[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Deleted]

Channel demonfires cd is reduced by haste, so gear shouldn't be making it irrelevant.

But if I'm swiming in Shards because of high crit/haste + SC, why would I pick Demonfire? I hope it's a good talent, adding an extra button should be rewarded.

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one thing i didnt expect is that quite a bit of destro's single target damage is pet/guardian damage (because of dimensional rift)

the rifts, main pet and service pet, plus doomguard/infernals is giving me around 35% of my overall damage.

this may be a good thing for wreak havoc as we can't cleave pet/guardian damage so they dont have to nerf it.

And how much of that damage is for the rifts? I think Rifts get the mastery roll, the rest doesn't, lowering the value of mastery by a significant number.

[Deleted]

But if I'm swiming in Shards because of high crit/haste + SC, why would I pick Demonfire? I hope it's a good talent, adding an extra button should be rewarded.

well the first thing we'll need to do is to find out if we're swimming in shards solely bcoz of high crit/haste or if it is due to high crit/haste+SC, as a lot of ppl are really pushing SC as the go to talent but it stands to reason that it is possible to reach an amount of haste/crit that renders the gain from SC negligable bcoz you wont have enough gcds to spend to spend the majority of your shards, rendering SC pretty useless, i can definately see SC becoming worse as we get more and better gear.

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From what I'm seing atm. mastery will be our best stat. But wait for simulationcraft if you wanna be sure.

Mastery does however have the nice benefit that it also improves your survivability. I had 135& mastery resulting in up to 30% less damage taken.
On Krosus this did 18 million absorb, whereas my Soul Leach did 42 million in comparison.

In general destruction survivability is really good with 1 minute CD on both our major defensive cooldowns.

im not exactly sure that mastery is going to be our best stat, haste should at the very least be right up there as it increases the amount of shard procs from immolate(yes i know that immolate crits doubles the proc chance but more chances is always better and haste gives you that directly and crit gives it through RNG, basically its predictability vs RNG) and reduces the cd of stuff like conflag and afaik demonfire in addition to reducing cast time of our spells, atleast im fairly sure haste will be above crit as i dont think crit does that much for destro anymore, as i see it, it will be something like mastery>=haste>crit but thats just my opinion and i might be wrong, i guess we'll have to wait until we're closer to release and finished tuning and let the theorycrafters do their thing.

i do agree that destro's survivability is looking extremely good atm with a 1 min cd on dark pact and UR, plus we have the life tap trait that reduces dmg taken by 30% every time we use it for 6 secs and soulleech+demon skin along with what we get from mastery, we will prolly be as tough as "ranged"tanks in raids, having an on demand 30% DR alone is potentially massive especially considering it only costs you 10% hp to use life tap, you could potentially sit at 60ish% DR at anytime you want, provided you get a good roll on the DR part.

[Duckz0rs]

well the first thing we'll need to do is to find out if we're swimming in shards solely bcoz of high crit/haste or if it is due to high crit/haste+SC, as a lot of ppl are really pushing SC as the go to talent but it stands to reason that it is possible to reach an amount of haste/crit that renders the gain from SC negligable bcoz you wont have enough gcds to spend to spend the majority of your shards, rendering SC pretty useless, i can definately see SC becoming worse as we get more and better gear.

For what it's worth: I've been testing with a template character on the PTR. With 10% crit and 15% haste (680 ilvl) and no artifact I'm consistently casting more Chaos Bolts than on live with CR. So my bet is it's largely SC that's making us swim in shards, unless I'm missing something exceedingly obvious.

[Dastey]

im not exactly sure that mastery is going to be our best stat, haste should at the very least be right up there

I was mainly refering to the guy asking about crit vs mastery. But I agree haste looks like a good stat in combination with others. And haste has generally been very good on aoe aswell. This time with out AoE being tied even more to shards and shard generation that will probably be even more true.

[Deleted]

For what it's worth: I've been testing with a template character on the PTR. With 10% crit and 15% haste (680 ilvl) and no artifact I'm consistently casting more Chaos Bolts than on live with CR. So my bet is it's largely SC that's making us swim in shards, unless I'm missing something exceedingly obvious.

either way, i think ill be very happy that i saved the trinket from iron reaver, i have a hunch that it will end up being very very good when the 7.0 patch launches.

[Gaidax]

Won't really matter.

As per what I seen on beta, Mastery is basically the top stat by far. The amount of power you get by stacking Mastery eclipses other stats easily and you can already have 120% Mastery with heroic dungeon level of gear.

[Baconeggcheese]

But if I'm swiming in Shards because of high crit/haste + SC, why would I pick Demonfire? I hope it's a good talent, adding an extra button should be rewarded.

Unless you end up in a situation where you never cast filler demonfire would continue to be useful. I don't imagine we'll end up in that situation, so.

