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That's basically the same point, but... Would it matter? I've always thought destruction did most of it's damage trough direct-damage spells like (mainly) Shadowbolt? You could alternate between Immolation, Conflagrate and Shadowbolts, am I right?
Not quite the same thing. Affliction gets dispel resistance on affliction spells (fear, howl, corr, curses, ua, drains, sl, haunt, nightfall), but destruction doesn't get dispel resistance for anything (immolate, isb, molten core, backlash). Generally, as a destruction pvper, you're using immolate, incinerate, conflagrate, soul fire and shadowfury more often than shadow bolt (generally - the situations vary, but it's mostly a fire build).
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Shadow Embraces -healing effect would be a loss, but would you really need the extra DOT damage ticks if you're using direct damage spells? I wonder if the lack of Master Summoner and Shadow Embrace is survivable. I might be defending a worthless spec, but I do find it interesting... The way I see it, it somewhat turns you into an arcane or fire mage with hit points and armor equal to a sl/sl lock.
Affliction has little to no burst (Nightfall and Haunt being pretty much all there is, and requires shadow school to be open). Shadow Embrace became a lot more worthwhile for PvP (especially since HoTs > DoTs on live) with the HoT healing reduction, and missing out on it is very hurtful to any sort of affliction build. In truth, it is the closest thing warlocks will get to a MS debuff (which is fine - we don't need MS), and we'll probably see a big return of UA/SPriest in both 2's and 3's for at least Season 5, and UA locks will become a lot more wanted in 5's. The only problem with it is the unpredictability of Nightfall, and the cooldown of Haunt. It is a big deal, though, because it's not truly a nuke spec, but it's not truly a DoT spec, either. It seems like it might be okay for bgs, but just an expansion on Nightfall/Backlash that we have now.
What I will say, though, is just about anything is viable in battlegrounds (trust me - I do pretty damn well as 0/5/56 currently in bgs and heroics, but it blows for arena, and is far from raid viable). Though, a SL/SL/SL builds pretty much reeks of failure in both arenas and raids.
Edited, Oct 7th 2008 10:31am by wingsofscion