Beta!

So I was given a beta key last night (yay!) Big thanks to the guy who got it for me!

I only got a chance to play around for a couple of hours but things are looking great so far, both for Warlocks and Deathknights.

I did throw up some initial feedback on the beta forum, however. Check it out here.

Let me know if you guys have any questions in particular about Warlocks or Deathknights and I'll try to answer them if I can!

Beta Thoughts

All Warlock specs look pretty strong in their own right. I have gripes about individual talents or mechanics, but on the whole I think they've taken everything in an appropriate direction.


1) Soulshatter needs to be unresistable. With Cataclysm now adding spellhit in addition to Suppression Blizzard is steering us towards running 13% hit instead of 16%. The problem lies in that Soulshatter is neither Affliction nor Destruction- requiring we run 16% hit anyway... For an aggro wiping ability with a significant cooldown of 5 minutes I don't think Soulshatter being unresistable is at all unreasonable.


2) Felguard/Ruin looks to be THE premier raiding spec. They really went all out to make Demo viable. Fel Synergy will be great for keeping the FG alive without having to waste time with Health Funnel. Demonic Empowerment looks quite nice as well- though the duration for the effect remains to be seen. My guess is ~10 seconds. Need I even mention how nice Demonic Pact looks to be. Definitely going to want one Demo lock per raid.


3) Destruction got kicked in the junk with the Demonic Sacrifice nerf...but in the long run I think the old DS being gone is good for the development for the class. It remains to be seen how well Destro will stack up in the raid game but I'm betting that it will be the #1 DPS spec so long as the imp can stay alive. That being said Phase Shift needs to be changed from a total damage immunity to a 100% AoE avoidance. This will allow him to DPS in raids and act as a mana battery for Affliction, but keep him from being able to attack with impunity in PvP as he will be vulnerable to single target attacks.


4) Affliction looks pretty strong overall. I would have done a few things differently but on the whole I'm satisfied with the changes.

a) Fel Concentration is still a very bloated talent that either needs to be brought down to 2-3 ranks, or affect all Affliction spells.

b) The new Amplify Curse is in a word...interesting, although I can't really hop on board with the implementation simply because CoA/Doom really don't get a whole lot of use in the arena/raid game what with us using CoT/CoX in PvP and CoE/CoR in raids. I'd scrap this implementation and bump the cooldown back up to 3 minutes and have it allow your next CoA not count towards the one curse-per-target limit. (sure it's an old rehashed idea of mine but a sound one if I do say so myself)

c) I'm still not the biggest fan of Death's Embrace as thematics go...but I can live with this one I suppose =P

d) Haunt. I love the new implementation. It's viable for both PvE and PvP and fits with Affliction quite well. However, to address the issue of DoTs not scaling with stats other than spellpower I would tweak it. Currently it increases DoT damage by 15%. I would instead make it increase DoT damage by 10% *plus* 50% of your crit chance. This would effectively allow crit to effect DoT damage. So at 10% spellcrit you would break even at 15%, at 20% spellcrit you would hit 20%. It would be an easy way to work crit into some usefulness. Still, Haunt seems to be very strongly implemented. Thumbs up.


5) Pet Scaling. Maybe we'll see more of it. Rumors are floating around that Hunter pets are getting seriously looked at as far as scaling off stats is concerned Maybe our pets will inherit our spellhit, penetration and more of our stam/int/spirit. If we're really lucky, Resilience, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.


6) Finally, the Fel Armor/Demon Armor changes. I'm all for them, actually. I like the fact that they're creating a distinct PvE/PvP armor type. Fel Armor in particular, giving a base amount of spellpower, 30% of spirit to spellpower, and 30% spirit regen while casting makes a great deal of sense. Homogenizing gear will be a great thing- if any only if Blizzard does a good job at making everyone want the stats that are on said gear. This will do that for Spirit. They just need to work on Crit...

Undispellable Fel Armor

So I get home, patch up and immediately go into an AV. Fel Armor didn't get dispelled every time I encountered a Hunter. It was a wonderful feeling and I'm sure Mages feel the same way. I'll admit it will royally suck when Mages have an undispellable Mage Armor that reduces the duration of all magical effects by 50%...but it is what it is and I think it's a change for the better.

