http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrus...and-spells.html

Love the protection talents for warriors. Haven't looked at much else.

Precision is nice. Too bad it AND MS are 30 pt talents, thereby making having both of them impossible. Bleh.

Edit: Heh, Blizz just moved TM to Prot, so this is a completely moot point. Even a bigger Bleh.

Editx2: Even better. With TM now in Prot, no Flurry and MS.... or no 5 pts in TM.


-A

Precision would be nice if it was tier 2 or 3, not tier 7 for crying out loud.

Devastate is a major let-down. Warriors have not had a compelling reason to spec Protection since release, and the best they can come up with is Improved-Improved-Sunder-Armor?

I can see that Arms and Fury tanking will still beat out heavy-Prot tanking in the expansion. A little more damage mitigation from Shield Mastery and Improved Def Stance does not at all make up for all the increased damage and threat you can get from the other trees.

The only cool thing I can see deep in Prot is Focused Rage, but that depends what they consider "offensive ability" to mean. Even if it means all attacks, it is hardly reason to go 31 prot and rule out Mortal Strike/Bloodthirst.

All I can say is, I hope in the new 25-man raids that Concussion Blow, Revenge's stun, and Shield Bash's silence actually do anything. Otherwise there is no reason to go past 15-20 points in prot, ever. Not for tanking, not for DPS, and certainly not for PvP.

<rant-ish>
I think if protection warriors actually had a role in PvP, these changes wouldn't be such a big deal, and in fact would be mostly welcome. PvE (Protection) specced Warrior is useless in PvP, and that's why a lot of Warriors go for DPS, as currently, there is pretty much little else that they can bring to the table in PvP (Mortal Strike debuff being the one 31-point exception).

Priests or Paladins or Shamans who spec for PvE can also be quite good in PvP - at least in groups (in solo PvP, they are not nearly as strong, but hey, neither are Warriors). Good healing is one of the cornerstones of a good group. If Protection Warriors could actually PROTECT in PvP, I can guarantee that we wouldn't see nearly as many complaints about Warrior DPS nerfs or whatnot. As it stands, Warrior is one of the worst classes at protecting his healers, leading to the common sight of Warriors running around mindlessly on the battlefield, trying to rake up as many kills as possible - there is little else they can do.

If Blizzard wants to nerf Warrior DPS, I think a lot of people could live with it, but if, and only if, they are given another utility - for example, actually protecting people in PvP. There is one new ability that works along those lines - Intervene (http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/spells-3411-intervene.html), but Warriors need more of such abilities to make Protection useful in PvP.
</rant-ish>

My issue is not really with the new warrior talents, but with the fact that we basically got crap compared to some other classes. Also, the 40 pt. talents are useless.

-A

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...512023300531051

That's my Blood Elf Pally levelling build

I know what you mean, as I have a warrior as well. I just think that if Protection had some other utility outside of pure PvE, the atrocities from Fury/Arms tree that 41 point talents are (and new talents overall) would be a bit less insulting, as we would have a fairly improved Protection tree to look forward to. For those who might disagree with my choice of words, just look at Deathwish - right now, a 21 point talent is better than both Arms/Fury 41 point talents combined.

As for the the new Warlock spells -- wow!

50% Threat Reduction (takes shard)
Soulwell - everybody can walk up and get a Healthstone (takes shard)
Seed of Corruption - Shadow AoE (yay)

oh and from elsewhere debuff slots raised to 40.

This is really Christmas for Warlocks ...

ps Dark Pact is being boosted to drain 700 mana at highest level (yay) Actually this is a phenomenal upgrade overall for Affliction locks like myself ...

Had a look at the rogue talents, wasn't too impressed with the new ones. However the old ones are very good and 61 points to spend is great

Here's my combat swords build
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...000000000000000

I think that will be everyone's BE leveling build... at least until they hit 10.

Looks like I'm the only one that actually likes the new warrior skills and talents.

Some great skills:
clickable +5% crit for 30 sec after a kill
+730 health shout buff
Spell reflection
Intervene (defensive intercept)

Some talents that I like:
-6% spell damage taken
+30% shield block value
Devastate (instant, damaging, high threat, no cooldown, keeps sunder up)

The Arms 41 pointer doesn't impress. Free moves for 10 seconds, but needs 30 rage to use in the first place and it's on a 5 minute cool.

