It seems that destro needs a buff for raiding

[Baconeggcheese]

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"

aff doesn't do 30% more than destro so that conversation doesn't happen. Also I'm in a pretty good guild, so we tend to care more about killing bosses than meters regardless.

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

Yup, I've played it on everything thus far. I'm currently playing it on star augur which is (was) the much harsher ST dmg check of this tier.

Nobody values assassination rogues or warriors, or demo/afflocks carrying the boss damage.

We have 2+ ass rogues on every one of our kills thus far, of course its valued. The thing is that boss damage is one of the easiest things to make up, and if you just wanted a class there to turret ST there's better options like ass rogue. What destro excels at is still doing boss damage while doing good add damage. When those lashers spawn I don't suddenly stop doing damage to the boss, I just also do solid damage to the lashers.

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.

Spriests are amazing at execute phases which tend to be dps checks.

[Cheapnecrolyte]

Blizzard loves warlock tears

I concur!!!!

[Deleted]

aff doesn't do 30% more than destro so that conversation doesn't happen. Also I'm in a pretty good guild, so we tend to care more about killing bosses than meters regardless.
Yup, I've played it on everything thus far. I'm currently playing it on star augur which is (was) the much harsher ST dmg check of this tier.
(snip)

could you give me a couple of tips for Krosus as Destro then? We have 1 affli, 1 demo and I played destro last night, and I was dead last with 550k dps, with affli at 690-750k and demo at around 600k. Admittedly, I was in the soak group that was in a place where I couldnt continue to dps the boss in the first bridge phase, so that definitely cost some dps. And most tries where we got to 2-3%, we did not have many adds, and those that we did have were up front, where they literally melted before a CB was able to hit.

Which talents do you play? BD-Erad-SC? Or the RB thing? Or do you use Demonfire?

I'll probably do it as affli tonight, despite not having good leggies (Sindorei's sucks with GoSup).

[burek]

I did 600k with the standard st build, elt sh service cdf, with no dps legendaries. 550k seems rather low especially with spite. Do you have max traits, 4pc, guldan trinket and so on? Soaking shouldn't count as a personal dps loss, everybody loses dps there, both the ranged covering the back ones and the melee covering the middle ones. Anybody trying to dps in the soaking phase will much more likely cause a wipe than a few missed casts.

As for tips, not much could be said for this fight. Don't wait for the beams but move earlier when casting instants. Not much else is going on, only beams and soaking. I used the circle to reach the back side faster before soaking, gateway for the orbs.

Destruction is a rng spec unfortunately, so pray to the rng gods to give you enough shards and your trinkets not to proc while soaking. My dps varied over 100k between the best and worst pull, that's like 20%, terrible stuff

[Deleted]

I did 600k with the standard st build, elt sh service cdf, with no dps legendaries. 550k seems rather low especially with spite. Do you have max traits, 4pc, guldan trinket and so on? Soaking shouldn't count as a personal dps loss, everybody loses dps there, both the ranged covering the back ones and the melee covering the middle ones. Anybody trying to dps in the soaking phase will much more likely cause a wipe than a few missed casts.

As for tips, not much could be said for this fight. Don't wait for the beams but move earlier when casting instants. Not much else is going on, only beams and soaking. I used the circle to reach the back side faster before soaking, gateway for the orbs.

Destruction is a rng spec unfortunately, so pray to the rng gods to give you enough shards and your trinkets not to proc while soaking. My dps varied over 100k between the best and worst pull, that's like 20%, terrible stuff

I played SC instead of CDF. Have max traits, 4pc (although 2 of them NM - I'm unlucky like that), but no Guldan trinket (nor Metronome). Still rocking 880 swarm and 880 Chronoshard (or 875 Mastery stat stick).

I'll try CDF tonight. How do you do it in the add phase: Immolate as many as you can and then CDF?
Do you "save" SH for the add phase to get more seconds out of it? Or use it at pull?

