[Legion] Brusalk's Destro Guide

[crazylandd]

Thanks for great guide!

[Turturin the Warlock]

I'm just hoping movement isn't as slanted as it was on Nighthold. It's already pretty shitty taking so much damage from burning rush and ELT combined with no way to make that damage up unlike demo/affliction.

You're talking about two different things that aren't related:

movement - this isn't what holds destro back in my view, at least numbers wise. In the base case, you actually lose less damage during destro movement than for most specs, since all you should ever be trading for movement is incinerate casts which do very little damage. The rest of your damage is unaffected (conflag, immolate, pet, rifts, and Chaos bolt since these are limited by resources). Remember that buttons-to-push-while moving =/= DPS while moving.

Self-healing - If you wanted self healing like affliction you'd have to give up 1 min unending resolve. Personally, I feel much squishier in raids as affliction, since it's burst damage that kills you most often, and its not as tho affliction self-heals through that (though the HS is nice as a once a fight oh shit button). Questing/pvp is a different story, obviously.

[Lucrece]

You're talking about two different things that aren't related:

movement - this isn't what holds destro back in my view, at least numbers wise. In the base case, you actually lose less damage during destro movement than for most specs, since all you should ever be trading for movement is incinerate casts which do very little damage. The rest of your damage is unaffected (conflag, immolate, pet, rifts, and Chaos bolt since these are limited by resources). Remember that buttons-to-push-while moving =/= DPS while moving.

Self-healing - If you wanted self healing like affliction you'd have to give up 1 min unending resolve. Personally, I feel much squishier in raids as affliction, since it's burst damage that kills you most often, and its not as tho affliction self-heals through that (though the HS is nice as a once a fight oh shit button). Questing/pvp is a different story, obviously.

I'll give up the 1 min unending resolve any day. The times I actually have to use it to survive are so few in comparison to keeping myself permanently topped off as affliction and not being a drain on healer mana.

Your 1 min unending resolve is piss anyways when I can get a permanent 30% damage reduction from soul link on demo that climbs up to 40% at low health on top of passive regeneration while still having a normal cd unending resolve.

And then there's sweet souls health stone for affliction which is basically getting 50% of your health back. I recover quicker from bursts of damage as affliction in m+ which means after any high damage epriods the healers can completely ignore me as I can recover by myself and they can focus on healing up the demonhunter who only has a self heal every 4 minutes or 45 seconds with Demonic.

As far as movement, sure, destro loses the least, but come 7.2.5 you're now losing total chaosbolt casts to boot.

[Gaidax]

I'll give up the 1 min unending resolve any day. The times I actually have to use it to survive are so few in comparison to keeping myself permanently topped off as affliction and not being a drain on healer mana.

Your 1 min unending resolve is piss anyways when I can get a permanent 30% damage reduction from soul link on demo that climbs up to 40% at low health on top of passive regeneration while still having a normal cd unending resolve.

And then there's sweet souls health stone for affliction which is basically getting 50% of your health back. I recover quicker from bursts of damage as affliction in m+ which means after any high damage epriods the healers can completely ignore me as I can recover by myself and they can focus on healing up the demonhunter who only has a self heal every 4 minutes or 45 seconds with Demonic.

As far as movement, sure, destro loses the least, but come 7.2.5 you're now losing total chaosbolt casts to boot.

In general I think Destruction could use some sort of extra bit of defense, but that said - I do think 1 min Unending Resolve is legit great. I am currently progressing Gul'dan Mythic and that shit is godsend, because overall damage intake is small but you are almost certain to be targeted by some shitty mechanic around once per minute and having UR for pretty much every time shit like that happens is a big deal, IMO.

The guy is right there - all that Affliction selfhealing is meaningless for Empowered Liquid Hellfire soak as ranged or Flames of Sargeras + Eye nuking you in P2, which can legit kill you if healers slack even a little, because in either case you have to be moving or die/fuck everyone over and have no luxury to drain, while 1 min CD UR covers both cases very well.

Also Demo Soul Link is 20% and don't forget that Destruction has passive damage reduction from Mastery as well. In the end Demo is sturdier overall, but the gap is not that huge really.

