State of Destruction - Beta discussion (PvE focus)

[Fallensaint]

To be fair, I think you probably should have used Dark Soul, as that would have probably given different results. I'd be curious to see the results where in rotation 2 you use DS on cd, and in rotation 3 you use it right before a 4 ember burn.

Well, yeah, that's pretty much why I didn't use it.

Depending on where you use it, it'll either increase your ember generation, or increase your Soul Fire burst. Neither of which is very conductive for figuring out the DPS differences between rotations. Testing the use of cooldowns in different parts of our rotation will probably be more useful when we're able to access level 90 content, and when our damage gets balanced properly.

You should do a 4th rotation which is essentially like #2, except pooling embers. I'd be curious to see where that falls.

Furthermore you seem pretty concerned about going oom and "making the most" of your mana. The only way to make the most of it is to use it. Blizzard has said they don't want destro to be a gcd locked spec, so with that in mind it's ok to spend a second or two doing nothing. You're thinking like a healer, that going oom is bad. Think more like a rogue, that capping your resource is worse. Rogues are constantly using up their energy to the point where they can't use SS/Mut/BS, and thus they do nothing but wait for it to fill so they have enough to use an ability again. If that's the design behind desro, then we need to actually play it as such, and get out of the mentality that going oom means we did something wrong.

Decided to kill two birds with one stone and did a test where I pooled 4 embers, and spent all my mana on Backdrafted Incinerates when they were up, or Fel Flames when they weren't. Except for two Ember Taps, all my embers were spent on Soul Fires when I'd pooled 4. Ended up with 21,369 DPS over ~5 mins.

I'm still not very keen on pooling 4 embers for burst unless I really need to. For one, over that 16 second total cast time it's really easy to cap Conflag stacks and mana. It's also easy to waste Backdraft stacks on the last few bits of that 4th ember. All three of those means wasted resources. For maximum efficiency, I'd rather build up about 3.5-3.8 embers, burn three on SFs, then build up that last partial with a Backdraft stack and pop a fourth SF. Backdraft lasts 14 seconds, so it's not going to fall off for one SF if I finish off that last ember early on a crit.

Overall, I'd still prefer to spend embers as I OOM, since that gives Backdraft some time to cooldown and I definitely won't cap on my other resources. I also won't take nearly as much self-damage. Doing maximum damage is important, but so is not killing yourself or overburdening your healers.

The main reason I'm concerned about mana is all of our ember using spells that aren't Soul Fire, though I admit that I haven't tested them as much. I'm not yet certain how reliant we are on Soul Fire's 4 second cast time for mana regeneration, so I don't yet know how our instant ember abilities would affect our overall DPS.

edit: I will admit though that I am probably being too conservative with my mana. As Destro on live I'm usually pretty blasé with the resource, and I'm probably overreacting to the loss of my Life Tap safety net.

[PsyBomb]

The rotations are probably going to end up as a situational toggle. Bosses with a vulnerability phase where max output in a short time is critical (Both Deathwings, for example) will use the pooled-Ember style. This of course only applies when said phases are around 16-24 seconds, if less than that then it will be as-appropriate to the phase length (Hagra would only be 2 Embers pooled, for example) and if much greater it will just be standard rotations as you prefer (Zon'ozz comes to mind)

[Count Zero]

Even tho I was super excited for all 3 specs, I was least excited for Destro until now -- it just seems the most finished now, based on the feedback I'm seeing. I'd like for them to somehow get Chaos Bolt back, but I dunno if it'd fit ... and it looks like there may be a chance they're looking to have it be green Soul Fire anyway (http://www.wowdb.com/spells/116858-chaos-bolt for those who haven't seen it)

But yeah, I guess we'll see where Afflic and Demo wind up. I'm a bit over Demo now tho, knowing I won't be able to tank with it for reals ...

Gah, wish it wasn't too early to start speculating on compatability of stat weights for dual-speccing ...

[Fallensaint]

Well, there's still some ambiguity about the fate of our currently unimplemented level 86 skill, but I will admit that I've seriously (and unfairly) underestimated Destro, and the possibility of instant Soul Fires don't sound nearly as debilitating as they have been. Still not too keen on the pet dependency implied by Destructive Influence's old/current tooltip, though. And Flames of A'lar could probably be better balanced to be less costly as an ember generator (killing our minion AND incurring a minute cooldown on our minion recovery ability is a bit much). And Havoc is very short, I'd gladly sacrifice a charge for a little extra time on it, or a shorter cooldown...

But yes, the core looks a lot better than I've been giving it credit for.