On that note I truly believe the undispellable nature of self buffs needs to be extended to other classes. Any long term (which I would consider 5 minutes or longer) self-only buff should be undispellable. Why? Well, as I see it if a buff is of a long enough duration and is only able to be cast on oneself then it is an aspect of that class that should be considered permanent. These types of abilities are intended to cover up glaring class weaknesses or buff up a class strength in order to effectively compete. To simply be able to remove one of these abilities is just silly.

Water Shield
Lightning Shield
Inner Fire
Omen of Clarity
Etc.

Wouldn't that negate the ability to dispel for other classes? I don't think so, really. Dispelling will still continue to be a valid tactic for short-term and non-class specific buffs. PWS, PWF, Paladin Blessings (on that note Paladins would do well to get a self only version of BoW since they really *do* need it) Earth Shield, MotW, BoP, Innervate, Eradication, etc.

Again, I simply feel that the long-term self buffs are far too vital to a class' performance be so easily removed. I would not, however, be opposed to Mass Dispel effecting them as it does require significantly more effort than spamming Purge, Devour Magic, Arcane Shot, etc.

The Fall Of Affliction? (Alternate Title: Die Shadowbolt, Please, Please, Die)

Okay folks, it looks like Blizzard cleared several websites to release alpha based talent/ability information so I'd like to take the time to post what I've wanted to for several weeks now. If you haven't had seen already go check out WoWhead and get a look at the new talents- but make sure to come back!

For a few weeks now I've been discussing with various people (covertly of course!) the inadequacies of the Wrath of the Lich King (alpha) Affliction talents. I've talked with several big names in the Warlock community, guildies, and even random locks on my server. Most have agreed with my points- if not fully then at least partially. Some might say I'm a tough sort to satisfy but it seems in this case these thoughts reflect those of at least a handful of players.

The current dilemma is that Affliction Warlocks are dumped as guilds go into Sunwell due to very poor damage output as DoTs gain no DPS from Haste or Crit- both stats that are very prevalent on endgame gear and necessary to multiple off spellpower and one another to create increasing levels of DPS like you see from most classes/specs. Even considering the added raid utility Affliction brings with Malediction and Shadow Embrace Affliction is deemed not worth the raid slot. Let's see how Blizzard has fared in the alpha and if they've fixed the problem...

Eradication: Admittedly not a bad idea in concept. DoTs proccing a Haste buff is pretty cool. But what is that Haste going to be used on in raiding? Shadowbolt. Last time I checked Shadowbolt wasn't the focus of Affliction- DoTs, Debuffs and Drains were. Shadowbolt is filler. Poorly scaling filler at that. This talent alone wouldn't be too bad if it were accompanied by several other strong and purposeful talents- but that's unfortunately not the case.

Death's Embrace: This talent needs the axe. Yet more Shadowbolt. +15% crit chance on targets below 20% health. It may look potent, but keep in mind this only affects Shadowbolt/Shadowburn- not UA, not Siphon Life, not Corruption. Plus add into the fact that other classes/specs have similar "sub 20%" effects and so that 20% starts to go by really quickly since raid DPS rises so much when the 20% mark is breached.

Everlasting Afflictions: Okay, this is what I'm talking about! Boosted DoT coefficients is just the type of thing Affliction needs. It fits the theme and it fits the function. A perfect addition! Too bad all this does is counteract Improved Shadowbolt no longer effecting DoTs...That's right! ISB only effects nukes now. Let's not forget the secondary portion of the talent: Corruption refreshing itself when Shadowbolt hits. Aside from the fact that this could be a very dangerous effect on encounters with aggro drops(Corruption tick = aggro) it's another blow to the gut by further divorcing us from our DoT rotations.

Cripple: I've read that this talent is being removed in favor of something else yet to be announced. This is certainly very Affliction worthy theme-wise, however it would appear to offer very little in the raid game. Hopefully when Blizzard thinks up it's replacement they will consider something more like Unstable Affliction- useful in both the PvE and PvP game.

