Just about everything in pve has 0 (non-level) resistances anyway, so i suspect that the 165 is for pvp purposes, to be able to negate all of the resistance buffs floating around (acclimitation, motw, aura's, totems, etc) or at least a hefty portion of them.

While the debuffs share the same category they don't share the power. A CoE is still superior to Earth and Moon for obvious reasons. A moonkin cannot replace CoR, not while staying in moonkin form and at range anyways.

Earth and Moon is 3% more than an unskilled CoE and Earth and Moon will be easier to obtain for a Moonkin than the skilled CoE for non-affliction Warlock.

Why not?

That's even better than CoR, actually, since it doesn't have the caveat of 'Increases target's attack power by (however much it is.)

I apologize for the brainfart of CoR vs FF.

Earth and Moon however... Isn't CoE 10% (+3% improved) on Frost, Fire, Arcane, Shadow and Nature spells while Earth and Moon is 6% to Arcane and Nature?

Isn't E&M still 3 stacks of 2% each for a total of 6%? Isn't it still limited to arcane and nature damage types only?

I guess on the plus side (if you can call it a plus side to loose the only unique raid utility you had) making SE self only and fell int largely useless (range limited buff designed for casters on a melee pet vs castable raid buff?) really opens up affliction specs that would have been hard up for points with 5/5 SE as a raid requirement. There's actually spare points to max out death's embrace and some non-raid skills now.

Then I eagerly anticipate the next revamp of warlock talents/abilities. It really looks like, with the new changes, that everyone in the raid can spec more or less as selfishly as they want to because there's another class that's going to want to pickup the talents to support the debuffs they used to cast just for their own benifit. It's going to be a grand new narcissistic raiding environment.

Except for mages who have a monopoly on the Spell Critical Strike Chance Debuff.

Looks like we may either have to waste some talent points due to redundancy or respec to adjust 2-5 talent points depending on who shows that night (eg no moonkin - spec into frailty, DK having connection issues - spec to malediction ..etc).

Edit: Spelling & Format

Also Sta Buff ist Priest only (which is especially annoying for Heroics with a non-priest healer and a non-warrior tank because you loose PW:F and Commanding Shout which is at level 70 more than 2000 hp less which is about 20% of the hp a tank starting with heroics has).

BoK is still paladin only (and is not baseline).

Mark of the Wild is druid only (but is crap on 70).

And the "Spell Haste Buff" is Wrath of Air Totem only.

Also, it seems like earth and moon as well as ebon plague will work for holy damage, making even malediction CoE strictly inferior unless we start seeing bosses with a bunch of resist.

I think the biggest issue at level 70 is going to be threat. With Salvation removed, and no threat stats yet on tank gear, plus a few threat moves and 10 talent points missing, raid leaders might find themselves preferring classes with active -threat moves (and pets to share threat with), among them warlocks.
Even at 80, I wonder how the devs plan to manage this. If a handful of dps classes will be able to cover all important debuffs, the margin of error for balancing personal dps becomes much smaller. I remember Naxx40 with 8xmage/rogue/warrior and we might easily arrive at a similar situation with rampant stacking of FotM classes.

If I understand the recent changes right, come 3.0 we lose a lot of +damage% and gain +haste% and +crit% (at 70, barring the new talent trees). We also may get to use a damage curse but it is going to be a lesser dps increase (no weaving and possibly no ISB). Does not look good for the already suffering Affliction tree. Plus it looks like Blizzard has finally given up on warlock as a "debuffer" altogether. I personally do not like the idea of a rooted mage with a pet at all.

I'm also curious how the new raidwide mana regen mechanic will work. Assume 6-7 non mana classes and 6-7 healers in a 25 man raid. If it's going to be anyting like Chain Heal, everyone but the healers get the mana returns at the start of a fight. Melee hybrids and warlocks are usually constantly low on mana, and locks might find themselves forced to lifetap near max mana to avoid stealing mana returns from their healers. If our pets are affected that makes it even worse.

I'm not sure if you saw the change to Improved Scorch but that is a spell crit debuff also now, so basically if you have no mages in the raid you get no spell crit debuff at all.

Elemental Shaman Totem of Wrath. It applies a debuff to enemy targets close to it increasing the chance that spells will critically strike them.

