Destro Buff 5.4 (Rain of fire Compensation)

[Deleted]

Don't give them ideas they nearly gave mages something exactly like that before minus the bonus trails

Firewall kind of spell? Must have been some very early beta thing, since I don't recall seeing it.

[Shadowygoodness]

I had this silly idea for a spell. Remember the boss Felmyst? Imagine the warlock breathing a small line in front of him that leaves the ground burning with fel flames, everyone that passes through gets slowed and the warlock generates bits of ember, target(s) also catches fire and leaves trails of flame behind him that behave the same way and last for as long as the slow does.

Yeah, that wouldn't work out, and it would bring back the jokes about warlocks being raid bosses.

Sounds like Nocturne from LoL

It used to be strong in 5.2 pvp now it's literally worthless. Hits for 80-90k with CD's popped, literally hits just as hard as a shamans lava burst does. I don't think a instant chaos bolt proc would be OP in pvp.

Not sure what gear you're running around in, but my CBs hit for 89k~ w/o cds. During Dark Soul + trinket, my CBs hit for close to 130k with CoE on the target. I do think that 89k outside of cds is a way too low, though, for a spell that has so much upkeep given Lava Bursts hit for just as much and proc like crazy. It's just a bad, bad, bad spell to be completely and totally honest, because in all honesty CB needs to be buffed to hit 100K at least outside of cds, but if you do that then me and others would be hitting for 150k+ during cds.


OT: I think they're probably not going to do anything too crazy at this late stage of the game. I foresee them buffing incinerate and immolate emberbit generation and calling it a day, which really sucks for destro pvp.

[Jetjaguar]

Another problem is of the 6 fights tested so far, there are not too many fights that destruction can abuse like in Throne of Thunder. It's the big draw of the spec that it can cleave and aoe unlike any other caster in the game. The MF and RoF changes make destro not so special anymore.

[Erolian]

Firewall kind of spell? Must have been some very early beta thing, since I don't recall seeing it.

Not to derail the thread but I think it was called Wall of Fog or something like that. It ended up getting completely changed and that's what ring of frost came from.

[Ealyssa]

PvP exists, and double-instant-chaos bolt would be both hilarious and wrong.

PVP exist, and triple instant lavaburst+mastery random instant recast would be both hilarious and wrong.

Yet still in game.

[a little Kappa]

I'd give us more damage from incinerate, immolate and conflagrate. Double the embers gained from crits and buff chaos bolt.

[Deleted]

To make us up to where we are on live currently we need to make up about 12-13% damage, there are a few problems with this.

1 - Haste scaling is 'dead' without Rain of fire.

2- We gain a monstrously good set bonus in the 4 part (we currently dont even have a 4 part).

3- We have 2 spells that really dont fill enough of a role in the rotation thats Immolate and Conflag.

4- Buffing the damage of the spells buffs sacrifice more than it buffs supremacy and because we are most likely gna run mastery in 5.4 as our main stat this will leave supremacy in a weaker position (subjective opinion but i have spent a lot of time looking at the options and i think this will end up being the case).

5- Amplification trinket is literally god mode for Destruction (Mastery main stat with crit second), The trinket is so good for the spec that you could literally delay dark souls entire CD just to be able to use it with full ember chaos bolt spamming i can see us being balanced around this and our new 4 part to give our 'expected damage' which will be useless in progression due to not having this gear yet or we will end up with some absurd scaling by the end of the tier.

6- Destruction is strong atm because it can abuse multiple targets, a lot of this is down to Rain of fire so on multi target fights we actually have a lot of ground to cover to get back to 5.3 levels of damage.

7- Ghostcrawler did actually mention that he wants us to back to the t14 nuclear bomb chaos bolts that are very few and far between so i can see damage being buffed instead of ember regen, this hurts multiple target a LOT and really destro needs like a 20% damage increase if you want it to be competitive if thats the case (This wont happen either).

How i would fix all this

1- Backdraft now increases incinerate damage instead of haste

2- Chaos bolt instant cast at 3 stacks of backdraft

3- Immolate generates 1 ember on tick and 2 on crit

4- Conflag generates 2 embers on cast and 4 on crit

5- Change meta uptime to balance damage accordingly

[Shadowygoodness]

How i would fix all this

1- Backdraft now increases incinerate damage instead of haste

2- Chaos bolt instant cast at 3 stacks of backdraft

3- Immolate generates 1 ember on tick and 2 on crit

4- Conflag generates 2 embers on cast and 4 on crit

5- Change meta uptime to balance damage accordingly

I could get behind these changes. I'd actually increase the base cast time of incinerate, too, if the damage was increased proportionately. That would keep haste from being completely useless to the spec. Only problem with doing that is incinerate would start to make CB look weak in PvP, so CB would need a damage buff which goes along with GC's wanting of CB to be a super nuke few and far between, but we all witnessed the outcry at the beginning of the xpak when CB was probably the most balanced it's ever been (just no one had any freaking pvp gear, so of course it hit like a freight train). I would love for CB to hit HARD proportional to the effort it takes to cast it, but I'm pessimistic about our chances.

[Gohzerlock]

For destro pvp they should give people what they've been asking for, immolate dispel protection.. a fire dot with a stun or slow or SOMETHING?!?! lol ANYTHING. I miss when rain of fire stun'd.. hilarious. Some kind of change for chaos bolt would have to be done for destro pvp to make a comeback, prob not till expansion.

