[Destruction] It's happening

[Bullettime]

I mean that still doesn't address the fact as to why destruction has got such a noticeable gap in sustain compared to the other specs.

The very least they could do is change the destro trait so when you Life Tap you gain 200% of the initially drained life back over 6-8 seconds instead of the garbage we have now.

Pretty much how I feel with it as well. Life Tapping wouldn't be that big of a concern, beyond an annoyance, if Destruction had better self sustain like the other two specializations. Destruction has to tap arguably more frequently and rotationally to perform while not being able to undo the damage.

Even just Demo tier regen would be amazing compared to where its at now. The two damage mitigation/healing perks for Destro's artifact are jokes.

[Count Zero]

Man I'm so torn. All things considered, I'm focusing mostly on Afflic but also when I'm catching up my AK to trait costs I dump points into Destro ...

Thing is, only spec-specific legendary I have at all is RoF ring. Right now I'm set to Afflic. But I'm considering trying to target Destro legendaries to play to its strengths, since everything I hear is that Afflic is not nearly as reliant on leggos ...

Gah, I gotta study up on the Tomb fights.

[Bullettime]

Man I'm so torn. All things considered, I'm focusing mostly on Afflic but also when I'm catching up my AK to trait costs I dump points into Destro ...

Thing is, only spec-specific legendary I have at all is RoF ring. Right now I'm set to Afflic. But I'm considering trying to target Destro legendaries to play to its strengths, since everything I hear is that Afflic is not nearly as reliant on leggos ...

Gah, I gotta study up on the Tomb fights.

Eh at least with Destro, most of its legendaries are lower key bonuses anyways aside from the shoulders and belt

[Tritone496]

Loaded ptr today and made some pulls. With 904 il gear pulled 745k @130million damage. On live i get to 715. That said shard generation is just very poor and makes the spec just feel clunky. Tough to get 4 shards to make the 2pc set bonus work properly. Destruction all along has starved for shards except during lust after that it just dies. Shard generation is the problem not how much our abilities hit for. This spec will continue to struggle if the current changes stand. Only slightly stronger from live. Just boggles my mind that blizz continues to nerf soul shard generation. Time to go play a melee class

[Lucrece]

Loaded ptr today and made some pulls. With 904 il gear pulled 745k @130million damage. On live i get to 715. That said shard generation is just very poor and makes the spec just feel clunky. Tough to get 4 shards to make the 2pc set bonus work properly. Destruction all along has starved for shards except during lust after that it just dies. Shard generation is the problem not how much our abilities hit for. This spec will continue to struggle if the current changes stand. Only slightly stronger from live. Just boggles my mind that blizz continues to nerf soul shard generation. Time to go play a melee class

The idea was that with less chaosbolts, the chaosbolts would hit harder, but chaosbolt just doesn't hit hard enough.

Destro needed Focused Chaos at the current shard generation just to climb up from the bottom of single target DPS.

Now they buff chaosbolt in a way that still isn't as much as focused chaos but reduced the amount of chaosbolts going out.

Destro more than anything needed numbers buffs, period. Mechanically it was honestly the least broken spec.

[Deleted]

Destro needs a talent rehaul the current iteration is beyond crap.

- Shadowburn needs to baseline and an execute talent
- ELT needs to die in a fire. Reverse entropy buff is no where near enough, eradication is only viable with right gear
- row 3 is generally shit all around and needs talents baked into the spec or moved
- FnB needs to be toggleable
- demon skin needs to be moved as burning rush is the go to talent because of shitty mobility and destro is already a paper class
- all grim. needs a rework.


etc, i could go on, but the talents are what are holding destro back more than pure numbers at this point.

[Lucrece]

Destro needs a talent rehaul the current iteration is beyond crap.

- Shadowburn needs to baseline and an execute talent
- ELT needs to die in a fire. Reverse entropy buff is no where near enough, eradication is only viable with right gear
- row 3 is generally shit all around and needs talents baked into the spec or moved
- FnB needs to be toggleable
- demon skin needs to be moved as burning rush is the go to talent because of shitty mobility and destro is already a paper class
- all grim. needs a rework.


etc, i could go on, but the talents are what are holding destro back more than pure numbers at this point.

