Dimeron

1. Sure there is. Compare a moonkin to a destruction lock. Who has more utility. If the utility roles has not been filled, who would have the priority. If destruction lock is equal damage to moonkin, then they need equal utility as the moonkin. Unique or non-unique, it needs to be there so the destruction warlock can at least be the guy who provides the utility, and not just the guy who is only picked after the raid leader has picked all the utility guys.

2. Yes, of course they need to re-itemalize. But lets compare shall we.

If a shaman wants to heal, he must grind out or use his DKP to get healing gear, he will also get couple healing gear here and there that the raid healer already have, then spend 50g and respec

If a warlock wants to heal, he must hm..... I guess he must basically re-roll and start from scratch.

Now which one is more versatile. The very fact hybrid has the option make them infinitely more versatile than pure dps classes. This versatility allows hybrid classes to get into groups, raids, and guilds much easier. How do you compensate something like this for the pure dps classes who lack this versatility.

 

Akston

I would say arcane mage and destro lock are in the same boat when it comes to utility. A destro lock can provide CoE or CoR or CoW, albeit not talented and not as strong as the talented version but the utility is still there. An arcane mage can bring focus magic which will be overwritten by demonic pact or ToW because both are more powerful. They both bring weaker back-up utility for the "just in case" circumstance.

 

tetracycloide

1.The destruction lock can be a guy that provides utility, he just has to respec to demo or affliction to do it. Just like a moonkin has to spec out of pure DPS in order to pick up all of their raid utility talents. If a destro lock speced for max DPS is the same DPS as a moonkin speced for max DPS they most certainly do not need to equal utility opportunities upon respecing as a moonkin to be balanced. They merely need utility opportunities upon respecing that sacrifice less personal DPS for said utility.

For example:
Max DPS lock does 3000 DPS
Max moonkin does 3000 DPS

Moonkin respecs for E&M and drops to 2500DPS
Lock resepecs for malediction and drops to 2700DPS

Given this situation who would you rather have providing that raid utility? So it is entirely possible that, given proper balances in spec tradeoffs, the moonkin won't be the end all be all caster you make them out to be.

2.If a shaman wants to heal they must grind out or use their DKP to get healing gear but does so at the cost of limiting healing drops for the healers that are actively healing in the raid. Why would any competent raid leader loot healing gear, regardless of who has DKP, to an enhancement shaman or an elemental shaman instead of giving it to someone speced for healing in most raids?

If you're going to make outrageous claims like 'infinitely more versatile' then there's not much point in debating. Warlock versatility is finite and non-zero, shaman versatility is finite and non-zero. No ratio or difference of versatility between the two can be described as 'infinite.'

My vanity is justified.

 

overg

My understanding is that this is exactly what Blizzard is now trying to do away with. They want to make it so that you *need* 0 of any particular class. If you have two of each class, great. If you have 5 of one class and zero of another, that will work too.

To put it another way, Blizzard seems to be aiming for a situation where you will never again be invited to, or excluded from, a raid simply because you're a warlock.

And while I'm here, I proposed this on the WoW forums, and wonder what you guys think. It's yet another attempt to address the affliction scaling issue, and basically involves your DoT's now becoming debuffs which increase your crit chance.

Affliction's Bane: While active, your curses, corruption, siphon life, unstable affliction, and immolate increase your critical strike percentage on your target by 20% per spell.

I realize that wording is kind of junky, but the basic idea is that every DoT you have on a target increases your shadowbolt's and haunt's chance to crit that target by 20%. Example . . .

Your gear gives you 25% crit chance. You cast corruption on a target. Your chance to crit that target is now 30% (25% x 1.2). Two DoT's would gives you a 35% crit chance, etc. up to a 50% crit chance if you've got all five DoT's on a target.

I *think* this idea gives affliction scaling with crit, but avoids the pvp problems of allowing DoT's to actually crit themselves (that problem, as I understand it, being spamming crittable DoT's is OP in PvP).

I'm certainly not proficient enough in the math behind WoW to know if these precise numbers would work. But it seems like the general idea would a) allow crit to scale for affliction . . . the more crit you have on your gear, the more each DoT is going to increase your crit chances, and b) avoids overpowering instant cast DoT's themselves by requiring the afflock to cast nukes to enjoy the benefits of the scaling.

