Ideas changes for Haunt and SoC in MoP.

[Zalkiden]

Posted in a few threads on the official MoP Beta class discussion forums for Warlocks.
Never got a response to the ideas I had.
So, before I go and create a post of my own there, thought I would see how well the ideas are received here.

Here is where I got the idea. Back in the Wotlk Beta haunt worked like this:

Haunt
Rank 1 80 You send a corrupted soul into the target, doing 800 damage over 2 sec. Haunt will continue to travel between targets who suffer from your Corruption spell. After traveling from up to three targets, the corrupted soul will return to you, healing you for 50% of the total damage done.
650 Mana, Instant cast, 40 yd range, 30 sec cooldown

Of which we also got a new spell to go with it that was:

Atrocity
Rank 1 60 You devastate the area, causing Corruption (Rank 8) to all targets within 15 yards. In addition, your Corruption spell will do 434 Shadow damage to the target when it finishes its duration.
Instant cast, 21% of base mana, 30 yd range

The idea I had was to make haunt work like:

You send a corrupted spirit into the target, doing X damage per sec, over 4-5 sec. Haunt will continue to travel between targets who suffer from your Corruption spell, up to 3 targets. Should there be no nearby targets to leap to haunt will stay on it's current target for the entire duration. Upon finishing it's duration, the corrupted soul will return to you, healing you for X% of your health.
Instant cast, 40 yd range, 20-25 sec CD. Cost 1 Soul Shard.

While baking Atrocity into SoC (which is pretty much giving SoC it's soulburn effect baseline, making SoC instant) with a 2 sec delay and keeping the damage threshold on it. So should the threshold be hit in a PvE it will detonate instantly when needed. While keeping the spell usefull in PvP as well so haunt may work effectively.

The problem I'm trying to solve with this is:

-Take Haunt away from being a throttle, we have MG now. No longer needed.
-Give us that spread damage Affliction is all about for PvP and PvE, while maintaining single target use for PvE content.
-Give Affliction back a little self healing considering we were gutted and all healing is in talents now.
-Make Haunt have decent damage and healing considering it's shard cost and CD.
-As well as to help see SoC used in PvP situations. I've always thought it was too cool a spell not to see used in PvP (aside from AV bridge fights that used to happen).

Those are the main points. I wish to have covered in this proposal.

Other ideas I had for fixing some things about Affliction were:

-Boost our dot damage by ~25% at the least to compensate for haunt no longer throttling.
-MG from here would then double the damage of our dots, including the new haunt, while being channeled.
-MG no longer Haste our dots. Just to be clear.
-I would very much enjoy Eradication coming back at this point. Working as it does on live. Slight modifications where necessary should the haste be too high.

Werst from the forums had this idea for curses that I thought interesting as well. Here it is as well as some changes I thought fit also.

-Adding CoEX to all curses, The slow being reduced to 20-25%. In addition give our Enfeeblement and Elements curses the jinx effect. Targets effected by jinx do NOT receive the slow from CoEX. Only our main target of the curse. Curses can still be soulburned for an AoE slow effect when needed.

[Xelnath]

Cool ideas aren't necessarily balanced ones.

Haunt is a burst DPS button. Using it otherwise is just a nuisance.

[Zalkiden]

Cool ideas aren't necessarily balanced ones.

Haunt is a burst DPS button. Using it otherwise is just a nuisance.

Numbers on everything can be tuned. I was mainly looking from a mechanics PoV.

Haunt in the case would be a source of 'Burst' Damage AND healing. Considering the numbers it would produce could be high considering it's shard cost and CD. Though the damage may not happen up front it can be increased through MG as well. Keep in mind in a PvP situation the Haunt will most likely jump to a new target around the 4-5 sec mark. Keeping the damage from being rediculous there.

Perhaps my proposal isn't the greatest. I am, however, trying to give Haunt it's healing back, keeping it a DPS button, keeping it true to Afflictions flavor, while making it so it's not a throttle to our DoTs.

Having it in it's current implementation ultimately defeats the purpose of the Soul Shard system in making it so if we must use a utility spell for shards...we're losing 40% dmg...which is even more heightened when we cast MG WITH Haunt on a target. It's like we lost Shadow Embrace...only to gain a much worse throttle in the form of Haunt.

[Xelnath]

Okay, Haunt nerf incoming.

[Jessicka]

Having it in it's current implementation ultimately defeats the purpose of the Soul Shard system in making it so if we must use a utility spell for shards...we're losing 40% dmg...which is even more heightened when we cast MG WITH Haunt on a target. It's like we lost Shadow Embrace...only to gain a much worse throttle in the form of Haunt.

It's actually pretty nice if you're making sure it's up when you know you'll get 3-4 MGs chained to cover it's full up time, there are plenty of shards generated then for utility/extra up time over Dark Soul. What isn't so great is when you start wanting to weave Drain Soul to aim for 100% uptime on it. As Xelnath says, it should be for burst not 'just another debuff', I'm just not sure the numbers are there yet to disuade people shooting for 100% uptime, but clearly so long as that uptime is desirable/acheivable without penalty, it's unable to offer burst, eating all your shards and therefore not working as intended.