Come WotLK content patch, what spec'll you all go?Follow

@Inoperante - From all I've seen, from the lack of stacking debuffs (Malediction CoEl vs. Ebon Plaguebringer) to the poor scaling with Haste for affliction to the buff/nerf to the utility of Shadow Embrace, all I can really see is them pushing Demo/Ruin specs and Fire Destro w/Imp. Affliction is going to be the leveling spec, as always, but I see it with less and less viability in raiding.

Shadow Embrace is a huge nerf to Aff locks' utility for raiding, especially since Malediction will be outdated with Ebon Plaguebringer.
Eradication, Pandemic and Death's Embrace - You can't get all three of these, even with a 54/0/17 build.

Even if Affliction locks AREN'T using Curse of Recklessness, there's no reason to use CoElements due to Ebon Plaguebringer, and CoD and CoA don't get any additional benefit other than Amp. Curse and iCoA.

Improved Shadow Bolt is no longer raidwide, but for the lock only, and is also down to 15% from 20%.

When we get Unholy DK's to 80 and raiding, Affliction loses its raid spot, since Fel Intelligence (Felhunter) is overwritten by Arc. Int. and Divine Spirit.

They are also nerfing Blood Pact, so Destruction may also be losing its raid utility.

shadow embrace ISN'T a huge nerf to the locks utility. for starters with basically the exception of MAYBE brutalus... no guild should need the old shadow embrace effect. secondly you're presuming that afliction HAS to remain THE buffing/debuffing spec for warlocks... I don't know if you've noticed it or not.. but blizzard is changing the way EVERY class works and from the looks of what they're chucking at us in afliction, they want it to be a powerful dps spec. also the new shadow embrace effect is a RAID WIDE 20% bonus to dot damage.
anyways, the new shadow embrace will give us a near perminant 20% bonus to that lock's damage, which is very powerful for an afliction dps. seeing as CoE will be basically outdated by the druids "earth n' moon" talent, this leaves more room for afliction dps by using either CoA or CoD (not sure which is the better choice currently... probably CoA though)
if you look at the damage bonuses..
20% to raid wide dot damage
10% chance for 20% haste on corruption ticks, and you only ever have to cast corruption once
20% bonus to our own dot damage from haunt
15% crit bonus to SB when target is below 20%
10% from shadow mastery
etc.... (got bored... about half way.. there's just to many to list)
also afliction could use a pet. could be the imp if you take improved imp (mainly it's a choice due to imba mana regen) or could be felhound due to the talent.

simply put, afliction is looking to be very viable.

you don't seem to be getting the point I'm trying to make... WHY should afliction STAY our utility spec? there is no reason other than that's what it has been up until now and this patch is changing the way every class works. also 'tanks not reaching the avoidance cap'... well the cap, last I remember, was 100% avoidance and other than rogues/hunters... no 'tank' could reach that. if what you meant is the defence cap, well tanks HAVE to beable to reach that to beable to tank, and i'm 100% certain they still cap (just that current gear may not have enough defence for a lvl.80 character currently, similar to the start of tbc when it was hard to get the cap then too) and finally if what you meant was the 85% damage reduction from armor.. well simply put even at 70, it's almost impossible for even a druid to get to that much armor and you never find a warrior with that much.

and there is reason to bring up brutalus, because come wotlk, IF blizzard makes another fight with a boss that hits, in lvl.80 terms, as hard as brutalus does at 70, then there would be 1 reason for the old shadow embrace version (but my guild doesn't even use it anymore... it actually isn't even needed here and this is the hardest hitting boss in the game)

lastly, all those talents ARN'T purely self improvement... you even bother properly looking at the new shadow embrace effect? it AFFECTS THE WHOLE RAID. seeing that almost every dps class has dot mechanics.... that's a pretty powerful raid buff

hmmm... i managed to miss that everytime I looked at the talent. lol, my mistake.. but that's my only mistake.

the comment about avoidance cap isn't a guess, it's a 100% for certain. simply put, as bosses get harder (lets say oh... by the time they give us ilidan or any of the titans for a kind of 'absolute endgame limit' for lvl.80.. with sargeras being probably added with the lvl.90 expansion... lol) avoidance caps will be a must... as will probably 30-40k health. the game mechanics may be changing but the only ways they can make encounters harder still stands by primarily increasing the gear level required, and to do that would require heading towards (and reaching) the avoidance cap. I'm 100% certain that a tank geared in naxx-25 man and equivilant gear will be at least border-line for the cap, with the variation being due to the life long question of "heath or avoidance".

