Destro vs. Affliction in 7.2.5/ToS

[Prussian]

Looking at the changes and set bonuses, which spec do people see performing the best in TOS and 7.2.5? I was personally glad to see SE go away.

[Bullettime]

I feel like it's going to ultimately come down to what the new Affliction talent is but the two will likely still be close enough to take your pick.

Destruction's raw output is already actually up to compensate for the Havoc nerf.

[Deleted]

With how many things that are broken for destruction i don't see how they are able to fix it. Since it would require a total rework of all talents etc.

[Rorixis]

I think destruction will continue to be the spec thats the most helpful to the raid by being able to focus fire add spawns, and will be even better at it now that they can pool bigger chaos bolts and unleash them with havoc. Affliction will continue to dominate in dungeons.

[agentsi]

I haven't seen the numbers on the PTR, but if you look at the highest parses for them now, Destro is behind by almost 15-20% on most fights, and ignore skorpyon( top pasrse destro, 3.3 mil, top parse aff 9.8mill, seems legit right?). Fights like Botanist for example, should be a place where destro truley shines, but still get out dps'd by Aff. Only one fight in all of NH do we beat Aff, and that is Elisande.

Instead of nerfing their overall damage, or adjusting destro, they're buffing them again. lol Blizzard clearly wants everyone who is a warlock, to only play Afflicition.

I just want it to be an even playing field, where skill is rewarded. Average number of destro skills used during a boss fight? 10-14, average number of skills used during the exact same fight as aff? 5-7

Not sure Blizzard will ever fix it, it appears they're "trying" but its all an illusion, imo.

[Bullettime]

I haven't seen the numbers on the PTR, but if you look at the highest parses for them now, Destro is behind by almost 15-20% on most fights, and ignore skorpyon( top pasrse destro, 3.3 mil, top parse aff 9.8mill, seems legit right?). Fights like Botanist for example, should be a place where destro truley shines, but still get out dps'd by Aff. Only one fight in all of NH do we beat Aff, and that is Elisande.

Instead of nerfing their overall damage, or adjusting destro, they're buffing them again. lol Blizzard clearly wants everyone who is a warlock, to only play Afflicition.

I just want it to be an even playing field, where skill is rewarded. Average number of destro skills used during a boss fight? 10-14, average number of skills used during the exact same fight as aff? 5-7

Not sure Blizzard will ever fix it, it appears they're "trying" but its all an illusion, imo.

Affliction got nerfed...... The flat buff they got is to try and compensate for Writhe in Agony getting nerfed and Malefic Grasp being butchered.

We're still way to early to be having this discussion though. Destro is still a work in progress, even if it is doing more raw output to compensate for the Havoc nerf, and Affliction doesn't even have a level 100 talent.

[BannedForViews]

I haven't seen the numbers on the PTR, but if you look at the highest parses for them now, Destro is behind by almost 15-20% on most fights, and ignore skorpyon( top pasrse destro, 3.3 mil, top parse aff 9.8mill, seems legit right?). Fights like Botanist for example, should be a place where destro truley shines, but still get out dps'd by Aff. Only one fight in all of NH do we beat Aff, and that is Elisande.

Instead of nerfing their overall damage, or adjusting destro, they're buffing them again. lol Blizzard clearly wants everyone who is a warlock, to only play Afflicition.

I just want it to be an even playing field, where skill is rewarded. Average number of destro skills used during a boss fight? 10-14, average number of skills used during the exact same fight as aff? 5-7

Not sure Blizzard will ever fix it, it appears they're "trying" but its all an illusion, imo.

How could you possibly think botanist is a place where destro should shine over affliction? Botanist is made precisely for affliction. It's a single target fight with perma adds to agony for shards, and a steady stream of short lived adds for souls and WoC stacks. It couldn't be designed more for affliction than it already is.

As to which I will play, if destro looks like it might be similar to mage spec where it has very strong single target/direct damage, with the ability to cleave very well when needed, I may go back to the spec I haven't played since TBC, and for the most part loath, because what is happening to affliction right now is an embarrassment. It such a shame that all the scrubs swapped over for NH and feel like their opinion matters to a spec they can't even play properly.

[Lucrece]

Destro changes barely amount to a ~5% bump to their current output, while their 2T cleave was gutted.

Short of significantly buffed numbers, destro will never be competitive with affliction for anything other than priority add burst (and even there affliction with 2 UA's into malefic grasp and if haunt is made good Haunt>UA will do well enough on add damage).