Looks like there will be a few more pets around too. Shamans get a fire elemental as a skill, Mages a Water one by speccing for it.

and the Warlock's 41-pt talented pet, the Fel Guard

I think it sounds great. At about 25% pop an insane strength potion, a trinket, then pop your talent, and go MS slam slam slam MS slam in ten seconds for a gazillion damage to push it into execute range.

That talent seems okay, but not worthy of the 41-point slot. Priests have Inner Focus that gives them a similar bonus. Inner Focus only gives one free spell, but costs no mana itself (the warrior talent requires 30 rage), is on a 3-minute cooldown (not 5), and is available in the third tier (not the eighth!)

Good point. Hmmm, some possibilites here. For the same cost as MS you get a MS and as many other moves as you can fit in the duration. A bunch of free Executes wouldn't be a bad choice either (presumably these would work like clearcast Ferocious Bites - the base move is free and all rage converts to damage).

Overall I expected the Warrior to gain less than other classes because it's so strong now, with the improvements to the class focused mainly on protection. Those are still some very nice abilities. Can't wait to see the Druid set.

Sounds fair to me - more accessible but only one spell, as opposed to 10 seconds of free abilities at a cost of 30 rage.

I guess my point is that it didn't feel like a very new or exciting 41-point talent. When I think of 31 or 41 point talents, I think of "exciting" talents like Shadowform or Moonkin or Arcane Power. In contrast, I think of talents that simply reduce mana/power costs or casting times as mid-level utility talents.

For example Inner Focus is great, but I would not be thrilled if we had it instead of Power Infusion. Presence of Mind is a great talent, but it seems more like a mid-tier talent than a 31-point capstone.

In this sense, all three 41-point warrior talents strike me as unexciting compared to other classes' new abilities. Warlocks get a new minion, mages can breathe fire, rogues get spell immunity, and paladins get a multi-target ranged damage/snare spell. Meanwhile warriors get an upgrade for Sunder Armor, an attack power booster that is weaker than the Crusader enchantment, and 10 seconds of free spells every 5 minutes.

The new warrior skills are great, but the talents are all ho-hum in my opinion.

Warriors, being the most gear-reliant class, are likely to have underwhelming talents; Blizzard will make up for it by adding crazy weapons and armor and people will cry 'nerf warriors' before you know it. Although, I don't find these talents underwhelming:

In the Arms Tree: Geez, buff arms warriors much? Improved Disciplines is nuts, Second Wind sets the warrior up to use his 41-point ability, and Blood Frenzy gives you 5% more damage for 12 seconds after a crit OR 21 seconds after a Rend--Blood frenzy gives you a melee-only version of the pally 41-retribution talent for 10 rage without a cooldown. And 10 seconds of free abilities is pretty sweet to cap it all.

In the Fury Tree: Improved Berserker Rage is pretty sweet since it scales and Precision gives more gear options. The rest feels like Bloodthirst to me; Something that you're going to have to know when to use to make it work. Rampage is actually almost exactly like Crusader in benefit, depending on weapon speed and the distribution of successful melee swings.

I did a few back-of-the-envelope calcuations based on a model of regularly distributed successful melee swings: With that assumption, Rampage increases attack power in a linear fashion over time until it reaches APmax. If it takes N seconds to reach APmax, then you can model it as 0.5APmax over N seconds followed by APmax for (30-N) seconds. So even for N = 30, you'll see 100AP over 30 seconds at level 70. That's not too shabby, but it requires that you time Rampage correctly to get the maximum benefit.

In the Protection Tree: Improved Defensive Stance is something that has been missing from this tree for a while and the Lounge has already discussed Vitality. The 41-point talent is kind of cool depending on the amount of extra threat actually generated...But where's the 'Improved Intervene' Talent? Protection warriors really need some PvP options and that's one ability that's screaming out for a talent slot in Tier 7 or 8; make it a 3-point talent that lets you intercept additional 1/2/3 attacks against a friendly target.

