locks seem to have had a dramatic pvp buff tho

Very disappointed that FG/Emberstorm has been killed by these changes, or at least without a significant gear sacrifice to avoid the need for Suppression :-/

I'm reserving final judgement until all the cards are on the table, but for now I'm not too impressed with the changes. All in all it feels like too much simplification and a nerf to boot. I kinda liked working for my decent position on the DPS charts, but if this is all then my affliction lock will play like a mage with both hands tied behind her back. I was under the impression that locks were supposed to get a small boost to make them able to compete with the current DPS toppers.

Btw, am I the only one who thinks Malediction is now incredibly weak considering where it is within the talent tree? It wasn't a strong talent to begin with, but it's even weaker now.

FYI, warlock's are the DPS toppers. I do agree with you on the simplification though, although I think it is way too soon tos ay whether or not we have been buffed. The new talents opens up for new specs and new gearing possibilities, we just need to find them out, test them and check the results. It's going to take a while, but I'm not that certain that what we got going on here actually is a nerf for warlock DPS.

I don't think the 6 seconds meta glyph is worth it compared to the other glyphs...unless its a minor glyph in which case its awesome. ^^


edit: well thinking about it its actually good I suppose considering 20% more dmg for 6 secs every 2 min.

20% for 6 sec every 2 in = 20% for 3 sec every min = 1% dps.. really worth it? I really really doubt it, unless it is a minor, in which case it is awesome.

The glyphs seem...almost too good to be true. Are these actually active on the PTRs or just floating around in the files?

Affliction's new priority set/rotation seem to be pretty obvious, unless of course the new Aftermath offsets the SE/Haunt nerf to Immo which I doubt highly.

What's really interesting to me at this point is how Demo's rotation is going to pan out, and to a lesser extent, Destro's.

Molten Core being a deep Demo talent (PH of course, but working with what's available) along with Decimation, it seems that Demonology is being pushed into Fire nuking with shadow dots, while Destro is fills the pure fire niche. Without an Emberstorm build, and with ISB being available at the expense of 3 points elsewhere (probably Cataclysm) would Incinerate be viable over SB in Meta builds? I'm thinking that the optimal rotation, given current talents, will either be CoA - Immo - SB or Incin, Demonic Empowerment as it comes up along with Meta (of course, assuring that it coincides with Heroism/BL), and then switching back and forth between Soulfire and SB/Incin <35%. Thoughts?

It doesn't look like Destro's rotation is changing all that much, except that CoA won't be optimal to use without MC.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Molten Skin supposed to be in the Demonology tree according to the patch notes? With that said, Wouldn't it make sense if Molten Core and Molten Skin were to switch places (with MC being in it's previous place?) I may have missed it if someone else already said this...but yeah...just a thought.

Has anyone else noticed that the Chaos Bolt glyph synchronizes the CD on CB and Conflag? That seems quite appealing to me, in terms of rotation management.

There was some talk about normalizing dots to have the same durations as one another. Anyone with PTR access able to determine if anything along those lines has occurred?

EDIT: Grammar

The changes need to be pondered upon. However, I've always had a sneaky feeling about where they're going with the destruction tree, and the changes seem to enforce my idea.

I think they're trying to make Searing Pain viable in a raiding environment, and make up for the low scaling due to cast time by considerably boosting its crit chance. If I'm adding it right, a raid buffed, talented and glyphed lock would have over 60% crit on searing pain. If they remove the threat coefficient(like I remember reading in some leaked patch notes), then I guess we might be looking at it replacing incinerate in the rotation, with another talent(or soul shard stacking) being changed to allow for soulfire spam during backdraft.

The changes in demo *make sense* overall. Decimate, however, does not. I don't mind the existence of execute talents, as long as they actually fit in the tree. A boost to the demon in demonology, Decimate in the destruction tree, Drain Soul in the affliction tree.

Affliction got nerfed two-fold. The rotation got dumbed down(hi, player friendliness), and the overall damage got nerfed quite considerably. The changes to pandemic and the effective removal of Immolate and Siphon Life from the rotation(they will also affect Drain Soul ticks) have probably brought it in line with the other classes as far as dps potential is concerned.

Overall, I think this will be an "even things out" patch. All three specs should have the same dps potential, and I think that is where they're going with this, by nerfing affliction and buffing demonology. Jury's still out on destruction.

We do not yet know of the coefficients, maybe corruption does more damage now to even out for us lacking siphon life? As I stated before, it is way to soon to start judging DPS.