[Deleted]

Unless you end up in a situation where you never cast filler demonfire would continue to be useful. I don't imagine we'll end up in that situation, so.

Yeah that's true, Bliz should and will not let that happen.

[Gaidax]

When I had the opportunity to try out Legendary that gave 25% chance to fire spells to generate a shard, I ended up almost not using Incinerate at all - I had so many shards I could literally spam Chaos Bolts and Shadowburns, I ran some Heroics back then and it was literally like cast 25 Chaos Bolts, 15 Shadowburns and like 4 incinerates on Heyla and similar stuff on others.

[Rayleigh404]

I'm only able to test on ptr and would like to ask those of you who have more (beta) knowledge what we'r supposed to do at the beginning of a fight. Sure with Soul Conduit shard management isnt as horrible during a fight but it feels like the start of a fight takes forever for destro.

[Gaidax]

Actually no, start of the fight, I'd say we are the new Arcane Mages really. you can get 4 shards super quick with Immolate and Conflags with a tiny bit of luck (and with tier then 5 because of another Conflag stack) and then you just pop all your shit, Lord of Flames, Chaos Bolt > Portal Portal > Chaos Bolt > Portal > Immolate > Conflag... and so on keep spamming Chaos Bolts and spells in between to benefit from Eradication.

Lord of Flames + 3 portals + all those Chaos Bolts = insane pull burst. I'd say more than anything on beta now or at the very least one of the top pull bursts. Really, forget Chaos Bolts - Lord of Flames + 3 portals up on pull is already plenty of guaranteed burst, Chaos Bolt spam is extra there, even if you utterly get screwed up with shards, with tier you will still pretty much get guranteed 2 Chaos Bolts plus Lord of Flames and 3 portals on pull, which is a shitton of burst and it is not even dependent on Mastery quirks because Portals and Lord of Flames do not benefit from Mastery.

Heck I bet once we unlock Conflagration of Chaos that has a chance to turn Conflag into mini-Chaos Bolt - it will be even sillier.

[Baconeggcheese]

When I had the opportunity to try out Legendary that gave 25% chance to fire spells to generate a shard, I ended up almost not using Incinerate at all - I had so many shards I could literally spam Chaos Bolts and Shadowburns, I ran some Heroics back then and it was literally like cast 25 Chaos Bolts, 15 Shadowburns and like 4 incinerates on Heyla and similar stuff on others.

That sounds like cancer.

[Gaidax]

Actually it was pretty fun in a way, lots of pewpew, but it won't hurt to tone it down to like 15%, maybe even 12%.

That said there is plenty of OP legendaries all around, so I am not sure going ahead and playing martyrs for sake of balance is a good plan seeing some bullshit legendaries other specs and classes can invoke.

[Deleted]

Actually no, start of the fight, I'd say we are the new Arcane Mages really. you can get 4 shards super quick with Immolate and Conflags with a tiny bit of luck (and with tier then 5 because of another Conflag stack) and then you just pop all your shit, Lord of Flames, Chaos Bolt > Portal Portal > Chaos Bolt > Portal > Immolate > Conflag... and so on keep spamming Chaos Bolts and spells in between to benefit from Eradication.

Lord of Flames + 3 portals + all those Chaos Bolts = insane pull burst. I'd say more than anything on beta now or at the very least one of the top pull bursts. Really, forget Chaos Bolts - Lord of Flames + 3 portals up on pull is already plenty of guaranteed burst, Chaos Bolt spam is extra there, even if you utterly get screwed up with shards, with tier you will still pretty much get guranteed 2 Chaos Bolts plus Lord of Flames and 3 portals on pull, which is a shitton of burst and it is not even dependent on Mastery quirks because Portals and Lord of Flames do not benefit from Mastery.

Heck I bet once we unlock Conflagration of Chaos that has a chance to turn Conflag into mini-Chaos Bolt - it will be even sillier.

do you use sacrifice ?

[Dastey]

Actually it was pretty fun in a way, lots of pewpew, but it won't hurt to tone it down to like 15%, maybe even 12%.

That said there is plenty of OP legendaries all around, so I am not sure going ahead and playing martyrs for sake of balance is a good plan seeing some bullshit legendaries other specs and classes can invoke.

Legendary was toned down to 15% several patches ago.
So that gives us 15% to refund 1 shard through artifact (up to 30% if you wanna go that route).
20% per shard from Soul Conduit
15% on fire spells through legendary (which I assume includes Chaos Bolt through the new chaos modifier)

That's a lot of chaos bolts

[sugarfree]

yeah, that sounds about right in terms of how many it takes on average to get a shard refunded, 1 every 9 is only when you have the worst possible luck in order to get a shard refund, with average luck you'll most likely get a shard refund around every 6-7 shards spent.

