I wonder what Blizzard's thinking on Curse of Elements is. The other CoE replacements are deep investments for the other classes, however those investments are stronger than the stock version of CoE. Also CoE helps with resistances, however resistances are not a factor for the (overwhelming) majority of encounters. And than, the one spec that actually boosts CoE up to match the other variants (and thus making it theoretically stronger because it still has the resist debuff) has the strongest investment in damage curses and thus losses the most from actually taking up that benefit.

Hopefully Malediction wackiness is a part of the "large pass" patch that's been promised. It's certainly exciting that a Balance Druid or Unholy Death Knight actually has the bonus as an essentially passive ability and thus allows Warlocks to use damaging curses more regularly in raids.

Sure it is, demo/destro didn't get replacements for their buffs lost and affliction did. To me that means afflictions relative power level increased, probably enough so to make it the best spec now at 70 to be honest(51/0/10 that is).

I will test if all of these things stack when my beta download finishes, but I assume isb/embrace stack.

Most high end afflocks are also currently taking ruin, so the benefit of those two talents at 70 is questionable, that's why I said before considering them, I'm not even going to try to touch that math.

And no, shadow embrace didn't directly benefit the lock in a raid, but so what? It's a utility and debuff spec, or at least it was. I don't really like the idea of gutting afflictions utility to make it into just another pure dps spec, destro wasn't enough? I hope they're going to be making some major changes to affliction in the next "pass" to somehow keep it a utility/debuff spec, at least inline with what wotlk moonkins can do.

Embrace & isb stack in beta.. Corruption is pretty annoying to use though. You have to wait until embrace(which is a 12 second buff every time you cast one of the dots effected by it, so you are probably going to need to stagger dots abit to have 100% uptime) is up, and isb is up, then pop you trinket and ride the super corruption the rest of the fight. Dark pact seems pretty op giving over 4000 when lifetap only gives 1400.

Heh, Assuming Blizz learned anything from Druids doing the same thing with lifebloom, riding the super corruption till boss death won't make it live.

Shame too.

So with the changes to Shadow Embrace what are you peoples thoughts on a 31/0/40 (No Dark Pact, 5/5 SM & 5/5 SE) shadow build as talents stand currently?

Something like:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
or
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

It seems that this talent might reinstate the ridiculous scaling of shadowbolt for numerous builds.

I still don't expect Affliction to be competitive at level 70. The 18% raidwide spellcrit highly favors Destruction builds with Emp. Imp, and improvements to that tree are yet due. Lvl 70 Affliction also has no threat reduction on half of its damage, and weak pet dps.

This feels a bit awkward. In a single target situation you're not going to cast corruption, CoA is 24 sec an siphon life is 30 sec. If you manage to get a trinketed corruption rolling as Flamingcloud described, the only sensible way to maintain 100% uptime is with siphon life. Of course it might and probably will be worth it, but it still feels awkward.

Only if the Imp is out and then we don't have spell lock nor seduce which I both prefer in 5 mans. And if you don't need them you normally don't need blood pact, because your tank outgears the instance.

Do you have a source for that? And is that in addition to the thread reduce talents?

I would go for something like
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

Assuming constant SE uptime, 5/5 SE and 5/5 SM gives you 21% more dmg.
4/5 SE and 3/5 SM only gives you 14.48% more dmg, but you get 3/3 empowered imp, which should give you more than the difference.

It is worse than I thought really, any dot cast while embrace or isb is not up, isn't effected by it for the whole duration. Would be fine if you didn't have everlasting affliction and you could use corruption in the rotation to keep it up forever. So basically you cast siphon, and any shadow spells you cast AFTER get +10%, and siphon doesn't get the effect. Improved shadowbolt works the same way. If you are standing far away from the mob(ie bolt travel time is greater than cast time) the bolt after you crit won't be affected by isb, but the 5th bolt still will be, and any dots cast while it is up gain the benefit the whole duration.

Shadowembrace is really not close to as good as shadow mastery.

