[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Baconeggcheese]

Off the top of my head, Sindragosa's Fury for frost death knights is active 5 min cd.

Tu-muthafuckin-che good sir.

[wholol]

Suddenly destro is looking quite hot for pvp with things like casting circle / firestone.

I'm actually hyped wanting to test this.

Sadly, I cannot...insert sad panda image here for dramatic effects

[garonne]

IIRC there's no traits that are actives, and I highly doubt that will change any time soon yet alone for a single one.

I imagine it'll either change to something completely different or in a best case scenario be tied to infernal instead of RoF which seems a lot more appropriate.

there are active traits in other classes

edit: didnt see above

[Roujeaux]

It's a better iteration of "Chaos" than Blizzard's current design. I personally would've preferred Blizzard to bring back Ruin as Destruction's mastery.

Mastery: Chaotic Energies

Increases your spellpower by (a minor)% and your spell critical strike damage by an additional (moderate)%.

This is all Blizzard had to do for Destro Mastery and call it a day. Would possibly have been close to zero complaints and much more reliable, and it continues the chaos "randomness" they insist on pushing for the spec.

- - - Updated - - -

So the Physical and Holy components of Chaos Bolt's chaos damage have been removed in the last build. Meaning it will no longer bypass things like Cloak of Shadows and Anti-Magic Shell.

It's not actually chaos damage any more, despite what the tooltip says.

This means that there is no longer anything beneficial about it being changed to from shadow to chaos - it is now purely negative. This is a pretty heavy nerf to Chaos Bolt, and the capability of Destruction in PVP in general.

This is something that someone with Alpha access should ask about in the Theorycrafting Thread at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743504316 over on the official forums since it pertains to under the hood mechanics and is a pretty drastic change if it's intended.

[Kirroth]

This means that there is no longer anything beneficial about it being changed to from shadow to chaos - it is now purely negative. This is a pretty heavy nerf to Chaos Bolt, and the capability of Destruction in PVP in general.

It's not 100% downside. I think their reasoning goes like this. They want Chaos Bolt to benefit from the few +Fire Damage buffs that Destro gets. Due to its history they don't want to make Chaos Bolt pure fire damage, and would prefer it to be chaos damage again like the name suggests. But they also don't want to power up its PvP potential by letting it count as physical damage. So they're going with this pseudo-chaos damage that's exactly as strong as they want it to be.

[Xorn]

Did Demonbolt also see this change?

[Gaidax]

Most likely it's just a collateral nerf due to Demon Hunters and their insane amount of Chaos damage abilities.

[Netherspark]

Did Demonbolt also see this change?

No. Demon Bolt, and all Demon Hunter abilities remain the normal full chaos damage.

This change only affects Chaos Bolt.

[Fearsom1992]

Destro is looking so sxy for soo many fights xD me(destro) and a demo warlock were tearing shit up in raid testing

[Deleted]

yeah, destro and demo are going to be my specs, demo will be my prio spec.

[JV Chequer]

Destro is looking so sxy for soo many fights xD me(destro) and a demo warlock were tearing shit up in raid testing

If they don't mess up the numbers Destro probably will be the "Raid-choice" for Warlock since Demo it's kinda weird right now and Affli lacks aoe.

[Gaidax]

Yes, Destruction has all it's toys in and even more. The only big downgrade is AoE and cooldown department, but AoE can be propped back up with talents and what is lost with cooldowns seems to be gained with sustain.

[wholol]

Destruction is looking to be the smoothest of the 3 specs so far, I honestly hope affliction/ demo get some polish.

[JV Chequer]

Yes, Destruction has all it's toys in and even more. The only big downgrade is AoE and cooldown department, but AoE can be propped back up with talents and what is lost with cooldowns seems to be gained with sustain.

For adds we can bank 2-3 Rifts, 2 conflags and 5 shards, that's pretty Bursty and Soul Harvest even if it's not recommended comes to use if really needed.

There's Service and Doomguard too (if they manage to correct the numbers), we lack those only if Supremacy comes ahead on dps but I have some faith on Sacrifice if tunneled right and with proper gear.

Depends if Sacrifice dmg counts for trinket stuff, Mastery, Eradication and can crit as well.

[Brusalk]

For adds we can bank 2-3 Rifts, 2 conflags and 5 shards, that's pretty Bursty and Soul Harvest even if it's not recommended comes to use if really needed.

There's Service and Doomguard too (if they manage to correct the numbers), we lack those only if Supremacy comes ahead on dps but I have some faith on Sacrifice if tunneled right and with proper gear.

Depends if Sacrifice dmg counts for trinket stuff, Mastery, Eradication and can crit as well.

That's still a LOT less guaranteed burst than we currently have access to. We can currently store 4 Chaos Bolts of resources, plus use conflag to get them out faster. Now, we can store at most 2, with one charge of Conflag reserved to letting us cast 3.

We probably can't really save that many charges of Rifts since Incinerate recharges a whole charge and we only have 3, meaning we can safely save only 1 charge on-demand without risking a missed reset.

On top of that, Backdraft isn't baseline, meaning we can't reliably reduce the cast time of Chaos Bolt unless we take backdraft over Roaring Blaze/Shadowburn.

We can potentially RNG our way to more burst with Soul Conduit, but that is not reliable.

Also, we no longer have a CD that increases our direct damage potential (only doomguard) so we have to pray that doomguard can hit that target. Also, Doomguard costs a soul shard so that's effectively one less Chaos Bolt we can cast.

[Gaidax]

Well I'd say my burst in Alpha is mostly dependent on Mastery and Rift RNG gods, but yes banking still exists, with conduit and artifact shard refund in addition to conflagrate and rifts - there is about 15 seconds or so of casting only high damage spells.

[Fearsom1992]

Im still trying to figure out the openers but yea our burst will mostly be on the rift rng gods and the 40% legendary with doomguard destro is super fun though ive done every raid test as destro and all 3 specs are viable

[wooters]

If they don't mess up the numbers Destro probably will be the "Raid-choice" for Warlock since Demo it's kinda weird right now and Affli lacks aoe.

afflic lacks aoe? with sow the seeds I can`t believe that will be true in live

[Scathbais]

afflic lacks aoe? with sow the seeds I can`t believe that will be true in live

I believe this has to do with the nerf to Seeds via increasing cast time from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds (though I am not in beta and have not tested). Given the cast time plus time it takes time for seeds to pop, other classes wilt instant aoe will be contributing much more damage.

[Fearsom1992]

Afflcition does not lack aoe its actually top dps on scorpion guy right now in the nighthold the problem is ( i know its beta numbers lol) that you have to notice adds before the rest of your raid n cast a seed (because seed has a donation time of 150,000 and it is a 2sec cast) by the time they realize the adds are up so u can trigger seeds x4 or x8... now soulflame wasn't working then so affi aoe is pretty crazy and so is demo.. all 3 specs are 100% viable