1. #2021
    Mechagnome Kildragon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brusalk View Post
    Keep in mind that those simc values don't take into account the nerfs on PTR. Haste as a stat will be gone. Crit will be about the same, and probably a bit lower. Mastery will probably be about the same, though perhaps a bit stronger compared to the other two which will take a hit (but not stronger than it is right now)

    As for flat buffing the SP coeffs of abilities, that can get you into some trouble with burst damage, or even with generators hitting stronger or as strong as consumers. The basic premise of generators < consumers needs to hold true for Destro to work as a spec.
    I don't think haste as a stat will be as useless as you think. It was a decent stat before RoF was buffed to increase ember generation and simply that one change won't ruin the stat for us. It still affects all of our spells except for conflag so I don't see its value dropping too drastically.

    You say we have to be careful with buffing coefficients because of burst and generators<consumers. Sure you have to be careful, but aside from mechanics changes such as the proc I proposed earlier, the only knob that can be turned to adjust scaling is the sp coefficient on our spells. I'm not to worried about anything overtaking CB in any case, seeing how incinerate has a 1.54 coefficient, conflag a 1.725, and immolate a .427, while CB has a 2.25 and scales with crit. Plus, chaos bolt is on average critting for almost three times as much as conflag, more than 3 times as incin and has the same distribution for DPET. Even if we cut CB damage and cast time in half, it would still crit for 300k+ every time.

  2. #2022
    Quote Originally Posted by Kildragon View Post
    I don't think haste as a stat will be as useless as you think. It was a decent stat before RoF was buffed to increase ember generation and simply that one change won't ruin the stat for us. It still affects all of our spells except for conflag so I don't see its value dropping too drastically.

    You say we have to be careful with buffing coefficients because of burst and generators<consumers. Sure you have to be careful, but aside from mechanics changes such as the proc I proposed earlier, the only knob that can be turned to adjust scaling is the sp coefficient on our spells. I'm not to worried about anything overtaking CB in any case, seeing how incinerate has a 1.54 coefficient, conflag a 1.725, and immolate a .427, while CB has a 2.25 and scales with crit. Plus, chaos bolt is on average critting for almost three times as much as conflag, more than 3 times as incin and has the same distribution for DPET. Even if we cut CB damage and cast time in half, it would still crit for 300k+ every time.
    I was more referring to PvP concerns with the base 25% reduction on players on Chaos Bolt.

    As for my "Haste as a stat will be gone" I mostly meant that in the capacity of it as a primary stat we'd use. We primary Mastery and Crit at different points with gear and trinkets, and Haste once you get RPPM stuff. With RoF gone Haste will be down below Crit and Mastery in all situations.

  3. #2023
    The Unstoppable Force Jessicka's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by luckydevours View Post
    The situation was much different compared to now. In Cataclysm Soul Swap required 2 global cooldowns to swap dots to another target in comparison with three if you did it manually (3 secs vs. 4.5 secs, both minus haste). Now Soul Swap has a reduced GCD of one second and with Soulburn it no longer requires you to use two of them (1 sec vs 4.5 secs minus haste). So the capacity and convience of SS has been improved quite a lot. By the way this is something i wish had never happened. I'm not convinced that you cannot essentially increase dot damage to compensate for nerfs to MG and DS and affliction will become automatically overpowered. I think with the right countermeasures like reducing dot application capabilities this spec can be balanced however having a significantly different emphasis in terms of gameplay and mechanics.
    It's fairly evident Blizzard aren't willing to take that risk, and have very likely in fact tested in-house. I recall SB:SW coming up as one of the reasons our dots couldn't be more powerful in a blue post or tweet. Weighed up against losing it though for those affore mentioned add fights, the spec could find itself in a worse position overall.

    I believe the strong performance of Affliction in Tier 11 was more due to Improved Soul Fire giving 15% haste and Dark Intent increasing dot damage by up to 9%. Otherwise the spec was not to dominant where those effects didn't come into play, for example in PvP. And once Improved Soul Fire was changed i cannot remember Affliction being significantly overpowered anymore, it certainly wasn't in Firelands and Dragon Soul, despite having strong dots and weak filler spells. It had an advantage in multi target encounters but it didn't dominate the whole content.
    ISF only lasted in T11 for 4-6 weeks in Affliction; the spec still remained very strong long after that and up to T13. I think there, the issue was in fact Shadow Embrace failing at its purpose of strengthening single target focus. You can go back up to 2 years on raidbots, and see the game was dominated in Firelands by Balance, Shadow and Affliction. Why it fell back into its place in T13 is broadly down to the lack of multidot encounters, and the raidwide buff to melee.

