[Destruction] It's happening

[Gaidax]

Chaos Bolt will most definitely stay at 2 shards.

[Lucrece]

If they wanted to revert to MOP/WOD they'll make CB 1 shard, because a 40% buff to CB is not even close to making up for the amount of CB's you'll be trhowing out, and destro was already in deep need of ST DPS buffs anyways.

Add to that a 45 sec cd Havoc, I don't know how in hell they'll keep our 2T niche the same without making CB hit even harder than a Focused Chaos PvP chaosbolt.

[Tritone496]

God this is a cluster if these changes go live. All this damn spec needed was either a reduction in shard cost for cb and rof or increased shard generation. This spec just ends up casting incinerate to much especially off of a bloodlust when your shard generation plummets. Spec is competitive during lust and then it just dies. If they go thru with the havoc change and the demonfire nerf not sure buffing cb is gonna mean crap especially with all the shard generation nerfs. But hey we get shard bits. Of course if i had Feretory maybe i wouldnt be so opinionated

[Baconeggcheese]

Sure, but we can judge what we see at the moment, and what we see is a nerf. Waiting patiently for the buffs to come to the next ptr(s).

PTR cycles always go the same, they iterate on mechanical changes and do small balance changes to get spells to be the % of your dmg that they want them to be, and then they go into tuning and blanket buff / nerf accordingly.

We're REALLY far away from having to worry about numbers.

[Keldion]

Chaos Bolt will most definitely stay at 2 shards.

Much as I would prefer a 1 shard CB, I have to agree with you that Blizzard will keep the 2 shard cost. Thanks to Soulsnatcher and Feretory, cutting this spell back to 1 shard baseline would reduce its actual cost by more than half.

SC is a refund talent, when you cut generation in half you cut SC's value, that value has to be made up in the strength added back to the spender. WH is effectively the same in that its duplicating what's already there, and when you cut it in half that damage has to be made up in the power increase to what's there. Wreak had power pulled out of it by the rework, SC *should* if I'm thinking correctly have stayed the same. I didn't do the math though so I could be completely off base there in regards to SC. With WH the entire point was to pull power out of it.

I'm not too fussed either way, it'll be figured out.

I treat the refund traits (Soulsnatcher, Soul Conduit, Feretory) as a cost reduction where sustained casts are concerned. On Live, the reason we can generally chain a string of Bolts together owes to its average low cost of 1.4 shards, or 1.3 with Feretory. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Based on this logic, Chaos Bolt is growing in cost from both ends in 7.2.5. Fewer shards will be generated, but we will also be spending more of them due to fewer refund occurances. Together with SC and 4/4 Soulsnatcher, Chaos Bolt will cost 1.64 shards on average, and Feretory merely drops this to 1.58.

In all honesty, I think Destruction needs more capacity if Blizzard is unwilling to alter Rain of Fire's disproportionate cost. A minimum of six shards would be desirable.

[Fabinas]

PTR cycles always go the same, they iterate on mechanical changes and do small balance changes to get spells to be the % of your dmg that they want them to be, and then they go into tuning and blanket buff / nerf accordingly.

We're REALLY far away from having to worry about numbers.

Yeah, not worried (yet, i usually start worrying at the candidate release PTR versions). I'm just defending people who say CURRENTLY is a nerf (because it is, so technically they aren't wrong), and i am expecting more iteration. I'm not shouting that the sky is falling on our heads, just commenting the changes as they are AT THE MOMENT. I hate bandwagons.

[agittunc]

I don't believe destro 7.2.5 will be in a better place then 7.2. mainly because of mastery being utter shit. the RNG element is less with 4th piece bonus but why force something into a set before destro being good.

Destro should have burning embers. not soul shards. it doesn't fit into the destro fantasy. and even worse with the drain life crap.
the update in 7.2.5 will be better but i just don't like destro being a soul shard spender to begin with.

They can make it so much better by changing up mastery. atleast don't make it so RNG. you can have either 1% increased damage or 50. that's just to much. if it was 1-25% then i would say that's alright.. and then increase chaos bolt base damage with 25% to compensate.

the soul shard update is good. but it can be even better with burning embers and mastery rework. then i would switch to destro. otherwise it's not worth it.

[Lucrece]

Getting conflagrates that nuke between 400-700k is just dumb. Same with getting multiple CB's at 800k and then randomly 1.2k. The swing is unbearable.

The other problem is REVERSE ENTROPY NEEDS TO BE BASELINE.

With how long chaosbolt takes to cast even with Backdraft I'm lucky if I can get in more than 1 chaosbolt before the mob is dead. The travel time of the spell and incinerate also need to be improved, or the shards need to be refunded if the spell doesn't hit before the mob dies.

[Gaidax]

One thing I must say - I, personally, am not giving a flying fuck whether it's called Soul Shards, Soul Bits, Burning Embers or bloody Burning Hamburgers - what important is the essence of the actual mechanic. If Blizzard want to stroke their class fantasy willy, they can keep pretending it's Soul Shards that we somehow get by burning shit.

[Lucrece]

One thing I must say - I, personally, am not giving a flying fuck whether it's called Soul Shards, Soul Bits, Burning Embers or bloody Burning Hamburgers.

It is a pretty stupid complaint. It's just UI, and soul shards are an even more ancient part of what a warlock is than collected fire pots called embers.

There's nothing preventing them from returning the growing fire aura visuals depending on amount of shards filled up.

I don't get this hate for soul shards or drain life. There is no more icon for warlock than Gul'dan and gul'dan cast drain life and used soul harvest. I don't get the obsession with fragmenting the class across specs and turning destro into evil fire mage.