Not really, numbers currently trump it all. Destro simply does not put out the numbers. The only fight it does any good on is a 100% 2 target wreak havoc fight and come 7.2.5 not even that will save it if some serious numerical bumps don't come through.

It's among the lowest ST DPS specs AND AoE DPS as well.

[Deleted]

The only annoying thing about it is that the numbers tuning will happen only very very shortly before raid release and then possibly again after the first hero week. This means that in order to hedge against Blizzard despotism, we currently have to pump AP into all specs.

At least I'm doing that. I'll never ever make the mistake of before 7.1 again where I finally had a 54 point weapon that I put into my bank a week afterwards, because Destro was destro-yed...

[Deleted]

Not really, numbers currently trump it all. Destro simply does not put out the numbers. The only fight it does any good on is a 100% 2 target wreak havoc fight and come 7.2.5 not even that will save it if some serious numerical bumps don't come through.

It's among the lowest ST DPS specs AND AoE DPS as well.

What I mean is, even with number tuning the spec is still shit to play because of maintenence buffs, zero mobility, turret playstyle, etc

[Lucrece]

What I mean is, even with number tuning the spec is still shit to play because of maintenence buffs, zero mobility, turret playstyle, etc

That's fair, but unfortunately I don't see them baselining the talents that are basically abilities they took away from us because they couldn't be bothered to make brand new talents for warlocks like they did for shaman and DK.

Destro would be so much better in aoe with the old fire and brimstone. Just the fact that I could spread immolate with a single cast instead of the current tab target shit.

Little things like that I don't see us getting back until the next xpac.

And TBH I don't mind the lack of mobility if our damage was actually balanced around that lack of mobility, but it obviously isn't.

Destro warlock is basically a shitty version of a frost mage.

Ice Lance is trucking for more damage than a chaosbolt, is instant cast, and happens to cleave, but is on a class with significantly less ramp up, way more mobility, and burst to boot.

Destro feels like a poor mage's spec because they took away a lot of what distinguished it from mages in mop/wod (and even then mage specs have eclipsed destro as a turret spec for most of its existence).

[Bullettime]

^ Which is also one of the reasons Destruction needs to be brought up a fair bit in its bulk. At least on live it can rapid fire Chaos Bolts to keep Soul Leech stacked but even that doesn't help too much when the spec kills itself pretty quickly through ELT maintenance and Burning Rush dependency.

This is going to hurt in the patch when we're Chaos Bolting less and more dependent on turret casting. Demonology and Affliction both have ways to get around their turret natures through being able to rapidly self heal (Affliction) or have trickle healing and feeling like an absolute juggernaut of a caster (Demonology.) Destruction does not have those upsides and feels like it's made out of a paper for a specialization that doesn't have mobility to fall back on like the three Mage specializations do.

I posted on the official board and my main three "wishes" for the specialization are a rebalancing of the Grimoire tier, have more meat on its bones, and for ELT to be reworked into the opportunistic power window it was intended to be and not maintenance garbage.

[Esinar]

PTR updates:

Conflagrate/Shadowburn now generate 4 fragments (down from 6)
Immolate now always generates 1 fragment on tick and has a 50% chance to generate and extra 1 fragment on crit (changed from 50%/100% on tick/crit)
Incinerate now always generates 2 fragments and an extra 1 fragment on crits (changed from 1 on hit and 2 on crit)
Rain of Fire damage reduced by ~10%

[Deleted]

Zzzz... How is it that destro lock was supposed to be one of the classes that got main focus and then aff. gets everything to new talents, moved talents and huge changes while it seems destro is done and they are.now only.doing number/shard tuning... I suspect another blizzard lie.

[Bullettime]

I like the shift on embers since it puts more embers into reliable gen and moves away from the crit except as a bonus. The nerf to Rain of Fire is a bit ??? but we'll see how it plays out with the tweaked ember generation model.

I'm still holding out that they look at ELT and Destruction's lack of bulk compared to the other two specializations. The current design/tuning of it feels a lot like Demonology in being a straight single target turret, just trading survivability for a short burst cleave window.

[Gaidax]

That is a good change, things are looking up, I just hope they won't land a nerfbat at the last moment.

