Destro vs. Affliction in 7.2.5/ToS

[Deladeu]

Nah, 5 dot naxx or the relative perfection that followed it in later WOTLK / Cata.



The two button spec that wasn't even optimal until gear levels approaching T6?

Why do people insist on this fabricated history that destruction was all that was played in TBC, it wasn't until mid-Hyjaal that it became optimal. Affliction was played for a large chunk of the expansion and it was pretty close to a well rounded spec at the time, well ahead of where a lot of other designs were bar Dark Pact being a bit of a joke.

Destruction was optimal early into T5 and the only reason anyone would ever play affliction was for levelling or CoS to buff the other destruction warlocks damage even more.

[Deleted]

Sadly immolate is bugged on the PTR right now. It's supposed to always give us a soul shard fragment non crit but sometimes doesn't. Can some one in US forums PLEASE report this ? And another thing is cry havoc trait. I think since we don't have huge havoc uptime anymore they could buff that trait a lil bit. What do you guys think ?

[Gaidax]

Sadly immolate is bugged on the PTR right now. It's supposed to always give us a soul shard fragment non crit but sometimes doesn't. Can some one in US forums PLEASE report this ? And another thing is cry havoc trait. I think since we don't have huge havoc uptime anymore they could buff that trait a lil bit. What do you guys think ?

I think you can write feedback about it in EU forums and yes, who in Blizz gives a damn about EU forums, BUT, maybe they will by mistake stumble on that feedback and actually send it up to the bigwigs, so better cover that thread at least.

- - - Updated - - -

For destro will stat priority change with 7.2.5. ? Been playing demo so far so i havent been following the updates

Too soon, Executus.

Buuut, my guesstimate is that Mastery may actually pull up due to T20, although I suspect that tier will change again.

[Deleted]

Not totally true, at the start of TBC Affli was pretty good, but as soon as you got some T5 quality gear, if i recall correctly offset gear was better than Tier during T5 for Destro (SSC / The Eye) the Destro 2 button sac spec could be played with as strong results as affli (or even stronger results already`, i switched somewhere during T5 progress from Affli to Destro) and then only skyrocketing as soon as you got T6 gear (dat juicy 4 set bonus) from BT/Hyjal and later on Sunwell gear.

Certainly not how I remember things, I remember it starting to become viable at the tail end of T5 but I think I was 1-3 bosses into Hyjaal before I felt the need to switch, and I was such an elitist little prick back then that I doubt I'd have played the suboptimal spec for a second - I spent all day glued to elitist jerks.

Most of the videos I see from 5 minutes effort googling old TBC kill videos seem to have affliction warlocks putzing around too. Can't say my memory is in stellar condition though.

Load sof people just stuck with destruction, even when it was not optimal, it was just way easier to play, the only thing you could get wrong was forgetting to sacrifice the succubus, or your finger getting tired from spamming shadowbolts lol

From my admittedly dimming memories, affliction was pretty toxic to play in TBC

Yeah, no argument that destro wasn't easier to play and a lot of people will have been using it, it wasn't like everyone playing the optimal spec was as widespread back then as it is today, but I find it incredibly hard to believe I'd have been playing anything other than the optimal spec back then with how anal about it I was.

Can't say I remember affliction being toxic at all though - surprised to hear that, it was relatively polished in terms of TBC class design from what I remember - mostly just dot maintenance while avoiding clipping dots and trying to avoid them all falling off at once. Classic was pretty dreadful, but TBC affliction I've always thought was far ahead of it's time - we were still at a point where boomkins and ele shaman (if anyone was mad enough to play them) were hunting for cloth gear for caster stats.

I'll drop it there though, don't want to drag the thread any further off topic.

[Gaidax]

Certainly not how I remember things, I remember it starting to become viable at the tail end of T5 but I think I was 1-3 bosses into Hyjaal before I felt the need to switch.

I can assure you that SB spam build was already viable before T5 hit, T5 is where it started to break away from the rest.

