Flamingcloud

I've seen nothing to indicate that it is a major glyph. Infact I have seen nothing to indicate that there is even a such thing as a major glyph anymore. With no classes getting any glyphs like polymorph penguin that do nothing, it would not surprise me if that 6 glyph two of each type system was completely gone. What glyph would you get over it? Siphon Life is easily the best glyph, Immolate is probably better as well. The CoA glyph is probably third best, followed by Shadowbolt and Corruption.

 

Bruscha

Malediction doesn't stack with ebon plague.
Shadow Embrace doesn't stack with grace
Would it be possible that they would also make CoR not stack with expose armor or sunder armor?

With affliction's buffs all becoming non-unique should they really get the DPS penalty for having that utility? With the way debuffs stand right now it's highly possible that an affliciton build could bring the exact same rdps benefit as a destro build through utility. Should they have the same dps potential?

 

bladehawk

Unless Destro becomes more than SB/Incenrate spamming which is what they are trying to do (the success factor will only be known when they finish the tweaks and level 80 raids are going) then affliction IMHO should do more DPS.

The current situation - curse and spam SB while watching TV doing more DPS than micromanaging DOTs and SBing is really unfair to people that are using the most skill.

but all classes have debuff mechanics that are replacable (in theory) so all classes should "suffer" DPS wise equally, at least in theory.

 

Soul

Right now, Shadow Embrace reduces the physical damage the target does to anybody by 5%. Grace reduces incoming damage by 2/4/6%. So, when a target afflicted by Shadow Embrace hit someone with a Grace buff, then somehow the game ignores the weaker of the two applicable effects? That just sounds bizarre, especially since the two effects are in no way congruent to each other - different magnitudes (1/2/3/4/5% vs. 2/4/6%), different damage types (physical damage only vs. all damage), different scopes (outgoing vs. incoming)... it just doesn't make sense.

 

Rustik

People keep looking at other classes having the same debuff as "zomg I'll be replaced." I see it more as "If you're more skilled and better geared than the dk, then you replace the dk. If the DK is better than you, then they bring the DK."

Granted if the DK does 50% more damage than the afflock in the same level gear, then something is wrong. FOr the most part, slightly lower dps doesn't mean much. As long as you bring the required dps, you're fine.

VR requires 15 dpsers do 500 dps to kill in the 10 minute enrage timer. Even if the DK does 800, and I do 600 as a warlock, we still bring what is required, and the warlock won't suck up as much healer mana. I might be a bit miffed about a 33% damage advantage, but 5 or 10% is small cookies.

Besides, the point of the redundancy is so if you don't have a warlock, you can bring the DK instead. Or vice versa. Or you can bring both and if one dies you still have it. All this doom and gloom over buff redundancy is silly.

 

• frmorrison

Unholy with 13% magic damage is currently not a very good dps spec (Blood and Frost with Unholy minor spec are better), so that helps an Affliction Lock plus Holy Priests are better healers than Disc Priest (using Shields for healing is bad for most of the tanks), so Affliction will be good if Priests + DK are not changed.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Bonestorm

All kinds of weak shadow damage flying around makes it a worse talent. ISB charges getting eaten by small things like necrosis or death and decay ticks would reduce the uptime of the debuff to almost nothing, killing its impact on dots, not to mention greatly reducing the damage it would potentially add to real shadow nukes. Also consider that while there will be less spriests in raids, the spriests that remain will be casting more mind blasts (and maybe SW: pains?), and eating more charges per. I think it would just make more sense to get rid of the charges and re-balance the duration/effect around that.

Unholy DK doesn't seem raid viable honestly, so I don't think you have much to worry about yet.

I would guess that all of the glyphs added into the game last patch were major glyphs, and minor glyphs are just not yet added. For one, it wouldn't make much sense if you could get six of these glyphs, since you could easily just pick up all of the good/decent ones for every spec/role, barring really situational ones. And I doubt they are going to drop all the cosmetic stuff like green fire, alternate druid forms and polymorphs, etc. as people were quite excited about them, testing the glyphs that actually effect game balance is just a higher priority I would imagine.

And for raiding affliction, I would say the siphon life and corruption glyphs are a given, I can't see why you would think the CoA glyph you could only make use of situationally would be better than an extra 2 points of nightfall. And unless running with multiple affliction locks becomes common so that you can cast CoA, than I would say either felhunter/imp glyph depending on which you are using, or the shadowbolt one would be the next best. Yes they are pretty weak, but it's better than buffing a spell you don't even cast.