[luckydevours]

What is this obsession with instant Chaos Bolts? If want you to play a fire mage, you can actually do it right now! Besides that it is never going to happen anyway ...

[Deleted]

If Chaos bolt was instant cast at 3 backdraft stacks and incinerate got damage instead of haste from backdraft it would add some depth to detruction burst damage because it would be a really big dps loss to use backdraft on chaos in exchange for burst damage.

But the problem with destruction is that it doesnt scale, if you look at the Dpet of most destruction spells vs some of the stronger specs you will see some mind blowingly stupid stuff.

This is from Destro with sac without Rain of fire (ptr) (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...k%C3%AD/simple)

Dps - 193461

Int / Crit / Haste / Mastery

5.61 / 3.21 / 3.42 / 3.22

Dpet -

Incin - 114705
Conflag - 185302
Immolate - 262707
Chaos bolt -356420
Shadowburn - 715692

This is from Arcane from live (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Cycobi/simple)

Dps - 260755

Int / Crit / Haste / Mastery

7.19 / 3.61 / 4.97 / 4.65

Dpet -

Arcane blast - 147110
Arcane missiles 309030
Arcane barrage -389216
Living Bomb -675489

You can see some huge issues here - To get us up to these sort of numbers Destruction would need to have seriously super buffed spell co-efficients, the reality is we arent going to get buffed that hard, the sad thing is that the class's that are top atm are top because of haste scaling - Destruction has very little of this so its scaling is absoloutely crapped on.

Ill be interested to see whether or not blizzard make a global nerf to haste scaling on dots (perhaps taking away the ability for them to scale with temp haste buffs?) because to bring this sort of damage in line would need a huge rework.

[Dazu]

I wouldnt want to lose the full haste from backdraft. The only time I GCD cap on incins is with heroism, which is 40 seconds out of say 5minutes. Id prefer my haste from it outside these times to generate more embers.

As for instant chaos bolt, I dont think its what PvE needs.

I would like to see maybe our imp become main pet again, and affect our spells (instant incin, or chance to reset conflag CD etc), which could easily be balanced to work out the extra dps needed.

[Riencel]

I'd like to be wrong but IMO they will not compensate for something that was not intended.

[luckydevours]

I'd like to be wrong but IMO they will not compensate for something that was not intended.

Yeah lets kill the spec entirely ...

[Nicola]

To everyone saying instant chaos bolt at 3 stacks of backdraft: It's fairly easy to sit at 6 stacks at backdraft, popping your cooldowns, trowing out 2 instant chaos bolts that crit for 100k+, a conflagrate and another instant chaos bolt that will crit for 100k+.
Being able to do 400k+ damage in so little time with only instants is stupidly overpowered. Heck, with some cc on the healer or some extra damage from your partner, your target is likely low enough to shadowburn.

[Deleted]

To everyone saying instant chaos bolt at 3 stacks of backdraft: It's fairly easy to sit at 6 stacks at backdraft, popping your cooldowns, trowing out 2 instant chaos bolts that crit for 100k+, a conflagrate and another instant chaos bolt that will crit for 100k+.
Being able to do 400k+ damage in so little time with only instants is stupidly overpowered. Heck, with some cc on the healer or some extra damage from your partner, your target is likely low enough to shadowburn.

First off, i really dont care about pvp its a lost cause in mop cause the whole idea of killing someone when they cant control there character is retarded but -

How is doing 400k damage with instant casts any different than being vs a mage or hunter?

within all reasons of reality that would require 3 embers 6 stacks of backdraft (which can be purged btw) and 4 - 5 globals, that really isint that far away from what people do now (and dont get me wrong i dont think that this would be the way forward in pvp at all, i just dont believe there is a way to make a hard casting spec like destro viable in pvp in mop)

[Xploit]

You can't just say to stick to PvE, when the game is balanced around both. Also, ideas of balancing a spec around a Meta Gem is silly. They will likely go the lazy route and increase ember generation via fillers, I'm surprised they haven't announced anything yet about it.

[Shadowygoodness]

On topic again please try and stick to pve in this specific thread.

Does it really have to stick to PvE? I mean the nerf to RoF ember generation greatly affects PvP, as well. It was essentially the biggest way destro locks sustained aoe pressure during team fights, and now with FnB not being baked into MF, FnB will probably have a hard time self sustaining the 1 ember cost.

[Deleted]

Ok well my bad then that was quite selfish, i guess the pvp arguements are fair to, i really just believe destruction is a completely lost cause in pvp in mists of pandaria, but its not fair for me to force that belief on others as there is other pvp outside of arena.

-Removed part of previous post

[Shadowygoodness]

Ok well my bad then that was quite selfish, i guess the pvp arguements are fair to, i really just believe destruction is a completely lost cause in pvp in mists of pandaria, but its not fair for me to force that believe on others.

-Removed part of previous post

I mean you're not far off the mark with that belief. In arenas, Destro has been "dead" in high ratings for quite some time. However in rbgs, destro has been of the strongest pvp specs in the game. I constantly top KBs with SB sniping, and aside from DKs I can top total damage done too. RoF essentially makes locks one of the hardest targets to focus if played right, b/c you'll have embers constantly flowing for Ember Tap spam + defensive cds. No more Ember Tap spam in 5.4, though