my point about brutalus also states that even for brutalus, the talent isn't needed. my guild downs him every week, no issues and we don't have the talent. my statements about afliction utility is that there's no reason it has to be our utility spec. blizzard has never stated "afliction HAS to be the warlocks utility spec", what they have stated though is that they want to limit specs less by giving utility to more specs and more classes. simply put if your guild NEEDS the old shadow embrace then you've got a bigger issue than just talent changes.. you might want to upgrade gear/skill or just quit the game. I've checked your armory and there's ALOT of content you've yet to try.. trust me, afliction utility is over-rated currently (even the benefit of having a malediction warlock is dwarfed by the insane damage increase of going destruction instead... the overall raid dps of malediction is minimal at best)

for the past... 2-3 years, mid to heavy use of demo and destruction talents has been the requirement for a dps spec, now with the upcoming change demo is looking to become our utility spec (off tank, spell damage debuff, improved healthstones) while destruction and afliction are meant to be brought close in line together for damage, afliction being given more than destruction while dest is being given a greater pvp viability.

Edited, Sep 10th 2008 8:51am by Jenovaomega

Edited, Sep 10th 2008 8:55am by Jenovaomega

I'm not suggesting that at all, and if you read what I said, it is simply paraphrasing what blizzard said about avoidance/armor caps. I said that by the end of lvl.80, you'll be capping it and that they'll be getting you closer to that point as the content comes out(and 85% avoidance cap is still 'little scared' when it comes to stuff like arthas)

in terms of utility, we have the option of utility. if we go for the felhound int/spirit thing, that leaves spare raid slots for other classes/specs. blizzard already said they don't want to limit raids to much. granted yes, the likely hood is that we'll have 1 mage, 1 disp priest, 1 moonkin, but the option is open for different combinations so that IF ever someone isn't online, we can be backup. the OPTION to be utility is there, whether or not it's 'raid optimal' is a different matter and personnaly, I don't mind afliction not giving anything but good damage, the fact is.. the less utility a class has, the highier they're ment to be in damage ability.

for the 'usefulness raid'

simply put, it'll be 2-3 of most classes. when it comes to warlocks people will always want only 3 locks in the raid for 1 of each healthstone. that is probably our main utility and the one thing blizzard will probably never take from us (and with the potion limit, they'll be even more important... presuming there's no limit on conjured consumables either... which if there was would ***** over mages.. so there won't be). currently, yes, CoE and CoRec are 2 more primary utilities of us, also CoT when needed. well personnaly I relish in the idea that any spec I go, I can use a dps curse instead AND that the people replacing my curses are doing it through procs/pet abilities rather than having to use up their own gcd's and decrease their personal dps for the bonus.

personnally I don't see why you're complaining. you get to do more damage AND have a more complicated class to play (so needing more skill to be played to its best, and a 24-60sec curse use requires more timing skill than a 5minute debuff that probably only needs refreshing once in the entire fight.

last I checked, unique means only 1 of each item type. again last I checked... each talented version of a HS was counted as a different version (2000,2200,2400... i forget exact numbers, to drunk). so even being unique you should still, in theory, beable to have 1 of each type... though this could change for all i know. and I wasn't saying we WOULD be using our buffs.. just that they're available.. simply put, in 5-10mans we'll be invaluable (and ALOT of 10 mans in next patch), 25man, we're there for damage.

the idea of the 'multi-spec' no-longer exists. yeah we can pvp a bit easier in each spec now... but still like today, there will be a dominant spec for each and people will inevitably, all spec that spec due to this. if you want a spec that 'others can't do better', ***** afliction and go demo. we can off-tank and do pretty amazing damage and buff the raid.

if you're worried about the cost of respec.. well.. wtf.. my respec cost is stuck at 50g, and i can litereally spend like 10-15minutes a day doing dailies/herbing/something like that to earn over 50g.. heck the last time i went below like 2k gold was due to buying loads of 22slot bags @ 1200g each and still within 2 weeks I was back above 2k gold. if I bothered to try to make gold, I'd easily have 5k per week without getting in the way with usual real life activities and if I neglected some, then 10k a week is more than doable. (or 10k's worth of items to sell, depends how much the market is flooded, current prices/ events etc...)

warlocks scaling badly with gear? wtf on you about. the only thing that CURRENTLY doesn't scale well is crit with dots (haste affects cast/gcd, which IS a sizable dps increase regardless of what idiots say otherwise), and this has been addressed with the dot 'crit' talent. so scaling of all specs is fine now. and the 'gimic tanking' of dest is likely to be replaced by the deathknight, the only tanking thing that's left for us random "zomg tank is dead, i'll go demon form and take over for 45seconds" tanking with 600% increased armor o.0
pet scaling is being addressed a bit too, they're getting our hit and crit now to i believe (but still no haste scaling...). I've never understood why people complain about warlocks... we are OP, have been for a long time and probably always will be. the fact that blizzard is bringing us down in-line with other classes is a good thing (means that people will now be seperated more by skill rather than who can press 1 button the fastest...).

and nothing wrong about posting while drunk. spelling may get a bit screwed but my knowledge is still the same.

