[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Baconeggcheese]

Do destro warlocks ever use Drain Life?

If you're gonna die and need to heal yeah.

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this is probably the best example for 'do the devs even play their own game?' any company has ever given. i've never been so disappointed in changes to a game. this prepatch just feels like a slap in the face. it's absolutely disgusting how much feedback they ignored and it suprises me that they pushed these changes to live. it shows tthat after 10 years they still have absolutely no clue what they're doing. i'm very sad about how they murdered destruction.

Half of what uzkin said is either hyperbole, subjective / grey areas, or false. There are some good points in there, like the aoe mechanics change or life tap / mana tap, but you have to cherry pick them between a lot of bad points.

The devs actually listened to more feedback during the alpha cycle than I've ever seen them listen to. We got certain changes almost verbatim what we asked for while other things weren't changed to exactly what people were suggesting but were addressed in some manner. Destruction unfortunately got the least amount of feedback time and mechanics changes since it was the last spec released and the one to see the least changes of the 3 specs. They did listen when it came to the talent rows, things are in a completely different spot or function differently than what they originally had.

People are upset because they aren't making large sweeping mechanics changes based on unrealistic beta feedback, while not understanding that by the time they get to the beta that the large mechanics changes are mostly done with and its more of a polish and tuning stage. If people wanted mechanics changes to happen they needed to post realistic and constructive feedback during the alpha, during which the devs listened to a ton of our feedback.

All of the lock kits are plenty strong for raiding, its going to come entirely down to tuning at this point. Which realistically was going to be the only thing seeing much changes in the beta and onward. And yeah tuning hasn't been in our favor, but I'm not exactly worried about it.

[landria]

If you're gonna die and need to heal yeah.

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Half of what uzkin said is either hyperbole, subjective / grey areas, or false. There are some good points in there, like the aoe mechanics change or life tap / mana tap, but you have to cherry pick them between a lot of bad points.

The devs actually listened to more feedback during the alpha cycle than I've ever seen them listen to. We got certain changes almost verbatim what we asked for while other things weren't changed to exactly what people were suggesting but were addressed in some manner. Destruction unfortunately got the least amount of feedback time and mechanics changes since it was the last spec released and the one to see the least changes of the 3 specs. They did listen when it came to the talent rows, things are in a completely different spot or function differently than what they originally had.

People are upset because they aren't making large sweeping mechanics changes based on unrealistic beta feedback, while not understanding that by the time they get to the beta that the large mechanics changes are mostly done with and its more of a polish and tuning stage. If people wanted mechanics changes to happen they needed to post realistic and constructive feedback during the alpha, during which the devs listened to a ton of our feedback.

All of the lock kits are plenty strong for raiding, its going to come entirely down to tuning at this point. Which realistically was going to be the only thing seeing much changes in the beta and onward. And yeah tuning hasn't been in our favor, but I'm not exactly worried about it.

congrats to 7.777 posts lol.

anyways imo it's not about mechanic changes. i could live with the rng. i hate it but i could deal with it. what drives me crazy is that they took half of our baseline abilities and made them to talents. they didn't even try to come up with anything. they literally just said fuck destro. i also understand they wanted to make rain of fire relevant again but they fucked this up aswell. when the prepatch went live i tried the build everyone suggests. didn't take me long to realize that i'm never going to use that 6sec damage buff after CB since i'm 100% of the time using fire and brimstone. at this point i don't give a shit about damage anymore. it is a QoL choice i made since there is no alternative.

edit: don't forget the ridiculous ability pruning. where is my soul shatter and why can't my burning pony walk on water anymore? some people might not care about those but i do.

[Gaidax]

congrats to 7.777 posts lol.

anyways imo it's not about mechanic changes. i could live with the rng. i hate it but i could deal with it. what drives me crazy is that they took half of our baseline abilities and made them to talents. they didn't even try to come up with anything. they literally just said fuck destro. i also understand they wanted to make rain of fire relevant again but they fucked this up aswell. when the prepatch went live i tried the build everyone suggests. didn't take me long to realize that i'm never going to use that 6sec damage buff after CB since i'm 100% of the time using fire and brimstone. at this point i don't give a shit about damage anymore. it is a QoL choice i made since there is no alternative.

edit: don't forget the ridiculous ability pruning. where is my soul shatter and why can't my burning pony walk on water anymore? some people might not care about those but i do.

