making Shadow Bolt fit better with affliction

[CaspianRoach]

Because that would be unique right?

As a matter of fact, yes. Deep Wounds and Ignite proc from all crits, Burning Embers proc from SF/Imp strikes, Pyroblast's DoT part is very small and doesn't scale at all. Fireball's DoT part is getting removed in cataclysm (it was glyphed out on live anyway) and Righteous Vengeance is removed in cata.

And it would be fun to see how Shadow Bolt DoT part would scale with mastery.

[Daggy1111]

Sorry but going on that logic "nukes are nothing more than upfronts dots". Whats stopping me from calling it a channeled nuke? Drains and channeled spells are that drains and channeled spells, not dots, not nukes they will not be affected by mastery.

To the OP it's a decent idea, but i really dont have a problem with SB the filler for aff, fits in perfectly with the spec and the lore. And what Jess said is right aff locks just arent about dots they are about debuffs to and shadowbolt applies two debuffs to the target.

The reason I say they are channled dots is that the way wow itself reads those drain spell is that they appllie a Damage over time aura, which is what a dot dose. Its not just spliting hairs,it actually puts a dot effect on the target while you channle.

---------- Post added 2010-10-03 at 02:18 AM ----------

I understand the wish to see shadowbolt more exciting, but it serves its purpose.
It just works, and I would rather see that maintained than introducing something new which will be endlessly adjusted and potentially removed or nerfed to the ground.
Take the issue with burning embers for destruction as a case in point.

The class descriptions page describes warlocks as a debuffer even, well that and a bit extra with hidden easter egg, which if desired I will describe.

You have to remeber though that burning embers was a EXTRA damage effect added to what is one of the best dpct spells locks have. I mean soul fire hits for a cubic shit ton of damage, both live and beta/ptr. So yeah it needed a nerfing, and badly. On the other hand sb is a fairly weak spell, and it would not be an extra damage effect. Also Id like to point out that while it would need to be nerfed maybe once or twice, historicly afflicton is the worste(next to spreist) scaling class in the game(and they both scale badly for the same reason).

[CaspianRoach]

historicly afflicton is the worste scaling class in the game

icc logs stopped by to say nuh-uh; best performing lock spec, sup

[Deleted]

Not -all- your spells have to be buffed by everything in your tree, or mastery.
For example: paladin tanks get only mastery benefit to block, not to stamina or dodge.
Another example: Resto druids are all about hots, yet they use nourish too.
Same goes for shadowbolt, it might not be buffed by your tree or mastery, yet you still use it, cos it's still good.

[Daggy1111]

icc logs stopped by to say nuh-uh; best performing lock spec, sup

Yeah after they twicked the spec though, and after they added glyphs and changed the way the spec worked and ignored a effect of the dot crit mechanic. ALso all lock specs are doing rather poorly when compaired to the other pure dps classes, and even worse when compaired to wars and most dks(and thats before you add in shadowmourn).

---------- Post added 2010-10-03 at 02:26 AM ----------

Not -all- your spells have to be buffed by everything in your tree, or mastery.
For example: paladin tanks get only mastery benefit to block, not to stamina or dodge.
Another example: Resto druids are all about hots, yet they use nourish too.
Same goes for shadowbolt, it might not be buffed by your tree or mastery, yet you still use it, cos it's still good.

Yeah but 1) drain life is doing better. 2) Shield block for pallys and hots for druids tend to make up Over half of their total heals/midigation. Afflicton locks tend to have only about 50% of their damage be from dots, with the exception of the exacute phase were almost 100% of their damage is dots, minus haunt.

[Deleted]

Yeah but 1) drain life is doing better. 2) Shield block for pallys and hots for druids tend to make up Over half of their total heals/midigation. Afflicton locks tend to have only about 50% of their damage be from dots, with the exception of the exacute phase were almost 100% of their damage is dots, minus haunt.

