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4.0.1 PvE major changes and discussion thread
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Post by
asakawa
What are the general changes to be aware of?
There are no hit buffs or talents in the game any more. you need 17% (446 hit rating)
Spirit no longer has ANY use for warlocks
ALL DoTs benefit from haste and crit without the need for glyphs or talents
Soul shards are gone.
We get three soul shards now which can only be used with Soulburn, an ability that empowers certain spells
All specs can use Soulburn to summon a pet instantly
Curses are now non-damaging debuffs (elements, weakness, tongues) while the damaging spells have become Banes (agony and doom)
You can have one curse and one bane on each target
Bane of Doom ticks every 15 seconds and has a 20% chance to spawn a guardian demon called an "ebon imp"
Doomguards and Infernals are on a shared 10minute cooldown and no longer dismiss your pet when you use them. they (like ebon imps) will attack your baned target.
We DO clip DoTs now (with the exception of Bane of Agony)
Soul Harvest is a 45% channelled heal that gives us soul shards out of combat
Soul Shatter now reduces threat by 90% and has a 2min cooldown.
---Let me know what I've forgotten---
Simcraft Stat weights
In T10 BiS gear
Affliction Int=4.1835 SP=3.0770 Hit=5.0114 Crit=2.0733 Haste=3.2885 Mastery=2.6345
Demonology Int=3.2822 SP=2.3497 Hit=5.3527 Crit=1.8953 Haste=3.9939 Mastery=2.5535
Destruction_NoSP Int=3.3966 SP=2.5421 Hit=5.7613 Crit=1.8817 Haste=2.9728 Mastery=2.5760
source
4.0.1 Known issues:
Drain Life cannot be used in macros.
Using an ability that triggers Soul Link around neutral guards will cause these guards to attack.
Blood Pact's tooltip is inconsistent with the actual buff given to them.
Health Funnel tooltip doesn't mention a channel duration.
The Emberstorm talent is too low on the talent tree of Destruction.
(
lol
)
The damage listed for spell Drain Life is inconsistent in multiple areas.
The sound of Immolation Aura will not last the full duration of the spell.
Affliction
Spec at 85
31/3/6+1
Spec at 80
31/0/5
SB back as filler
Guessed priorities
:
CoE
Haunt
Corruption
UA
BoA
DS (
if
< 25%)
SB
Guessed opening spell order
:
CoE ► Haunt ► SB ► Corruption ► UA ► BoA ► SB ►►
Pet
Until we get demon soul affliction has no reason other than output to choose a pet. In 4.0.1 the Succubus (glyphed) does more damage than the Felhunter.
AoE
CoE ► Soul burn (on cooldown) ► Seed of Corruption
With glyph of soul swap adding a 10second cooldown to the ability it can not be effectively used for AoE
What's changed for Affliction?
No more rolling corruption
Soul Swap allows you to to move DoTs around and is instant cast
Soul burn: SoC adds Corruption to the seed AoE effect
Drain Soul will refresh the duration of Unstable Affliction in the execute phase
Siphon and Drain Life heal for less than they used to
jinx = AoE CoE ^_^ you put it on one target and that target gets an aura effecting mobs around them.
Demonology
Spec at 85
2/31/8
I see 2 points as optional here though Demo is in the excellent position of having too many options so it's not really "optional".
I've put points in Doom and Gloom but Improved Soul Fire or Improved Immolate may prove better DPS.
Spec at 80
0/31/5
Dropping Doom and Gloom. BoD will be a very important part but more for spawning demons I think, than the actual damage it does.
Again leaving Bane full and dropping down to 2/3 in Shadow and Flame.
Guessed Priorities
CoE
BoD
Immolate
HoG
Corruption
Incinerate (
if
MC)
Soul Fire (
if
Decimate)
SB
Shadowflame has been buffed enough for us to want to use it in rotation when possible, even on single targets.
I won't put this in the priorities but bear it in mind
Guessed opening spell order
CoE ► BoD ► HoG ► Immo ► Corruption ► SB ►►
AoE
HoG ► Hellfire
plus
Metamorphosis ► Immolation Aura >on cooldown and/or when prudent
Use a Felguard
What's changed for Demonology?
