Naxx loot

[Snifles]

Off of trash on the way to Patchwork




Off of trash in Spider Wing


I will update as I go. Server has been going up and down every 5 min it seems.

Snif

[Theleb]

/hug da Snif

MOAR LOOTS PIX KKTHX?

[El Tanakh]

Relevant links to this thread from MMO-Champion:

Grieving Spellblade

Robes of Hoarse Breaths

Gloves of Dark Gesture

Agonal Sash

Nax 10 Warlock Set

And some more items at MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies


Thanks for the pics Snifles, avantgarde raiding FTW!

[Whezia]

I did some thinking about the Nax 10 man set and affliction!
Blizzard has mainly been working with the aff-tree recently and now they stack over 200 haste on the Nax set?

So what does that mean, will aff. still only be a levling/lowend raiding build as it was in The Burning Crusade? or is it something I don't get?

[Theleb]

That spellblade has the same skin as Iblis - its beautiful ;) (and quite pwn).

[Sasztam]

Well, it certainly does seem odd that Blizz would have us focus on affliction and then stack haste on our set...

I have been hearing that haste may end up decreasing the global cooldown, allowing for faster dotting, which would be my best guess. However, I'd still rather see more damage/spell hit/even crit for the sake of haunt and imp shadowbolt

[Figgs]

Haste does lower your GCD, but last I heard there's a limit to it. Still, just lowering the GCD is a joke if you consider end-game content. It is still a "cap" like spell hit; any haste over and above what you need to have minimum GCD will give you no benefit to DoTs. That is, DoTs cease scaling with haste at that point.

Haste lowering GCD is not a solution to DoT haste scaling. If changes to Affliction regarding haste scaleing stops there, then that's what it'll do exactly---just stops there. Destruction will then pull ahead just like it does in The Burning Crusade now.

[Theleb]

Look at the currently vaunted builds that have been theorycrafted for DPS....look at the sets....see? they match exactly for what, up until this moment, Blizzard have obviously desired to see you spec - destro. Or at least they realise that most raiders will min-max and go that way until affliction gets buffed) but.....with the possible changes to Affliction these are going to be valuable for any spec.

I haven't see a lot of entry-level raid gear but at the moment I don't think there's enough haste reasonably available to hit min GCD simply because 32.7 haste @ 80 = 1%.

[Figgs]

Hmmm. I see. Still, haste has little direct benefit to DoTs.

Destruction warlocks derive benefit from haste for all of their output.

Affliction, suppose we are still looking at a 50% SB/Haunt distribution, will only have 50% direct benefit. For any length of combat time, your DoTs are going to do the same amount of damage no matter how much haste you have. To derive significant benefit, the GCD and cast time you've saved here must be used to do damage, i.e. cast Shadow Bolts.

(Haunt has a cool-down and a duration, so haste isn't going to do much there.)

So haste benefits Affliction through our secondary (filler) spells. Since these spells benefit much less from our other attributes (spell power and crit), each point of haste is worth much less to us than to Destruction.

In other words, Affliction scales worse with haste than Destruction. When all attributes are more or less equally obtainable (i.e. end-game raiding), we'll see Destruction pull ahead because they gain more benefit. This is exactly what's happening now in The Burning Crusade.

Of course, now that Affliction scales with crit, it may be that the haste difference is small enough for all practical purposes, in which case I'll be satisfied.

[Theleb]

The point is that actually haste is worth very nearly as much to Affliction as Destruction if you run the numbers (and depending on your build) problematically people tend to predicate around DoTs and don't realise that the standard SB Filler spell accounts for 50% + of their DPS - you obviously DO realise that but honestly, if the spreadsheet formulae are to be believed (and I've already stated that it can over-value haste because its taken out of context of your itemisation level) then...in fact, I'll go check:

0.92 as Destro, 0.82 as Affliction/Ruin and 0.75 as UA. Depending on how good Haunt proves to be (I think 20% extra damage from DoTs that can crit is as good as ruin - especially when combined with Shadow Embrace) Haste is still going to be worthwhile. Its not as if this set stacks the equivalent to the haste values we're seeing today (around 380+ on really cutting-edge warlocks) as it stands if you gemmed with +damage throughout you're only sitting on 6% haste without counting other sources - I'd guess that we'll see SB casts of around 2.3 / 2.2 seconds even for affliction locks which isn't outrageous.

Its not as good as sheer + damage, no....its not awful.

In other words, Affliction scales worse with haste than Destruction. When all attributes are more or less equally obtainable (i.e. end-game raiding), we'll see Destruction pull ahead because they gain more benefit. This is exactly what's happening now in The Burning Crusade.

You are in fact, revisiting old ground here - its well known that Affliction scales more poorly at this moment in time. Lets wait to see what happens in Open Beta and Live before we tie Blizzard to the Stake of Poor Itemisation