Specs In Beta

[Evillocksp]

I kno there was a thread already done on this, but i didnt really see any hard info from beta testers. I myself didnt get into beta. Ive been playing my lock since vanilla, and demo since BC. But i changed to destro in ulduar days and even used destro in ICC along with demo when our other demo lock wasnt there. Been bouncing between demo and destro. Just seems on my server, which is Zul'jin, most of our locks are all destro. I kinda want to be different but i do enjoy playing both specs, and not just becuz they put out nice dps. But i was just wondering how demo and destro are holding up against eachother at 85. Should i just abandon demo now, becuz compared to destro it just feels slow, and i enjoy being able to move and cast on the move with destro instant casts. Sorry for the wall of text, but how is demo and destro doing at 85 compared against eachother.

[Seezer]

I've seen affliction locks doing very well is some of the cataclysm raid vids. People are going apeshit right now over destro because of where it is at 80. But by 85, we're going to have alot more haste on gear, and with demon soul's excellent felhunter buff, and dark intent, I think that affliction is going to be where it's at. Plus, there seems to be alot of target switching in many fights, which is great for affliction now. And affliction is a good leveling spec. I think I'm going to stick it out with afflic and a destro offspec

And who knows. It's happened in the past, and may happen in cata even more so since we have 2 specs to use, but there may be mobs that are immune to fire damage. So it may come in handy to have an affliction spec on you.

[Mortalislol]

Any fight with multiple differnt targets affliction will excell with good use of Soul Swap and Soulburn: Seed of Corruption.

Also the damage levels we are seeing at the moment are partly due to the fact new talents and abilities are tuned for 85 and also a lot of people are near bis or at least full 264 due to it being so late in the expansion. As a result haste values are much higher than they will be at the start of Catacylsm as well as intellect and crit.

[jazx]

honestly, with Twin type bosses(Which there are a ton of in cata right now) Bane of Havoc will outshine just about anything. its literally just like saying "ok i get to do 15% more dmg this entire fight for nothing"

afflic is good. but its WAY to much work for it only being "good" not sure if alot of ppl noticed, but you can get imp soul fire as any spec...and trying to keep up all the dots and imp soul fire..yeah its just not worth it compared to how easy destro and demo play with around the same numbers

demo is good all around honestly, it can do INCREDIBLY CRAZY burst dmg while meta/DG/felstorm and the like. and it does have about the same dmg as destro.
with the talent that lets you bring your meta cast form down is very nice. meta is normaly bak in around a minute and a half too 2min, seen as low as only a 30second gap between meta forms
i am having some trouble with hand of guldan reseting the immo timer(obvsly its a good thing) but there are plenty of times u either have to rebuff immo for it not to fall or you need to slip in a fel Flame after a few shadowbolts or something. point being is im not sure how they are intending that to be used..like if they WANT you to be fel flameing in a sitting rotation.

to answer the OT question. demo is nowhere close to dead, with alot of haste i can see someone sitting in meta form for nearly 60-70% of a fight. with good cooldown timing, meta/pet abilites/etc, demo can easily keep up if not surpass destro at 85(esp if someone is very good at the spec. im much better at destro/afflic than i am demo)

and YES i am in beta and YES i have done raids and YES as either spec. mostly as destro, a few as demo, one boss as afflic(then said fuck this after that one)
hope i have given you the info you needed

Edit: something i realized today, imp soul fire is actually not "true haste" its "casting haste" meaning obvsly that it only effects...casting...and not dot ticks and such. with that said, afflic shldnt spec into it really. and probably is more like what it is to play now

[Deleted]

but there may be mobs that are immune to fire damage. So it may come in handy to have an affliction spec on you.

i think they will remove the immune things in raids and dungeons because when i did hc blackrock caverns, i attacked this fire elemental with nothing but immo, soulfire and incinerate.

[ComputerNerd]

About time they removed that clumsy immunity mechanism.
I saw a blue post that stated they could not remember the last time they implemented school immunites on mobs.
Yeah try every fire elemental in wrath.

[harky]

Fire Elementals in Wrath aren't immune to fire... I'd have noticed by now with how many I've farmed for Spellweave as Destro.

