Any consensus on what spec will be the spec.

[joxur]

I suspect destro after playing the beta for a while. Both destro and aff are good mechanically, I think some small tweaks in the first few months of launch will get them where they need to be. Demo concerns me with the long ramp-up. Not sure how they fix that quickly, or that they even see an issue. I'll be going destro unless something significant changes.

[ThePhantombox]

Personally I plan on going aff, not because I don't like destro, I actually do, I just want something different.

[Zerach8]

I suspect destro after playing the beta for a while. Both destro and aff are good mechanically, I think some small tweaks in the first few months of launch will get them where they need to be. Demo concerns me with the long ramp-up. Not sure how they fix that quickly, or that they even see an issue. I'll be going destro unless something significant changes.

Demo would be fine if they added something to implosion which would make it viable for target swapping...something along the lines of every 2 imps sacrificed refunds 1 shard and than tone down the damage of the spell itself as that could potentially make it very strong for every situation. Implosion is good for target swapping but you kinda reset your ramp so it takes a while before u can regen enough shards to get your imps going again, this might fix it a bit

[Gaidax]

I'd rather have them give something baseline to allow switching and/or burst.

[Zerach8]

I'd rather have them give something baseline to allow switching and/or burst.

or that

/10char

[Noxate]

Demo is the only spec that I see lacking pretty heavily in the "tools" department. Hard to say about anything else, there's probably going to be multiple tuning patches before progress even starts. Many things could change but numbers aside Destro>Aff>Demo is what it looks like at this moment. However they could throw out a patch that completely gimps some of the extra tools Destro has so who knows.

[Deleted]

First of all things are going to be constantly changed and tuned through the expansion with a lot of it happening right when the first raid tier is released.

To an extent, sure, but while I fully expect numerical changes there's only so much you can do. Destructions toolkit still seems more robust and I'd be surprised if that changed.

I'm also honestly curious as to if Blizzard will be more hesitant to be tuning things throughout the expansion this time, artifact lag will be a legitimate concern since they've split knowledge between specs. I'm aware that acceleration is in place, but it's still going to be pretty damn unpleasant if demo has been in the shitter for most of the expansion and is then buffed up in the third tier - that artifact leveling may be accelerated but you're still going to have to go out and grind it up, all of which could theoretically have been pumped into your "main" artifact if that spec was still optimal.

I'm hoping pures (where knowing all 3 dps specs and switching as appropriate has always been more or less mandatory in any half serious guild) don't end up feeling like they're getting the raw deal compared to something like a ret paladin that can know it's investments are going to be pretty sound from day 1.

[Deleted]

Artifacts will always make it so that you have one main spec. Yes, you can spend artifact power on 1 or even both other specs, but it will always result in making your main spec worse than those that spend all power into their main spec weapon.

And with the overcharging of artifacts this will not stop even for fully spec'ed out artifacts.

Question comes down to "how much additional dmg potential do you want to sacrifice only to have the ability to switch specs". And on that list, a 3rd artifact weapon probably won't even come close to score.

[Deleted]

Do keep in mind that it costs like 1 point in your main spec to get a new artifact to like 2-3 points behind your main.

Say you have LoF + Ripper + Imp Inc = 20 points. The next point would be over 39k AP, which would get you 14 points in Aff and 15 in demo. Or just 16,5 in 1 secondary spec.
Add CoC and you have 27 points, the next would cost 240k AP. Enough for 2x 20 AP in the 2 other specs or 22,5 in a single spec.

As a pure dps, I think we should have at least 1 additional spec leveled to decent amount.

I do wonder how we are supposed to get relics for our 2nd/3rd artifact if they are like weapon drops, we'll most likely never get raid level relics in them.

[Barks]

I personally loved playing demo, liked playing affli, but almost always ended playing destro just because of numbers, over past expansion however

[murdax]

Also as a side note, I don't see why most locks wouldn't be reasonably able to maintain 3 specs in legion. Throughout mop and wod I knew several people that maintained a main with 2 raid ready specs plus 2 or more alts that were raid ready with thier off specs as well. The way I understand it, artifacts will be increasingly easy to power up with offspecs and as time progresses over the expansion. I definitely plan on having 3 raid ready specs to play as on my lock.

From a gear and learning the class spec mechanics yes its possible, but when it comes to your artifact weapon it becomes really difficult. Just trying to grind the artifact power needed to max is a pain and the real grind. And this is coming from someone that plays non stop, which is why most persons are worried about picking the right spec at launch .

