[5.4] Brusalk's Destruction Warlock guide

[jason1975]

Depends on the results. Basically the way I put it to my guild is that I'll play the best spec for the task on progression.

In your opinion, how much of an incinerate buff would Destro need to be competitive with Afflic/Demo? Not better, not even equal, but competitive?

Would like to tweet GC and Lore the answer.

[Brusalk]

In your opinion, how much of an incinerate buff would Destro need to be competitive with Afflic/Demo? Not better, not even equal, but competitive?

Would like to tweet GC and Lore the answer.

Well, that's a really hard question because of all the changes that have happened to every spec.

I can give you a rough answer to make up for the 33% ember loss from RoF though, if that'd help.

[Werst]

Simply to offset the loss of 30%'ish ember generation you would have to buff ember consuming spells 30% minimum. That still wouldn't fix the piss poor scaling, especially haste/legendary meta gem scaling, the spec is held back by. Even with that kind of buff the spec still wouldn't keep up it would just not lose ground from the RoF change and just in terms of the ember consuming spells. For incinerate, conflag, FF (dest only) you would want to buff the base numbers at least 10% to match step with immolate but buff the coef closer to say arcane mages for all of them. Darksoul is also much weaker comparatively speaking than aff or demo's darksouls. You could double it and it still wouldn't match...probably need to do something like 30% crit and 30% crit multiplier. Otherwise if its left as is then destro needs to be comparatively more powerful the rest of the time to offset the weaker darksoul. Since the present playstyle is all about CD stacking that makes balance tricky.

Really changes like a minor glyph to trade 30% crit on backdraft for the 30% haste (okay cast speed reduction) and reducing conflag's recharge by haste (the way imp swarm glyph works) would help the spec quite a bit. Even if it came at the expense of making shadowburn eat 3x havoc charges or something. I am concerned that destro's situational cleave/sniping is holding it back from ever having better mechanics that would let the spec stand on its own outside its niche.

TLDR mongo buffing incinerate (only incinerate) to catch the other specs would have to be so large it would throw off all sorts of things.

[Brusalk]

Simply to offset the loss of 30%'ish ember generation you would have to buff ember consuming spells 30% minimum. That still wouldn't fix the piss poor scaling, especially haste/legendary meta gem scaling, the spec is held back by. Even with that kind of buff the spec still wouldn't keep up it would just not lose ground from the RoF change and just in terms of the ember consuming spells. For incinerate, conflag, FF (dest only) you would want to buff the base numbers at least 10% to match step with immolate but buff the coef closer to say arcane mages for all of them. Darksoul is also much weaker comparatively speaking than aff or demo's darksouls. You could double it and it still wouldn't match...probably need to do something like 30% crit and 30% crit multiplier. Otherwise if its left as is then destro needs to be comparatively more powerful the rest of the time to offset the weaker darksoul. Since the present playstyle is all about CD stacking that makes balance tricky.

Really changes like a minor glyph to trade 30% crit on backdraft for the 30% haste (okay cast speed reduction) and reducing conflag's recharge by haste (the way imp swarm glyph works) would help the spec quite a bit. Even if it came at the expense of making shadowburn eat 3x havoc charges or something. I am concerned that destro's situational cleave/sniping is holding it back from ever having better mechanics that would let the spec stand on its own outside its niche.

TLDR mongo buffing incinerate (only incinerate) to catch the other specs would have to be so large it would throw off all sorts of things.

Indeed. I don't think only buffing Incinerate is in any way a good idea, but it's possible to do.

I'm really hoping that they take a long and serious look at Destro in the expansion. It's gameplay is insanely fun, but it's not even all that good at it's niches anymore. Aff and Demo 2 target cleave both do more damage than Destro. Not to mention that burst at the start of the fight is completely and utterly in favor of Aff and Demo than Destro.

It's somewhat funny that the "burst" spec has such terrible burst.

[jason1975]

Well, that's a really hard question because of all the changes that have happened to every spec.

I can give you a rough answer to make up for the 33% ember loss from RoF though, if that'd help.

Yes, a rough number. We're not trying to fix all the issues, we're trying to impact on the decision they are about to make.