Am I on to something, or would this fail to adequately address the current scaling problem (or create new problems of it's own)?

 

Dimeron

1. No, what am saying is,
if moonkin with no utility talent = 4000 dps, and destruction warlock also = 4000 dps,

the destruction warlock needs more to make up the fact moonkin has brez, innervate, and moonkin aura, as well as superior cc.

And if a moonkin with utility is 2500 dps, then if affliction warlock with the utility is 2500 dps as well, then affliction warlock need to be able to offer same amount of utility moonkin can. Right now the amount of utility between a fully talented moonkin and a fully talented affliction warlock is nto even close.

2. I will explain this in the simplest form possible

Class A can dps with a score of 100, and can spend Y amount of g/dkp to become a healer.

Class B can dps with a score of 100, can never become a healer without re-rolling.

Class A and B offer exact same utility.

What's the point of B, besides game play and role playing reasons.

I think it is what Blizzard is aiming at. But point 2 will be much harder to achieve.

For example, a raid has 6 druids. say, 2 restor, 1 cat, 1 bear, and 2 moonkin.

The raid will probably work pretty well. You are not gimped on healer, you are not gimped on casters, and you have a enough utility and still enough room for melee dps.

However, if a raid has 6 warlock, it wouldn't work nearly as well, at least with current implementation of things.

This is IMO one of the main flaw in the newly developed system.

Yea, arcane mage are in the same boat. Fire mages as well, but not as bad as at least they have scorch and more importantly, the AOE thing going for them (which may or may not work out). I mostly used destruction warlock because it is a warlock thread.

 

Chupavida

While enhancement shaman can't step right into a healer's role without major gear swapping, these changes are still significant buffs for shaman/druids/priests in that they can use the same gear for caster dps and healing. An elemental shaman can wear the same gear he wears as resto with virtually no difference in dps. The same goes for Balance/resto druids and Shadow/holy priests. With the hit cap lowered, the only major roadblock to using the same set of gear for both dps and healing is virtually a non-issue.

People talking about needing to gear hybrids for multiple specs are overlooking the fact that the hybrid classes will now be able to effectively gear for two specs at once by picking up spellpower gear.

It is a huge buff, one that has me working on my druid with dreams of an Oomkin/resto hybrid.

I love my warlock, and she'll still my main regardless of how things shake out, but the itemization revamp has made hybrids much more attractive to me.

 

tetracycloide

Trinkets and set bonus are hardly of so little impact to consider needing multipul sets a 'non-issue' especially with two or more other classes competing for the same set tokens and many raid memebers needing trinkets for their primary function before a hybrid spec can loot one for their secondary function.

Think of this another way, however. Even if it required literally no extra gear to go from direct healing to DPSing you cannot do both at once and remain compotent in either function. Lets say you need 6 healers to attempt content and only 5 log in but you have extra DPS. Having hybrid specs easily transition from DPS to healing is a net gain for the non-hybrid specs because another DPS slot just opened up. Meanwhile if every healer logs in there no real incentive to bring the hybrid DPS over the pur DPS or vice versa.

My vanity is justified.

 

Nacht

My suggestion for Affliction crit scaling would be to modify Haunt in the following way. Remove the 20% damage increase to DoTs while active and switch it to this.

Haunt: While Haunt is active on the target, the critical strike damage bonus of the warlock's spells and abilities is increased by 10%. Additionally, while Haunt is active on the target, each Affliction curse and damage-over-time effect active on the target increases the critical strike bonus damage of the warlock's spells and abilities by 10%.

Therefore, Haunt(10%) + Curse(10%) + Corruption(10%) + UA(10%) + SL(10%) = additional 50% bonus crit damage, which is effectively equivalent to Ruin, but requires maintain full uptime of DoTs. Haunt will maintain it's cast time, direct damage, and heal components.

With Curse of Elements applied, and Everlasting Affliction, only UA and Haunt need to be recast with regularity, and SL once per 30 sec. Lot's of room for Shadow Bolts in between. Make ISB work like it does on live (applying to DoT damage and direct damage), but only for the warlock's own spells. The percent effect on ISB and crit bonus of Haunt can be adjusted for appropriate balance concerns (as they only benefit the warlock), but you get the point.

