I like my rotations like I like my socks, nice and tight.

[Grizelda]

And you thought a 2.5 second cast was long? LOL.

Hey blizz, I don't like Improved Life Tap to keep the buff up. O.K. heres Improved Soul Fire to Keep the buff up.
I don't like this 2.5 second cast time. O.K. heres a 4 sec cast time.
Not enough instant procs? No instant procs!

[ComputerNerd]

Consistent behaviour is a must really, when using a given ability it should behave in a consistent fashion so that you always know just what the role of it is.
I do like choices whereby I can deviate from the optimum rotation or priority when there is a need for it.
I suppose the best example of that would have been the drain life/shadow bolt farce where I think drain life should have been a viable filler as a survival option but with an associated hit on your dps. A choice you make which should be viable to substitute when appropriate.

[Jessicka]

My favourite spec, and in my opinion by far the easiest, is Affliction, but just does not cut it when it comes to any sort of burst damage. It was OK in T11, but seems to be the least effective spec in T13. This is why I am excited for MoP Affliction where it seems like we will get burst damage if needed by blowing shards on Haunt.

Those Haunts are factored into your overall DPS by virtue of it's use with Nightfall procs. It's not burst. On the contrary, it's more ramp up.

[Sockmaster]

Those Haunts are factored into your overall DPS by virtue of it's use with Nightfall procs. It's not burst. On the contrary, it's more ramp up.

It's not ramp-up, just a limiting factor on your overall DPS.

Affliction isn't amazingly bursty, but the ramp-up time is minimal, especially when compared to live.
Live: Corruption, Doom, UA, Haunt, 3 stacks of SE, possibly Eradication?
Beta: Corruption, Agony, UA, Haunt, Malefic Grasp

The big difference is that Haunt is much more powerful (bursty) compared to Haunt on live and that we don't have to stack SE.
We could even cut the ramp-up time down more and SB:Soul Swap, where you are doing more than average DPS in 3 GCDs. That's very quick ramp-up time.

[Jessicka]

Strange you should list Eradication as part of the ramp up on live, when Haunt is now filling the same role, but limited to specific targets.

Edit: That's not to say ramp up isn't better now, but to say we have burst is misleading.

[Sockmaster]

I'm not sure how that is confusing.

Eradication is a proc, and uncontrollable. It is not guaranteed to be up at the start of a fight.
Haunt is a spell that you can control and will always be up for the start of a fight. Less ramp-up, more burst.

And let's not leave out Dark Soul and Grimoire of Service. 30% haste for 20 seconds and 100% more pet damage for 30 seconds on top of 100% haunt uptime for at least that entire period of time? I think it's safe to say we're pretty bursty.

[Jessicka]

I didn't say it was confusing, I said it was strange you said it's not part of the ramp up, then immediately list it as such :P

[Sockmaster]

I didn't say it was confusing, I said it was strange you said it's not part of the ramp up, then immediately list it as such :P

You said it was strange (as in you were confused about my reason for saying that) that I listed Eradication as part of the ramp-up when Haunt was filling the same role, and then went on to say that "to say we have burst is misleading."

I replied, saying that Haunt is more bursty and more reliable than Eradication. If you're comparing the two as forms of ramp-up, Haunt is obviously the clear winner here.
I also said that we do have burst in the form of much less ramp-up time (4-5 GCDs), and powerful cooldowns (Dark Soul as mini-lust, Service for more pet damage).

I'm not sure why you're trying to take this conversation into an argument about whether or not eradication really is part of our ramp-up or not.
Even without factoring it in at all, we're looking at significantly less ramp-up time and much more burst.

[Jessicka]

My only argument is whether you're regarding the improvement to our ramp up as burst or not, I don't think it is. Clearly your definition of burst is at odds with mine - I regard Burst as being able to put out significant numbers in a few globals, such as Mind Spikes/Blast, Deep Freeze/Shatters, and once upon a time Conflag/Chaos Bolts. Haunt does none of these things.

[Sockmaster]

My only argument is whether you're regarding the improvement to our ramp up as burst or not, I don't think it is. Clearly your definition of burst is at odds with mine - I regard Burst as being able to put out significant numbers in a few globals, such as Mind Spikes/Blast, Deep Freeze/Shatters, and once upon a time Conflag/Chaos Bolts. Haunt does none of these things.

Improvement to our ramp-up time is improvement to our ramp-up time.

Our burst mostly comes via Dark Soul and Grimoire of Service. 30% haste for 20 seconds and 100% more pet damage for 30 seconds. We don't have a specific ability that is "bursty" (according to your definition) and deals a ton of damage (unless you cast 4 haunts in a row), but those cooldowns are both very nice forms of burst.

[Deleted]

Why didn't you play another class? Because some MoP lock specs (Destro) play very similarly to other specs.

Actually i agree with him. The cata lock changes pushed me over the edge, although it wasn't the only reason why i quit. Which is why i didn't just go and play another class.

I didn't nerd rage over the cata changes to locks, i just didn't find it fun to play. After playing a lock for a long time and going through various changes i felt they almost had a nice spec in cata but ballsed it up with ISF. It's not hard to do, it's just a pain in the arse too keep up that is all. The MOP changes look nice so far although they still need allot of work, i'm looking forward to trying out the changes and have my fingers crossed they can pull it off.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 10:47 AM ----------

Improved Soul Fire (ISF). Clunky as hell. Even with 4 set tier bonus (which returns a shard after Soulburn + Soulfire), having to hard cast a 2.5 second spell just sucks. Improved Imp just doesn't proc enough.