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uhm, tell me in what way destro has become a dot spec? it has literally not changed since MoP, well atleast not in any major way and i fail to see how it can be a dot spec with only 1 dot. if i didnt know better i would call you a troll tbh.

I'm merely talking about PvP and yes it has become a dot spec in that aspect because Immolate keeps getting buffed while the struggle to keep a competent hitting Chaos Bolt is non-existent.

And yes it has CHANGED a lot since MoP. The actual pvp rotation in Legion is far different from MoP. Hell, it's even far from WoD.

You literally do not cast Chaos Bolt in PvP. That is pointless. It is a trap spell, your dps suffers if you cast it instead of spamming shadowburn and immolate.

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Demonfire doesn't benefit from any artifact traits though, and doesn't work with Havoc. Demonfire needs a pretty massive buff to make it better than soul conduit.

Also (Not directed at you), 20% is 20%. On average 1 shard every 5 shards spent, no idea where 11% comes from. The artifact trait also only has a chance to refund a single shard, not two individual chances for a shard. Soul conduit and soul snatcher combined can even make you end up with one shard more than before casting chaos bolt. Combined with immolate ticking on one or more targets, you can easily end up never having to cast anything but conflag, immolate and chaos bolt.

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Yeah, Destro is definitely not a dot spec. You cast chaos bolt more than ever in Legion!

Not in PvP, you don't.

[Deleted]

Anyone else feel like the Imp passive/trait is just pointless anyway, because we're either using Sacrifice or Doomguard? Service is such a bad talent, not sure why they even left it in the tree. I would absolutely LOVE if the Imp was the pet of choice in almost every encounter; it's so cool and it was how it was in Cataclysm. But making it obsolete by giving us a talent that gives us a permanent Doomguard just ruins it entirely. No one is going to use the poor little imp when we have a Doomguard pet

I just want Shadowburn to be a baseline execute again. It feels so dumb just being there and being so unbalanced compared to Chaos Bolt right now. The fact that people even need to do the maths to see what does more damage just shows how weak Chaos Bolt is and now unbalanced Shadowburn is right now.

Eradication is a nice touch to the playstyle, but it would be even better if we could reliably build and spend resource. Right now, soul shards just feel so clunky and uncontrollable, it's so difficult to plan ahead due to the spontaneous resource generation, or even more frustratingly, the lack of control we get actually generating shards when we need them. I love pooling embers waiting for procs to line up, but now I just see Destro as more of a 'Chaos bolt when you can in case you cap on shards too quickly' kind of rotation. Going from 40 emberbits down to 5 shards really ruins the smooth and predictable control we had of resource generation.

Service demons do 100% more dmg than normal demon.

[Deleted]

I'm merely talking about PvP and yes it has become a dot spec in that aspect because Immolate keeps getting buffed while the struggle to keep a competent hitting Chaos Bolt is non-existent.

And yes it has CHANGED a lot since MoP. The actual pvp rotation in Legion is far different from MoP. Hell, it's even far from WoD.

You literally do not cast Chaos Bolt in PvP. That is pointless. It is a trap spell, your dps suffers if you cast it instead of spamming shadowburn and immolate.

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Not in PvP, you don't.

Then you should have said you were talking about PvP :P Even then, spamming an instant cast nuke, using 3 instant cast nukes (portals, if they are off cd), and a dot is hardly what I would call a DoT spec.

On another note: We ended up talking a bit about how with the right gear, talents and artifact relics / traits, we end up almost never casting incinerate. Doesn't this make the incinerate portal proc trait extremely lack luster? 4% chance on a spell that we end up never casting doesn't look good, heck, even at 6% it wasn't looking very appealing to me.

[Dastey]

Does anyone know about the interaction between Fire & Brimstone and GoSac aswell as Rain of Fire and GoSac?
Can it procc multiple times from 1 incinerate cast and from RoF aswell?
Looking at the damage Demonic Power does on single target I would assume it is absolutely mental on aoe, especially if these combinations work

[Gaidax]

Does anyone know about the interaction between Fire & Brimstone and GoSac aswell as Rain of Fire and GoSac?
Can it procc multiple times from 1 incinerate cast and from RoF aswell?
Looking at the damage Demonic Power does on single target I would assume it is absolutely mental on aoe, especially if these combinations work

It is very good with AoE but simply due of the base damage it offers, Demonic Power has RPPM behavior, so more damage events do not result in more procs.

As for single target, in my experience it does about the same damage single target as if you had imp out and no talent selected in that row.

Kinda annoying really. Will be constantly switching between single target, multitarget and AoE specs.

Like single target - Roaring Blaze, Service. Multi-target or AoE total toss up depending on what encounter is, I can't say I'm excited about having to talent dance especially with restrictions they put on it.

So TLDR answer question - no special interaction, you do not get more procs from hitting more targets or having more damage events.