It seems that destro needs a buff for raiding

[Gaidax]

I have to object to not using ELT. ELT is dead easy to use and hard to whiff on. RB and CDF are another matter, and more an issue with how they haven't buffed CDF for enough ST and instead chose to add more cleave onto it for some reason.

Another problem is that even in the ideal fight that is Elisande, which destro locks should be god tier on, they got beat on by shadow priests, who are supremely better on 3+ targets and even ST. Serenity's demonhunters performed as well as their second destro lock. Even the assassination rogues and marksman hunter did very closely on performance.

There's just no payoff for these niches. Niche specs that don't even dominate their niches while generalist classes do better in that niche and ST/aoe to boot.

It also has to do with how mobility just takes a dump on all the warlock specs particularly. Affliction isn't competitive without MG, so its mobility is hamstrung there. Demo and Destro are still as they have been mobility wise. And all these fights have serious movement, and most of the NH fights involve aoe which warlocks are simply mediocre on.

If affliction didn't brute force ST DPS (and it's still ~10% behind those broken assassination rogues), it would be down there with demo and destro.

And 7.2 sees no hints whatsoever of those supposed warlock tweaks they were working on, particularly soul effigy and demonic empowerment but destro as well.

ELT is not a problem, yes, problem is people trying to use everything at once without turning on their brain and questioning themselves whether it is really the right way.

Another thing is simply a question of balance and application, let's face it - Destruction is simply not very good at padding, thus numbers are lower across the board than let's say Aff/Demo/Spriests/Whatever which can produce a bunch of often meaningless damage easily simply by autocleaving shit or tab dotting one way or another.

Destruction IMO is quite a bit more viable than, for example, Padffliction or Demo for where it actually counts, namely switching to and killing priority targets, the biggest "issue" with it that it offers a highly focused damage instead of damaging everything around at once by a fraction, which results in warcraftlogs numbers not looking nice enough.

Another problem is an absolute dogshit theorycrafting community for Destro, which leads many people astray, stumbling over their feet trying to pull out bullshit rotations which only a machine in lab environment can perfect - namely RB/CDF + a bunch of other crap, which was kindly suggested by various people around and is religiously being parroted by various uninformed individuals.

[Lucrece]

Well, affliction can't even pad outside Skorpyron. It's a ranged ST spec with tunneling MG.

They took all the cleaving away from affliction by shifting all of affliction's damage into UA and Agony and making Corruption and Siphon Life dogshit damage (and seed of corruption is mediocre if not just bad). Agony takes a long ramp up time so by the time it starts damaging adds the add is dead, and UA is a ST dot.

I wouldn't say ST specs are padding specs. They're just specs you use to push phases while the other classes deal with adds.

Affliction is basically a far more limited (inferior) shadow priest with better ST and much less cleaving capacity and mobility.

Demo is just demo, a ST spec that gets trounced by assassination rogues/melee/frost mages and has no mobility whatsoever while having pedestrian cleave and terrible aoe.

Destro can do valuable damage as Serenity showed with Elisande, but again it's super niche. Dealing with priority adds isn't something even destro warlocks dominate in despite being the only thing they can excel at.

I'm just disappointed at how little they've done to target QOL changes. Destro is RNG. Affliction is massive RNG as well with souls and not having souls during progression during opener. Only demo offers a playstyle not mired in RNG and instead it's even more of a turret spec.

No visual updates still (especially affliction, god those vanilla dot animations and vanilla drain soul downgrade from malefic grasp, losing verdant spheres to mages), and the one new glyph we get is for a pet we can't even use because they decided to take a crap on their progress of making all pets available for all specs and instead turn back time to assign spec specific pets again.

[nessopito]

Well, affliction can't even pad outside Skorpyron. It's a ranged ST spec with tunneling MG.

They took all the cleaving away from affliction by shifting all of affliction's damage into UA and Agony and making Corruption and Siphon Life dogshit damage (and seed of corruption is mediocre if not just bad). Agony takes a long ramp up time so by the time it starts damaging adds the add is dead, and UA is a ST dot.