[burek]

Used sh together with other cds, its a 6min fight so you can only use it 3 times. On adds just used havoc while runing back and try to get a few cbs off. We usually have an add in the middle or back or on the side where the beam is just about to hit, so those are the good targets since melee doesn't melt them. I don't think the add damage meters much, it was like 10 mil on them for most of us, that's like 5% dmg. But if you cant even get a cb off, better just go for the boss.

[Baconeggcheese]

could you give me a couple of tips for Krosus as Destro then? We have 1 affli, 1 demo and I played destro last night, and I was dead last with 550k dps, with affli at 690-750k and demo at around 600k. Admittedly, I was in the soak group that was in a place where I couldnt continue to dps the boss in the first bridge phase, so that definitely cost some dps. And most tries where we got to 2-3%, we did not have many adds, and those that we did have were up front, where they literally melted before a CB was able to hit.

Which talents do you play? BD-Erad-SC? Or the RB thing? Or do you use Demonfire?

I'll probably do it as affli tonight, despite not having good leggies (Sindorei's sucks with GoSup).

I run BD / ELT / SH / Serv / SC, pulled 642 this last week. Not the highest ST the class is capable of, but I wasn't expecting to get that. More than enough dps to kill the fight though, and much more useful on adds since soaking doesn't go perfectly every time.

I'm not sure what your strat looks like, but its pretty normal for locks to have a circle set up to get to the back of the room for soaks. I do the same thing, where I try to get some of the furthest back soaks every set.

I'm not really sure what tips I could give you for that fight, as its pretty close to patchwerk with a lil bit of movement and a bit of adds. There's not exactly a ton of nuance there. One thing I'd say is time out your coolies and consider when you use SH, I only get 3 SH's regardless of whether or not I use them on CD with our kill time so I delay one a minute to line it up with my 2nd round of 3 minutes.

[Deleted]

4 piece makes the rotation even more awkward with RB IMO. And I don't think we need an overkill buff, people are still playing destro. There are lots of parses but none of them near the top. They need their AOE buffed, even with Channel Demonfire splash damage, the AOE is pitiful compared to other specs.
What they do need desperately IMO is an overhaul of mechanics to smoothen out the rotation. It's so annoying right now. You have a bunch of dps abilities that don't line up well. So for single target you have a 3-minute summon cd, a two-minute buff cd, a 1.5 minute summon cd, a dot with a cast time that needs to be applied twice and then has to be buffed and not refreshed before very near expiration, a maintenance buff that has to be refreshed every 20 seconds, a random hard-hitting spell that must be channeled for 3 out of every 15 seconds, portals that randomly proc and must be cast not to cap, and finally good old chaos bolt spenders and incinerate fillers. They don't synergize at all. It's just a huge mess.

Having played destro through all mop and a small amount of wod when I actually played wod it feels similar ability wise but the way we translate those abilities into damage doesn't feel the same. Gone are the trinkets and procs that buff your stats or spell power, giving you a solid dump window for those stored embers(soul shards). Now it feels like I'm casting CB at four shards to avoid capping and waiting for procs that never come. I've had to make a TMW with a massive icon to show when mark of the claw procs as it's the only time you get a genuine buff to stats for dumping. So many trinkets now are "summons a thing that does x damage" which just doesn't lend itself to destro.

You can definitely see this in action when you watch old videos from MoP. Late ToT early SoO it wasn't unusual to burst 1m dps on the pull and finish at 250-300k now you burst 1m and finish at 600k.

- - - Updated - - -

could you give me a couple of tips for Krosus as Destro then? We have 1 affli, 1 demo and I played destro last night, and I was dead last with 550k dps, with affli at 690-750k and demo at around 600k. Admittedly, I was in the soak group that was in a place where I couldnt continue to dps the boss in the first bridge phase, so that definitely cost some dps. And most tries where we got to 2-3%, we did not have many adds, and those that we did have were up front, where they literally melted before a CB was able to hit.

Which talents do you play? BD-Erad-SC? Or the RB thing? Or do you use Demonfire?

