Destruction: I dont think the sky is falling

[Baconeggcheese]

true, destro is viable, but there is a big difference between being viable and being competative, which is the case for destro, its viable but hardly competative.

Yes and no one ever disputed that, it's literally the worst fight for the spec no one expects it to be competitive there. That's fine though, because its a powerhouse everywhere else.

[Deleted]

Yes and no one ever disputed that, it's literally the worst fight for the spec no one expects it to be competitive there. That's fine though, because its a powerhouse everywhere else.

I am not saying Destro is bad on most fights, but what exactly do you mean by powerhouse? At what point does a specc become a powerhouse and to be perfectly honest I don't think being in the bottom half qualifies for powerhouse, but that may be some sort of different definition.

[Deleted]

yeah I am very likely switching to Affli with 7.1.5.

Would love to test the destro and affli changes on the ptr, but can neither create nor copy characters at the moment

One big problem with destro is even if you are completely specced into AoE you don't do as much AoE damage as you would expect compared to other classes that aren't even specced into aoe and then on single target you are flat out the worst specc in the game.
That is one big concern for me right now. Destro single target is horrendous. And destro single target is even worse when you aren't specced for ST. And basically 95% of dungeon bosses are single target, well because you only have 1 tank in 5 mans. Especially with tyrannical it becomes somewhat annoying. I hope Affliction is more well rounded.

I somehow can't get warm with Rain of Fire right now. I even have that awful ring and hate RoF.

As for demo I don't feel comfortable with that specc. Super short single target fights are fine, but longer fights where you have to life tap every 10-15 seconds once you've depleted your initial mana pool really are annoying. Demo is not really for me.

I just hope Affli will be well rounded enough so that I can fully focus on affli gear, legs and relics. It doesn't need to be the very best in every situation, but I wanna be competitive in ST when I am specced ST and I wanna be competitive multi target when specced for multi target.

That is something I am really missing with Destruction. When I am specced into Wreak Havoc my cleave is great, but when I am specced into soul conduit and every single target talent there is then my single target is still the worst in the game by far.

Let's see how Affliction plays now with the hefty Legendary Hood nerf and T19 2 AND 4 piece nerf.

Well, that's the problem with Destro, it's a gimick specc.

It's pretty much all based around it's ability to cleave evenly onto two targets and really excell at doing it. However the second the fight has other demands it's starts to fall behind vastly. With the recent talents changes though I would think Blizzard would like to make it so you get to choose how you want to approach single target and AoE, and ideally they will balance it as such so that you can do both. The difference will be if you wanna burst, high prolonged damage or whatever is needed.

I'm too gearing and spending artifact power into affliction. Even though I recon Demo will be just fine in 7.1.5 the many buffs Affliction has gotten already it would seem as if it will be the strongest specc hiting the new patch, and if that's the case I want to be ready. It's just a shame I have no Affliction legendary and never got lucky enough to get Sindori's Spite even though I've been playing Demo for the last few months.

Btw, one of the things I did with Demo to better come to terms with Life Tap was to no longer see it as a mandatory button that needed to be pressed in order to keep going but instead as a way to gain DPS. It's an instant cast, thusly meaning that whenever you need to move as Demo it's one of the best abilities you can cast to keep your rotation going. So basically, just imagine it's old Fel Flame, and it does it's best damage whenever you hit sub 30% mana. It's fine to cast at 70-80% mana. Even though you aren't ooming, you will eventually and therefor casting it earler means no need to cast it later.

[Pokeypenguin]

Destro is not even super amazing at 2 target cleave if you don't have either of the cleave berries.

[Baconeggcheese]

Destro is not even super amazing at 2 target cleave if you don't have either of the cleave berries.

None of the specs are particularly amazing at anything without berries compared to specs with berries.

[Pokeypenguin]

True, guess it just adds to the "feels bad man" pile. Be nice to at least top cleave fights QQ

[Lucrece]

Yeah, and to be honest, destruction is by far the most mechanically sound and flexible spec. Affliction has received a lot of neat fixes for 7.1.5 to become a rival, but destro is so goddamned flexible I'd be surprised if it doesn't remain the most popular spec by far.

Destro's issues are mainly number related in ST. Numbers are easy to fix. Mechanics take a whole expansion to fix. The closest destro has with mechanics problems is the aoe, but that's a warlock problem not a destro problem as all warlock specs MUST rely on conflicting ST vs. AoE talents to aoe competitively.

Destro feels relatively crisp to play. It's an incredibly practical spec. No convoluted mechanics to be punished by disruptive raid mechanics.

