There's progress going on BUT it's not enough

[coolcatchris]

meh, locks have never been in trouble. "Oh Noes! aff isn't as killer as destro!" shame. kinda like the difference between frost and fire mages.

you want highest killer dps, go destro. you don't, go aff. you can't have the 2 top dps specs, or we'll start finding locks irl and kill you off one by one for your arrogance.

[kartu3]

are you also forgetting that shadowbolt scales as well for affliction, as it does for destruction when it comes to haste?

I am not forgetting it, it's simply irrelevant.

it's only normal affliction should benefit less form it, cause eventually, affliction would start scaling so well, destruction would be completely useless

SB should benefit a bit less from spelldmg, then scaling with haste/crit will be fine.

scaling is nice, too much scaling, is not

Obviously. But 0.5 of SB cast doesn't make DOT with 33% haste do 33% more dmg. Which translates into "not enough scaling"

[Raptorg]

I am not forgetting it, it's simply irrelevant.
SB should benefit a bit less from spelldmg, then scaling with haste/crit will be fine.
Obviously. But 0.5 of SB cast doesn't make DOT with 33% haste do 33% more dmg. Which translates into "not enough scaling"

you just don't get it, do you?

let me show you how the spells scale

lets assume

Shadowbolt: 60% of total damage
UA: 15% of total damage
Corruption: 15% of total damage
Immolate: 10% of total damage

for each 1% of haste affliction gains slightly over 0.6% damage, for each point of crit, affliction gains slightly over 0.3% damage

crit is lackluster, haste is acceptable, because it gives shadowbolt the same benefit as destruction

DoTs are supposed to be 100% crit, and have to make up for the loss in scaling/crit damage affliction doesn't have compared to destruction

with the new changes affliction will gain a slight boost in crit scaling changing it from 0.3% to 0.6%

which is fine, because that 0.4% scaling comes into superior scaling from spelldamage

all thanks to shadow embrace, everlasting affliction and haunt

making DoTs scale with haste, having them tick faster, would probably end up in extreme scaling due to all these DoT damage boosters.. which would result in too much scaling

ofcourse, my assumptions don't consider siphon life, which actually enhances my point, because that spell will gain a significant damage boost, which increases affliction's damage even more - sadly enough, that scaling comes from spelldamage, again..

so, unless our spelldamage benefit is reduced, haste isn't likely to be added into DoT in a 100% scaling situation, cause that would take them to a new, likely to be overpowered, level.. which is something i'd like to avoid..



having a powerful class is nice, having an overpowered class.. is not, i'm quite sick of nerfcalls, and playing an overpowered class isn't fun either.. so, yes, i'd like to avoid becoming overpowered

[Ahura]

1. 100% agreed. There's no reason why they shouldn't be affected by haste. They could use a different formula than the one used for DD spells. The argument that "oh it reduces your GCD so you can apply more DoTs" is total bullshit. Other classes get the GCD reduction and faster casting.

2. Corruption really does need to be instant. Or at least make it a 3 point talent, with an additional 2 to improve it one way or another.

3. CoA should be included in Pandemic, but I don't know if other curses need a buff necessarily. Sure would be nice, but not needed.

4. Don't agree with this one. First of all, that will mean that one warlock is all you need for raiding. Secondly, it will just kill us in raids when it comes to debuff slots. Imagine all the locks in your raid putting up all their useful buffs on a target. You'd just be knocking each other's shit off the mob.

5. Not sure about crits on channeled spells. Could be a balancing nightmare. Also, it would make non-affliction warlocks pretty powerful in PvP. Imagine a desto lock draining and getting 40% crits on it. That's not supposed to happen. A similar solution to your suggestion is to just make the coefficient a little larger.

6. No. No. No. No. No. No more channeled crap. In fact, I'd love to see drain life graphics changed so there is no 25-yard green beam yelling "SILENCE ME." I don't think affliction needs a nuke, especially in PvP. The whole point of the tree is that you do small gradual damage that adds up over time.

7. There should be a talent making UA instant. A compromise would be to change Improved Corruption talent to make UA instant also.

8. Too soon to ask for that. The numbers aren't finalized and we can't really make any judgments until one patch after WotLK goes live. The first version will be pretty unbalanced still, just like vanilla and TBC were.

