One of the most important considerations though, as mentioned earlier, is in fact that it would be unbalanced in pvp, to be able to refresh unstable affliction with an instant cast, that has no cooldown, that uses two spellschools (you would have to lock out a fire spell AND a shadow spell to prevent an affliction warlock from casting it). This alone convinces me that FF will not be without a cooldown.

Blizzard also stated they wanted it to be a demonology spell; it would indeed make sense if it was talented to reduce the cooldown in demonology, and it would fit the longer immolate duration. If immolate duration remains at 24 seconds, perhaps it will be talented down from a 30sec cooldown to 20 or 22 seconds, as an example.

With a larger cooldown like this, it would not be used simply to keep the dots rolling constantly, but would refresh UA while providing damage, or immolate, if its damage is high enough to be worth casting like this. Demonology, on the other hand, would be usable to refresh immolate, always. Perhaps talents would even buff its damage so that it would always be used on cooldown.

On the subject of hellfire being dangerous, as we would have to move into melee, it is no more dangerous than AoE'ing as a demonology lock is currently, surely? The best damage we can do AoE'ing is to move in and immolation aura, before casting our AoEs. So, doesn't this just become a matter of waiting for tanks to get solid aggro, or standing back and using something inferior?

As it is currently, rain of fire is buffed for destruction through empowered imp proccs, while affliction has plenty of talents that boost SoC. They are already much better for the other specs than for demonology, and blizzard have not stated that they wanted to make SoC/RoF unusable for demonology, just as while SoC is afflictions AoE, destruction *can* still use it, if the situation calls for it.


I am interested in how the shadowburn change will affect things; will it be usable at execute range, perhaps? It has a shorter range than other spells, at the moment, so perhaps that would change, or it may just become an awkward execute.

My guess is that Fel Flame will have a rather long cooldown, if not longer than 15 seconds. I don't think it will be intended to have us use a spell designed for Demonology and Destruction to refresh Unstable Affliction.

Also, it's rather funny how warlocks have been pretty much the only caster without an instant nuke up until now, only to get two at once (including Shadowburn). Maybe the latter one will finally be used in the Destruction rotation...?

I think the clarification on channel duration can be extrapolated to explain how things will work for DoTs/HoTs as well.

From the WoW Damage Dealing Forums:
and from the WoW Healing Forums:

Assuming the above and Everlasting Affliction resetting the duration of Corruption after the next tick, then to maximize UA DPS, locks will want to refresh UA:

• before the last UA damage tick
• by Satisfying the equation: Time Remaining to Last UA DoT tick + Hasted UA Full Duration < 15sec

I feel like this goes against the "DoT Simplification" given to Locks in their class preview (DoTs cannot clip, but are reset with a mechanic similar to Everlasting Affliction). In my opinion, that window to refresh UA is hardly fluid nor intuitive, which I thought were design goals of the "DoT Simplification".

What I got from the blue posts was duration of channels will go down while tick count will remain the same. Once there's enough haste to get 1 extra tick in the original duration, you gain 1 extra tick, start over with duration reduction but with ticks + 1.
This would also work nicely for dots, also not allowing any kind of dead time (it expires as soon as last tick does damage). So for example Drain Soul would fluctuate between 12.5 and 15 the first time then 12.86 and 15 for getting the 7th tick and so on.

I believe it will become a long awaited execute spell (think Kill Shot, Hammer of Wrath, Execute) for Destruction.

No, it wouldn't. As mentioned before by Blizzard, they mean to incorporate Fel Flame into Destruction and Demonology, not Affliction. The fact that that it refreshes UA might as well be just an added bonus to add some synergy to our Affliction repertoire, but most probably not meant to be included as part of our rotation. It only makes sense that the cooldown will be equal or higher than UA's duration in order to have Affliction warlocks use it as an emergency refresh when we cannot stop to cast, be it PvE or PvP.

I bet the last thing they want is an Affliction warlock refreshing a dispel-protected DoT every 3 seconds while running away.

Curious if this ability is intended to replace Shadow Bolt so that each spec has it's very own primary nuke or whether this ability would solely be used to maintain the debuff. Personally I would much prefer the former...

Well I don't think Demo Locks will be casting Incinerate even when Molten Core procs because Soul Fire will cost no shards at any stage of a fight, so that is one less nuke. Because of the Soul Shard changes affecting the cost of Soul Fire though I expect that the whole current system (Molten Core, Decimation) to get quite a big overhaul. Who knows, maybe Soul Fire will be the primary nuke for Demo Locks...

I don't imagine Soul fire will be cast without decimation.

Right now this where the BiS numbers are:

Soul Fire's DPET - 12748
Incinerates DPET - 11617
Shadowbolts DPET - 9435

Given that the Soul Fire has all MC procs sub 35% included in its DPET, its non MC DPET will be lower. Then you are trading 40% haste for 18% damage and 15% crit. Also keep in mind that the longer cast on SF means that its more likely that you won't get to use all the MC charges before they either fall off or get refreshed.

I do think something has to change though because based on what is known we are now up to a pretty long list of standard combat abilities

1) curse
2) bane of doom (which is proposed at being more than once per minute for demon)
3) immolate
4) fel flame
5) corruption
6) demon bolt
7) shadow bolt
8) incinerate
9) soul fire
10) Demonic empowerment
11) metamorphosis
12) immolation aura
13) demon soul
14) hellfire (demon aoe)
15) shadowburn (as a possible option thanks to extra talent points)

and then we haven't even hit the utility buff/stuff that you might need in combat
16) dark intent
17-20) soul burn + spells
21) demon circle
22) demon portal
23) death coil
24) fear
25) banish
27) health stone
28) potion
etc...

In fact, it's worse than how you describe. You will actually *lose* dps if you do not clip! Because the DoT is now a constant duration, while the ticks have any arbitrary interval, you will always end up with a "useless" fraction of DoT in the end. If you do not refresh before the DoT expires, you lose that fraction and your new application will start counting from 0 again. However, if you do clip the existing DoT, you will have gained the time before your new application. You will overlay a small part that is not used, though. Example:

Assume 15 second UA and hasted 2 second ticks.
This means you are left with 1 second at the end that will not do any damage, unless you clip it to extend the duration.
Let's say you clip at 14.5 seconds with an identically hasted UA.
The result is that the next damage tick will happen 1.5 seconds into your new application. You've taken advantage of 0.5 seconds of the last 1.0 second tick from the previous application. You want to clip as late as possible to maximize DPS.

So in reality, instead of losing DPS if you clip, like today, you will lose DPS if you fail to clip even by a millisecond. It becomes more like Haunt, but unlike Haunt where missing to clip costs a percentage of damage on existing DoTs until next Haunt is applied, you will now lose the fraction tick fully, which will be approximately half a tick on average. And this applies to all DoTs individually.

There's already a preliminary version of Demon Bolt on the alpha: LINK

Apparently it's a dual-school (Shadow / Fire) spell that casts an 8 second debuff which causes the target to take 30% more damage from your pet, with a 2.5 second cast time and a 12 second cooldown. I'm not sure how big the damage is, though a quick comparison to Chaos Bolt gives us an identical cast time and cooldown, and a similar base damage (although the coefficient could still be anything)

Since it has a cooldown, it's obviously not something that will replace a filler spell, but rather something you just weave into your rotation to maintain the debuff. The dual-school aspect is interesting from a PvP perspective though, if the preview implication of dual-school spells being immune to lockouts is to be believed.