Is Destruction really as bad as people say?

[Medieve]

I don't have an ember problem in Gara'jal 10HC. I generally go in solo and blow everything up within a few casts, then am back out again to blow 4 CB's with a nice buff. I'd imagine it'd be more difficult just with the health scaling with 25 man, but shouldn't be impossible.

[purefury]

To add to all of the above posters:
Destruction doesn't do worse dps than Affliction, if the player is better at destruction than at affliction. In a perfect skillcapped world, you'll do 130k dps as affliction and 118k as destruction. Those 12k dps would matter, but those 12k do not exist in the real world, in the case of a pro destro warlock being sub par at affliction.

on sim affliction might do 130vs118, but its possible to do much more dps than sim as affliction by good pandemic usage with procs, while destro is simulated much closer to optimal. that means if u can do 150k affli, you will still do 120k destro.

besides even 10% dps is huge difference, in a 10man its a difference between 2% wipe and a kill.

[DocQuantum]

This is one of those "yes and no" answers.

If you're asking about hardcore progression raiding, destro can't keep up.
If you're asking about casual guilds raiding, destro doesn't fall "too" far behind; play what you want.

Also note that if you're amazing at destro and suck at afflic/demo, your mileage may vary. Theory != practice.

[Shefu]

I have played destro since TBC and have always managed to consistently be in the top bracket of DPS in both casual and progression raiding on and off. Just like others have said, u have to know the spec and take advantage of every little detail! Affliction has been favored as the raiding spec since Wrath, but once u get some good gear at least in casual raids it is possible to top DPS. Just do your best.

[Sabsy]

i tried destro in raids last night finally (been afflic since i hit 90) and it wasn't that bad... i of course have not played it since cata so i'm sure i could tweak my play style and learn some tricks to do even more dps (plus i have a lot of haste+mastery gear so my gear isn't exactly optimized for destro since haste is pretty bad) but destro is definitely viable on many fights

also it depends on what your guilds strat and comp is for the boss... for instance we did some attempts on heroic amber shaper last night (using the strat of stacking the debuff and holding dps on the boss until ~75% then burning while he casts amber scalpel) and destro was working VERY well! 3.5mil chaos bolt crits were nice to see also it seems much better than afflic at killing the adds

i've also been reading it's the best spec for heroic tsulong and just as good if not better than afflic on some other fights...

there are some fights (like heroic will) where destro is pretty far behind though

[Deleted]

Destro is actually really good and competeable on most fights that doesnt involve pure single target damage. I was suprised how good it is for spread out AOE with MF (Ambershaper, P2 sha) and i will consider playing it more often.

[Deleted]

i am thinking of going destruction for main spec, am wondering tho if their are any up to date guide for it and how do ya use ds at start before getting up embers or use it when ya got full embers?

[Brusalk]

on sim affliction might do 130vs118, but its possible to do much more dps than sim as affliction by good pandemic usage with procs, while destro is simulated much closer to optimal. that means if u can do 150k affli, you will still do 120k destro.

besides even 10% dps is huge difference, in a 10man its a difference between 2% wipe and a kill.

Destruction doesn't take into account procs either you know... You can hardly say with certainty that one spec is simulated more optimally than another. I spent 5 minutes with the destruction priority and increased the 2 target cleave DPS by 30k in BiS gear. I highly, highly doubt that the single target is optimal.

[Deleted]

Destro is actually really good and competeable on most fights that doesnt involve pure single target damage. I was suprised how good it is for spread out AOE with MF (Ambershaper, P2 sha) and i will consider playing it more often.

Good to hear

[whi]

I spent 5 minutes with the destruction priority and increased the 2 target cleave DPS by 30k in BiS gear. I highly, highly doubt that the single target is optimal.

Do optimize the single target aswell then, please. Cheers!

[Medieve]

Do optimize the single target aswell then, please. Cheers!