 

Chupavida

I agree with you that pure classes will always be more desirable for their respective roles. I don't think Blizzard is so stupid as to leave us out in the cold. But I think the changes to itemization are such a significant buff that it will influence the number of hybrids that guilds recruit. Raiding is still a social game more than anything else in my opinion, and at least in my guild, there are a few hybrids that seem to respec 2-3 times a week depending on the demands of raid composition for sunwell/BT.

And I don't think that set bonuses and trinkets are a significant barrier. Unless they change the 3 tokens per boss droprate, everyone will be getting "offspec" pieces within a month or two, just like they are now. It's always the non-set pieces and the weapons that separate the pure classes from the hybrids in most guilds. And while I'm sure there will be role-specific trinkets, most of the trinkets that we are all using are "spellpower" trinkets of one kind or another. As long as on-use spellpower trinkets are most classes' bread and butter, trinkets won't get in the way.

I don't really like this, even though it makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. There were enough complaints about gear homoginization when arena/raid gear shared the same graphics. I don't relish the idea of wearing the same boots as every other clothie/caster/greedy shaman in the game.


I think this kind of thing does a good job of addressing the issue without requiring a major overhaul of DoT mechanics or the creation of a new filler.

But I think that's most people's problem: Why can't they be creative enough to come up with something exciting and different? It seems like a lot of the changes are just so many bandaids, rather than creative alternatives to the same old mechanics.

 

Chupavida

combined with above

 

Sardaukar

That's actually our point. That elemental shaman saved the raid because of its flexibility. Thats something that my warlock cannot do. As far as set tokens, I know all of our shaman/druid/priests/warriors have completed at least 1 extra offspec set of T6 level loot - heck, we are still working on M'uru and some of them are already getting offspec t6 belts and boots (nevermind bracers which everyone has gotten their fill of). Part of the problem is the way classes can use armor levels below theirs - an resto shaman who wants to make an elemental set (or vice versa) really has access to a wide range of cloth, leather and mail caster armor even beyond their own set tokens. You may not get it quite as fast as people whose spec it is (and things like skull of guldan may never find their way to you) but they certainly seem to have an easy enough time getting offspec stuff. Factor in the change to pure +spellpower and I think you are going to see shaman with 25 man raid level gear (once we start to see epics with +spellpower/haste/crit/etc again) able to use many of the same items, cloth, leather or mail, for both healing and damage. That kind of utility is just something a warlock doesn't have.

As far as the dps slot opening up, thats great, but the raid wouldn't have functioned without that shaman. You seem to be looking at it from a "is my dps slot as a lock safe?" whereas I'm looking more from a "is my destro lock able to help the raid as much as someones shaman/druid/priest" and the answer I'm coming up with right now seems to be no.

 

PSGarak

Two notes for people suggesting ideas for affliction crit scaling.
First, don't. This is more of a guideline than a rule, but still, tread carefully.

Second, and this is the important one: Giving affliction more crit is not the same as making affliction scale with crit. They are, in fact, opposite, since as you saturate on crit the impact of crit goes down as a percent of DPS, and your base DPS is the higher-crit scenario. The ideas (not yours, but a previous one) of adding a crit bonus per affliction spell means that affliction gets a smaller percent of its base DPS per crit rating, which is exactly the opposite of what we need to happen. Increasing crit bonus helps, but in order for affliction's crit scaling to match destructions, when we get only half our damage from nuking, we'd have to crit four times as hard. It's a good solution and I like it, but it can't be the end of it because it's rather unbalanced. I also don't like collecting all our crit scaling in one talent at the end of the tree, it's putting your eggs in one balance and that makes it counter to the rest of the tree.

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

 

Vetinari

Clearly intellect is not your primary stat.

 

Alessandri

While allowing dots to increase crit scaling on our nukes might bring affliction up to par with destruction at higher gear levels, it is still counter intuitive to the tree as a whole, which is based around powerful dots and drains rather than nukes. Instead, I think a previously mentioned idea of allowing Haunt and/or Shadowbolt crits to double the dmg increase on dots from Haunt is a much better idea. In this setup, dots would still be our primary spec focus, but crit from gear would actually go to use by buffing our damage over time spells.

