State of Destruction - Beta discussion (PvE focus)

[Szemere]

got few days ago the ptr copy of my hc geared warlock
i used to be a EJ reader , but we can consider the EJ forum (except for some classes and zakalwe/simcraft creator) as history, mmo forum has now got the title of "official" forum of serious debate on the specs & class.
Even of we 're still in the beta, as some said, we re close of the end and settlement of the rotation, still there is some tweaking on number but i don't think we ll see some revolution, we have the general idea of what we ll get @september 18th when the 5.0 patch will hit the live servers.

So i tested the 3 specs on the PTR but couldnt find any informations, on best talent nor rotation or glyphs, as im a destro fan, i tried to do smthg but wasn't very sure of it. I don't find any post (sticking ?) on the subjects, maybe its time to do so as PTR is up ?

So my question is :

I saw the ember generation based on the rotation, so what is the best rotation and use of CB spell ?

==> boss not moving :
immo > CB > shadowburn (sub 25%) > conflag > inci
4 ember ready = dark intent + CB using 4 or 3 ember

==> boss moving :
immo > conflag > inci/ff > CB

What I have been doing so far (before the bug was introduced where 3 stacks of Backdraft do speed up Chaos Bolt, but are not consumed by it), was basically CoE>Immo>Keeping Conflag under 2 stacks if Backdraft is 3 or less>Shadowburn (if the target doesn't have your Shadowburn debuff yet)>Chaos Bolt with Backdraft under 3>Incinerate with Backdraft>Conflagrate>Incinerate>Fel Flame

However that does get changed up when a trinket or big cooldown or internal cooldown is about to be ready, so you can line up Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn with it, in that case I just completely skip those 2 spells to save up the embers, and as soon as the cooldown is off I chaincast 3 Chaos Bolts (having 4 full embers is often a waste of some embers), or fire off 3 shadowburns over a period of 10 seconds (with the 5 second debuff).

It might be worth investigating, whether with the Shadowburn mana return in execute phase, it might be better to use Fel Flame instead of Immo due to an abundance of mana.

[Deleted]

The cd's we have all work differently, speaking from a PvE prespective if you 'line the stars' properly you can do over a million damage in 4 gcd's with shadowburn (self buffed, argent tournament dummys) assuming you line up a trinket proc and grimorie of sac, this is important because sac does not benefit chaos bolt.

I do think that if Fel Flame had a damage increase under 20% hp it would sync really nicely with our execute phase.

http://i48.tinypic.com/2nu54lg.jpg - premade warlock on PTR

[Szemere]

The cd's we have all work differently, speaking from a PvE prespective if you 'line the stars' properly you can do over a million damage in 4 gcd's with shadowburn (self buffed, argent tournament dummys) assuming you line up a trinket proc and grimorie of sac, this is important because sac does not benefit chaos bolt.

I do think that if Fel Flame had a damage increase under 20% hp it would sync really nicely with our execute phase.

http://i48.tinypic.com/2nu54lg.jpg - premade warlock on PTR

Don't need to have the stars align to do 1M damage in 4GCD's on lvl 90 at all

[Deleted]

Ye, i figure mid Mop that will be closer to 3 million, but thats not to bad for lvl 85 while in bad gear.

[Spoiledkid]

So, should Backdraft decrease CB's cast time on PTR or not?

[Phoenexis]

The problem is that the spell isn't acquired until level 86. So I'm guessing Blizzard wants to ruin Destruction PvP at lower levels even more

[Deleted]

I really wonder what the hell is going on with Warlocks...

(If I'm not mistaken Affliction was really appreciated by the players and had good feedback, yet they changed most of its gameplay in the new build.) nevermind

Destruction is receiving mostly negative feedback and there is close to no change done to it (a miserable 8% up on Immolate yaay -_-).

[Grizelda]

Even on live, GC called affliction one of the smoothest specs in the game. Now they are trying to find a way out of the drain twisting, haunt uptime mess they created.

[Zinnin]

I really wonder what the hell is going on with Warlocks...

If I'm not mistaken Affliction was really appreciated by the players and had good feedback, yet they changed most of its gameplay in the new build.

Destruction is receiving mostly negative feedback and there is close to no change done to it (a miserable 8% up on Immolate yaay -_-).

The gameplay shouldn't change at all, the glyph went baseline.

[Deleted]

They changed the main mechanic of Affliction, Malefic Grasp making DoTs tick 2 times faster.
I might be wrong but I think the gameplay will be changed a lot by the removal of this effect, the DoTs will be refreshed less often.

[Gobuchul]

It's been ages since the dot speedup also shortened dot durations accordingly. This change is just their way of going back to an MG effect that does something less than doubling the DPS of all the dots whenever it's up.

[Zinnin]

They changed the main mechanic of Affliction, Malefic Grasp making DoTs tick 2 times faster.
I might be wrong but I think the gameplay will be changed a lot by the removal of this effect, the DoTs will be refreshed less often.

Malefic Grasp has not effected dot duration since the first two? builds on beta. It simply added ticks inbetween existing ticks when the debuff was on the target.

Edit: Whoops Gobuchul beat me too it.

[Deleted]

Really ? I tried Affliction like 1 week ago and would have swore the DoTs were disappearing really fast
Beta Destro really slows me down

[Sandrox]

Anyone else noticing that backdraft is not reducing the cast time on Incinerate, at least on the PTR? Dont have beta though.

[Marximos]

Anyone else noticing that backdraft is not reducing the cast time on Incinerate, at least on the PTR? Dont have beta though.

You are correct, backdraft doesn't seem to reduce the Incinerate cast time on PTR, however on the Beta, it does.

I just tested both.

[Sandrox]

You are correct, backdraft doesn't seem to reduce the Incinerate cast time on PTR, however on the Beta, it does.

I just tested both.

That doesnt make much sense, I thought beta and PTR were on the same build?

[Marximos]

That is true, they are the same build, though perhaps the bug was triggered by something different.

[Micke]

incinerate with backdraft didn't start working until I got to lvl 86

[Szemere]

incinerate with backdraft didn't start working until I got to lvl 86

Yeah, the Pyroclasm that enables Chaos Bolt to benefit from backdraft has been messing up quite often, if you don't have it some functionality of Backdraft might not work, and when you do have it other stuff might be bugged.

[Phoenexis]

I don't even see why would they put Pyroclasm at such a High level. Talk about making Destruction attractive to new players huh?