I think it will still suffer the same problem lower Affliction currently faces which is no scaling. Above Siphone life you miss, Shadow embrace (10% proc), Shadow Mastery (10%), Contagion (5%), Everlasting Affliction (20% dmg), and Haunt (20%). All of the scaling to make Afflictions dots powerful is up far to high to make good viable hybrid 21 or less point builds. Lower Demo is more apealing for destruction now due to Emp Imp tallent, which further removes what you can get with your remaining points in lower Affliction and we already know how powerful the lower destro tree is which would be the natural choice of deep demo. Think of juggling 30, 24, 18, and 15 second cooldowns with this build.. it would be a nightmare!

Also keep in mind the 3 GCD use to cast those weak shadow dots and how often you need to cast them, just for a 10% fire proc. I Think Blizz is doing a decent job making each tree need more than just 51 points, just as long as they finish the job and allow us to build proper specs around bloated trees.

Things like SL/SL made blizz weary of putting good scaling on dots unless a heavy investment in the tree, and the sad side effect IMO is poor synergy with a deep destruction build.

Edit: oversights

Immediately at 70 maybe.

But +10% doesn't make up for the scaling issues that happen as you start adding more gear. You need around 30%-40% better scaling, plus double the value for crit, if I'm remembering the numbers right.

I like how everyone throwing out the new big shadowbolt spec that has Shadow Embrace and Shadow and Flame is taking 5/5 Emberstorm and Molten Core. Have we forgotten what it is to raid on live?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

Empowered Imp and Improved Sould Leech offer nearly 20% crit chance and remove the need to life tap.
I'm not sure how that is better than 1% crit and 10% damage.

Can some hardcore level 80 beta tester post the exact mana cost of 'Create Healthstone'? Or some other ability, along with mention of whether they have a mana cost reduction talent that applies.

I just want to convert mana costs from 'percent base mana' to something more concrete.

Thank you!

The Create Healthstone wotlkwiki entry hasn't been updated since July 29, according to the page history.

What I'm interested in is what the recent 'everything is now based on base mana cost' change has done to the exact mana costs. (Are level 78/79/80 shadow bolts and incinerates still extremely expensive?). Blizz mentioned that the percents were chosen to result in mana costs similar to the old values ... but I just want to make sure.

And all it takes is for some nice, helpful level 80 tester to post the exact mana cost of a single spell with '% base mana' in its tooltip

Someone can also just post the base mana at 80 (which is derivable.)

I looked up the damage spell costs back when this change first went in. Basically they deliberately bumped all the lock spells up by 1-2%. They could've made them 1-2% lower and made them match current spell costs almost exactly (which is what the mage nukes are), instead they're all a couple percent higher. It's not a big deal, just something to note that there's a slight dps loss there due to tapping time.

That's not quite true unless you're Demo, actually. Darkpact got massively buffed (and the felhunter regens mana FAST if he's talented), and on the Destro side of things you have Improved Soul Leech returning solid amounts of mana back. Demo's personal casting is a lesser chunk of it's DPS than the other specs, as well.

Even in the case of using Lifetap, once we properly regear it will be going for WAY more HP-Mana conversion per cast than it does now. Net result is still significantly less time spent casting Lifetap than we currently use.

Sorry, I indeed was thinking from a demo perspective (since right now that seems to be what raids will want their first warlock to be, unless the strength of demonic pact has changed in the last few days), I should've clarified. Demo worries me a fair bit.

Regardless, you can assume SB, incin, and SoC have similar costs at 70, just a percentage or two higher.

yeah, a percent or two doesn't worry me when Lifetap is returning 25-30% more mana relative to now (just going by napkin math on a 70, but it's a good indicator). Shadowbolt glyph reducing it by 10% also puts it well below current, and EVERY raiding warlock is going to keep that one equipped.

In case anyone is wondering, I'm going by something of a wish-list set of stats. Badge +hit gear has a good load of spirit, regemming to Purified in Red and Blue sockets with Reckless in the Yellow, switching the chest to +6 to all stats, and a couple of inscription notes. It's a very rough estimation, but using 3.0 mechanics, it seems to give good ballpark figures.

EDIT: I was mistaken on some Inscription mechanics, tank you to the below poster.

You don't need a stack of glyphs, once they're in, they're in till you change them, like enchants or gems.
The 1 hour cooldown has to do with application of the glyph or something.