I'll probably do it as affli tonight, despite not having good leggies (Sindorei's sucks with GoSup).

I find with adds that die fast it's best to havoc the add and chaos bolt the boss (or some add that wont die as fast) that way if the add dies mid cast you'll still at least finish the cast and get your CB on the boss

[HeroicMythic]

Since I have no account on the US forums, could anyone link this thread or post the data there in the forum and ask the developers for a comment or feedback? It would be enlightening to see what they think about the performance position of destruction warlocks in heroic raids.

--------------------------------------------------

Let us evaluate how viable a destruction warlock is in heroic nightmare raids by using the available data/parses from warcraftlogs. Out of the top 200 warlock parses, how many of them are affliction, demonolgy, and destruction? Let us also shine some light on how the 5th best (dps wise) destruction warlock is competing with other damage dealer classes on each boss.


Skorpyron:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 195, demo: 4, destro: 1
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 0

Chronomatic Anomaly:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 107, demo: 80, destro: 13
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 25 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 1226
2017-02-06 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo:, destro: 19 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 959
2017-02-16 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 1383

Trilliax:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 137, demo: 57, destro: 6
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 14 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 2327 lol
2017-02-06 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 8 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 1915
2017-02-16 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 2006

Spellblade Aluriel:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 104, demo: 95, destro: 1
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 8

Krosus:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 91, demo: 98, destro: 11
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 15 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 2289
2017-02-06 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 6++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 2469
2017-02-16 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 1962

Tichondrius:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 140, demo: 35, destro: 5
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 12
2017-02-16 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 4770 FOURTHOUSENDSEVENHUNDREDSEVENTY

Atraeus:
2017-01-20 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 159, demo: 41, destro: 0 (zero)
Really? 0?
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 2 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 1204
2017-02-06 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 6++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 830

Botanist:
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 51 , demo:66 , destro: 83 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 552 (just wait till more shadows (90% of rankings) get to that boss)

Elisande:
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 10 , demo: 18 , destro: 172 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 14

Gul'dan:
2017-01-28 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: 59 , demo: 69 , destro: 72 ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 358
2017-02-06 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: 67++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 307
2017-02-16 heroic out of top 200 available wl parses: affli: , demo: , destro: ++ the 5th best destro is overall at position: 370

Keep in mind that there are still some awesome warlock players who play destruction. Just imagine what would happen to the statics if those few players would not be counted.



Conclusion: The data of the first three weeks of raiding in hc nighthold indicates that destruction warlock is total garbage in 7 out of 10 bossfights. It is a complete failure. The lack of adequate performance is hideous and can be easily backed up by numbers. However, in 1 of the 3 "last" bossfights (Elisande) destruction warlock is among the best speccs(frost DK, assa Rogue, Shadow). Only few % difference between those speccs. In the 2 remaining bossfights (Botanist and Gul'dan) destruction warlock is doing ok. At Botanist 6th position out of 24 dd speccs. Gul'dan 17th position out of 24 dd speccs. So in conclusion, if you play destruction warlock, you will be 7 * total garbage, 1 * among the better speccs, and 2 * in the mid of the pack.

[Istaria]

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.

Have you voiced your concerns to the theorycrafters, brought enlightening data & offered alternatives to 'bullshit rotations' ?

[Baconeggcheese]

Have you voiced your concerns to the theorycrafters, brought enlightening data & offered alternatives to 'bullshit rotations' ?

As far as I understand it, there is no one on the warlock theorycraft team who plays destruction. And the person who does / did the destruction sims responds to feedback / criticism with hostility.

There was plenty of arguments had due to this and the leading people astray, which afaik said person still does to this day. Hence why you see BD / SC called "meme build", because the guy doesn't take it seriously despite finally realizing that it is a competitive build.

[Gaidax]

Have you voiced your concerns to the theorycrafters, brought enlightening data & offered alternatives to 'bullshit rotations' ?

Yes, see the above.

