[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Turturin the Warlock]

I don't PvP much, but I was wondering if anyone has found any merit in the Fel Fissure PvP talent. An AoE double-MS on every CB seems pretty good, but I suppose maybe the opportunity cost hurts it too much?


On the contrary, there were several mechanical buffs that were important to Destruction being what it was in late MoP over the course of the expansion.

5.1 gave RoF and Conflagrate Ember generation, 5.2 changed Soul Leech into an absorb, and then the 5.2 hotifxes gave Incinerate and Conflag a chance to generate extra Embers.

RoF always had ember generation. The conflag change did not affect how you played the spec in the slightest.

The soul leech change upped survivability for all specs, it changed nothing about the destro playstyle.

The hotfixes to add a hidden chance at extra embers were in SOO, not 5.2, and again, they didn't change how the spec was played, at all.

These were all damage buffs, not changes that caused some massive shift where people were like "oh the playstyle used to be a mess but now it's awesome". People play a spec more when its damage is buffed. This isn't new or surprising. If you don't want to accept that fine, but this is the last time I'll explain because it's off topic and bit of a waste of time.

[wholol]

Full moon hits like a truck (artifact druid spell), demo lock artifact spell hits for a ton, but was nerfed for a lot, anything prot can hit like a truck in pvp.

And so on...
@wholol Dunno how is that possible, for instance Cobrak hits for 480k without soul harvest, initiation and ofc the orc racial in one of his videos. Your either hitting some1 with dmg reduction cd used (which is a good deal of dmg to do when some1 used dmg reduction) or didnt align everything. Calculation hits about >700k if you calculate all the data (as I said what I did on friends acc, and what I saw on Cobrak streams). When it coems to wpvp this even goes up, I mean until the end of the patch, with some legendaries mythic raiders will be able to hit for 1mil with no problems in wpvp. This also works for pvp players with ratting of 2200+ (1700 was a mentioned ratting which gives you normal raiding gear, 2000 prolly for heroic and 2200+ for the mythic equal stuff probably).


Yes, I totally agree they need to balance chaos bolt to not be a one trick pony. I really dont see even a decent 3s team let you align the whole thing. After a month every1 will figure out to counter this. So yeah, they need to change sustained dmg chaos bolt is doing, or we will be cd stacking all over again, with a shadowburn spam in between... Dont see taht being viable at all compared to affliction, which is back to being a cancer sl/sl once was. 3 melees can train you, and u will just be spamming insta dots and drain tank them.

Maybe he had the berserker buff in the bg ? I can assure you with both harvest and firestone chaosbolt hits for 400k on average in pvp , I've tested this on beta myself, now if you wish to link said video so we may see what exactly happened with your friend Cobrak in order to achieve this mystically fabled damage increase much would be appreciated.

[bio347]

Sorry, I got some of my notes mixed up and backward. It's been a couple years, what can I say? The RoF change simply made it generate embers without Immolate present and doubled its tick rate - a tiny change that, y'know, only made low-target-number AoE possible at all. Totally didn't matter.

And I got my hotfixes mixed up, so the 5.2 one I was thinking of was just the one that made Shadowburn's ember return function correctly. That's all.

Look, I played Destruction for the entirety of MoP. It's not that it wasn't fun the whole time - it was. But to say that it played the same in 5.0 as it did in 5.4 is literally a joke, and a poor one at that.

[Gaidax]

Maybe he had the berserker buff in the bg ? I can assure you with both harvest and firestone chaosbolt hits for 400k on average in pvp , I've tested this on beta myself, now if you wish to link said video so we may see what exactly happened with your friend Cobrak in order to achieve this mystically fabled damage increase much would be appreciated.

Here to humor you, I made a beta character with basic PvP template and unlocked artifact and tossed some bolts at dummy. Result 230k, 286k and 304k. Because it is dummy, then no Intiation and no Firestone and no 1.55 Intellect multiplier in PvP, character race is Human, yes Eradication.