[Turturin the Warlock]

not being a drain on healer mana.

Being a drain on healer mana isn't actually a thing. If your healers are claiming it is, it is likely they aren't very good healers. That's not a problem that gets solved by a warlock changing specs.

[Beatin]

As someone who mains affliction I tell the healers that I switched to destro for this fight and they will actually have to heal me. Most of the time as affliction I can keep myself topped off. There is a few times when I need heals. Clearing heroic gul'dan and I have the eye on me with 6 stacks. Besides that there really isn't a time I really need healing. And that only happens when my healthstone and my ur is on cd.

[Deleted]

Anyone got ideas on how to stop my pet from dying multiple times on a single pull in p3 Mythic Gul'Dan?

Argh this is really fucking annoying.

[Gaidax]

lul, we just got to P3 M Guldan, anyone got ideas on how to stop myself from dying multiple times on a single pull in p3 Mythic Gul'dan? lol

[Baconeggcheese]

lul, we just got to P3 M Guldan, anyone got ideas on how to stop myself from dying multiple times on a single pull in p3 Mythic Gul'dan? lol

What's killing you?

[Gaidax]

Just kidding, implying that imp dying is the least of my worries there, as we only reached P3 now and yet to make it consistent.

[Deleted]

Anyone got ideas on how to stop my pet from dying multiple times on a single pull in p3 Mythic Gul'Dan?
Argh this is really fucking annoying.

Didn't have this problem at all.

...

...

Just kidding, i'm doing the shitty orb job since my guild doesn't have a mage

What is really nice from bliz :you can invoc your pet back instant but for a shard cost (after the mc add release himself).
What isn't, is that the imp dies like 5 seconds later from the orb barrage

(Don't do it at home kid, using MC on the add make you lose some good 5-10 seconds dps on it).

[Scathbais]

Being a drain on healer mana isn't actually a thing. If your healers are claiming it is, it is likely they aren't very good healers. That's not a problem that gets solved by a warlock changing specs.

I will have to disagree with you here. During actual progression, unless you overgear content, healers should have it just as bad as dps and tanks while learning the fight. When I use ELT during progression, it means I am losing 90% my health approx every 3 minutes just from life taps. Why should a healer have to deal with that? With affliction, you life tap and then you are healing yourself so it is almost never an issue. If you are a raider that willfully stands in fire for 90% damage every three minutes on every pull during progression, you wouldn't be very popular with your RL or your healers.

Now if you raid with elite healers that have no problem healing through ELT during mythic progression, more power to you. Most of us don't have that luxury.

[Lucrece]

I mean, destro is still fun as hell. The survivability difference is just my main gripe. Wouldn't be bad if Reverse Entropy were BiS talent for everything, but that's not where we're at. And if we're at the point where ELT needs to be made utterly irrelevant to not expose destro's pitiful recovery options, then why have ELT at all. It'd be a dead talent, and dead talents are not good design.

There's a reason why nobody's running destro in pvp, it literally keels over the moment someone stares at you. The difference in survival is noticeable. You have better spike mitigation frequency but you can't sustain damage anywhere as well.

And why should destro be unique in this feature?

All the warlock specs should be pretty damn resistant to chip damage through a wealth of self recovery options.

We have Eternal Struggle which is just bad, and then the Life Drain trait which does not produce bad healing but it's also self defeating because life drain costs so much mana that whatever health you healed up you'll life tap away to continue casting (on top of the obvious damage loss, which would be fixed by bumping up the damage increase of the trait so it isn't as large a loss).

We simply have two really bad survival talents.

[burek]

Not sure what are you talking about, in a raid setting destruction takes less damage than most other classes, even when you take life tap and burning rush in account

[Uzkin]

As destro, it feels horrible to have to skip Demon Skin due to Burning Rush being 100% mandatory (speaking about 5-mans). If destro had Demon Skin the disparity in survivability between the specs wouldn't feel nearly as bad.

[Lucrece]

Not sure what are you talking about, in a raid setting destruction takes less damage than most other classes, even when you take life tap and burning rush in account

Other classes have mobility and immunities. Frost mage has ice barrier, ice block, 2x blink from shimmer.

