PTR Destruction

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

Seems really complicated to do 100%, but also seems kinda crazy. I'm at a target dummy doing 4k DPS alt-tabbed from Burning Embers and my Imp keeping it up. Bane of Havoc seems to be broken and doing nothing at the moment.

I'm pretty happy with how Burning Embers recalculates your damage dynamically with spellpower buffs, but Nether Ward seems to do the same, so I'm not sure how they will work, seems like it could be really buggy, especially with stacking trinkets.

Shadowburn seems kind of weak, I thought it was supposed to be an execute ability, but I don't really see myself using it, it does as much damage as Searing Pain.

Assuming you were to be using it, you'd have these buttons to press, in no particular order (but there would be a priority):

Incinerate
Chaos Bolt
Immolate
Conflagrate
Soulfire
Bane of Doom
Shadowburn

That's kind of a lot. Makes it pretty fun though. I'm guessing your priority list would be something like this:

Soulfire(Instant)>Immolate>Conflagrate>Bane of Doom>Chaos Bolt>Incinerate with Shadowburn mixed in depending on the damage it's "supposed" to do.

The Imp procs so many instant Soulfires I couldn't even use my 3 charges of Backlash most of the time. Isn't Backlash supposed to be duration now? Or is that not implemented yet?

[gerni]

Isn't Backlash supposed to be duration now? Or is that not implemented yet?

I believe the way it works now is there is a duration of 15 seconds and 3 charges which only affect the 3 spells incinerate, shadow bolt and chaos bolt. No more wasting a backdraft charge on immolate. That is what I noticed while testing out Destro on the PTR.

I'll agree with you about the instant soulfires. I couldn't count how many times I would get 2 or 3 instant soulfires within a few seconds of each other.

[Repo123]

I noticed conflag wasn't hitting for crap. The initial conflag didn't hit any harder than the dot conflags. I'm assuming it's a bug.

[Malphass]

I hope so, would be a shame to see the conflag damage go away.

[Deleted]

is it strong compared to other classes? i really hope warlock will be nice in cataclysm. anyone got some experience on beta?

[Evillocksp]

Ive recently been playing demo after playing destro since vanilla wow. But a couple months ago i switched back to destro and it just feels more smooth than demo. Demo is just slow, it hits hard but on the move it just doesnt work. Destro works well on the move even when people say it doesnt, instant casts are ur friend on the move.
On the PTR and beta im def goin to be lvling and raiding as destro, i like hitting things fast and burning stuff down instead of building stuff up. People say destro is boring but i love it, even tho it lacks raid utility, it makes the game so much more fun for me now playing destro.

[fanoe9]

Long time reader of the forums, 1st time poster. I'm a hardcore Destro fan, so with these new changes i have to say i like where Destro is heading.
Normally i'd do about 8-8.4k DPS on a test dummy on Live in my current gear. But at the moment, its insane. I'll average about 12.5-13k single target DPS, no Bane of Havoc. And with Bane of Havoc, 14k-16k depends on the debuffs on the dummy and my RNG. I took a SS of a decent run, 5min test, few debuffs on there.
And to the OP, Bane of Havoc seems to be working now, I honestly didnt think 15% would be much, but its a nice addition. And our new Fel Embers is just insane. I'm currently glyphed Immo/Incin/Conflag, but the new conflag glyph sucks, so i just copied myself again but with an Imp glyph, so i'm going to test that DPS next. Should be a nice increase, if the glyph helps boots up Fel Embers.

http: //img837.imageshack .us/f/wowscrnshot091310161154. jpg/
Edit: New poster, so can't post the link, just get eliminate the spaces to see the link.
EDIT:: And this is w/out Conflag scaling properly or at all for that matter, and talented Soulfire doesn't seem to be proccing the 15% spell haste. So, just some BUGS ive noticed.

[Malphass]

http://img837.imageshack.us/i/wowscr...310161154.jpg/

Fixed'

[mei]

I believe the way it works now is there is a duration of 15 seconds and 3 charges which only affect the 3 spells incinerate, shadow bolt and chaos bolt. No more wasting a backdraft charge on immolate. That is what I noticed while testing out Destro on the PTR.

I'll agree with you about the instant soulfires. I couldn't count how many times I would get 2 or 3 instant soulfires within a few seconds of each other.

