Bruscha

I can agree with that. The problem is determining how much potential utility is worth. I would say not any more than a 5-10% drop depending on the strength of the utility. (For example if Destro is doing 3k dps the affliction lock would be between 2700-2800 dps)

Enough that there is a penalty for the utility but not a big enough penalty that it's an immediate respec if that utility is covered by another class.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Assuming Necrosis is fixed to scale with AP (last I checked it was based solely on weapon damage) that's another source of Shadow Damage to consider from DKs.

I'm not up to date on what are the current optimal DK DPS builds, but I don't currently see much incentive for Blood DPS builds to go into Frost. At least the builds I've been toying with trying out pick up Necrosis on the assumption that it'll be fixed.

 

Hearteater

On DK sources of shadow damage with respect to ISB: At present, Frost DKs will be using Frost Strike instead of DC, so that won't be burning a charge. As an added bonus, deep Frost builds appear to work better with a side of Blood talents, so no Necrosis either from them either. Obviously that is all very subject to change.

 

Evidicus

I would make the case that the "best" specs for level 80 raiding will have more to do with what your guild's class/spec composition are in raids, and what any potential set bonuses are for T7, T8, etc more than they do just looking at what our talent trees have to offer. Obviously there will always be tradeoffs between utility and personal DPS, but what that utility is "worth" will really be determined by a ton of factors outside of the individual warlock's control (again your raid composition being the largest factor). Trying to pick the best spec at this point is like trying to argue over how to solve a jigsaw puzzle that has half the pieces missing. I think the one thing we can all agree on at this point though is that the days of having 3-5 (or more) Warlocks in a raid spamming shadow bolts is probably at an end, which is a good thing.

Personally I am more interested in is the immediate future and what specs Warlocks will be taking in post-3.0 to continue their 25 man raiding in BT and Sunwell. That said, what level 70 specs do you plan on using after the patch for raiding?

 

Razumikhin

I'm interested in this as well. Are there any tests or simulations of different specs underway?

 

Quintessa

I think 0/21/40 will still be the optimum DPS spec post-3.0/pre-WotLK. But with the nerfs to ISB and DS, and with the addition of Molten Core I think Fire Destro will take precedence over Shadow Destro, especially for locks currently clearing Sunwell that have the gear to support Fire right now.

This is the spec I'm going to try as soon as 3.0 is released: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

 

Rustik

I was thinking about this while at work today. Haunt is a flat 20% increase to dots. In effect, a 20% crit chance with ruin is a 20% bonus to Any DD spell. Haunt is a multiplier directly on to you dots, to aid in scaling. Destro still has a benefit because it has a second multiplier, haste. (And a well geared destro lock has more than 20% crit.)

But If you remember, life tap will now be based on spirit. A destro lock in all that stam/int/SP/haste/crit gear won't have diddly for spirit, whereas an affliction lock with int/sta/spi/SP will have a crapton. Considering the health return from siphon life, Haunt, and the occasional drain life, Affliction only needs tap once or twice every once in a while, and still has enough leftover to heal themselves of some AOE.

Destro will expend a LOT more GBCs on life tap, and draining will really nerf their dps. Soul leech is asking for the RNG to slap you int he face. They'll be dependent on a healer. Nobody is accounting for the tons of healing the affliction lock does, but blizzard is including it in the balancing. I always kinda figured that's why one is affliction and one is -destruction-.

Affliction could go off into a dark corner and play dot spam till the cows come home and the sun falls out of the sky, and they'll sustain the majority of their maximum dps doing it. In order for destro to max their damage they're likely to either nerf their damage or require healing. I have a feeling that there will be lots of aoe healing in WotLK, to up the healing stress without crushing blows. And to account for the fact that now every healer has an AOE heal.

 

Wyand

I guess I will try a Fire-Destruction spec with active Imp out. Not that I think it is the funniest or "best" possible spec in wotlk, but imho it's the only viable spec you can achieve with 61 Talent points.

