To be honest I still haven't tested it. I got the idea while answering the post I quoted, and it was quite late at night. Plus I hoped in a patch day this wensday, so I didn't go on PTR to do tests.
All in all, no math for the moment (I really have no time, sadly), I'll go on PTR and test it in my first free night (toward the end of the week? *crossing fingers*).

I assumed the points in affliction are not a good dps upgrade since it's commonly accepted (I think) that we should just cast coa. And Imp Life tap suffers from the same problems ISL has. So Affliction has nothing more than imp coa really worth for a destro. Since the guy seemded to want a destro hybrid, I worked a bit to try to find something using the math I did and read in the last days (in which F&B and ISL+SL seems rather weak talents) and end up with something that I tought could be competitive against a pure destro. But for now it's just feeling and approsimations.


EDIT: Now that I think of it, without replenishment and jow it's kind of useless to test on dummies, since I'll be forced to life tap a lot (which we usually don't need, as we've seen in the last WWS posted). So I guess either someone can access a raid on PTR (or has spriest and pally friends on PTR) or I'll need to wait for the patch to see some testing.

I currently play 30/41 hybrid, and was thinking about going 28/43 when the patch hits. It may not out-dps a Chaos Bolt build under optimal conditions, but with the current server lag at raiding times I fear the gap between theory and in game results might favour a simpler rotation i.e. 30/41 on live.

When the lag is at it's worst I find myself mashing the buttons just to get a incinerate of.

The other point also being that you avoid lackluster talents like soul leech and fire and brimstone, as a previous poster above in this thread stated.

Any one else having similar thoughts?

1. There's no need to become all offensive and nerdy about it. Seriously.

2. Never did I mean anything near what you seem to believe I do.

What I am saying is that ISL does imrove dps time to oom just as much or more than a shadowpriest does. If you're gonna go ahead an broadly say "ISL is useless" based on a purely mathematical argumentation, then in consequence you could just as much go ahead and remove the shadowpriest, or remove the JoW. Both are things you'd obviously never do because you know what a dps-loss this can be.

ISL makes destruction more efficient. You might not believe me, which is fine. I'm encouraging you to go and test it, instead of blindly following maths, which can only ever be part of the equation in a dynamic game such as WoW. In fact, as I said, I had your exact opinion until I actually tested it.

Apart from the fact that I've never been offensive, at max a bit harsh...

I provide quantitative data, and you tell me "do not belive the math, I feel it's this way, go check", thus valutating qualitative data more than quantitative data.

I know exactly how it feels. I did test ISL in beta. Actually FIRST thing I did when I got my beta key. Hell, I even played with 10 seconds lag to actually (try) to test it (untill lag finally got better).
It was because it felt that way that I loved it and tought so highly of it.

It's a really good talent normally, but in our raid enviroment it's been showed we do NOT need all that mana, since the mana we get from other buffs is more than enough. And in a non movement fights long enough to need a life tap when we could be dpsing, we would usually need to life tap just once more than what we'd need without ISL.

When the day will come that we'll need more mana, ISL will be the answer, untill that day (or my math is proven wrong) arguing to quantitative arguments with qualitative ones isn't going to make me change idea.

I'd appreciate more for you to try to show me where I did wrong, and to prove me that it's not like my math says, rather than telling me to do all the work based on just your feelings (even more, since I had those same feelings too and I did what I did to prove them, actually proving the opposite).

EDIT: After the feelings come math and tests. And the latters are what really counts in the end.

Great analysis Dirich; but I have more questions about ISL. How important is the benefit to our little buddy the imp? My thinking was always that you take ISL not for your own personal convenience but you keep your imp from running out of mana over the duration of a long encounter. With our imp raid buffed do we simply not have to worry about his mana regen?

From what I've read lurking these boards, that's one of the concern many had and it seems that with the buffs we have in raid enviroment the imp never run oom.
Altough I belived them at first, I must admit that looking at the wws in the previous page I feel like doing some math (but if math were done, please tell me, so I can save some time).

But anyway, the mana awarded by imp soul leech to our little bolt spammer is still lower than what he'd get from a mana spring (I'm so thankful for those wws!). Which means that IF we need ISL for our imp we could just save the 5 points of ISL+SL and be put in a party where a shammy can give us mana spring (and I'm talking about the mana spring NOT enhanced by talents), or we could ask a pally to actually BoW our imp.
So probably I can just skip the math, since there's no way you can't get nor a bow nor a mana spring in the 90% of the raids.

P.S.
I'm still learning how to use WWS, and I'm wondering if it shows the BoW buff. I didn't find any trace of bow in the raids of the WWS posted thus my "wondering". Altough I can hardly imagine any pally being so careful to buff an imp... usually they do not buff my pets even when I ask them to... which mean that bowing the imp can replace ISL, if it were needed.