That makes sence, If it didn't have stacks then it'd be like having 30% haste for those spells 100% of the time which seemed a little too good to be true... lol. But they should add soul fire to the talent.

[fanoe9]

I've done some more testing with Destro, and I am liking what i've seen to date. Now, i recently did a couple attempts, of course using recount which wouldn't be as accurate as say WoLs, but it still holds some Value.

img835.imageshack. us/f/wowscrnshot091410152835. jpg/ - Using Bane of Havoc, with some Debuffs on targets from other classes. I was at 19.5k for quite awhile, but got a nasty lag spike, and ended my session with almost full Dots left of the target for some reason, which lowered my DPS 8k.

img227.imageshack. us/f/wowscrnshot091410152844. jpg/ - Single Target. Now in both attempts i used my Inferno for extra dps, but both of these iterations were about 5-6min long.

(If anyone could fix the links, feel free. Just trying to share some numbers of what destruction can do.

[Loveletters]

I'm not sure if it still is but Burning Embers was doing waaayyy too much damage and of course conflag was very low damage. I really like the new Emp Imp and I hope it ends up being something that is cast fairly often (eg. Hotstreak) instead of Nightfall (which is where it seems they are taking it )

[Spoiledkid]

What's imp's crit rate on PTR and how much lock's stats affect it? Just wondering how good Mana Feed will be.

[Granpa]

Destro is just head and shoulders above Demo and Affliction on the PTR right now. I can hit over 10k dps on the test dummies without breaking a sweat. And I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right. Right now my rotation/priority looks something like this:

COE -> Bane of Havoc -> Immolate -> Chao Bolt -> Conflag -> Incinerate -> Soul Fire (whenever that thing procs to make it instant).

Aggro's going to be a challenge for us if this keeps up, and like I said, I'm probably doing it wrong.. lol

Oh yeah, and my mana never goes below 97%.. go figure. I expect the nerf bat to hit Destro HARD!

[mei]

Bane of havoc doesn't work on the same target you are dpsing right? Or have they changed it?
And bite your tongue about the nerf :P

[gunner_recall]

The Imp procs so many instant Soulfires I couldn't even use my 3 charges of Backlash most of the time. Isn't Backlash supposed to be duration now? Or is that not implemented yet?

This. Jesus flipping Christ, it procced every 2 seconds.

[ScorchHellfire]

Some obvservations:

The ptr build is behind the beta build. The beta build has soul leech nerfed to 2% health and mana at max rank and empowered imp is nerfed to 4% proc at max rank. These two talents combined made it so you didn't have to worry about mana at all while doing your full rotation due to all the instant soulfires. So don't get used to the damage output from soulfire and the mana regen because that is not correct.

Bane of havoc only seems to work when you cast it on another target while already doing damage to another enemy first. If it is pre cast before starting your rotation on the main target it doesn't do anything.

The doomguard's damage is weak compared to the infernal. The doomguard does less damage with its shadow bolts than the infernal does with its melee so combining that with its aoe damage and longer duration and the good amount of aoe it does when it first comes out, it is obvious which is the stronger pet right now. However the infernal is bugged so that if it runs out of stuff to attack it will bug out and stop following you and freeze in place and not even do its passive aoe anymore. So basically you have to have it constantly attacking stuff or else it will stop in place and become worthless til it dies.

Yes conflagrate is bugged and is doing about a tenth of the damage it should be doing, but even with this destruction is pulling a good deal more damage than it is one live. Keep in mind that talents have not been nerfed to their current beta levels though.

Improved soulfire is not functioning at all and sometimes burning embers does not apply. This happens with both the imp and soulfire versions. So after the nerfs go through, maybe the other things being fixed will keep the damage where it is currently at, especially in the beginning of the fight.

Backdraft is not supposed to have charges. At least the talent's tooltip doesn't say it has charges so I'm guessing it is supposed to be a constant 15% haste to those 3 abilities which makes sense since it no longer effects immolate and many times you end up having to cast an instant soulfire instead of doing your conflragrate at the normal time so it gives a little leeway for the buff to be up.