Just look at the alternatives:
-Shadow Destuction as it is known. 5% isb-nerf, 5% demo-sac nerf. Compared to the already strong Fire-Destruction Spec on Live Servers which even gets Emberstorm buffed again (-0.5 sec cast-time on incinerate instead of 10%) Shadow looks weaker now.
-Fire Destruction with sacced imp. No possibility to reach imp soul-leech for Mana while having 5/5 S&F, again the 5% nerfed sac-buff. No Stamina for the whole Raid. My feeling says the 10% damage from sacced imp is weaker, than the Mana-gain plus the dps from the active imp.
-Demonology.. either without range/crit for sb and ruin, or without all the goodies in the lower demon-tree. Especially demonic pact. Sucks.
-Affliction.. either without range an crit-chance (and ruin) on Shadowbolt, or without eradication, death's embrace, everlasting affl. an haunt. Sucks big time.

So I think i'll try out something like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
Not Knowing wether the whole backdraft-thing and/or Fire and Brimstone are worth it, I just skipped them. If they turn out to be good, I'll take some points out of demonology.


What drives me mad about that upcoming patch is the question wether the changes to Fel Armor and Lifetap regarding Spirit will already go Live and what will happen to my Sunwell-gear. I don't think Blizzard will change the stats on non-set pieces like those from Kil'Jaeden or Brutallus's panties.


Sorry for my poor English, usually I'm just a reader :>

 

Quintessa

This is a good point. It seems that in WotLK a lot of Destruction's DPS increase will come from increased mana efficiency, with the addition of Spirit to the generic caster itemization and the Spirit based skills and talents. If they end up not adding Spirit to many of the Sunwell pieces and T6, or any of the mana efficiency changes, any 0/21/40 variant may be discarded for more mana efficiency during the 3.0->WotLK lull. Or we may just have to disregard the non-Spirit itemized Sunwell boss drops in favor of the Sunmote turn-ins itemized with Spirit.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It's unlikely that Destruction is going to ignore Spirit on their gear. The mechanics of the revamped Fel Armor are such that Spirit is a very clear DPS increase, especially if you take Demonic Aegis. In addition to reduced Life Tapping, you gain +Damage from Spirit both of which mean bigger returns from Soul Leech (time spent Life Tapping is time spent *not* potentially proccing Soul Leech). Like everything else with Destruction scaling, the loop feeds into itself to become better and better.

Haunt doesn't make up for Destruction's self-synergy. It increase's Affliction's strongest point, DoT scaling with Spell Damage, without addressing Affliction's weaknesses. When Affliction Life Taps it's during the "filler" phase of the DPS cycle, you lose less for Life Tapping compared to Destruction anyway. Reducing the need to Dark Pact/Life Tap only increases the amount of time Affliction has to spend on its weakest portion of DPS.

So ultimately, even mana regen mechanics play to Affliction's disadvantage.

 

Sydane

The best Demonology build at 70 with WotLK talents looks like 1/55/5 (the two points in Health Funnel are filler and can go anywhere) but you sacrifice ISB. However, if all the destro locks are fire anyway, it probably won't matter much. That's probably the build I'll be using or something similar depending on what other talent adjustments they make. You could pull some points out of Fel Synergy most likely, but there's not really anywhere else to put them unless you want to pick up Molten Core, and you can't cut enough to get ISB. As long as the raid wide buffs come in 3.0 along with the talents (and they should), the Felguard is going to be a beast and practically indestructible.

 

Wyand

That's exactly what I was thinking about. Blizzard already kind of stated in a blue-post, that they'll change stats on existing sets for classes that experience a major change in their mechanics. That says "hey, we're going to put spirit on the warlock-sets". But I am quite sure that they won't chance the non-set pieces, because there are equal alternatives available on each slot (with sucky damage-stats). I did some minor Maths on that issue, looking at the amount of spirit on mage-sets, assuming ours will get similar amounts, using the base + 3*spirit formula for lifetap und the 2.4 formula for passive mana-regen. If all the T6 pieces get around 20-25 spirit you would end up with roughly 600 int and 400 Spirit raid buffed if you took 8/8 t6 (including the old crap), which would result in approx. 1800 Mana Lifetaps and 140 mp5 while casting (~15% decrease in mana-cost) which would be more than enough to keep up. Not to forget the 130 +spellpower via Fel Armor.
Of course nobody wants to run around with more than 4 pieces of T6 in Endgame Gear, so I just started to collect the tradeable Healer-pieces that none of our priests needs anymore.. Just to make sure.