[CharodeyGarona]

That is a good change, things are looking up, I just hope they won't land a nerfbat at the last moment.

It may *seem* like a good change, but I've just done the theorycrafting, looking at the numbers from my own Krosus kill, and this is a shard-neutral change. Before this change, we were at 59% shard generation compared to live. Now, we're at 60%. All we got is more emphasis on consistent slow shard gen, with on-demand gen being decreased. You can hardly call that good.

Also, RoF, easily competing for one of the worst AoE abilities at the moment (hello mobs walking away) got a 10% nerf. Fun.

[bio347]

It may *seem* like a good change, but I've just done the theorycrafting, looking at the numbers from my own Krosus kill, and this is a shard-neutral change. Before this change, we were at 59% shard generation compared to live. Now, we're at 60%. All we got is more emphasis on consistent slow shard gen, with on-demand gen being decreased. You can hardly call that good.

Also, RoF, easily competing for one of the worst AoE abilities at the moment (hello mobs walking away) got a 10% nerf. Fun.

There's no way this change is shard neutral. The immolate buff alone accounts for the nerf to conflag (over time, because you could always highroll the previous one) which means that the incinerate buff is pure gain.

[CharodeyGarona]

There's no way this change is shard neutral. The immolate buff alone accounts for the nerf to conflag (over time, because you could always highroll the previous one) which means that the incinerate buff is pure gain.

The problem is you're just making guesses, whereas I plugged in the numbers into a spreadsheet.

But we can do it together. Wanna share a link to a Krosus kill of yours, or any other? We can take a look at the actual number of Immolate ticks and crits, Incinerate hits and crits, and Conflag hits, and do the math.

[Lightbull]

I'm just now seeing this thread so this is probably late input, but whatever.

The way I see it is that Blizzard is making Destruction more fun to play. Destruction has always been about those massive Chaos Bolts, and sadly in Legion, Chaos Bolt became more of a spell that you turret out every few seconds, meaning they had to bring Chaos Bolt damage down to compensate. So I feel that the changes are great in that regard.

Yes, Incinerate generating Soul Shard fragments would hurt your movement a bit, but Dimensional Rift now also generates fragments. If movement continues to be a problem though, I can see them adding a mobility talent in the future like they have done with Demonology.

Also random thought from someone who mains Demo, so I'm probably inexperienced, but since Backdraft and Roaring Blaze require you to use Conflagrate at certain times, would Shadowburn become a decent talent for fights where you need to move a lot?

[Lucrece]

I'm just now seeing this thread so this is probably late input, but whatever.

The way I see it is that Blizzard is making Destruction more fun to play. Destruction has always been about those massive Chaos Bolts, and sadly in Legion, Chaos Bolt became more of a spell that you turret out every few seconds, meaning they had to bring Chaos Bolt damage down to compensate. So I feel that the changes are great in that regard.

Yes, Incinerate generating Soul Shard fragments would hurt your movement a bit, but Dimensional Rift now also generates fragments. If movement continues to be a problem though, I can see them adding a mobility talent in the future like they have done with Demonology.

Also random thought from someone who mains Demo, since Backdraft and Roaring Blaze require you to use Conflagrate at certain times, would Shadowburn become a decent talent for fights where you need to move a lot?

They didn't bring Chaosbolt down to compensate for frequency, because ST output has been garbage since the start of the expansion. It is still garbage in 7.2.5 PTR.

AoE is also garbage and it's not like you're turreting rains of fire and even when you layer 2-3 of them the damage is pitiful not to mention the radius.


This idea that our output has been where it's intended is silly. It's just been a negligent ordeal where the spec does well in a fight like Elisande or Dragons of the Nightmare or Xavius but terribly everywhere else.

Wreak Havoc has kept the spec relevant in the few circumstances where it can shine, and 7.2.5 nukes that without buffing significantly the output on ST and AoE to compensate for crippling our 2T DPS with the change.

If they don't balance the numbers in upcoming builds by a significant margin destro will actually come out for the worse as it lost the only niche it was relevant in while gaining little traction in the ones it still continues to suck at.

And that sucks because destro is by far the most fun spec to play instead of being a glorified imp mother spamming demonic empowerment or a UA empowerment bot.