[frychikn]

damn man, demo never gets love huh? :/

[Deleted]

damn man, demo never gets love huh? :/

Demo is the spec they destroyed to make Demon Hunters feel more special. You should know by now they don't give a damn.

[Gangresnake]

Can't comment on MOP as I did not play it, but I think I'm correct in saying there was a trinket that contributed a lot to affliction's strength there?

Every trinket was a superpower for Affliction because Dot "snapshotted" the damage of the entire dot at the exact time when you cast the dot
Which mean a reasonably skilled aff player could play around his proc to have short period of insane damage followed by long period of filling and waiting for another
Shit was fun I tell you what

[Extremities]

it will just wait for it.... every new iteration of the PTR they buff afflictions dmg in someway it seems.

Good as it should be seeing as how Malefic got buttfucked beyond belief

[BarelyLegalBear]

Haven't really been keeping up with this thread, but how is destro looking for ToS, it's always been the lock spec i've preferred and I would just like to know how they're doing so far on the PTR. Still leveling mine, but as affliction because it's a breeze.

[Liarparadox]

Every trinket was a superpower for Affliction because Dot "snapshotted" the damage of the entire dot at the exact time when you cast the dot
Which mean a reasonably skilled aff player could play around his proc to have short period of insane damage followed by long period of filling and waiting for another
Shit was fun I tell you what

I miss snapshotting so much.

[Baconeggcheese]

a reasonably skilled aff player

Or literally anyone with a buff tracker.

Was effectively a 3 button spec, pretty much the epitome of proving the point that if the numbers are there people will find damn near anything fun.

- - - Updated - - -

although I suspect that tier will change again.

I'd be surprised to see anything else change for destro tbh.

[Deleted]

Still not sure how this whole thing pans out between Affli and Destro. Or even Demo for that matter. It sucks so bad that they are always behind with their "class-changing" pre-patches before raid releases so that we effectively always only have one or so week to adjust before the raid opens.

I now have Demo and Destro weapon at 52 and Affli at 55 but don't know if I should keep spreading the AP into all weapons or push one higher... Any insights on how you are doing it?

[Count Zero]

Still not sure how this whole thing pans out between Affli and Destro. Or even Demo for that matter. It sucks so bad that they are always behind with their "class-changing" pre-patches before raid releases so that we effectively always only have one or so week to adjust before the raid opens.

I now have Demo and Destro weapon at 52 and Affli at 55 but don't know if I should keep spreading the AP into all weapons or push one higher... Any insights on how you are doing it?

It sounds like all three will have their place in Tomb. I'd probably just keep and eye on the ptr while dumping tokens in the spec you feel you play better as.

Personally I'm going the route of screwing myself over by switching my loot spec and which spec I dump AP into based on every single ptr update, so. lol

Still not sure whether I'm going to go full Destro or Afflic, but for right now I'm loot spec Destro and dumping points there (although my Aff weapon is several traits ahead).

[Baconeggcheese]

Still not sure how this whole thing pans out between Affli and Destro. Or even Demo for that matter. It sucks so bad that they are always behind with their "class-changing" pre-patches before raid releases so that we effectively always only have one or so week to adjust before the raid opens.

I now have Demo and Destro weapon at 52 and Affli at 55 but don't know if I should keep spreading the AP into all weapons or push one higher... Any insights on how you are doing it?

Personally my plans just destro / aff concordance and then probably dumping destro cause I don't see myself using demo much if at all. Frankly I'll be surprised I swap much out of destro with how things usually go for me.

[Deleted]

Still not sure how this whole thing pans out between Affli and Destro. Or even Demo for that matter. It sucks so bad that they are always behind with their "class-changing" pre-patches before raid releases so that we effectively always only have one or so week to adjust before the raid opens.

I now have Demo and Destro weapon at 52 and Affli at 55 but don't know if I should keep spreading the AP into all weapons or push one higher... Any insights on how you are doing it?

