A request for a Warlock

[Skandranon]

Actually, you have 6 instants.  You have Fire Blast (normal spell), Cone of Cold (normal spell), Arcane Missiles (talent for no interruption), Arcane Explosion (talent to make instant), Frost Nova (normal spell with very low damage, really a root), and one other spell that I saw that was on a ten minute cooldown like Death Coil.

The only instant spell we have on a ten minute cooldown is Cold Snap, which just refreshes the cooldown on all Frost spells. Arcane Missiles doesn't exactly count as instant either, since its sustained DPS is lower than either frostbolt or fireball.

My point stands: max rate mage DPS is fireballs with a fire blast and cone of cold thrown in whenever the cooldown comes up. Anything else isn't worth wasting the global cooldown on.

The Warlock has Suppression, Improved Shadowbolt, Shadow Mastery, and Pyroclasm.

The Mage has Piercing Ice, Fire Power, Arcane Focus, Improved Scorch, and Arcane Power.

+% damage isn't the same as -% resistance, nor is it the same as +% vulnerability. Warlocks and mages each have just one vulnerability talent: Improved SB/Improved Scorch. Arcane Focus does not improve arcane spell damage, only reduces the chance of a RESIST popping up. Arcane Power is usable once every 3 minutes for 15 seconds, not exactly useful for anything but PvP bursting.

That said, even lumping together passive +% damage and active +% vulnerability, it's pretty easy to see that warlocks get to use Imp Shadowbolt and Shadow Mastery to their full effect together, since all you need to do is cast shadowbolts. To use Improved Scorch, mages have to use Scorch, which reduces the effect of Fire Power since the 10% bonus is being applied to a low-damage spell.

So let me get this straight, your Ignite does half another fireball.  Is this with +damage gear or without?  If without, you're saying your fireball, without damage adders is doing average of 800 or my shadowbolt that does an average of 500, a 300 point difference (this is without me putting on damage adders).  This means that my next 4 shadowbolts (barring something wacky from CoS) is going to give me roughly 400 more damage on that +20%.  It's effectively the same damage Skan. 

With. And I wear something like +150 damage, +5% crit. Without damage gear, Fireball averages 638 damage per cast, and I get about 350 more on an ignite. With damage gear, though, 40% of a crit becomes relatively less compared to 80% of a base shadowbolt (which is what you get for your four 20% bonuses).

Even at this stage, sure, I do more damage, barring something wacky from CoS. And my damage is low, barring something from....from what? At least you can have nightfall and CoS go off. I can either hit or crit. In any small sample, yes, you can factor out nightfall and CoS, but in any large sample they'll combine for a decisive damage advantage.

And if I lifetap and bandage, I can get killed (as happened a couple times now on Onyxia raids, I tapped down 2000 and immediately got hit by two fireballs before I could get bandaged up and died).  Lifetap/Bandage is great if you know you're not going to take any damage, but anytime you're dealing with a large AoE attack or random attacks (like you see from MC bosses and Onyxia), you could end up dead.  The last couple attempts we made at Onyxia, I made sure my DoTs were up and I then wanded when I got low on mana.
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Yes, but at least you have that option. Especially with MC bosses, where their AoE attacks are curses (whee, no dps from me) or on a predictable timer, lifetap and bandage works fine. Mages have no option, even one that can get them killed.