While the math on ISL is quite intriguing, I fear I might miss it in a non-optimized raid format (which is often the case). In a raid with wisdom being judged, shadow priests, and mana tides abound ISL may very well prove to be moot. But in melee heavy raids (/cringe) where proper spell caster buffs might not be present ISL might very well be a valuable talent to have? I haven't done the math on this, but it might be something to be considered.

I don't know if this has been touched on or not, but is Intensity a necessity in raiding builds? With the change to spell pushback I wasn't sure if it is. The wording is awfully vague. And at the moment I cannot think of too many fights where I'm constantly being exposed to spell pushbacks. Sapphiron maybe? I hadn't noticed if the damage pushed spells back.

My current build is 0/13/58 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The Backdraft, Chaos Bolt, and Conflagrate changes in this next patch seem to be right up my alley. I can't wait.

I opted to go for some of the utility spells like Shadowfury and Shadowburn rather than a purely raid DPS build. Though I wish I could move 2 points into Imp CoA for a 2/13/56 build without losing sleep. If I do it'll probably be at the price of ISL.

I was curious as to which Glyphs would be the way to go in the next patch for such a build. ATM I'm rocking the Immolate, Imp, and Corruption glyphs. I hadn't done the proper homework on rotations and hadn't learned until recently that Corruption may be a hindrance DPSwise (though it's certainly felt like it all this time I've been casting it). So I'll be likely dropping it from my rotation and glyphs.

Immo and the new Conflagrate glyphs seem to be a must. That leaves the CoA glyph or the Imp glyph. The CoA glyph's savings of a few GCDs per fight seem negligible, and TBH it feels like a waste of a glyph spot. I'm leaning towards keeping the Imp glyph.

1) I tought about the fact that sometimes it can be troublesome to get the bonuses. But, a part from the chance to get a bow buff, which up to now I've not seen in the wws posted lately, the only chance when jow and replenishment can wear off and no totem can be used is when you have to move and stop dpsing, which means you can't dps and have free time to spend using life tap. So you get mana when you can't dps, aka you don't lose dps, aka you do not use ISL any more than how you use it when you are 100% under all the buffs.

2) Another good point is Intensity: I've tried to see if I could skip it, but there's nothing really usefull for raid that I can spend the points on in order to get to the higher tiers. I mean... I was trying to avoid destructive reach too, since treath seems not to be a prblem right now, and the added reach isn't always that needed. Well, I WAS, but there's nothing else to spend points that COULD even be remotely useful in raids.
Well, I searing pain if the last mob of a pull is almost dead and I think I can't cast another incinerate, but to get imp searing pain for that last cast I can try to squeeze in... not worth it

3) With the next patch if you spec backdraft blizzard has said you have to use Glyph of Immo and Conflag or they'll gift your account to someone more worthy than you to play a lock! (long way to say, almost everyone agrees they are no-brainer ).
Last one is kind of hard to discuss, if there's no info on how Glyph of CoA has been reworked (at least, I've not seen it anywhere). But I'll mostly run 10 man, so may I'll not always be using coa (raid dps buff > self dps buff), and gimping my dps by using corruption to proc MC, which is why I bought a glyph of imp (but I'm not gonna spec into imp corr just for that).

Just speaking to this point, there's not many options to place that point to get further down into the talent tree. Intensity isn't bad for Rain of Fire and pushback, though I can see your argument about a lesser need for spell pushback talents with other game changes. Personally, I couldn't see the point of putting points in shadowburn (especially in a fire build), unless you wanted to use a spell that would destroy a ton of soulshards on demand.

Yeah my feeling on Intensity is that if it really is as useless as it sounds, I'd probably toss that point into Imp CoA and take one out of ISL. I think I'm going to try out 2/13/56 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for a while and see how that goes.

Hehe, yeah. I know Shadowburn is for all intents and purposes useless in a raiding situation. But it's nice to have for BGs and the like, heheh. I like to grab utility spells where I can when it doesn't nerf DPS too much.

Another thing I had been wondering about is Drain Soul. Should Destruction warlocks also be Drain Souling at 25% (instead of the Incinerate filler)? It seems like a no-brainer for affliction, but I wasn't sure if it was the same for Destruction.

Death's Embrace is why Afflocks do it and why Dest locks shouldnt.
Death's Embrace - Spell - World of Warcraft

Yeah, that's totally an affliction thing. Barely does any dmg in the destro tree.

Remember that DS gets buffed in the aff tree by a multiplicative amount depending on the amount of Aff spells on the target. (Soul Siphon) If you are Dest that multiplier is even lower. Making it even less worth casting.

That spell affects affliction locks' other filler exactly the same, so it can't be the reason to swap to DS. Affliction has two DoT buffs (SE and Haunt), Soul Siphon and considering the same shadow multipliers, DS beats SB. However for destro, you won't have SE, Haunt, SS or any notable shadow buffs, so your incinerate will still have a better DPCT.