My thoughts in a nutshell? Blizzard is attempting to shove Shadowbolt down our throats- maybe they're encouraging a 50/0/21 raid build but I can't help but sneer at the thought. It just doesn't fit with the style of Affliction. I realize this is veering further from math and towards opinion but c'mon Blizzard! If we wanted 70-80% of our DPS to consist of Shadowbolt wouldn't it make sense to spec Destruction, not Affliction? You're taking the lazy way out- rather than fixing DoT scaling you're diluting the differences between the two talent trees. More Shadowbolt spam. Less casting DoTs. Less overall DoT DPS. It all feels oh so poorly inspired. I could sit here for hours and spout off ideas that would work better but the fact remains: Blizzard is ruining the identity of the Affliction tree and we can do nothing but sit here and hope that someone at Blizzard reads this and takes note.

Tweakified WotLK Talent Affliction Tree

Just did Affliction, Kyth. I don't wanna suggest anything that wouldn't vibe well with Destro again =P

http://www.war-tools.com/t55507.html

Another 51pt Affliction Idea

Curse Mastery- Grants each of your curses a secondary effect as follows:

Agony: Gives a chance when dealing damage to afflict the target with chest pains, stunning them for 3 seconds.
Doom: Reduces the time for the damage to be dealt by 10 seconds.
Elements: Additionally increases damage done by DoT effects by 10% (Magical DoTs, Bleeds, Diseases, the works)
Exhaustion: Immobilizes the target for 2 seconds whenever Curse of Exhaustion ends.
Recklessness: Causes the target to damage themselves for 5% of the damage they deal for a maximum of 20% of your total health per attack/spell.
Tongues: Increases mana cost of spells by 10%
Weakness: Increases Rage/Energy/Runic power ability costs by 10%

Sounds fitting, no?

Cripple Goes The Way Of Atrocity...

...or so I've read. It's good to see that ideas that don't work really do go down the crapper. On the flip side apparently they are focusing more on the Paladin/Hunter talents right now so we won't see a replacement for Cripple for a while- Which is fine, give them time to sit on it and think up something really good. Can't wait to see what they come up with next!

Vanguard...Again!

I guess I've hit another WoW lull and it appears I'm not the only one. A few people in my guild have recently called it quits, at least temporarily, either due to boredom or spending the summer with the kids, etc. I haven't totally quit but I have dialed back the number of days I raid each week. Why? Well, two reasons.

Firstly- I'm just plain getting bored. When we killed Illidan I wasn't jumping up and down with joy like when we got Ragnaros, Vashj, Kael, etc. I hate to say it but I really didn't *care*. I'll partly blame that on general burnout. I've had 95% raid attendance for well over a year which is a recipe for burnout. I'll admit that some nights I didn't want to put down what I was doing to raid. It got to the point of becoming more of a chore than a hobby. Even having taken most of this week off and just raiding on Thursday I enjoyed myself much more than the previous week. Playing too much just numbs you...

Secondly- Future prospects. I'm losing interest because, well not to sound depressing, but the future looks grim. Sunwell brings new content, but even boss fights grow old after the first few kills. Affliction continues to fall further and further behind and the trend will only grow worse in Sunwell. I'm going to have to sit myself out on Brutallus because I won't be able to meet the required DPS. Also, Affliction isn't looking so hot in WotLK alpha. Most of the new talents are either entirely too PvP focused, or the mere concept of the talent is just 100% fucking stupid. There's no sign of any change regarding DoTs and Haste/Crit...maybe coming later, maybe not. Oh, and Deathknight totally isn't panning out to be anything like I had planned- I might make one as an alt, but the overall ability mix isn't what I was looking for.


All that down in the dumps stuff being said...I started playing Vanguard again and am having a blast! I tried a bunch of the classes up to level 10 and have settled in on just playing my Psionicist (which I had previously leveled up to 22) and my Monk, which I've been enjoying greatly. I'm going to get the Monk up to 22 and then level them up side by side, playing whichever the group needs. They are a stark contrast of one another:

The Psionicist is an extremely proactive "take-control of the situation" type class with the most CC/kiting options in the game(think of a pull in an instance where you can fear + banish + voidwalker offtank + Curse of Ex kiting + Mind control + mind controlled mob offtanking all in one character that still remains quite balanced) It's a micromanager's paradise playing a Psi, both solo and in groups. I've already talked about them on the blog before so I'll spend more time discussing my newly discovered Monk.

