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Comment by 8888_

Do not let your raid leader force you to take this talent. It is a very minimal increase, and it wastes your talent points.

That being said, it does a very minimal upgrade to damage.

Comment by 50996

that is not true at all this talent is very good for pve and pvp. my drain life and siphon life do much more and it helps that this dot last's 5 mins so in a fight i have 1 less dot that i have to recast over and over.

Comment by diskenth

For Affliction spec warlocks, this is a waste of a talent point. Curse of Agony should be used in every solo PvE situation instead of Curse of Shadows. In raiding, only 1-2 warlocks will be carrying this, and will probably be unhappy to be speccing it as they have to respec in order to do maximize their grinding potential.

@chrisstbtc: You're definitely thinking of Shadow's Embrace. 1 pt of that is a must-have for Affliction specs as it creates a free dot to drain more life with!

Comment by 109709

CoS and CoE are for bosses/mobs with alot of hp when youre dpsing with many casters, for doing most possible dmg. Theyre meant for raiding, but if you somehow manage to get in a 5-man heroic with 3 mages/locks/sp i guess you could do alittle more dps with CoS/CoE, at least if you got malediction.

And chrisstbtc is not talking about the shadow embrace talent (which reduces physical dmg dealt), but as he says: CoS, which, with 3 points in malediction, will do totally 8% more life drained (if CoS counts as an affliction, thinking of the soul siphon talent).
Also, you deal 8% more dps with your shadow spells, tho you yourself lose dps if you usually would use CoA. So its not for soloing :)

I dont know if 1 warlock's CoS will stack with another one's CoS (or CoE with CoE), but if they do, any deep affli lock who's into raiding, should imo spec malediction unless it gives the tanks a problem with holding aggro, but i doubt that.

More vulnerability means less needed firepower, which means less need of mana, which means less need of pots. ^^
You also get more time to focus on whatever is needed in a complicated bossfight since you wont need to nuke that hard to get the boss down before he enrages and wipes the raid.

Comment by 56606

In 2.4.3 one aff lock will be pretty much mandatory as Curse of Shadows will be abolished, its effects rolled into Curse of Elements. This should help alleviate some animosity between the various caster dps classes (except the poor Nature guys).

Comment by Zeeklock

It says that this will now increase spell dmg by 3% fully ranked, wich depends on how much spell dmg you currently have, not bad but remains to be seen

Comment by Blightman

It is 3% boost to spell damage whether CoE is up or not. Tested myself:

respec affliction minus malediction
Drop a corruption on a dummy in IF
record how much it ticks for
now add in the 3 points to malediction
Drop a new corruption on a dummy in IF
record how much it ticks for

Comment by 241152

Improved corruption, shadow mastery, and contagion are additive
if you have all three, the formula looks like this:
(base damage + added damage from spellpower) * 1.30

Works the same way with improved CoA, contagion, and shadow mastery:
(base damage + spellpower damage) * 1.30

Malediction works differently, it's multiplicative. If you have imp. CoA, shadow mastery, contagion, and malediction, the formula for CoA looks like this:
* 1.03

Comment by 104258

when it says "increases spell damage by 3%", does that apply only to Curse of the Elements or all your spells?

Please make sure you personally "tested" this, I don't trust blizzard.

Comment by 168146

in the next patch this talent will only give 3% increased spell power.... wich makes it useless. (hard to believe but blizz turned yet another talent useless for afflic locks). Lets say u reach 2000 bonus spell power. 3% of that is 60....so are 3 talent pts worth 60 bonus spell power? i think not. if blizz doesnt add smth to it, then its role is just to fill up the talent tree

Comment by nekorion

I know the tooltip states it increases your periodic spell crit chance by 9%. however when you are getting this while leveling, does it apply? Without pandemic does this actually do anything to your crit chance?

I ask because it comes before it on the tree, so you potentially get periodic spell crit chance before you have the ability to do it. Warlocks have some funky mechanics like Nightfall being exactly the same as Glyph of Corruption so you can actually use glyph without nightfall. By that logic, do warlocks pick up 9% crit chance on getting it?

Comment by Thottbot

This should 15% to make it worthwhile for this talent to be used. Curse of agony makes all the difference and its on the lower part of the tree and mostly used.

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Malediction

Malediction

Talent

Increases your spell damage by 3%, and increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells by 9%.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Modifies Critical Strike Chance (7)
Value: 9
PVP Multiplier: 1
Affected Spells:

Corruption	Corruption	Corruption
Corruption	Corruption	Corruption
Corruption	Corruption	Corruption
Corruption	Unstable Affliction	Unstable Affliction
Unstable Affliction	Unstable Affliction	Unstable Affliction

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Mod Damage Done % (All)
Value: 3%
PVP Multiplier: 1

Flags

Is Ability
Passive spell
Aura is hidden
Cast time is hidden

Malediction

Buff

Spell Details

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