[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Deleted]

Yes, please tell me more stories about how WoD Destruction is complex and advanced, I need a good laugh.

I bet you are one of those guys who for some reason thinks that sniping Shadowburn and correctly using Havoc and F&B requires anything more than 3 brain cells and a couple of mouseover macros.

To make it short - no it's not complex and FYI I played Destruction exclusively pretty much most of WoD. Feck, I'd say Legion Destruction is quite a bit more "complex", unless you pick passives in every damned talent row.

What part of Legion Destruction is complex? I'm just not really seeing it. I'm not saying it is going to be easy being among the best, assuming equal gear, but I strongly believe that the difference between good and bad destruction warlocks will come down to talent choices, gear, and perhaps artifact traits. There are almost no complex interactions between skills, perhaps with the exception of havoc'd channel demonfire, since it is not necessarily intuitive that you should or should not apply immolate to the secondary target depending on how long it will live.

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I can understand people singing MOP destruction's praises, but I find it hard to understand why anyone would champion WOD's over it.

Unless my brain is completely rotten, MOP had all WOD had but with more punishing resource management without CR ramping generation through the roof (at least at lower gear levels) and dot snapshotting giving you some more decision making.

I can understand people having issues with Legion destro - Chaos Bolts feel a bit flacid, SB being sectioned off to a talent that often won't be viable and I really hate the changes to resource generation, I thought embers were soulshards done right. Far less RNG and made the filler feel meaningful. Can't really understand complaints over the difficulty being gutted after WOD.

I guess destro has lost the baseline "skill" of SB sniping and pre-havoc-ing, but those both feel like small potatoes compared to what was lost going from MOP -> WOD, and destro was being slated as being too simple for most of MOP.

I think people are referring to Legion because it is what we just had. MoP and WoD Destro were very similar though.

[Deleted]

A wise man told me don't argue with fools
Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who

- Jay-Z

They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience .

[Deleted]

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more their decision to revert to soul shards for destruction confuses me. It has lead to RNG shards (Which isn't enjoyable), less damage from individual chaos bolts, shard cost on cooldowns / pet summoning, and just generally less interactivy between our skills.

Incinerate can be buffed as much as they want, but that still doesn't make incinerate an interesting button to press. They seem so scared of Rain of Fire being used for anything other than AoE, that they added a cast time and a huge shard cost to it. Immolate (A dot) is our second highest damage source (Roughly), and has a chance to generate a shard as well as a chance for a higher chance for a shard.

Whoever made that decision, as well as taking our cool visual to give to fire mages, seems to be very off track with regards to class fantasy.

[Fearsom1992]

My brain it hurts.

[Halwyn]

So, what's the bottom line for the whole Artifact leveling path? First Lord of Flames branch, then what? Conflagration of Chaos looks good, but all the stuff leading to Dimensional Ripper looks even more so (Soulsnatcher <3), can't figure it out.

[Scathbais]

With the spirit of having a good discousion, i would write down my experience with the new Lock Destro in Mythics:

Firstly, my setup: Roaring Blaze > Manatap > Demon Skin > Erradication > Dark Pact > Grimore of Sacrifice > Channel Demonfire

Im playing Warlock ever since Vainilla, so the Tap Dance is quite nostalgic and easy to me, but this is what put the skill cap in the spec... Having to use GCD in Life Tap for mana and in Mana Tap for the microbuff is quite dificult, and thats the reason Revese Entrophy talent exist... RE blow away one of the skill caps (been a well used Havok the another one) in three ways: 1) No more Life Tap use 2) No microbuff management 3) Less Casting time... But in every situation where i use RE, i end with less DPS then using a wisely manage Tap Dance. Maybe this change with the Artifact, im expecting a more fluid SS flow with it, but right now, im having so few SS then using Soul Conducit not seems worthy, this and the well Channel Demonfire CD fit in my rotation, leaving me with a always "microburst" moment.

This is for me, a very least dont see to much problem with Destro tooltip, more then no having my Demon Ability with me when a Sacrifice my demon... For all the flexibility it have, i can only be gratefull, and as i see it, only DK Unholy is this flexible (and needing a nerf maybe, is just too easy do anything with it >>).

