Warlock talent changes (8905)

[Raptorg]

i sorta welcome that change..

you see, before i chained UA and Corr(same duration) but now that i no longer will use Corruption, i have to chain it together with SL, but that way it gets out of "sync",with this change basically, every 2 UA's i'll be using SL and they'll end at the same time, every 30 seconds

although it doesn't change much dps-wise, it makes managing DoTs a lot easier

i do hope the mana cost is reduced to reflect this change though

[Deleted]

Am I the only one who's not impressed?

Assuming in a DPS rotation you will use in no particular order:
Corruption;
Unstable Affliction;
Siphon Life;
Curse of Agony;
(And Shadow Bolt ofc, but disregard it as it's not a DoT).

Is it really fair to make us spend 3 points to enable only 2 of our spells to scale?

I think I'd rather see DoTs able to crit by default, and a nerf in the base damage. Or a flat increase by some percentage of our crit chance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying it's a good talent for us, but that's only because previously we had nothing from crit, half a pie is better than none.

[Recar]

sl isnt really nice damage in the first place (so an early one to go when your raid hits the debuff limit).
and when was the last time you were using CoA in a raid?

for solo it wont matter and about pvp i couldnt care less, so i really like these changes

[ChaoticSong]

Am I the only one who's not impressed?

Assuming in a DPS rotation you will use in no particular order:
Corruption;
Unstable Affliction;
Siphon Life;
Curse of Agony;
(And Shadow Bolt ofc, but disregard it as it's not a DoT).

Is it really fair to make us spend 3 points to enable only 2 of our spells to scale?

I think I'd rather see DoTs able to crit by default, and a nerf in the base damage. Or a flat increase by some percentage of our crit chance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying it's a good talent for us, but that's only because previously we had nothing from crit, half a pie is better than none.

SB crits, Haunt's direct component crits, and our 2 main DPS DoTs crit. I'm satisfied. CoA isn't exactly a part of every Lock's DPS rotation or even favored over Doom which I don't want to ever see crit. SL I'm not even 100% certain the damage per cast time is enough to outshine SB.

I've been rethinking my build some and where I can shift points around
Assuming a DK or Moonkin/Not assuming a Worm pet/Faerie Fire/Destro Lock for CoR
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

Assuming no DK/Moonkin
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

Still kinda iffy on Dark Pact. At the least I think it'll become more situational (Is Shadow Bite just coming up/will the pet be able to Bite after I DP?). In any case, it'll be the first thing I subtract from if I need points for something else for the simple reason that there are now talents at least as good/if not better than it and it has an alternate that gets improved early on in the tree.

[Raptorg]

sl isnt really nice damage in the first place (so an early one to go when your raid hits the debuff limit).
and when was the last time you were using CoA in a raid?

for solo it wont matter and about pvp i couldnt care less, so i really like these changes

i wouldn't say SL is bad damage

currently in beta it will gain

+10% damage from SM
+20% damage from glyph
+20% damage from haunt
+20% damage from shadow embrace
+50% spellpower coefficient(5% per tick, 10 ticks = 50% spellpower coefficient)

compared to now it only gains that 10% from SM

[Funkatron]

Oh and btw, Imp. Immolate is still worthless and only picked up because of Conflag.

"Glyph of Immolate - Increases the periodic damage of your Immolate by 20% but decreases its initial damage by -10%. "

How is that not really useful for affliction? Haunt will be an extra +20% DoT damage and SE will be another +20% DoT damage. All combined, it seems like that'll make Immolate really good for an affliction rotation.

[Deleted]

Perhaps using a rotation as an example was a bad idea, let me put it this way.

3 talents for 2 out of 4 DoTs to scale.

It's good that Blizzard are trying to do something about DoTs not scaling, but this is fobbing us off with half a solution.

My problem is that we have to spend talent points to rectify what is a problem with mechanics.

Edit:
At the very least I think this should be reduced to 1 talent and effect UA/Corr/SL, I can understand if it doesn't touch CoA.

