Affliction got some nice boost, better scaling with damage, haunt constant 20% increase and slightly better scaling with crit through haunt. But as long as crit and haste are the more prevalent stats in endgame then affliction will still come up weak compared to destro.

However on the flip side of it, if all dots could crit or chance to trigger extra damage like wandering plague then it would then flip affliction over to being op. One thing I could see happening is maybe something like change up Deaths Embrace. Something along the lines of being when a target is below 20% health your DoTs have a chance equal to your spell crit to trigger and extra tick, but lower the crit to shadow spells or change it back to just haunt and bolt.

DoT critting would have to be from a talent and it would have to be deep in Affliction to prevent OPing destro or Demon with the ability to crit dots.

Im looking at a fire destro build with empowered imp and improved imp, maybe demonic aegis, and enough points in imp corruption to get it under gcd for pve. Using corruptions for molten core procs. But primarily casting immolate, incinerates, conflags. Maybe soul fire on backdrafts but that could take a heavy toll on my shards in end game.

I actually go the other way. I'd much rather crit% be figured in to all DOT effects, rather than have a talent add it in. A talent that made crit useful for DOTs in Affliction would just be putting Demo and Destruction in the same position Affliction is in now (although to a lesser degree). That is, not all their spells scale with all their stats.

Spells that don't scale with stats are bad. They cause problems that will creep up and cause grief later. So much easier to just make all the spells scale with the same stats from the start. Why is Blizzard resisting this? It has no downside beyond the time required to implement the change.

I'm assuming what you mean to say is that Immolate stacks ala Lifebloom up to 2-3 times, but only one charge would be consumed by Conflagrate thus allowing us to Conflagrate without having to "waste" Backdraft on another Immolate.

That would, I think, be an exceptional way of handling the awkwardness of Conflagrate and Backdraft. The only problem could be if they swap Demonic Power and Aftermath as many have suggested, wherein the two talent points that were being wasted on Molten Core are freed up, only to have nowhere to go. It's purely a hypothetical issue, but then we're dealing with a purely hypothetical talent change.

I don't see what the problem of dots not criiting is.
If I remember correctly, last time I was affliction, my dots had a DPCT around 2.5K-3K. That's much higher than the DPCT of destro's SBs.
To be honest, the problem I see with affliction scaling has nothing to do with dots, but rather to affliction's SBs being very weak.
If affliction had access to effects similar to destro's Ruin and SnF talents, affliction would possibly scale fine with gear.

With all those troubles regarding Immolate, I would personally like to see it changed to from its current version to one that starts with a Base damage, then a dot component that starts with high ticks that gradually get lower.
During the last 5 seconds of the Immolation the debuff changes to "Smoulder" - which allows to re-ignite the Immolation with a Fire spell crit OR a Conflagration.
This would save the need for refreshing talents and include Conflagrate in a rotation(as destro lock).

You're right, affliction has great DPCT and DPM also, what dots lack is high DPS, since they're damage over time. Shadowbolt dps is causing them to fall behind, but most people don't think the dot spec should be using shadowbolt so heavily in the first place. They want their dot damage or drains to be the bulk of their dps, neither of which are effected by crit, and haste has a minimal effect on DL due to it's poor scaling.

The other reason they tend to fall behind is concurrent damage, or the lack thereof. That's one of the reasons I suspect they're hesitant to buff dots in any way, and why the neutered the coefficients on them as well. The potential to dot multiple people in pvp is in conflict with the single target nature of pve.

That wouldn't really fix the problem. If immolate can stack twice, and you consume one of the immolates, you would still want to recast immolate during backdraft to get it stacked back up to the maximum stack size.

That's why I think they should just let dots crit finally. I don't think it would be too much for pvp personally. Remember how affliction was overpowered for a short while when 2.0 was released and they had better coefficients? They nerfed the hell out of them, even though those coefficients were intended for BC, when people would have the higher sta they were planning for everyone. They overdid it, rather than wait and see how it would be at endgame, and they didn't reverse the nerf afterwords. Not that it would address the lack of crit/haste scaling for affliction, but it wouldn't be as bad as it is now.

I disagree, the biggest reason to recast Immolate during Backdraft currently is the bonus damage on Incinerate. Without any haste at all you lose 2 ticks from a "fully stacked" Immolate in this setup. With even just 10%, however, you'll only lose half the damage on a single tick. The bigger issue would be interaction with F&B.

