State of Destruction - Beta discussion (PvE focus)

[ComputerNerd]

I am assuming that auto-wand is simply a wand version of an auto-attack and just an oversight that is seeing it limited as present to destruction.
I hope that is the case anyway.

[Arcontes]

About the chaotic energy bug:

On the first build it was like this

Chaotic Energy
31,4% mana every 5 seconds

You could spam incinerate+rotation up to 4 embers, still with some mana left, that means you might be able to cast some fel flames along the way (not sure they're dps optimal now, besides soulfire of course). 31% might need some tweaking, but it's probably around what it will be on live, ~6k/sec.

Also I'd appreciate very much if they changed fel flame for destro into a fire spell (orange), name it Flashburn or whatever.
Having 1 fel flame spell always bothered the hell out of me, it gets me angry as fuck. Either let us be felcasters OR hellcasters.
Also, some kind of meteor of destruction spell would be nice. Maybe a proc that acts like hand of gul'dan (delayed damage). Destruction always lacked that meteor from the sky thing... Put it into our rotation, spamming incinerate, refreshing immo and backdraft seems like anyone will be able to play destro now... u.u'

Last thing, unlink Demonic Influence from our demons... I want to Sacrifice so bad (i know they can be used together, but what if I want to stay 95% of the time without pet? should I just miss that fast soulfire?)

But overall it's really cool! Keep this updated, it was sooo hard finding stuff about destro. (friggin demo wannabees)

[Jessicka]

I am assuming that auto-wand is simply a wand version of an auto-attack and just an oversight that is seeing it limited as present to destruction.
I hope that is the case anyway.

No, it's legit. You wand while you cast; I just had our GM test it on his lock in Beta. That basically restricts Destruction to a single weapon type, restricting them monumentally in terms of itemisation. This whole spec sounds like a complete and utter clusterfuck from beggining to end. They were quick to announce that ISF was gone in MoP because they knew how hated it was, but somehow it's like they don't understand it wasn't maintaining a buff that pissed people off, but the manner in which it was done by necessitating a very long hard casted Soul Fire to do it. So, we're back stuck with very long cast Soul Fires, and by all accounts chaining them, not to avoid a DPS loss, but to avoid killing yourself. I mean seriously, what in the absolute fuck is that?

[Arcontes]

Ahh BTW, haste increases your mana regen, so you can cast faster without being punished for it.

[Alienshroom]

I only play destruction, but i dont have anything against affliction. Im looking forward to seeing how far this burst makes it.

[Arcontes]

No, it's legit. You wand while you cast; I just had our GM test it on his lock in Beta. That basically restricts Destruction to a single weapon type, restricting them monumentally in terms of itemisation. This whole spec sounds like a complete and utter clusterfuck from beggining to end. They were quick to announce that ISF was gone in MoP because they knew how hated it was, but somehow it's like they don't understand it wasn't maintaining a buff that pissed people off, but the manner in which it was done by necessitating a very long hard casted Soul Fire to do it. So, we're back stuck with very long cast Soul Fires, and by all accounts chaining them, not to avoid a DPS loss, but to avoid killing yourself. I mean seriously, what in the absolute fuck is that?

I don't see a problem to hardcast soulfires on PvE. It's not like standing there for 4 seconds will kill you if you know where to stand. Just like arcane mages, affli (haunt/shards) and destro (soulfire) locks now have a 2 phase rotation, this means we can burst a lot better than before. Long casts won't feel clunky because of their heavy damage, they will feel rewarding (PvEwise).
About the wand thing, they just have it at the moment until they are able to come up with a new spell for the rotation, that won't go live, trust me, they learn from their mistakes, unlike most people's beliefs.

[Deleted]

And again I find myself repeating this, they nerfed Mana-Regen across the board for ALL specs and ALL classes with the last big update. Chaotic Energy still gives a "big" bonus to mana regen (it about quadruples it), the base mana regen is just terribly low.

Before that Nerf, Destruction felt quite good. You would use Conflag/Incinerate/Fel Flame to build up that Ember and than use it on a 200k Soul Fire "crit". The "not boring" part about the rotation was mixing in Fel Flame to gain an Ember quicker (and deal more damage and extend Immolate) while not using too much of your mana. With the lack of Addons I opted to use Fel Flame until I hit about 30% Mana, then I would not use it until I was back to about 80%.

But I do agree that we need some way to reduce the ramp-up time for AoE, maybe turn Ember Tap around? So we would use a part of our HP to instantly create an Ember? Would fit with the Life Tap Idea and the Embers burning us and all, could be problematic to balance in PVP though.