[Shazea]

SL with 1500 spell power:
2310 over 30 sec := 231 per tick

Glyph (+20%) * Shadow Mastery (+10%) * Haunt (+20%)* Shadow Embrace (20%):
1,2 * 1,1 * 1,2 * 1,2 = 1,9008

SL with talents and spell pwer:
231 * 1,9008 ~= 439 per tick

calculating Everlasting Affliction:
5% of 1500 is 75
75 devived over 10 ticks: 7,5 extra per tick

Now if you add bonus damage from +coefficient talents like Everlasting Affliction you have to apply all those multipliers once more on the added damage:

7,5 * 1,9008 ~= 14 extra per tick





So SL with all talents and bonuses up and with 1500 spell power would tick for

1st tick: 453
2nd tick: 467
3rd tick: 481
...
last tick: 579


That damage is by no means neglectable anymore (remember SL heals you... + 20% of the damage it does while Haunt is applied also heals you).

[Rockeroad]

I'm loving the new affli changes:

our dots can crit
dots getting better coeff
shadow embrace being a ms for locks =)

But heres the thing you guys arent noticing. Shadow Embrace only stacks twice to its gonna be a two-point talent now so you only need to spend 51 points in it to get only what you need like this build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000 . I know it isnt that good and i could change it a bit but its still a very nice once since you only need 51 point minimum to get all the way down to haunt and just get the stuff you need.

[Undeadnerf]

Well these changes are clearly not the major overhaul. Affliction is now really bloated, the new shadow embrace requires casting spells again, the new everlasting affliction takes longer to deal damage and the mechanics are broken as expected and who knows what will come of those weird talents designed to make PVP more difficult.

Also you need to remember they nerfed the armors, a lot of warlocks won't be using demon armor because spell power=healing for drain specs and you might as well do more damage.

As of right now every class can target a lock and burst him down because locks got stamina nerfs and everyone else got dps boosts, the healing from affliction is not even noticable compared to the damage/sec taken.

New Shadow Embrace: Requires casting multiple spells over a 12 sec time to gain a 10% boost that may or may not effect existing dots. The -30% healing from HOTS is kinda good I guess. Hots still easily out heal dots, so not sure whats the point.

Eradication: Moved a tier so demonology can use it....meh change since casting spells is just not an option most of the time.

Everlasting affliction: Went from a flat 20% increase to an increasing over time damage improvement. The talent is bugged of course, but in theory it should be an increase for PVE damage but again require lots of time, lots of casts, and lots of recasts(Dot removal) to have subpar PVP dps.

Pandemic: This talent is about a 3% PVE damage increase because it doesn't effect ALL dots. With low affliction crit rating, you can't have an every once and a while boost to damage. You might as well have a talent that is 3/3 increases shadow damage by 3%. Its a start in the right direction, but damnit how many times does it need to be explained.

I want not to be negative, but affliction sucks balls on live. It sucks balls in beta and we recieved several survival nerfs which means when the patch hits its going to REALLY suck balls. They gimped SL/SL and destro is the current survial spec in beta. Come on blizzard give me a reason to PVP after the patch comes out.

[ChaoticSong]

I'm thinking about it more and more and wondering how Pandemic will interact with crit based talents, especially being as the damage is a seperate effect rather than doubling the actual DoT's tick.
http://surgie.net/wow/pandemic.jpg

Talents like Death's Embrace and Ruin, or rather than Ruin the talent, a similar effect from an item like the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond's +3% crit damage have me at a loss for whether or not they'll effect Pandemic's bonus damage or crit rate. If we gain the +15% crit from Death's Embrace, will that count toward Pandemic? Will Devastation (unlikely as it specifies Destro spells) effect its proc rate? If anyone in the beta could test this it'd be awesome. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult assuming one still has a CSD around in a helm. Just wait for a proc and see if the Pandemic damage is > than the corruption tick that proc'd it.