[Unspoken]

Shadowbolt: 60% of total damage
UA: 15% of total damage
Corruption: 15% of total damage
Immolate: 10% of total damage

Raptorg the problem stands where the bold text is, affliction shouldn't be so damn dependable to shadowbolt to become semi-viable, the damage contribution is insanely high in the first place, it's screaming "Hey you are stupid for investing 50 points in affliction go destruction instead".

The closest thing to a warlocks are Mages both in design and mechanics, firebolt, frostbolt and Arcane Barage are the main nukes they'll be using according to there selected career(tree), in addition to that they also got Frostfirebolt. There tree design are far more complete than ours and offers strong alternatives at least on the DD nuke side.

Hell, i can't even think of a class that spends +50 talents points on a tree just to found out that a single spell from another tree can outdamage it even if untalented... Can you see logic behind this ?

About the numbers once again this isn't the time for discussing it, with blues pointing out 8k dps mages ,videos showing 8k warrior white crits and 11k specials or even 8k DK crits our crappy OP dots should atleast be doing 3 times as much to be competitive, let's wait for the balancing build and we'll have infinite time to discuss it then.

About Haste, if you believe that lowering the duration of a dot is OP (just for the record,i don't) then i am more than sure that a haste/damage modifier talent will be something that you will agree, numbers once again are irrelevant but we have seen talents like that on Paladins and Shamans and they work fine.

Last, If you believe that warlocks are or will be (with the suggested changes) OP you are mistaken, i am excluding PvP since you don't play and focusing entirely on PvE, warlocks had there time until BT, Destruction locks are worst than Hunters and Rogues on SP gear levels, the difference with mages is marginal and warglaive warriors bury us down the charts. You noticed that the word affliction is not used? Correctly , affliction is so shit that even the term "epic fail" fails to deliver, show me a 2k dps affliction lock that uses full affliction rotations and i'll paypal you some cash.

Casting dots decreases your dps is the only assumption needed for everyone to understand that our design remains flawed and that needs to change asap.

[Raptorg]

because shadowbolt needs affliction interaction, not destruction interaction

[wearelegion83]

As i have been a lock for along time i have to disagree with how most people are viewing affliction atm. the base damage on Unstable affliction has been massively buffed, corruption can be reset in its duration and has a chance to cause 20 percent spell haste for your shadowbolts and haunts etc. Not to mention your UA and corruption have a chance equal to your crit chance to cause 100 % extra damage. Plus when your target is at 20 percent or lower you get an additional 15 percent crit chance for your shadow spells(meaning if you have 25 percent to crit then its 40) and with that pandemic now gives you a 40 % chance to make UA and corruption do 100 % more damage per tick. Also everlasting affliction, 5 percent more damage to your dots every time they do damage? granted they will put a cap on how much bonus you get to those dots if you keep them from ever falling off but seeing as corruption should never fall off i see it doing a ton of the actual lock damage. Im pretty sure Affliction is going to be the main damage spec when mixed with ISB and bane.

[Drearcerberus]

1. Haste must be affecting dots the same way it affects DD spells.
2. Corruption must be made instant or a secondary effect should be added.
3. Curses must be seriously buffed and CoA should be included to Pandemic.
4. Stupid 1 Curse/lock limit should finally end.
5. Channelling spells should be able to crit (waiting for it).
6. Affliction channelled nuke to act as a shadowbolt alternate.
7. UA should become instant or a secondary effect should be added.
8. Spell damage coefficients on all DoTs must be further buffed.
 

1. I don't mind this change if you want to give up all the + damage % modifiers affliction just got. One of the reasons SB was scaling so well was because of the straight up 15% damage modifier from demo sac.

2. Yeah, this should be instant cast and the talent should be replaced with something else.

3. Every debuff is going to be streamlined with similar debuffs from other classes. This is Blizzard's intent and so our curse probably won't be buffed. As to CoA, being able to crit yeah that would be fine.

4. Not really necessary.

5. If they give it to shadow priests they probably should (although only drain life and only on the damage end).

6. No. If you want a class with DoTs and a mainly channeled nuke level a shadow priest. Shadow bolt is your nuke live with it.

7. No.

8. No. They're fine as is, with all the talents you get to further scale them you should be happy.

Hell, i can't even think of a class that spends +50 talents points on a tree just to found out that a single spell from another tree can outdamage it even if untalented... Can you see logic behind this ?