We have Hand of Gul'dan which refreshes Immolate
for it to work you need to cast it AS SOON as it's off cooldown
Molten Core procs from Immolate and no longer empowers Soul Fire
Decimation procs from 25% health
Destruction
Spec at 85
4/3/31+3
Yup, "+3"!
Nether Ward and Nether Prot have become really useful looking PvE abilities.
Doom and Gloom and Dark Arts are DPS increasing abilities and Improved Life Tap will save some globals.
After that the options are to waste a point in Improved Corruption to get access to Jinx or pick up some utility in demo (Fel Synergy/Demonic Embrace) to get access to 1/2 Mana Feed.
(Personally, at this point, I'm inclined towards Jinx but those with regular UH DKs or Affliction Warlocks in their raids will likely want to go with Demo for the rest of their points.)
Spec at 80
2/3/31
Destruction is the easiest spec to make a level 80 build out of which may prove to make it the strongest spec for patch 4.0.1 raiding.
Corruption is strong enough to go in the priority and get talent points
Guessed Priorities
CoE
Soul Fire (
if
Empowered Imp)
Immolate
Conflagrate
BoD
Corruption
Chaos Bolt
Incinerate
Using a Shadow Bolt for the 5% crit debuff is always an option now all Destruction Warlocks will have the talent. As such you should monitor the debuff and use it if it is not in place
Use Soul Fire (with Soulburn if you don't have a Empowered Imp proc) to get the Improved Soul Fire haste buff whenever it is available
Use BoH instead of Bod when applicable
Searing Pain is
currently
far ahead of incinerate and goes even further beyond with the talent below 50% health. this means that is threat allows you should use Searing Pain as an execute ability.
Shadowflame has been buffed enough for us to want to use it in rotation when possible, even on single targets.
I won't put this in the priorities but bear it in mind
Guessed opening spell order
CoE ► Soul Burn (
if
no emp.imp proc) > Soul Fire ► BoD ► Immo ► Conflag ► CB ► Corruption ► Incin ►►
AoE
CoE (if Jinx) ► Rain of Fire
OR
Seed of Corruption
Still very unsure about this. Will Destro's mastery be enough to pull RoF ahead of Seed?
What's changed for Destruction?
Empowered Imp now procs off your imp's hits and gives an instant Soul Fire
Netherward makes your shadow ward more useful.
Nether Protection makes it even better
Bane of Havoc deal 15% of your damage to the baned target.
It does not work on the same target you attack.
Expect it to be very strong on some rare fights and completely useless on others
Use corruption
Gems
Meta =
CSD
Red =
brilliant cardinal ruby
Yellow =
reckless ametrine
or
lightning eye of zul
if you need the hit.
Blue =
Rigid Majestic Zircon
or
veiled dreadstone
find a way to use the hit because it's going to be unavoidable for blues i think.
Important points regarding gems -
We don't know stat weights. These WILL change with 4.0.1.
I can't confirm the gem changes on PTR because i haven't copied my jewelcrafter. Input welcomed.
I may have just missed some of the gems ^^
to do:
add glyphs
add level 80 specs
(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
372101
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
DraconisAerius
I'm really liking Improved Soul Fire for all specs, it's a great opening bonus for us and easily reachable. For those extra points on Destro I'm inclined to go with Jinx also, mostly due to how right now in beta dps dk's are GCD locked and I think due to how they say they are struggling we might not see as many as we do now. Well at least until the problem gets fixed. The other place I'd put those points is Aftermath, but only if we have any boss fights that feature mobs in the way saurfang, dreamwalker, and deathwhisper do. I also think Searing Pain has some potential, but only when talented. A 40% increase to your crit for one spell is alot. Demonic Embrace might also be worth placing those points in, after all more health = more mana for us.