The bottom line, however, is that we're currently dealing with a lot of mechanics that are fine on their own but don't play well together. It's awkward, much like what Fury Warriors were facing with the original beta trees, and in a variety of ways that no single change is likely to repair.

Except that mentioned AoE spells are channeled and have spell power coefficients lower than normal nuke of equal cast time, while DOTs aren't channeled and have spell power coefficeints higher than normal nuke of equal cast time.

Affliction Corruption already has DPCT very close to DPCT of a Destruction Shadow Bolt crit. Does it need more? DOTs already work like auto-crit spells. I don't know perhaps you would find it more balanced if new critting DOTs would get spell power coefficients based on their cast time, because many people go into "they don't deal damage instantly and can be dispelled so they should scale better", but I personally don't see the difference between instant damage and delayed damage when it's in a several-minute boss fight and that boss never dispels DOTs.

DOTs have enough damage as it is, and don't need any more. The way it worked in TBC was caused by itemization issues that you could dodge crit early, but not late, but for example I had almost the same crit rate as Destruction from Attumen to Illidan, and while having about the same crit I got some spell power and haste, and capped my hit.

The good part is lower % hit caps, so the relation between stats in early WotLK and late WotLK will be more similar than in case of TBC, meaning that you won't be able to dodge crit and haste so easily in early game.

1 tick of Immolate deals so much more damage than bonus Incinerate receives for having Immolate on target, and also Incinerate interacts with other Warlocks' Immolates for that bonus.

Obviously they don't have enough damage, or the difference between an Afflict build and our bog standard X/21/40 (and the expansion X/X/5X fire builds) wouldn't be so huge. Talking about DPCT and coefficients means nothing when at the end of the day, full 1 button destro (or upcoming 2-3 button fire-destro) win hands down on dps and raid contribution. Until affliction spells gain the same benefits from gear as destro spells, there will be inequality. And inequality means *someone's* being left behind, be it destro early TBC, be it afflict late TBC.

I also doubt anyone here truly means "give affliction equal footing on crit/haste AND let them keep their current coef's". There will be a trade off, be it lower initial damage or lower coef's. And really, balancing *that* portion of it is stupid easy.

1. Enable equitable "crit/haste on dots" mechanic on test server. <likely the hard part, coding wise>
2. Run their version of Dr Boom tests using Destro and Aflict test-locks at X, 2x, 3x gear levels.
3. Find that Afflict lock is A% higher average dps than Destro lock.
4. Scale back Initial damage and/or coef by A%. <doing math, changing a number in a database, *EASY*>

If step 4 is hard, because A% is significantly different among the cases, then start the fuck over, your equitable mechanic isn't equitable enough.

People always bring up the 2-3 mob pull "dot everything up and be OP'd!" argument. Valid argument. But marginal. Some classes have 2-3 mob abilitys, but more are either full on single target, or have AE things. As such, unless we're talking trash/normal EXP mobs, designers build encounters as either single target or AE required. And trash/exp mobs simply don't last long enough for dots to run full course. The 2-3 mob dotting in pvp is countered by dispels and dot's not being burst to begin with.

Why yes, the fact that, as an affliction spec, I'm not casting DoTs for 70% of the time *is* the problem. :P

In all seriousness, trying to fix affliction by tinkering with shadowbolt it strikes me as completely bass-ackwards, though this feeling is nothing new.

And we'll have to simply disagree with dots scaling fine when they 100% don't scale with crit, and only marginally with haste.

I repeat: DOTs have enough damage, the fact that they have DPCT of a Destruction Shadow Bolt crit is perfectly enough. I understand that you want a single Corruption to do 10k damage on level 70 in solo situations, but that's nowhere near balanced. Your problem is Shadow Bolt not having enough damage, not DOTs. What they currently do with Haunt and with extra spell power scaling isn't right, it will only increase disparity between DOTs and Shadow Bolt. 30% of your casting time will produce 70% of your damage, and it's not funny. They are overbuffing DOTs again.

And again the same record. They may scale bad with haste and not at all with crit, but they scale better with spell power. Why do you keep mentioning one side, but completely ignore other one?

I don't think he is. If Shadowbolt was boosted to the levels required to up Aff enough then Destro would be back at shadow. Instead of running circles trying to balance the specs back and forth using the same few spells, then trying to balance them in regards to their speciality would be better, and easier I would think. Destro nukes, Demo pets and Aff DoTs. So what if DoTs are effective, it isn't as if you can stack them*. You could have a DoT do a million damage and cost 10 mana, but if you can only have one of them up on any one target and it does the damage slowly, then it doesn't matter right? You cast it once and you then have to cast something else. If that something else is bad because it is an out of spec spell, then it isn't that spell's fault. It would be wrong to base any buffs around it rather than the specdependant spells since they can impact the power of other specs in an unwanted fashion.

