Anyone else raid as destruction?

[Deleted]

Would definitely make burst too strong. The only buff I'd give it, if I were to give it a buff would be to bring Burning Embers back and have it applied by Conflag or CB.

What would happen when you want to chain 3 Chaos Bolts then ?

In my opinion a DoT doesn't really fit with the new Destro philosophy of nukes and quick switches.

[Abominatus]

I don't disagree, there are plenty of points in this thread exactly where Destruction's stengths are being pointed out as a place to shine, just as there are places for Demo to shine.

Let's look at the argument another way though - take a look at that graph, and suppose all three points meet at the same place - what reason would anyone ever have to play Affliction or Demonology if the effort for the greater complexity wasn't rewarded? We've just sat through an entire expansion of complaints about that being an overarching concern for the class as a whole.

The fact is, they perform far closer than people are prepared to accept; Destro has it's niches (although there are too few fights right now to show that), but one spec does necessarily have to fill that line of the smoothest curve.

Bah. That reads like some kind of passive-aggressive elitism. The problem in Cataclysm is that all three warlock specs were obtusely complex for no good reason. None of the MoP specs suffer from that condition. You play a spec because you enjoy the playstyle. If you're obsessive about min-maxing for encounter dynamics or you play in a guild that is so bleeding edge that it actually matters, you respec per encounter to squeeze every ounce of performance out.

What constitutes an acceptable variance is arguable. The fact that the variance between specs is widening with gear progression WITHIN the tier, isn't.

[Rayaleith]

Bah. That reads like some kind of passive-aggressive elitism. The problem in Cataclysm is that all three warlock specs were obtusely complex for no good reason. None of the MoP specs suffer from that condition. You play a spec because you enjoy the playstyle. If you're obsessive about min-maxing for encounter dynamics or you play in a guild that is so bleeding edge that it actually matters, you respec per encounter to squeeze every ounce of performance out.

What constitutes an acceptable variance is arguable. The fact that the variance between specs is widening with gear progression WITHIN the tier, isn't.

Exactly THIS. Accepting the "I play a more complicated spec, I do more damage" is wrong design philosophy. This is for sure. Good players are not supposed to be the ones that play the "complicated rotation"! I guess Jessicka is the same person who wrote the demonology guide at bliz eu forums. Well this guide show enough for the player that he knows the class. He should not need to play a specific spec to back his knowledge with the results.

Wouldn't be a shame to see a good destro player do less damage than an average affliction one? And ok. Maybe not in this tier. But as sims show at the moment, the gap will grow. This is the only issue.

[Rustjive]

It would be interesting to know your opinion about that Xelnath : do you really think Destruction is equivalent to the other specs on a single target fight ? Because I really doubt it, its strength is clearly the cleaving/execute (like you said you wanted it at the end of the beta), on a single target fight I would probably not be at the top of my raid.

That's true, but if Destro were any better of a single-target spec it would probably be the strongest overall spec (and it will be approaching that once 5.1 changes drop). As it is, it is neck and neck with Demo on any sustain AoE fight; on any 2 target fight it is competitive with Affliction. On any fight with any add or in a non-sustain AoE fight it is by far the strongest spec. I have a first hand view of this - the better lock in my guild has been crushing Elegon/Will so hard that people in my guild are harassing me and telling me to switch to Destro.

[Jessicka]

What would happen when you want to chain 3 Chaos Bolts then ?

Same thing that happens with Ignite.

In my opinion a DoT doesn't really fit with the new Destro philosophy of nukes and quick switches.

It probably doesn't, but balance has to come ahead of philosophy. At the very least, this would have minimal impact on the actual rotation.

Bah. That reads like some kind of passive-aggressive elitism. The problem in Cataclysm is that all three warlock specs were obtusely complex for no good reason. None of the MoP specs suffer from that condition. You play a spec because you enjoy the playstyle. If you're obsessive about min-maxing for encounter dynamics or you play in a guild that is so bleeding edge that it actually matters, you respec per encounter to squeeze every ounce of performance out.

I think Zumzum's own parses demonstrate that that simply isn't necessary.

What constitutes an acceptable variance is arguable. The fact that the variance between specs is widening with gear progression WITHIN the tier, isn't.