I disagree. Blizzard continues to not understand the mechanics and problems behind the soloing and raiding Warlock. The biggest problems Warlocks face is threat at all times, not the ability to get rid of half of it once every 5 minutes. While the addition of threat reduction to Imp Drain Soul and Destructive Reach (why Imp DS I have no clue, or even why the talent still exists) it is not enough. They are forcing Warlocks to get MD and have Imps out if they want better than 10% threat reduction. This does not lead to an expanded play style, but a pigeon holing build.

I can only hope that there will be a true Talent review for Warlocks and Warriors prior to BC coming out and we (Warlocks and Warriors) get a chance to argue against some of the changes they're making. (Why is Curse of Exhaustion still a talent based Curse when it should be normal repetoire? Why is the talents for CoW and CoA still split off as seperate talents, there should be one all encompassing talent that boosts all curses by a specific amount. Why does Imp Corruption still exist when Corruption should be made instant much like Arcane Explosion was? Blizzard's developers just don't understand the inner workings of the Warlock in a solo environment and a raiding environment.)

If the aggro-control spell (Soulshatter) dumps 50% of existing aggro, that's pretty huge; you'd just need to use it when you have enough aggro to be worth dumping.

If it operates instead by adding a buff which reduces threat generated by 50% for a minute or two, that might have about the same effect as the 30% overall MD/imp reduction.

Anyhow I think this is basically our talent review. More mana regen, a useful DP, aggro management, better/more affliction spells suitable for PvP, a high-level pet ... it's right from the wishlist. There's some stuff Blizzard hasn't really cleaned up yet, but there's time before the expansion.

Interesting Tidbit: Anyone who grabs Suprise Attacks, as it stands, lowers their DPS. Run through a small script:



I though it was bad (as in completely not worth going for) before. Now that I've seen this (the key is dodged Backstabs take very little energy), I realize it's borderline incompetent.

Improved Drain Soul is really strong. I can see people grinding with this as their main recovery and deleting the shards produced. 15% of maximum mana for free is way better than Life Tap or Dark Pact

Why is that Heroism and Bloodlust for shamans are faction specific but do the exact same thing?

Paladins

Firstly Consecrate is no longer in the talent trees. Presumably it will be a base spell

Next it looks like there's some intention for builds with some Retribution to tank. There's a talent to boost healing done to targets with the Sanctity Aura on. Paladin tanking works by doing Holy damage so this boosts both the amount of threat the Paladin generates as well as the healing done to him. If you're using a Warrior to tank Improved Sanctity Aura would be a slightly odd choice since giving him Defiance or a resist aura would probably work better than boosting his heals and the healers' threat by 6%

Benediction and Improved judgment with the new talents of Empowered Judgement and Fanaticism seem to pave the way for a very nasty judgement spamming build, a bit more like a shock using shaman than usually seen from Paladins now.

For instance this



can be talented to be spammable every 8 seconds with -15% mana cost, +15% crit chance, 10% bonus damage from aura and 3% bonus damage from Crusade. That's in addition to Seal of Blood's normal effect (+30% weapon damage). Horde only, this particular kind of nastiness is not for the gentle souls of the Alliance

I'm expecting a lot of concern about Seal of Blood. The trade-off of considerably more damage for slightly less survivability is a good one for paladins since survivability is so high anyway. In PvP Blood Elf paladins are going to be nastier than their Alliance counterparts, in PvE other Horde classes may become frustrated with all the dps-adins who refuse to heal

In the Protection tree the changes seem oddly PvP-friendly rather than PvE friendly. You have a ranged daze at the top of the tree now - absolutely uber for anti-kiting on players but not really much use in PvE. Also you can slaughter people while bubbled, always good for a laugh. The tooltip should say this talent has a 1/2% chance per use of causing forum drama

In the Holy tree new talents help the raid paladin in the healbot role. Light's Grace is very much designed for a Paladin who is chain casting low rank heals, there's a +damage and healing one and two -mana cost ones. Changes are useful but not terribly exciting. Additionally there's the rather pointless Blessed Life which is a damage reduction talent deep in a tree which isn't otherwise tank or soloing friendly. Mind you small percentage increments to efficiency are probably the best new additions for raid healers, we don't really benefit so much from spectacular or single-use talents. (Give me +1% healing over Lightwell any day, although that's an argument for another day)

Stylistic purposes. Bloodlust fits Horde better than Alliance.