[Deleted]

But I do agree that we need some way to reduce the ramp-up time for AoE, maybe turn Ember Tap around? So we would use a part of our HP to instantly create an Ember? Would fit with the Life Tap Idea and the Embers burning us and all, could be problematic to balance in PVP though.

Could be problematic for my healers too

[Jessicka]

I don't see a problem to hardcast soulfires on PvE. It's not like standing there for 4 seconds will kill you if you know where to stand. Just like arcane mages, affli (haunt/shards) and destro (soulfire) locks now have a 2 phase rotation, this means we can burst a lot better than before. Long casts won't feel clunky because of their heavy damage, they will feel rewarding (PvEwise).
About the wand thing, they just have it at the moment until they are able to come up with a new spell for the rotation, that won't go live, trust me, they learn from their mistakes, unlike most people's beliefs.

Standing around for 4s when you need to just might not be possible; most encounters have some form of mechanic that will force you to move at random, which during a 4s cast is very heavily punitive. The movement talent would mitigate that slightly, but it's still a very long cast and heavily limits your talent choices.

As to the wands, they said they want the spec to be non GCD-capped so the wand effectively provides the function of autoattack/autoshot in terms of limiting burst. I can't see it being removed or replaced.

[Deleted]

A simple question to other beta players : i keep getting oom, as as such i keep dying even sometimes on a single mob... and i'm beginning to twitch. Please confirm :-)

[Callace]

Hi guys.

As an all-time Destruction fanatic and specialist, in a Heroic raiding environment, even when the spec wasn't considered viable, I now managed to get beta access from a mysterious guildy, so I wanted to share with you the awesomeness that is Destruction on the beta.

I'll bookmark this thread and answer any questions if anyone has any, but I'd also love to discuss the abilities and gameplay with other Destruction warlocks on the Beta in here.

I made a thread about my current thoughts on the EU beta forums here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3554369483

As you can see, I complained about mana regen not being enough. As people pointed out in other Destruction summaries, it is supposed to be much like energy. However, energy that only replenishes 1 or 2 energy per second, is obviously not gonna do much for a rogue.
For those not in the Beta: At 85 everyone has 100k baseline mana, not increased by Int, and in Destruction you regen 1k-1.5k mana per second. Incinerate costs 17.5k mana, Immolate costs 8.75k mana, Drain Life costs 2k mana + 2k mana per second channeled (and channeling this definitely makes you go OOM, altho slowly). Cooldowns you pop also cost quite a bit of mana, your Unending Resolve (Shield Wall) being 10k mana (doesn't cost GCD, Twilight Ward being 4k mana, and Dark Soul being 5k mana (and doesn't cost a GCD either).
Just comes down to: Everything you do requires you to spend about 3-10 seconds doing nothing or spending Burning Embers or casting Conflagrate, thus you're doing nothing half the time.

Apart from that, I can say Destruction feels nice, and the burst that Burning Embers give is INSANE.

szemere

Improved Life Tap would be hella useful. I use it in my current Lock specs and I never, ever run out of mana OR health. Is it still in game?

[Deleted]

"Random" is not entirely true. While a lot of Encounters do have a random element to them, none currently has you moving at completely random times. With good planning, you will always be able to get that 4 second cast off. That is the interesting thing about Embers, you can use them right when you get them but you do not have to. The point is that you don't have to stand and cast for 4 seconds at a very specific time in your rotation, you can swap that around. Yes, with a 3.5-4s cast we will have to worry about that a lot more than other classes/specs have to, but it is certainly possible.

[Illumy]

Possible indeed, but it just feels clunky.

[Szemere]

Standing around for 4s when you need to just might not be possible; most encounters have some form of mechanic that will force you to move at random, which during a 4s cast is very heavily punitive. The movement talent would mitigate that slightly, but it's still a very long cast and heavily limits your talent choices.

As to the wands, they said they want the spec to be non GCD-capped so the wand effectively provides the function of autoattack/autoshot in terms of limiting burst. I can't see it being removed or replaced.

You should try out Destruction at level 86, and with a non-imp pet (according to some imps don't fire enough attacks off to be viable atm). I did not level that far yet because of the fact that it's not fun to play it yet due to the mana, but 4sec Soul Fires are a thing of the past, when A: your pets reduce it's cast time (yes we'll be stuck with it at 5.0.1 but 86+ will fix it, same as arcane at 4.0.1), and B: when Haste actually proves to be a good cast due to increased mana regen (I tried reforging everything into haste, and everything out of haste, but it didn't increase mana regen yet), Soul Fire will be shorter as well due to that.