DOT DO SCALE. their cast time/the global cd created from casting the dot is decreased by haste, this in turn increases the dpsc of the dot and increases the time available between having to recast the dot, so allowing for you to keep a tighter dot cycle and cast more SBs in between. THIS is why blizzard won't ever make the dot ticks scale with haste because doing so would either 1. be very OP, or 2. require a massively increased amount of haste rating required for 1% decreased duration in a dot and sacrifice the decrease in dot cast time/gcd generated.

warlocks are OP, 'rather odd scaling' which leads to topping damage meters with the minimal amount of effort required is kind of the definition of 'OP' just a more elaborate wording. the fact that I can push out 2.6k dps with 2 buttons (CoD and SB) is OP and the fact that I'm not even one of the best geared DPSers in the guild, but yet I still top the meters due to the simplicity of the class, is OP.

every class needs to stack hit, yeah we need 40 more than most other caster dps classes, but then there's melee which currently need like 350 for hit cap, around 300 with talents usually (but then melee's are wierd and for some, capping hit isn't even beneficial... fury warriors being the prime example who only need about 80-90 hit supposedly and that stacking crit instead makes up for the lack in remaining hit.. 'tis wierd but true). come the content patch, like the rest of the classes, we get talented hit, so we'll only need 172 hit (as the 1% base chance to resist will be removed), then take into account the 3% hit from some other class's buff/debuff that'll help, so we'll only need about 138 hit, 126 if draenai aura stacks. come lvl.80, we'll be back up to needing 200 hit to reach the cap. nice and easy.

yes demonology dots don't scale as much, due to no pandemic. they still scale from haste (TRY to realise this... PLEASE) but their pets scale better than ours and deal more damage, so making up for the loss. also they have a much larger +dmg than the other two specs which makes up for some of the loss of deep afliciton/dest talents.

@Jenova

Since you seem to be watching this post actively, check your PM's, got something important in there for you.

Spec Amp Curse. Fail to scale with haste. End of story.

I'll be back later, have to go do RL things now. >.<

That version of Amp. Curse doesn't yet exist, but it will. I also assume that you'll be using Curse of Doom rather than Curse of Agony in a raid (unless Pandemic affects CoA, which would give it a better DPS and DPCT than CoD by far). Corruption, after Everlasting Affliction, won't be recast by an Affliction lock, and also therefore does not scale with haste. Immolate and UA cast times are all that are affected by haste. Oooo, a whole 0.5s off SL. Whoopdedoo. Wrath of Air along with haste implemented on gear will already probably lower the GCD to 1s anyway, so your point is not particularly valid.

So the DPCT goes up, but that doesn't change that the DPS goes up if DoTs ticked faster than they do now. Currently, your Curse of Agony does 139.708333~ DPS (3353/24). With any amount of haste, your Curse of Agony still does 139.7083~ DPS. If haste affected DoTs, say your CoA duration goes down to 21 seconds. Your DPS from CoA would go UP to 159.6~. That's an increase of almost 20 DPS, in addition to being flat 3353 DPCT from a 1s GCD on curses. Realistically, though, you would be casting CoD over CoA. And speccing 21/40 in Sunwell. But that's aside from the point. The fact of the matter is, DoT duration scaling with haste is ultimately a DPS increase, and in order for Affliction warlocks, Demonology warlocks, Shadow priests, Moonkin druids (Insect Swarm, Moonfire) and Fire mages (Ignite, Fireball, Pyroblast) to benefit to the best possible ability, DoT durations need to scale with haste. Now, tell my why you wouldn't actually take an increase in DPS. Tell me exactly why DoT duration shouldn't scale with haste. And give me reasons to back it up, because right now, I think you're full of ****.

As far as hit, the math has been done that we'll need 236 +hit to reach hit cap (since they are removing the 1% unmitigatable hit), or 9% hit. Suppression and Cataclysm are a crutch, and anyone who can't reach hit cap before raiding is lazy. Blizzard made it possible with Heroics gear in TBC, and there's no foreseeable reason why it shouldn't be possible in Wrath. Still, Soulshatter isn't a "good" reason to stack hit, it is THE reason to stack hit. It's the same reason that Survival Hunters usually take a point in Improved Feign Death, because of its resist mechanics.

In terms of mana regen, they nerfed Fel Armor and made it 2% hp5 instead of spirit based mp5.

How would it be "ridiculously OP"? You continue to make this claim, but you have yet to show any evidence to back up how it would be OP.