  4. #2024
    Mechagnome Kildragon's Avatar
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    With all that in mind, my proposed changes are this:

    -Immolate generates one ember per tick and two embers per crit tick. This would preserve the value of haste and offset the ember loss from RoF. Avg embers gained in sims would be 236 from ticks + 120 from tick crits = 356 compared to 120 from immolate + 113 from RoF = 233. Result = avg of 120 extra embers per sim.

    Current numbers are right here
    http://simulationcraft.org/530/Warlock.html

    -Implement Glyph of Chaotic Haste; "Decreases cast time, damage, and ember cost of Chaos Bolt by 50% but it is no longer affected by backdraft." This should help with destro in PvP while not being ideal in PvE due to it still taking three charges of Havoc. The number is also not set in place, I was simply trying to come up with a baseline number.

    -RoF generates 80% less embers when used against a single target. This will ensure that RoF will never be a part of single target rotation again.

    -Backdraft now also increases the damage of Incinerate by 20%. This would give incinerate some of the oomph! it really needs (it deals on avg 20k less than shadow bolt).

    Now my reasoning. RoF will in all likelihood still be included in the single target rotation, simply because it has a higher DPET than incinerate. My RoF change will make sure that won't happen again. With RoF being out of the picture completely, we would lose around 9% of our DPS from RoF damage and the embers that come with it. The immolate buff would give us all of those embers back plus we'd be gaining a rather large amount of extras. It would also preserve the value of haste and even crit. The backdraft buff would ensure that Incinerate gets some kick to it and it would be a decent buff overall to get us in line with the other specs. Lastly, the CB glyph would let us get CBs off in PvP without making it OP. The damage nerf to CB against players might have to be reverted, but I'm not sure.
    Last edited by Kildragon; 2013-07-23 at 06:07 PM.

  5. #2025
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    Not bad, but if you want it actually considered then you should post in blizzard forums.

  6. #2026
    Mechagnome Kildragon's Avatar
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    I don't have a sub currently so I can't post on the official forums. If you like my ideas then please feel free to post them for me.

  7. #2027
    Quote Originally Posted by Kildragon View Post
    ...
    Now, the obvious solution for blizzard would be just to buff the sp coefficients for destro. Will they do it? Who knows. You did mention earlier that making chaos bolt faster would further devalue haste, mainly cause of the gcd cap. Are haste levels at that point where we actually get gcd capped under BL? If yes, they really need to make immolate generate embers on every tick, at which point haste would gain value again.

    On to your point about a proc, I can actually agree with your sentiment and perhaps a proc isn't the best solution.

    I do like the idea of rapid fire destro, mainly because I like both PvP and PvE. In PvE, a slower CB isn't the end of the world, cause blizzard could make it hit as hard as they wanted to.

    It does create problems in PvP though. There, it becomes a situation of either manage to get those casts off and blow something up, or you fail and as a result get very frustrated. With KJC not affecting CB anymore, destro needs to be a faster nuke spec or it will never be good in PvP again. Blizzard already felt pressured to nerf CB because people got scared seeing a huge skull fly at them and obliterate them. It doesn't matter how easy they are to stop, people hated it. Now with our mobility gone, we just won't be able to get those casts off. Hence my suggestion of a faster CB that costs less embers and does less damage. The spec would still play the same, with the difference being twice as many CBs during the burst phase. You'd still have fast nukes and controlled burst, just in smaller chunks.

    I really don't see another way to make destro viable in PvP again. We either need mobility or speed. In 5.4 we'll have neither. I don't like adding procs either so I really only see this as a good option. Unless they added the other idea we've discussed, and make CB have an adjustable cast time.
    Yes, we hit the GCD for Incinerate under BL/Hero, (and this with even LFR/PvP gear...at least with Backdraft anyway).

    Personally, I mentioned this toward the beginning of the expansion, I thought it would've been better if Soulfire would've replaced Chaos Bolt with a shorter cast time but less damage (still 100% crit), and having Chaos Bolt as an instant proc or CD (perhaps based off Immolate crits, or even a Soulfire buff/debuff of some sort). Whether it is Chaos Bolt that's cast and Soulfire as the proc/CD, doesn't really matter, I just liked it the way I mentioned it due to pixel gfx preferences really. :P

    Though that being said, I feel it's a bit late in the expansion for that degree of overhaul on a spec, but I could see a redesign like that being quite feasible.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kildragon View Post
    With all that in mind, my proposed changes are this:

    -Immolate generates one ember per tick and two embers per crit tick. This would preserve the value of haste and offset the ember loss from RoF. Avg embers gained in sims would be 236 from ticks + 120 from tick crits = 356 compared to 120 from immolate + 113 from RoF = 233. Result = avg of 120 extra embers per sim.