[Bjarkan]

Fire effect on Warlock is not coming back, period. Blizz give it to Fire Mage, and they wont have 2 different class with the same visuals... Now, something like fel fire, its a different thing.

Increasing CDF cooldown is something the leaves me bad taste, i mean, the WHOLE idea of those changes are to make Chaos Bolt feeling more rewarded of cast, thats why Blizz is reduccing the Shard generation, and buff CB... But nerffing CDF? I mean, sure, CDF was hitting has hard as a CB, basic number wise, but CDF never make shade over CB for requier this nerf, even more, with the HEAVY nerf on Havok, we are not in the position on be the "2-target god" blizz says like us to be...

This change is a bad change, increasing the numbers of Incinerate we cast per minute, this increment of cast also directly increase the shard generation, something they say want to reducce... Is there something i dont see with this change?

[scrappybristol]

Chaos Bolt will most definitely stay at 2 shards.

In this case, it would be cool if the rifts generated shard bits too.

chaos portal generates 1 bit per hit
shadow portal doubles incinerate bit generation while its active
chaos tear generates 6 bits upon hit
flame rift causes your immolate to give a 100% chance of bit generation for its duration

Hell maybe also have Lord of Flames generate 3 shard bits for each mini inferno attack so we can almost spam CBs during its duration.

[Visyx]

Fire effect on Warlock is not coming back, period. Blizz give it to Fire Mage, and they wont have 2 different class with the same visuals... Now, something like fel fire, its a different thing.

Increasing CDF cooldown is something the leaves me bad taste, i mean, the WHOLE idea of those changes are to make Chaos Bolt feeling more rewarded of cast, thats why Blizz is reduccing the Shard generation, and buff CB... But nerffing CDF? I mean, sure, CDF was hitting has hard as a CB, basic number wise, but CDF never make shade over CB for requier this nerf, even more, with the HEAVY nerf on Havok, we are not in the position on be the "2-target god" blizz says like us to be...

This change is a bad change, increasing the numbers of Incinerate we cast per minute, this increment of cast also directly increase the shard generation, something they say want to reducce... Is there something i dont see with this change?

I wouldn't say 'god' would be the right word since Seph's exact words are different and, I think, a bit confusing.

Despite these changes to Havoc, I want to state that we still want Destruction to stay among the top several 2-target specs. Destruction has a clear niche of being great at 2-targets, especially 2-target spread out (which some specs can't handle as well) and we don't intend to disrupt that.

Don't think this means that it's intended that we are THE top cleave spec but he then admits that we have a clear niche. So, considering how Destruction doesn't excel at either ST, not necessarily the top cleaver, and we're mediocre with AOE, I'm not sure where they want us to be.

I had more to say but the patch notes came in:

http://www.wowhead.com/news=262448/7...tr-patch-notes

[Hyrja]

holy shit the 10 soul shard fragment shit looks so retarded. JUST BRING BACK EMBERS BLIZZZ!!!! stop destroying our class..

[Lucrece]

I wouldn't say 'god' would be the right word since Seph's exact words are different and, I think, a bit confusing.



Don't think this means that it's intended that we are THE top cleave spec but he then admits that we have a clear niche. So, considering how Destruction doesn't excel at either ST, not necessarily the top cleaver, and we're mediocre with AOE, I'm not sure where they want us to be.

I had more to say but the patch notes came in:

http://www.wowhead.com/news=262448/7...tr-patch-notes

Exactly at the same spot demo is.

Basically a spec that doesn't excel above anyone despite being a limited niche spec. Worse in ST by far to affliction/assassination, same to frost but with way worse aoe/cleave.

Destro will swap that around to be more slanted toward 2T cleave and worse at ST, but the placing as "nothing special" won't change barring a serious numbers tweaking, which 40% CB buff doesn't even come close to accomplishing.

The warlock spec kits were just mangled. Destro happens to be the least mangled and more versatile kit, but it doesn't have the raw numbers to follow through and compete with affliction who's seriously mechanically gimped but completely overtuned on numbers.

Demo's a mess but they won't acknowledge that demo is basically the scrap heap that remains after they ravaged it to give demonhunters a playstyle (demo lost burst aoe and cleave, and burst in general that came with meta while demonhunters gained the best of both worlds).

The salt to the wound comes with Kanrethad being reintroduced in his demonic form and the Feltotem Tauren popping demonic wings as well.

[Netherspark]

holy shit the 10 soul shard fragment shit looks so retarded. JUST BRING BACK EMBERS BLIZZZ!!!! stop destroying our class..

... what? Do you even know how embers worked?

[Hyrja]

Welp. Just tested it on PTR and it really does feel alot like embers now. Just the visual is different >.<

[bio347]

I'm sure somebody can make an addon that turns the soul shard icons into burning ember ones. Besides, if the UI element is anything like the old one you're probably gonna want custom a bar or something to track them with more granularity anyhow. The ember UI was awful.

[Deleted]

Destro should have burning embers. not soul shards. it doesn't fit into the destro fantasy. and even worse with the drain life crap.
the update in 7.2.5 will be better but i just don't like destro being a soul shard spender to begin with.

Actually the soul shards fit destro fantasy the best out of all the warlock specs. Fel magic needs life force / souls to work and destro uses the most fel based spells out of all the specs so I have absolutely no idea where the people claiming "soul shards don't fit the fantasy" are coming from.

Also makes drain life very fitting and also it's nice to have a way to heal yourself in combat while questing. It has saved me multiple times. No idea why anyone would want LESS self heal. It doesn't even affect the destro rotation.

[Baconeggcheese]

Actually the soul shards fit destro fantasy the best out of all the warlock specs.

Affliction is literally souls / grim reaper themed right now.