[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Zoopercat]

@Baconeggcheese - ah, I forgot to mention we don't have the warlock tier bonuses live yet (they are ready, and will be in the next update). Sorry about that!!!!

I believe our next update already has a tweak for the template rotation to try and stack up roaring blaze buffs, but the opener hasn't been fiddled with very much.

If you do play with the rotations, you can share them for other ppl to play with (like me!). Click the 'share' button on the rotation page and post the link. Then any time you update your rotation, people who add your rotation to their list (like me) will get all of your updates too

[Dastey]

In case anyone is interested in digging around. Here are some logs from tonight: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&fight=16
First few tries playing Service. The last 10 tries or so Backdraft, Reverse Entropy, Sacrifice and Wreak Havoc

[Zoopercat]

Update - we mentioned the imp bug to someone at Blizzard, who confirmed the bug. It turns out the imp's firebolt costs too much mana in game right now. It should be 40 (I believe it's using 70). So once blizz fixes that, it should bring the imp's damage up a bit. And remember, we updated our model to use the right amount of energy, which should bring the AMR imp dmg down a bit, making them meet in the middle.

[Soulzar]

So what am I forgetting here that would bring me up another 1.5m dmg, cause I did this really fast and lose. I'm sure I'm missing something.

Mastery.. lulz

[JV Chequer]

Mastery.. lulz

Oh boy...here we go again.

[Raddest]

In case anyone is interested in digging around. Here are some logs from tonight:
First few tries playing Service. The last 10 tries or so Backdraft, Reverse Entropy, Sacrifice and Wreak Havoc

That's exactly what we need to see. Thanks for the link. Question, are you having fun playing Dest at 110 with the artifact weapon? Because on PTR right now, the rotation is brain dead boring.

[JV Chequer]

New Build:

- Chaos Barrage Rift nerfed around 16%
- Cataclysm buffed to 45sec CD...thats kinda huge for Mythic+
- Immolate duration AND dmg increased 20% - Pretty much a QOL improvement and a buff to both Roaring Blaze and Cataclysm.
- CB and Incinerate nerfed by around 3%

Incinerate more and more becomes kinda....pointless. I wish they buff Dimensional Ripper to 10% again to compensate such low dmg coming form Incinerate. CB "little nerf" its kinda pointless too, + points to Roaring Blaze and CDF Build.
Maybe..just maybe..the tiny nerf on both Incinerate and CB it's because we gonna cast both more often since we gonna cast less Immolates around.

[Raddest]

New Build:

- Chaos Barrage Rift nerfed around 16%
- Cataclysm buffed to 45sec CD...thats kinda huge for Mythic+
- Immolate duration AND dmg increased 20% - Pretty much a QOL improvement and a buff to both Roaring Blaze and Cataclysm.
- CB and Incinerate nerfed by around 3%

Incinerate more and more becomes kinda....pointless. I wish they buff Dimensional Ripper to 10% again to compensate such low dmg coming form Incinerate. CB "little nerf" its kinda pointless too, + points to Roaring Blaze and CDF Build.
Maybe..just maybe..the tiny nerf on both Incinerate and CB it's because we gonna cast both more often since we gonna cast less Immolates around.

Incinerate was doing great damage for me on PTR.... then I realised it's because I had lvl 100 pvp gear that buffs incin dmg by 50% on targets affected my immolate. They're definitely shifting a lot more damage into immo.

[bio347]

- Chaos Barrage Rift nerfed around 16%

The Shadow Bolt Rift got nerfed, too. That's not the Demonology SB in the datamine.

[Dastey]

That's exactly what we need to see. Thanks for the link. Question, are you having fun playing Dest at 110 with the artifact weapon? Because on PTR right now, the rotation is brain dead boring.

I have always enjoyed the rotation and I still do. What is worth mentioning about the logs is I used T18 2 and 4 piece bonus. But I really do enjoy how the specc is playing. Especially when there are more than 1 mob as your soul shards go crazy

- - - Updated - - -

In regards to tonights changes I see it this way
- The dimensional rift should be approximately 12% nerf, as one of them is nerfed by 20% and the other 16%. However someone who has exact numbers on rifts can probably calculate a more realistic percentages

- The nerf to incinerate and chaos bolt is a small nerf to our on demand burst (priority targets)

- Immolate change is a pretty significant buff to roaring blaze, especially when acquiring the tier 19 2 piece bonus and with 45s CD on Cataclysm and 18s uptime on immolate, pretty big buff to Cataclysm

- If you look at immolate change. Every 90 seconds we would currently cast 6 immolates, but afterwards only 5. This results in 120% of Spell Power less damage from the direct factor. However it gives us 1 extra global which will probably be worth approximately 220% of Spell Power so 100% more there. Which is essentially 10 nerfs to the incinerate counteracted (give or take 16 seconds every 90 seconds that is counteracted). So the nerf to incinerate and chaos bolt gets reduced slightly due to this and with 2 piece bonus it is probably gone entirely.

[Raddest]

I have always enjoyed the rotation and I still do. What is worth mentioning about the logs is I used T18 2 and 4 piece bonus. But I really do enjoy how the specc is playing. Especially when there are more than 1 mob as your soul shards go crazy

- - - Updated - - -

In regards to tonights changes I see it this way
- The dimensional rift should be approximately 12% nerf, as one of them is nerfed by 20% and the other 16%. However someone who has exact numbers on rifts can probably calculate a more realistic percentages

- The nerf to incinerate and chaos bolt is a small nerf to our on demand burst (priority targets)

- Immolate change is a pretty significant buff to roaring blaze, especially when acquiring the tier 19 2 piece bonus and with 45s CD on Cataclysm and 18s uptime on immolate, pretty big buff to Cataclysm

- If you look at immolate change. Every 90 seconds we would currently cast 6 immolates, but afterwards only 5. This results in 120% of Spell Power less damage from the direct factor. However it gives us 1 extra global which will probably be worth approximately 220% of Spell Power so 100% more there. Which is essentially 10 nerfs to the incinerate counteracted (give or take 16 seconds every 90 seconds that is counteracted). So the nerf to incinerate and chaos bolt gets reduced slightly due to this and with 2 piece bonus it is probably gone entirely.