There will always be argument over what's an acceptable variance, but Blizz have said they try to balance for averages, without the spread of outliers getting to wide. You're talking about a theoretical maximum that very few, if anyone will be able to acheive. We had similar discussions in ICC about how Destro, while simming incredibly close to Aff and Demo, demonstrably could not come close to keeping up. At only 3 weeks into the tier, it's too soon to say whether Affliction's simulated lead is realistic - not least because no one is even close to those gear levels.

Xelnath hinted that they test specs using bots within the game environment rather than simulations; those should at least in theory provide more realistic results.

[Rustjive]

& Elegon

Look at #1 parse for Elegon at the moment, by the way. That's in a 9:28 fight with 478 ilvl, only killing 5 waves each time.

[Abominatus]

Same thing that happens with Ignite.


It probably doesn't, but balance has to come ahead of philosophy. At the very least, this would have minimal impact on the actual rotation.

I think Zumzum's own parses demonstrate that that simply isn't necessary.


There will always be argument over what's an acceptable variance, but Blizz have said they try to balance for averages, without the spread of outliers getting to wide. You're talking about a theoretical maximum that very few, if anyone will be able to acheive. We had similar discussions in ICC about how Destro, while simming incredibly close to Aff and Demo, demonstrably could not come close to keeping up. At only 3 weeks into the tier, it's too soon to say whether Affliction's simulated lead is realistic - not least because no one is even close to those gear levels.

It is questionable whether Zumzum would actually do more damage as Aff/Demo, and I think the only person who's opinion I would trust on that is Zumzum, not you. He is undoubtably doing more than competent damage as Destro, but (given a specific level of skill) would he do better in another spec?

As far as whether it's too soon to tell whether the scaling is as bad as it seems, we're going to have to agree to disagree. I think there's quite enough log information out there to see trends. I see it already within my own guild as well, although that is obviously a small sample size. Everything I see anecdotally corresponds to what Simcraft says I should be seeing, which is a widening gap between specs.

As far as fixing it goes, I suspect it needs a couple of linked changes to keep the burst factor limited. But as long as Conflag has a fixed CD, haste is going to be a very poor stat for destruction, because it increases the number of un-backdrafted incinerates being cast, and therefore has a deleterious effect on mana sustainability which in turn affects the caster's ability to pool Chaos Bolts and reduces his ability to play the spec flexibly to maximize output with trinket synccing, etc.

[Deleted]

Look at #1 parse for Elegon at the moment, by the way. That's in a 9:28 fight with 478 ilvl, only killing 5 waves each time.

Thanks I hadn't seen it yet. That's exactly what I wanted to say, the best scores are still very much improvable and even Elegon which is clogged with Aff parses might be beaten. I don't think my Celestial Protectors live long enough in my raid to use the triple Havoc trick on them though :/

It is questionable whether Zumzum would actually do more damage as Aff/Demo, and I think the only person who's opinion I would trust on that is Zumzum, not you. He is undoubtably doing more than competent damage as Destro, but (given a specific level of skill) would he do better in another spec?

Well I haven't respecced for one year (Firelands..........) so I can't tell either

As far as fixing it goes, I suspect it needs a couple of linked changes to keep the burst factor limited. But as long as Conflag has a fixed CD, haste is going to be a very poor stat for destruction, because it increases the number of un-backdrafted incinerates being cast, and therefore has a deleterious effect on mana sustainability which in turn affects the caster's ability to pool Chaos Bolts and reduces his ability to play the spec flexibly to maximize output with trinket synccing, etc.

Exactly ! Haste is a very bad stat for us right now. Not only it seems to OOM me faster (thus forcing me to cast Chaos Bolt without buffs), but it is even worse when you can use Havoc (which is 6/6 fights in Heroic) since it provides no benefit compared to Mastery/Crit to the copied CB/SB.

[whi]

I don't disagree, there are plenty of points in this thread exactly where Destruction's stengths are being pointed out as a place to shine, just as there are places for Demo to shine.

The fact is, they perform far closer than people are prepared to accept; Destro has it's niches (although there are too few fights right now to show that), but one spec does necessarily have to fill that line of the smoothest curve.

What kind of niches do you have in mind, if there's currently "not too many fights to let destruction shine" in your opinion? I was pretty sure, that destruction's niche is cleave, as in, two target dmg, and that's... most fights currently available..? Feng comes to mind as a fight, that's rather single+aoe(but shield phase can be happily abused by havoc+shadowburn). Everything else has adds that can be cleaved to - sometimes there's more than just 1 add, where affli should shine, or if your tactic permits -demo, and that's fine. Thing is, currently the only thing that keeps destruction over mud is havoc+shadowburn x3, on targets that shouldn't even be a valid target to cast shadowburn on. That's abusing a bug(or was called one by our very own dev here on mmo) or mechanic by now, as it's doesn't seem to be getting fixed.