The Monk, in contrast, is a super-reactive damage machine. They're like a DPS Warrior/Rogue mix with some mystical flare added on top. They DPS well, are a suitable offtank, and have a bunch of fun abilities like Feign Death and Slow Fall. Monk attack chains *really* liven up the gameplay. When you crit you can choose between 3 different finishers, all useful depending on the situation. When you dodge an attack a counterattack opens up- which you can trigger by using "Swaying Step" making you dodge the next attack aimed at you. If you parry an attack you can use "Quivering Palm" to lower the target's damage by 50% for 8 seconds. Not to mention the stance system...which totally blows WoW's out of the water:

Warriors change stances, sure, but as a Vanguard Monk you change stances A LOT. Enter Crane Stance for increased Dodge/Parry chance to open up the Counterattack abilities. Crane stance also gives a reduction to attack endurance cost(sorta like Rage) so you can use more of the normal specials to build up "Jin" (sorta like combo points...sorta...) . Did a counterattack just open up? Switch to Tiger stance for increase crit chance, use the ability and go back to Crane Stance to build more Jin. When you're ready to use your built up Jin on your stronger attacks you Feign Death to wipe your aggro, switch back to Tiger Stance for increased crit chance as you dump all your Jin into a few huge "Ashen Hand" attacks which likely crit to proc a finisher attack which you then use, then back to Crane Stance again. When you leave combat you can switch to Harmonious stance to build up Jin while you're out of combat traveling, or studying a much stronger foe to build up your much needed Jin for the fight. Monk is a great class that really keeps you on your toes.

A mix of good and bad. As WoW wanes Vanguard comes into the picture. It makes me wish, again, for the millionth time that someone would develop a game with the depth, complexity and PvE focus of Vanguard with the overall polish and customizability of WoW. Sure, they're intended for two completely different audiences- WoW is the casual focused, mainstream, simple game developed by Blizzard, who have a legacy of the aforementioned "polish". Vanguard is more of a niche game with great focus on depth, immersion, and obviously for slightly more hardcore gamers with its more complex gameplay systems.

Why, oh why can't I have both merged into one? Vanguard had a chance but it's just too bad their funding fell through and they had to be bought up by SOE, who certainly do not have the best track record.

Cripple Eh?

Okay, so Atrocity is gone. Good riddance. The synergy with Haunt would have been kinda cool, but what's the trouble in manually casting Corruption? Less automation is the last thing we need.

What did they put in its place? Cripple. I gotta admit I like the idea of Cripple a hell of a lot better than Atrocity. Even though Cripple in its current form is pretty overpowered I do like it in concept.

That being said I've gotta be the wet blanket you all know me to be... It really doesn't offer a whole lot in the PvE realms of things. Maybe for kiting adds. Vashj, for example would be a good use- but really it's just a beefed up version of CoEx, and in most cases CoEx is enough.

I'd like to see cripple get a cooldown attached. 30 seconds (ballpark.) In addition to the slowing effect I'd like to see it boost your damage over time effects by a percentage as well. Not too much, but enough so it would be worth more DPS than 1.5 seconds of a Shadowbolt. 10 seconds of say.... +25%? Something like that? /shrug

I just hate seeing talents with limited PvP use or limited raid use. Why can't they design everything with both in mind? The last thing we need is another Shadowfury or Dragon's Breath.

Tweaks To Atrocity

I'm not posting unreleased content here, but if you've seen the alpha Warlock talents you'll know what I'm talking about.

Okay, the problem as I see it with Atrocity, the 51-point Affliction talent is it's just too situational, in a situation where we have another spell which already does a bang-up job. I will admit, the synergy between Atrocity and Haunt is not only effective, but just sounds awesome...even still, Atrocity is too situational and needs to be reworked.

I would like to propose the following:


Atrocity
30 second cooldown
Your next Corruption spell... {insert alpha Atrocity effect here}
*or*
Your next Curse of Agony does not count towards your one curse per target limit.

Voila! The talent becomes something of an amplify curse for Corruption and Curse of Agony, with Agony giving a nice single target DPS boost, and Corruption giving a nice {non single target} DPS boost. I feel that allowing Curse of Agony to be up alongside Curse of Shadows is important as we have so many talents that boost the damage output of CoA, yet our raids expect us to be the Curse of Shadows bitch. With this you end up with a versatile talent useful in both PvE and PvP, and in single target and {non single target} situations.

Thoughts? About the only thing I could see anyone taking issue with is the cooldown, but the 30 second cooldown allows the synergy with Haunt to work out just right.