 

Flamingcloud

Well if they were all major glyphs and you could only have two... I would get siphon life and immolate for affliction, and the third would probably be CoA. Nightfall is worth like 15 dps out of 2500. Then again I would probably only go affliction if I was the second affliction lock and didn't have to cast CoE. For pure fire destro, I might get CoA to go with immolate.

 

Darkmantle

The point I haven't seen mentioned much in the great affliction scaling debate is raid buffs. Moonkin provide crit and haste, elemental shamans provide an increase to crit damage and haste while resto/enhance shamans and disc priests remain the +dmg buffers. There is also drums and bloodlust that magnify any difference. Depending on how improved moonkin ends up in its final form it will also increase crit and haste scaling for direct damage casters.

That means that even if you manage to tune affliction and destro to be 10% different at all levels of gear then once they are raiding they will be unbalanced compared to one another.

The start of wotlk looks to be fairly similar to TBC though with a lack of spread stats. There seem to be too many items like this which end up with a massive amount of +dmg due to fel armor because they refuse to stack more than 4 stats on blues. A search on wowhead turns up many blues with dmg/spirit, no spirit and dmg/haste or no spirit and dmg/crit except for the black duskweave bracers.

Until we start seeing the naxx caster gear it will be hard to see how all the changes pan out. If we start to see spirit/dmg/crit/hit/haste items in early naxx then it is a safe bet that destro and demo/ruin will keep their top spot.

 

Flamingcloud

You have to keep in mind that haste:dmg ratio for affliction is basically the same as it is for destruction. The values I have for UA affliction are 1dmg = 1.03dps, 1haste = 1.02dps 1crit = 0.38dps. For destruction the values are 1dmg = 1.39dps, 1haste = 1.44dps 1crit = 1.16dps.

It isn't a problem of haste scaling badly, it is a problem of haste AND damage scaling badly, no stats scale as well as they do in destro. Crit is obviously horribad but there is nothing you can do about that aside from getting spirit items instead of crit items.(assuming the theme of an item having dmg/spirit or dmg/crit remains)

 

Darkmantle

Haste is worse for me as an Australian(whose lowerping has broken as well >:O ) on dots because timing versus the global cooldown is harder than for a shadowbolt with its longer cast.

You make an excellent point that if 1 dmg = 1 haste = 1 crit = x dps for both affliction and destro then it wouldn't matter in raids what buffs we get but while haste and crit scale better for destro than for affliction then raids will always magnify the difference irrespective of other issues.

I don't think I am quite communicating my thinking clearly enough, so I will use the example I had in my head.

If we got into a situation where an item with 1.5x damage x haste and x crit scaled equally(destro maintaining their theoretical 10% advantage) well for afflction and destro, because of higher affliction scaling on +dmg, that would be a good place to start. We would be balanced along all tiers of gear. However as long as crit is significantly better for destro then raid buffs will break that balance. Especially with the magnification of crits with the shaman totem and CSD equivalents.

 

• frmorrison

How to make an educated guess which is major and minor is that major adds something new or more damage, while a minor adds "flavor" or a small bonus to a minor spells or a cooldown reduction.

Something that is most likely minor is Glyph of Healthstone, Glyph of Banish, Glyph of Howl of Terror, Glyph of Death Coil, and Glyph of Health Funnel. Likely more are minor, but you see the point.


Depending on your spec and whether you want to PvE and PvP, I can see adding the 4th Major being very useful.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Bonestorm

AFAIK the separation of lesser/minor glyphs has been scrapped, and it's now it's just 3 major and 3 minor/lesser/whatever they're called, unless it's been changed yet again. I didn't really think about the immolate one for affliction, you're right that would probably be second choice. More nightfall means more uptime on ISB thou, or is that worked into that number?

 

Rustik

I've got it.

Adjust haunt's damage, and remove the 10 second cooldown. It becomes our filler spell for affliction, and applies a debuff to the target that increases dot damage by 4%, heals us for 20% of our dots, stacking to 5 times.

Edit: Forgot to add the damage component.

 

Selmarix

That would not fix the scaling problem as affliction would still have a terrible cubic scaling coefficient in comparison with destro which makes it close to impossible to balance the specs properly.

