Haunt refreshing SL would be 1 GCD saved every 30s which is a DPS increase.
SL combined with Corr is 1 GCD saved every 30s at the cost of the former SL damage.

I see, sorry I just got out of a 12 hour shift and a bit tired, I didnt think of GCD. However I would rather see them implement that and maybe tone down some of the buffs they made to shadowbolt in an effort to offset the dps increase of ignoring the GCD with it being added to haunt then to see the spell disappear all together. I'm sure those who PVP would also agree.

In all honesty tho.. Id rather they just leave it the hell alone all together.

Yes I saw this comment but this comment was just a guess without any source.

So I guess nobody knows.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Will ISB stack with Improved Scorch?

Not really, I just thought it too ridiculous to comment on. Seriously, I DO need a mod for 5xhaunt, 4xUA, 4ximmolate, 2xCoA (with Glyph), and 2xSL per minute, but I won't need it when you take away SL? I always cast CoA and SL together anyway (just like UA and Imm), so why would removing SL remove my need for a mod (if it was needed at all; many say they do without)? If they wanted to simplify the rotation, making Haunt an instant or last 15 seconds would have had more impact than removing SL from the rotation. I'm already casting SB 60% of the time as it is; I honestly don't need more simplification.

Stop thinking about how they think. Either you get so mad to uninstall wow or you go insane

just logged on to test, and i cant replicate those results.

I tried sbX2,sfX2 2nd is still slower, 1.33 vs 3.29.

I tried sb>incin as suggested, and this did not create 2 buffs, so weaving those 2 to alternate SF + another nuke wont work. the buff on you, is reset to 10 secs on the 2nd hit of sb or incin.

I cast SF after casting 2 SB, was 1.33 sec ( this matched the tool tip for SF ) and cast another immediately after. I moused off the SF tooltip and back on, and it showed 3.29. Also, I notice the buff goes away as soon as you finish casting the first SF, so I don't see how sb sb sf sf will work.

Time it so the second sb will hit just after the first sf was finished. This will reapply the buff and you can happily get another sf off.
Pretty sure this is something not intended though, but the challenge of getting the hang of it sounds like it can be nice.

The more I think about the affliction changes, the more I keep thinking there has to be a better way to keep Blizzard's goal of "should be playable without 3rd party mods" concept without ruining the concept of the tree. Having 50+ talent points affect ~70% of our damage like it does now makes a lot more sense than having the bulk of our talents affect 50% or less of our overall damage. I keep coming back to a Haunt revamp every time I think about this.

In a pipe-dream world, Haunt acts more like Lifebloom, where the end heal doesn't proc until the Haunt debuff wears off the target. So, refreshing Haunt doesn't automatically give the warlock the heal, but letting it die before recasting (such in pvp) will. Haunt's damage can be changed to damage over time, stacking to three, similar to Lifebloom. Each stack increases the damage component of Haunt, making it close to the damage of Haunt + Shadow Bolt direct damage combined. This means that Haunt no longer has a cooldown, but becomes the "spammable nuke (well, dot in this case)" in place of Shadow Bolt. This spamming is just to maintain the three stack for the course of the fight. While the direct damage component aspect may hurt in pvp, the fact that Haunt is off its cooldown means that dispel heavy groups will be healing the warlock similar to dispeling lifebloom works now. Siphon can stay linked to Corruption, and Immolate, as we're seeing, is still worth casting, meaning the new affliction warlock would be "rolling Haunt" while maintaining Unstable Affliction, Immolate, and their Curse. Finally, Haunt would be added to Pandemic as well, so that it can crit, too. Outside of spamming Haunt on multiple targets for lots of incoming heals (is this really a bad thing?), I'm not sure what the downside of this concept would be. It certainly makes Drain Soul more difficult to maintain for <25%, but outside of Drain Soul ticks refreshing the Haunt stack, I don't see an easy fix.

From what id expect, we need enough haste, to buff the talented SF to leave our hands, before the Incin/SB hits the target. We sould still need to start off the rotation with SB,SB,SF tho
What i expect people are seeing on test, is due to the lag its being made possible, but with reduced lag on live, i dont think it will possible to replicate, unless you can get it down to under 1 second with haste rating, either way, we should gain the buff when the spell leaves our hands as its buffing us, were not debuffing the boss. Should proc from "Besalyn casts Incinerate" and not from "Incinerate hits <insert boss>" ofcourse that change could lead to fake casting incinerate to spam SF but i wouldnt see that as a dps increase.

You're all doing it wrong :p

Consider this (You need a healthy bit of haste for it, but if I can do it without raid buffs anyone should be able to do it in a raid).