    Current numbers are right here
    http://simulationcraft.org/530/Warlock.html

    -Implement Glyph of Chaotic Haste; "Decreases cast time, damage, and ember cost of Chaos Bolt by 50% but it is no longer affected by backdraft." This should help with destro in PvP while not being ideal in PvE due to it still taking three charges of Havoc. The number is also not set in place, I was simply trying to come up with a baseline number.

    -RoF generates 80% less embers when used against a single target. This will ensure that RoF will never be a part of single target rotation again.

    -Backdraft now also increases the damage of Incinerate by 20%. This would give incinerate some of the oomph! it really needs (it deals on avg 20k less than shadow bolt).

    Now my reasoning. RoF will in all likelihood still be included in the single target rotation, simply because it has a higher DPET than incinerate. My RoF change will make sure that won't happen again. With RoF being out of the picture completely, we would lose around 9% of our DPS from RoF damage and the embers that come with it. The immolate buff would give us all of those embers back plus we'd be gaining a rather large amount of extras. It would also preserve the value of haste and even crit. The backdraft buff would ensure that Incinerate gets some kick to it and it would be a decent buff overall to get us in line with the other specs. Lastly, the CB glyph would let us get CBs off in PvP without making it OP. The damage nerf to CB against players might have to be reverted, but I'm not sure.
    I could go for this as well personally. That being said, it seems like it would be hard to implement RoF generating 80% less embers when used on a single target, seeing how a target can move in and out of it at will, but who knows. /shrug

    I will burn your soul.

  8. #2028
    Mechagnome Kildragon's Avatar
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    The technology is there, seeing how spells like healing rain and even RoF already do healing/damage based on how many people are in them. I imagine it wouldn't be impossible for them to adjust it on a per tick basis in terms of ember proc chance based on the number of targets it's hitting.

  9. #2029
    Quote Originally Posted by Kildragon View Post
    The technology is there, seeing how spells like healing rain and even RoF already do healing/damage based on how many people are in them. I imagine it wouldn't be impossible for them to adjust it on a per tick basis in terms of ember proc chance based on the number of targets it's hitting.
    I guess you're right, I didn't really give it much thought beforehand.

    I will burn your soul.

  10. #2030
    I've almost got my New lock leveled up (old servers dead) bring on the 5.4 grind to glory!

  11. #2031
    Quote Originally Posted by Jessicka View Post
    ISF only lasted in T11 for 4-6 weeks in Affliction; the spec still remained very strong long after that and up to T13. I think there, the issue was in fact Shadow Embrace failing at its purpose of strengthening single target focus. You can go back up to 2 years on raidbots, and see the game was dominated in Firelands by Balance, Shadow and Affliction. Why it fell back into its place in T13 is broadly down to the lack of multidot encounters, and the raidwide buff to melee.
    ISF lastet for over two months until Patch 4.0.6 when it was made inaccessible for Affliction warlocks. They even compensated the spec with buffs to Shadow Mastery, Haunt and Shadow Bite in Patch 4.1, so it couldn't been that dominant.

  12. #2032
    I even think it was more than 2 months it was the whole first patch of Cata till the reashed 5man troll dungeons

  13. #2033
    The Unstoppable Force Jessicka's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by luckydevours View Post
    ISF lastet for over two months until Patch 4.0.6 when it was made inaccessible for Affliction warlocks. They even compensated the spec with buffs to Shadow Mastery, Haunt and Shadow Bite in Patch 4.1, so it couldn't been that dominant.
    Well as I said, the numbers are still there to view on raidbots. Not sure why you're so insistant.

  14. #2034
    Quote Originally Posted by Kildragon View Post
    With all that in mind, my proposed changes are this:

    -Immolate generates one ember per tick and two embers per crit tick. This would preserve the value of haste and offset the ember loss from RoF. Avg embers gained in sims would be 236 from ticks + 120 from tick crits = 356 compared to 120 from immolate + 113 from RoF = 233. Result = avg of 120 extra embers per sim.

    Current numbers are right here
    http://simulationcraft.org/530/Warlock.html

    -Implement Glyph of Chaotic Haste; "Decreases cast time, damage, and ember cost of Chaos Bolt by 50% but it is no longer affected by backdraft." This should help with destro in PvP while not being ideal in PvE due to it still taking three charges of Havoc. The number is also not set in place, I was simply trying to come up with a baseline number.

    -RoF generates 80% less embers when used against a single target. This will ensure that RoF will never be a part of single target rotation again.