Take that, multiply it by 1.55 and you have 400k Chaos Bolt in PvP combat without anything, so yeah I can confirm Corbak's numbers, add Initiation and Firestone to it and it's a ton of damage average even without Eradication. Heck add rifts involved, Chaos Bolt rift does 240k damage on dummy, Barrage a bit more than 300k.

Quite a farcry from wet noodle Chaos Bolt in PvP, eh? Even without Firestone, 400k is not that terribly low as you make it sound - it is your hardest hitter by far. Basically, spawn some rifts with their delayed damage, pop Firestone and proceed to global people.


Here is screenie of Chaos Bolt on dummy - I hope you will not accuse me with photoshopping it or something: http://imgur.com/a/OWIYM

[wholol]

Here to humor you, I made a beta character with basic PvP template and unlocked artifact and tossed some bolts at dummy. Result 230k, 286k and 304k. Because it is dummy, then no Intiation and no Firestone and no 1.55 Intellect multiplier in PvP, character race is Human, yes Eradication.

Take that, multiply it by 1.55 and you have 400k Chaos Bolt in PvP combat without anything, so yeah I can confirm Corbak's numbers, add Initiation and Firestone to it and it's 800k damage average even without Eradication. Now here is the fun part - my character has has 1460k HP with PvP template, add 20% bonus stamina (warlock) and it's 1752k HP. This means that popping Firestone, then 2 Chaos Bolts and some DoT or Shadowburn could potentially kill me right there.

Quite a farcry from wet noodle Chaos Bolt in PvP, eh? Even without Firestone, 400k is not that terribly low as you make it sound when you have people running around with 1500k HP.


Here is screenie - I hope you will not accuse me with photoshopping it or something: http://imgur.com/a/OWIYM

Did they buff CB in pvp or something ? I don't recall it doing that much.

And whats that about photoshopping lol, I'm simply genuinely interested in finding the answer , I'm not trying to sound like an ass

[Gaidax]

They did not buff anything, they nerfed it actually.

It was always this way, except for early alpha where they buffed it, but back then you could not play Destruction (except for one patch where there was a loophole in Artifact quest that allowed to unlock it).

Chaos Bolt is not omg super strong, but it's not AS weak as people make it sound, some make it sound as if a dude can just stand there and take 10 Chaos Bolts and laugh... well no, in reality taking 2-3 Chaos Bolts can crater someone depending on buffs/debuffs that were up at the time, the target better pop some shit up or he's dead.

The good thing about Chaos Bolt however is that it takes much less setup to pull out than many similar nukes - Frost Mage with Glacial Spike may look scary, but pulling out a Glacial Spike, for example, requires considerably more setup than Chaos Bolt.

This is of course if you do not just go ahead and prance around spamming Shadowburn, which is also very viable - basically best warlocks will mix the two, because Chaos Bolt is indeed a huge throughput spell much better than Shadowburn, but at the same time Shadowburn is just great for mopping up and keeping up the pressure.

[Fallensaint]

Don't crits have a reduced multiplier in PvP? I'm not sure if it's been changed for Legion, but in WoD the crit damage multiplier was reduced to 150% in PvP instead of the standard 200%. That would pretty heavily impact Chaos Bolt's effectiveness in PvP.

[Lucrece]

Problem with chaosbolt is not the damage, it's the mechanics of delivering damage for the warlock. All you can do against current melee is shadowburn spam and it's nothing really special.

Warriors are getting 2.1 million bursts.



Cartoonz playing frost mage with Bahjeera. Notice frost mage can get 600k frostbolt crits but even that pales in comparison to what warriors are doing.

The only arena they lost is because the opposing team's warrior globaled their healer faster than Bahjeera did theirs.

The video even has footage of an affliction warlock, who people are saying is unkillable with a 50% damage debuff when life draining people and curse of weakness for 25% decreased physical damage. Bahjeera's warrior blew him up in no time with some contribution of Cartoonz's burst.

