Is it seriously the devs intent?

by Jackjack | 02/08/2008 15:17:46

To make every warlock who wants to compete in end game raid PVE dps spec destruction fire?

I mean, honestly, look at the talent changes and the massive buffs fire destro has gotten. In live, fire was pretty close to shadow as it was, and now in the xpac, it will destroy every other spec in terms of straight up damage.

Incinerate has been redued to 2.0 second cast with talents, while retaining it's 2.5 second coefficient.

There's a ton of fire talents that buff damage and crit, such as molten core, backdraft, empowered imp, and fire and brimstone.

Now frost mages have a debuff that stacks causing 10% increased critical strike chance for fire, frost, arcane spells.

And with the buff to scorch, increasing damage done for fire, frost, arcane spells, you can bet there will be at least one mage in every raid with that.

Meanwhile, affliction had started off looking promising, but without any scaling with haste or crit for 50% of the afflock's damage, haunt, eradication, everlasting affliction are all lackluster in comparison to the buff fire destro has gotten. And death's embrace is such a bass ackwards talent! An afflock wants to cast all their dots because that's where the meat is of the affliction lock's dps, and shadowbolt has the weakest DPCT of all the spells. Yet here's this talent that increases the crit chance of all our shadow spells. So now, when a target is below 20% health, an affliction lock has to decide whether to forego casting dots or not because of this talent.

I know koraa told us affliction was not intended to be relegated to only leveling duty, but once again this xpac looks to make affliction the red headed stepchild of all the raiding specs. The utility it has is nice, but unfortunately, you only need ONE afflock in the raid to provide the utility the tree has to offer. Meaning, every other lock will be pigeon-holed (once again) into a destro spec just to have a raid spot.

View original thread

by Koraa | 04/08/2008 19:34:39

We have yet to do number testing, we'll balance the tree's so that their damage is closer together. That said, Destruction has less group utility than Affliction or Demonology has, which can warrant a slight DPS advantage.

Even though you'll be casting DoTs as affliction, you'll still be casting Shadow Bolt's in your rotation. Thus haste/crit/death's embrace all benefit you.

[ Post edited by Koraa ]

Class Designer

View original thread

by Koraa | 04/08/2008 19:46:19