Erm, druids: maybe, paladins: hell no. For a paladin to mitigate 50% from blocking they'd have to block 166.67%, which would be nearly double blocking 1 hit, that's kinda impossible. (And I'm talking cata mechanics atm since there was mastery talk already, in live atm it's way way down cos they block... 3, maybe 4k per hit max while ICC25 bosses hit for 30k easily, depending on which boss.)
What I mean to say is still, it's there: use it, not everything has to be buffed by your talents/mastery. And if drain life is doing better: what's stopping you? Just SB every now and then to keep the debuff up and DL the rest of the time.

[Daggy1111]

Erm, druids: maybe, paladins: hell no. For a paladin to mitigate 50% from blocking they'd have to block 166.67%, which would be nearly double blocking 1 hit, that's kinda impossible. (And I'm talking cata mechanics atm since there was mastery talk already, in live atm it's way way down cos they block... 3, maybe 4k per hit max while ICC25 bosses hit for 30k easily, depending on which boss.)
What I mean to say is still, it's there: use it, not everything has to be buffed by your talents/mastery. And if drain life is doing better: what's stopping you? Just SB every now and then to keep the debuff up and DL the rest of the time.

I am not saying pallys block 50% of all damage, I am saying of the damage midigated(which is actually about 30%) half of that is from their sheild. Pallys block a lot, in fact over twice as often as the dodge/parry(yeah I know aura and all) and it adds up to about 50% plus of all of their midigaton, and as midigaton is the main effect of tanks(that and massive ungody huge health pools) that means that over 50% of their spec "effect"(midigation) would come from block, which is effected by their mastery. Also the reason for the whole drain life thing is that it basicly makes a afflicton lock a spreist, but without the burst.

[Deleted]

I am not saying pallys block 50% of all damage, I am saying of the damage midigated(which is actually about 30%) half of that is from their sheild. Pallys block a lot, in fact over twice as often as the dodge/parry(yeah I know aura and all) and it adds up to about 50% plus of all of their midigaton, and as midigaton is the main effect of tanks(that and massive ungody huge health pools) that means that over 50% of their spec "effect"(midigation) would come from block, which is effected by their mastery. Also the reason for the whole drain life thing is that it basicly makes a afflicton lock a spreist, but without the burst.

Still not right, no tank in their right mind values block highly in it's current form.
Atm my pala tank in ICC25 gear, unbuffed has 29.33% dodge (which completely mitigates an attack, let's deduct 20% for ICC, so block has a relatively higher chance), 24.15% parry (which also completely mitigates) and 15.24% block (which mitigates 1509 damage, and add 30% from holy shield spell, let's equip block value libram and pump it up to... 2094 damage blocked + redoubt (if always up which it isn't) = 75.24% @ 2722 damage).

Let's assume a boss hits 100 times for 15k per hit (this is low and makes block scale better than it actually is).
9.33% dodge + 24.15% parry will mitigate the full hit, that is (9.33+24.15)*15k = 502k mitigated.
75.24% block will mitigate 2722 per block, that is 75.24*2722 = 204803 or 205k mitigated.
Total mitigation would be 707k, block is 205/707% = 28.99% of that total mitigation.
So no, not half a paladin's mitigation is from block, far from it, and keep in mind this is with my stats for block optimized, no dodge trinket, a block libram and redoubt always up.

Edit:
Sorry for being off-topic, I still stick with my former standpoint: Not all you do has to be affected by talents/mastery.

Edit2:
Forgot about redoubt, added it in calculations now.

[ComputerNerd]

Shadowbolt fits just fine, it just needs the numbers sorting out.
And that is where the debate of dots vs drains comes in, since at the moment drain life would seem to scale better than shadowbolt particularly if you take into account the mastery, and if drains are considered dots for that purpose.
Therefore if drain life is going to be scaling better, then it would have to be something quite dramatic done to shadowbolt to make it superior dps again.

[Jessicka]

I believe DoTs are defined purely as Damage over Time spells, whereas Drains are included where 'Periodic Damage' is stated.