Pending how much extra threat this deals, this is not minor. First, it's an instant-attack, scaling damage, no cooldown, skill for Protection warriors. Something they completely don't have right now. Add in the extra threat you get from this, and it can be a great talent for Protection warriors.

The fact that the threat is dependent on Sunder Armor is a very good idea. It doesn't limit the attacks damage for PvP purposes while not making it "too easy" for threat in PvE purposes.

As far as aggro goes, it remains to be seen how effective the new 41 point Defensive Warrior talent is. There's a good possibility it will increase MT threat gen significantly. On top of that, Horde guilds are getting Blessing of Salvation (keep in mind they've managed to get to Naxx without it). A 50% threat dump at will is pretty damn good for long fights, too. I may be remembering incorrectly, but wasn't the MD/Imp threat reduction additive before, now nerfed to multiplicative? The added threat bonuses (which is pretty nice gravy on the already useful talent Destructive Reach) reduce the threat gap, which is all they *should* do considering the MD/Imp requires sacrifices for that one, now smaller, threat advantage. Considering all these things, I believe there's a good chance that Warlocks will be able to get by without the MD/Imp combo, while maintaining its viability.

Mana feed looks awesome - finally a way to restore pets' MP, or get more from DP. I still would like to see pet's stats/abilities scale with spell damage or something gear-dependent though. The Soulwell looks awesome too, finally something to make Healthstones for a raid at a reasonable shard cost.

We'll have to wait and see just what exactly the Fel Guard's abilities are. It could have a large impact that we don't even know about yet. The only indication we have from the preview is that it's grouped with the Succubus in MD. It's not even listed in DS though, which is odd.

Affliction looks like it could be pretty insane for group PVP. I'm not sure about how exactly dispels work; are the debuffs on a "stack" which pops the top debuff off? If so, I expect Decursive to be updated to simply skip targets with Unstable Affliction on the top of the debuff stack. Unstable Affliction could be a "decursive shield" for the other magic DoTs, including Seed of Corruption which effectively would give you a 36 yd range AOE. Improved HoT looks awesome, too.

It remains to be seen whether Contagion's damage bonus is additive or multiplicative in relation to the Imp CoA/Corruption bonuses. Even if all of the damage bonuses become additive, you're still looking at a 1900 Corruption, 2200 CoA, and 1800 UA on a +500 SD geared lock with the new +100 SD armor buff. That's 5900 damage if they don't get dispelled - talk about lethal.

We don't yet know whether the duration increase for Lasting Afflictions is meant as a damage buff or as a counterbalance to the 30% dispel resist. If it's a damage increase, that'd boost the two instant cast spell Corruption/UA combo to 4950 damage! If the talent does not increase overall damage, I don't think it would be all that useful if UA is usable as a shield for other magic DoTs.

Of course, I have completely skipped Immolation. If the UA "decursive shield" does end up working, that would open up a new combo. Queue up an immolate, once it goes off an immediate Corruption is cast, leaving only 1.5 seconds for a safe dispel before UA comes in. So you're looking at over 4700 damage to an unsuspecting target if the dispellers are busy for only 1.5 seconds, or you're forcing the dispellers to take that 1575 damage hit and dispel anyway.

Who knows, perhaps UA's dispel damage gets increased by spell damage and SM. Talk about a hurtful dispel!


Overall, I'm pretty excited about the Warlock preview. The possibility of locks specializing in DoTs seems realistic. The Fel Guard is intriguing. There are some overall improvements, and the threat situation looks decent enough to me at this early stage. It may not have everything I want, but it's definitely something I'm excited about.

It's a bit early to start slinging about terms like incompetent. You are making a huge assumption that crit % will be maintained in the expansion. I'm not at all sure that will be the case.

In addition, missing a BS you are counting on for a CP to keep your cycle operating optimally could hurt you more then 2 dps.

Well, Heroic strike looks to have been significantly improved with the synergy with shield bash. It sets up another combo like shield block + revenge... assuming some bosses can be dazed... and it seems silly to add this synergy if bosses can't be dazed.