Also, are the issues that the previous Shadow Embrace introduced still present? Namely the one where you have to reapply the DoT that caused the Shadow Embrace to get any benefit from it? Same goes for Haunt/Everlasting Affliction since they're both debuffs. I'd hate having to constantly reapply dots after first applying them just to benefit from our debuffs. Never paid attention to it on live since we were never the ones putting up the debuff and the one we did put up came before our actual DoTs.

[daveyman]

what will be the raiding affliction lock rotation now?

[Sephirah]

what will be the raiding affliction lock rotation now?

Raiding affliction lock? Are you joking?

[Varithorn1]

This thread was talking about raiding affliction warlocks, so leave, kay?

[Sephirah]

This thread was talking about raiding affliction warlocks, so leave, kay?

I was simply stating that the last updates don't solve the lack of dps of affliction...

[Surgie]

I'm thinking about it more and more and wondering how Pandemic will interact with crit based talents, especially being as the damage is a seperate effect rather than doubling the actual DoT's tick.
http://surgie.net/wow/pandemic.jpg

Talents like Death's Embrace and Ruin, or rather than Ruin the talent, a similar effect from an item like the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond's +3% crit damage have me at a loss for whether or not they'll effect Pandemic's bonus damage or crit rate. If we gain the +15% crit from Death's Embrace, will that count toward Pandemic? Will Devastation (unlikely as it specifies Destro spells) effect its proc rate? If anyone in the beta could test this it'd be awesome. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult assuming one still has a CSD around in a helm. Just wait for a proc and see if the Pandemic damage is > than the corruption tick that proc'd it.

Also, are the issues that the previous Shadow Embrace introduced still present? Namely the one where you have to reapply the DoT that caused the Shadow Embrace to get any benefit from it? Same goes for Haunt/Everlasting Affliction since they're both debuffs. I'd hate having to constantly reapply dots after first applying them just to benefit from our debuffs. Never paid attention to it on live since we were never the ones putting up the debuff and the one we did put up came before our actual DoTs.

I had my illi helm with CSD equipped when I took that shot, so you can see that the +crit dmg% modifier didn't add into it.

Can't really test your other questions atm since the server is crashing every 30 seconds thanks to unholy blight rank 2 :

[Varithorn1]

I was simply stating that the last updates don't solve the lack of dps of affliction...

If mindflay is counted as a periodic spell, shadow embrace will be a great utility. Look at Pandemic, that ability has a lot of potential to make affliction scale better. Do some research before you troll.

[Sephirah]

If mindflay is counted as a periodic spell, shadow embrace will be a great utility. Look at Pandemic, that ability has a lot of potential to make affliction scale better. Do some research before you troll.

Fine, it seems that affliction locks are satisfied by the last changes, even if haste don't affect dots, the pseudo crit applies to only 2 dots and so on.
You can continue to call me troll, just don't complain if when WotLK will come out this changes won't be enough.

Shame, for example, that http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...10_warlock.jpg has so much wasted haste on it.

[Deleted]

I'm glad someone else sees this as how pathetic it really is.

Most people seem so glad Blizzard actually took on board part of what we said that they don't notice what a back handed "buff" it is.

[MortuariusBC]

Fine, it seems that affliction locks are satisfied by the last changes, even if haste don't affect dots, the pseudo crit applies to only 2 dots and so on.
You can continue to call me troll, just don't complain if when WotLK will come out this changes won't be enough.

Shame, for example, that http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...10_warlock.jpg has so much wasted haste on it.

not saying everything is fine and dandy... but damn some of you ppl are so negative... this was a huge boost to affliction

zomg haste doesnt effect dots... hate to tell you but with everlasting afflictions and some of the talent changes haunt and sbolt will be cast way more than any dot you have

crit now effects UA and Corr the 2 highest damage dots you can cast in a raid... most of the time you will not be using agony or doom and that leaves siphon life that isnt effected by crit... boohoo