That is a crit debuff that applies to both spells and physical attacks.
The mage debuffs only apply to spells.
Those are separate debuff classes and therefore they stack.

According to the blue post totem of wrath and WC/Scorch are in different categories so they should stack. Regardless my point was just that all the buffs/debuffs that warlocks bring have been made redundant (or useless in the case of SE) while some classes still have unique buffs/debuffs (Fort, BoK, WC).

Ok so being a warlock that has not completed Sunwell yet I am worried about what will happen to pre WotLK raiding after the patch. Do you guys think it will make raiding harder or easier? Im not exactly sure what will happen but I do hope it doesnt ruin last minute progression.

And My second question is what will be the best raw dps destro spec when the patch comes out for raiding? I dont think it will still be the nuke 0/21/40 build due to all of the nerfs. But I would appreciate anyone linking the expected best dps build. I would like to get an idea of what spec im going to be raiding

Well it depends on a couple things.

Easier
-Some classes will have better specs for dps/healing
-There are a few new raid buffs

Harder
-Overall raid damage for locks is defintely gonna be down unless the weaving/scorch/demonic sac changes are made up for in some way. Plus lifetap nerf.
-If this replenishment buff does not stack(and I doubt it does) you will get like 300mp5 if it has 100% uptime, so mana regen for some healing classes is going to be down, coupled with the fact that you don't get your 100mp5 from mana potions anymore. Healers also can't down rank anymore

My guess would be if it went live with the information we know at the moment, it would be harder, dps might not be down(lock dps probably is), but I have a hard time believing healers can coup with the changes.




As to destro specs I posted a few pages back but I would think 9/0/52 moltencore/dot/incin or a heavier build something along the lines of 0/0/61 would be best.

Correct. You could do a calculation using a spreadsheet or RAWR to input your current gear and choose specific buffs (by only checking 1 buff from each category). However, with a blue post saying that warlocks are getting a major revision next patch, it's really just a waste of time to try to figure out what spec will be the best at level 70.

I feared that it would make raiding harder. Unless you are overgeared for a specific fight like Brutallus I think it is going to be harder post patch.

You reccommended either a 9/0/52 build or a /0/0/61 build. Where would your point placement be in these builds. Because as it stands now Destro has various options for point placement

I see one of four different things happen, either

A) All specs do similar DPS and utility is just a bonus. This makes utility specs totally overpowered in small scale scenarios (10 man). Why bring a Mage to your 10-man Naxx raid, when you can bring a Boomkin who grants the same DPS and a metric fuckton more raid utility and DPS boosts?

B) Personal DPS is lowered for utility specs based on quantity of utility. This would make raids take only the minimum number of utility classes and stack the shit out of Rogues and Destruction Warlocks (or whoever wins the DPS war)

C) Blizzard magically finds the middle ground. Where personal DPS and raid contribution are equal for all classes, in all raid compositions for 10 and 25 man raids. Hah!

D) Destroy the idea of the utility spec. Do A), but also take away utility from Elemental Shamans, Moonkin, Ret Paladins and Enhancement Shamans and distribute them around more, so that all of us grant an equal amount of personal DPS and a fair amount of utility.

D would dilute the game a hell of a lot, but its the only good solution I'm seeing here. The utility specs offer far too much utility to offer the same DPS as a Mage or Rogue right now. And reducing personal DPS based on utility brought would put min-maxers into the mindset of grabbing as many non-utility classes as they can get their hands on.

I was doing some messing around with some specs and I came up with a few different destro builds. But I like this one the best so far.http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000 Any thoughts on this?

I agree that D would be the most balanced for 10 and 25 man, but also agree that the game is getting too diluted. Even this raid stacking changes makes everyone not unique, it is really depressing. I think A or B is the most likely(B being the most), C is a pipe dream that only the deluded would believe is possible.

I don't think a point in fel dom and a point in fel vit are going to be better than shadow burn and shadowfury(If you are going the 13 demo route). I don't really think 13 points in demo just for imp fel aegis, and imp imp will be better than chaos bolt, instant corruption, imp coa, and imp lifetap, but maybe.

Still there is no real way to pick the finished destruction spec as fire and brimstone and chaosbolt are not done for sure, and others are likely not done as well.