Also, if wands will be firing off shots during actual casts (I'll try hardcasting a soul fire when I get on the beta with a wand equiped (no wands aren't viable yet due to lack of spellpower, easily outweighs the shots in the current state of beta)), I wonder whether that will be the same for other specs, and whether they'll allow spellpower staves to shoot as well later on... (that might force healers into using something that can shoot as well for extra DPS, but then again, that is the same for priests that can use wands, if it actually works for non-destro specs as well)

A simple question to other beta players : i keep getting oom, as as such i keep dying even sometimes on a single mob... and i'm beginning to twitch. Please confirm :-)

Don't play Destruction on actual living mobs unless you have a voidwalker/voidlord tanking Destruction's levelling strength is supposed to be that you can burst a single target down before it actually reaches you, that's obviously not the case when you go OOM after 5 spells

[Jessicka]

"Random" is not entirely true. While a lot of Encounters do have a random element to them, none currently has you moving at completely random times. With good planning, you will always be able to get that 4 second cast off. That is the interesting thing about Embers, you can use them right when you get them but you do not have to. The point is that you don't have to stand and cast for 4 seconds at a very specific time in your rotation, you can swap that around. Yes, with a 3.5-4s cast we will have to worry about that a lot more than other classes/specs have to, but it is certainly possible.

While mechanic timers such as DBM or Bigwigs will show you the cooldown of boss abilities, not all bosses use those abilities right on cooldown. Sure, you can sit on the embers until you're 'safe', but if that means you're sitting on them while oom and spamming your wand I don't think that would feel much better than having to interupt or eating the extended cast. :\

Autowanding is a Destruction only thing btw.

[Szemere]

Improved Life Tap would be hella useful. I use it in my current Lock specs and I never, ever run out of mana OR health. Is it still in game?

Life Tap is replaced by the increased passive mana regen (Chaotic Energy), which is currently too low.
When this will actually go live, you don't even want to lifetap, because the mana provided by a lifetap should be about the same as 1-2 seconds of casting something else. For example: currently Drain Life/Harvest Life is cheap as hell, 2k start mana, 2k mana per channeled second, I can see myself channeling this when I'm OOM, cause even with the current incredibly low mana regen, the spell is almost mana neutral, I can channel it for a minute and still have 80% mana left. So stuff like that will help your healers much more than just Lifetapping for a relatively small amount of mana.

---------- Post added 2012-04-03 at 11:24 AM ----------

While mechanic timers such as DBM or Bigwigs will show you the cooldown of boss abilities, not all bosses use those abilities right on cooldown. Sure, you can sit on the embers until you're 'safe', but if that means you're sitting on them while oom and spamming your wand I don't think that would feel much better than having to interupt or eating the extended cast. :\

I think if you actually try to keep your Embers relatively low when you're not saving up for AoE, at 86+ the time you delay casting that Soul Fire, will actually reduce the casttime as well. If you run around long enough, you'll just have an instant Soul Fire. Downside is indeed, if you have to constantly move (say, Hagara ice phase takes quite long at 86+), you'll probably be unable to spend all those Embers without switching it up to Fire and Brimstone (which is actually a slight DPS increase over your normal spells at high levels of mastery).

Autowanding is a Destruction only thing btw.

Well, that's at least a relief for the other specs, still confused why it's not mentioned anywhere except for the MoP calculator on their site, which I thought to be a bug at first...

[Phoenexis]

I personally don't get what happened to Blizzard. Why would I want an energy-like/resource based spec when I play Destruction, which is defined by burst?

Imo they totally messed the spec up half way during development. We were suppose to be mass chain casters with fast casting times who gradually build up deadly embers and would be forced to dump them because they would get too dangerous to handle, not because we lack stupid mana... I'm a warlock, I don't give a damn about mana, I have Life Tap with that. Warlocks should never have the "oom" issue, that's what makes them partially warlocks, I would play mage if I wanted to watch out for my resource bar... Also, the hell is up with retarded mechanics like Auto-Wand?

They should have just went with: Immolate + additional DoT (Corruption), Conflag for backdraft, Incinerate as filler and Chaos Bolt as great Ember generator. Chain cast until embers become deadly and impossible to handle,then dump with some powerful spell (Ember Tap, a devastating Soul Fire, etc...). If ever oom then use Life Tap or benefit from Mana Feed. The current model seems much more like an arcane mage style...

[Szemere]

OKAY, on Auto-Wand.