Permabanned :O

So yeah. I'm normally not one to get banned, or even get a warning. I tend to play by the rules pretty well. So there's a 10 page thread on the Warlock forum on the WotLK alpha talents...it was up for a whole day...nothing deleted! I figured Blizzard knew the leaks were pretty widespread so decided to lay off. Boy was I mistaken! I made a thread critiquing the Affliction talents(of the 5 new talents only one was worth a damn...I had to!) Low and behold a couple of hours ago I log into the forum and am...permabanned! The odd thing is I haven't even had an infractions before and I didn't even post *what* the talents did. Others who were discussing in the same manner only got 1 week bans. I'm going to try to appeal this. I understand it's their rules, and respect that, but I'd like them to look over my post again to see that I didn't actually post unreleased content, but was just discussing it.

Until then I'll be posting on the character "Painez"

EDIT:

Hello,

After reviewing your account's forum record we have determined
that the appropriate actions were taken, and this account will not
have forum privileges restored under any circumstances. We
regret to implement such severe action, but at times it is
necessary to maintain a positive forum environment.

"A positive forum environment" WTF? They could at least shoot me
some line on Blizzard's intellectual property, etc. Not some canned
response totally unrelated to the actual case. Oh well...

Damn...I'm Fugly!

Okay so the picture you normally see of Draele on the here is pretty badass, right? I mean, I got some nice lookin' gear, everything kinda matches. It's got a good vibe- ya know?. Lately though? I'm outright fugly. Throw on the T6 gloves, T6 shoulders and a new weapon + offhand combo. Nasty. Just scary. Totally unappealing. Blizzard really needs to let us dye our armor. I'm not normally one to care a whole lot about what my gear actually looks like, but I am pretty particular of the colors they come in. I don't like bright colors...at all. Give me your blues, greens, dark purples, browns or any grayscale color and I'm a happy camper. But for the love of god keep red, yellow, orange, & pink the hell away from me...

And without further ado I present to you the new and unimproved "Fugly Draele":

To Dwarf Or Draenei?

...Not the kind of thing I normally post on here but yesterday I saved my two potential Deathknight names. One Dwarf and one Draenei. (Certainly not your standard fare Human, Undead or pink-pigtailed female gnome that everyone else wants to make) This is going to be a tough choice for me. Dwarves just wreak of badassery and are my favorite fantasy race. 'Nuff said. Draenei seem like they might make a terrible DK, what being the Naaru brown-nosers they are- but if you give them just the right features they can look pretty dark too- and let's not mention two very nice racials with Gift of the Naaru and Heroic Presence. They clearly have the advantage as racials go compared to Stoneform and Treasure Tracking. The tail is what's got me, though. Damn distracting wiggly thing...

Here's Krigus:

And Daerdric:

Some Thoughts On The Recent Lich King Information

Well, that certainly was a sudden flood of information, wasn't it? I caught wind of the news coming on WoWinsider just before heading to bed last night. Let's just say I ended up going to bed at 6AM instead of 3AM...

I'll touch on my personal highlights of all the new media and info...

1) The whole 10/25man version of every dungeon news. I'm all for it. I never understood how people could be so against something that's just letting other players enjoy the game. So long as the 25-mans have better loot I can't voice a single concern. Hell, since Blizzard won't have to create different dungeons for different crowds it really let's them make the most of their development team talent, which hopefully means new content will roll out quicker! To anyone still against it: It sure beats Blizzard trying to find some middle ground between casuals and raiders that won't suit either group and make everyone pissed. I think with this change the only people who will truly be upset will be raiders who take themselves and their egos *too* seriously.

2) Deathknight information. A few things were clarified about the class mechanics. Notably the "Runic Power" mechanic which acts as another resource type that builds up as you use runes, effectively allowing stronger moves to be charged up over time. This really adds another level of depth to the class that I wasn't expecting. Another interesting tidbit of info was the whole "Presence" mechanic, which functions similarly to Warriors stances. Frost Presence increases your mitigation and threat, Blood increases your damage output, and Unholy increases your movements speed/"other PvP stuff".