Damage avoidance is better than damage mitigation anyways.

If ranged were entirely made up of balance druids and elemental shamans, you might have a point.

[Gaidax]

Other classes have mobility and immunities. Frost mage has ice barrier, ice block, 2x blink from shimmer.

Damage avoidance is better than damage mitigation anyways.

Ice Barrier is basically a really shit version of Soul Leech, just like Teleport is a shit version of Blink and Ice Block is a frikkin' 4 min CD which is often simply burned on cheesing mechanics - so may as well not see actual personal use.

You keep underestimating 1 min CD Unending Resolve and the fact we have baseline DR from Mastery as well, that coupled with Soul Leech is quite a bit of defenses.

I would absolutely love Destruction to get a small extra nudge just to get the point - like +10% stamina, but even now it's indeed pretty sturdy.

- - - Updated - - -

I do think that Burning Rush needs some toning down on damage intake, the penalty is already there really where we don't take alternative defensive talent that row. Should really halve the health cost or increase movement bonus.

And I secretly wish they make Sac viable again - because that + Dark Pact is utter lols.

[Turturin the Warlock]

I will have to disagree with you here. During actual progression, unless you overgear content, healers should have it just as bad as dps and tanks while learning the fight. When I use ELT during progression, it means I am losing 90% my health approx every 3 minutes just from life taps. Why should a healer have to deal with that? With affliction, you life tap and then you are healing yourself so it is almost never an issue. If you are a raider that willfully stands in fire for 90% damage every three minutes on every pull during progression, you wouldn't be very popular with your RL or your healers.

Now if you raid with elite healers that have no problem healing through ELT during mythic progression, more power to you. Most of us don't have that luxury.

Let's pretend your HP pool is 4MM (its less but i'll slant the argument in your direction). by your math that's 3.6MM damage you take over 180 secs = 20k hps. 4-5 healers can easily top 4MM hps in aggregate. You are claiming 0.5% of total healing output or .1% output per healer on 1 player is a "drain" on their mana? C'mon.

I do actual mythic progression and have for many expacs. We don't overgear the content. Mana was literally only ever a broad issue in the first few weeks of cataclysm raiding. And in the odd case in other tiers where any given healer has had trouble with mana, it is never fixed by having warlocks not life tap, and that is never suggested by anyone with facts and logic at their disposal as the cause of the problem.

Disagree all you want, but its just a bullshit argument to say that warlock life-taps are a drain on healer mana in raids.

[Soluna]

Is there some sort of opener advise you got?
My opener can do from 800k dps to 1.2 mil depending on my mastery luck.

I have 898 ilvl, the haste stacking trinket from NH and the gul'dan trink. I have 4p, lessons of spacetime and magistrike wrists.

My opener is the following:

Immolate>Soul Harvest>Imp>Infernal>Conflag>Rift>chaos bolt>incinerate/conflags for double chaos bolt spams due to 4p and applying immolate> using rifts between the spells to keep the lessons of spacetime buff up.

I use wreak havoc most of the time. If I am using CDF (Which I hate), then I try to use it on cd, and between periods where i use a conflag, but want to wait for a shard more or two to cast more chaos bolts together while benefiting from backdraft.

[SpikeySquad]

Is there some sort of opener advise you got?
My opener can do from 800k dps to 1.2 mil depending on my mastery luck.

I have 898 ilvl, the haste stacking trinket from NH and the gul'dan trink. I have 4p, lessons of spacetime and magistrike wrists.

My opener is the following:

Immolate>Soul Harvest>Imp>Infernal>Conflag>Rift>chaos bolt>incinerate/conflags for double chaos bolt spams due to 4p and applying immolate> using rifts between the spells to keep the lessons of spacetime buff up.

I use wreak havoc most of the time. If I am using CDF (Which I hate), then I try to use it on cd, and between periods where i use a conflag, but want to wait for a shard more or two to cast more chaos bolts together while benefiting from backdraft.

There's an opener in the main post. Soul Harvest then spending globals on summons seems a waste to me. Personally I like to open with a CB and then Immo as I cap easily but that's a personal thing.