 

Vagabond

Every answer that "Fixes" our scaling problems by monkeying with our filler (be it Shadowbolt, be it Haunt, be it some new nuke) still fails. Every time you cast a dot rather than the filler, you lose ground on I'level usage; till you eventually get to a point where its simply not worth casting the DoT.

That is unless someone wants to take a crack at making the filler have additional bonus scaling above and beyond its normal haste/crit scaling, where the addition is the X/Y portion of a full rotation that you spend casting dots; and yet is tied to dots on target, lest you simply don't bother. Don't forget, the rotation changes from cycle to cycle due to differing dot durations.

Fixing the filler to cover for the dots is far FAR more complicated than just fixing the dots.

 

Selmarix

The best suggestion that I have seen that allows your DoTs to scale with crit while not actually allowing them to crit themselves is to make a haunt crit increase DoT damage by a far higher percentage than a non crit.
Of course the problem with that is that the difference between haunt crit and non crit phases is quite massive.

Another way would be to increase the effect of imp shadowbolt on DoTs and remove the charges from that part of the effect (but still keep them for the lower effect on DDs). That would make DoTs scale with imp shadowbolt uptime which would increase with crit and haste.
If the increase in synergy between affliction locks (and probably demo) would be too big then a similar way would be to add a talent in deep affliction like this:
Your direct damage crits have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to increase the damage of _your_ DoT spells on the target by 100% for 4s (numbers can be changed for balance).

 

BeerBelly

In my opinion the best suggestion for DOTs to scale with crit was put forth by Draele. Every 1% crit should increase DOT damage by 0.5%

Seems the easiest option and I don't think it would be over powered.

 

Selmarix

Combining the DoT crit damage increase with a DD usage will reduce the PvP impact (and the nerf cries from that side).

 

PsyBomb

Actually, that kinda would be. I know that I would absolutely love an additional 12% static damage bonus to my DoT effects right now, and that would put my little Affliction warlock significantly above the Destro guys while retaining his utility.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

tetracycloide

If crit and haste are revamped to contribute significantly to the DoT portion of affliction damage then the spell coefficents would have to be reduced. Obviously crit scaling on the current spells would be overpowered because they were supposed to get all the damage they needed out of spell power. I do not think anyone is suggesting adding in crit scaling on DoTs while maintaining the same spell damage coeffecents is balanced.

My vanity is justified.

 

Selmarix

Indeed, the key is to change the mechanics to allow for cubic scaling for affliction first and then modify the coefficients until the balance is right both during the entire item progression (which would not be possible without first changing the mechanics).

 

Lhivera

Potential counts for something. Just because these stack doesn't mean they're not often going to be useful (especially in 10-mans, but often in 25-mans as well). Blood Pact vs. Commanding Shout is the simplest example -- they may not stack, but Blood Pact will still be much more likely to reach ranged DPS (which will matter in some fights), and if you're running with only one Warrior, he'll be wanting to use Battle Shout.

So basically, they'll be balancing on utility potential now, rather than guaranteed utility. And Affliction has higher utility potential than Destruction, so it needs to do somewhat less damage to compensate. Similarly, just because Improved Water Elemental may often be redundant with other mana regen buffs, a Frost Mage still has it, and therefore has higher utility potential than a Fire or Arcane Mage, and just do less damage than they do.

However, utility potential is obviously not as valuable as actual utility, so the damage penalties should clearly be reduced.

At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Moonkin and Elemental Shaman have had a similar request running for Stormstrike since before there were Moonkin. It's unlikely, though not impossible, Blizzard will change the functionality. Even in its current state what I said remains true. ISB will be a notable DPS boost for all classes using Shadow damage, but it will fit in a Stormstrike niche. That makes the talent worse and that's a change from the current paradigm of full ISB uptime from start to finish. That by and far doesn't mean the debuff is now useless, only nerfed.

 

Flamingcloud

The only moves that death knights have that would be eating isb charges from what I can tell are scourge strtike, and death coil. The raids that have unholy dks are the ones least likely to have an affliction warlock. I assume the most common raid makeup would have a blood dk, frost dk, 1 spriest, 1 demo lock, 1 aff lock(with the dks all using dcoil in their rotation). While isb uptime would be lower it should be around 65% in this raid, instead of the 71% we got in these 3 shadow destro 2 spriest groups.