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Q u o t e:


It wouldn't be OP, it would be boring. Affliction is one of the few specs that's actually mentally engaging. That would only dumb it down :/

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It's also boring doing nothing but watching DoT timers rather than enjoying the complexity of a fight.

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Q u o t e:


It's also boring doing nothing but watching DoT timers rather than enjoying the complexity of a fight.

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You mean the generally easy to manage gimmicks?

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I love all these non-locks who leveled other toons to 80 saying basically "L2P it's easy, affliction locks are fine...."

So I guess your quest to keep locks ruined is fail.

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http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Draele My main, I post on this guy because I can't exactly post on Draele due to discussing certain alpha talents several months back.

My goal is not to ruin Warlocks. It's to not dumb down Affliction which is one of the only interesting specs left in the game.

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Q u o t e:


You mean the generally easy to manage gimmicks?

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Maybe "complexity" is too strong of a word, but the point still stands that watching timers rather than the fight is boring.

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Q u o t e:


http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Draele My main, I post on this guy because I can't exactly post on Draele due to discussing certain alpha talents several months back.

My goal is not to ruin Warlocks. It's to not dumb down Affliction which is one of the only interesting specs left in the game.

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There's nothing to dumb down. You watch your timer and refresh your dot.

Another problem I have with Affliction is Shadows Embrace, if there is more than one Aff lock in a raid, only one of them will gets Shadows Embrace. Tell me of another class that has this bug?

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Q u o t e:
That was fixed, but wasn't working properly, and since has been fixed again. That bug can really screw us, but I believe it's working properly atm.

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Must be an intermittnet bug then becuase there were a few boses where I never got SE up despite casting Haunt and SB. Can anyone else comment?

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Q u o t e:
Affliction is all about DPCT. Go to the warlock forums LK raid guide and you'll see that SL is 4th out of 5 DoTs (CoA, Corr, UA, SL, Immo). Haunt should always be up for other reasons so it's not included. Immo refreshes very easily with UA since they have the same duration. That leaves SL as the least rewarding for the effort. However it is an instant and can be 'fit in' but you shouldn't waste a lot of effort trying to refresh it perfectly (Haunt is VERY important, CoA should never be overwritten, and if you get UA right you also get Immo right - so focus on those).

The talent "Soul Siphon" increases dmg by 4% for each affliction effect on the target up to 60% additional effect. Drain Soul does 4x dmg when the target is below 25% health. There are threads about locks doing 8k dmg per tick.

Okay, so I'm not 80, but I've got the facts right.

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yeah , your facts are wrong sorry 8k ticks? are not out there and besides that damage after the health is 25% is nice but its not 8k ticks.

i currently have 2100 bonus spell damage and with buffs and or any extra spell increases the biggest iv seen is 2k a tick on cor. and 4500 a tick on drain soul. thats with my own dots .

if your taliking about added dots from more warlocks to increase the effect sorry i dont gear around how many locks are going to be in raid thats stupid.

another thing this thread is about spell rotations that are to much for the damage they produce when u can just spam incen. or sb.

reread my posts and please make it to lvl 80 and get some epic gear , if you less than 80 then reading your facts somewhere isnt good enough.

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Q u o t e:
We have been talking about a couple of different approaches to warlock rotations. One is to try and make more of the dots last around the same duration so you aren't watching them quite so much. Another is just to lower the standard rotation from having so many dots. These are both things we are working on but it's too early to say what the changes will end up being.

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My vice guild leader (for lack of a better term, lol) just decided to level a DK after getting his Warlock to 80 and doing some raids. He had zero desire to do this leading up to, and at the beginning of, WotLK.

I know this. He loved playing the 'lock in T5, suffered it's simplicity in T6 and had high hopes the playstyle would return to T5 level of fun and involvement. Apparently, even he thought it was too much currently to truly be fun. I'm sure he'd be interested in whatever changes you put forth.

Nice! That is good to hear.

Though I can't imagine why it would take so long. It should be a high priority item since most people are starting to raid.

And of course the massive warlock dropoff since we're so nerfed.

[Edit]:

It really shouldn't be too difficult:

1. Haunt refreshes Siphon Life. That's one dot removed.

2. Haunt and Shadow Embrace increase dot damage from shadow dots only. Immolate = another dot removed. Allow Shadow Embrace to stack 3x to compensate for the loss of DPS.

3. Revert the UA nerf and bring it back to 18 sec and 21 with a new Glyph (or baseline).

Done.

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Q u o t e:
We have been talking about a couple of different approaches to warlock rotations. One is to try and make more of the dots last around the same duration so you aren't watching them quite so much. Another is just to lower the standard rotation from having so many dots. These are both things we are working on but it's too early to say what the changes will end up being.