SB->{SB->SF, Repeat}

-- Some rough stats
SB Cast time: 2s
SF Cast time: 3.19s
SF Cast time + Dec: 1.27s
Range: 30 yards
SB Time in flight: ~1.4s (Guestimate quite frankly, but it's longer than 1.27s)

We start with decimate up
00:00.00 SB Starts casting
00:02.00 SB finishes casting
00:02.00 SF Starts casting
00:03.27 SF Finishes casting Decimate consumed
00:03.27 SB Starts casting
00:03.40 SB Hits target Decimate gained
00:05.27 SB Finishes casting
00:05.27 SF Starts casting
00:06.54 SF Finishes casting Decimate consumed
00:06.54 SB Starts casting
00:06.67 SB Hits target Decimate gained

etc

[edit] looks like a few people suggested this as I was writing this post.

I'd say it is useful to keep at least CoA running for MC uptime. 10% on the SF is quite a bit and SB's alone won't give you decent uptime. Corruption however, you might drop at that phase.

Not sure about Immolate, would need some DPCT comparisons with SB/SF in the new setup.

As a side note, if you are spec'd 41/30, it would be beneficial to at least keep CoA and Immolate up being that you'll be spamming Incinerate over SB. CoA obviously to keep up MC.

I ran tests trying to keep CoA, Corr, and Immo up. It gets rather hectic. But keep in mind, if you need to refresh Immo or CoA, you can go Incin>Immo>SF or Incin>CoA>SF. I also played with LT'ing as a filler.

Basicly, the rotation isn't easier, you still have the whole ton of durations, just fewer buttons to press, but you still have to cast UA/Immo before they expire, guesstimate Haunt cast to not lose it, cast CoA asap. I never actually found SL as the hard part of affliction, more Haunt and the fact that it only lasts 12s and restarting rotation loses quite a bit of dps. And that Haunt always ended up needing refresh at the worst of times.
And if you do ask most other classes playing this game, they all use dotimers, all of them. Add to that procwatchers, hidden CD watchers, everyone has some bars counting down something. You cannot make the game not depend on external timers unless you add some very good blizz timers/cooldown watchers or just make everyone spam 1 thing.

Blizzard probably started with trying to simplify stuff because people couldn't play affliction, but people that could didn't really ask for dot removal, just less estimating and overlapping timers. And my guess is it still won't make more people get closer to the max poential.
Then somehow we got pegged as high dps. Sure, when I use my 1300-1400 dps Doomguard I do high dps, it's 1k+ more dps than the felhunter. So they tried something to simplify and at the same time, slightly lower our damage.

While I admit I haven't seen conclusive evidence of a big nerf (while my tests in post #180 showed 460 dps difference they were only 18 minutes long each) I haven't seen any evidence that it's closer to no nerf.

Post moved to new thread: http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t48311-s...ost_3_1_specs/

For the affliction spec can you try 53/0/18 using the imp and the succubus. I'll go over and try to figure out how to use the simulationcraft software myself.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...ion=9626<br />

Glyphs:

Haunt
CoA
Life tap

When will this be in the SVN trunk?

I am updated to r1579, but I don't see sample T8 models included and didn't see an occurrence of 3.1 in the code anywhere.

Edit: I see that the preliminary support was added a few revs ago now, thank you for your sample T8 profiles.

Pandemic vs resilience (-25% Crit damage, - 12.5% Dot Damage), assume the dot hits for 1000 base in PVE.

Non-Crit: 1000 - 12.5% = 875
Crit: 1000 + (500 - 25%) = 1375 (875 + 500)

Still crits for full amount, no double dipping. This is how the talent is expected to work, but if the burst talent they keep talking about comes up short expect them to buff dot crits to 200%.

I am not too familiar with Simulationcraft so forgive me if I am mistaken on its ins and outs.

I have a few suggestions for your 41/30. Or I would like to see the numbers on the 41/30 that I am running with in the PTR.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...0&version=9626

Also, I don't know if it makes much of a difference on how you set up the actions for its rotation, but I usually save Demonic Empowerment until the end of my rotation to get Demonic Frenzy to 10 stacks. I am also running with a Spellstone over a Firestone. I have a feeling that bug will be fixed sooner or later. And I like haste more.

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong with any of these suggestions.

Very good call. I reran the simulation with immolate (I also changed the spec to include aftermath), and edited my post above. Affliction looks more competitive now.

I'm another person who is not too familiar with the mechanics of Simcraft. However, Zakalwe, regarding the 5/13/53, Shadowburn is not needed as it's really only a PvP talent and can be put into Demonic Power. I also think that point for point, losing a point in Empowered Imp and putting another point into Demonic Power is much more beneficial, especially with the nerf of the crit debuff via Scorch. As for the glyphs, I'm pretty sure that the Immolate glyph will provide a higher increase than Chaos Bolt glyph, especially when Conflag is factored in.

I would also add the Immolate glyph in place of CoA, and 1 point in Cataclysm instead of Improved Drain Soul. Which pet are you using?

edit: or 1 point in Demonic Power. You could consider 5/5 Ruin vs. 2/2 Demonic Power.