It only fires in between 0 and 1 shots, only when you are doing instant casts right after a cast-time spell. Wand shots do NOT go off during the casting of Incinerate or Soul Fire. Auto-Wand is not stopped by casting it seems, however the "swingtimer" stops, just like a Fury Warrior hardcasting Slam. And we're probably gonna do a whole lot of hardcasting.

After some testing:
-Using an ability does not turn off Auto-Wand in any spec.
-Triggering a GCD, either pauses Auto-Wand for any spec, or resets the timer on it, the odd thing is that you can sometimes have a wandshot go off just before or after you use a GCD, in Destruction at least. Not sure about this stuff tho.
-While hardcasting any spell, Auto-Wand pauses in any spec.
-While either spamming GCD-triggering spells (Fel Flame/Corruption, Curse of Elements doesn't seem to trigger GCD for some reason atm), or spamming cast-time spells, no hits go off, so we're not like a melee that can just spam instant GCD spells and still have white hits.
-It doesn't fire when moving at all (it resets the swingtimer), so this will not make Destruction any more mobile compared to without wand.

-Wand as weapon is NOT viable for Demonology, simply because in Metamorphosis, it replaces that auto-attack with Auto-Wand, whereas auto-attack is about double as fast, 2 times as strong, and refreshes Corruption, which the wand doesn't.

-Melee weapons in Destruction function the exact same while casting things as Auto-Wand, but the wand does not fire when moving, and the melee weapons will not go off when out of range, but will actually hit while moving.
-If the wand had spellpower, it would be the best option for Destruction on Patchwerk fights where you can't be in range all the time.
-If you have to move more than the time you have to be out of melee range of the boss, a staff, sword, or dagger, would be a DPS increase, as long as they have the same DPS on them.
-Don't fully trust the DPS named on the weapon or wand, actually casting spells and instant spells seems to mess with the swingtimer...

---------- Post added 2012-04-03 at 12:17 PM ----------

I personally don't get what happened to Blizzard. Why would I want an energy-like/resource based spec when I play Destruction, which is defined by burst?

Imo they totally messed the spec up half way during development. We were suppose to be mass chain casters with fast casting times who gradually build up deadly embers and would be forced to dump them because they would get too dangerous to handle, not because we lack stupid mana... I'm a warlock, I don't give a damn about mana, I have Life Tap with that. Warlocks should never have the "oom" issue, that's what makes them partially warlocks, I would play mage if I wanted to watch out for my resource bar... Also, the hell is up with retarded mechanics like Auto-Wand?

They should have just went with: Immolate + additional DoT (Corruption), Conflag for backdraft, Incinerate as filler and Chaos Bolt as great Ember generator. Chain cast until embers become deadly and impossible to handle,then dump with some powerful spell (Ember Tap, a devastating Soul Fire, etc...). If ever oom then use Life Tap or benefit from Mana Feed. The current model seems much more like an arcane mage style...

If they would do what you currently said, it would be much closer to an arcane mage than it currently is.
Currently, we are supposed to be the caster-type of a monk: have Chi/Burning Embers that you can spend on attacks or attack-modifiers, have other attacks that generate Chi/Burning Embers.

Yes, currently Ember-generating spells are a tad boring (keep Immolate/CotE up>Incinerate when you have Backdraft up>Conflagrate>Incinerate without Backdraft), however, the consuming of Burning Embers is a lot more interesting than your arcane mage. First of all, you can build up to 4 Embers and consume them one at a time, with an arcane mage you get X stacks, and then consume them all with one spell, which on live doesn't hit harder than the spells to generate stacks at all. Destruction on beta on the other hand, consumes one out of 4 possible charges at a time, in either a:
-very powerful self-heal (80k non-crit on beta with DS HC gear),
-or a very powerful Soul Fire (guaranteed crit with modifiers in crit and mastery, hits 140k with my current gear, happened to Tarecgosaproc for a total of 250k just now)
-or spread a curse, or immolate/conflagrate/incinerate, to all targets in 15 yards, with the damaging abilities hitting 250% harder, depending on your mastery (and yes, all those incinerates it creates can also generate Burning Embers, thus making that a VERY powerful AoE rotation)
-or instantly resummon a dead pet without costing mana -> not the most useful, but you'll probably lose less DPS spending an Ember on instantly resummoning your pet, than you would by hardcasting a pet summon and not generating Embers during that casttime.

[Sylar Hao]

As to the wands, they said they want the spec to be non GCD-capped so the wand effectively provides the function of autoattack/autoshot in terms of limiting burst. I can't see it being removed or replaced.