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You should also consider having Haste affect the DoT duration. As it is, Haste mucks up the rotation pretty badly... There are even large gaps where X amount of haste provides NO DPS gains until you reach enough to weave another 2.5 second cast into the rotation... That's a LOT of haste needed to see even a small change in DPS. It winds up working like this:

Cast DoTs (DPS Unaffected by Haste)
Spam SB/Haunt
Recast DoTs
Spam SB/Haunt

That DoT casting framework has a terrible effect on Haste scaling. You get:

Cast DoTs (DPS unaffected by Haste)
Spam SB/Haunt (lets say 3 casts for arguements sake)
Recast DoTs

You get a new piece of gear with Haste on it...

Cast DoTs (DPS unaffected by Haste)
Spam SB Haunt... (still 3 casts... NO benefit from the new gear)
Recast DoTs


You basically "collect" useless Haste gear until you reach a plateau where it has FINALLY after ages of taking up item points become usefull... And remains at that level of usefulness until you reach the next plateau. This is bad design. When you get an upgrade to gear, you should be able to immediately benefit from that upgrade... Not 3 months later when you hit the plateau.

In addition, Haste effect on SB/Haunt spam and NOT the DoTs ensures that at every level of Haste, the amount of time between the last SB cast and the time to recast your DoTs changes. That is bad design. it needs to be more predictable.

The easiest and most effective way to solve those problems is to allow Haste to reduce he Duration of DoTs. That would keep the rotation static at all levels of Haste and would also fully alleviate the plateau issue.

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Q u o t e:
We have been talking about a couple of different approaches to warlock rotations. One is to try and make more of the dots last around the same duration so you aren't watching them quite so much. Another is just to lower the standard rotation from having so many dots. These are both things we are working on but it's too early to say what the changes will end up being.

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I think it would be a little easier to manage if our dots just lasted longer, so we could get all our dots up, and then sit back for 10 seconds or whatever spamming SB and haunt. Then we would have time to concentrate on something else instead of having to stare at our timers constantly, instead of getting them all up, and then having to weave shadow bolts and haunts, and still keep an eye on our timers.

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Q u o t e:
We have been talking about a couple of different approaches to warlock rotations. One is to try and make more of the dots last around the same duration so you aren't watching them quite so much. Another is just to lower the standard rotation from having so many dots. These are both things we are working on but it's too early to say what the changes will end up being.

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GC Your thoughts are appreciated as always.

I'm not so sure about the idea of making dots have the same duration. Yes it would help in terms of knowing when to refresh them. However, keep in mind that it would be a pretty significant dps nerf because you would then spend more time refreshing them when they had all run out, unless you timed it perfectly so you started your dot rotation just as they were falling off the target. 5 dots is just too many to handle mid battle imo with haunt no matter how long the duration is.

I like the idea of fewer dots in pve. One idea (that would take a lot of testing) would be to have more dots have a "shadow trance" component built in and also have certain dots that syngergized exclusively with shadow bolt. For example, corruption, UA, and agony could all shadow trance at a fairly high rate and shadow bolts could also apply a debuff that benefited those dots (rather the current debuff that effects all of them).

The end result would be that in pve it would be most effective to use 3 dots, shadowbolt, and haunt rather than 5 dots. It would also make us a little more bursty without affecting the major feel of the tree.

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Q u o t e:
We have been talking about a couple of different approaches to warlock rotations. One is to try and make more of the dots last around the same duration so you aren't watching them quite so much. Another is just to lower the standard rotation from having so many dots. These are both things we are working on but it's too early to say what the changes will end up being.

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On the one hand, I appreciate you looking at tweaking the rotation. It is getting a bit long and goofy to manage, but as long as the "payoff" for mastering the rotation is worth it (i.e. some seriously out of this world dmg potential) it's not the end of the world. I really feel most of us would be less peeved about the rotation (or the way destro is less a true rotation and more a nuke-flinging psychological disorder) if the damage from said uber complicated rotation were higher when played well.

On the other hand... as much as I appreciate and laud your efforts to ensure that our rotation is viable, playable and "worth it", please do not make this Priority A-Number-1 for the warlocks. Lots of locks complain about the rotation--virtually all locks complain that when you nerfed our survivability, you went way way way too far. A means for Demon Armor to scale to 80, stack with Fel Armor, and share them with the pet would likely go a long way towards undoing an overpowered nerf.

And by the way... why did Blizzard nerf that in the first place? Haven't we been over this? Mages have high DPS and escape mechanics because it's how the class works. Warlocks *had* high DPS and survivability, but no real escape mechanic, because it's how the class worked--except that's gone, and doesn't work, and to a huge degree it really feels like the class doesn't work, either.