Looked at the cata.wowhead.com pages for Hellfire, still says it does damage to the caster. I thought they were getting rid of that? The Rain of Fire page is weird, it's different to the likes of Seed and Hellfire in that there is no slider to adjust the level and thus how much damage it does. is it meant to be like that?
What I really think pulls Seed ahead of RoF is when the mobs are still moving, or the tank needs to move/gets feared, then the mobs are still getting hit by the aoe, where as RoF they aren't.
I'm also wondering if Demonic Aegis might be worth specing into. The way the extra healing works on Demon Armor, and with healers being told "You will run out of mana", any extra help for them could save a wipe.
Post by
Fingulfin
Hellfire does do damage to yourself still.
Demonic Aegis is not worth spec'ing into. It is not a DPS increase in any way, shape or form. You can put points into it as demo if you so choose, demo already has a million and a half "extra" talent points required.
If the mobs are still moving, you aren't AoE'ing them. RoF has a huge radius, unless you are pulling the mobs from one end of a room to another, if RoF is higher DPS you will cast RoF.
Aftermath is for PvP.
More health is not more mana for us. Stamina does not help or hurt our DPS or mana pools in any way.
Searing Pain is not and will never be part of your PvE rotation. Imp. SP is for PvP (and it is a very bad PvP talent at that).
Post by
376485
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Post by
Fingulfin
No. The third stack really isn't that important. The only reason we even have an initial shadow bolt before DoTs is to get the 5% crit debuff up (the shadow embrace stack is nice too).
Post by
376485
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Post by
220291
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Post by
Rekijan
A 5% increase in dot damage not important? Noob is confused...
Getting your dots on the target is better than the 5% increase.
Put otherwise: 5% extra dot damage on 0 dots is?
Post by
asakawa
What others said and also the fact that it's a debuff so the last stack can be applied after the DoTs and still effect them all.
OK, i got a bit carried away last night (blame the jack and ginger ^_^) and made a 4.0.1 spec thread with level 85 builds! I've added builds for level 80 now and it all gets a bit more speculative at this point so opinions please!
Post by
TheVorago
a jack & ginger infused asakawa = frivolous speculator? /cheer ^_^
no seriously, your specs look fine too me.
but generally, is it only me who just cant get excited over the heavily minimalistic trees? blizzard saying they wanna add talents that are "fun" and doesnt feel obligatory, but looking generally at the trees, what do we see? if pvp, say in affliction you pick the improved crowd control points. if pve, you don't.
where's the room for stretching? duh..
Post by
asakawa
yeah it does feel like they've stepped back from the stance that the cookie-cutter specs should say "all these points and then spend the last 10 wherever you like".
that was a fine idea but when we all first saw the new trees without enough talents to spend points in, forcing us to get stuff like Curse of Exhaustion, the idea lost some of its cool. PvE players just don't like picking up talents that have zero effect on their DPS I guess.
I really like the smaller trees, they're still bigger than the trees I first used in vanilla and if every expansion added more tiers things quickly get out of hand. just like when tBC released and they had to introduce combat ratings, I think this
is
something that is needed now but it's something that would only become more and more important the longer they left it.
Post by
539323
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
asakawa
I think the times when we use BoH at the start of the fight are likely to be rare but i'm not sure the idea of wasting a haste buff on an instant holds much water. It's almost certainly worth using before SF just for the extra damage though.
I think it's probably best to just remove BoH from priorities and work on the assumption that destro is using BoD unless the encounter allows otherwise.
It's very interesting what you're saying about Emp. Imp procs and not something I'd considered at all. Right now there's so little to use our shards for and destro has Shadowburn as a nice way to regain shards that i can't see it being an issue but, on the hope that they add more uses for Soulburn at some point in the future, you right, it's worth pointing out.
The ISB thing is interesting. All destro locks will have it and none of them will want to cast it. There are so many specs that can do the debuff that I'm inclined to leave it out of priorities for the sake of simplicity. Things start to get very messy when we include all these things but it depends on whether we're making a simple priority list or a fully featured flow chart for the decision making process. I think there's a place for both.
made a couple of changes. let me know if i missed anything
Post by
262843
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Fingulfin
Are you sure? I'm gonna get on later and test this.