[Lucrece]

The pretty safe bet for any expansion, as this one isn't special despite people's short memory, is that if you don't like the state of a class during an expansion, change classes.

Classes don't get substantial changes or revamp mid expansion in terms of toolkit. They only gain tweaks to numbers.

It's always better to bet on classes with toolkits you find superior even if the numbers aren't there.

Unholy DK is garbage not because of toolkit, but because of numbers. It's easily fixed with numbers tweaks, but they have a burst aoe toolkit, a sustained aoe toolkit, and respectable tools for cleaving and ST burst.

It's easier to fix a spec lacking in numbers than one lacking in mechanics.

It's why they can buff affliction and demo numbers to be as high as they are and the specs still have substantial flaws disguised by brute numbers tuning.

[Count Zero]

The pretty safe bet for any expansion, as this one isn't special despite people's short memory, is that if you don't like the state of a class during an expansion, change classes.

Classes don't get substantial changes or revamp mid expansion in terms of toolkit. They only gain tweaks to numbers.

It's always better to bet on classes with toolkits you find superior even if the numbers aren't there.

Unholy DK is garbage not because of toolkit, but because of numbers. It's easily fixed with numbers tweaks, but they have a burst aoe toolkit, a sustained aoe toolkit, and respectable tools for cleaving and ST burst.

It's easier to fix a spec lacking in numbers than one lacking in mechanics.

It's why they can buff affliction and demo numbers to be as high as they are and the specs still have substantial flaws disguised by brute numbers tuning.

That's the thing, tho - people will play a clunky spec if it does good numbers.

[Lucrece]

That's the thing, tho - people will play a clunky spec if it does good numbers.

You can play it, but it's not enjoyable so what's the point of playing a game if you don't enjoy what you're doing.

Even if feral was doing the DPS that the mongoloid, broken and easy as fuck assassination rogues are doing ( which is what feral should be putting out, given their difficulty compared to the faceroll that is assassination rogue), I wouldn't play a feral druid with their cancer blood talons+jagged wound+savage roar playstyle even if sponsors were lining up.

I'm getting decent numbers as affliction, but I'd take cataclysm affliction and demo in a heartbeat over the steaming pile of shit we have now.

An affliction artifact whose core ability is frustrated by utter RNG and complete starvation of souls during a pull when in progress, where two golden traits don't even work because they're surreptitiously shut off and skorpyron adds rain souls on you while otehr boss adds give you none.

This is one of the most boring iterations of affliction and demo we have had. It doesn't matter if they're both sitting at the upper quartile, they're shit to play and honestly the 3 sec chaosbolts with life tap and disappointing implementation of demon rifts as artifact ability don't help me enjoy destro either.

[Gaidax]

I enjoy current Destruction a lot actually. By throwing away trash which was constantly touted as "optimal" by various sources and using BD/Erad/SH/Serv/SC setup you will have a very smooth and nice playstyle.

I'd say only issues with it is inability to play petless and desynched cooldowns, as well as Chaos Bolts being a tad too plentiful and a tad weaker in return.

[crimsonhead]

Honestly on the whole the spec is solid if everything just lines up. I recently dropped a on use "explode at target location" trinket for a mythic 10 trink that increases mastery by 762 per sec for 10 sec then decreases it. Now that my haste is around 30% I felt comfortable using a mastery trinket and I have to say the results are rather crazy. I am having HUGE chaos bolts, in the 1.5s+ cause of the mastery rolls. With 4pc I have switched to BD / ELT / SH / WH (and swap with CDF as needed) but last night on Tich I was seeing great numbers while using Wreak havoc. It really comes down to watching timers and knowing when the adds pop so you can prepare by lobbing Havoc on the Tich and then going ham on crack on the adds and chaos bolts flying everywhere. Granted ofc single target fights are a diff story but I have been trying various playstyles on H-Tich and I have found the one I am using with WH works well. We are totally viable it's just the stars have to align...