I have go around in prepatch with GoSac and with GoServ, and for the both cases, i can say is a waste use RoF for a pull of a less 5 thrash... Havok is quite strong, and with it, my setup of Havock > Immo > Confla > Chaos Bolt > CDF > Inci spam, make the work just fine in pull up to 4 thrash.

Hey Bjarkan, thanks for sharing your experience with this talent set up. Not one I had considered before (stigma on mana tap and such). I played around with it quite a bit after reading your post and while the rotation is interesting, it refocused my attention on one weakness of the current destro spec: the lack of passive self heals and the need to either drain life or drain your healer. Is it worth the loss of dps from drain life for the damage buff+health drain of using manatap+life tap?

Please correct me if I am missing something, but Affliction naturally heals through drain life/drain soul as part of a normal rotation, demo gets self heals passively through Soul Link, but destro with mana tap requires adding drain life to the rotation or will make your healers need to give you unnecessary(?) healing.

What are your thoughts on this or has it not been an issue in your mythic tests?

[Baconeggcheese]

The spec has been gutted and destroyed. It's the damn truth, don't go around throwing out buzzwords to try to make my claim false.

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So, what's the bottom line for the whole Artifact leveling path? First Lord of Flames branch, then what? Conflagration of Chaos looks good, but all the stuff leading to Dimensional Ripper looks even more so (Soulsnatcher <3), can't figure it out.

You want to pick up impish incineration and burning hunger first, the rest is up for debate. There are people who are planning to skip LoF and grab residual flames asap and then pick up LoF and CoC because it sims better to do it that way in pure patchwerk on these early sims (not sure if adjusted for roaring blaze nerf). Personally I'm skeptical, could see it going either way as long as you pick up the LoF arm first.

[Bjarkan]

Hey Bjarkan, thanks for sharing your experience with this talent set up. Not one I had considered before (stigma on mana tap and such). I played around with it quite a bit after reading your post and while the rotation is interesting, it refocused my attention on one weakness of the current destro spec: the lack of passive self heals and the need to either drain life or drain your healer. Is it worth the loss of dps from drain life for the damage buff+health drain of using manatap+life tap?

Please correct me if I am missing something, but Affliction naturally heals through drain life/drain soul as part of a normal rotation, demo gets self heals passively through Soul Link, but destro with mana tap requires adding drain life to the rotation or will make your healers need to give you unnecessary(?) healing.

What are your thoughts on this or has it not been an issue in your mythic tests?

Hm in very long term fights may be a problem, i had to said i still havent been in any fight that last more then 5min... And in thrash i hardly use Mana Tap, as normally go just to waste... But you may had a point, i had to think about it, for progression porpourse it would be neccesary to know this.

As for my experience, i dont had any problem with it just yet, dunno if because i normally go with a tight group and the healer dont speak his mind about having to healing me a little more for the Life Tap... I would had to ask for his opinion, but what i can say for sure is normally with our high surv, i dont need almost care, so maybe is one thing for another.

[foxyloxy]

When is it best to use RoF over Chaos Bolt/Havoc+Chaos Bolt?
Has anyone done the math?
I'm getting overwhelmed when factoring crit chance/eradication into calculation.

[Uzkin]

Because destro is sooo tanky, we must pay for it by...
* being less mobile
* spending our health on life tap, without the ability to gain it back passively or via standard rotation
* taking longer to recover from battlerez, and at higher dps cost (this is a funny one -- learned it from baconeggcheese)

We get so much class fantasy in exchange for tankyness! <3

(the comparisons are with the other classes, not the other warlock specs)

[Lucrece]

You mean, you don't take Reverse Entropy? I don't know how anyone can play without it.

Reverse Entropy is virtually the reason I'm playing destro over any other warlock spec, because it's the only spec that can skip out on this Life Tap spam bullshit.

Well, that, and Channel Demonfire. I know, I know, Channel Demonfire is shit compared to Soul Conduit, but it looks amazing and I feel entitled to at least something visually new in a sea of outdated spell animations.