[xuros]

From a gear and learning the class spec mechanics yes its possible, but when it comes to your artifact weapon it becomes really difficult. Just trying to grind the artifact power needed to max is a pain and the real grind. And this is coming from someone that plays non stop, which is why most persons are worried about picking the right spec at launch .

Whats gong to happen is tons of folks will be going destro at launch and after they will buff the shit out of one of the other specs so people can run about trying to get their "other" artifact up to par.

[striderZA]

Whats gong to happen is tons of folks will be going destro at launch and after they will buff the shit out of one of the other specs so people can run about trying to get their "other" artifact up to par.

Yep Blizz sure are out to get us. Tinfoil hats engaged!

[Deleted]

As it stands, Destruction>Affliction>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Demonology

Affliction will still excel at council fights as per usual with it's multidotting as well as having strong single target.
Destruction however has the absolute qualities that make it a extremely strong and potent dungeon/raid spec. Little ramp up. High burst. Decent AOE. Amazing target switching. Not completely fucked on the move if you time your life tap & Conflags right. Decent single target. There is extremely little reason for me to believe that we won't be using Destruction in a competitive environment. If you don't care about competition, then generally this thread shouldn't concern you. Just play whatever suits you.

Demonology has slow ramp up. Guardians which are functionally DoTs until revised. Heavily penalised on movement. Horrendous target swap. Annoying pet AI.

Target swap is in my opinion the most essential ability in WoW raiding these days. Almost every single encounter has a form of target swap that is hugely important. This has been Blizzard's way of making more and more difficult raid encounters, and it does work, but it also means that if your spec has no target swapping capabilities, you might as well start befriending the bench. There is a reason we never used feral druids back in HFC.

You'd have to obscenely buff the numbers of Demonology to make it viable. Much like it is in the prepatch, except with Legion we won't have T18 4pc (less important now) and Archi trinket.

[Deleted]

Yep Blizz sure are out to get us. Tinfoil hats engaged!

More that they're crap at balancing and have historically tended to overeact to "overperforming" specs by nerfing them to the ground, whilst taking forever to recognise a crap spec that no one uses until months into raid tiers, at which point they have an "oh crap" moment and buff them to ridiculous extremes

It never mattered much before artifacts, now it does.

Artifacts, you'd almost thing it was a ploy to keep people grinding, with clearly best performing specs and classes subject to continuous change part of that

Warcraft is all about keeping people logged in and playing, and history proves that Blizzard are either

(a) utterly useless at class and spec balancing

or

(b) deliberately create top and bottom classes/spec, as an encouragement to players to create new chars and level them

I rather suspect it's (b) , because in the past we've had classes and specs that have so glaringly over and underperformed it's hard to imagine that anyone just failed to "notice" them.

- - - Updated - - -

You'd have to obscenely buff the numbers of Demonology to make it viable. Much like it is in the prepatch, except with Legion we won't have T18 4pc (less important now) and Archi trinket.

Particularly if you're in a guild with enough people to make everyone have to compete for a raid place. You're not going to get a raid place as a demolock if there's a MM hunter, fire mage or unholy DK available. Maybe not even if you're destruction, because all other things being equal, it comes down to numbers.

[striderZA]

(b) deliberately create top and bottom classes/spec, as an encouragement to players to create new chars and level them

I rather suspect it's (b) , because in the past we've had classes and specs that have so glaringly over and underperformed it's hard to imagine that anyone just failed to "notice" them.

Dunno why you're trying to paint a picture of Blizzard trying to keep people playing by changing class balance inbetween patches. People don't reroll every patch, not at all as often as you are seemingly implying. Heck, in several years of raiding, it's been very, very rare to see guildmates rerolling inbetween tiers; the only time that I can recall is our enhancement shaman being asked to switch to his hunter for Blackhand. From a raiding perspective, it's really only Top 100-ish guilds that are "required" to play 2-3 classes, being ready to switch when a particular fight favors one or the other, and how much of a % of the WoW community do those people make up?

- - - Updated - - -

Particularly if you're in a guild with enough people to make everyone have to compete for a raid place. You're not going to get a raid place as a demolock if there's a MM hunter, fire mage or unholy DK available. Maybe not even if you're destruction, because all other things being equal, it comes down to numbers.