Post by
TheVorago
I've been playing on the beta with a warlock, and at least at level 83, Drain Life is doing considerably more DPS than Shadow Bolt is (at least it was the last time I checked. I'll have to check it again).
diz make me happy! hope it holds up.
yeah it does feel like they've stepped back from the stance that the cookie-cutter specs should say "all these points and then spend the last 10 wherever you like".
that was a fine idea but when we all first saw the new trees without enough talents to spend points in, forcing us to get stuff like Curse of Exhaustion, the idea lost some of its cool.
PvE players just don't like picking up talents that have zero effect on their DPS I guess.
and nor should they have to. its just a little silly looking at the affliction tree, the only three talents you wont grab for pve are CC talents. you will and
must
grab all others! any freedom that may have been implied by blizzard then amounts to getting points from other trees than the one you actually prefer. tis strange.
one may have thought that they'd instead add some more borderline talents that are usable and desirable in pvp as well as pve, making it more individual and also fitting for those who arent hardcore min/maxers. we have a good example today with destro's shadowfury that in spite of being a CC is something i personally would never play destro without, while others shun it. Yes the trees look pretty but they could do with some fleshing out.
So if choices aren't present in talents, may we place some hope in the glyph system? :P
Post by
asakawa
So if choices aren't present in talents, may we place some hope in the glyph system? :P
So far, not so much.
the choices are all quite bad currently. For most of our specs there's a stand out choice in each of the prime and major categories and the other two, you're choosing the best of the bad options.
Example:
Affliction picks up Haunt for a major then... corruption? BoA?
It picks up Soul Swap for prime then... SB? Soul Link?
Destruction is the only spec that has more viable options than slots to fill and there will quickly be theorycraft that says "GoConflag is worse than GoImmo so use GoImmo" or whatever.
Personally i really don't like the idea of using DL as a nuke. Channelled nukes have caused a lot of issues for SPs and i don't think we want a bite of that pie really. However, as aaroc says, even if blizz balance it so that new 85s still use SB, at some point were going to get enough mastery that we'll surely be using DL when we kill deathwing at the very latest.
Either way i'll be very interested to hear more about DL's output.
Thinking more about DL as filler (and this also effects DS to a lesser extent), is a channelled spell refreshable like a DoT?
Haste will effect the channel in the same way as it will effect DoT spells - increasing the number of ticks and not decreasing the length of the channel - but if pressing DL again doesn't refresh that same channel but starts a new one then we've effectively got a spell that, as we initially feared with DoTs, only benefits from haste at various threshold points where it gives an extra tick.
Also channelled spells, if not refreshable, have the innate problem of not being queue-able like DD nukes are.
If a recast of DL refreshes the current channel then a lot of my fears go away and we're just left with the fact that blizz have said at various points that they don't want the Affliction playstyle to be purely based around DoTs and channels. If DL beats SB i just think they'll fix it >.<
Post by
TheVorago
Personally i really don't like the idea of using DL as a nuke. Channelled nukes have caused a lot of issues for SPs and i don't think we want a bite of that pie really.
what's been causing issues? since channeling DL or casting SBs = standing still, where's the downside to a nuke that at leasts is an insta-cast/channeling? it's so much more affliction =)
So if choices aren't present in talents, may we place some hope in the glyph system? :P
So far, not so much.
the choices are all quite bad currently. For most of our specs there's a stand out choice in each of the prime and major categories and the other two, you're choosing the best of the bad options.
that's just sheit. but what about the long mastery road? i got the impression this is where much the variety and fun was supposed to take place and this was made possible since it was non class-specific and hence "outside" of the class glyphs. guess I'll have to do some research.
edit: asakawas edit just now made the possible DL problems clearer ;P
Post by
asakawa
that's just sheit. but what about the long mastery road? i got the impression this is where much the variety and fun was supposed to take place and this was made possible since it was non class-specific and hence "outside" of the class glyphs. guess I'll have to do some research.
I don't understand what you're saying here.
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