Thread: Fixing Destro

  1. #1

    Fixing Destro

    So I'm probably of the minority but I feel like warlock damage is in a pretty reasonable place right now. But that isn't to say that I don't think they need some major changes, although I'll admit my knowledge is mostly limited to destruction. And I'm going to preemptively say this before anybody else does, the "why don't you just reroll class/spec" response. I've put 611 hours to date into playing destruction in addition to spending about 150k gold on items in preparation for raiding, and I'm sure as shit not going to say "shucks, that's a dang tootin bummer, I guess I'll just reroll and I'm sure my raid leader will be fine with a last minute class change." And I suspect to many on here who have been playing warlocks since BC, that's just a tiny fraction of the amount of time they've spent playing their locks. I started in SoO, and I'm sure I don't have half the dedication and love for my class/spec as many of the people who post on here. So if all you've come in here to say is "just reroll" or "locks are just QQ because they're not top damage anymore," now is a great time to leave.

    This is mostly for PVE, since I don't PVP much as I've found that currently the best PVP strat is to afk while a melee kills you hoping that maybe your team will pull through despite the handicap of having such a waste of space on their team.

    This post is not about damage, as I'm of the opinion that destro damage is actually in a pretty acceptable spot. There are enough adds to cleave that there is plenty of room to shine, or at least perform to a reasonably high standard. There are enough destro locks pulling consistently high numbers that sadly, its probably a l2p issue if you're doing 16k dps and you're 640.

    In the recent interview on Final Boss, the reasons for the recent destro nerf (and lets call it what it is, because it was a huge quality of life hit for a very marginal single target gain), were varied. First, they want certain specs to be good at certain things - multi-dotters shine in certain places, burst classes shine in others, etc etc. I don't particularly agree with this philosophy, I much prefer a philosophy that every class should have several options in their toolkit to shine in a large variety of situations and be able find a roll in each fight, so that each class has the potential to do good single target, good cleave, good aoe, etc. But it is what it is, and that isn't the end of the world as we know it. This philosophy is already proving to be pretty obnoxious though, because while some classes have niches (destro is solid on cleave, affliction and spriests on multidotting etc), others are doing consistently well on every single type of fight and have options in their toolkit that allow them to work well everywhere (looking at you monks, ret, and MM hunters). The main thing that I think is important here is consistency. I'd prefer every class to be like monks, ret, or mm, that does solid single target and solid cleave and solid aoe, but at the very least, don't make some classes only niche and others do well everywhere. At any rate, I digress. The other reason's that they gave were that they believed destro AoE was too strong and that they didn't want Rain of Fire to be part of our single target rotation. All of these are valid critiques.

    Here's the problem though - destro is typically defined by its AoE, and so being changed from an AoE class to a cleave class (that is entirely dependent on low latency and high FPS) in the course of an unannounced hotfix is a pretty big gutshot. In addition, the current talent tiers for warlocks leave little to real gameplay choices and styles, and are pretty mediocre as a whole.

    Tier 1: Two good choices that are situational and make for a solid choice, and one crappy one. Searing flames is pretty worthless right now though, while ember tap hasn't been adjusted for charred remains vs non charred remains talent choices and heals about as much as a used bandaid that's been floating in a pool for a week.

    Solution: adjust embertap healing to provide a bigger heal for people not specced into charred remains.

    Tier 2: One PVP option that pretty much never works in PVE and is worthless on a boss fight, another PVP option that could make for an interesting talent choice if it actually did what the tooltip said it did (provide an 11% heal, which appears not to be working in Highmaul), but that doesn't do what the tooltip says, and is again worthless in a PVE environment, and one extremely useful talent that can be used in a large variety of PVE situations. Now there is a tough choice that leads to interesting gameplay decisions if I ever saw one.

    Solution: Fix mortal coil so that it actually does what the tooltip says it does. This is mostly a PVP oriented tree anyway, so we'll just accept its a bit of a throwaway for PVE.

    Tier 3: Probably my favorite tier of the warlock talent tree. 3 different abilities that work very differently for a large variety of different damage types and situations. I think this one is great and needs no changes.

    Tier 4: Another PVP option mixed with PVE. I get that PVP needs to have a talent tree with interesting abilities for them, but I wish blizzard would stop giving talents that have a purely PVP focus and quite literally will not be used in a raid under any situation. Burning rush and unbound will feel like an..odd... tradeoff for lack of better word.

    Solution: Make burning rush baseline. Replace the talent with something else.

    Tier 5: What is Grim Service? is that that one that you will never use under any circumstances despite being a class built around bursting during nuke phases? In addition to grim service, we have two passive talents, one which gives you a stronger demon and one that lets you eat your demon. Which seems cool in theory, but in reality it doesn't mean making an interesting playstyle choice, it means hopping on the forums and letting somebody who is better at math figure out which one is ahead, and then setting and forgetting.

    Solution: get a bigger damage increase from grim sac, grim surv. Give cooler pet bonuses (either better things that your pets already do, like shorter cd on imp dispel or inturrupts, or abilities like demo's wrathguard bladestorm).