It's not "half of our baseline abilities made talents" and it's not "ridiculous ability pruning" - see? That's exactly what some more calm people are talking about - jumping out of your skin with silly exaggerations only makes people ignore whatever you say (well except for doomsday circle jerk squad that taken over these forums).

For example me - I dislike the fact that Backdraft and Shadowburn became talents and what's worse competing on the same row at that and I also dislike the treatment F&B got, BUT it's not half of our baseline abilities - it's 2 abilities and one passive so unless you claim we had 4 abilities and 2 passives in total in WoD - then your claim is wrong and is exactly called "hyperbole" - as in exaggeration.

Then the ridiculous ability pruning... what was so vital and indispensable for you that got pruned in Legion to make it ridiculous?

And finally, you and many posters like you conveniently leave out what we actually got in Legion, things such as much more powerful Havoc, stacking Rifts which allows ridiculous burst and openers (especially opener burst, which was a weak point of Destruction in WoD), our filler and Conflagrate became much stronger because both penalty was removed and artifact further buffing them and a reverse treatment where Soul Leech is no longer a talent but baseline with Demon Skin making us super tough. Then Destruction has Unending Resolve down to 1 min CD from 3 mins in WoD.

A lot of good changes happened as well, but you really must keep parroting this 2-3 bad things that happened along the way and make a huge deal out of it? Chill out, people - mechanically Destruction will be just fine in Legion and my only concern for example - mechanically that is - burst AoE. That is ALL.

And yes numbers will be tuned if they prove to be low.

[landria]

It's not "half of our baseline abilities made talents" and it's not "ridiculous ability pruning" - see? That's exactly what some more calm people are talking about - jumping out of your skin with silly exaggerations only makes people ignore whatever you say (well except for doomsday circle jerk squad that taken over these forums).

For example me - I dislike the fact that Backdraft and Shadowburn became talents and what's worse competing on the same row at that and I also dislike the treatment F&B got, BUT it's not half of our baseline abilities - it's 2 abilities and one passive so unless you claim we had 4 abilities and 2 passives in total in WoD - then your claim is wrong and is exactly called "hyperbole" - as in exaggeration.

Then the ridiculous ability pruning... what was so vital and indispensable for you that got pruned in Legion to make it ridiculous?

And finally, you and many posters like you conveniently leave out what we actually got in Legion, things such as much more powerful Havoc, stacking Rifts which allows ridiculous burst and openers (especially opener burst, which was a weak point of Destruction in WoD), our filler and Conflagrate became much stronger because both penalty was removed and artifact further buffing them and a reverse treatment where Soul Leech is no longer a talent but baseline with Demon Skin making us super tough. Then Destruction has Unending Resolve down to 1 min CD from 3 mins in WoD.

A lot of good changes happened as well, but you really must keep parroting this 2-3 bad things that happened along the way and make a huge deal out of it? Chill out, people - mechanically Destruction will be just fine in Legion and my only concern for example - mechanically that is - burst AoE. That is ALL.

And yes numbers will be tuned if they prove to be low.

...

okay. backdraft, shadowburn, fire and brimstone, soul havest, demonic circle.

in the level 15 talents you can choose one of 2 pre 7.0 base abilities
then shadowfury has a cast time.
lvl 60 talents are the same shit again.
then you can pick 2 mobility skills (where one was baseline aswell) or a defensive cooldown. probably my favourite row. who came up with that?
and the last row. havoc going back in time, throwing some boogers and more rng.

then they bring back life tap. everone loves life tap. /s

rain of fire is an absolute failure. 3 soul shards... if the pack is moving you're fucked. ah well... you're fucked either way. 3 soul shards for rain of fire is not worth it. it also has a cast time now. cool.

next would be the pruning. are you trying to tell me that it was absolutely necessary to remove soul shatter or the glyph that makes my horse run over water? why does conflag not slow anymore? it is ridiculous because they took away stuff for absolutely no reason and went even further and gave base line abilities a talent spot.

also what penalties are you talking about and where is all the good stuff we got? besides havoc i can't see anything good.

