State of Destruction - Beta discussion (PvE focus)

[Szemere]

Hi guys.

As an all-time Destruction fanatic and specialist, in a Heroic raiding environment, even when the spec wasn't considered viable, I now managed to get beta access from a mysterious guildy, so I wanted to share with you the awesomeness that is Destruction on the beta.

I'll bookmark this thread and answer any questions if anyone has any, but I'd also love to discuss the abilities and gameplay with other Destruction warlocks on the Beta in here.

I made a thread about my current thoughts on the EU beta forums here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3554369483

As you can see, I complained about mana regen not being enough. As people pointed out in other Destruction summaries, it is supposed to be much like energy. However, energy that only replenishes 1 or 2 energy per second, is obviously not gonna do much for a rogue.
For those not in the Beta: At 85 everyone has 100k baseline mana, not increased by Int, and in Destruction you regen 1k-1.5k mana per second. Incinerate costs 17.5k mana, Immolate costs 8.75k mana, Drain Life costs 2k mana + 2k mana per second channeled (and channeling this definitely makes you go OOM, altho slowly). Cooldowns you pop also cost quite a bit of mana, your Unending Resolve (Shield Wall) being 10k mana (doesn't cost GCD, Twilight Ward being 4k mana, and Dark Soul being 5k mana (and doesn't cost a GCD either).
Just comes down to: Everything you do requires you to spend about 3-10 seconds doing nothing or spending Burning Embers or casting Conflagrate, thus you're doing nothing half the time.

Apart from that, I can say Destruction feels nice, and the burst that Burning Embers give is INSANE.

szemere

[kendro1200]

I think they simply have mana regen heavily undertuned at the moment. I remember months ago a blue mentioned that there was some intent of you actually running out of mana with destro. That when you did, you were basically forced to burn embers while you waited for your mana to get back up, or at least that was the intent. The overall design goal being that there was no longer a casting priority system for destro, you just had to be pushing a button to keep your resources from capping out to be effective.

I do have to say though, if the intent is to turn the mana bar into some sort of energy type resource for destruction warlocks, just dump the mana bar all together and use an energy bar. In general, apart from arcane mages and healers, I think the game is just about ready to dump the mana resource for ranged dps classes. The resource only serves as a limiting reagent when you get brezed or any encounter that eliminates mana regen or drains your mana pool entirely. Heavy hitting spells rarely have a mana cost that prevents you from spamming it, instead such spells usually have high cast times that require you to wait for a proc of sorts to cast them, or they have cooldowns to artificially manage their use. Long gone are the days where mana was an actual finite resource that allowed you to throttle your dps to what you needed to put out, now it's just an annoying relic of a very ancient system.

[Obsidian9]

My Warlock on the beta returns 1.5k mana per second. With my anecdotal testing I have concluded the following:

All out dps (gcd capped) brought my character to oom in around 30 seconds. This netted me one full ember to use on soul fire. With 1.5k/s and 100k mana it would take 66 seconds to regenerate for another cycle during which time you can only auto attack and conflagrate. Thus double the time regenerating as actively dpsing.

Going a lower mana rotation of only using incinerate does little to fix this as you still use ~75% of your mana pool just in the opening immolate-conflagrate-incinerate x 3- conflagrate - incinerate x 3. This does not even net a full ember without 4 crits. This sustained would also be... lets just say boring as you would be casting 1 incinerate per 4 seconds. ~3 Conflagrates(36 sec recharge for chaining) would be required to make an ember + 4 second soul fire cast time thus close to 40 second rotation set. 9 incinerate x ~12k mana per cast + ~3 immolates x ~9k = 135k mana. Thus about 3.4K mana/s (super rough estimate) required to sustain which still results in huge gaps.

Going even lower mana rotation of immolate-conflagrate-incinerate x 2... wait... repeat. Would generate a whole ember per minute with 2 crits. This allows for a couple embers to be generated without going oom but still results in a mana deficit.


Thus one of the following needs to happen or something I haven't thought of:
A) Increase mana regeneration to more than 3.3k/s.
B) Decrease the mana cost of our spells
C) Increase mana regeneration and decrease mana cost (obviously to lesser degrees)

The current state also makes the use of our utility ember dumps more difficult. For instance the pet resurrect spell essentially saves 13k mana at the cost of 110K+ damage which is not a great trade.

Also as the OP stated our CDs/Utility spells cost a fair chunk as well thus making the current mana problem worse still. That does not even include Rain of Fire which costs 30k mana and does not even do that much damage without also using them ember to spread immolate.

If there is potential in the spec it is highly covered up with the current mess it is in. Yes it is beta, but until these numbers get fixed the rest of the spec can't really even be tested.

[crabmousse]

Chaotic Energy is bugged mate.

[Obsidian9]

Chaotic Energy is bugged mate.

At most partially bugged as you still get a higher mana return than demonology by a fair margin.

Though you have a fair point as many spells appear to be increasing with Chaotic Energy

However using the 5k mana cost of incinerate and 2500 immolate cost it would still take more than ~25 seconds to get mana neutral on a ~17.7 second rotation. Which is a bit low to me even counting in the idea of gaps in a caster which already has gaps by you know... casting. *If* it is not bugged in mana return rate as well which is harder to detect.

As a side note I will be curious to see if the new bane of havoc will work exactly like current Havoc or more along the lines of DTR.

[crabmousse]

well to be more specific the mana regen has decreased dramatically from the build they had with the Beta release. before they patched in Pandaland Destro was burning through mana but there was significant regen during Soulfire casts.