This very simple. Affliction basically buffs all shadow spells, while destruction basically buffs all fire spells. The only real talents that support shadow bolt in the destruction tree can all be found on the 1st tier. Everything else is really optional. Nice to have, but optional.

[Sardonicpoet]

Shadow bolt support talents? Optional beyond the first tier?

one word.

Ruin.

that talent alone cements Destro into the better scaling tree (once spell hit capped) for good unless something changes.

Affliction:
Scales from crit now for dot ticks
Scales from haste ONLY in its reliance on a lackluster Shadow Bolt for most of its damage

Destro:
Scales amazingly from haste
Crit effects it far more than it does Aff, probably even with dot tics crit'ing
Gets insanely more damage on every crit they get, thanks to Ruin

Destro's scaling is so much more multiplicative that it's silly to see people saying that Affliction is fine depending on Shadow Bolt for most of its damage even though it's less powerful version of the spell places them eternally behind Destro once players reach spell hit and get respectable crit percentages.

Affliction shouldn't have to rely on an untalented ability.

Perhaps crit mechanics for channeled dots will change this.

But dismissing any idea of letting Affliction have some Haste love is just close-minded.

[faris1]

Consider every 3 seconds you have CoA, Corruption, Immolate, SL, UA ticking. If all of those had a chance to crit based on your crit rating, youd only need 20% crit to see at least 1 crit every 3 seconds. That would be OP.

CoD and CoA are fine l2p.

Drain Life will never and should never equal Shadow Bolt in damage. It has a secondary effect that shadowbolt doesnt, that's like saying a resto druid should dps as well as a lock.

A lock casting both CoD and CoA at the same time would be retarded. Right now in my gear it would be about 400-450 dps just from 2 curses.

40% increase to DoT damage, 10% shadow damage, and 15% when you crit shadow bolt. Coefficients are fine l2p.

UA being instant would only make it castable on the run. As if we needed more reason for people to hate on us because we have "too many instant spells". Though a glyph to make it instant without the secondary dispel effect would be nice.

Corruption is fine, go back to playing the mage you played pre tbc.

[velourea]

thanks for giving your arguments more value by putting "l2p" behind sentences. :

[Raptorg]

thanks for giving your arguments more value by putting "l2p" behind sentences. :

his arguments do make sense..
well, most of them

[sugarfree]

To be quite honest, I really do prefer my dots to scale with haste. But I won't dwell on it, we have varying beliefs and I don't have time to spend it arguing. What I'm really concern is TOO MANY MANDATORY POINTS in Affliction. I hope when we get a review, they'd revamp and reduce talent points all over the tree because it's just too full. 3 points in SE would be a start, really.

And yes, please give us instant corruption. I don't care what other people say, its coefficient doesn't warrant its cast time.

And I would love to use SE in PvP, please incorporate easier spells to cast to trigger it twice, because my SB will not see the light of day.

That is all.

[darkenrahl]

Consider every 3 seconds you have CoA, Corruption, Immolate, SL, UA ticking. If all of those had a chance to crit based on your crit rating, youd only need 20% crit to see at least 1 crit every 3 seconds. That would be OP.

yeah because critting with a lot of low dmg spells ain't fine, critting with a big one, is?

CoD and CoA are fine l2p.

bullshit
coa should be crittable (as in pandemic)..

Drain Life will never and should never equal Shadow Bolt in damage. It has a secondary effect that shadowbolt doesnt, that's like saying a resto druid should dps as well as a lock.

qft

A lock casting both CoD and CoA at the same time would be retarded. Right now in my gear it would be about 400-450 dps just from 2 curses.

hope you're kidding or are talking about affli spec or you're talking about beta, because a lvl 70 destro-lock doing doom during his cycle gets roughly 150ish dps at most (consider that with 1600 spelldmg cod is worth 130ish dps with misery/shadoweaving/coe up....)..

40% increase to DoT damage, 10% shadow damage, and 15% when you crit shadow bolt. Coefficients are fine l2p.

fail user is fail..
we get a lot of dmg boost, but maybe, just maybe you don't remember that, compared to old affli this spec HAS some noticeable buff, yet talking about "affli is fine, l2p" i assume you're a trashy lock, because affliction in terms of damage (no i won't talk about utility, as nowdays apparently blizz's new line is "everybody has MANY utilities") is at the bottom
these may lighten our situation, but in the end not taking advantage of every and i mean EVERY stat we get fully, we're bound to lag behind, make no mistake..