[Bjarkan]

...

okay. backdraft, shadowburn, fire and brimstone, soul havest, demonic circle.

in the level 15 talents you can choose one of 2 pre 7.0 base abilities
then shadowfury has a cast time.
lvl 60 talents are the same shit again.
then you can pick 2 mobility skills (where one was baseline aswell) or a defensive cooldown. probably my favourite row. who came up with that?
and the last row. havoc going back in time, throwing some boogers and more rng.

then they bring back life tap. everone loves life tap. /s

rain of fire is an absolute failure. 3 soul shards... if the pack is moving you're fucked. ah well... you're fucked either way. 3 soul shards for rain of fire is not worth it. it also has a cast time now. cool.

next would be the pruning. are you trying to tell me that it was absolutely necessary to remove soul shatter or the glyph that makes my horse run over water? why does conflag not slow anymore? it is ridiculous because they took away stuff for absolutely no reason and went even further and gave base line abilities a talent spot.

also what penalties are you talking about and where is all the good stuff we got? besides havoc i can't see anything good.

Conflagrate and Incinarate did half damage because Charred Remaines mechanic, without that, they get highly buffed, even more with the new SP factor.

For the baseline turned into talents, yes, you can see it like a nerf, but more then a nerf, was a change on mechanic. Destro had a lot of versatility to take on almost every situation, and with the new changes, it was neccesary to do so... Right now, you have to choose what you want to specializated, AoE, ST, or Mobility.

Soul Shatter is not necessary anymore, tanks now do really good damage, and generate a lot of aggro, so is really hard to die for aggro pulling... And if you think about adds just spwaned, we had a superb surv to hang on until the tank taunt them.

We dont need Demonic Cicle as baseline with all the surv we had now, in PVP i can take 3 vs 1 against me, and had enough time to kill one and really scare the other 2... Gateway was leave as baseline for raid utility, another good thing we have (healtstone, gateway, summon, soulstone).

What i really want blizz give us back, is the demon ability in GoSac, i REALLY want my spell lock back...

[Vynny]

Conflagrate and Incinarate did half damage because Charred Remaines mechanic, without that, they get highly buffed, even more with the new SP factor.

For the baseline turned into talents, yes, you can see it like a nerf, but more then a nerf, was a change on mechanic. Destro had a lot of versatility to take on almost every situation, and with the new changes, it was neccesary to do so... Right now, you have to choose what you want to specializated, AoE, ST, or Mobility.

Soul Shatter is not necessary anymore, tanks now do really good damage, and generate a lot of aggro, so is really hard to die for aggro pulling... And if you think about adds just spwaned, we had a superb surv to hang on until the tank taunt them.

We dont need Demonic Cicle as baseline with all the surv we had now, in PVP i can take 3 vs 1 against me, and had enough time to kill one and really scare the other 2... Gateway was leave as baseline for raid utility, another good thing we have (healtstone, gateway, summon, soulstone).

What i really want blizz give us back, is the demon ability in GoSac, i REALLY want my spell lock back...

I don't necessarily agree with you about RoF. I think they were caught between getting rid of it, leaving it as irrelevant, making it relevant at the cost of a long cd (which is boring), or doing what they did by putting an SS cost on it, and I personally think that they made the right call. On top of that, I really like that they kept the infernals for RoF on the artifact

Secondly, I completely agree with you on GoSac. Lock is the only dps that isn't guaranteed to have an interrupt. I mean, you have no idea how many times my raid leader or an officer has given me shit for not having my felhunter out because I either sac'd my voidwalker for survivability or I was playing demo and couldn't afford to lose my felguard dps. I personally think that it's about time blizz gave locks a baseline interrupt and gave felhunter a different utility. It made sense when not every class had an interrupt, but in today's line up every other dps has some form of interrupt that's baseline, every tank has an interrupt that's baseline, and resto shaman's have an interrupt baseline. Literally the only specs in the game that aren't guaranteed to have an interrupt are disc priest, holy priest, mistweaver monk, holy paladin, resto druid, and all flavors of warlock due to GoSac bullshit and other pets just being better for destro/demo.

[Tabrotar]

Ah yes and we don´t need soul shatter anymore just like rouges don´t need vanish (which they still have) or priest need fade (which they still have) og hunters need feign death (which they still have) right?