[shade3891]

I don't get the problem really, if say: you would use Drain Life as a filler, the nightfall procs will occur a lot more often and you will still be shooting Shadow Bolts only instant casts after a channel.

So you end up having both as fillers ...

[ComputerNerd]

The problem is that drain life was never intended as a general filler, only a slight dps loss if survivibility is an issue, so you take a dps hit to gain health back faster.
Shadowbolt is still meant to be the one you spam for the most part, just unfortunatly due to screwed up ptr/beta numbers drain life came out better.

[ComputerNerd]

Warlocks were rarely unique, and despite those who do not like the comparison with mages, we have always shared a lot of similarity.
Whether a mechanic is unique or not does tend to cause quite a debate though I will agree that something being unique is not always a good thing.

[Deleted]

Drain Life scales with Mastery... pretty easy to check it out @ PTR... reforge some crit/haste to mastery and your drain dmg goes up ;P If that's intended, dunno... cause Blizz doesnt really give any feedback :P

[Daggy1111]

Still not right, no tank in their right mind values block highly in it's current form.
Atm my pala tank in ICC25 gear, unbuffed has 29.33% dodge (which completely mitigates an attack, let's deduct 20% for ICC, so block has a relatively higher chance), 24.15% parry (which also completely mitigates) and 15.24% block (which mitigates 1509 damage, and add 30% from holy shield spell, let's equip block value libram and pump it up to... 2094 damage blocked + redoubt (if always up which it isn't) = 75.24% @ 2722 damage).

Let's assume a boss hits 100 times for 15k per hit (this is low and makes block scale better than it actually is).
9.33% dodge + 24.15% parry will mitigate the full hit, that is (9.33+24.15)*15k = 502k mitigated.
75.24% block will mitigate 2722 per block, that is 75.24*2722 = 204803 or 205k mitigated.
Total mitigation would be 707k, block is 205/707% = 28.99% of that total mitigation.
So no, not half a paladin's mitigation is from block, far from it, and keep in mind this is with my stats for block optimized, no dodge trinket, a block libram and redoubt always up.

Edit:
Sorry for being off-topic, I still stick with my former standpoint: Not all you do has to be affected by talents/mastery.

Edit2:
Forgot about redoubt, added it in calculations now.

Thing is i am talking about in cata, were block is about 30% of the inciming damage, not current block. Currant block has nothing to do with mastery, and would have to be ignored when dealing with issues of mastery scaling. Now I am not going to go over the exact numbers, but lets say you have a dodge parry of about 25% in cata(which is actually about were it was). Now we add in that block right now can get up to about 75%( remember this is all rough numbers). That would make block roughly Half of your total midigation. While I do agree that currant block sucks majorly, that is why they are changing it in cata.

---------- Post added 2010-10-03 at 03:44 PM ----------

Shadowbolt fits just fine, it just needs the numbers sorting out.
And that is where the debate of dots vs drains comes in, since at the moment drain life would seem to scale better than shadowbolt particularly if you take into account the mastery, and if drains are considered dots for that purpose.
Therefore if drain life is going to be scaling better, then it would have to be something quite dramatic done to shadowbolt to make it superior dps again.

Thing is though, and this above everything else is my main point of putting this idea here, is that afflicton is still the worste scaling spec locks have. This one change would end that effect, completly stop drain life as a filler, and still have no effect on ramp up time or damage done. Now it is true that you could just fix sb's numbers, but then you would still have the same scaling issues, and as haste/mastery gets higher drain life will just once more take over as the filler. So yeah if you jsut say Sb is fine and go with it, you can scale it a bit, but all the same old problems that afflicton has always had would still be there.

---------- Post added 2010-10-03 at 03:47 PM ----------

I believe DoTs are defined purely as Damage over Time spells, whereas Drains are included where 'Periodic Damage' is stated.