Last time there were full immunities like that was in TBC. Even then the last one was in SSC.

[Heliorad]

There's a few fire elementals immune to fire in Wrath, but the only case I can recall is Halls of...I think Stone. After you run through the earth elementals on the ground floor, and go up stairs, there's steam and fire elementals. The fire ones suck because they're immune to Rain of Fire and other fire-based destro spells.

Other than that, so far in Beta I've not encountered elemental mobs that are immune to a specific kind of magic damage.

[Evillocksp]

Guys, thanks for the input. Im back to demo again for another expansion then, been loving it since the new patch came out. Destro is nice, fast paced and stuff, but demo just feels right. Not sure if its becuz ive been playing it since BC or wut, but its nice that we actually have some decent burst now and on movement fights we r actually doing well since our pets hit so hard. Felstorm with our dots rolling and an ebon imp out while moving is showing that we dont lose that much dps. But i tried destro, i just miss my felguard too much when im not demo. haha Thanks again for the input.

[nocturnus]

But by 85, we're going to have alot more haste on gear

It's exactly the opposite. By 85 you'll have much less haste on items.

Anyway, on beta all 3 specs are doing pretty good. Destro is still top-dog though - which is fine since it's the most compelling spec to play.

[Seezer]

It's exactly the opposite. By 85 you'll have much less haste on items.

Anyway, on beta all 3 specs are doing pretty good. Destro is still top-dog though - which is fine since it's the most compelling spec to play.

How do you figure? There's tons of haste on 85 gear. Our tier is loaded with it (228) haste on pants alone, and non tier pieces, plus reforging large amounts of stats of less value. We'll have more of everything. Haste included. It's still going to be one of the more attractive stats. Here's a few items for example:

http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/59498/h...light-council/
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/59501/s...-fifth-circle/
http://cata.wowhead.com/item=60251
http://cata.wowhead.com/item=60249

Now, our T11 4 set sucks, but the stats on our tier is pretty amazing. The only way I could see us having less haste than we do now, is if mastery takes haste at 85. But for afflic especially, I don't know if that will happen.

[TeleToko]

How do you figure? There's tons of haste on 85 gear. Our tier is loaded with it (228) haste on pants alone, and non tier pieces, plus reforging large amounts of stats of less value. We'll have more of everything. Haste included. It's still going to be one of the more attractive stats. Here's a few items for example:

Now, our T11 4 set sucks, but the stats on our tier is pretty amazing. The only way I could see us having less haste than we do now, is if mastery takes haste at 85. But for afflic especially, I don't know if that will happen.

You'll need 4 times as much haste at level 85 to reach the same percentage (on top of over 1700 hit rating to be capped) so we will not see current values for a long long time.

[Greyarea]

I doubt we will see current haste percentages till at least the 3rd, maybe 4th tier of Cata content, if ever. Unless you go nuts and it's deemed good to reforge/gem everything to haste and neglect everything else, then again I won't be unhappy if I'm proven wrong cos I love haste.

[Affectionate]

while its 100% true that we wont be seeing 40-50% haste till prolly the last tier of content (if even then tbh) due to rating inflation, its also worth noting that all specs have access to 18% haste if kept up rotationally (dark intent passive 3% and Improved Soul Fire 15%)

Now for demo and destro keeping ISF up is pretty easy imo, I messed around with it as demo on beta and its more than doable, and Destro gets instant procs from imp so I'd imagine it's easier. Im just not sure how well it'll roll with affliction, but 15% haste seems likely worth it regardless of how clumsy it might feel to get used to. (casting soul fires as affliction lol)

Just for reference, the premade in ilvl 333 blues (pre-heroic gear, which is ilvl 346) when reforged for maximum haste, and ignoring raid hit cap! has ~1200 haste.... which is a measly 10% where-as 1200 @ 80 is roughly 36% lol

[Greyarea]

Improved Soul Fire is a cast speed buff, not a haste buff so only effects your casting speed and not DoT ticking speeds in any way shape or form. The only way it would impact on DoT's is teh initial cast of Unstable Affliction and Immolate. Due to this it's not going to be used in the affliction spec at 85 I would assume. Again I may be wrong for affliction, but due to it not impacting DoT's at all, it would be greatly lessened as a buff for aff.

