[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Deleted]

I keep seeing people dissing Mastery without realizing just how strong it is, combined with how much weaker crit got because 15% WoD bonus for destruction was eliminated and it not helping that much with shards really compared to embers.

To put this in perspective, currently I have:

4481 Crit Rating - this equals to +12.8% crit - to a total of 17.8% crit
9118 Mastery Rating - this equals to + up to 78.15% damage - to a total of up to 102.15% damage.

Slash my mastery rating by half and it will be close to my current crit rating, which will become: +12.8% crit vs + up to 38% more damage raw stat benefit. (Haste scales as crit with rating btw).

That said - mastery does not affect pets and rifts, however even taking that in account - I believe Mastery will be a top stat to take or at the very least very competitive with alternatives, especially because it provides strong actual damage benefit AND comes with a juicy damage reduction component on top of that. At 102% mastery you have up to 22% damage reduction, that is not a small amount.

If anything, my experience shows that stacking Mastery to high heaven seems to deliver in Alpha/Beta.

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And yes baseline AoE got gutted, Rain of Fire is not a weak spell, it's ok, but it by itself is not really that much and every time tank moves trash out of it makes me /sadface... and this is happening like 40% of the time at least.

38% is 19% extra damage on average from mastery, with increased RNG because bigger swing, no effect on pet.
12,8% crit = 12,8% extra damage on average without crit damage talents/modifiers, with reduced RNG from crits. However we get double shard chance on a immolate crit tick and that means more CB's and less incinerates. However I have no idea how to calculate that in a damage increase.

Both effects are multiplicative with eachother, so I could very well see both being desired in equal numbers. Besides that I find those ratings to be pretty close, especially when you use a pet.

[Gaidax]

38% is 19% extra damage on average from mastery, with increased RNG because bigger swing, no effect on pet.
12,8% crit = 12,8% extra damage on average without crit damage talents/modifiers, with reduced RNG from crits. However we get double shard chance on a immolate crit tick and that means more CB's and less incinerates. However I have no idea how to calculate that in a damage increase.

Both effects are multiplicative with eachother, so I could very well see both being desired in equal numbers. Besides that I find those ratings to be pretty close, especially when you use a pet.

There is quite a lot of difference between 12.8% and 19%, this gap will grow significantly as we get more stats and also do not forget that mastery offers pretty fat damage reduction.

IMO, Mastery will simply be too good to pass up, not only it is extremely competitive damage-wise, but on top of that damage reduction too. If anything, I can see raiders stacking it through the roof just because of literally free damage reduction.

[Lucrece]

It is absolute dogshit in PvP though.

[Baconeggcheese]

I worry more about the future of the mastery with how its scaling.

Right now its not too crazy on numbers, but that can quickly get out of hand if we're already seeing numbers as high as 100%. Imagine us having 200+% swings in dmg on a single cast on just mastery alone before other modifiers.

Hopefully the secondary stat scaling drop off is fairly steep as we go, otherwise we'll get to shenanigans pretty fast.

[Gaidax]

I think people are too much obsessing with polar extremes (with bias towards 0).

Overall it will average out just fine.

[Deleted]

guess so, never happened to start a expansion having a 45% secondary mainstat like haste

[Baconeggcheese]

I think people are too much obsessing with polar extremes (with bias towards 0).

Overall it will average out just fine.

I'm not at all concerned with averages, I'm concerned with the potential for massive swings. If I knew it was on a fairly steep bell curve I'd be less concerned, but if its truly random then the higher the number gets the more it has potential to cause significant issues. Those issues not just being 0, but also being 100% of whatever value.

The extremes are precisely the problem. And what makes it especially frustrating for people is that its completely out of our control. Arcane mage right now has a similar issue where they can RNG swing to do the same dmg of 2 other mages combined or be the mage doing half the dmg of the other mage and its completely out of their control. That isn't fun for people, RNG is healthy within reason but this has the potential to cross the line.

[Gaidax]

So you mean it's just like Critical Chance for every other class?