And the focused rage talent looks to bring the possibility of very significantly reducing rage requirements. And I suspect rage will not be "unlimited" in 25 man content, as it isn't in any of the current 20 man content. These rage savings should be able to translate into a rather significant amount of extra threat for a warrior able to spam 3 skills at once (sunder / devastate / shield bash / shield slam / revenge + Heroic + shield block). Add what will probably work out to be 500 HP or so from vitality, and it looks to finally give protection warriors a pretty significant advantage over non-protection warriors or protection warriors with 15-20 points in protection when it comes to tanking.

More interesting to me in the warrior talents is the move of tac mastery into protection and leaving parry in arms. This seems like a deliberate complication to the 30 (flurry) / 31 (MS) that I suspect will be popular among the DPS warriors and PvP crowd.

I know warriors get a lot of use out of their gear, but I hope the devs at Blizzard don't use this philosphy when they design talents. Anyone who levels their character gets the same amount of talent points, but the majority of warriors do not get the awesome weapons that you think of when you think warrior. Just because there are some high-profile warriors in PvP matches who do crazy damage with DPS-focused specs, should all warriors live with substandard talents when they are trying to spec for PvE?

Thanks for pointing out the Heroic Strike/Shield Bash combo, I missed it. I hope raid mobs can be dazed - this would be nice synargy - but I have sure never seen one dazed before. Can non-players even be dazed now?



Vitality was changed to 5% stamina, not 10% stamina, and not 10% health. So if you have 500 stamina, you get a whopping 250 health, for 5 talent points, via a 35-point talent. Fortunately you can put 5 points into the previous two tiers and skip Vitality if you want.

The problem that I see with the way they're handling threat is akin to taking away Feint from the Rogues and telling them to use Vanish to deal with threat or take Hemorage to get a threat reduction for raiding purposes. They need to make threat reduction more viable for Warlocks and only a 10% reduction for Affliction and 10% reduction for Destruction still forces Warlocks to go to MD if they want serious threat reduction. Why is it that all the other classes have threat reduction talents that give them 20% reduction at lower tiers in the trees, but still force Warlocks to go deep into one tree to get 20% reduction? This shows that they looked at the "wishtlist", but didn't understand what Warlocks were talking about.

The fact that they also continue to add more and more DoTs shows that they fail to realize how a soloing Warlock plays. As it was before, a Warlock had to lay down their DoTs in a very specific order with very specific timing for Blueberry to hold aggro. With the increase in the number of DoTs, they effectively will force the Warlock into Drain Tanking and thus relegating Blueberry to being a shield.



This will only be useful to a soloing Warlock. To a raiding Warlock, the chances of getting the killing blow will go down significantly. Case in point, during a run on any given raid instance, I maybe get 5 to 6 killing blows out of a couple hundred kills. Overall, that's not going to help that much in maintaining my mana.



Threat reduction for MD has always been multiplicative. So there has been no change in threat for Warlocks in that sense. Blizzard hasn't understood what the real problems are for Warlock, they're just making changes to make it look like they understand.

The other problem, as I stated above, is there are too many DoTs now. For a Soloing Warlock, this is making it nigh impossible for Blueberry to hold aggro and for the Raiding Warlock, this means that they've practically doubled the number of slots that they can take up in debuff slots. I can pretty much guarentee with the DoT happiness that Blizzard is going through there will be another call to increase the number of debuff slots. Prior to coming out with these talents and spells, the 40 debuff limit looked like it was going to be perfect allowing for all classes to put up their debuff on the mobs without anyone really fighting over debuff real estate, now with the number of DoTs Warlocks are going to have along with the various Debuffs other classes are getting as well, everyone is going to be fighting over who gets how many DoTs.

The other problem that Blizzard hasn't tackled at all is the fact that the demon talents don't scale. Once you top out at 70, your pets don't improve while you do through gear. In effect, the demons just become an extension of spells with not real purpose outside those spells they have (Blood Pact, Seduction, Sacrifice, Devour Magic, and Spell Lock). Instead they should roll all the demon talents into one talent making it require 5 talent points and make it improve all demon powers by 5% per level starting at 10% (so 10, 15, 20, 25, 30) and thus allow for a little more creativity in the Demonology tree.