[Shandas]

Meh, I feel like crap when playing on my Warlock. Just pugged heroic Helya, was specced for ST and got booted for low dps because I dident pad my numbers with aoe on adds. ;(
I probaly should have specced into Havoc but dident want to HS and respec. Annoying only to be able to pull off 300k single target with 880 Itemlvl.

[Deleted]

Yes,

Destro is SO BAD, that Method had 1 during world first kills. Also Serenity. Also Danish Terrace. Even the 4th world first kill had 1 Affliction. And basicly top 50 guilds.

I hate this community. So MANY INCOMPTENT people.

[SpikeySquad]

Meh, I feel like crap when playing on my Warlock. Just pugged heroic Helya, was specced for ST and got booted for low dps because I dident pad my numbers with aoe on adds. ;(
I probaly should have specced into Havoc but dident want to HS and respec. Annoying only to be able to pull off 300k single target with 880 Itemlvl.

Not using Havoc on such a cleave fight where add management is everything? No, I am not talking about the little ones either. Let the bursters handle them.

[Deleted]

I am not saying Destro is bad on most fights, but what exactly do you mean by powerhouse? At what point does a specc become a powerhouse and to be perfectly honest I don't think being in the bottom half qualifies for powerhouse, but that may be some sort of different definition.

I'm so surprised about statements like this... I simply cannot believe that all other dps in my raid are so much worse than me, because in my raid group, I'm actually only ever ever bottom half in Nythendra when I don't re-talent for single target. Even Ursoc, I'm in the Top 3 because of the add cleave. Cenarius as well. Xavius doesn't count because the ones that get the first, possibly second dream will always be up, independent of class/spec. Spider also. Odyn, Destro is untouchable.

So: Overall, I'm actually not too unhappy about destro in raids. I can actually very well live with the fact that I'm not as good on straight ST fights if I am doing well on most others.

M+ is a different story of course. There, with mixed spec I'm usually last in most fights (burst AoE and ST) but again double or more dps than everyone else on 2-target cleave.

[Deleted]

I'm so surprised about statements like this... I simply cannot believe that all other dps in my raid are so much worse than me, because in my raid group, I'm actually only ever ever bottom half in Nythendra when I don't re-talent for single target. Even Ursoc, I'm in the Top 3 because of the add cleave. Cenarius as well. Xavius doesn't count because the ones that get the first, possibly second dream will always be up, independent of class/spec. Spider also. Odyn, Destro is untouchable.

So: Overall, I'm actually not too unhappy about destro in raids. I can actually very well live with the fact that I'm not as good on straight ST fights if I am doing well on most others.

M+ is a different story of course. There, with mixed spec I'm usually last in most fights (burst AoE and ST) but again double or more dps than everyone else on 2-target cleave.

you are a very special snowflake

[Pokeypenguin]

Yes,

Destro is SO BAD, that Method had 1 during world first kills. Also Serenity. Also Danish Terrace. Even the 4th world first kill had 1 Affliction. And basicly top 50 guilds.

I hate this community. So MANY INCOMPTENT people.

Imps can dispel.

[Deleted]

you are a very special snowflake

he's beyond a very special snowflake, if he didnt pad *cough cenarius* or the ppl in his guild didnt take ages to kill the add on ursoc which they apparently do, then the picture would be very different, in my guild he would very rarely enter the top 10.

[Baconeggcheese]

he's beyond a very special snowflake, if he didnt pad *cough cenarius* or the ppl in his guild didnt take ages to kill the add on ursoc which they apparently do, then the picture would be very different, in my guild he would very rarely enter the top 10.

Early kills destro carried add dmg since the dps check was tight. Nowadays the add dies so fast I use ST talents but still get a normal havoc cleave off into it and am always near the top of the dps meter.

Dunno what you consider pad on cenarius, the only thing that would be padding is hitting the dragons. Everything else is a high priority target that needs to die. We were absolutely strong in EN (and odyn, and helya), you'd have to be a special snowflake not to realize that.

[Jondar]

Are people still confusing ability to pad minor targets with being a good class/spec ITT? Seems like it's been going on for a while now, and I'm pretty sure I just read someone say "Destro isn't even that good at 2 target cleave."

Who opened the LFR hero floodgates? I imagine these people go to Warcraft Logs, look at the rankings tab and go "SEE? THAT HUNTER IS AT 1M DPS ON DRAGONS. DESTRO CANT DO THAT! HAH!" without looking at the 56 million Dread Horror damage that goes into padding WCL rankings.