    -Backdraft now also increases the damage of Incinerate by 20%. This would give incinerate some of the oomph! it really needs (it deals on avg 20k less than shadow bolt).

    Now my reasoning. RoF will in all likelihood still be included in the single target rotation, simply because it has a higher DPET than incinerate. My RoF change will make sure that won't happen again. With RoF being out of the picture completely, we would lose around 9% of our DPS from RoF damage and the embers that come with it. The immolate buff would give us all of those embers back plus we'd be gaining a rather large amount of extras. It would also preserve the value of haste and even crit. The backdraft buff would ensure that Incinerate gets some kick to it and it would be a decent buff overall to get us in line with the other specs. Lastly, the CB glyph would let us get CBs off in PvP without making it OP. The damage nerf to CB against players might have to be reverted, but I'm not sure.
    I don't really think trying more ember generation to Immolate is a good idea. Plus that makes Immolate an insanely good DoT for Destro while Destro is a nuke spec.

    Trying more ember generation to Immolate suddenly makes Destro extremely good at multidoting for single target gain. That's more of a role for Aff/Demo.


    The other ideas are decent enough. If they do implement that RoF change they should really un-nerf RoF so we can actually AoE again.

  15. #2035
    Really wish they'd make conflag charges scale with haste and backdraft swap to more crit instead of cast time. Any stat being completely devalued for any spec seems like a dev flaw.

  16. #2036
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Kildragon View Post
    -Implement Glyph of Chaotic Haste; "Decreases cast time, damage, and ember cost of Chaos Bolt by 50% but it is no longer affected by backdraft." This should help with destro in PvP while not being ideal in PvE due to it still taking three charges of Havoc. The number is also not set in place, I was simply trying to come up with a baseline number.
    Chaosbolt dont hit so much in pvp, 50% nerf damage would make CB hit like a poor incinerate..

  17. #2037
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    What if we got something to up our crit damage bonus as a completely passive effect to destruction (similiar to elemental shamans), this would ensure that our nukes hit like nuclear bombs which would keep the feel of the spec.

    Would be quite a simple fix aswell when you consider exactly how far behind the spec is falling right now.

    Id say an extra 50% crit damage bonus would be kinda cool.
    Last edited by mmoc77bb2b62ef; 2013-07-24 at 02:27 AM.

  18. #2038
    Quote Originally Posted by AjayxD View Post
    What if we got something to up our crit damage bonus as a completely passive effect to destruction (similiar to elemental shamans), this would ensure that our nukes hit like nuclear bombs which would keep the feel of the spec.

    Would be quite a simple fix aswell when you consider exactly how far behind the spec is falling right now.

    Id say an extra 50% crit damage bonus would be kinda cool.

    You seem to have forgotten that the game is sadly balanced largely around PvP.

  19. #2039
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Teye View Post
    You seem to have forgotten that the game is sadly balanced largely around PvP.
    The funny thing is that blizzard are going to have to bite this bullet no matter how much they dont want to in 5.4 because destro scales so poorly right now (with rof gone) that the only thing they can do is buff damage.

    You can either buff ember generators (which makes the spec feel weird when they hit similiar to stuff like Chaos bolt)

    or

    You can buff Ember comsumers (pvp cry fest)

    or

    You can buff Ember generation (this needs to be done through immolate i think and makes the spec stupid strong with multiple targets)

    But the simple fact of the matter is that you need to buff the damage in some manner, be it through spell coefficients or something like bonus crit damage.

  20. #2040
    Quote Originally Posted by AjayxD View Post
    The funny thing is that blizzard are going to have to bite this bullet no matter how much they dont want to in 5.4 because destro scales so poorly right now (with rof gone) that the only thing they can do is buff damage.

    You can either buff ember generators (which makes the spec feel weird when they hit similiar to stuff like Chaos bolt)

    or

    You can buff Ember comsumers (pvp cry fest)

    or

    You can buff Ember generation (this needs to be done through immolate i think and makes the spec stupid strong with multiple targets)

    But the simple fact of the matter is that you need to buff the damage in some manner, be it through spell coefficients or something like bonus crit damage.
    I actually think that buffing base damage and nerfing our bonus crit damage would be a good option at this point. Bring up the base of our abilities but lower the burst end. Something along the lines of:

    Type: Normal Class | Destro
    Crit: 200% | 175%
    Non-crit: 100% | 125%

    Couple this with a change such that Chaos Bolt doesn't always crit, but is a guaranteed crit during DS and I think it'd put Destro in a better spot in general, especially for PvP concerns.

    (I wish PvP didn't exist so Destro could be the amazing burst-phase centered spec it should be.. /sigh)

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