I just look at the Talent layouts and the new spells and think that Blizzard really didn't put much thought into the Warlock talents at all like they did with the other classes.

Aftermath (a warlock talent that few people take) gives 10% chance to daze with each destruction spell, and blast wave can daze them. But there aren't many ways.

Daze has been added to more than warrior abilities though. I don't remember what else got it, but I remember seeing skills that would daze a target on some of the other classes.

I personally like the idea. It's something prot warriors *don't really have* at the moment. A spammable instant that does damage. +threat is fine, too.

Unless the tank is overgeared, the MT in a 40-man has near-unlimited rage to work with from being hit. If they don't, then their gear is good enough they don't really *need* the excess rage to hold aggro.

Expansion is 25 man content, not 40 man. I expect there to be less rage available than currently... more on the order of AQ20 type content, and in that content you have somewhat limited rage. Plus, even in 40 man content, the "unlimited rage" factor doesn't come in until you start hitting the Tier 2 bosses. I know in my tanking in MC I still didn't have enough rage to be mashing the HS button every swing cycle along with my cooldown skills. Until that happens and you still can't spend all your rage, you aren't hitting an unlimited rage situation. It's going to be more difficult to generate content with that kind of damage done to a tank when you're bound to have fewer healers around just from the 25 vs. 40 standpoint.

Gauging how much threat you NEED is difficult, because DPS classes will "test" their threshold on trash and scale their boss damage appropriately. Shake is an example of this... GG mentioned the hunters would scale back their damage so tehy wouldn't pull aggro... So the tank has little indication that he is not generating as much threat as another tank would. It's difficult to gauge how much extra DPS can be liberated by improving threat generation. In some fights it's zero, while in others it's significant.

It works hand in hand with things like the warlock complaints that they can't utilize their DPS because of aggro concerns. Warrior threat handling capability has been improved... so warlocks will be more able to utilize DPS. Also I see "good tanks" tougher to come by simply because of the parallel tasking you will have to do while tanking. As it is it's a cycle of shield block, heroic strike, and [insert global cooldown skill here]. The expansion will add a layer of complexity with the Shield Bash / Heroic Strike mechanic and the sunder / devastate mechanic.

I don't really see a problem. I can take Keshi into 20-mans and still garner all the aggro I need. So, while this makes for good discussion, I really don't see how it'll be a problem. However, I also don't depend on HS for threat generation. I generate most of my threat off Revenge and Shield Slam, being a tank specialist. In the expansion, I'll have Devastate. I think I'll have all the aggro I need.

Keep in mind that Horde will now have paladins and the godly Blessing of Salvation for 30% reduction of threat across the board which equates to 42% more damage that can be dealt without pulling aggro. That combined with all the recent threat reduction abilities that have been added (particularly for mages in their last review) as well as the new higher threat protection talents that will be added should greatly reduce this problem.

It's not a problem, I was merely pointing out some of the advantages of protection vs. non-protection tanking that people seemed to thing was a small point. People seem to think that the new talents are a very small factor in tanking ability, but I think it will bring a pretty significant threat advantage to protection tanks. Your points are right along with my line of thought.

The only caveat to all this, is that *very* few warriors will ever get that deep in the protection tree. Too little e-peen potential for a lot of players. "ZOMG, I can't do 400 DPS with this build! It suxxorz!" I will go that deep, by my own choice. I'm not generally depended on to do much DPS. And, Conc, I know you're not telling me this, but I get so tired of 'the conventional wisdom' that putting more than 15 points in prot is 'stupid', and 'crippling'. I've also had some of those same 15-point protection tanks tell me that 8/8 Might is better than Wrath because they *need* that extra aggro the set bonus generates. Huh? L2P!

(Not you, Frag)

I don't feel it is. Removing the leaked Shadowstrikes was a reactionary measure -> their fans did the math, seeing how good the talent is. Blizzard immediately goes "whoa, if they're this happy, something must be wrong." So they go to change it, and again don't run the math. When can the Rogues expect a change that is mathematically sound the first time, before the players run the numbers themselves?

Also, even Sinister Strike's DPE (damage per energy) goes down with this talent. Since they have 30% less crit, their DPE only goes down by less than a percent, instead of about 1.2%. I can garauntee you I'll be staying above SS's current crit rate with Backstab.