[Baconeggcheese]

So you mean it's just like Critical Chance for every other class?

You say that as if we don't have crit chance.

[Gaidax]

You say that as if we don't have crit chance.

We are certainly less susceptible to its quirks than just about any other spec.

[Baconeggcheese]

We are certainly less susceptible to its quirks than just about any other spec.

We can cast an incinerate for instance that can do anywhere between X and X x Y x 2. I'm actually more concerned with the high end here and the ramifications that come with being able to RNG into stupid damage by pure chance.

RNG is healthy within reason, I didn't mind this mastery at all when it looked like we were going to have 50-60~ish. But once we're pushing towards well past 100 it starts to create problems. Personally I'd rather them just neuter the scaling put on a decent bell curve and buff the base damage of the spec. I'm ok with some variance, but this scaling is on the cusp of getting out of hand really fast during the xpac.

[Gaidax]

Yes we can, I did see one freaky Incinerate like this that did almost Chaos Bolt damage... one.

It's rare really, most of the stuff falls in this ballpark of +25%-+75%.

[Bidis]

Thing is with mastery's current scaling, our RNG may become more consistent-ish which may result in some sort of nerf. It's really less disappointing to have it designed differently to begin with, than getting nerfed at a later point IMHO. In a fight it will most likely even out but will it raise any bells when it spikes? Still this is mere speculation unless someone crunches numbers.

[Soulzar]

I worry more about the future of the mastery with how its scaling.

Right now its not too crazy on numbers, but that can quickly get out of hand if we're already seeing numbers as high as 100%. Imagine us having 200+% swings in dmg on a single cast on just mastery alone before other modifiers.

Hopefully the secondary stat scaling drop off is fairly steep as we go, otherwise we'll get to shenanigans pretty fast.

They said it was supposed to. Focus was to increase primary to keep the secondary's multipliers in check.

[Gaidax]

Thing is with mastery's current scaling, our RNG may become more consistent-ish which may result in some sort of nerf. It's really less disappointing to have it designed differently to begin with, than getting nerfed at a later point IMHO. In a fight it will most likely even out but will it raise any bells when it spikes? Still this is mere speculation unless someone crunches numbers.

Unless it really goes out of hand consistently as you say, there won't be any issue IMO, you constantly have these "lol 400k Chaos Blott in PvP nurfr plz!" things popping up and it does not do anything because freak occurrence is freak occurrence.

At worst warcraftlogs may be skewed to misrepresent state of things with some lucky warlocks getting good streak.

[Uzkin]

Mastery should be rolled three times, and the results added together. (appropriately tuned, ofc)

Or even better, rolled twice for fillers and three times for spenders, and added.

[bio347]

It seems like making mastery more consistent goes against the point of it.

[Uzkin]

It seems like making mastery more consistent goes against the point of it.

If the point is a stat that most destro locks find annoying, then sure.

[Baconeggcheese]

Yes we can, I did see one freaky Incinerate like this that did almost Chaos Bolt damage... one.

It's rare really, most of the stuff falls in this ballpark of +25%-+75%.

If it happens ever its a problem. It's not really a problem of it being RNG, its a problem that you can have severely different casts and the range of that gets wider and wider as we get more gear.

Just as an example, in mop warriors had these taste for blood stacks that in pvp they'd just beat on targets doing no damage until they got enough of and then all of a sudden decimated the target. They had to give it a pvp only limitation because it was a problem, thankfully pvp is getting the separate stat sheet in legion so for that specifically it won't be a problem, but it'll still happen in pve.

I've no desire for destruction to look like arcane does today.

[bio347]

I think TfB is a pretty poor comparison, because it's not like you're "doing no damage" if you roll a bit low on a couple successive shots. It's also completely uncontrollable, and will theoretically normalize over the duration of an encounter, so in fact it's pretty much nothing like TfB was.

If the point is a stat that most destro locks find annoying, then sure.

Well then you're going to come up against the ever-present "MMOC forums are a hilariously poor representation of 'most'" issue, of course.