[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Baconeggcheese]

Until you compare it to the strong specs. Also mostly in cleave situations.

Dunno, tested star augur on monday and was consistently near the top of the meter and that fights pure ST with a decent bit of movement. Haven't had any dps issues compared to other classes during testings. My copied char does have a shit ton of mastery though, I've actually been swapping everything for crit where I can but I'm still pretty heavily skewed for mastery.

Obviously there's outliers that are clearly not in the realm of target tuning but generally we look fine. Is this your first beta that you have these concerns?

[Deleted]

Dunno, tested star augur on monday and was consistently near the top of the meter and that fights pure ST with a decent bit of movement. Haven't had any dps issues compared to other classes during testings. My copied char does have a shit ton of mastery though, I've actually been swapping everything for crit where I can but I'm still pretty heavily skewed for mastery.

Obviously there's outliers that are clearly not in the realm of target tuning but generally we look fine. Is this your first beta that you have these concerns?

Are there any logs from that? I just haven't seen any locks get near the top, not that we are the only ones, but I'm not sure what top they are aiming for being balanced.

Well, it is the first beta where destruction warlocks can have 100% uptime on havoc, and I'm kinda worried that single target DPS will suffer from that. Soul conduit doesn't seem to be enough of a difference in single target DPS to make it balanced, if you understand what I'm trying to say.

If everything was 100% balanced, and soul conduit made us do exactly the same DPS as everyone else on single target, wreak havoc just looks like it will make our 2 target damage stronger than anyone else by a lot. Hell, even without wreak havoc our cleave damage would be problematic if we did the same single target DPS as other classes.

[Baconeggcheese]

Are there any logs from that? I just haven't seen any locks get near the top, not that we are the only ones, but I'm not sure what top they are aiming for being balanced.

Not that are public, I'm in a US top 10 guild and the top US scene is old fashioned in that they keep everything super secret and to themselves.

I was consistently between 370-400k dps which always put me in the top 4 of dps on every pull. Granted we had no enhancement shamans which are apparently very obviously broken right now. The pulls were fairly short as well, talking 2 minutes ish.

Though standard practice you can just look up logs on warcraft logs to see what guilds who public log are doing.

[Duckz0rs]

I don't have any beta experience, only PTR, but Soul Conduit seems quite underestimated for ST to be honest. Even without the Soul Snatcher trait, or any other for that matter, I was honestly swimming in shards.
Using the template character (680 ilvl with 10% crit, character copy was broken when I had the time to test) I pooled shards in dungeons until 4 and then started strings of Chaos Bolts. I think the least amount of CB's I've managed to cast in a row was ~5 without pause. During most boss fights I only cast about 2 Incinerates because there was no end to the stream of incoming Soulshards.

[Deleted]

Not that are public, I'm in a US top 10 guild and the top US scene is old fashioned in that they keep everything super secret and to themselves.

I was consistently between 370-400k dps which always put me in the top 4 of dps on every pull. Granted we had no enhancement shamans which are apparently very obviously broken right now. The pulls were fairly short as well, talking 2 minutes ish.

Though standard practice you can just look up logs on warcraft logs to see what guilds who public log are doing.

If that is the kind of DPS we are supposed to do with that gear level, then I am less worried. Maybe I should have mentioned this, but when doing dungeons on beta I'm consistently in the top as well. Just not when the "broken" specs appear. Enhancement hasn't been touched for ages, which led me to believe that those kinds of numbers are what we are supposed to pull off, and that Blizzard thought we were doing even more than that and then did the nerfing.

I guess my real issue is that we don't hear much about why they make the changes they make, and sometimes they just don't seem to make a lot of sense.

[Baconeggcheese]

I guess my real issue is that we don't hear much about why they make the changes they make, and sometimes they just don't seem to make a lot of sense.