Actually it's not, there are lots of other things to take into account, and all other things are very rarely equal. It takes time to gear new specs, it takes time for people to level new alts. Gearing has to be planned according to your raid before a tier, so that you can reasonably distribute tier / trinkets and just gear in general.

[Spunt]

Removed post. Had a blonde moment and posted this in the wrong thread.

[Deleted]

As it stands, Destruction>Affliction>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Demonology

Affliction will still excel at council fights as per usual with it's multidotting as well as having strong single target.
Destruction however has the absolute qualities that make it a extremely strong and potent dungeon/raid spec. Little ramp up. High burst. Decent AOE. Amazing target switching. Not completely fucked on the move if you time your life tap & Conflags right. Decent single target. There is extremely little reason for me to believe that we won't be using Destruction in a competitive environment. If you don't care about competition, then generally this thread shouldn't concern you. Just play whatever suits you.

Demonology has slow ramp up. Guardians which are functionally DoTs until revised. Heavily penalised on movement. Horrendous target swap. Annoying pet AI.

Target swap is in my opinion the most essential ability in WoW raiding these days. Almost every single encounter has a form of target swap that is hugely important. This has been Blizzard's way of making more and more difficult raid encounters, and it does work, but it also means that if your spec has no target swapping capabilities, you might as well start befriending the bench. There is a reason we never used feral druids back in HFC.

You'd have to obscenely buff the numbers of Demonology to make it viable. Much like it is in the prepatch, except with Legion we won't have T18 4pc (less important now) and Archi trinket.

Currently I'm not in beta but the part about demo being screwed on movement and destro being "not completly screwed on movement" smells like BS. Care to explain how is having pets ( DoTs) on boss that deal most of ur dmg worse than having to life tap with only one DoT up? If u YOLO burn ur conflags during movement ure going to screw up Roaring blaze afaik.

[striderZA]

Currently I'm not in beta but the part about demo being screwed on movement and destro being "not completly screwed on movement" smells like BS. Care to explain how is having pets ( DoTs) on boss that deal most of ur dmg worse than having to life tap with only one DoT up? If u YOLO burn ur conflags during movement ure going to screw up Roaring blaze afaik.

Pet damage is largely dependent on hardcasting Demonic Empowerment, and actually having demons to empower require you to stand and cast Shadow/Demonbolt.

[Deleted]

Actually it's not, there are lots of other things to take into account, and all other things are very rarely equal. It takes time to gear new specs, it takes time for people to level new alts. Gearing has to be planned according to your raid before a tier, so that you can reasonably distribute tier / trinkets and just gear in general.

As I said if you're in a guild that has enough people to have them compete for a raid place.

My current guild isn;t like that, my old ones were, and yes, we had those moments where the guildmaster had to tell mages they were benched for Sunwell unless there was a spare space that couldn;t otherwise be filled.

- - - Updated - - -

Currently I'm not in beta but the part about demo being screwed on movement and destro being "not completly screwed on movement" smells like BS. Care to explain how is having pets ( DoTs) on boss that deal most of ur dmg worse than having to life tap with only one DoT up? If u YOLO burn ur conflags during movement ure going to screw up Roaring blaze afaik.

Because

(1) most of you rpets are guardians types (dreadstalkers and imps) that are tied to long cast times (summon dreadstalkers and hand of gul'dan)

(2) You can;t cast eithe rof those without building shards, which is mostly tied to Shadowbolt/Demonbolt (long cast times), although Demonwrath is a possibility, it is incredibly weak as AOE or damage and appears to be more a shard generator, but is very inefficient unless you already have lots of demons out

(3) All your pets hit like soggy noodles unless they are buffed by Demonic Empowerment, also long cast times

IMHO warlocks are designed to be immobile, the idea seems to be "move less because you can take more", unfortunately, this won't help in Mythic modes because you eithe rmove or you get oneshot no matter how tanky you are.

Demo really has no "alternatives" to take like Shadowburn to replace it's long hardcast spells.

As has been previously said, demonology would have to be wildly overbuffed for pure damage output to make up for the fact that it simply lacks adequate tools for raid encounters

Destruction does pretty much everything better, and there are classes that do everything - except abusing cleave fights - better than destruction

Our best spec is middl eof th epack, our worst one - undoubtedsly demo, by a mile - is a real bottom feeder. Like poor old ret paladins