They've made it so that the cost of additional points after 53-ish isn;t worth farming. I'm at 54 and the next level costs 1.1 billion P, that's a lot of AP and all you get is an occasional proc of 300 int per level. Concordance itself is wellworth it; the extra levels in it barely are.

The intent was absolutely make it not worth AP farming for these. In fact, the Concordance steps are only in there to keep AP from not being worthless.

They are litteraly a token prize, oh, I didn;t get loot, but at least I got some AP. It;s better than nothing...but only just.

IMHO once you have Concordance on all three specs, or even two if you happen to hate one, then just dump the points in whatever you enjoy playing most.

[Deleted]

Still don't understand why people value the 52nd so much and say everything afterwards is a waste... It's easily possible to get to 57/58/59 if you pool everything into one weapon after bringing the others to 52. That's another roughly 50% buff on the 52nd.

I'll push Affli to 56, then bring Destro up. While I would love Demo to be good, I just don't see it in the current state of mythic encounters basically forcing almost constant movement on you.

[Gaidax]

Still don't understand why people value the 52nd so much and say everything afterwards is a waste... It's easily possible to get to 57/58/59 if you pool everything into one weapon after bringing the others to 52. That's another roughly 50% buff on the 52nd.

I'll push Affli to 56, then bring Destro up. While I would love Demo to be good, I just don't see it in the current state of mythic encounters basically forcing almost constant movement on you.

Because 52 is trivial, while "easily" 59 for example, requires a chill 16 billions AP. For example, in my guild there is World 2nd rank by AP dude nolifing 24/7 and he's at the "easily" 59 traits.

Of course that's another 2100 mainstat to proc, it's not worthless, but it's really tiny gain that is simply within error margin, really and the point is that the effort required to get this power gain is simply not worth the grind.

It's even more evident to be so when you compare let's say 54 ranks, which is relatively chill to 59 - 1500 mainstat for ungodly grind- meh?

I'd say overtime after like 60th trait, people will simply stop bothering at all, aside from pure madmen.

[Deleted]

Because 52 is trivial, while "easily" 59 for example, requires a chill 16 billions AP. For example, in my guild there is World 2nd rank by AP dude nolifing 24/7 and he's at the "easily" 59 traits.

Of course that's another 2100 mainstat to proc, it's not worthless, but it's really tiny gain that is simply within error margin, really and the point is that the effort required to get this power gain is simply not worth the grind.

It's even more evident to be so when you compare let's say 54 ranks, which is relatively chill to 59 - 1500 mainstat for ungodly grind- meh?

I'd say overtime after like 60th trait, people will simply stop bothering at all, aside from pure madmen.

Sure, having 59 now requires quite a bit of effort to have NOW (I don't like the term nolifers, since that's just a matter of preference - who are we to judge). Over the next 3 weeks, a couple billion isn't actually that much. A full heroic clear already gives around 100 Million now and will give 150 or 200 soon. Mythic even more. Heck, the command center missions give you 74 Million with a chance to double.

Just because it's big numbers, doesn't mean that it's hard to get.

[Gaidax]

Sure, having 59 now requires quite a bit of effort to have NOW (I don't like the term nolifers, since that's just a matter of preference - who are we to judge). Over the next 3 weeks, a couple billion isn't actually that much. A full heroic clear already gives around 100 Million now and will give 150 or 200 soon. Mythic even more. Heck, the command center missions give you 74 Million with a chance to double.

Just because it's big numbers, doesn't mean that it's hard to get.

With the AK nerf, the heroic clear at AK40 will give what... ~250 million? That "now" won't change much - for example, from 60 to 61 you need a chill 5.5 billions AP, that's only 22 heroic clears there... and this will escalate further of course. From 63 to 64, for example, - 12 billions AP - really at this point anyone but the most mental edgelords won't bother anymore even months from now.

Basically, as I say, anything above 60 traits will be an exercise in futility.