Warlockery in WotLK

Warlockery in WotLK
I say that if the hunters can do it, we can too! So the WotLK warlock talents are out, at least in an early form. They have said that they will be taking away the cheese that is Demo Sac from Destro builds (the wowhead beta talent trees do indeed reflect this), so I was wondering what ideas other locks had for prospective specs. Obviously assuming none of the talents drastically and fundamentally change between now and when WotLK releases. Obviously, it is of limited worth getting into long, protracted discussions and building talent trees when the talents are not truly finalized and could easily change, but...I know I can't be the only person who does it anyway. :D Anyhow, for me, it is looking like my favorite tree -- Demonology -- might be getting a fairly significant buff, to the point that it is actually worthwhile to bring one to a raid (this is also helped because Destro no longer appears to be the GO THIS BUILD AT HIGH END OR DO LIKE 50% OF WHAT YOU SHOULD build anymore as well). The inclusion of Demonic Pact sort of gives us the caster itineration of a Survival Hunter's Expose Weakness. Demo is additionally getting the free '2pc t5' via talents with Fel Synergy, which was sort of what limited and/or outright broke the spec in a lot of situations, so keeping pet up will be a lot easier. I was thinking of something like: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=IZbgczsgoqcsgzVoE0bVb Metamorphosis as a pve ability obviously depends on how good it proves to be in pve. There are a few points there that could go between several talents, namely Cataclysm, Destructive Reach, Mana Feed and Shadowburn. Not really sure what the 'best' between them is as of yet.

For a pure raiding build, it might be advantageous to take Ruin instead of Metamorphosis. Especially because Metamorphosis has a 5 minute cooldown, during which you'd need to make up all the extra damage done by Ruin's crits. This would be tough to do since Warlocks are already so close to the threat cap. I guess it depends on how aggro is managed in WotLK. But by the time WotLK gets released... who knows?

I've been following the new talents since they leaked from alpha, and the build that's most attractive to me at the moment is 50/0/21 with Eradication over Death's Embrace. Demonology looks excellent, and it seems like at least one demo lock will be necessary in every raid thanks to demonic pact. Not sure how demo will stack up against aff early in WotLK raiding, though. Oh, and in case you were still wondering whether spirit would be useful for locks, life tap's mana restoration is now based on spirit rather than spellpower. The Rank 7 conversion (the rank we've got now) is 710 mana + SPI*3, according to Wowhead. Also, fel armor's spell damage is modified by 30% of your spirit in addition to letting mana regenerate while casting. Edited to add - Oh shit, just noticed this next one (thanks Rose): Demonic Sacrifice - Sacrifices your summoned demon to grant you 20% spell haste and 10% spell damage... for 20 seconds. It looks like it's deep demo or no demo at all for pve locks.

For a pure raiding build, it might be advantageous to take Ruin instead of Metamorphosis. Especially because Metamorphosis has a 5 minute cooldown, during which you'd need to make up all the extra damage done by Ruin's crits. This would be tough to do since Warlocks are already so close to the threat cap. I guess it depends on how aggro is managed in WotLK. But by the time WotLK gets released... who knows? I dunno. You’re probably right. I cant imagine Metamorphosis (as an ability balanced for pvp) being able to outdps Ruin in a crit based spec. I thought vaguely about a Demo build with Ruin, taking a point out of Demonic Tactics. I’d rather not make a decision before Metamorphosis is expanded on beyond its extremely vague description though. If Morph is a crappy ability in 95% of all raiding situations (like Shadowfury), I won’t bother with it. If it is wicked fun and still useful...eh, might try it out anyway. I’m sure I will be -*test*-('")ing it a lot in any case, as it is the only interesting looking 51pt talent to play with for locks atm.

lolspirit

I've been following the new talents since they leaked from alpha, and the build that's most attractive to me at the moment is 50/0/21 with Eradication over Death's Embrace. I agree with chosing Eradication over Death's Embrace ; the latter seems more like a PvP talent. But why would you skip Haunt in favor of (I presume) Ruin? The CD is shorter than the duration, which means it should almost always be on, so that means one more DoT and a bonus of 15% to all dots (including, I would think, the DoT part of Immolate). Back when I raided as afflic, about half of the damage would come from DoTs, the other half from shadowbolts, with a very low crit rate for the latter. The homogenization of itemization might mean affliction warlocks will be forced to get higher crit % than we generally did, but I don't think it will be high enough to justify passing Haunt - especially at lower gear levels. I don't really like what they did to Destruction and I'm still not attracted to Demonology, but I'm pretty satisfied with the new stuff in Affliction. If it's viable (and I still play my warlock), I'll be glad to return to my favorite Warlock tree.

Truthfully, I'm still not sure what to make of Haunt. The version you described is very, very good, but it's different from the one currently on wow-europe's talent calculators (which does more damage but doesn't buff your other DoTs) so rather than drop a point into Haunt I tentatively went with Ruin. Edited to add: I agree with you on the destro changes, the only new talent that really interests me is improved soul leech, and that only because spirit is becoming necessary.

Yeah, I was going by the WowHead calculator, apparently it's outdated. Too bad, it was a 51-point talent that was exciting, for once. EDIT : actually, it might be the official calculator that's outdated. Malediction still affects Curse of Shadows...I hope it's the WowHead version that's correct.

As far as I know, wowhead's is the 'most' updated. Storm, Fire and Earth and Elemental Oath -- elemental shammy talents -- were only recently changed from really shitty talents, and the newer ones are on wowhead.

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