[Deleted]

hi Brusalk just wondering about gems in 5.4

full mastery gems in yellow slots or int_mastery gems and so on

[Brusalk]

hi Brusalk just wondering about gems in 5.4

full mastery gems in yellow slots or int_mastery gems and so on

Not 100% sure yet, but probably full mastery.

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Yes, a rough number. We're not trying to fix all the issues, we're trying to impact on the decision they are about to make.

I'll try and come up with one when I get home.

[Schirmy]

Destruction

Chaos Bolt's damage has been increased by 15%.
Incinerate's damage has been increased by 10%.

Thanks, Blizz.

[Scathbais]

Destruction

Chaos Bolt's damage has been increased by 15%.
Incinerate's damage has been increased by 10%.

Thanks, Blizz.

So is 10% enough to make incinerate our filler over felflame?

[Deleted]

If its to scaling and base (which it probably is) then yes.

[Smoothmeduso]

So is 10% enough to make incinerate our filler over felflame?

Yes it is enough to be the filler over Fel Flame but we already knew that blizzard wouldn't allow us an instant filler. The 10% buff to incinerate raises the value of crit a bit more due to higher critical strike damage on incinerate hits. I don't recommend gemming full critical gems because as of now intellect still has the better damage scale over all other stats(from my tests). To be honest we are nothing more than fire mages as destro in our attempts to achieve the highest amount of crit possible without sacrificing intellect.

[Deleted]

Except that we stack mastery, we have green fire, chaos > pyro, we have an execute, we have demonz, we have better aoe, we actually have a CD to buff our damage.

Im sure i could make that list go on a bit.

[Smoothmeduso]

Except that we stack mastery, we have green fire, chaos > pyro, we have an execute, we have demonz, we have better aoe, we actually have a CD to buff our damage.

Im sure i could make that list go on a bit.

We is a relative term, my test show that critical out weighs mastery, so crit will be my main stat. The 10% buff on top of this makes it out weight it even more long live destro being competitive once again.

[Deleted]

GL with that, if i could ask did your testing ever get based off of anything other than hitting a target dummy at 535 item level or w/e that was at the time.

[JV Chequer]

We is a relative term, my test show that critical out weighs mastery, so crit will be my main stat. The 10% buff on top of this makes it out weight it even more long live destro being competitive once again.

There is no way crit overweight mastery at Heavy AOE fights.

[Barnagma]

Not 100% sure yet, but probably full mastery.

So destruction in affliction gemmed/enchanted/reforged gear will do(atleast a bit)? It's for solo purpose only

[Deleted]

Crit isint better for destruction next patch regardless, its literally impossible because of the 4 set / 2 set / DS and ofc how huge the int is on procs next patch.

Just as an example -

35 - 40% crit raid buffed
30% DS
15% 4 set
Int procs + potion + 2 set would probably throw you over 100% in certain situations.

Now seen as we get so much crit easily when it matters (DS and 4 set) and it devalues the more you get i see absoloutely no way that it would out way mastery which doesnt in any manner suffer diminishing returns and helps hugely with AOE.

To add to this the 4 set has a 10 second internal CD so that would devalue crit even further.

On a seperate note, i actually think that incin buff is enough to make Sacrifice better than sup at high mastery levels, i jumped on the ptr and just randomly casting on the dummy was getting some incinerates as high as 518k, i think thats significant enough not to ignore (Zero testing on that btw just a hunch)

http://imgur.com/XZUq0yl <-- screenie incase interested.

[Smoothmeduso]

Crit isint better for destruction next patch regardless, its literally impossible because of the 4 set / 2 set / DS and ofc how huge the int is on procs next patch.

Just as an example -

35 - 40% crit raid buffed
30% DS
15% 4 set
Int procs + potion + 2 set would probably throw you over 100% in certain situations.

Now seen as we get so much crit easily when it matters (DS and 4 set) and it devalues the more you get i see absoloutely no way that it would out way mastery which doesnt in any manner suffer diminishing returns and helps hugely with AOE.

To add to this the 4 set has a 10 second internal CD so that would devalue crit even further.