I haven't seen anything thus far in this thread or the demonology thread about Fel Domination and Master Summoner. With the Imp doing such a large chunk of destruction damge and the debate on whether ISL is worth it from a DPS standpoint i was thinking of dropping 3 points into these talents. It seems really challening to quantify something like a .5 second summon but situationally if our little machinegunner dies this seems like it could be hugely useful.

I'd personally advise against it. Your Imp shouldn't die. There are only a few encounters I know where the imp might die and it isn't really worth it to put down 3 points for the unlikely case. If he IS close to dying however, it's probably just better to sacrifice a few seconds of your DPS-time to Health Funnel him instead (which is why I take 2/2 IHF in the Demo-tree going for 3/3 DA).

The only fights where the Imp dies for me is 4H (somehow the bugger steals aggro when tanking) and Saph (where re-summoning isn't going to help you).

As i was testing 2/13/56 vs 0/28/43 yesterday on ptr (by the way i didn't notice a dps difference that couldn't be coming from me screwing up ). i just noticed how counterproductive conflag glyph, backdraft, f&b and cb work together:

if you want to use a f&b "proc" you'd need

(1.5/x)+((3*2,5)/(1.3*x))=5

spellhaste while x=1.spellhastepercent.
i came down to 45.38% what's about 1488 hasterating.

without that haste you'd have to cast immo for the last charge as it would fall off before the last inci hits.

there would also the possibility to use chaosbolt, but that's only possible once in a while due to 12sec cd vs 10sec cd of conflag and the fact you want both on cd.

last possibility would be soulfire which is simple crappy due to soulshard cost and dps being lower than inci (in short fights where you wouldn't have to lifetap. for math see a few pages before)

so that's why i'd prefer 0/28/43 build.

I'm really hoping they'll change F&B in 3.0.8. What already was a bad talent becomes absolutely horrible with the new Conflag glyph - so, yeah, no one should really worry about trying to "proc" it. If it's unchanged, either redesign your spec around it or take it just for the Immolate buff.

The redesign would probably mean taking Soul Leech and ISL. To add a little to the debate above, both sides have a point. While TangoDigital is right to stress that math isn't the only thing that matters, and Dirich is surely wrong when he values quantitative over qualitative arguments in an uncritical way, to say that "if you think ISL is worthless then you think a shadow priest/JoW is worthless too" is a bad argument. The point is that a shadow priest and JoW may very well be enough to keep your mana at acceptable levels, making ISL overkill. This is what should be determined, and I think it'll simply vary with the length of the fight. The shorter the fight, the less value ISL has.

I still think F&B is going to be your best bet to reach Chaos Bolt. 15% is still 15% and even though you will be Conflagrating like crazy (and mostly not get the bonus) the crit-bonus is still there and you'll probably get it once in a while. But I agree it needs an overhaul like a flat 5% extra crit to the spell or something like it so regardless if you have the glyph or not the talent will still be worth it. Right now it feels average considering how high up it is compared to other talents in the same range for other specs (Everlasting Affliction and Demonic Pact) not to mention other class trees.

Ok, I've been reading the lock forums since I rerolled about 2 weeks pre-LK, but this is my first post.

Anyways, to answer Dirich (Post #286):
The answer to this comes from Zaleiria's Post #154 under the Glyph Choice thread regarding the change to CoA on the PTR:
Whitetooth, immediately below that, states the PTR Glyph of CoA is a 21.6dps increase over the live Glyph of CoA, which is proven elsewhere on that thread, as well as admitted by the devs (not providing quotes/links to either, they're out there), to not be a direct DPS increase, but a DPCT increase as well as freeing up a small number of GCDs.

Fire and Brimstone is bad but unfortunately there's not a lot of alternatives when it comes to DPS increases if you're going for Chaos Bolt. Assuming you're going Demonic Aegis/Chaos Bolt it basically comes down to either spending 7 point for Unholy Power (5 points for the talent and 2 points in other things to open it up) or putting points in Fire and Brimstone.

For the way I would allocate the points it would come down to (net gains):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

+10% pet damage
Soul Link
Fel Domination (without Master Summoner)

vs

66% more chance for imp crits to increase spell crit by 20% for the next spell
Damage of immolate increased by 15% of my spellpower
+25% crit chance on conflag if used in the last 5 seconds


I suppose another alternative is you could try taking those last 7 points and putting them in Affliction (Imp CoA, Suppression and Imp Life Tap).

Here is another possible option, again open for debate, leaving out F&B but having ISL and UP: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The question remaining is the value of ISL, the value of F&B with the Conflag glyph, and whether points in Aff would be preferable to either, compared to 5/5 UP.

EDIT: And it definitely appears there's flexibility in which talents you take in Destro to avoid F&B. So yeah.

Thoughts?