[Deleted]

Have you tried equipping a wand in main hand (well there is non other place now anyway) ? You auto-wand between spells a bit like hunters' autoshots.
It is a bit strange, since having a wand is going to be a nice DPS boost as destro.

- I am hitting for 1k3-2k4 (non crit) with the premade character wand (ilvl 378)
- No auto-wand when moving
- 30m range (could be changed I guess)

[Szemere]

I actually found a US poster, about 4 days ago or something, stating it took him until he got 4 full Burning Embers, to get OOM. I think it's a bug introduced in one of the latest patches, so I think that's definitely gonna change really soon (as in: urgent bug soon, not design decision soon :P )

---------- Post added 2012-03-31 at 01:47 AM ----------

Have you tried equipping a wand in main hand (well there is non other place now anyway) ? You auto-wand between spells a bit like hunters' autoshots.
It is a bit strange, since having a wand is going to be a nice DPS boost as destro.

- I am hitting for 1k3-2k4 (non crit) with the premade character wand (ilvl 378)
- No auto-wand when moving
- 30m range (could be changed I guess)

I've thought of that as well, it was odd when Auto wand was listed in the Destruction abilities. I just lack an off-hand atm, otherwise my 410 wand would be extremely viable, as viable as Lightning Rod HC I think.

Edit: I pull back my words: There is no Spellpower on wands yet, thus they are not a viable mainhand yet. It's definitely in the planning to add that judging by what has been said before, so I guess that's gonna be a wait and see.

[Obsidian9]

well to be more specific the mana regen has decreased dramatically from the build they had with the Beta release. before they patched in Pandaland Destro was burning through mana but there was significant regen during Soulfire casts.

Well see I wouldn't know about that for sure since I was in the latest wave and no one seems to talk about poor destruction :P

[Szemere]

Yup, seems like everyone is super focused on getting demo tanking, thus the idea to at least have a dedicated Destruction thread, to give the best feedback possible on the official forums

[Gorehowl]

i really hope this is a bug and not intentional, was trying destro on beta last night and if our #1 spammed ability is just sitting there doing nothing then i might not be playing a warlock in mop

[Szemere]

Maintenance right now, hoping it will be fixed in it, that would be AWESOME.

[Sorx]

I'd much prefer it if locks didn't have regen at all. We have life tap and I can't say I've ever used it since WOTLK.

More mana regen means locks spend more time spent doing dmg. assuming things are balanced, we'd have to be nerfed so we do less dmg on average to pull comparable dps to being reliant on lifetap. I much prefered lifetap as it can be timed for when there's movement in fights and because it was a semi iconic ability. I'd also rather hit harder.

[Deleted]

I did a bit of questing as destro today and I can tell you that is unplayable at the moment. You basically have to drink every 2 or 3 mobs and you usually don't have mana to cast soul fire once you got ember since it costs 34% of our current mana pool.
Obviously something is really bugged and hopefully they fix it soon since I am really looking forward for some real destro action.
Oh and btw, destro locks don't get life tap anymore, it is replaced by ember tap which burns an ember and heals you quite large chunk (35% ish).

[Obsidian9]

you usually don't have mana to cast soul fire once you got ember since it costs 34% of our current mana pool.

Soul fire does not cast mana with an ember.

I found questing just fine even with the messed up mana cost/return rate, more problems doing anything other than questing in my experience so far.

[Szemere]

I'd much prefer it if locks didn't have regen at all. We have life tap and I can't say I've ever used it since WOTLK.

More mana regen means locks spend more time spent doing dmg. assuming things are balanced, we'd have to be nerfed so we do less dmg on average to pull comparable dps to being reliant on lifetap. I much prefered lifetap as it can be timed for when there's movement in fights and because it was a semi iconic ability. I'd also rather hit harder.

Life Tap is gone, and replaced by that mana regen. Destruction doesn't really use the standard mana regen type DPS resource in MoP.

[Imnick]

I'd be interested if Destro became a spec that used wands as a dedicated autoattack weapon, although I can understand that annoying people as it's a large change, and it could well mess up the itemisation

[Considerit]

Compared to Demonology (or even Affliction), the Destruction feedback seems to be quite sparse. I posted a list of what I see as Destro's main PvE issues at the moment, for those interested, on the US beta forums and I think I got all of the important problems (and tried to offer the most common sense solutions when possible): http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4253972247

In short: Embers as a system have so much potential, but it just seems wasted in the current form and relegated to being used on generation, essentially, for most PvE situations. The rotation on live is a bit too unintuitive, clunky, and generally unfun, but the rotation on beta swings the pendulum of balance way too far in the opposite direction - giving us the most static, simple, yawn-inducing play ever. No Life Tap is not very lockish. The big three problems!

[Obsidian9]

I'd be interested if Destro became a spec that used wands as a dedicated autoattack weapon, although I can understand that annoying people as it's a large change, and it could well mess up the itemisation

No other class is forced to just use one one weapon type. Such a change would be a huge problem. It would be like saying ret pallies can only use 2H maces.

[Imnick]

No other class is forced to just use one one weapon type. Such a change would be a huge problem. It would be like saying ret pallies can only use 2H maces.

I did mention that yes
They'd presumably have to gain access to bows or something as well (except these would not be itemised for casters and would honestly just be plain weird), or Blizzard give staves a ranged attack (which would annoy monks and possibly druids)