Single target isn't that far off. I've been playing around with it, trying to squeeze that little extra blood out of the stone, and haven't found the combination that drastically improves everything. 2 targets gives you unique opportunities to empower your cleave, but unfortunately single target is too "static" for Destro. I'll keep working on it, and I'll let you know if I come up with anything, but sims are pretty closely reflecting raid differences for 10 man, at least. Unfortunately I don't have enough information to really say how it fares in 25, but the rumor is destro benefits a great deal from extra skull banners and other cooldowns.

Try to keep in mind when looking over parses is they also include overkill damage that skews the damage dealt. While Destro's strength is sniping off adds, hitting for an extra 200k or so overkill a global makes destro seem more powerful than it is. I'm not trying to say that Destro is bad because of that. The truth is it mechanically performs extremely well. When you're comparing sim data to parses, the high deviations seem to be due to overkill damage that is unique to Destro that you won't see in a patchwerk sim, making it seem as if it performs far better than it sims. The truth is Destro just has wasted damage built into its execute.

I think it would be a great experiment for Blizzard, buff Destro a bit so it's on par single target patchwerk as the other two specs, and watch parses blow the other specs away and locks flood Destro based soley on overkill damage. It'd definitely be amusing, if nothing else. The forum QQ would be outrageous.

[whi]

Wonder who came up with the idea, that overkill damage is being counted for in wol logs!

Sparkuggz hit the nail here pretty much, and said what we were saying since beta - if affli+sac would be tonned down to affli+sup/service levels(to give those poor affliction players a choice, obviously) it's single target would be +- comparable to destr/demo's(going by simc numbers, which *surprisingly* are once again right - if only one would predict this happening before mop going live..). 5.2 will fix it, though, hopefully, right..?

[Deleted]

There is a rule WHI.

Devs sucksss, so Pet sucks, so Sacrifice > Pet, so No choice, and we know this issue since the very beginning, so Demo + sacrifice at the end.

[whi]

Choice assumes balance, i guess, but sure, i like the good old tbc's petless style, even though someone will surely say how unlockish it is. Sadly the new and fixed version of defensive called assist is new and everything besides fixed, but other than that pets aren't *that* terrible when on passive and sent to attack with a /petattack everytime.

[Deleted]

on sim affliction might do 130vs118, but its possible to do much more dps than sim as affliction by good pandemic usage with procs, while destro is simulated much closer to optimal. that means if u can do 150k affli, you will still do 120k destro.

besides even 10% dps is huge difference, in a 10man its a difference between 2% wipe and a kill.

You didn't really read the last line of the quote did you...
A sub par affliction warlock will not go 20k above his BIS sim.

[purefury]

You didn't really read the last line of the quote did you...
A sub par affliction warlock will not go 20k above his BIS sim.

i did, just answered ot by proxy ;p
what you are saying is that bad player might do better DPS as destro than affliction basically. that is possible, but just as well it could be other way around increasing the difference too.
ok not in this case, hard to do much wrong with destro...

[kushlol]

Good to hear

I played destro for the 1st time for heroic tsulong after watching your video and we ended up getting the kill =D. Definitely a playstyle change from the normal affliction and demo i'm use to. It was definitely fun trying to get the hang of it again.

[Deleted]

i did, just answered ot by proxy ;p
what you are saying is that bad player might do better DPS as destro than affliction basically. that is possible, but just as well it could be other way around increasing the difference too.
ok not in this case, hard to do much wrong with destro...

Yes..
You aren't necesarily a bad player for being better at the destruction rotation than the affliction one. They are quite different, afterall, in spite of how easy they seem to some.

[deadfish]

Destruction is OK, but the problem is Affliction is simply better and if you choose to play destruction then you believe that your own enjoyment is more important that the enjoyment of the 24 other people you are raiding with.

I play this game for fun, if i want help other ppl i'd rather do charity work

[Deleted]

On sims the difference between Destruction and Affliction is roughly 12k dps. In the real world you will never really see this 12k dps difference come into play because you can't play as perfectly as the sims so it comes down to what do you perform better with. This will typically be the spec you love / enjoy playing. So what I'm saying is that you can keep up on dps with an affliction warlock if you just play well / better. Affliction is good but if you don't like multi dotting then you just aren't going to do as well as you would playing destro. Hopefully you get my point