Possible WoTLK Raiding SpecFollow

This is my first theorycrafting thing I've done so don't be surpised if there are some things missing.

Here it is: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=IVZf0cZxVGVr0tVoAfct

Key Talents that are new are :

Molten Core- Shadow spells and DoTs have a 10% chance to increase Fire damage by 10% for 6 seconds.

Backdraft- Increases critical chance of Conflagrate, Immolate and Shadowburn by 10%.

Kindling Soul- Your spell damage is increased by 10% of your spirit, in addition spell crits increase your Spirit by 30% for 10 sec.

Empowered Imp - Increases damage done by your Imp by 15%, all critical hits done by the imp have a 60% chance to make YOUR next spell a crit. This effect lasts 8 seconds.

Eternal Flames- Your Searing Pain and Incinerate spells have a 100% chance to refresh the duration of Immolate. In addition Searing Pain/Incinerate increase damage done by Immolate by 5% stacking up to 5 times.

Chaos Bolt- 990-1256 Fire damage, cannot be resisted. 8 second cool down, 1.5 second cast.

The idea of this build is to have as many of these effects up as possible, while keeping Immolate up and stacking Eternal Flames. You will have your Imp out attacking to get the Empowered Imp buff. Since the Imp can run out of mana quickly, we may have to plan ahead for the best times to use this, or save it for times where the boss needs to be burned down quickly.

An example of a fight could go like this. Put up Corruption and Shadow Bolt until Molten Core procs. Then put up Immolate. Now you have a choice, you can either put up 5 stacks of Eternal Flames or go for the Imp SB buff, while keeping Immolate refreshed. Another idea is since the Empowered Imp buff lasts 8 seconds and the Chaos Bolt CD is 8 seconds, trying to get a Chaos Bolt off with the crit buff up could be worthwhile. I'm not sure if a Shadow Bolt or an Incinerate would be better off here but you are also relying on the Imps limited mana.

I have never used the imp for firebolting past level 10 so I'm not quite sure on how much he can dish out with his mana. Empowered Imp seems questionable, but I dont see a reason not to have it if your not going to have any other pet out. I tried remaking the spec to include DS but it was missing a few key talents. Who knows, maybe we will get some new spells or even a new pet that changes things around.

If you have any comments or ideas, please post them.

While I appreciate the effort you put into your post, you have to understand that any theory-crafting at this point is pretty much useless. While it is definitely possible to to explore broad ideas and theories, we do not have enough information for the detail. Many things are vital to theory-crafting possible talent set-ups, such as:

Itemisation. More specifically, Blizzard seems to be re-working spirit. We don't know how this might affect anthing.

Talents of other classes might benefit some talent specs over others.

As far as I know, no spells or abilities have been posted. For what everyone knows, the base damage of shadowbolt at 80 could be 5000. Unlikely, but you get the idea.

We have no idea as to the type of bosses we will be encountering. Therefore it is hard to craft talent specs designed to kill those bosses.

Some talents will definitely be changed before release, making any speculation about them useless.

Sometime you cannot truly understand a talent without actually playing with it. ISB is an example, until I specced for it and had it proc in an instance, I thought it was worthless.

True, speculation isn't all bad, but it be better to simply wait till the finalised talent trees and list of spells and abilities comes out.

P.S Anyone want to argue that fire is better than shadow?

Edited, Jul 14th 2008 9:20am by germa

It does appear as though Blizz is trying to make the Destruction Tree Fire, and the other trees use shadow if you look at the released talents.

If you look deep in the "Possible Leaked WotLK Alpha Talent" thread, I have posted and commented on a few builds that I think will look good in WotLK.

Also, I agree that anything we speculate on now is kinda pointless, as these talents may change, we don't know how itemization will work and we don't know what other spells may be available.

The good part is, looking at some of the affliction talents, it appears as though they are trying to make it more viable. So shadow will still have it's glory, though not in Destro.

Problem I see with your build is nothing in the 58 pts in destro make up for the loss of DS. unless there is some radicle change (which i hope for) 80 raiding is gonna look the same as 70 with the different spam spell. With the change of VT to 2% from 5%, but I had heard something of it being raid wide idk, Shadow will go bye bye and mages will be our new best friend. But at least the graphic is better.

My thoughts exactly, though the number I aim for currently is 2k DPS, and that will probably like double with WotLK.

Hehe, I know that shadow is better than fire, just wondered if anyone thought differently.

And some of the Affliction talents look rather nice for raiding. Everlasting Affliction and Ruin, nice.