It's still a pretty lame decision... I mean, you cast spells for a while dealing around 30k damage and then you start autoattack for 3k... That's not a Destruction Warlock, that's a Fairy tickling your foe's belly XD.

I really hope they scrap that idea. Like someone pointed out, a good way to adress that would be to make Searing Pain like mage's Scorch, with 0 mana cost but average to low damage. Or add Chaos Bolt+Soul Leech talent, restoring some mana back when hitting... I don't know.

Say no to autowand!

---------- Post added 2012-04-03 at 11:01 AM ----------

I personally don't get what happened to Blizzard. Why would I want an energy-like/resource based spec when I play Destruction, which is defined by burst?

Imo they totally messed the spec up half way during development. We were suppose to be mass chain casters with fast casting times who gradually build up deadly embers and would be forced to dump them because they would get too dangerous to handle, not because we lack stupid mana... I'm a warlock, I don't give a damn about mana, I have Life Tap with that. Warlocks should never have the "oom" issue, that's what makes them partially warlocks, I would play mage if I wanted to watch out for my resource bar... Also, the hell is up with retarded mechanics like Auto-Wand?

They should have just went with: Immolate + additional DoT (Corruption), Conflag for backdraft, Incinerate as filler and Chaos Bolt as great Ember generator. Chain cast until embers become deadly and impossible to handle,then dump with some powerful spell (Ember Tap, a devastating Soul Fire, etc...). If ever oom then use Life Tap or benefit from Mana Feed. The current model seems much more like an arcane mage style...

200% agreed.

[Deleted]

Are people not reading what has been posted time and time again? The rotation was not

keep Immolate/CotE up>Incinerate when you have Backdraft up>Conflagrate>Incinerate without Backdraft

but rather

keep Immolate/CotE up>Incinerate when you have Backdraft up>Conflagrate>Fel Flame if enough mana > Incinerate without Backdraft

This might not seem like much but it adds a whole new layer of complexity warlocks never had before: mana management. Yes, it is currently not possible because you run out of mana far too fast, but I still maintain that this is unintended. You currently can't even get to a full Ember without running out of mana. That can't be the plan. However, I don't think that "spending" Embers will be all that complicated: In single target fights you go for Soul Fire 100% of the time. The "perfect" situation for Destruction AoE would be to get 2 Embers, put Immolate on 10 mobs (with Fire & Brimstone), plant a Rain of Fire on top of them and keep spamming FnB+Incinerate (with 10 mobs you are guaranteed to get a full Ember back everytime you incinerate). This is probably completely overpowered though. Now, if there are less then 10 targets (or if you don't have 2 Embers) you will just FnB+Immo and RoF them.

Anyway, it seems like we are back to the Destructive Influence discussion which is probably burried in the Compiled thread. So let me summarize:

• DI is a bad concept because you are reliant on your pet AND ON YOUR PET BEING ABLE TO ATTACK. Can't pick up Grimmoire of Sacrifice. Need to use the pet with the fastest attack speed.
• Assuming that only "specials" create a stack, we would get about 1 stack of the buff every 4 seconds. That is 0.5 second less cast time on Soul Fire after 20 seconds of casting. Does not change the problem (4.0s or 3.5s base casttime).
• Even if we are to assume that we generate a buff on every autoattack, we still would only have about 10 stacks after 20 seconds. That MIGHT be enough, but it is still a long cast.
• There is no need for such a skill. Simply reduce the cast time of Soul Fire by a 1.5s and shift some damage from SF to Immo.

It seems like autowanding is just not properly implemented right now. When I was testing it before the last update, I had the feeling that it sometimes prevented me from casting ("Another action is in progress"). Then again, before the patch it did deal about three times as much damage (Not 100% sure, I will see if I have some video footage of that when I get home). But one way or another, I am very sceptical about the concept of a non GCD-capped caster spec. I am not saying it can't work, but it is something we never had before and I am sure it will feel very very weird. In addition to that, balancing it will be extremely hard. Either auto-wanding does a lot of damage and you can get through LFR with just doing that, or the damage will be incredibly spiky (even more so then arcane mages).

While mechanic timers such as DBM or Bigwigs will show you the cooldown of boss abilities, not all bosses use those abilities right on cooldown. Sure, you can sit on the embers until you're 'safe', but if that means you're sitting on them while oom and spamming your wand I don't think that would feel much better than having to interupt or eating the extended cast. :\

I am still under the assumption that the rotation is intended to be played like it was possible before the last update. There, you would then be using Incinerate/Immolate/Conflag/Fel Flame instead of using the Ember for a Soul Fire while waiting for the boss to use his ability. That would be possible I think.