* Well that could be a solution too. Adding more DoTs, new or even stacking old ones. However that is the least likely and the most troublesome solution I think (which DoTs can then be reapplied etc).

Critting DoTs could perhaps be kept at a smaller percentage than the direct damage spells so as to discourage stacking crit, but rather continue the spellpower stacking. But at least crit wouldn't be wasted for such a significant amount of the damage.
Haste... well that is indeed an issue. Personally I would prefer a stat like Haste be one of the gammed stats. Clearly Aff has little obvious use for small amounts of passive haste (the talented haste from Eradication is cheap and effective enough), neither does Druids have any burning desire for haste in Feral forms given their dependancy on instant yellow attacks, likewise Hunters would do well to avoid Haste too (same issue with the added problem of pets). In all these cases specs and classes that share gear with them actually want Haste to some extent (most clothies aside from Spriests, Rogues and Enhancement Shamans). With such a diverse (un)need for Haste I don't think it is a good stat to slap on gear in anything but special cases. If it is too widespread certain classes and specs will be too limited in their gearupgrade options, while the rest can pick and choose more or less.

If at the end of the average raid, my DPS/total damage output and the Destro'lock's are neck and neck, then yes. 10k over 18 sec would be fine.

If there was true depth of gear availability, then you'd be partially right. What does crit/haste matter if Afflict can simply get pieces that have none, instead picking up items with more spell power.

O wait. Gear is not, nor ever will be that deep past the level up process. Lvl 80 PVE purp's will have 1 set, maybe 1 more "set's worth" of options per tier. We could count in PvP, but they burn alot of the item budge on resil and high stamina in excess of PvE needs. Perhaps you're proposing situations similar to Frozen Shadoweave, where items last from the moment you ding level cap through multiple tiers of raiding; and all the negative issues around that. Besides, this goes against the gear homogenization that Bliz is working under; almost all of the other spell casting dps want crit and haste, so crit and haste we will get.

O wait, focus on a single stat is excessively taxed by the formula used in item-budgeting, and as such with fall behind the power curve of other items with points spread over more stats.

---------
From the tone of your posts, it sounds like you prefer the shadow-mage style play, while I'm obviously biased towards affliction "dot them up and laugh while they die" play. Others want to explore the Firemage 2.0 and "Fluffy, go kill it!" styles. And nothing's wrong with any of them. If you spec that way, then the gear, spells, and talents should result with us all being on an equal playing field. Note, I'm discounting utlity and the like, these are things that are less quantifiable, more transitory, and generally should be equal access regardless of spec.

As several people have mentioned, blizzard has not addressed the core problems with affliction. In theory, the fact that dot's dont scale with crit and only barely with haste is made up for the fact that they receive a larger than normal portion of +damage (in the sense that they are 1.5 second or instant cast but receive more than a 1.5 second cast nuke would). The problem then becomes that even deep affliction warlocks don't spend all, or even most, of their time casting those dots. Haunt is a step in a right direction in the sense that its something we can cast between our dots that will increase said dot damage, but its bad in the sense that its just like shadow bolt: a nuke that benefits from the haste and crit that our dots do not.

Simply letting dots crit would just make ruin a required talent for affliction locks, and I don't think anyone wants to be tied into a 21 point talent when we have just been freed from the 21 point talent of DS. I don't think there is anything wrong by itself with having affliction get lots of damage from +damage and not much from +haste/+crit - they just need to figure out a way to allow us to keep going with affliction spells when our dots are all ticking. I believe the easiest way to do this is through blizzards new inscription mechanic. One that reads "Your drain life spells do not heal you and any healing that you would have gained is instead dealt as damage." Affliction gets its high dps filler spell and no further changes are needed (I utterly reject the argument that this would make us too much like shadow priests. Destro warlocks already play almost exactly like mages - i dont see why blizzard would have a problem with affliction locks playing similar to shadow priests).

Again you are missing the point. UA scales poorly because shadowbolting scales poorly when you spec affliction, not because dot's scale poorly. Yes dot's don't scale with crit and scale poorly with haste, but they scale so well with spellpower that they don't really need to. UA/Corr will get 140/150% of spell power with the new 45-50 talent, which is MASSIVE for a spell that is effectively a 1.5s cast. With just a rough calc that would be over 6500 damage on a 1.5s(ignoring haste). If that could be spammed that would be ~4500dps-so dot's scale just fine. The problem comes in when you start casting 2.5s shadowbolts that do ~4000 damage, or 1600dps.

