Warlocks buffed in Wrath!Follow

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Dude. DUDE. DUDE!!!

Edited, Sep 10th 2008 3:57am by wingsofscion

******* Yeah!!!! :D

my favourite of that is the corruption change :D we've needed that for a LONG time, imba buff to all specs and even more reason to go afliction... hmm.. i'm spoiled for choices. also the demon form change is sweet and needed. a lock without a pet in pvp is just a pointless version of a mage. lol

Very nice. I guess they weren't joking when they said we were getting a huge overhaul before 3.0 went live. With the changes to the way buffs/debuffs are working, it was looking pretty grim for us, especially Affliction. Now Haunt/Ruin should be able to put up some damn good numbers, and Haste will be more worthwhile to Affy 'locks using SBs with Ruin.

@Jenova - Yes, spoiled for choices indeed! I'm glad that they're pushing away from Devastation being so necessary for Aff and Demo locks, and making Ruin more available, from a PvE perspective. Though, it just saddens me that we're still going to have to go 18 points into Destruction to be truly effective in raids (for Destructive Reach). Oh well, a buff is a buff, no?

17 or 19 with Intensity since Shadowburn isn't really necessary, heh. But they are changing the mechanics of pushback so we'll have at most 3.5 second Shadow Bolts (provided we spec Bane, which any sane raiding lock should). There's still a required 17 points in Destruction for affliction locks, but I think I could deal with 1 point in Intensity, if any at all.

I'm not going to disagree with that latter statement, but until I see the mechanics of raid environments in Wrath, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that raids will probably NOT be the same as BC raids. Comparing raids now to those that don't even exist is rather naive and presumptuous, don't you think? I don't like the idea of being pigeonholed into 19 points in Destruction, but I'll take it if I have to, and probably will anyway if I'm stuck with Affliction right off the bat, since I can't stand drain tanking anymore.

Abilities vs. actual encounter are two very different thing. I couldn't care less if you come up with new tactics (and rather see you as a braggart for saying as much), but regardless of that, you wouldn't have to come up with new tactics for new bosses if they truly were all the same, now would you? Besides, Blue has stated that they're making things less AoE intensive in comparison to BC because not only Warlock pets but also Hunter pets have had severe survivability issues (and also one of the reasons that Demo Sac has been the premier raid spec over 0/40/21 with succubus).

This is not a pissing contest, Jenova. Beyond that, why start an argument anyway? No real reason. I get all my information from the Beta boards as well as the WoW boards (Maso, Clearly and Fallenman being probably some of the most upstanding people to get info from, for that matter - Maso being a PvP lock and Clearly and Fallenman being Sunwell raiders).

Whoa whoa whoa, I never said Intensity wasn't needed. In fact, I'm one of those people who value Intensity over Nightfall, which is annoying at best, though technically a DPS increase (but so marginal, I find Intensity more worthwhile, especially given my grinding methods). Currently, you have to sacrifice either Nightfall or Intensity, period. I see the benefits of Intensity now, but given we have yet another spell to add into our rotation, as well as the implementation of haste on all gear, things could change. I said it may not be AS necessary because we're also going to be spending time casting Haunt (which has pushback resistance with Fel Concentration, as does UA) - and again, because of haste being added to our gear, which lowers effective cast time even further, even with pushback. And also as I said, we may not need both points if we have paladins with Concentration Aura up, since it's another talented 50% pushback resist, which will sit us at 85% pushback resist with only one point in Intensity (and we could get to 92% pushback on UA/Haunt with the only three points in Fel Concentration, or 106% pushback with four points, but Amp. Curse is more of a significant boost than Fel Concentration, if you ask me, unless the Aff lock is on CoEl/CoR duty). Since Paladin auras are being moved to raid-wide, this is also something to consider.

What I'm concerned about it Affliction bloat, because 5/5 Fel Concentration may be necessary to prevent UA/Haunt pushback in the same way Intensity provides pushback resistance for our Destruction spells, which brings the Affliction point requirement up by another two points. Already, we need 58-59 points in Affliction to do optimal damage (counting either Frailty or Malediction, but not both), as well as another 19 points in Destruction to do optimal damage, but we have to sacrifice something in order to get ahead.

Also, I am aware that pets are getting avoidance baseline, and am very happy about that.

As for "explaining to me" anything, I don't care what qualifications you have in terms of theorycrafting. Just knowing that you have done the encounters is enough for me and for many others. So it will come off as you bragging. And normally I'd be one to insult you based on where you stand in raiding versus other claims you've made, but I won't, because that would be pointless.

The problems I have with your posts, Jenova, are that they are not fully thought out. There are things being brought in from other classes that also must be taken into consideration. That leaves us more talent points available for other things, and we can probably go with a 53/0/18 build using 1 point in Intensity, and skipping out on Shadowburn for Affliction, thanks to the combination of Concentration Aura and Haste, not to mention Eradication procs, Wrath of Air totem, Moonkin Aura, Heroism, etc.

The way I see it, haste works in a way such that if you are spending less time casting, the less chance you are to be vulnerable to spell pushback.

Consider this:

Scenario 1:
Random Mob A shoots a Fireball at you, and you have zero haste or pushback resist. The Fireball will take 4 seconds to reach you. In that time, you have the mana to shoot two Shadow Bolts (at 2.5 second cast time) at the enemy. Firing off two shadow bolts will take 5 seconds. By the time you are finished with your second sbolt cast, the Fireball has reached you, causing you pushback.