UA being instant would only make it castable on the run. As if we needed more reason for people to hate on us because we have "too many instant spells". Though a glyph to make it instant without the secondary dispel effect would be nice.

well yeah, let's remove the dmg on dispel component, this way it'll be just another dispellable dmg like our other "powerful" spell...
and i guess that a rogue keepin me in stun for an hefty amount of seconds, then popping cloak of skill when he's heavy dotted and then throwing his shitty knife (apart from melee interrupt as kick and gouge) and silincing me at me if i dare to cast non-instant spell from ranged-distance is exactly fine..

Corruption is fine, go back to playing the mage you played pre tbc.

corruption is a 2 seconds cast (we gotta spend 5 points to get it istant) that has a LOWER coeff then insta dot..
yeah corruption is fine

[Dismas]

I know I wouldn't mind Drain Life being comparable (but still less) to SB in damage, however Blizzard would have to do the math and reduce the amount it heals per damage point...prob. .5 or .25 heal for every 1 damage done.

[kartu3]

his arguments do make sense..
well, most of them

Lol, especially this one, amazingly well put:

Consider every 3 seconds you have CoA, Corruption, Immolate, SL, UA ticking. If all of those had a chance to crit based on your crit rating, youd only need 20% crit to see at least 1 crit every 3 seconds. That would be OP.

;D

[Raptorg]

Lol, especially this one, amazingly well put:

;D

most of them =/= all of them

[kartu3]

I am not forgetting it, it's simply irrelevant.
SB should benefit a bit less from spelldmg, then scaling with haste/crit will be fine.
Obviously. But 0.5 of SB cast doesn't make DOT with 33% haste do 33% more dmg. Which translates into "not enough scaling"

you just don't get it, do you?

;D

let me show you how the spells scale
lets assume

Shadowbolt: 60% of total damage
UA: 15% of total damage
Corruption: 15% of total damage
Immolate: 10% of total damage

Ok.

for each 1% of haste affliction gains slightly over 0.6% damage, for each point of crit, affliction gains slightly over 0.3% damage

And that is... right, right? Simply because it is:

crit is lackluster, haste is acceptable, because it gives shadowbolt the same benefit as destruction

DoTs are supposed to be 100% crit, and have to make up for the loss in scaling/crit damage affliction doesn't have compared to destruction

with the new changes affliction will gain a slight boost in crit scaling changing it from 0.3% to 0.6%

which is fine, because that 0.4% scaling comes into superior scaling from spelldamage

all thanks to shadow embrace, everlasting affliction and haunt

making DoTs scale with haste, having them tick faster, would probably end up in extreme scaling due to all these DoT damage boosters.. which would result in too much scaling

Probably? So you don't even know what you are talking about, yet you continue to claim that things are "fine"? Nice.

Guess what, there are guys who did some calculations (mostly on shadowpriest.com forums, but mechanics is the same for affliction locks) and know exactly what they are talking about, unlike you. Well and things are nowhere near "fine".

[kartu3]

most of them =/= all of them

Right, then this one was probably also not one of them:

CoD and CoA are fine l2p.

Guy who writes something like this:

Consider every 3 seconds you have CoA, Corruption, Immolate, SL, UA ticking. If all of those had a chance to crit based on your crit rating, youd only need 20% crit to see at least 1 crit every 3 seconds. That would be OP.

is either small kid, or idiot. And theorycrafting is quite hard for both.

[Drearcerberus]

I'm not saying affliction is fixed by any means, but people don't really seem to realize how well affliction will now scale with spell damage. This is not to say that affliction shouldn't scale with haste or crit at all, but when you scale really well in one area the others cannot be as good or it would be insane. In pre-TBC, when they originally put out the new DoT coefficients affliction scaled too well on damage to the point where any thing a warlock DoTed up died and the incoming nerfs that were then received crippled the spec for the rest of TBC. All I'm saying is from what I can see is people want too much for affliction, without having a lot of the other things it got toned down. That's just my thoughts.