No, it doesn't. Since the patch Combat Daggers was easily able to grab 3/3 SnD. This has enough built in slack that the dodged Backstabs are not a concern, really. Low Time on Target is the only thing that prevents me from keeping SnD up.

Mutilate also doesn't look so great...

Requires daggers, attacks with main hand and offhand simultaneously, gives 2 combo points.

Assuming equal weapon damage in MH and OH + 5/5 Dual wield spec., that's 175% damage + 2 combo points.

Compare to backstab:
170% weapon damage (assuming 5/5 opportunity)
+30% higher chance to crit if you have improved backstab.

so is 5% more damage + 1 combo point and loss of facing restrictions worth giving up +30% chance to crit?

I don't have proof, but it seems like at the very least it's worth the talent point flexibility to go with backstab (able to go weapon expertise for raiding or MoD for PvP) since mutiliate seems like it requires 41 assassination / 20 combat to be even comparable to backstab.

Soloing with the Voidwalker? Hmm. Isn't your basic grinding build either Dark Pact or Demonic Sacrifice(VW)? I just open with Shadow Bolt, Immolate, and 3x DoTs and ignore that mob while I put 3 DoTs on another.

It's my opinion that the Voidwalker can't hold aggro against any mob you're actually damaging fast enough to be 'grinding' and his only use is to hold off a mob you've left basically untouched if you pulled one mob too many.

Anyhow your post does remind me - what about the poor Succubus and Voidwalker? The Imp is made more viable with Mana Feed (OOM being his main problem) but if there's something that makes the Succ and Voidwalker good pets for solo-60-farming (let alone instances) I missed it. I guess Mana Feed helps there too, but Blue is just not well suited to his ostensible role, tanking. Neither is the Succ's DPS significant post-60, even though she is the melee-DPS pet.

One thing that Demonology needs is something that improves pets with your gear, somehow. A talent or
talents that adds a % of your HP and/or some of your +dam to the pet.

I agree that the 2 new debuffs will probably not find a place in raids. Can't have a Warlock using 5-6 debuff slots out of 40, really. But each Warlock should be able to get a Curse and Corruption (or other magic debuff) on the target, and that's a good thing.

....

Random thought: Maybe Curse of Weakness is somewhat overlooked. One CoW is somewhat pathetic (30 dam out of 900 = 3% dam red), but have 3 locks doing amped CoW and you've taken almost 150 from every hit. Healers should be able to appreciate that.

Mutilate being two tiers deeper than Seal Fate into Subtlety just doesn't make sense to me. Seal Fate builds don't need combo points, Combat Dagger is really the only combo-point restricted build.

One thing we all agree on is that pets need to scale post-cap somehow. That relates to the fact that the VW's threat gen is pathetic at this point in the game, which is the problem for grinding with a VW. They could have book drops like the level 60 spell ranks, or they could directly tie it to some essential lock stat like spell damage.

As for the raid slots, I don't think any given lock is going to want to put up 4 DoTs and spam Shadow Bolt. You'd pull aggro very quickly like that anyway, so I don't see the debuff slots being that huge of an issue.

Random nit: only one instance of each curse can be on a mob at the same time. If one lock uses CoW, any other locks casting CoW will overwrite it. Otherwise you could get multiple Curse of Elements/Shadows on the same mob.

I'm pretty sure I've seen 2x CoA (from different locks) on the same target. But you're saying CoW doesn't stack? "A more powerfull spell is already present"?

if so --- nuts!

CoA and CoD are the exclusions, not the rules. All other curses are one and one only.

The problem with that is what about the Warlocks coming up to 60 that haven't raided? There's still going to be looking Dungeon Set 2 as their best setup for gear and with the additional DoTs, Blueberry has even less chance of holding aggro. Those Warlocks that don't have the raid instance gear will have more downtime grinding if they use DS because they won't be getting back as much Health as a raid geared Warlock and also will be spending more mana casting spells as their +damage isn't as high to kill the mobs sooner.

And I agree, Demonolgy does need a talent(s) that scales the pets better. The three individual talents don't allow the pets to scale. Maybe they should change Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina to pull a percentage of your Int and Stamina onto the pets.