My favourite spec, and in my opinion by far the easiest, is Affliction, but just does not cut it when it comes to any sort of burst damage. It was OK in T11, but seems to be the least effective spec in T13. This is why I am excited for MoP Affliction where it seems like we will get burst damage if needed by blowing shards on Haunt.

This is whats concerning me with the 4 second cast time on CB for a 3 ember rage dump. Yeah, you get 30% knocked off that..... Whoopdy doo no one likes too sit there turreting it up for those long cast times. Plus making it pointless for a 4TH ember in destro.

[Jessicka]

Improvement to our ramp-up time is improvement to our ramp-up time.

Our burst mostly comes via Dark Soul and Grimoire of Service. 30% haste for 20 seconds and 100% more pet damage for 30 seconds. We don't have a specific ability that is "bursty" (according to your definition) and deals a ton of damage (unless you cast 4 haunts in a row), but those cooldowns are both very nice forms of burst.

The latest sims aim for 100% uptime on Haunt; it's part of the ramp up, which whether it has been improved overall or not is irrelevant. Daedelus claimed that blowing shards on Haunt offered burst, it doesn't. In that we agree.

That Service and DS offer some on demand damage is a good thing for sure, but I've yet to see whether either of those would actually offer the killing blow on a switch; the latter does not at present on live (although the change to haste in MoP may help) and the former I think would be better replaced with Supremacy for the better utility.

[ComputerNerd]

Haunt as a buff to the damage of other spells on a given target is a ramp up.
Burst would be a nuke which ultimately has no impact on the damage your other spells have.
A shadow bolt prior to 3 stacks of SE would be a ramp up, but it functions as a nuke afterwards.

[Deleted]

Affliction: extremely happy how things are coming to be. Malefic grasp (even though I hate channel spells) was a great move, because adding the ability for a "burst" in the most heavy dot spec in the game was just a good way to balance things. Concerning the pvp aspects of the spec, I'm also very pleased since although we got somewhat tiny nerfs due removal of demon armor for example, the soul shard mechanic is way more organized, since the 15 sec cooldown allows us to actually fit it into the gameplay (instead of using it once per minute).

Destro: I haven't read enough on it, still trying to figure how the mana mechanic, seems a bit odd.

Demo: this was the spec that made me switch to my warlock. I absolutely love the complex rotation, the meta mechanic and how it revolves around mastery, and ofc, the fact that your demon is a big component of your damage per fight. But...The way it is atm, the spec seems to be a big bowl of random stuff throwed in for the sake of making it different. I dislike the time we're spending in our filler, I dislike the meta filler, and the spec is just too confuse. I hope blizzard is hearing player feedback (not the warlock tank though lol), because I've seen some posts where the problem and possible directions demo spec could take are very well according to our major complains (like the "melee warlock" problem was).

For mop, I'm for sure switching to affliction, since it's the spec that seems the most attractable to me (especially with malefic grasp!). I can still view destro as fun, but atm stepping into demo territory is a no-no.

[iDot]

I love the way Destro is looking to be in MoP. As you said Destro is kind of clunky atm, but I still enjoy it. Affliciton is alright, I like the Grasp/Haunt mechanic. And for demo... it's just MY GOD horrible currently, they have a lot of work to do, but I have my hopes.

[Rezhial]

Am I the only one that loves current destro? Including ISF? It's taken some time but I feel like I've truly mastered the spec.

Although the changes to come form current beta seem very fun as well

[shinewaylee]

hehe,good for me is that you choose des,my favor

[Sockmaster]

The latest sims aim for 100% uptime on Haunt; it's part of the ramp up, which whether it has been improved overall or not is irrelevant. Daedelus claimed that blowing shards on Haunt offered burst, it doesn't. In that we agree.

That Service and DS offer some on demand damage is a good thing for sure, but I've yet to see whether either of those would actually offer the killing blow on a switch; the latter does not at present on live (although the change to haste in MoP may help) and the former I think would be better replaced with Supremacy for the better utility.

Well, playing devil's advocate, you could actually do some respectable burst just blowing shards on Haunt. It would be the equivalent of condensing Malefic Grasp's damage into a single GCD. It would be detrimental to your overall DPS if you just did this for the sake of being bursty, but hey, you could do it if the fight was ending in like 10 seconds and had shards left over.

Service offers about 7k DPS for those 30 seconds when used in conjunction with DS.
DS is a personal bloodlust for 20 seconds.

If you look at the DPS timeline on the latest sims, DS and Service are giving the warlock about 20k more DPS every 2 minutes.
If you don't find the combination of bloodlust and 100% more pet damage bursty, then I don't know what would convince you otherwise.

Supremacy doesn't offer all that much better utility. :\
Imp gains a small heal, but his DPS is sub-par.
Voidwalker gains nothing? I didn't look very hard but it didn't look like any of his abilities changed.
Felhunter gains a secondary spellsteal effect, but I'm not really sure how it works. Didn't test it out or anything.
Succubus gains the ability to seduce more than just humanoids. Also, rainbows.

Supremacy is a terrible option, even for DPS (although not as bad as sacrifice, which is a nerf from not even picking a talent). Unless they buff it massively or nerf service (which will probably happen), they won't even be close. Service, as it is currently, offers ~31.5% increase in overall pet damage. So it is three times better than supremacy from a pure DPS standpoint.

And honestly, while they will eventually be adjusted to offer similar DPS values, I would argue that service offers more utility than supremacy.
An extra spell lock, an extra seduce, an extra tank. Much better than some of the things you're offered with the supremacy grimoire.