    Tier 6: This one (I think) bothers me the most, because it's so close to being so good, and ends up being by far the worst.
    AD - DS is not that strong as is as a major dps cooldown, and getting an extra 1-2 of them over the course of the fight isn't make or break. Still not a terrible talent choice, but not really that great either.
    KJC - this talent is worthless with hunters having aspect of the fox. The vast majority of time spent moving in WoD is consistent short bursts of movement - "oh look a trap under my feet, 2 steps sideways and keep dpsing, too bad I missed 2 globals right there...and oh look it happened again 15 seconds later." Anytime there will be sustained raid movement for a few seconds, you can bet your ass there will be an aspect of the fox going out because those moments are few and far between, and when they happen healers typically need it.
    Mannoroths Fury. Completely. and Utterly. Crap. With the 60% damage reduction nerf to rain of fire, coupled with the fact that it already hit like a wet noodle, coupled with the fact that it no longer generates embers, this talent is a loss in every single possible way.

    Solution:
    Buff the damage multiplier of DS when taking AD. Adjust overall numbers to compensate and make sure damage stays relatively consistent with where we are now.
    Turn KJC into a charge system with a shorter cooldown. 15-20 second cooldown, can cast 2 spells on the move. reintroduce semi-mobility and allow the people who loved the playstyle of being able to move take a dps hit in exchange for mobility.
    Remove Rain of fire from the game. Introduce mannoroths fury as a replacement ability, that does exactly the same thing as the old rain of fire did at the same damage level as the old one + ember generation. It'll be a part of single target rotation, but now destro will have a working AoE rather then a "cleave or gtfo."

    Tier 7: Problems: I actually quite like DS and cata, but think cata is undertuned in a raid environment. Not sure what the solution is to making it not hit quite so hard in heroic dungeons and challenge modes, but it seems weird to me that a talent that is basically built for Koragh and bursting down the adds that spawn would be quite so far behind an ability that is designed to be purely single target (demonic surv). I'm finding my own damage to be 2k dps lower with cata then with DS. Moving on, I think charred remains is just that - the charred remains of something that used to be cool. What it actually turned into is a "stand and turret and hope you don't ever, ever, ever have to move." There are probably some people who play it better then me. But I'm equally sure that there are probably a huge number of people that hate the implementation of that talent as much as I do, and feel extremely frustrated feeling forced into it for AoE situations because of the RoF nerf.

    Onward to the RoF nerf. I think it hurt a lot. Going from being an AoE class to a cleave class with no forwarning in an unannounced hotfix that relies heavily on low latency and high FPS was really a shitty thing to do. I know they didn't want it in the single target rotation, and felt like warlocks were doing too much AoE though.
    Solution: Either remove it from the game and have mannoroths fury give you a talent that gives back the ember generating damage dealing version, or, if you're not doing that talent, fix it so that it will generate embers on 3 or 4+ targets and not effectively ruin our entire AoE rotation.

    I think, with similar damage dealing numbers to where were at now, destro would be a bagillion times more fun to play. There would be a lot more interesting talent choices that actually make a difference in gameplay, and the spec in general would be a real treat in the decisions you get to make.

    TLDR: blahblahblah, nothing is going to change for WoD because the class is in need of a total overhaul and that simply wont happen now that the expac has been released.

    Anyway, I'd love to see some other locks thoughts on whether I'm being a whiny baby and should just get used to it, or if those changes sound generally like a step in a positive direction. I'd also love to hear from some affliction and demo locks as to their class ailments, because I like knowing that everybody else is suffering as much as I am.

  2. #2
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Killface1 View Post
    Solution:
    Buff the damage multiplier of DS when taking AD. Adjust overall numbers to compensate and make sure damage stays relatively consistent with where we are now.
    Turn KJC into a charge system with a shorter cooldown. 15-20 second cooldown, can cast 2 spells on the move. reintroduce semi-mobility and allow the people who loved the playstyle of being able to move take a dps hit in exchange for mobility.
    Remove Rain of fire from the game. Introduce mannoroths fury as a replacement ability, that does exactly the same thing as the old rain of fire did at the same damage level as the old one + ember generation. It'll be a part of single target rotation, but now destro will have a working AoE rather then a "cleave or gtfo."
    I'll just skip a bit here...

    Currently warlocks grabbing AD like hot cupcakes, despite it being somewhat meh. this would only make it even more popular.

    KJC, in my opinion should be back to it's passive nature with a twist, such as every 10-15 seconds you gain a buff charge of KJC up to 3 charges and if you move this charge is automatically spent in case you cast a non-instant spell allowing that single spell to be cast on the move - got 3 charges - cast 3 spells while running around.

    Rain of Fire is too iconic to remove, it's Single Target usage was annoying, unnatural and I am glad to see it removed from ST priority list. It should be fixed to be useful in pure AoE situations only with no chance of getting back into constant Single Target priority list, currently it is rarely useful at all, which is not good.