There's also a double warlock match up there where a destro lock lands a chaosbolt on Cartoonz and it doesn't even make it past his Ice Barrier.

[Deleted]

Problem with chaosbolt is not the damage, it's the mechanics of delivering damage for the warlock. All you can do against current melee is shadowburn spam and it's nothing really special.

Warriors are getting 2.1 million bursts.



Cartoonz playing frost mage with Bahjeera. Notice frost mage can get 600k frostbolt crits but even that pales in comparison to what warriors are doing.

The only arena they lost is because the opposing team's warrior globaled their healer faster than Bahjeera did theirs.

The video even has footage of an affliction warlock, who people are saying is unkillable with a 50% damage debuff when life draining people and curse of weakness for 25% decreased physical damage. Bahjeera's warrior blew him up in no time with some contribution of Cartoonz's burst.

There's also a double warlock match up there where a destro lock lands a chaosbolt on Cartoonz and it doesn't even make it past his Ice Barrier.

It's pre-patch time, nothing is yet final and things will change many times in the first or two patches.

[Janke]

@Gaidax You forgot that crit doesnt do 200% dmg in pvp anymore. You calculation was really good, except for that little detail. So if your chaos bolt hits for 230k, you need to divide that in 2, multiply it by 1.55 and then by 1.5 again. So you should actually hit chaos bolt for 300k if it is hitting for 230k on a dummy.
@wholol https://youtu.be/FOdEr0zDef0?t=3m11s Here, his chaos bolt hit 400k+ without soul harvest and with firestone, from this point on he is trying to hit chaos bolts and gets all kind of results over 400k with firestone, on ppl without defensive cds. Largest was ~500k... He didnt use soul harvest once in the video. Think Chaos bolt took a slight nerf (not a big one) during patches from then, and he isnt using initiation, so it can hit for more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-MFirwK6Zg Here is the video by Hazzed, another pvp guy from youtube, I think he is more active than Cobrak, but you can see it isnt his main spec. At one point rng in its full glory is shown, when he literally rapes a rogue with 2 portals and a chaos bolt. He isnt using firestone in the video, and his cbs are hitting for over 200k all the time when targets dont have defensive cds.

Hope thats enough data, sry I cant put my own data, will try to after I finish the exam on monday. Dunno only if my buddy is free. Honestly, reducing chaos bolts cast time by 0.5 would be a huge buff for us. That means you could get mana tap instead of reverse entropy and make that nuke with firestone I am talking about even stronger.


I would like to know how does cremation work when it comes to CoFrag and crit (is that dmg added to confla, can that dmg crit and is it increased when you have the artifact proc etc..)?

- - - Updated - - -

I would also like to point out that I completely agree with @wholol . Spec with this combination of mastery, cast times on main nuke and the dmg of main nuke completely depending on 45 sec cd is a pathetic design. Hope I am not mistaking here, but your observation was similar to this, in either this thread or in the legion pvp one.

Cant believe they create such a stupid mastery and call it class design, fantasy and what destro was always about. Destro was enver about random crits doing different dmg. For Gods sake we were always hitting with constant numbers. Play style never changed until mop, it was a gatling gun style, in which you chain few cast abilities and instants to deal burst dmg. You could add soul fire if your cc chain worked pre mop. After mop it was pretty much getting shard to do the a gatling gun sequence of chaos bolts.

Thats why I am chasing that dream of one trick pony chaos bolt (being your soul fire ) into bunch of portals and shadowburns for a crazy destro nuke chain. God bless tbc, even with no defensive cds besides coil you actually had viable dmg and burst not depending on a cd...

[Fallensaint]

I think people are a little mistaken on what that 1.55 bonus int multiplier on the PvP template represents. That's not an extra amount, it's there to act as the int you would normally get from your weapon. The template won't be doing 55% more damage than a player normally geared in full 850 gear.