Scenario 2:
Random Mob B shoots a Frostbolt at you, and you have enough haste to bring your sbolt cast to 1.9 seconds, but still no pushback resist. The Frostbolt will take 4 seconds to reach you. In that time, you have the mana to cast two sbolts at the enemy. Casting two sbolts will take 3.8 seconds. By the time the Frostbolt reaches you, both of your sbolts have already been cast, and you have no worries about pushback (assuming the two sbolts would kill the mob).

Also, pushback mechanics are changed so that you only receive two pushbacks until you are immune to pushback for the rest of the cast. So, at the very most, that would be 1.3 seconds of pushback, if you are even affected by the pushback to begin with. Remember, Concentration Aura will bring up the pushback resist by a significant margin (50%), so you won't be pushed back anywhere near all the time, as you are making it sound.

Granted, much of this has to do with raid setup. If you have more than one paladin, one paladin is going to have Retribution Aura up and one is going to have Concentration Aura up. The way you make it sound is as if you have zero pushback resistance 100% of the time. As it stands now, we don't have an option other than to spec Intensity because Warlocks don't have the luxury of a Paladin in their group, much less a Holy paladin. With paladin auras being made raidwide, the value of Intensity is likely to change in the xpac, and I can feasibly see only putting one point into Intensity. Until we know exactly what the mechanics of each fight will be like, we can't make any set views, however.

Edited, Sep 11th 2008 5:00pm by wingsofscion

No, it's not JUST the more haste you have, but ALSO the more incoming damage you have. You are continually assuming that you will ALWAYS be knocked back EVERY time you get hit. With talented Concentration Aura, you will only get knockback 50% of the time. Add in one point in intensity, that is boosted to 85% knockback resist (which is already higher than what we currently have from Intensity alone).

So in a 1 minute scenario, you will only get pushback 15% of the time with iConcAura and 1 point in Intensity, or once every 9 seconds on average. Assuming 2 second sbolts, that is once every 4.5 sbolts. Even then, since you have pushback resistance, it is not feasible to say you will necessarily get pushed back twice during that same cast. RNG skews the results greatly, and you could have some fights where you only get pushback once or twice, or fights where you get pushback 15 times in one minute. Unfortunately, we can't exactly created a fixed amount because each fight will be different.

60/2.5 is a possible 24 shadow bolts, at a maximum of 48,000 damage dealt.

Scenario 1: Assuming double pushback each time there is pushback, while also having iConcAura and 1 point in Intensity:

Every 9 seconds, Shadow Bolt becomes a 3.8 second cast. Just over 20 shadow bolts in 60.2 seconds, or an average of 3.01 second cast shadow bolts. Approximately 39,867 damage dealt in 60 seconds, or ~83% of maximum damage.

Scenario 2: Assuming one pushback each time there is pushback, while also having iConcAura and 1 point in Intensity:

Every 9 seconds, Shadow Bolt becomes a 3.3 second cast. 22 shadow bolts in 58.8 seconds, or an average of about 2.67 second cast shadow bolts. Approximately 44,943 damage dealth in 60 seconds, or almost 94% of maximum damage.

60/2 is a possible 30 shadow bolts, dealing a maximum of 60,000 damage. Pushback occurse again every 9 seconds due to 85% resist to pushback.

Scenario 3: Assuming double pushback each time there is pushback, while also having iConcAura and 1 point in Intensity, with 2s sbolt cast:

Every 9 seconds, Shadow Bolt becomes a 3.3 second cast. 26 shadow bolts in 58.8 seconds, or an average of 2.3 second cast shadow bolts. Approx. 52,174 damage in 60 seconds, or ~87% of maximum damage.

Scenario 4: Assuming one pushback with each pushback, with outlined stipulations in Sce.3:

Every 9 seconds, Shadow Bolt becomes a 2.8 second cast. 27 shadow bolts in 58.8 seconds, or an average of 2.18 second cast shadow bolts. Approx. 55,046 damage in 60 seconds, or ~92% of maximum damage.

But again, this is assuming constant damage every second, which has not been the case in any raid environment. And this is more or less a "worst case" scenario, anyway. The numbers in an actual raid will vary due to RNG.

Suffice to say I don't completely disagree with you, but I don't completely agree with you, either, given RNG and the wide array of scenarios that can be cooked up.

Edited, Sep 11th 2008 9:54pm by wingsofscion

Even with the RNG factor, the best you can do is work of averages, and over time, they tend to come true. One fight you may be really lucky, and the next extremely unlucky, but over the course of a full raid, you'll normally be pretty close to the averages. That's the way RNG's work, and the reason why Jenova has almost never been wrong. He does the maths, and does them well.

sooo, to sum things up. my maths was right, I was right but I over-estimated the effect. as said, these are very simplistic scenarios and there won't be many boss fights with constant aoe damage or parts of the encounter with constant aoe damage (but there will be some). the original arguement occured because you did say that you'd be tempted to go 0/2 or 1/2 intensity, which is where the arguement stemed from, your underestimation of the importance of knockback resistance and my over-estimation of it ( though I'll still go as far to say that capping knockback resist is as important as capping spell hit in terms of increasing personal dps)

back to the original topic, sinstralis is right about the changes, it's also there beause in pvp, demon form was currently being only a 'oh FSMA<MW' button to save ourselves, but with little viablity to deal damage or CC in comparison to not using it and staying with pet out (a lock without a pet in pvp, is generally just dead-weight), so the change for 40% increased damage is more of a pve thing and to actually make your opponents scared of you while in demon form rather than just think "meh, i'll ride this out" and then part of having the pet out is there for the added pvp utility (also further increased pve damage)

my maths is, last i checked, exactly how knockback is working in wotlk, if it changes then I'll redo the maths. I actually done the maths both with and without simplified crit, i was surprised to find that it doesn't affect the overall % differences, though this is in a simplified setting... in a real life raid scenario things work alot differently