[wholol]

hmm I've been thinking about it for a while, if they could change bane of havoc so that it "duplicates" the next 4 destruction spells on the target, we could place it on our primary target if no secondary target is available and that would be pretty nice for a cd don't you think ? ( then the cd and duration would actually be decent), or maybe I'm just trying to squeeze in a little too much

[Deleted]

I dunno if it's been already mentionned, but flames of al'ar has be changed again
- if you have pet => FoA => sacc pet, generate 1 ember
- if you have no pet and no GoSac=> FoA => consume 1 ember, insta-pet resummon
- if you have no pet and have GoSac => FoA => consume GoSac buff, insta-pet resummon (new afaik)

[Count Zero]

- if you have no pet and have GoSac => FoA => consume GoSac buff, insta-pet resummon (new afaik)

Very interesting ... looks like all that's left for Destro for Sac to be viable is for it to address the lack of resource generation via pet, which probably is the last thing to do as it seems like it'd be the trickiest part to balance. eg, whether to balance it around single-target or multi-target, considering that simply removing the pet in favor of a self-buff favors multi-target already. I imagine they'd just have to bake it in with something that's mutually-exclusive / pure single target.

Is Destructive Influence or whatever implemented yet ? Destro feels pretty fleshed out now but I haven't seen anyone report from the latest build that they're getting the cast-time reduction on SF from pet attacks, which seems like it'd really, really smooth out the rotation even more.

[Deleted]

The problem is that we need the long cast time on SF to regen our mana, else we WILL be OOM, which is never the case right now if well played. I really don't know how will they implement this spell.

[helheim]

i've put like 8 hours into destro alone on beta and compared to the current destro spec live, it feels retarded. it feels like it's missing something.

why immolate itself doesn't provide some small ember generation on its own is beyond me.

the fact that it's essentially been broken down to, currently, a 5 spell 'rotation' or priority list is mind-numbingly boring. it's like having to manage a paladins holy power and a rogues energy meter simultaneously and once you have immolate up, you spam a whopping 3 buttons.

i'm not impressed. i dont like holy power + energy; it's like making destro play rune tetris.

backdraft would be nice if it affected soulfire, because pet attacks decreasing it's cast time is apparently still NYI. i have no semblance of a 'rotation' at all currently. it feels very button-mashy, whereas on live it's much more fluid.

someone please tell me how this is better than what we already have. i don't see it, at all.

[Gorehowl]

so, is destro having corruption on beta a bug atm, or is it intended?

[helheim]

so, is destro having corruption on beta a bug atm, or is it intended?

caused by glyph of doom, get rid of it.

[Deleted]

iwhy immolate itself doesn't provide some small ember generation on its own is beyond me

That's the very same though i've been experiencing this whole afternoon. While questing / grinding i'm used to immolate everything up, and ... when you realize that after 3 mins and 4 packs you're still at about 0 embers, it's ... disturbing.

[Phoenexis]

i've put like 8 hours into destro alone on beta and compared to the current destro spec live, it feels retarded. it feels like it's missing something. why immolate itself doesn't provide some small ember generation on its own is beyond me. the fact that it's essentially been broken down to, currently, a 5 spell 'rotation' or priority list is mind-numbingly boring. it's like having to manage a paladins holy power and a rogues energy meter simultaneously and once you have immolate up, you spam a whopping 3 buttons. i'm not impressed. i dont like holy power + energy it's like making destro play rune tetris.

someone please tell me how this is better than what we already have. i don't see it, at all.

I say we're missing Chaos Bolt which could be a mass ember generator that you'd watch out for on a regular basis, and maybe Corruption or something... Also, what happened to auto-wand? Is it used in our current rotation? Will it be used once Destructive Influence goes live on beta and we don't spend 4 seconds casting Soul Fire?

[Fallensaint]

Auto Wand does not exist except in the game files. All clothies have Shoot, which allows them to use their wand, but that's nothing like a hunter's Auto Shot. It's basically unchanged from the Shoot we have on live. Unless you have a wand with an attack speed less than one second, you won't really see any wand attacks.

[Sylar Hao]

The more I play, quest, test... the more I think the following changes should be made to Destruction (of course, imho):
- The most important: reduce Soul Fire's cast time (at least half a second or so). I like the feeling of a big cast with desvastating damage, but it feels way too slow, at least for me.
- One more spell to manage, on a low CD, 15 sec or so, kinda like Chaos Bolt (not necesary this one) that may increase Ember regeneration rate, or have a side effect.
- One more way to gain embers, it could be Immolate ticks, Conflagrate... Even if spells cost a little more mana. Actually it feels slow, if it were more dynamic it would be way funnier.
- A way to gain an instant Ember without being a dps sacrifice (losing pet), on an average CD (45 - 1min or so). It could cost a small amount of health instead or a nice amount of mana, it's a fair trade.
- Unlink all spells, abilities and passive effects from pets. Soul Link is good, Flames of A'lar is bad.
- Fire and Brimstone out of GCD.