 

overg

Well, DoT's and crit are being tied together somehow . . .

From Koraa on the Warlock Lich King forum, "There will be a new talent in Affliction in an upcoming build. Keywords: "DoT" and "Crit" (Well, sorta)"

WoW Forums -> The Devs are listening (maybe)

 

narshanna

After getting my beta key I decided to try to get ready for the incoming 3.0 patch. Basically I decided to do some testing of different specs at Dr. Boom to try to gather some useful data to show to my guild locks.

I have done all my testing totally unbuffed, except for the fire dmg part because my gear was shadow oriented. Either way spell power/crit/etc are written down, together with links to the specs I tried. The chosen addon was Recap. Wether if it's liked or disliked, it was used because it had just the features I was looking for. Also it helped me to do the same testing in both life and beta servers.

Also, I tried to do all my testing alone, at rather odd times (Dr. Boom uses to be crowded at the beta server), to avoid having other classes' buffs messing around.

Shadow destro:

I went for a more or less updated form of our current 0/21/40. I know it may not be perfect, but I don't think taking other talents would have changed the outcome dramatically. Most of the core ones are there (hopefully).

Talents: clicky clicky

Stats:

1536 shadow dmg
21.43% base crit
143 haste rating

Spells: CoE, Immolate and Shadow bolt. You may argue the desirability of keeping immolate in that rotation, but I didn't take mana usage into consideration, to be honest. When I ran out of it I just paused Recap.

Total DPS: 1380 on avg


Fire destro (Empowered Imp + Backdraft):

Here is where I start getting the chills. Having my imp nuking stuff isn't something I though I'd get to see, ever. His survability is still poor imho.

Talents: clicky clicky

Stats:

1533 fire dmg
21.43% base crit
143 haste rating


Spells: Imp's Firebolts, CoE, Immolate, Incinerate and Conflagrate when Immolate had less than 5 seconds left (to get the most out of Fire and Brimstone)

Total DPS: 1771 on avg


Fire destro (same build, just not using Conflagrate):

As the subject reads, I kept the same build but I decided to take Conflagrate out of the picture. No big surprise in the end here.

Spells: Imp's Firebolts, CoE, Immolate and Incinerate.

Total DPS: 1999 on avg


Fire destro (Empowered Imp without Fire and Brimstone):

Finally I decided to check if removing some points from destro and moving them to demo to increase my survability a bit and my fel armour would affect the equation.

Talents: clicky clicky

Stats:

1581 fire dmg
21.43% base crit
143 haste rating

Spells: Imp's Firebolts, CoE, Immolate and Incinerate.

Total DPS: 1917 on avg

____________________________________________________________________

Some conclusions/random thoughts/random notes:

- Shadow destro looks dead in my eyes. Cold maths are there.
- Fire destro with Empowered Imp seems to rule them all, at least apparently.
- I know I didn't test affliction throughly, but I personally believe that until its current scalability issues are fixed (poor/close to null impact of +crit and +haste) it's out of the picture for the most part.
- I still have to check how fire destro with Empowered Imp would work in fights where you cannot keep your Imp alive. When I've done so I'll post some numbers here if you think they might add anything of value.
- 2/2 Improved Soul Leech adds new levels of longevity to both you and your Imp. I did notice a huge difference between having and not having it.
- Conflagrate and Backdraft, as cool as they may look, feel like a waste of DPS time in the long run. Also it eats mana at a rather naughty pace.
- All my fire builds had Molten Core on them, even if I didn't add shadow spells. I noticed, but I wanted to add a new batch of tests before going there. Basically I'll add Corruption to the rotation and see what happens. I do my testing alone, which means that nobody else can keep CoE up for me. Otherwise I'd go with CoA since its uptime is less demanding in global cooldowns.
- When it comes to synergies, having a fire mage around does boost your damage, a lot, if you are Empowered Imp specced. Keep in mind that every time your Imp crits so you do. That's just to name one, there are many others around.
- Keep an eye in your Imp's mana. If he runs out of it he will... try to melee stuff (?!). Cleave anyone?