[Janke]

@Fallensaint Oh yeah, I brainfarted there.
Will dive in some more calculation to see what actually happens there.

[wholol]

Well I tested CBs on several players in a duel today, made sure none of them had any damage / crit reducing passives or actives on them during said duel and a chaos bolt with no power ups whatsoever did 150k the first time and 190k the second, during power ups ( I used mana tap,soul harvest, initiation and firestone all at the same time with target at 100% ) and the first time I did 360k ~ ish and second CB i did 410k ~.

So Unless there's a pvp modifier when testing vs players I have no idea how this can be so different, @Gaidax can you test this vs a player in a duel instead of a dummy and tell me the result plz? it's driving me insane

[Smog]

@Baconeggcheese You picking up Impish Incineration immediately after Lord of Flames or heading straight to Dimension Ripper first? I'm assuming the former.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Baconeggcheese You picking up Impish Incineration immediately after Lord of Flames or heading straight to Dimension Ripper first? I'm assuming the former.

Yeah the former. I'm not entirely sure if I don't pick up impish as soon as I can even before LoF depending on how leveling is going since I'll be in a group and likely will be using it or even gosac constantly. I mean its basically a gold artifact trait, so it'd be silly not to snap it up early.

[Turturin the Warlock]

@Baconeggcheese You picking up Impish Incineration immediately after Lord of Flames or heading straight to Dimension Ripper first? I'm assuming the former.

Impish incineration is a 3-3.5% increase on single target, more for sacrifice when it cleaves effectively. As a 1 pt trait investment that is significantly ahead of any single point you'd spend on the way down to dimension ripper.

[Smog]

Yeah the former. I'm not entirely sure if I don't pick up impish as soon as I can even before LoF depending on how leveling is going since I'll be in a group and likely will be using it or even gosac constantly. I mean its basically a gold artifact trait, so it'd be silly not to snap it up early.

If I were leveling in a group, I'd probably opt to pick it up immediately and just perma run GoSac. Thanks for confirming, man.

Impish incineration is a 3-3.5% increase on single target, more for sacrifice when it cleaves effectively. As a 1 pt trait investment that is significantly ahead of any single point you'd spend on the way down to dimension ripper.

Perfect; that's what I thought. Thanks, Turturin.

[hiramloram]

This has literally nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Yes, warlocks were obscenely overpowered, but destro also worked and flowed far better than at any other time in any other expansion. The DESIGN of the class was superior in MoP. Whether you were beating anybody else or not has not a single damned thing to do with it and is entirely beside the point; if you were shit, other better locks still made you look like an assclown by comparison. What you're saying doesn't even have a place in the conversation.

MoP destruction FELT good and had a far higher skill cap than this BS they've introduced in Legion (or even WoD), and that is the point he's trying to make. It sure as hell felt a lot better than destruction does on live or in the beta.

This gets explained to the same idiots over and over again and the same idiots fail to comprehend it every time.

[Deleted]

Since I haven't tested it yet since frozen account :

Are all 3 warlock specs boring and bad in terms of skill level/fun etc. ? Or is it just destro. I've heard that the demo rotation is pretty dull. What about affliction?

It seems a lot of classes are complaining about LEGION streamlining the game too much and make it "too easy". Are there any real good specs left that require players to be good and give them a slight advantage if they are good/better than avg ?

[Turturin the Warlock]

Since I haven't tested it yet since frozen account :

Are all 3 warlock specs boring and bad in terms of skill level/fun etc. ? Or is it just destro. I've heard that the demo rotation is pretty dull. What about affliction?

It seems a lot of classes are complaining about LEGION streamlining the game too much and make it "too easy". Are there any real good specs left that require players to be good and give them a slight advantage if they are good/better than avg ?

A good player will get more than a bad player out of every spec in the game. Your perception that this is a rare phenomenon is just not grounded in reality.