In real situations, there aren't any classes that can match our ability to target swap onto 2+ priority targets and do sustained damage unless we're talking a [b]good[/i] Shadow Priest in STM. If you can't do it well it's a L2P issue.

- - - Updated - - -

Having to execute that fight perfectly because you are carrying low dps, especially with flame lick RNG, made it significantly harder then if you just stacked shadow priests. we had quite a few early attempts where he would have died if we had a different raid setup.

Let me know where this unlimited pool of good Shadow Priests comes from. Because from the sounds of it, every guild has the option to have 5+ that will do top tier damage. Funny enough, though, that never seems to actually happen on most teams.

If you're worried about your Destro single target (not sure why you play Destro expecting ST, but that's another topic) just spec Demo. Even without Legs you can probably do more ST with it as long as you play properly and have good haste gear.

[Mezmaron]

Yep I've tried the other specs, not a huge fan of them either. But that was more along the lines of focusing on Destruction; If the best answer we can give ourselves is "Just play another spec" then Blizzard have failed as class designers.

You might be able to keep the same functional soul shard asthetic without reverting back to embers, but there were several quite organic things why MoP warlocks were much more fun to play:

• Staggered resource generation - You could build up your embers over time and then release one big, punchy Chaos Bolt and it felt great. They could also reliably be generated and used for ember tap when required.
• Triggerable Fire and Brimstone plus Immolate - God this felt fun.
• Mobility - This should be a no-brainer. Extra mobility was a paradigm shift I can't believe they backed away from. It made a lot of sense and was enjoyable to play.
• Decent AoE - Another no-brainer. Brimstone + Immolate + Rain of Fire felt like a great AOE with just enough ramp-up and it felt great to cast. Things melted. Fun times were had.

Basically you had mobile, well-synergised organic DPS that was fun to play and now we... Don't. It's not as fun.

This sums up my thoughts on the destruction warlock as well. The revamp warlocks got in mop got it right and to see the near complete 180 the class has done since then is incredibly disheartening. It was the closest to "right" the spec/class has ever felt to me. I still remember running around firing off spells just cause we could out of the sheer fun factor. I fully expected blizz to expand on movement for casters in WoD but instead they chose to regress gameplay. I reject their current idea of what destruction warlocks should be and hope they realize it is a mistake. Acknowledging warlocks need work is a start so we'll see.

[TheBull300]

This sums up my thoughts on the destruction warlock as well. The revamp warlocks got in mop got it right and to see the near complete 180 the class has done since then is incredibly disheartening. It was the closest to "right" the spec/class has ever felt to me. I still remember running around firing off spells just cause we could out of the sheer fun factor. I fully expected blizz to expand on movement for casters in WoD but instead they chose to regress gameplay. I reject their current idea of what destruction warlocks should be and hope they realize it is a mistake. Acknowledging warlocks need work is a start so we'll see.

MoP was definitely the most fun I've ever had as a warlock, especially Destro. I wish they would go back to MoP Destro as the class fantasy was almost spot on, I would prefer a non pet fel flam flinger over what we have today.

Heck we don't even have pet choices... Destro is Imp, Demo is Fel Guard and Affliction is Doom Guard we dont even manage them or have much interaction with them, they might as well not exist

[Deleted]

Dunno what you consider pad on cenarius, the only thing that would be padding is hitting the dragons.

aye and that is what he'd have to do to get into that top 3 spot he claimed he was consistantly getting, even on ursoc which i highly doubt due to all the stutter step movement. not saying destro isnt good on any fight they can cleave close to 100% of the fights but even then they are struggling with classes that can do close to the same dps while focusing entirely on ST dps but the moment they cant or shouldnt cleave, destro dps just drops like a sack of potatos.

[Jondar]

not saying destro isnt good on any fight they can cleave close to 100% of the fights

So like.. the majority of encounters in this game?

Like.. you're blaming padding as the reason why a Lock can do well but ignoring how much padding other classes do to appear to be destroying Locks in your eyes. Priority damage, Destruction locks are ridiculously good. The entire benefit of being a Destro Lock that when they DO cleave, they don't lose any damage from other priority targets so that makes up for their lack of single target when there isn't an add. Like.. Literally any.

he's beyond a very special snowflake, if he didnt pad *cough cenarius* or the ppl in his guild didnt take ages to kill the add on ursoc which they apparently do, then the picture would be very different, in my guild he would very rarely enter the top 10.

Again, a double standard. You're saying that other classes in your guild should be able to pull damage away from Destro on the add but the Destro locks can't pull damage away from the other classes. So if the Lock does well, he's either padding or his team sucks but if the other classes beat the Locks it's just because their classes are better? Get real.