I really like this concept as it adds a lot of choices to how you play your class. What spec? Which runes do I put on my blade? What presence will I be using? Add Runic power on top of that and you've got what *appears* to be a pretty intricate and customizable class. I just hope the Unholy talent tree isn't necessarily just PvP focused like the Unholy Presence would infer... I hate how they did that to Warriors with Arms=PvP, Fury=RaidDPS, Prot=Tanking. Each talent tree should be raid and PvP viable, not be pigeonholed...

Krigus, the Dwarven Unholy Deathknight raider may never exist if this is true. =(


3) Visuals. I'm in love with "The Nexus" dungeon. Check out this video of the Borean Tundra that shows The Nexus. Holy crap that's pure awesome. I've wanted an icy style dungeon ever since that blue dragon cave in Winterspring! Really looking forward to this one!


All in all it was nice to get some clarifications and get some new info, but my appetite simply will not be sated until I can get a look at the Deathknight talents/abilities, and the new Affliction talents/abilities. I'm dying to see these, discuss them, theorycraft them, and maybe even get in the beta and get a chance to try them out an offer feedback on 'em.

My UI

Had a few requests to see it so here it is. This is one I took to show off how high my shadow gets when the Hyjal ring, Hex Shrunken Head and 2pc t4 procs. Everything I have keybound isn't on screen- all the buttons you see are clicked.

Per request here's the mods I run...I left off some... The ones I have listed here are either cosmetic or functionally useful.

Apeture: The big big black bar at the bottom of the screen.
DoTimer Suite: The DoT timers on the right side of the screen and cooldown in the bottom right of the screen.
Bongos2: My button bars and keybindings.
Clearfont2: My different than normal fonts for most things. Baar Sophia is the font for everything but target's damage you see.
Closetgnome: The gear sets.
eCastingbar: My cast bar, target's cast bar, and fatigue bars.
eeShards: Shard display plugin for FuBar. Also, automatically deletes excess shards above any number you set.
FuBar: The bar at the bottom. Clockfu, Bagfu, Durabilityfu, Moneyfu, Questsfu(which is the quests in the top left too)
Good Damage Font 2.0: The damage font. It's Adventure.
Itemprice Tooltip: Not seen on screen, but this adds the vendor price to the tooltip of every item.
Onebag/Onebank/Onering: Just combines all my bags into one big bag and changes the background.
Pitbull: My unitframes.
Prat: My chat mod.
Ratingbuster: Shows percentage equivalents to spell hit rating, etc.
Scrolling Combat Text: I think most people have this =P
SharedMedia: Shares fonts, textures, etc across several addons and saves memory by doing so.
Squeenix: My square, borderless minimap.
Visor2: My "move stuff" addon. Nifty for shifting things around that aren't covered in other mods. Like the tracking menu, buffs frame, etc I've moved around.
Xloot: Very nice loot mod. Just makes the looting window look really slick, adds a quick link all items to guild/raid/etc and expands the size of the looting window based on how many items are on a body.

Swap Demonic Sacrifice & Dark Pact?

Apparently one of the ideas I put forward in the post I linked to in the previous entry is quite popular. That being the idea of swapping Demonic Sacrifice & Dark Pact combined with a change to Mana Feed.

Demonology's idea would be that Mana Feed would be changed to act as a source of mana renewal for the demons. The demons, gaining back their mana would both act as damage/utility *and* as a mana battery for the Warlock. This synergy between the Warlock and their demon is simply paramount to the Demonology tree so why not extend it? Demonology should thrive on having it's demon out and having synergy with it, not sacrificing it!

Affliction would get an altered Demonic sacrifice, because, well Affliction already has improved Lifetap, and having the best health leech abilities is better suited to sacrificing health for mana. This Demonic Sacrifice would only be a 10% damage increase(down from 15%) but also bestow a 10% increase to health/mana received, further reinforcing Affliction being the health/mana sponge.

Destruction, finally, would gain both a buff to Conflagrate and Shadowfury, with Conflag being changed to both a burst and sustained damage ability which would renew, rather than consume, Immolate giving Destro a new ability to use in raids, help their sustained damage in PvP and make Fire Destro just that much more appealing. Shadowfury wouldn't actually get a buff in damage, but rather would debuff the mob/player to take more damage, in PvP helping to focus train target(s) with both a stun and damage debuff, and in PvE would give Destruction some utility.

http://www.war-tools.com/t50549.html

In conclusion, Demonology would become more synergistic with Dark Pact/Mana Feed and not have a nearly wasted 21 pt talent in DS, Affliction would have it's damage and mana/health stealing capabilities increased by DS and Destruction would move away from being forced to pick up DS just to spam Shadowbolt ad nauseum, and would begin to use DoTs(Immolate+Conflag) and debuff the mob more(Shadowfury) making it much more of a Warlock and much less of a "Shadowmage."