Shadowburn seems to be a mostly useless ability. It's nice for the utility of getting 3 shards from killing stuff instead of having to channel soul drain but if you had already learned how to channel it right at the last second, this utility is pointless. Especially when stuff dies so fast that you can't even hit the 20% window before they die. Of course this will be different in cata but the way it is in wotlk is making it hard to test. Actually you don't even really have to bother draining either because you can just do soul harvest if you are running low since you don't even need to use shards that often. But once again this is cata so stuff dies too quickly to even bother doing the full boss rotation. Unless its damage is buffed a good amount I wouldn't bother with it and put points in nether protection or backlash instead.

But yes, all in all destruction's damage seems to be going up a very significant amount but by the way the blues are talking, this is intended for every spec. Also keep in mind that the numbers tuning hasn't happened yet so our dps could still be nerfed.

---------- Post added 2010-09-16 at 05:08 AM ----------

P.S. Life tap hurts like hell now, so hopefully we will retain a good portion of the regen we are getting because its much less effecient than on live. Basically we have to spend 3 times the amount of health to get the same amount of mana compared to its current version on the live realms.

---------- Post added 2010-09-16 at 05:15 AM ----------

Destro is just head and shoulders above Demo and Affliction on the PTR right now. I can hit over 10k dps on the test dummies without breaking a sweat. And I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right. Right now my rotation/priority looks something like this:

COE -> Bane of Havoc -> Immolate -> Chao Bolt -> Conflag -> Incinerate -> Soul Fire (whenever that thing procs to make it instant).

Aggro's going to be a challenge for us if this keeps up, and like I said, I'm probably doing it wrong.. lol

Oh yeah, and my mana never goes below 97%.. go figure. I expect the nerf bat to hit Destro HARD!

Bane of havoc doesn't duplicate damage on the target it's on it only copies damage from other enemies so we will still be doing doom on our main target. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that Bane of doom is not proccing the doomguard it's supposed to.

Also don't cast chaos bolt first. Do immo then conflag then chaos bolt then incinerate spam til you have to do another immo/conflag/chaos bolt and of course the instant soulfires when you get them.

Ideally if improved soulfire was working you would do a soulburned soulfire after your curse and bane then do immo + conflag but its not functioning at all so no point doing so right now.

---------- Post added 2010-09-16 at 05:22 AM ----------

What's imp's crit rate on PTR and how much lock's stats affect it? Just wondering how good Mana Feed will be.

I'm pretty sure the full pet scaling is not implemented yet. At least it is not showing up in it's stat pane. But as far as crits, from what I noticed, it is critting about a third of the time if not more. Let's just say if empowered imp was still based on imp crits then we would have almost no time to cast anything but instant soulfires...

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

I disagree with opening with Soulburn + Soulfire, I'd suggest saving those for proc stacking to get more haste during your damage procs to get a better effect. Furthermore, the opening threat would be pretty high, possibly enough to warrant stopping DPS for a short time.

Also, on the PTR, Bane of Havoc works on the main target (the tooltip doesn't specify whether or not it wouldn't, it doesn't really make sense for it not to) and also stacks with other Banes. I'm hoping at least this is the way it's supposed to be, it makes sense to me. Bane of Havoc seems like a spell that a) increases your overall damage and b) lets some damage continue on the boss while you nuke adds.

Having it not work on your main target and/or not stack with Bane of Doom would really reduce the usefulness of the spell. You'd end up using extra GCDs on it to be getting a small damage increase (unless these adds are super high HP) and would be a pretty poor mechanic. The only really good use it would have would be on bosses that spawn lots of adds you AoE. I don't know about you, but I don't think it should be more useful than that.

[Jessicka]

The tooltip is pretty clear that only One Bane per Warlock can be active on any one target, so that is clearly the intent - no stacking with Bane of Doom (otherwise they may as well give it another name so it isn't considered a Bane).

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

The tooltip is pretty clear that only One Bane per Warlock can be active on any one target, so that is clearly the intent - no stacking with Bane of Doom (otherwise they may as well give it another name so it isn't considered a Bane).

Let's hope that's the worst of it then I guess.

[Granpa]

Also don't cast chaos bolt first. Do immo then conflag then chaos bolt then incinerate spam til you have to do another immo/conflag/chaos bolt and of course the instant soulfires when you get them.

Well the only reason I cast CB first is because the conflag proc is not instant after immolate. It usually takes about a half a second for conflag to be available so I toss in a CB in that time to start up the cycle. It's the same on live.