I wouldn't say ST specs are padding specs. They're just specs you use to push phases while the other classes deal with adds.

Affliction is basically a far more limited (inferior) shadow priest with better ST and much less cleaving capacity and mobility.

Demo is just demo, a ST spec that gets trounced by assassination rogues/melee/frost mages and has no mobility whatsoever while having pedestrian cleave and terrible aoe.

Destro can do valuable damage as Serenity showed with Elisande, but again it's super niche. Dealing with priority adds isn't something even destro warlocks dominate in despite being the only thing they can excel at.

I'm just disappointed at how little they've done to target QOL changes. Destro is RNG. Affliction is massive RNG as well with souls and not having souls during progression during opener. Only demo offers a playstyle not mired in RNG and instead it's even more of a turret spec.

No visual updates still (especially affliction, god those vanilla dot animations and vanilla drain soul downgrade from malefic grasp, losing verdant spheres to mages), and the one new glyph we get is for a pet we can't even use because they decided to take a crap on their progress of making all pets available for all specs and instead turn back time to assign spec specific pets again.

It's just not warlocks who are susceptible to movement intensive encounters, seems by the logs all ranged specs are just as susceptible. In fact, Demo the "OMG DONT MOVE TURRET NO CLEAVE SPEC" is actually one of the top performing ranged specs on logs despite all the movement and cleave fights. If anything this tier of raiding has melee edging out / beating range, while range runs around dealing with mechanics more often than not.

[Lucrece]

It's just not warlocks who are susceptible to movement intensive encounters, seems by the logs all ranged specs are just as susceptible. In fact, Demo the "OMG DONT MOVE TURRET NO CLEAVE SPEC" is actually one of the top performing ranged specs on logs despite all the movement and cleave fights. If anything this tier of raiding has melee edging out / beating range, while range runs around dealing with mechanics more often than not.

Not necessarily.

There's a mix of low numbers for other specs masking their low performance whereas warlocks have good potential numbers but get trucked by movement.

There is simply no comparison to blinkx2 when you have to soak falling orbs in Elisande compared to warlock, or hunter disengages or the druid blink.

Our best answer is burning rush, gateway without legendary pants is just not enough.

Frost mage is doing really well in mythic, both on boss damage and cleave.

Of course melee are doing better in general because they barely have mechanics that force them off boss for the same amount of time ranged have to interrupt casting and move.

[Amonthar]

ELT is not hard to maintain but it feels like a totally empty cast. I would prefer a buff across the board that includes the use of the GCD (so about 8-9%) as opposed to this but it would not happen. I use ELT but hate it.

I haven't seen a legendary in over a month easy. Now that I can buy wow tokens with gold, I am seriously looking at leveling another Warlock and I am stuck with absolute trash legendaries. Legendaries are gated behind how many you can use so why are they gated in obtaining them in this increased time between getting one? I hope 7.2 offers something to offset this.

[Lucrece]

ELT feels bad because Life Tap is a garbage spell for all specs.

Life Tap is a warlock penalty.

No other caster besides arcane mage, who has mechanics tied to mana management, has to waste empty globals to keep casting. It's just terrible that in the first 12 seconds of bloodlust as affliction I'm already life tapping, and it's especially bad for demo because you're life tapping at the same time you're trying to squeeze out a meaty TKC.

Life Tap is just a terrible concept they brought back for no reason whatsoever.

[nessopito]

Not necessarily.

There's a mix of low numbers for other specs masking their low performance whereas warlocks have good potential numbers but get trucked by movement.

There is simply no comparison to blinkx2 when you have to soak falling orbs in Elisande compared to warlock, or hunter disengages or the druid blink.

Our best answer is burning rush, gateway without legendary pants is just not enough.

Frost mage is doing really well in mythic, both on boss damage and cleave.