    Mannoroth's Fury could be adjusted to affect F&B instead in some way, although I am not sure it's a good idea. Maybe scrap it all-together for some new unique Destruction talent.

  3. #3
    I would be a fan of reworking/removing MF or making it work with Cataclysm for a overall burst aoe package.

  4. #4
    The Unstoppable Force Jessicka's Avatar
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    They're not going to touch our 90 or 100 talents until the next expansion. Those that are underperforming simply aren't regarded as fun enough.

    Really, don't expect any major changes this expansion now, they've given us the time scale and are doubtless in a rush to get the next out the door for next Christmas.

  5. #5
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jessicka View Post
    They're not going to touch our 90 or 100 talents until the next expansion. Those that are underperforming simply aren't regarded as fun enough.

    Really, don't expect any major changes this expansion now, they've given us the time scale and are doubtless in a rush to get the next out the door for next Christmas.
    I would not be so sure about that. One year is plenty of time for things to happen and I am pretty sure we have wild swings ahead in this expansion too.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    I'll just skip a bit here...

    Currently warlocks grabbing AD like hot cupcakes, despite it being somewhat meh. this would only make it even more popular.

    KJC, in my opinion should be back to it's passive nature with a twist, such as every 10-15 seconds you gain a buff charge of KJC up to 3 charges and if you move this charge is automatically spent in case you cast a non-instant spell allowing that single spell to be cast on the move - got 3 charges - cast 3 spells while running around.

    Rain of Fire is too iconic to remove, it's Single Target usage was annoying, unnatural and I am glad to see it removed from ST priority list. It should be fixed to be useful in pure AoE situations only with no chance of getting back into constant Single Target priority list, currently it is rarely useful at all, which is not good.

    Mannoroth's Fury could be adjusted to affect F&B instead in some way, although I am not sure it's a good idea. Maybe scrap it all-together for some new unique Destruction talent.
    I'm of the opinion that the reason you see warlocks flocking to AD isn't because it's particularly rewarding, but simply that the other two talents are decidedly bad. Mannoroths fury is utterly worthless right now, and KJC isn't much better (for the reason stated before). As is, you have a minor DPS increase vs two godawful talents.

    Rain of fire effectively already is removed from the game. It brings nothing of value to your damage in any except in debatable situations. And the devs in that interview said they would have done it differently in retrospect, not that they had any changes planned. Making mannoroths fury do what the prenerf RoF did would make for a very interesting talent tree - "you want slightly more single target and cleave? AD. You want a working AoE rotation at the cost of a damage buff or two? MF. You want slightly more mobility at the cost of your AoE and single target? KJC. I think that would make for a pretty awesome tree.

    But I honestly don't really *expect* this (or any other changes) until the next expac. Still, would breath a hell of a lot of life into a class that feels like it has quite a few gaping hole in its playstyle in addition to a talent tree that has very limited and mediocre options. Destro has a ton of potential to be a really fun class right now, but it sure doesn't feel that way.

  7. #7
    Great post fyi here is my question.So with the cleave damage you talk about what pet you using? With Demonic serv your pet is next to u unless you use the Fire guy all the time but he seems to do less damage and only good for trash pulls? I am pulling standing still 17k to 18k but moving i am still at 14 and half dps. The tectus fight is all about running dots and running dots self heals bubbles dots and you get it.Is it better to use the fire dude so that damage spread on both mobs?

  8. #8
    I said this somewhere else, but Manoroths could allow RoF to generate embers passively (which I'd prefer) or when activated


    If they are not even going to improve that talent after the confessed ham fisted revisions, I don't think were going to see any improvements let alone bug fixes.

    It is what it is.
    Last edited by Grizelda; 2014-12-09 at 07:44 PM.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Pungchow View Post
    Great post fyi here is my question.So with the cleave damage you talk about what pet you using? With Demonic serv your pet is next to u unless you use the Fire guy all the time but he seems to do less damage and only good for trash pulls? I am pulling standing still 17k to 18k but moving i am still at 14 and half dps. The tectus fight is all about running dots and running dots self heals bubbles dots and you get it.Is it better to use the fire dude so that damage spread on both mobs?
    You should never use the infernal. That's another mediocre/wasted talent. It's always a dps loss compared to the doomguard, except I guess if the fight where to have 20 mobs up the entire time. In which case it'd probably be decent. The cleaving comes down to your use of havoc, shadowburns, and not capping embers.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Grizelda View Post
    I said this somewhere else, but Manoroths could allow RoF to generate embers passively (which I'd prefer) or when activated


    If they are not even going to improve that talent after the confessed ham fisted revisions, I don't think were going to see any improvements let alone bug fixes.

    It is what it is.
    Yeah, that talent definitely has potential, just in its current iteration is as much use as that wrapper from mcdonalds burger you found in your car from 3 weeks ago with a little bit of mold on it.

  10. #10
    I would have liked a Draenor Perk that turned Immolate instant cast. That would make Destro somewhat viable in PvP, while also adding much needed mobility in PvE.

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