Conclusion: I think that T6 with spirit will be enough to keep you able to raid until you picked up the non-set pieces with +spirit.

The really interesting question is will there be a point where you just have enough mana-regen and can pick up some of the spirit-less pieces to do more dps or will the better mana-efficiency with even more spirit be strong enough to make all the spirit-items better than those without? But thats a question for the spreadsheet

 

Wuff

Currently, I would remove the points from Metamorphosis, Corruption and Demonic Empathy. Especially if all the destro locks go fire. This would grant you the 5 necessary points for ISB and would make you a shadowbolt spammer (maybe add immolate) with maximum raidwide caster dd buffing.
Or do you plan on raiding without shadow priests when 3.0 arrives?

 

Burberri

Having messed around a little bit with destruction, I think you will find a 0/3/47+11 will have the same mana efficiency even with the life tap nerf. The people that are SOL are demon spec warlocks as they don't get imp soul leech nor dark pact.

Just a comment, I know Eradication does not stack with bloodlust, which leads me to believe that backdraft doesn't (though I haven't had a chance to test it), so it could be that these abilities have lower values particularly in shorter fights. Whether they stack with wrath of air, or imp boomkin I have not yet had a chance to test.

 

Drundia

You are talking as if crit is super-useful stat, especially in early gear-up cycle. It is so ridiculously crappy, that 30% of spirit into spell power is almost making spirit better than crit, add to this possibility of Demonic Aegis, mana regeneration, and higher mana per Life Tap. Then no crit scaling of Imp, reverse scaling of Empowered Imp free crit, Immolate DOT which doesn't crit either, and I can see crit not being particularly desirable stat even for a Destruction Warlock.

 

Smurrf

This was posted in response to the following:

Source


Not much on the surface, but the use of the word 'considerable' here tells me that they actually are looking at the feedback from Locks. Good to know.

 

Zed

Incorrect. Soul Leech alone lets you sustain your dps indefinitely on a raidbuffed stand-and-nuke encounter (read: Brutallus). Sure on an aoe-damage encounter there is a greater chance for you to go to low hp if it doesn't proc but that is somewhat compensated by higher Warlock HP pools and Fel Armor. Also in a non-emergency situation Life Tap damage can easily and cheaply be healed, you just need to be careful not to put unneccessary stress on your healers. Some more aware ones will also use "preemptive" hots on you even when you are at full hp. And after an incoming damage spike you are usually loaded with hots and can freely lifetap to full. Not to mention, grouped with a shadow priest (which I admittedly very rarely am) makes the whole Life Tap thing a non-issue.
You will also get spirit regen, ISL and maybe ILT after the patch which all reduce required healing, while the Fel Armor change is more likely to increase it.

I'd be suprised to see DS/SnF to remain the dominant spec post-3.0. Top geared locks do 2500-3000 dps on Brutallus, meaning your Imp, the Emp. Imp benefit and the rest of the 40+ goodies in Destro should come out at ~300 dps to compensate. This seems easily achievable, add on top the benefit of shared aggro with your pet, and reconsider.

 

Sydane

Metamorphosis may or may not suck compared to Ruin, that remains to be seen, but it's going to be more worthwhile than one point in ISB, and stands a pretty good chance of being rather overpowered at 70. I'd drop one point in Bane before dropping Metamorphosis (and that's from a numbers point of view, not to mention the coolness factor).

That said, the ISB uptime of one demo lock with under 30% effective crit (probably under 25% given the typical crit suppression) is going to be terrible in a raid with 2-3 shadow priests (under 40% with 3). Not to mention that the new spell description still says it won't affect periodic damage, and if that is the case, it's completely worthless to have.

I guess I could do a bastardized version like 0/51/9 but my gut tells me 4% crit to my pet and 2% haste and 2% better demonic empathy is going to be better overall than what little ISB can provide. Hopefully we'll have some version of the spreadsheet available to help with making these decisions somewhat, though I don't think either way it will make a huge amount of difference.