Of course melee are doing better in general because they barely have mechanics that force them off boss for the same amount of time ranged have to interrupt casting and move.

I don't understand what you are trying to argue here... That other specs are played by lesser skilled players thus masking their true dps per encounter? Or are you talking about sample size? Our good potential dps is "trucked" by movement , yet the end result from succesful logs is placing demo as one of the better ranged alternatives... At least the heroic logs have a good enough sample size to make a rather robust trend for ranged DPS, and mythic seems to be mirroring that same performance (with exception of frost mages performing far better in mythic logs for now.)

I mean yes we don't have double blink and our most efficient movement abilities is a well placed circle/gateway+ burning rush, but the results are still consistent thru most encounters.

[Lucrece]

I don't understand what you are trying to argue here... That other specs are played by lesser skilled players thus masking their true dps per encounter? Or are you talking about sample size? Our good potential dps is "trucked" by movement , yet the end result from succesful logs is placing demo as one of the better ranged alternatives... At least the heroic logs have a good enough sample size to make a rather robust trend for ranged DPS, and mythic seems to be mirroring that same performance (with exception of frost mages performing far better in mythic logs for now.)

I mean yes we don't have double blink and our most efficient movement abilities is a well placed circle/gateway+ burning rush, but the results are still consistent thru most encounters.

I'm arguing the other ranged specs are undertuned numbers wise. You park them on a patchwerk fight like krosus or if you want some slight cleave, star augur, and you see frost mage, warlocks, and shadow priests as the only ranged classes that have competitive DPS that isn't just aoe padding.

Ele shaman looks great because chain lightning spam tends to do that on adds that would die anyways, same for fire mage. But look at their boss damage and priority target damage and their performance is abysmal while melee are doing the same aoe as them on top of doubling their boss damage contribution.

[Deleted]

The only issue I have with my warlock in the current tier is that I'm not able to handle the mechanics in the fights as well as others. That makes me very limited in what I can contribute to as part of the raid.

As an example adds needs to be interupted and killed on Krosus? I really cannot contribute.
Lashers needs to die on botanist? Gotta be someone else.
Pools needs to be soaked on Magister? Hope there's a portal in the right place and meanwhile losing extreme amounts of damage.

Overall from checking my logs the times where I can ignore mechanics and just go full out turret my damage is nearly too high, but as soon as I have to start doing the mechanics I drops straight to the bottom nearly.

[pies1]

The problem is 2 fold. First, dest plays like shit qithout.embers. Second, havoc makes it impossible to have decent ST without being broken as fuck on cleave.

[Lucrece]

The only issue I have with my warlock in the current tier is that I'm not able to handle the mechanics in the fights as well as others. That makes me very limited in what I can contribute to as part of the raid.

As an example adds needs to be interupted and killed on Krosus? I really cannot contribute.
Lashers needs to die on botanist? Gotta be someone else.
Pools needs to be soaked on Magister? Hope there's a portal in the right place and meanwhile losing extreme amounts of damage.

Overall from checking my logs the times where I can ignore mechanics and just go full out turret my damage is nearly too high, but as soon as I have to start doing the mechanics I drops straight to the bottom nearly.

I'm the affliction lock in our raid:

"Why are you only 5% of the damage done to Lashers?"

"Because Even if I put 2 Unstable Afflictions and no other dots on them, they won't see more than a tick for each before the Lashers die. Agony takes 10 seconds to ramp up damage. The Lashers die in 5 seconds or less."

"I don't know, you need to help out with the adds."

/take a deep breath

[SpikeySquad]

The only issue I have with my warlock in the current tier is that I'm not able to handle the mechanics in the fights as well as others. That makes me very limited in what I can contribute to as part of the raid.