Crit value is for all spells to crit most of the time it is more important than mastery due to emeber regen, and double damage of normal spell hits, whether we hit the 100% crit threshold that you have set is irrelevant. New tests with 50% crit and trinkets with intellect procs show an increase in damage. You are basing your theory on the fact that when crit hits 100% for a couple of seconds of the fight more important than having sustained critical strike damage from all spells. This is why you see destro being so far behind the other two specs. If you open your mind you will understand the significance of getting critical strikes with spells half the times or more.

In my test mastery did not equal or apply more damage than the critical strike of all spells. This is simply understandable because a critical strike is 100% more damage for the selected spell, for an example if an incinerate hits for 150k regular it will crit for 300k or more. No amount of mastery possible will allow this to happen(in current gear). Mastery however isn't useless it is very close the crit and is the second most valuable stat between crit,haste, and mastery. If you do not crit while prioritizing mastery, the crit that you are saying is our second best secondary stat is useless. To compensate for this loss crit should be atleast 50%+ so you can get the most out of mastery. Chaosbolt is our strongest spell but we have other spells that we use to sustain our dps. In order to sustain dps our other spells have to hit for higher damage. The highest damage one can achieve at the moment is critical hits+mastery which further increases the value of getting a critical strike.

The green fire doesn't set us apart from a fire mages, because fire is our element of damage as is it is for mages. Green fire is nothing, the original locks such as myself deserve more after the doom gaurd ritual and Dreadsteed quests we had to endure.

[Deleted]

Smooth no offense but you are not worth wasting energy on trying to convince, i can keep about 55% crit chance on incinerate while stacking mastery over 50-60 million damage (without raid buffs) because i know how to use my temp buffs, i dont care for your opinion because in my eyes are wrong, i also will go happily wrecking meters as i always do as destruction, you can do what you want and im not stopping you but for the love of god if your gna post that trash at least back it up with something, the last time you done this you linked some random youtube video of you battering a dummy with what looked like pvp gear and the free gear on the ptr.

Soz for lack of paragraphs <-- tired

[Smoothmeduso]

Crit isint better for destruction next patch regardless, its literally impossible because of the 4 set / 2 set / DS and ofc how huge the int is on procs next patch.

Just as an example -

35 - 40% crit raid buffed
30% DS
15% 4 set
Int procs + potion + 2 set would probably throw you over 100% in certain situations.

Now seen as we get so much crit easily when it matters (DS and 4 set) and it devalues the more you get i see absoloutely no way that it would out way mastery which doesnt in any manner suffer diminishing returns and helps hugely with AOE.

To add to this the 4 set has a 10 second internal CD so that would devalue crit even further.

On a seperate note, i actually think that incin buff is enough to make Sacrifice better than sup at high mastery levels, i jumped on the ptr and just randomly casting on the dummy was getting some incinerates as high as 518k, i think thats significant enough not to ignore (Zero testing on that btw just a hunch)

http://imgur.com/XZUq0yl <-- screenie cause im sure ill get called out for bullshit on this.

Sacrifice as I stated before in the forum is better than all other grims in 5.4. The 10% buff didn't make the glyph better it is just better if one tests it with the right stat weights. I easily saw this with the crit>mastery build.

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Smooth no offense but you are not worth wasting energy on trying to convince, i can keep about 55% crit chance on incinerate while stacking mastery over 50-60 million damage (without raid buffs) because i know how to use my temp buffs, i dont care for your opinion because in my eyes are wrong, i also will go happily wrecking meters as i always do as destruction, you can do what you want and im not stopping you but for the love of god if your gna post that trash at least back it up with something, the last time you done this you linked some random youtube video of you battering a dummy with what looked like pvp gear and the free gear on the ptr.

Soz for lack of paragraphs <-- tired

No worries. You are entitled to do what you want. You can call anything trash because you have that right. I will not get upset at your response to my results. If you refuse to become a better destro lock that is your business. Glad to see you decided to use the trash grim: sac, that I stated would be best for 5.4. 10% buff doesn't affect grim of sacrifice it is just a passive buff which means Grim: sac was always the better choice. Instead of typing insults focus on proving my theory to be wrong and actually contribute something to the forums instead of copying what someone else has said and acting like a child. If there is anyone who want to test my theory feel free to do so and let me know the results so I can compare them to mines. Thank you.