Everything else seems cool.

[wholol]

The more I play, quest, test... the more I think the following changes should be made to Destruction (of course, imho):
- The most important: reduce Soul Fire's cast time (at least half a second or so). I like the feeling of a big cast with desvastating damage, but it feels way too slow, at least for me.
- One more spell to manage, on a low CD, 15 sec or so, kinda like Chaos Bolt (not necesary this one) that may increase Ember regeneration rate, or have a side effect.
- One more way to gain embers, it could be Immolate ticks, Conflagrate... Even if spells cost a little more mana. Actually it feels slow, if it were more dynamic it would be way funnier.
- A way to gain an instant Ember without being a dps sacrifice (losing pet), on an average CD (45 - 1min or so). It could cost a small amount of health instead or a nice amount of mana, it's a fair trade.
- Unlink all spells, abilities and passive effects from pets. Soul Link is good, Flames of A'lar is bad.
- Fire and Brimstone out of GCD.

Everything else seems cool.

pretty much this, though i'd place a bold over ember generation speed( so far seems like building embers is slow indeed ) and a new spell for increased ember generation / more flavor to the rotation.

[kai zayin]

The more I play, quest, test... the more I think the following changes should be made to Destruction (of course, imho):
- The most important: reduce Soul Fire's cast time (at least half a second or so). I like the feeling of a big cast with desvastating damage, but it feels way too slow, at least for me.
Destructive Influence should address this, it probably just hasn't been tuned yet.

- One more spell to manage, on a low CD, 15 sec or so, kinda like Chaos Bolt (not necesary this one) that may increase Ember regeneration rate, or have a side effect.
I would like this, honestly it seems the actual rotation for Destro will be so much simpler than what I'm used to that I may find it too boring to play.

- One more way to gain embers, it could be Immolate ticks, Conflagrate... Even if spells cost a little more mana. Actually it feels slow, if it were more dynamic it would be way funnier.
I haven't played the beta yet (have it just haven't bothered to log on yet) I'll respond to the rest after I play with the spec a little.

- A way to gain an instant Ember without being a dps sacrifice (losing pet), on an average CD (45 - 1min or so). It could cost a small amount of health instead or a nice amount of mana, it's a fair trade.
If we have an ember generator it needs to come with a tradeoff. Sacrificing some health isn't going to cut it, maybe increase the CD of one of our major CDs as cost (Example: generate an ember, but put an additional x seconds on Demon Souls CD)? I dunno, but I agree that sacing the pet sucks; however at the same time there does need to be a tradeoff.

- Unlink all spells, abilities and passive effects from pets. Soul Link is good, Flames of A'lar is bad.

- Fire and Brimstone out of GCD.


One of my concerns deals with the current implementation of Havoc, if it does indeed have a 6 sec duration after accounting for the GCD we have 5 seconds to cast 4 spells. With that it's going to be impossible to stack 4 embers then Havoc 4 Soul fires. Just a minor concern that we won't be able to make full use of Havoc due to it's duration.

[Xorn]

Well, yeah, that's pretty much why I didn't use it.

Depending on where you use it, it'll either increase your ember generation, or increase your Soul Fire burst. Neither of which is very conductive for figuring out the DPS differences between rotations. Testing the use of cooldowns in different parts of our rotation will probably be more useful when we're able to access level 90 content, and when our damage gets balanced properly.



Decided to kill two birds with one stone and did a test where I pooled 4 embers, and spent all my mana on Backdrafted Incinerates when they were up, or Fel Flames when they weren't. Except for two Ember Taps, all my embers were spent on Soul Fires when I'd pooled 4. Ended up with 21,369 DPS over ~5 mins.

I'm still not very keen on pooling 4 embers for burst unless I really need to. For one, over that 16 second total cast time it's really easy to cap Conflag stacks and mana. It's also easy to waste Backdraft stacks on the last few bits of that 4th ember. All three of those means wasted resources. For maximum efficiency, I'd rather build up about 3.5-3.8 embers, burn three on SFs, then build up that last partial with a Backdraft stack and pop a fourth SF. Backdraft lasts 14 seconds, so it's not going to fall off for one SF if I finish off that last ember early on a crit.