Thanks for the reply. That's reassuring to hear.

[Smog]

I remember this discussion occurring earlier, but with even more nerfs to incinerate (and immolate's upfront damage remaining the same), at what point will immolate become our filler and incinerate get removed from our bars entirely?

I'm assuming there has to be a certain crit level where this becomes the case, and I'm estimating it's soon considering:

• Immolate is now only a 28.4% SP loss in upfront damage (Immolate's traited 141.6% SP vs Incinerate's 170%).
• Immolate's additional 24% crit chance.
• Immolate's shard generation (which scales with crit and haste).
• Immolate's shorter cast time (even with incinerate's low priority cast time reduction artifact traits).
• Incinerate's already low ranking in terms of damage contribution (making any actual damage lost between the two even more marginal to overall dps).

This is obviously assuming all 6 immolate traits have been taken, but I think it's already been pretty clearly established those are high priority and will be acquired very early. If you consider that you likely won't have the incinerate cast time traits until much later, immolate looks like even better filler than it does in the scenario above (and this traiting/path will very likely be the case for most people for the first 1-2 raid tiers).

Am I way off in my late-night logic, or is incinerate teetering on the edge of absolute garbage tier outside of FnB aoe? I genuinely want to be missing something here. My only out is that immolate filler doesn't work with Roaring Blaze, but if you're spamming Immolate and swimming in shards, Backdraft starts looking better as well.

[Gaidax]

Well you do have a chance to get rift with Incinerate for what it's worth.

Anyway, about this patch, while it is again a wash or tiny nerf in terms of performance I can't help but feel frustrated over this constant pattern of Chaos Bolt being dragged down, after a buff in early Alpha we started with what it was 370% spellpower?

I see Chaos Bolt as a spec defining big nuke, the top moment and it gets diluted for all kinds of trash like DoT damage as if we are some sort of Affliction.

Not terribly psyched, especially when compared with some other specs like Arms that can casually deliver 1.5mil Mortal Strikes. Chaos Bolt is just becoming a all fiddle in a sea of mad nukes some classes have in Legion.

[sugarfree]

Why do they keep buffing a dot on a burst spec? Anyone still want to argue this is not going for Cataclysm Destruction?

[urdasergiu]

What is the point in having incinerate atm, and why do they keep nerfing our shity cb

[Dastey]

Why do they keep buffing a dot on a burst spec? Anyone still want to argue this is not going for Cataclysm Destruction?

I would like to argue it: Cataclysm does nothing in single target except adding an extra button to your action bar.
Cataclysm does nothing on cleave, as havoc is simply superior.
Cataclysm is stricly an aoe option.

Done

- - - Updated - - -

What is the point in having incinerate atm, and why do they keep nerfing our shity cb

From my logs last night incinerate averages 8% of my damage. However on some tries (and after I specced into more cleave based rather than single target) it went down to roughly 5-6%
So yeah incinerate is kinda shitty atm. and with the nerf to dimensional rift it has become increasingly bad.

[Duckz0rs]

I would like to argue it: Cataclysm does nothing in single target except adding an extra button to your action bar.
Cataclysm does nothing on cleave, as havoc is simply superior.
Cataclysm is stricly an aoe option.

The poster you quoted meant the Destruction playstyle from the Cataclysm Expansion, not the Cataclysm talent. And with a new build, new doomsayers it seems. The buff to incinerate mostly seems to be an indirect buff to Roaring Blaze (mostly the duration increase) and a very minor shift in damage to compensate. Percentage shifts of 5-10% SP don't make Destro a DoT-based spec.

[Dastey]

Ah I see. That would be cancer but luckily we only have 1 DoT now. And you could argue it becomes less of a DoT specc now since you have to use the DoT less often. In fact with Roaring Blaze it basically becomes a combo specc.
Currently on live immolate is better than incinerate even it if gets only 1 tick and this is still the case in Legion, which is fine

What is truly interesting about the 18 seconds duration on immolate is that conflagrate has 12 seconds CD and therefore 24 seconds in order to get 2 charges. This means that if we can hit 25 % haste Roaring Blaze will most likely become absolutely insane as conflagrate CD hits the same as immolate duration allowing us to do immolate > conflag > conflag every single time.
With 2 piece bonus it becomes 27 seconds for 3 charges which means we require 33% haste, and if we can hit that number (or close to) once again Roaring Blaze will be mental with immolate > conflag x 3

These will most likely be the best points of haste you can get under those circumstances, but whether it will be better than mastery I doubt, but I will leave that to some simcraft numbers

[Tokas]

I mean can it replace Chaos Bolt entirely, or is it just there to confuse people and ought to be used as a finisher only?

[Fallensaint]

The buff to Immolate isn't that huge. It only gained one tick of damage for it's longer duration, so it still does the exact same damage over time. The main benefits are you don't need to recast it quite as often, there's a slightly bigger window for multiple Conflag boosts with Roaring Blaze, and it's a bit easier to maintain Immo on multiple targets.