Personally I don't see that as a warlock problem but rather one where people personally choose to play only one spec. I play all 3 in Nighthold (and yes without the BiS legendaries for each and not full AP) so yes warlock is fine for burst damage, for cleaving, for tunneling damage, for AoE, it has a stun, an interrupt, a dispell, specs that have slightly more mobility for a high movement fights and so on and so forth. Though yes warlock mobility overall does seem rather low compared to some other ranged classes. At least in my group though doing mechanics properly (on Trillax, Ellisande, Gul'dan etc) seem far more important on progress than any extra DPS I can throw out though we overgear it and I'm still in heroic, naturally mythic will have tighter enrages.

I don't have any max alts at the moment so perhaps there are well rounded ranged (melee are a different beast in my opinion) specs from other classes out there that can do actually all of that and still get high numbers?

I don't think each spec should be able to do everything and enjoy the differences between ours. I do agree though that certain specs have less utility however I am happy focusing fully on DPS then! Of course if you are in a much smaller guild and lack something then yes I can imagine it could be a problem though.

[Baconeggcheese]

I'm the affliction lock in our raid:

"Why are you only 5% of the damage done to Lashers?"

"Because Even if I put 2 Unstable Afflictions and no other dots on them, they won't see more than a tick for each before the Lashers die. Agony takes 10 seconds to ramp up damage. The Lashers die in 5 seconds or less."

"I don't know, you need to help out with the adds."

/take a deep breath

Reasons why I play destruction all the time despite aff being fotm.

Better progression spec.

[Deleted]

Reasons why I play destruction all the time despite aff being fotm.

Better progression spec.

Doesn't that just change the conversation to:
"Why is your fellow affli lock doing 30% more dps than you?"

"Because I switch to the priority adds"

"I don't know, you need to do more overall dps"

PS: Out of curiosity - Do you play destro for Krosus?

[Deleted]

First, right now I'm convinced all pure dps classes suffer from a "pure tax" of sorts, where you have a spec tailored to each type of encounter (single target/cleave/aoe). Meanwhile in the land of hybrids, where you only have 1 dps spec available (and here I'm counting ranged and melee separately), that spec needs to have good everything in order to justify bringing one in a raid.

Second, melee seem to cry whenever they need to leave the boss hitbox even for a second or two, not realising 90% of ranged can't do much while moving either. I was actually mindblown when there was a reddit Q&A and one of the devs said they balance melee time on target with a class like mages (who, at the time, had ridiculous mobility thanks to double blink that does not interrupt casting and Ice Flows).

Third, they add maintenance mechanics that nobody likes (not even the old devs, see Improved Soulfire from Cata times), just because. Want #classfantasy? How about you turn Life Tap into a proper dps cooldown? 2min cd, restores 2 shards and 1 more every 5 seconds for 20s, maybe along with a generic 10% damage/crit/haste/whatever tackled on. Now you have two different cooldowns that don't really stack with eachother (so you don't get ridiculous stacking like you did in the past and they disliked, although see Crusade + trinkets/Draught + Battle Cry for more on that).

In short, while you can fix numbers with across the board buffs, there are some really questionable design decisions and contradictions at a core level. I just hope they learn from this, although looking behind makes me doubt it.

[Gaidax]

Doesn't that just change the conversation to:
"Why is your fellow affli lock doing 30% more dps than you?"

"Because I switch to the priority adds"

"I don't know, you need to do more overall dps"

PS: Out of curiosity - Do you play destro for Krosus?

That is a pretty nonsense conversation at certain play levels, for example in my case (which is not some uber world top 30 edgelords) it is already a case of officers not giving a rats ass about parsing and shit, but do give much more damn about shutting down Krosus adds ASAP to the point where people who slack on those too much risk bench for that encounter.

[Deleted]

The problem is 2 fold. First, dest plays like shit qithout.embers. Second, havoc makes it impossible to have decent ST without being broken as fuck on cleave.

I do believed that once. But when you see warrior's / rogue / .. doing great ST and Cleave (when adds are close together) i see no point why we need to be taxted that we can cleave over a larger distance. That maybe happens to be with 1 boss in raid of 10 bosses.

