Patch 2.4 tidbits

[Lissa]

Some new tidbits dropped yesterday that are apparently from a leaked email or something. As such, take them with a large chunk of rock salt:

Priest
<blockquote>Mana Burn effect reduced roughly 50%.
Mana Burn cast time reduced by 1 second.
Improved Mana Burn: Now increases the amount of mana burned from your Mana Burn spell by 10/20%.
Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4% down from 1/3/5%
Lightwell: Charges increased to 15, up from 5.</blockquote>

Wonder how this change to Mana Burn will effect things. This may really kill priests in PvP when dealing with mana wars if the amount of mana burned is significantly reduced.

Warlock
<blockquote>Life Tap: Spell coefficient reduced by $
Life Tap now consumes toughly 10% more health when used.
Demonic Knowledge now increases your spell damage by an amount equal to 4/7/10% down from 5/10/15%
Improved Shadowbolt: Now only works for the Warlock.
Improved Shadowbolt: Now increases Shadow damage by 3/6/9/12/15%, down from 4/8/10/14/20%
Incinerate spell coefficient increased by $</blockquote>

Looks like Blizzard is trying to break the Warlock to Shadow Priest synergy (but no vice versa) with the change to ISB. It also appears that Blizzard is trying to make Immolate-Incinerate viable, but I'm not sure they can do it because even with the change to ISB, unless the coefficient change to Incinerate is 15% higher (around the same as Shadow Bolt), Shadow Bolt will still be preferential.

Potential Shadow Bolt damage increases go like:

{SB base damage range + [Shadow Damage * (0.857 (3/3.5) + 0.2 (5/5 SnF)]} * 1.1 (Curse of Shadows) * 1.15 (Sac'd Ho) * 1.15 (Shadow Weaving from SP) * 1.15 (possible ISB being up)

or

[SB base damage range + (1.057 * Shadow Damage)] * 1.455 (1.673 with ISB, 2.91 with Crit-Ruin and no ISB, 3.346 with ISB and Crit-Ruin)

Potential Incinerate damage increases go like:

{Incinerate base damage range + (111 - 128 for immolate being up) + [Fire Damage * (coeffient, presently .714 + 0.2 (5/5 SnF)]} * 1.1 (Curse of the Elements) * 1.1 (Emberstorm 5/5) * 1.15 (Sac'd Imp) * 1.15 (Imp Scorch)

or

[Incinerate base damage range + (111-128) + (Fire damage * .914 presently)] * 1.6 (3.2 with Crit-Ruin)

Just a note as well, having immolate up brings Incinerate up to the same range as Shadow Bolt for damage range. Shadow Bolt 11 is 541 to 603 and Incinerate 2 (figuring in Immolate being on target) is 555 to 642. Average damage on each is then 572 for Shadow Bolt and 598.5. If we assume 1000 damage for each of calculations, the coefficient change to make Immolate equal to Shadow assuming 100% uptime of ISB would be: 0.905, up from 0.714, so around a 26% to 27% increase in the coefficent of Incinerate. So, unless Blizzard makes this drastic a change to Incinerate's coefficient, I don't see Raiding Warlocks switching away from Shadow Bolt to Incinerate. What I do see however, is Warlocks going with Incinerate if, and only if, there are mages rolling scorch in the raid and no shadow priests.