Patch Day, New TalentsFollow

something like 56/0/5, you need bane regardless, the rest goes in afliction. i'll do a tree later

56/0/5 this is basically what you're looking for, the biggest problem though is that it misses a few important talents simply because you need almost ALL the talents in that tree to maximise your damage. no improved felhound means your pet can't dps fully AND be a mana battery at the same time. no improved CoA to make the most of amplify curse (though if you want you can move that 1 point to imp.CoA or suppression). malediction you're taking mainly for the increase spell power.. as your local boomkin will be better at providing the damage increasing debuff. also you're missing ISB, which does still affect dot damage, just it doesn't affect raid anymore.

i'd say the lvl.80 'endgame' raid spec would be 63/0/8, so not much different.. but the actual dps output available would be possibly 10% more due to having your felhound dpsing as well and due to your pet never running out of mana.

Edited, Oct 14th 2008 8:09pm by Jenovaomega

Staying w/ destro for now

looking at (0/9/52)

At the moment Ruin is quite an important talent imo, but there simply isnt room for it. There are now sooo many Afflic talents that are required to even approach competetive DPS, Bane is essentially the only choice you can take outside Afflic. AT lvl70, sadly, Afflic is doomed to be sup-optimal.

For endgame I'd be tempted towards this build, which forgoes Improved Felhunter (you can Lifetap/Haunt to regain health) and Death's Embrace in favour of Ruin. This would form the core of a crit-heavy Afflic build that can effectively weave Shadowbolts into the rotation as well.

i was thinking about a lvl 80 build where u have 10 extra points to spend

at 70: (looking at the spreadsheat in my other post)
a 56/0/5 haunt build pwns by 250 dps over a chaosbolt build without FB which is the strongest destruction build atm.
2nd best build is a haunt build without SE.

http://hinome.net/wow/wotlk/warlock_comparison.html

when i look at those numbers it seems that destruction is dead.
at lvl 80 i think affliction will still be 200 dps above any destruction build...

and destruction also requires lifetapping which isnt helping your raid

Sadly destruction has always been my favourite spec but who will take a lock which requires some healing and does less dps...

I'd probably agree with you raqiel, I forgot about ruin being there for an afiction spec and to paraphrase quote blizzard "ruin is one of the closest things to a 'required' talent for any/all specs from any class.".

I can see why afliction specs now do so well (especially that ruin based one), though I'm still skeptical about it's usefulness in end-game scenarios (yeah come wotlk, we'll have to wait a good 6 months or so for the actual 'end-game' content to be released, so maybe jumping my guns a bit), simply put haste still doesn't scale as well with afliction as destro (or with pets currently) so I'd see a spec that relies the least on pets and dot damage to be the spec to rule in the end. The classic example is how up until the end of T4 content, afliction specs ruled to due talented hit and not needing as much crit to make them work, but once T5/T6 content came out; as well as the introduction of readily available haste; the infamous 0/21/40 spec came to rule. now yes crit is more beneficial for afliction specs, but still not fully (CoA/CoD/Siphon life still unaffected by crit) and with haste purely increasing the dpsc of dots and barely affecting the actual dps given by the dot, haste is still not having a full effect.

POST EDIT
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=818

check that out for the 'official' patch notes.
NB: they don't reflect all the changes, as always there are some shadow changes which have probably been reported on through the whole testing, but never put within the official patch notes

one thing to note... emberstorm, it'd seem, has been buffed again to a 0.5 sec reduction from incinerate compared to the last known patch notes where it as 0.25, also possibly ISB has been buffed slightely from 10% to 15%. NP has been buffed to a 10 sec duration from 8 seconds. molton core though looks to have been brought back from a 12 second duration to a 6 second again .
suppression might not affect mana cost anymore either.., just the 3% hit. so umm.. yeah either these are actual changes, typos or they forgot to add in all the details.

POST POST EDIT

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warlock/talents.html

official blizzard calculator is upto date. the suppression thing was a type, still has the mana cost reduction. also the ISB and emberstorm changes are true. they also forgot to add that backdraft now AGAIN reduces casttime AND mana cost by 30% (I hated it when they first changed that). all the other changes I listed are true too.

Edited, Oct 15th 2008 7:47am by Jenovaomega

good to know sins :)

oh, everlasting afliction has been nerfed again. used to be that each tick gained 5% bonus +dmg (so for CoA, with 12 ticks that 60% bonus +dmg o.0, 30% for corruption etc..), now it's just a 20% across the entire spell. also nolonger is it haunt that refreshes corruption, it's SB again, which means you no longer NEED 5/5 points in that talent to make sure you refresh corruption(though it is still very advised i'd say due to the bonus +dmg). haunt has also been nerfed back to a 10second cd from 8second.

so yeah, i THINK that's everything I can see simply from the official talent calculator

or wait... chaos bolt is back down to a 1.5 second cast but is still getting a 0.5 sec reduction from bane...so probably a typo and is actually a 2.5 second cast. preferably imo due to spell coefficients it should be 2.5 second cast. also if it was 1.5 with -0.5 from talents that'd officially make haste 100% useless for the spell in a pve environent (but more useful in a pvp one)

Edited, Oct 15th 2008 7:56am by Jenovaomega

chaos bolt is far from useless in pve. it does massive damage, with 0% chance to be resisted or partially resisted on a short cd, with a good +SP coefficient and it fits in perfectly with a conflagorate for backdraft rotation. so chaos bolt rocks in pve. it's something like the 3rd or 4th most powerful direct damage spell in the game, with soulfire at the top currently.

and good to know that the everlasting affliction is still the same as well as the chaos bolt being a typo.

finally updated, finally logged in, most the talents in the 'official' talent calculator are wrong, stick to the mmo-champion one imo.

Edited, Oct 15th 2008 4:50pm by Jenovaomega

you should open with SB > haunt > dots > haunt kinda whenever off cd

simply put, you need to stack up the shadow embrace buff instantly or you won't maximise your damage. after that it's all about keep the haunt and shadow embrace debuff up perminantly, keeping your dots up constantly and getting in shadowbolts whenever you can.

or haunt > SB if you feel you want to get haunt straight on cd so you can cast more of them during the encounter.. personnaly I haven't tested to see which is best, or to see if using haunt the moment it's off cd is preferable to using it just before it wears off so as to just 'clip' each haunt.

Do we even have space to put in SB in new aff rotation ?

Jen you freak ,thanks :D

I'm more than happy aff can compete with destro in damage.Or it can't ?