I hope it helped to shed any light. I'm still trying to find the build and rotation I'll be using in the near future. Once I have more data I'll toss it here.

 

PsyBomb

Narshanna, I'm curious about one major thing. There has been a different Shadow Destro build going around, SE/Imp.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

This seems like it could work out a bit better than the one you tested. The third point in Backlash can be put elsewhere, usually in Siphon Life or Shadowfury, but I think where it is provides the best standing DPS.

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.

 

narshanna

Thanks for the link. I'll add it to my next batch of tests and let you know the outcome.

 

XereX

I do not understand this talent and i am not in beta, can someone explain this talent to me. Is this a debuff applied to the mob and everyone in the raid gets the benefit of it (if they use fire spells of curse) or is this somehow tide to the character like the new ISB?


Narshanna, your fire Destro without Conflagrate produced the highest DPS. Can you please test this rotation, one more time but also include Chaos Bolt in your casting rotation.

Thank you.

 

LCN

It effects YOUR spells like it says. Whether it will be applicable every tick or just upon the initial cast of a dot (in practise immolate), idk.

 

XereX

LCN, Thank you for clearing that up for me since I read somewhere the point of this talent (molten core) is to be used by Demo Locks for the raid which kind of didn’t make much sense.

Keeping in mind A) the Molten Core Talent, B) the testing done by Narshanna where using Conflagrate was DPS lose and C) Chaos bolt is still somewhat a wild card where we don't know much about it (Could be that I don't know much about it yet), can’t do much theory crafting with Chaos Bolt atm.

What is the general feeling on a build like this click here ?

 

F4nt0m

It's a self buff, like backlash, shadow trance, etc etc....

Also, yea I'd like to see chaos bolt worked into the "Imp, CoE, Immo + Incinerate x a bunch" testing.



Besides that SE shadowbolt build, could you also test this 0/13/48 shadowbolt build?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000


And this 0/3/58 shadow build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000


You also should try 3/3 Backdraft, it would seem to me that 20% haste (and mana cost, you mentioned mana issues) would affect this. Something like this:
0/3/58 fire
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
(I got chaos bolt, though it would be great if you could test and see it's a DPS increase and by how much.)


It's great that we're seeing some real beta testing. Emp. Imp is shaping up to be ridiculous. you mentioned you think he's still fragile, perhaps that's just at 70? From what I know, he gets some massive base HP buffs from 70->80. Yours has the 80% AOE avoidance right? What's his HP at?


Oh, and I know you paused recount, but how long was it taking to go oom with each spec? How long before the imp went oom?

 

tetracycloide

That would depend entirely on the situation. If your guild is progressing through WotLK's first major tank and spank DPS race a la brutalis and whoever normally applies the 13% spell damage buff doesn't log in you can respec and save the raid just like a hybrid can save the raid if you are short healers.

Take it one step further as well, there are encounters that are traditionally progressed through with more healers than normal. Hybrids being able to respec back and fourth means you can progress through them without changing your raid makeup or forcing DPS classes in your regular lineup to sit out.

The entire raid is becoming more flexable and as a result I am certainly not looking at the situation from a 'is my DPS slot as a lock safe' I am looking at it from a 'more felxability means if I'm the best player I will get a raid slot reguardless of my class.' This is not currently the case, there are situations that can easily arise now where the best raider you have is benched because they're not the right class. More flexability in raid make up will aliveate, not exasturbate, this problem.

My vanity is justified.

 

zepi

Your build is flawed for Backdraft, try this instead. As far as I can see, this build maxes the single-target dps of backdraft-rotation based build.

No Imp. Scorch? Which curse? CoE? CoA? CoD?

 

TangoDigital

What you're saying is only true in a world that doesn't exist, where everything is ideal and the human aspect without impact.

If I'm going to have to choose between a Moonkin who might under circumstances bring some more util but is an all around a*hole as a person and/or completely sucks at playing his class... and a Warlock who migh not have as much util but knows his shit well and makes funny jokes when we wipe, then you can count on me inviting the lock.

The new system really supports that point of view. At some point, you'll be able to choose who you actually want in your raid on a personal basis. No more "well he's a sucker but we need BoS or we're screwed".

The rest is just tuning numbers.

TangoDigital