[Trixxa]

I just felt the need to chime in on the discussion of the last 2 pages, because I don't want others who are less experienced to get the wrong idea. Many read these forums who are not theorycrafters or mythic raiders, and some people are far to negative for my liking.

Bacon is correct, the optimal rotation in Legion is much more complex and intensive than WOD or MOP. If you go with the best dps talents, which mythic progression raiders like myself will be using, Destro is much more engaging than previous versions. If you don't believe me test it out yourself on a target dummy. Use RB, MT, Eradication, GoServ and CD. Spend 6 minutes keeping a constant perfect rotation going: maximize 3x RB Immolate while using unbuffed Immo between to keep 100% uptime; CD, GoServ, Doomguard and rift x2 on cooldown; don't let Conflag charges cap; keep MT uptime 100%; CB dumps on procs; don't cap shards; don't OOM; weave in some havoc on 2nd dummy without loosing main target dps; and then tell me you can do all that 100% perfectly while dealing with mythic raid encounter mechanics.

Using Destro's kit with passives like BD, RE and SC is super easy and might lead people to believe Destro is ruined. But those same people will never get top 20 parses.

[ShiyoKozuki]

stuff

I'd like you to back up your claim about destro in legion being the most complex destro has been in a while. Change my mind, please.

[Baconeggcheese]

Change my mind, please.

I genuinely don't think that's possible from what I've read of your posts. It'd be an exercise in futility.

[Rogalicus]

I still don't like RNG resource generation. I don't really want to discuss the complexity of WoD destruction, but it had good flow and pretty predictable resource income and damage output. Well, not anymore. Also, I liked FnB for our AoE more, RoF is unnecessarily expensive, slow and positioned.

[striderZA]

The spec has been gutted and destroyed. It's the damn truth, don't go around throwing out buzzwords to try to make my claim false.

It's your opinion that you're not backing up with, anything, really. Repeatedly stating something doesn't turn your invalid argument into a valid one. Moreover, anyone that's disagreeing with you is just met with "You have no idea what your saying / you're lying / you're blind" which is a really dumbass (not to mention fallacious) approach to trying to defeat someone's argument, just saying.

[Scathbais]

I just felt the need to chime in on the discussion of the last 2 pages, because I don't want others who are less experienced to get the wrong idea. Many read these forums who are not theorycrafters or mythic raiders, and some people are far to negative for my liking.

Bacon is correct, the optimal rotation in Legion is much more complex and intensive than WOD or MOP. If you go with the best dps talents, which mythic progression raiders like myself will be using, Destro is much more engaging than previous versions. If you don't believe me test it out yourself on a target dummy. Use RB, MT, Eradication, GoServ and CD. Spend 6 minutes keeping a constant perfect rotation going: maximize 3x RB Immolate while using unbuffed Immo between to keep 100% uptime; CD, GoServ, Doomguard and rift x2 on cooldown; don't let Conflag charges cap; keep MT uptime 100%; CB dumps on procs; don't cap shards; don't OOM; weave in some havoc on 2nd dummy without loosing main target dps; and then tell me you can do all that 100% perfectly while dealing with mythic raid encounter mechanics.

Using Destro's kit with passives like BD, RE and SC is super easy and might lead people to believe Destro is ruined. But those same people will never get top 20 parses.

Same question to you Trixxa, any issues at 110 on practice dummies with that rotation? Are you needing to drain life like I do testing on live? Seems like our passive healing is nonexistent with destro. Playing with that rotation I am eventually OOM and Out of life

[Baconeggcheese]

I still don't like RNG resource generation.

It's really not different, you got a baseline amount of guaranteed embers from casting (you get a baseline amount of shards from conflag), and then you had RNG embers you got from crits (you get RNG shards from immolate hits / crits).

[Uzkin]

Every resource mechanics in the game is "really not different" from soul shards if you are willing to generalize as much as you just did. But the fact is that back in WoD there never, ever was a chance that after casting a Chaos Bolt you were left either with 0 or 3.2 embers (single target). Now there is (when expressed in equivalent amount of shards, out of 5). That's a massive increase in RNG, just like s/he said.

Edit. "single target" added to avoid nitpicking.

[Shademehre]

Why can't we all just get along and be friends