[Affectionate]

Improved Soul Fire is a cast speed buff, not a haste buff so only effects your casting speed and not DoT ticking speeds in any way shape or form. The only way it would impact on DoT's is teh initial cast of Unstable Affliction and Immolate. Due to this it's not going to be used in the affliction spec at 85 I would assume. Again I may be wrong for affliction, but due to it not impacting DoT's at all, it would be greatly lessened as a buff for aff.

ahh, i wasnt aware of that, with the talents that lead to impSF tho its cast time is not that much longer than a shadow bolt, and since (sadly imo!) Sbolt is still the Aff filler I'd almost see it as worth it.

[Fligahgigook]

How do you figure? There's tons of haste on 85 gear. Our tier is loaded with it (228) haste on pants alone, and non tier pieces, plus reforging large amounts of stats of less value. We'll have more of everything. Haste included. It's still going to be one of the more attractive stats. Here's a few items for example:

http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/59498/h...light-council/
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/59501/s...-fifth-circle/
http://cata.wowhead.com/item=60251
http://cata.wowhead.com/item=60249

Now, our T11 4 set sucks, but the stats on our tier is pretty amazing. The only way I could see us having less haste than we do now, is if mastery takes haste at 85. But for afflic especially, I don't know if that will happen.

Relative haste, not actual numbers. Combat values are way higher than they were every planned to be right now.

[nocturnus]

How do you figure? There's tons of haste on 85 gear. Our tier is loaded with it (228) haste on pants alone, and non tier pieces, plus reforging large amounts of stats of less value. We'll have more of everything. Haste included. It's still going to be one of the more attractive stats. Here's a few items for example:

http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/59498/h...light-council/
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/59501/s...-fifth-circle/
http://cata.wowhead.com/item=60251
http://cata.wowhead.com/item=60249

Now, our T11 4 set sucks, but the stats on our tier is pretty amazing. The only way I could see us having less haste than we do now, is if mastery takes haste at 85. But for afflic especially, I don't know if that will happen.

You'll need way more haste to reach actual percentages. ~1400 haste won't grant you 50% haste but merely ~12%. The same counts for any other stat. Just look at your crit and haste percentages while you level up. Your percentages decrease each time you level up without changing your items.

Blizzard also mentioned that some stats (haste was one of the stats mentioned) were too prominent on ICC gear. This will probably also change. I doubt we will ever see haste values we currently have - even in the last-tier of content. Item stats will be balanced more consistently. Which also confirms the fact that ISF should always be cast [SF cast-time] seconds before ISF drops. You can't rely on our current haste values for instants to proc, just imagine at 85 with much lower values=fewer fire balls cast by the imp=less frequent chance on instant SF.

My soulfire cast time is 1.7 seconds in a raid. So when there's about 1.5 seconds left on the ISF buff I start hard casting a soulfire. If an instant drops I time it to refresh the buff if possible.

[Greyarea]

Even if they reduce teh amount of haste on gear, you still have hit/crit/mastery to reforge to haste if needed to hit magic numbers if it's not already present on the item in question, not to mention some enchants and gemming along with some profession boosts like eng gloves. Haste will be lower as a % like I said, but gearing for it is a bit more flaxible now with reforging.

My only quarm with reforging is that it's a flat 40% stat change, I just wish it was a 1%-40% swap, something the player could customise. Nothing worse than having to reforge for hit and having yourself go over the cap with no way to get below cos of teh static 40% stat change (ignore gems/enchants for the example)

[TeleToko]

Improved Soul Fire is a cast speed buff, not a haste buff so only effects your casting speed and not DoT ticking speeds in any way shape or form. The only way it would impact on DoT's is teh initial cast of Unstable Affliction and Immolate. Due to this it's not going to be used in the affliction spec at 85 I would assume. Again I may be wrong for affliction, but due to it not impacting DoT's at all, it would be greatly lessened as a buff for aff.

This is not true, ISF is a haste buff and does effect your dots.