So the question is, what will happen, when a non-add fight happens? Or to reiterate, when on fights that are at least good for destruction now it comes on-par with affli/demo at best, what will happen when more demo/affli friendly fights come? Should we all just spec affli and stfu, or expect blizzard to balance the most basic part of dps -single target- closer?

Let's look at the argument another way though - take a look at that graph, and suppose all three points meet at the same place - what reason would anyone ever have to play Affliction or Demonology if the effort for the greater complexity wasn't rewarded? We've just sat through an entire expansion of complaints about that being an overarching concern for the class as a whole.

Strictly single target speaking.

Short answer: there shouldn't be one.

Longer: was arcane weak due to being easier spec to play than fire in cataclysm? Was combat weaker than assa/sub due to be less complex? Shouldn't complexity be, a) subjective, b) a choice, c) non-argument, at the level of play we're talking about here? Assuming you're playing demo(no idea why, you seem a demo player) - why? It does less single target dps than affli, is it less complex than affli then? Which part of affliction is so complex, that it warrants to trump other warlock specs exactly?

[Grubjuice]

adding one single target DoT (like Doom used to be) would solve a lot of issues for Destro

It could be balanced to increase destro's singlet target damage to be on par with the other specs,
it would have no impact on our cleaving or AoE (not pushing them any further into OP territory)
it would ad a little something to break to the monotony of oour single target rotation but not in a way that made the spec too difficult.

call 'Smolder' or something

[Jessicka]

What kind of niches do you have in mind, if there's currently "not too many fights to let destruction shine" in your opinion? I was pretty sure, that destruction's niche is cleave, as in, two target dmg, and that's... most fights currently available..? Feng comes to mind as a fight, that's rather single+aoe(but shield phase can be happily abused by havoc+shadowburn). Everything else has adds that can be cleaved to - sometimes there's more than just 1 add, where affli should shine, or if your tactic permits -demo, and that's fine. Thing is, currently the only thing that keeps destruction over mud is havoc+shadowburn x3, on targets that shouldn't even be a valid target to cast shadowburn on. That's abusing a bug(or was called one by our very own dev here on mmo) or mechanic by now, as it's doesn't seem to be getting fixed.

So, everything except where Demo or Aff could/should shine? Okay. Who's to say Aff and Demo aren't abusing their own execute moves?

So the question is, what will happen, when a non-add fight happens? Or to reiterate, when on fights that are at least good for destruction now it comes on-par with affli/demo at best, what will happen when more demo/affli friendly fights come? Should we all just spec affli and stfu, or expect blizzard to balance the most basic part of dps -single target- closer?

Strictly single target speaking.

Same thing as happened to Shadow Priests on Ultraxion/Baleroc, they fall down the meter. That didn't mean they weren't able to absolutely own every other fight in the entirety of Cataclysm.

Short answer: there shouldn't be one.

Longer: was arcane weak due to being easier spec to play than fire in cataclysm? Was combat weaker than assa/sub due to be less complex? Shouldn't complexity be, a) subjective, b) a choice, c) non-argument, at the level of play we're talking about here? Assuming you're playing demo(no idea why, you seem a demo player) - why? It does less single target dps than affli, is it less complex than affli then? Which part of affliction is so complex, that it warrants to trump other warlock specs exactly?

A single target fight though is tricky to balance 3 DPS specs around. If Destruction was absolutely ahead of Affliction and Demo for single target, people would read the sims and neglect completely that Aff was superior on 3-4 target fights and Demo on AoE/mobility and people would play it and spec it for everything - then complain it was sub-par compared to other classes for those roles. And let's be honest, that is exactly what's happening with Affliction now; it's top simmer, and so everyone uses it for everything and then they complain it sucks at AoE thanks to it's long ramp up and immobility thanks to MG channeling.

I could probably agree if the argument was that Destruction's niche is too tightly defined in terms of cleave/huge burst and that encounters weren't being built to let that definition shine. That's a whole other issue though, and 6 encounters just isn't enough to judge that on.

[Grizelda]

I would hate the burning embers DOT option. It's nice to not have to leave a DOT on something if I don't want to. For this reason, I was so happy that they unchained Conflagrate and Incinerate from Immolate.