Dots(damage over time) and peridoic damage(drains) are the exact same thing. I am not saying they are the same thing because they sound the same, I am saying they are the same thing as the game(wow) is hardcoded to veiw them as the exact same thing. Both simply apply a damage over time aura on the target, so anything that effects one will always effect the other unless you only specify certain spells(which is what you see with syphon).

[Deleted]

If the Mastery became a problem, they could just change it to apply to all Shadow Damage, rather than just DoTs. Furthermore, I'm not sure the Mastery does, or intends to, include Drains for that to be the problem.

then it wouldve been very boring mastery tbh

---------- Post added 2010-10-03 at 05:39 PM ----------

Whether drains and dots are the same thing as far as the mastery goes is a big part of the arguement, and one that really does need clarifying.
The mastery states dots specifically, when players are keen to shove the two together.
Whether they are technically different, excluding drains from that mastery is something important, and I agree with that issue about shadow damage in general.

i already tested that. Mastery affects DL. I did this with full mastery reforging and the least madstery and i wa getting higher dmg DLs without any debuffs and without any procs/additional sp

[Flaubertlives]

Just interjecting as a Shadow Priest here; you're lucky to have a cast time spell as a filler and not a channel.

Channels bring all sorts of issues into rotations due to something called latency. Unless you have basically 0, ticks come later than they should and you can clip the last tick - even if you time the cast as it should appear to be. Nochannel macros don't work efficiently either, so don't bring that into it.

Basically, all I'm saying is be happy that you have Shadow Bolt as a filler, you don't get screwed by the lag monster.

[Deleted]

Just interjecting as a Shadow Priest here; you're lucky to have a cast time spell as a filler and not a channel.

Channels bring all sorts of issues into rotations due to something called latency. Unless you have basically 0, ticks come later than they should and you can clip the last tick - even if you time the cast as it should appear to be. Nochannel macros don't work efficiently either, so don't bring that into it.

Basically, all I'm saying is be happy that you have Shadow Bolt as a filler, you don't get screwed by the lag monster.

except with changes to dots etc you cant clip it anymore really unless u recast at the start of channel

[Daggy1111]

Affliction, perhaps add a talent that reduces SB damage by 50%(?), but places a DoT that does 100% of SB's normal damage over 12 seconds(?), perhaps allow the DoT to stack up to 3 times(?). Maybe this could be further reinforced by adding in talents to boost Incinerate damage in relation to the number of stacks of this SB DoT that are up. As an example;

- Your Shadowbolt damage is reduced by 50% but causes Dark Affinity on the target, dealing 100% of Shadowbolts Normal damage over 12 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.
- Your Incinerate damage is increased by 50% for every stack of Dark Affinity on the target.

Essentially, this gives Affliction SB some more affinity with the spec but still leaves a filler. With some number tuning, it's quite possible that they could work this similar to what they did with Warriors (giving them the option to wield 2 1h'ers or 2 2h'ers) so that if you prefer the current SB spam system you can keep it, but if you prefer to have the DoT with incinerate. It's even possible they could work it so that if you weren't keen on either of those as fillers, the DoT could be powerful enough that you didn't want either.

Obviously, it's just an idea and was thrown together purely on the spot.

Stop stealing my idea (joking). The problem with that idea is that 1) you would have to scale incin with affliction in some way, not to mention that incin is a fire spell in a shadow based spec(while i dont have any problems with useing something from a dif spec like what we do with sb now, I do have a problem with useing a different unsupported damage type). 2) you couldn't balance it. By keeping sb the same, you would always do less damage then the sb dot option because of afflictions mastery and talents. unlike with what they do with titan/single minded, which is much easier to balance being as weapons damage is less of an issue to balance then spell damage, you would basicly have to adjust the spells every patch(and probably 3 or 4 times during the patch) to meet up with the numbers. I do however like the idea of having choice, but I don't see a way its possible.

[Jessicka]

then it wouldve been very boring mastery tbh

Oh come on, increases DoT damage is "interesting"?