Edit: regarding changing our tier sets, cutting out half the stam and making it spirit would be a buff for us now, even before 3.0. As such, I very much doubt that they will bother. It's not like they radically changed our entire mechanics of stat distribution like they are doing with Enhancement Shaman. Besides, you can always just regem everything with 12 spirit green Northrend gems if you feel the need.

 

TheDrDroppedMe

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...icnexus_17.jpg

This is just the 1st heroic piece. There's still 3 tiers of epics above it with much higher item levels to account for. Haste and Crit will not be Destro-specific. Affliction is just not in a good place right now. That static 20% will mean very little even in just Heroic epics.

 

Sydane

Bear in mind, that's the rough equivalent of 17 crit rating at level 70, which is less crit than [Hands of the Sun] (heroic drop) or [Gloves of the High Magus] (quest reward), much less any epics T4 or higher. Most likely, Destruction Warlocks at level 80 in blues will be doing lower dps than SW warlocks are right now. The dropoff in rating value is massive.

We're also seeing tons of gear with nothing on it but Stam/Int/Spirit/Spell damage like Demonic Fabric Bands and Leggings of Burning Gleam. However, one of the more interesting things that is showing up is items with more Rating on them than pure Damage like Rhie-ay's Clutching Gauntlets, something that was unheard of in BC. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the itemization turns out and it's still a bit too early to make any strong assumptions.

 

Darian_TruBlade

I've always been a fan of being a glass cannon. If there are pure damage options in raiding as well as in dungeon/quest blues it'll be funny when I'm more fragile than my Imp.

Unfortunately, I don't think even Sta/Int/Spi/SP gear will help Affliction enough; Destruction potentially benefits more from that same gear. Spirit simply isn't as good a DPS stat for Affliction as it is for other specs because you can time your Life Taps/Dark Pacts during your "low" DPS Shadow Bolt phase. If Destruction has the option of Int/Spi/SP/Crit gear then it's only worse as there isn't an effective equivalent for Affliction.

Given that all three Warlock specs have significant problems at the moment (Affliction: Scaling, Demonology: Metamorphosis, Destruction: Awkward Mechanics) the "considerable" work Blizzard's putting into Warlock talents doesn't surprise me. Hopefully we'll have as brilliant a review as the others we've seen so far.

 

Yorex

Big post on beta boards about buffs/debuffs. Relevant sections for Warlocks:
I don't think this bodes well at all for Affliction. Fel Intelligence not stacking and ISB/SE being self-buffs hurts most of the "utility", and the last few pages of this thread are enough to show that balancing the damage is much easier said than done.

On the other hand, this should kill any debate about DKs eating ISB charges, since there won't be any charges anymore.

 

Aeverius

Shadow 'locks are also losing the synergy of Shadow Weaving, as it's now a buff to the Priest rather than a boss debuff.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

PSGarak

I like the stacking changes in general. I don't like the way the warlock changes fel out. I would have prefered fel intelligence sharing stacking with BoK rather than AI and DS. The ISB and SE changes... hurt currently, but I'm willing to wait how they shake out. If shadow destro really is dead than that basically makes crit an important stat for an affliction warlock, in a way other than having DoTs crit, which I like (I would like it more if ISB were moved to affliction). Shadow Embrace, I don't know what they have planned. 5% on self isn't worth 5 talent points, 6% might be worth 2 while grinding. Or they could redesign or totally scrap it.

I also notice that Moonkin make a generally superior support class to affliction locks under those changes. In addition to moonkin aura, they can duplicate CoR and CoE (and misery =P), and CoW is not a particularly valuable or unique debuff anymore. I don't mind sharing support functions, but I do feel like moonkin are encroaching on our function to an unreasonable extent that I would like to see scaled back.

The good news is, now that they're done with this they have to look again at individual classes, and glyphs, in light of redesigned abilities. I look forward to that.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Arnath

Who wants a self only Shadow Embrace? Some of these changes are mind boggling.