[whi]

People will complain about everything, no need to pay attention to it all, if we could have the same potential single target dps then we could go from there and balance everything out, sure its not that simple, but it might be a tad harder, when the basics aren't there to begin with.

I don't really remember shadow priests falling behind on tank n spanks, or owning every other fight for that matter, but if that was the case and you find it acceptable, then we can agree to disagree at best.

Maybe i wasn't clear enough - i would like two things to happen to destro:
a) havoc+shadowburn fix - chaos bolt treatment? lowering substantially its current cleave damage,
b) single target buff through inci/conflag, i guess.
Which would hopefully lead to destro being on par with affli and demo(which probably needs a bit of a buff aswell) on pure single target, shine on two-target, and keep falling a bit behind affli the more adds are added to the point when aoe is better than multidot -so, probably >6- where demo should start shining, and affli/destro should be on par, again.

[jason1975]

This is one of those discussions where I feel like people are talking past each other, not to each other.

Let's review:

1. Right now with "good" (not elite, but good) skill, all three specs are extremely viable.
2. Destro has some fights in the current tier that it excels at.
3. Destro is the easiest spec to play (by quite a bit), and moderately skilled players will likely get the most out of it

ALSO . . .

4. Gear scaling will quickly see Affliction become dominant as we progress through this tier and heroics.
5. Without changes, this gap will continue to widen.

Frankly - and I'm sure nobody wants to hear this - Affliction probably needs a single target nerf, along with a couple of other ranged classes/specs (looking at mages). It's simply going to start out-scaling everything by too big a margin to be allowed to continue. At the same time, it probably does need slightly (very slightly) better AoE.

Destro probably needs a bump up of about 5-7% at the top end. There's a lot of ways to do that, but if you take into account that Destro is pretty deadly in PVP ATM, it's very likely going to come in the form of a DOT mechanic or random proc. Additional ember gen off conflag is a good start (it's limited by the cooldown and not spammable like putting fel flame in the rotation).

One other way to go is to put Havoc in the single target rotation. Something like "if you cast a damaging spell at the havoc target, it does X% more damage".

[Grubjuice]

Random proc is actually very unlikely, as Xelnath has said he does not want to incorporate reaction based procs into destro's mechanics.

Almost every tier sees some tinkering in scaling and spell strength, if Affliction begins to scale too fast i hope we can alert Blizzard to our concerns and they can adjust each spec accordingly so that destro and demo are not not outpaced.

[Xelnath]

This is one of those discussions where I feel like people are talking past each other, not to each other.

Let's review:

1. Right now with "good" (not elite, but good) skill, all three specs are extremely viable.
2. Destro has some fights in the current tier that it excels at.
3. Destro is the easiest spec to play (by quite a bit), and moderately skilled players will likely get the most out of it

ALSO . . .

4. Gear scaling will quickly see Affliction become dominant as we progress through this tier and heroics.
5. Without changes, this gap will continue to widen.

Frankly - and I'm sure nobody wants to hear this - Affliction probably needs a single target nerf, along with a couple of other ranged classes/specs (looking at mages). It's simply going to start out-scaling everything by too big a margin to be allowed to continue. At the same time, it probably does need slightly (very slightly) better AoE.

Destro probably needs a bump up of about 5-7% at the top end. There's a lot of ways to do that, but if you take into account that Destro is pretty deadly in PVP ATM, it's very likely going to come in the form of a DOT mechanic or random proc. Additional ember gen off conflag is a good start (it's limited by the cooldown and not spammable like putting fel flame in the rotation).

^ My respect to you, sir, for recognizing the real issue here.

[whi]

^ My respect to you, sir, for recognizing the real issue here.

Would you be so kind and pinpoint that issue more precisely?

[jason1975]

^ My respect to you, sir, for recognizing the real issue here.

Maybe you could clue me in and tell me which "real issue" I was talking about . . . :-P

[Deleted]

How can u have fun playing destro when you know that by respeccing you could be pulling close to 20k more DPS?

[Xelnath]

I believe Affliction sims better than it plays and Destro plays better than it sims.

---------- Post added 2012-10-22 at 12:28 PM ----------

Maybe you could clue me in and tell me which "real issue" I was talking about . . . :-P

This is one of those discussions where I feel like people are talking past each other, not to each other.

That one, specifically.