Thoughts?

DS Forum Post

I think I got a pretty strong (and dramatic!) discussion going on involving Demonic Sacrifice here. Heading to bed now, it should be interesting to read tomorrow afternoon!

Talent Tune-up: Suppression

So I figure I'd write something about talents that just don't seem "right". Not in interest of trying to get buffed(Hell not many people read this Blog anyway for me to have much effect), but rather from a design/mechanical perspective things that just don't make a whole lot of sense... The backseat game developer is sneaking through!

Today I'll talk about Suppression. Yes our friendly tier 1 talent. I guess my gripe here is that it doesn't seem all that focused. For raiding even deep Affliction Locks need to cap their Spellhit for Shadowbolt, Immolate & Soulshatter. Its usefulness there fails. For leveling you generally won't be fighting mobs over +2 levels(8%) so Suppression exceeds this cap. The only real purpose it serves is to pad your hit cap while gearing up for that 16% hit for bosses, though this is a very brief period.

Ultimately I'd change this talent in one of two ways: A direct change to Suppression itself or making all that hit useful in some other way. Both tie into existing phenomenon which I will go into detail about...

Changing Suppression: Change Suppression from 2/4/6/8/10 Affliction Spellhit, to 1/2/3/4/5 Shadow Spellhit. This would cover everything but Immolate(no biggie) effectively lowering the real hit cap to 11%. Not nearly as nice as Shadowpriests and their 6%, but a much nicer change from Suppression's current incarnation. Secondly, it would be a very nice tier 1 talent for both Demonology and Destruction to pick up.

"What about DS/Destro? They won't ever have room in their build to get Suppression." To that I say: Demonic Sacrifice is flawed, especially given the placement in the tree. Blizzard will be extremely hard pressed to create a 51 point Destro talent that rivals DS for two reasons. A) DS is a very strong talent. +15% damage or 3%mp4 are both very appealing buffs. B) What use do Destruction Warlocks even have for their pets in raids anyway? There is no real opportunity cost with DS because giving up your pet means is but an afterthought for Destruction, making the talent all the more desirable. IMO Demonic Sacrifice should be nerfed and made into a trainable ability as it will only cause problems whenever Destruction spec choices/balance are involved.

Making All That Spellhit Useful: What if Affliction had its own "spam" attack that took advantage of Suppression? I'll admit I've never been the biggest fan of the concept that even as Affliction the spell I cast the most is Shadowbolt, a Destruction spell. But even still, what if Drain Soul actually was *actually* good for doing damage? With the 15 second duration and 50% "Drain coefficient" it's far from useful as DPS. Simply remove the 50% coefficient cut, and then make a talent in Affliction increasing the tick speed, and reducing the overall channeling time from 15 seconds down to 10, thus artificially raising the coefficient much like Bane does and making it tick every 2 seconds instead of 3. It would be competitive damage then, and Suppression would actually see use past a couple points.

Either one would work. I'll admit I'm partial to #2, but #1 is far more simple and elegant. Either way, this is a flawed talent and I'd love to see it somehow changed.

Respec Time

So I did a slight respec the other day. From 43/7/11 to 45/5/11. Dropped 1 point in Improved Lifetap(with the new spirit changes a raid buffed Imp can nearly sustain me) and 2 points in Demonic Embrace(I'm a little burnt on arenas ATM, so why not?) and used those 3 points to fill out Shadow Embrace from my former 2/5. Hopefully the raid will appreciate it and it'll even help a little when doing dailies! GG 3% less damage.

Don't Bother With Forums On The Weekends

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but do yourself a favor and completely ignore the Blizzard forums between Friday night and Sunday. The level of stupid(not ignorance, ignorance is quite forgivable) on the forums on the weekends is simply atrocious. Between thread necros, trolls, and morons you've got better chances of having an intelligent WoW conversation with your grandmother. Right.