Destro is also one of the lowest AoE specs in the game ironically enough despite being pretty bad for single target as well.

[Liarparadox]

How could you possibly think botanist is a place where destro should shine over affliction? Botanist is made precisely for affliction. It's a single target fight with perma adds to agony for shards, and a steady stream of short lived adds for souls and WoC stacks. It couldn't be designed more for affliction than it already is.

As to which I will play, if destro looks like it might be similar to mage spec where it has very strong single target/direct damage, with the ability to cleave very well when needed, I may go back to the spec I haven't played since TBC, and for the most part loath, because what is happening to affliction right now is an embarrassment. It such a shame that all the scrubs swapped over for NH and feel like their opinion matters to a spec they can't even play properly.

hahah pretty much.

And I agree with an above poster. This question may be fun or entertaining; but it's far too early to tell which spec out of any of them will be best for TOS. I suspect we got lots of incoming tuning still. And even when it goes live. The week after will see another tuning pass. It always happens that way. You'd have to wait until TOS has been out for at least a week or two to answer this question seriously.

[Bullettime]

hahah pretty much.

And I agree with an above poster. This question may be fun or entertaining; but it's far too early to tell which spec out of any of them will be best for TOS. I suspect we got lots of incoming tuning still. And even when it goes live. The week after will see another tuning pass. It always happens that way. You'd have to wait until TOS has been out for at least a week or two to answer this question seriously.

There's inevitably going to be significant tuning. Destro is basically a "meh" ST only spec now and Affliction doesn't even have a level 100 talent. We're at the very beginning of things.

[Gaidax]

Nobody has a clue, they do pretty significant changes with each build now.

The only things you can sort of count on is Affliction to keep its retarded AoE and Destruction to be better at nuking priority adds.

On PTR currently Destruction is a bit stronger than live and Affliction is a total rollercoaster in the middle of the ride and no idea where it will end up.

[Deleted]

On PTR I was able to pull 1m dps substained over 4min as destro on a target dummy with feretory and spacetime shoulders 910 ilvl. Destro will be the best progress spec on most fights simply because you need to burn prio adds. Maybe affliction does more dmg on botanist right now but tunneling boss and putting a small dot on adds to gain souls and WoC stacks doesn't help much when adds can overwhelm you if you don't kill them fast enough.

[Skrubba]

On PTR I was able to pull 1m dps substained over 4min as destro on a target dummy with feretory and spacetime shoulders 910 ilvl. Destro will be the best progress spec on most fights simply because you need to burn prio adds. Maybe affliction does more dmg on botanist right now but tunneling boss and putting a small dot on adds to gain souls and WoC stacks doesn't help much when adds can overwhelm you if you don't kill them fast enough.

I was under the impression that there weren't a lot of adds in TOS. Is this right?

[PowerOfTwo]

I was under the impression that there weren't a lot of adds in TOS. Is this right?

Neah, about... half-ish the bosses have adds. It's actualy quite formulaic. Tho there seems to be THREE ST fight wich is quite rare. Beyond that, Engine of Souls / Demonic Inquisition ? is / are the mandatory cleave fight, you got the huntresses as the council fight and KJ is largely ST with periodic , IMPORTANT adds.

3 ST "mechanics" fights , for there are no PW fight, 1-2 add fights, 0-3 cleave fights 1 council fight and 1.. "endboss" as even endbosses are getting kinda predictable - 3 phases, important adds, "cool" transitions, etc.

[Krazzorx]

Well, you can't really just list out all the fights because you can essentially disregard the first 1-3 bosses as being pretty irrelevant as they are designed to be killed pretty quickly. Even on mythic. For instance, single target fight, and first boss, Goroth should be completely ignored.

Answering the question needs to wait till affli sees its replacement talent and whatever the new tier bonus will be.

[Zechs-cenarius]

Gonna come down to what the new talent is and what they change the tier set bonuses to. Its a bit premature right now to really compare.

[Deleted]

can't say yet because PTR isn't final.

Many changes to comes. My guts tell me Destro will be the top ToS specc for warlocks, but that is just my opinion.

[Ilir]

just play demo

[sheggaro]

How do people deal with this on an AP level?

Do you just level both artifact weapons equally, or?

That's what I've been doing, yeah.

[Joryy]

Tuning is still happening, so no one knows what will do the most damage.

What probably won't change much though, is how that damage is distributed. Affliction is good with waves of adds, Destro is good with an important, short-lived add. Demo doesn't really have a niche, and every warlock spec is good at sustained multi-target.

Look at the Tomb fights and decide what you want to play.