Overall, I'd still prefer to spend embers as I OOM, since that gives Backdraft some time to cooldown and I definitely won't cap on my other resources. I also won't take nearly as much self-damage. Doing maximum damage is important, but so is not killing yourself or overburdening your healers.

The main reason I'm concerned about mana is all of our ember using spells that aren't Soul Fire, though I admit that I haven't tested them as much. I'm not yet certain how reliant we are on Soul Fire's 4 second cast time for mana regeneration, so I don't yet know how our instant ember abilities would affect our overall DPS.

edit: I will admit though that I am probably being too conservative with my mana. As Destro on live I'm usually pretty blasé with the resource, and I'm probably overreacting to the loss of my Life Tap safety net.

What I do to prevent mana capping during a burn is after my second SF in the series cast as many FF as it takes to oom, and that still gives me plenty of times to finish the other two Soul Fires and still have buff time left over for a few FF at the end as well.

As for burdening the healers, we actually have a LOT of ways to heal and mitigate damage. For example, glyph of healthstone is an amazing way to offset the effects of holding on to embers. We also have Soul Leech, Mortal Coil, Unending Resolve, and a few other talents that can reduce or prevent damage, many of them off the GCD.

---------- Post added 2012-04-15 at 11:38 PM ----------

The problem is that we need the long cast time on SF to regen our mana, else we WILL be OOM, which is never the case right now if well played. I really don't know how will they implement this spell.

This is the last time I will say it. Going oom IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. Our mana regen is something ridiculous like 35k mp5, it only takes a few seconds to go from 0 to full, and hard casting four SFs will make you mana cap, which is bad.

I think if any lock wants to play destro in MoP they should seriously consider rolling a Rogue, Feral, or Hunter on live just to see what it's like to work with an energy type system so that they can understand the ebb and flow of the resources.

the fact that it's essentially been broken down to, currently, a 5 spell 'rotation' or priority list is mind-numbingly boring. it's like having to manage a paladins holy power and a rogues energy meter simultaneously and once you have immolate up, you spam a whopping 3 buttons.

i'm not impressed. i dont like holy power + energy; it's like making destro play rune tetris.

Rogues have energy and combat points, so what's your point? That you don't want to have to manage two whole resources? In the same sentence you complain about how the spec lacks complexity, then complain that you have more things to manage than you want. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Considerit]

This is the last time I will say it. Going oom IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. Our mana regen is something ridiculous like 35k mp5, it only takes a few seconds to go from 0 to full...


I think if any lock wants to play destro in MoP they should seriously consider rolling a Rogue, Feral, or Hunter on live just to see what it's like to work with an energy type system so that they can understand the ebb and flow of the resources.


Rogues have energy and combat points, so what's your point? That you don't want to have to manage two whole resources? In the same sentence you complain about how the spec lacks complexity, then complain that you have more things to manage than you want. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

One doesn't manage mana. Not as Destro anyways, as we have no tools to do so. You either have enough, or you don't, and if you don't, then the problem isn't that you spend some time doing nothing - but that we'll be forced to make use of that time in the only way possible: auto-attacking in melee (or auto-wanding). Either of which is hugely problematic. One forces us into melee range and the other forces us into a specific weapon type. Either of which, although not the end of the world, is definitely a negative direction for the spec.

If you don't want a dps caster to hit something every gcd, limiting mana is not the way to go, but rather give us some cast times greater than a global (which we already have, so all is well there). Same end result in fewer actions-per-minute, but prevents the auto-attack/auto-wand silliness.

The fact is, we'll never spend our time not doing something. If there's a way to eke out damage, we're going to do it, no matter how crazy/unintended it may be. We're not melee. We're not a rogue, feral, or hunter. What works for them does not work for us. Not when you consider all of the many implications.

We can't oom. Not unless we have something we can do during that time. Something not as horribly consequetional as auto-attacking or auto-wanding.

[xskarma]

One doesn't manage mana. Not as Destro anyways, as we have no tools to do so. You either have enough, or you don't, and if you don't, then the problem isn't that you spend some time doing nothing - but that we'll be forced to make use of that time in the only way possible: auto-attacking in melee (or auto-wanding). Either of which is hugely problematic. One forces us into melee range and the other forces us into a specific weapon type. Either of which, although not the end of the world, is definitely a negative direction for the spec.

Just to play devil's advocate, but being forced in to a single weapon type hasn't stopped Assass rogues from being played. And since we don't know yet how many and which type of weapons will be out in Mists and what they'll do with our old wands we have no way of knowing if wands might be just as prevalent as daggers are and thus Destro being perfectly viable with just wand as a weapon option.

I have a cool looking wand or 2 in my Void storage, for just such an occasion