[Lucrece]

I just feel the demonic rifts from the destro artifact could do so much more than just be trivial RNG fire and forget damage you pop up only for single targets so you don't cap but the damage they do is not that significant nor boosted by any % damage increase mechanics that don't affect pets (making rifts pets is just dumb), but then again I feel the same about the affliction artifact which is just bland trash, virtually "RNG get a 10% damage buff, maybe 20% if we at Blizzard feel like turning your 2 other gold traits on for that boss fight instead of stealth disabling it."

Thal'kiel's Consumption is the only artifact skill which I actually enjoy, even if due to some current limitations with demonic empowerment and mobility on demo it can be really unforgiving. But the core ability itself has what I wish affliction and destro had for an artifact ability.

[sheggaro]

I enjoy current Destruction a lot actually. By throwing away trash which was constantly touted as "optimal" by various sources and using BD/Erad/SH/Serv/SC setup you will have a very smooth and nice playstyle.

I'd say only issues with it is inability to play petless and desynched cooldowns, as well as Chaos Bolts being a tad too plentiful and a tad weaker in return.

Maybe if I had ever gotten Feretory I could say the same, but without it this build is very bad compared to CDF crap.

Now I play affliction and shit on destro's dps.

[Baconeggcheese]

I enjoy current Destruction a lot actually. By throwing away trash which was constantly touted as "optimal" by various sources and using BD/Erad/SH/Serv/SC setup you will have a very smooth and nice playstyle.

I'd say only issues with it is inability to play petless and desynched cooldowns, as well as Chaos Bolts being a tad too plentiful and a tad weaker in return.

I think the current destruction is objectively worse than prior iterations mechanically. the BD / SC build is basically us grasping at straws trying to make the spec play as close to the previous iterations as we can. And it gets pretty close, but even then all of the depth that came with the prior package has been removed.

Shadowburn no longer exists
BD's charge nuance has been removed
our resource gen is ludicrously high and comes from so many independent procs that with belt you are guaranteed to munch shards, this is coupled with our shard cap being effectively cut in half means we can basically never bank shards to attempt to make decisions on when to spend them. CB damage is relatively the lowest its ever been to accommodate the insane shard gen. All combined pretty much completely removes any decision making around spending shards. Its all just volume.
Havoc's charges have been removed and any nuance to do with timings and spending charges with it. Generally speaking if you're ever going to make much use of havoc you default to wreak havoc which turns it into a maintenance debuff.
Our aoe kit is mechanically inferior in every way, in both base function and with talent options.
Our mastery was made worse seemingly for the sake of having something different.
We are unable to effectively use 2 of our talents (CDF / RB) because between our ludicrously high amount of shard gen and large number of tiny sustained dmg CD's there are such a large amount of spells competing for globals that its simply impossible for a human to use those two talents to maximum effect.
Even if we were able to squeeze them in, they don't add the level of depth that the spec had previously. Everything that was added is mostly fire and forget (like rifts), and comes with very little if any nuance.
And to ice that cake, they forced us to use life tap again, and really ELT is just the better talent on the row despite them full well knowing that people freaking hate maintenance buffs almost unanimously.

And that's all without the desynched cd's and reliance on playing with an imp specifically (meaning no interrupt) despite the spec effectively being petless for 2 xpacs. I still enjoy playing the spec but its more the lesser of 3 evils for me right now. I can't really objectively say they didn't take what was easily one of the best designed specs in the game mechanically and being the very model of "easy to learn, hard to master" and just systematically remove almost everything that made it that. The difficulty that comes from playing the spec now is mostly that its cumbersome, as opposed to being well designed for min-maxing. When a lot of the changes were on paper they didn't really bother me and I didn't think they'd change much besides gutting our aoe kit. But the more I play the spec, the more I notice how much of its nuance is just gone.

Right now the only thing I really find myself having to min-max is the 2p, and all that requires is to try cast some globals in between each of the many many CB's I cast while minimizing shard munching which can happen even chain casting CB's.