Soulfire

[Snappie]

In a raiding enviroment, Soulfire is great when Heroism / Bloodlust is up in combination with Backdraft. It will eventually do more damage then Chaos Bolt with enough speed-increasing effects.

[Deox]

after alot of testing, SoulFire is only worth casting durring bloodlust/Backdraft with no trinkets or effects active.(not counting moltencore)

[TerryBogard]

In a raiding enviroment, Soulfire is great when Heroism / Bloodlust is up in combination with Backdraft. It will eventually do more damage then Chaos Bolt with enough speed-increasing effects.

It will eventually be better because it has a 120% base spellpower coefficient and therefore scales better. After enough spellpower its DCPT count is higher than chaos bolt... takes a while though. Ill do the math and figure out what spellpower you need to accomplish that later

[Deleted]

Some of my fellow locks not just scream stupidity, they also have it written on their forehead...

"My <insert cast here> is better because it crits for 15k... Oh wait, it has a 15 sec cast time... Ah who cares, it's a biiiig numbahhh."

Please, leave it to the guys that know something about the game (those that brought up DCPT, for example).

I do think that a lot of idiots use SF in a raid because it just has a higher number, and they forget that in the same time you could cast 2 CB for 5k instead of the 8-9k SF, while even effectively doubling your relative crit rate (2 chances in same time).

But this is why I LOVE Blizzard for nurfing us to death with WotLK: Finally all the kiddies that have no clue about the game and just played the easy-as-pie TBC WL will now play something else. Probably a Retardin or DK.

Soc

[Drearcerberus]

I think to make soul fire as good as incinerate (w/ immo on the target) in damage per cast time you need to be at about a 1.5 second cast for soul fire (just a quick estimate). CB is is overall a lot better to cast. SF would almost need to be at the same exact cast time to do the same DPCT. The only good thing about SF is the fact that it's DPM is excellent and the need to lifetap less maybe beneficial. Soul fire costs about 200 less mana and does significantly more damage for its price. With a decent amount of haste, spell damage, crit, and shard farming during periods of bloodlust/backdraft it might be ok.

[sugarfree]

There are 2 possible things they can do to make SF viable in PvE. Either through a glyph that removes the shard cost because until then it would be spammable. And also, they are reworking the shard system, so that might help.

[lrs078]

Soulfire is a niche use spell. If you get to stand around long enough to use it in PVP you are probably up against a poor team, they are busy killing your healer and you can't pell em off w' fear, or you are in a BG and its less relevant IMO. The proc on backlash wouldn't really change much in PVE unless there is a lock tank spec I'm unaware of. Might help gib a daily quest mob or something but that isn't where the "balance" focus of the game needs to be. Since I doubt they are backing off melee's burst dps we need either similar burst or survival. Otherwise facerollers will still intercept/hamstring/bladestorm and we can't do a thing about the free HK we just gave them. Ditto for the ambush/mut/backstab/killing spree/etc rogues....

As for destro locks in PVP...they are currently viable simply because they are the only method we have for burst and our dots just have so many things stacked against them. (dispels, hots > dots, by definition not burst, resilience reductions, no way in hell we get to live to see them tick, etc). They also give us some stuns which are the only CC we have that isn't a fear. (both controllable via shadowfury or proc chance). They still suffer from the only 51 point talent that has a cast time (aside from haunt) so interupts and mobility are a problem. My best friend is a rogue...done a ton of pvp testing. In a nutshell...I can kill a stupid rogue but if they are at all decent I"m screwed. Hint...best success chances are having your portal precast and orbiting 39 yards from it. A trinket+teleport macro helps too. Also w' mage armor, priest shields, etc chaos bolt is of help against them. Can't tell you how many times I've seen "Immune" pop up when the mage/pally sees it flying towards them though. Unfortunately it just hits 4K off the 25K HP warrior who is 3 shotting me if I can get the cast off to begin with.

I'm not sure what rosered is talking about...locks are doing fine dps wise in PVE but are in very rough shape in PVP. Changes to make 1.5 second casts "instant" would do very little to raid dps where its the same amount of time dpct but worlds of help in PVP so you don't have to be a stationary target begging to get interupted and otherwise cc'd.