Aren't you forgetting that a standard Destruction build includes talents from Demonology? You can't compare apples and oranges here. An Affliction lock that picks up Ruin is not getting DS, DA, or DS in the process... so you're not comparing apples to apples.

There is more to it than just DPCT, by limiting yourself to that being your only measuring point, you don't get the full picture, and any argument you put forward ends up being misleading through omission.

It really doesn't matter how HUGE the numbers are, if at the end of the day they don't bring home the bacon (or at least end up in the running)...

Also, please note that as we go up in gear tiers, that coefficient scaling actually has to get BIGGER to keep up. If going from T7 to T8 results in +6% dps increase for spells that use everything, and is broken down to +2% spell damage, +2% haste, and +2% crit, then for affliction to keep up, it has to gain the 4% from haste and crit from other means. The Gear's is the same, so that's out. Everyone's 80 and there are no new ranks of spells or talents, so that's out too. Leaving Coefficients. But trying to code sliding coefficients strikes me as wicked hard, and a trainwreck waiting to happen.

Depends on your viewpoint. I'll attempt to explain mine.
You are comparing DOT directly with nuke. Which indicates that DOT's scale better with spell damage due to coefficients.
I'm comparing a DOT based spec's value of spell damage to a nuke based spec's value of spell damage. In which case; the nuke build actually gains more dps from spell power than the affliction lock.

To state that affliction does and will scale better with spell damage enough to offset it's lack of scaling from crit and haste doesn't seem accurate when this is the situation. This could change in WoLK because there won't be quite as many percentage modifiers for nukes as there are in live. It's still a possibility that at some point a nuke build who gains full benefit from crit and haste will also gain more benefit from spell damage. Linear coefficients can't keep up with the multiplicative effects that haste and crit give.

I see, so in PVP Corruption alone should almost kill players (or kill, based on their gear), that indeed sounds fine. I really don't understand what's so hard to understand, your problem is weak Shadow Bolts, not weak DOTs.

Gear should have balanced stats from start to end. The problem in part is that there was a lot of spell-power-only items in early content. That's what's getting partially fixed. You aren't getting items with only spell power any more, so you'll have undesirable stats from start to end. You also get 20% higher spell power benefit on DOTs, and 20% extra periodic damage on them through Haunt. Is it really not enough?

You aren't supposed to get upgrade in form of single stat, they are supposed to come balanced, for example a single piece will give you an increase of 20 spell power + 10 haste + 10 crit. And it is completely irrelevant if everyone benefits from each of this stat equally. You might not benefit from crit, you benefit very poorly from haste, but your benefit from spell power may compensate for it, and it does for all DOTs. Your problem is still poor quality of your filler spell, not your DOTs. Affliction Shadow Bolt loses in scaling quality in all 3 stats, relative to Destruction Incinerate or Shadow Bolt.

But it isn't caused by poor DOT scaling, it's caused by extremely poor Shadow Bolt scaling in an Affliction build. The problem is that I see people asking to improve scaling of something that already has best scaling in game, but people ignore the component that is scaling poorly, a filler spell, Shadow Bolt. Why blaming DOTs when you already spend about ~30% of time casting them, but they provide 50% of your DPS. Already in TBC Affliction build DOTs have double DPCT of Shadow Bolt, and it's getting further up, in WotLK Affliction build DOTs have almost triple DPCT of Shadow Bolt. I extrapolate it to situation where you would only cast Haunt and DOTs and wouldn't even bother to use any filler because it would be so useless.

Here's where I start saying stupid things. "Screw breaking PvE due to PvP balancing." Or how about "if your partner can't be bothered to cleanse or heal you within 18 seconds then yes you should die." Or even "if Affliction does indeed turn out to be to brutal when its finally brought up to parity with Destro, simply nerf it using resilience. Again. Other than the universal CC timer limitation, locks already play by a different ruleset in pvp than pve. Resil effecting dots and CoD immunity. Whats one more pass at the same?"

If the raid DPS/damage numbers aren't there, then no, its not enough. 1000% of 0 is ... 0!

As a Heavy affliction spec, I sure hope shadowbolt is truly weak; considering where all the talents got spent.

And again, you're only looking at it from DPCT perspective only.