[Deleted]

First, right now I'm convinced all pure dps classes suffer from a "pure tax" of sorts, where you have a spec tailored to each type of encounter (single target/cleave/aoe). Meanwhile in the land of hybrids, where you only have 1 dps spec available (and here I'm counting ranged and melee separately), that spec needs to have good everything in order to justify bringing one in a raid.

The real tax feels like legendaries / AP being fractured over three specs that you're (rightfully) expected to be able to play. Keeping them even remotely close to each other is another thing.

This morning I had a conversation with a monk healer about why I was playing destruction on M-Krosus, despite regularly being top 5, often 2nd on damage as is, probably far higher than a destruction warlock should be in a raid, but he's semi-right, I feel like I WOULD be affliction, but I don't feel like I have the gear, artifact or legendaries to go affliction for it since my mastery is in the 50%ish region off the top of my head, I don't have a Gul'dan trinket since the loot council has insisted on giving 2-3 to our other warlock, and my affliction artifacts not 54 yet.

I can stomach the AP deficit, at least I can feel like I can work towards that, but the legendaries having no effort made to be cross-spec is asinine. I still have zero good destruction legendaries, let alone ones for affliction and demo. It's frustrating enough still feeling like I need to fish for a good destruction one (and dreading the inevitable ROF ring) without even thinking about having to repeat the process for affliction and demo.

That is a pretty nonsense conversation at certain play levels, for example in my case (which is not some uber world top 30 edgelords) it is already a case of officers not giving a rats ass about parsing and shit, but do give much more damn about shutting down Krosus adds ASAP to the point where people who slack on those too much risk bench for that encounter.

Just be aware your experience is far from universal - I know I see people in my guild having dreafully lopsided views on things - expecting cutting edge dedication in some areas while not giving a hoot if people are performing well below what we SHOULD expect in others.

Some people are really bone-headed.

The problem is 2 fold. First, dest plays like shit qithout.embers. Second, havoc makes it impossible to have decent ST without being broken as fuck on cleave.

Are we broke on cleave right now? Spriests seemed to be beating the socks off us as is. I'd rather let classes shine in their niche and be adequate elsewhere than be playable in their niche and poor elsewhere.

[Gaidax]

Just be aware your experience is far from universal - I know I see people in my guild having dreafully lopsided views on things - expecting cutting edge dedication in some areas while not giving a hoot if people are performing well below what we SHOULD expect in others.

Some people are really bone-headed.

There is no if or buts here - you don't kill adds on Mythic Krosus = wipe.

The people you are talking about usually do not go far in raiding.

[Lucrece]

Reasons why I play destruction all the time despite aff being fotm.

Better progression spec.

What they don't understand is that I'm also the reason they're not dealing with more add phases since I'm usually ahead by 50-100 million damage or more on the bosses.

I mean, with Tichondrius and our rogue switching from outlaw to assassination while the mage/ele shaman deal with adds is the reason why the 2 of us were able to carry boss DPS so we wouldn't risk an enrage timer.

Nobody values assassination rogues or warriors, or demo/afflocks carrying the boss damage. I mean, melee as usual just want to tunnel the boss despite most melee spec being burst classes and having 2+ gap closers, and when you got a marksman hunter, ele shaman, and fire mage around, you don't go pointing fingers at the warlock as to why adds aren't dying faster.

Shadow priests were stacked on botanist and nobody was complaining about how shadow priests as a dot class won't shine on Lashers, because instead they will wreck the boss.

Second, melee seem to cry whenever they need to leave the boss hitbox even for a second or two, not realising 90% of ranged can't do much while moving either. I was actually mindblown when there was a reddit Q&A and one of the devs said they balance melee time on target with a class like mages (who, at the time, had ridiculous mobility thanks to double blink that does not interrupt casting and Ice Flows).

.

I had the ret pally and rogue with the nerve to tell us ranged that Trilliax was as bad a fight for them as it is for ranged.

They swear that melee are forced off boss anywhere close to the amount of time ranged DPS have to spend moving for mechanics.