[wooters]

they have been dumbing down destruction in every expansion until we have reached an absurd low point where the spec is almost worthless to play over time. baseline abilities are now talents, rof is boring and often unpractical not to mention too expensive, no interrupts, CB cost are doubled so we cannot effectively save shards up for burst(atm its dmg is shit as well..), dmg cd is a weak demon.. but the worst aspect of it is ofc the gameplay. as said its been dumbed down to the point there is next to nothing interesting going on, so little interaction. immolate give shards and we spend them lol..and that's basically it. no brain needed. its even the same from start to finish..nothing changes and we are gimped no matter what..

is this what wow veterans deserve after sticking with the game for 12 years? Can`t believe there are knowledgeable people on here that actually is defending this half hearted crap. know you are not doing this spec and the people playing it any favours

why not give rof a chance to refresh all or some..of the immolations on targets.. maybe add secondary impactful effects to the plain dmg our spells do and perhaps bring back glyphs so we could pick between these effects, so they in addition to talents actually changed our approach to encounters and also let the players build something a little more unique. why not change existing abilities or add new ones that force us to think..and make some hard choices where to go next in our rotation. it shouldn`t be too hard to do better imo...if they could be bothered

[Duckz0rs]

Ah yes and we don´t need soul shatter anymore just like rouges don´t need vanish (which they still have) or priest need fade (which they still have) og hunters need feign death (which they still have) right?

That's an unfair comparison. Feign Death and Vanish have uses outside of dropping aggro. Feign Death can help entirely reset a bad pull in solo content for example. Soul Shatter did no such thing, it just lowered your aggro instead of dropping you off all the mobs lists. Vanish is simply integral to rogues, particularly in PvP. Yeah, sure, they use it to drop aggro in a raid but that's just one of the many, many things it's used for.

Fade you're correct on, that could've been pruned along with Soul Shatter. But honestly, of all the things that got pruned over the past expansions why complain about Soul Shatter? I personally haven't pressed or had that button on my bars since Cataclysm. Particularly in WoD where holding aggro was absolutely no problem at all for a tank or your VW I can't imagine anyone using the spell. I'd have loved to keep Backdraft/Demonic Circle/Shadowburn/Embers Effect baseline for example, but with Soul Shatter I won't notice if it's gone or stays.

[Turturin the Warlock]

they have been dumbing down destruction in every expansion until we have reached an absurd low point where the spec is almost worthless to play over time.

Shadow bolt spam was clearly so complex. Your hyperbole is more likely to get your legit complaints ignored btw.

[Deleted]

Ah yes and we don´t need soul shatter anymore just like rouges don´t need vanish (which they still have) or priest need fade (which they still have) og hunters need feign death (which they still have) right?

If it wasn't needed then it didn't need to be keybound, in which case there wasn't much use pruning it (much like unending breath).

Same as a lot of things - just because they weren't used very often doesn't mean they need axing. Sense demons sure would be nice now that we have this pre-patch event that requires it, an expensive potion or an alt to spawn the dreadlord. I helped a friend 2-man Empress in HOF recently and the tank swap mechanic would be much easier if I had a threat drop instead of having to tell him to just go ham and try to get aggro.

One of my favorite parts about MMO's was that they offered a vast toolkit that, even if it was filled with a lot of mostly useless things, you'd occasionally find ways that they could be useful or make things a little more convenient.

It's one thing to prune Fel Flame (which I still think was a terrible choice, but I can at least understand it freeing up a keybind), it's another to prune things that sat in your spellbook 99% of the time and could be dragged out on the rare occasions they were needed.

Shadow bolt spam was clearly so complex. Your hyperbole is more likely to get your legit complaints ignored btw.

Said the kettle to the pot.

Somehow I don't think anyone remembering destruction fondly was remembering the brief period of time that SB spam was viable in TBC.

WOTLK and Cata certainly wasn't my cup of tea, but I can understand anyone who did like it being upset by the revamp it got.
Likewise MOP destruction, while always feeling like a button short of a rotation to me, felt far better crafted than what WOD or Legion offered.

[Tabrotar]

I also don´t understand who did come up with unending breath is button bloat(and other skills which we don´t use everytime) ?
You have more than one action bar just put everything you don´t keybind there?

[Turturin the Warlock]

Said the kettle to the pot.

I think you've got me confused with someone prone to wild over reactions and exaggeration. You won't find any of that in my post history.

[Deleted]

I dislike the new destruction changes to an extend that I just refuse to play it in this state. They took a well flowing specc, and turned it into a huge RNG mess. Where previously you had control over your resource generation, and spamming incinerate actually felt like you were working towards something (chaos bolts), now I just spam incinerate because I have nothing else to cast. And worse than that, I actually have to spam it more than I used to, because the soul shard generation is low and random. I think that the removal of burning embers is a step backwards. They should have continued building and improving on the burning ember mechanic, which wasn't bad, instead of trying to reinventing the wheel.

