Having not been able to get onto the PTR yet and see for myself (damn queue), how is Destro stacking up against Affliction? Is it more on par now? I can see by the posts in this thread that Destro/Demo appears to have gotten a boost and Affliction somewhat of a nerf (due to the combination of spells), but can't seem to find a post comparing the two directly on the PTR. Or am I going blind again?

Just tested this.

Unfortunately, the Doomguard spawned from a Curse of Doom has a maximum of 15 minutes in duration. So you could Enslave him a maximum of 3 times before he disappears and you need to CoD again.

But, yes, I was able to keep him for 15 minutes without any problems whatsoever (5 full minutes -> Enslave Drops -> Re-enslave -> Repeat).

Something funny: If you get on a flying mount and fly up, he doesn't despawn. He just de-enslaves and sits there like a normal mob. (If you go back down, he attacks you.) So you could create a forest of random Doomguards standing around haha

Anyway, yes, a permanent Doomguard is totally doable for bosses, provided that you can find a mob that you can tank for 60 seconds...

If the effect remains the same and it's a "landing" proc then this is going to a viable strategy sub 35%, what we will need to find out though is the flight time from maximum range and the haste required to get a 2SB2SF rotation working sub-35%, it also begs the question of whether spending destructive reach will become a worthwhile talent when lower on haste.

Anyone else able to replicate the results of a 2SB2SF rotation?

On live, you can actually Curse of Doom a doomguard and get a new one that way. Its a neat little trick that could help in keeping a doomguard up semi-permanently. You could never depend on if during a progression run though. Once you die you would have to find a new mob to start your doomguard chain.

All I can see for improved burst damage is dots critting and changes in SB crits, via the talent changes. Most likely glyph of life tap will help also, so long as you use it frequently.

How significant that will be I'm not sure... unlikely to suddenly make us great on trash I would have thought.

I think they could have achieved a much better PvE nerf for affliction by toning down DS. As far as I've noticed, it isn't until the last 25% that affliction starts shooting up the DPS ladder. I personally have no problems balancing my DoTs; it's actually what makes playing affliction fun for me. The only thing they could have done to improve rotation is make Haunt last 15 seconds and/or make it an instant cast. I'm unsure how the current changes have any influence on our trash DPS.

Actually, Haunt's duration wasn't so bad. In 60 seconds I cast 5xhaunt, 4xUA, 4ximmolate, 2xCoA (with Glyph), and 2xSL. All in all not that hard to maintain really. Ok, make it instant then, which will also help in PvP.

That's why they allow themselfs to get into a discussion about resilence and dots, interesting..

Even the filler part of affliction damage needs time to build up (on Talent & Itemrprocs mainly)
Adding something more to trigger before it gets viable defies the definition of burst.
If throwing a SoC (SF+RoF) at a trashpull was pointless before, it will be so with 3.1

On the discussion of resiliance, surely ALL spells/Damage should now be reduced by resilience for every class, Affliction Dots are now our "normal damage" as they can crit, before they couldnt crit and so "Needed" to be reduced to be fair. Now theyre affected by the "reduced periodic damage" OR "Reduced crit" whereas other classes its simply "normal damage not reduced" but "Reduced crit damage" What is the difference of a dot or two, ticking for 400 damage each and getting penalised, and a Rogue auto attacking me for 400dmg each hand and not getting reduced?

To me this change on Dots makes the periodic nerf obsolete.

Oh I am so frustrated with trash. I´m only doing 10k dps per trash mob group (naxx10/25). I wonder what locks he asked to get this kind of aproach on us.

That was the point when I stopped reading his posts. Have you ever seen useful numbers from him or a post where exactly whe do too much damage? I didnt so I would prefer not so use his arguements here.

I dont understand why they couldnt just leave Siphon Life how it is on live but make Haunt refresh its duration along with corruption if they are that hell bent on simplifying afflictions rotation.

As for DoTs and critting, why use two differant rules on them? Why cant the DoT be affected by the normal resilience penalty for DoTs when its ticking as normal, and then be affected by that same percentage on the crit instead of what they are suggesting with changing the percentage to the normal critical penalty modifier when a crit registers? Its a compromise I think its half decent.

Mage's debuff is being reduced to +5% spell crit to be on par with ours. Imp SB doesn't stack with their debuff.

Ele Shaman and Balance druids have a group buff that adds +5% spell crit. These are under a separate category as they're buffs and not debuffs. They stack with our imp SB and Mage's debuff, but not with each other.