[bio347]

Oh hey, I think this is my cue to point out that the Dimension Ripper trait means that casting Incinerate is not "just for damage" (as if doing damage is bad, or something). Yes, it's in the artifact and not the prepatch, but since when has prepatch play meant ANYthing?

[wooters]

Shadow bolt spam was clearly so complex. Your hyperbole is more likely to get your legit complaints ignored btw.

If one go back that far sure..there was a less complex approach to the gameplay similar to what we see now in legion. I wouldn`t be surprised if the recent popularity of legacy servers have influenced blizz to go this route. obviously a hunt for subs would be more important then making this game as good as it can be

[Lucrece]

This spec is such feast or famine, on top of a terrible design that leads to uncontrollable waste of resources (you want to bank soul shards for eradication windows yet influx of shards from RNG leads to constant waste). You can't avoid waste because you're chain casting either fillers or dumping chaosbolt cast times when a soul shard procs at 5 soul shards.

If you're not in a multitarget fight where you can't put up multiple immolates, then your performance is in for a rollercoaster ride as you're at the complete mercy of RNG outside 1 soul shard every 12 seconds.

Chaosbolt swings are just terrible, if anything this spell should have a special rule that it benefits from the cap of the mastery level at the very least. It might actually be worth a damn in PvP.

What's worse, lost all our snares, lost baseline aoe stun and now have to talent away from survival for a miserable 1.2 sec cast while melee and shamans keep their 4-5 sec instant aoe stuns.

You virtually bring nothing besides demonic gateway and healthstones to a mythic+ dungeon, when the most valuable tools there are hard aoe stuns to reduce mob damage at high keystones, or heroism or interrupts (which we were robbed off since they force fed us a spec specific imp).

Cooldowns for us create even more ramp up as both grimoire imp and doomguard consume a shard, so you pop your cd cooldowns but set your burst cycle behind in doing so.

We have to talent into aoe or single target while mages and hunters and warrior get free passive cleave/aoe built into their core specs. Lost our burst AoE, and our burst cooldowns on top of being inconvenient happen to be mediocre.

The one saving grace of this spec is wreak havoc, that's about it. We'll be the new windwalker monks, gods of cleave and unremarkable everywhere else.

[TheCookieGod]

People keep complaining about the loss of complexity in rotation, but, legitimately curious here, when has destruction ever been complex? As far back as I've been raiding on a heroic/mythic level (MoP, essentially the supposed golden age of warlock design), the rotation was always pretty basic: apply Immolate, spam Chaos Bolt during big procs, reload with Incinerate during down time. Playing beta now, the damage has shifted around, but the rotation is more or less the same. Everything has just been slowed down. Which don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of, but people like wooters are acting like you couldn't do 90% of the spec properly blindfolded before Blizz took their pruning shears and cut destro's balls off.

I'd argue that destruction is more 'complex' now than it has been since I actually started paying attention to my rotation. We have to life tap again unless you talent for the mana recovery. One of our optional talent cooldowns becomes better the more targets are afflicted with Immolate, so there's something we have to track (or just Cataclysm). We have an additional ability with 3 charges for decent burst that we can use on the move as well. We have more buttons we actively need to press more than once in combat now than we ever did in WoD. The loss of Shadowfury (and it being instant cast) is a bummer, but it was always a situational ability for me, and is even more situational now.

All of this flies out the window when we start discussing pvp, which is a monster I'm not at all familiar with, so I'll freely admit ignorance there.

Is it clunky and poorly designed? In my opinion, yes, especially compared to other classes and spec. Is it simple? Less so than WoD at the very least, and arguably MoP as well.

[Baconeggcheese]

It's actually gotten more complex with legion than its been in quite some time.

But its the pre-xpac so ofc doomsayers are out in full swing. The same kind of talk happened before wod, and before mop, and basically every xpac.

*shrug*

[Turturin the Warlock]

It's actually gotten more complex with legion than its been in quite some time.

But its the pre-xpac so ofc doomsayers are out in full swing. The same kind of talk happened before wod, and before mop, and basically every xpac.

*shrug*

Yup, Destruction was only ever actually complex in cataclysm, and there was broad underperformance and outrage because of it. I am one of the few people who posts here regularly who actually loved cataclysm destro, so it's laughable to me to see the same people who whined about ISF and shadowflame now whine about lack of complexity. Simple, complex, either can be fun and engaging. But if the grass is always greener, the problem is behind the keyboard, not with blizzard