Like people have been saying, changes happen over multiple builds and not everything is getting looked at simultaneously or publicly. I'm not sure why balance changes happen the way they do (for instance buffing immolate base dmg in two separate builds and then nerfing the artifact traits in a 3rd build) but knowing that is how things happen makes worrying about an individual build nonsensical.

I'm not in the slightest bit concerned about tuning, especially with this Xpac where they gave themselves more knobs to turn than at any point in the games history and completely separated out pvp. I'd focus on what you enjoy playing or what specs mechanics are more favorable to the type of content you enjoy and then see where tuning lands in the coming months. Shit will continue to change all the way past launch, so there's no sense in worrying about things now.

[Deleted]

I don't have any beta experience, only PTR, but Soul Conduit seems quite underestimated for ST to be honest. Even without the Soul Snatcher trait, or any other for that matter, I was honestly swimming in shards.
Using the template character (680 ilvl with 10% crit, character copy was broken when I had the time to test) I pooled shards in dungeons until 4 and then started strings of Chaos Bolts. I think the least amount of CB's I've managed to cast in a row was ~5 without pause. During most boss fights I only cast about 2 Incinerates because there was no end to the stream of incoming Soulshards.

soul conduit is an annoying talent to value coz you're dependent on how fast you generate shards and how fast you can spend them, the faster you can do that, the higher the value of soul conduit, im fairly certain that soul conduit wont be the go-to choice at launch but might be as we get better gear. problem with soul conduit is that you need to spend on average 9 shards(if you believe in laws of probability) to get 1 shard refunded thats a lot imo, and i also think the value of soul conduit might get skewed a bit due to the soulsnatcher trait which essentially does the same as conduit just at 15% rather than 20%, i might be wrong and im prolly biased coz i dont like refund mechanics, it always seem like a lazy way to give a class/spec something.

[garonne]

20% means 5 shards to get 1, 1 every 9 is 11%

[xuros]

20% means 5 shards to get 1, 1 every 9 is 11%

Then its more like 11%. Soul conduit sucks for me on all specs that ive tried it. Could just be bad RNG but I cant say that ive got the 1 in 5 reliably

[garonne]

Then its more like 11%. Soul conduit sucks for me on all specs that ive tried it. Could just be bad RNG but I cant say that ive got the 1 in 5 reliably

i usually run with soul conduit and have times where i cant get rid of shards

[Deleted]

20% means 5 shards to get 1, 1 every 9 is 11%

mathematically, that is incorrect as it is 20%+20%+20%+20%+20%, if it were then a lot more ppl would win the lottery, when it actually works more like compound interest 20% when spending 1 shard, 20*1,2% when spending 2 shard, 20*1,2*1,2 when spending 3 shards etc. atleast thats how i was taught, but blizz might use another way or maybe im thinking of something else.

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i usually run with soul conduit and have times where i cant get rid of shards

but that might have nothing to do with soul conduit and everything to do with a good immolate procrate, keep in mind that haste afaik still reduces the cd of conflag and every immolate tick has a chance to give you a shard and with something like cataclysm, putting up 5ish ijmolates should give you so many shards that you cant use them all even without soul conduit.

[Deleted]

20% means 5 shards to get 1, 1 every 9 is 11%

Over the course of a fight you should gain about 25% more shards. SC generated shards have 20% to gain more shards aswell, etc etc.

Demonfire is however 2 free shards per 15s and should be a worthy talent for the start of the gearing. It might be redundant at a certain gear level as SC should give us more shards with more haste/gear/artifact power.

[sugarfree]

This spec is really returning back to Cata Destruction where every lock stopped playing. This has become a dot spec. Affliction, watch out.

[Deleted]

Over the course of a fight you should gain about 25% more shards. SC generated shards have 20% to gain more shards aswell, etc etc.

yeah, that sounds about right in terms of how many it takes on average to get a shard refunded, 1 every 9 is only when you have the worst possible luck in order to get a shard refund, with average luck you'll most likely get a shard refund around every 6-7 shards spent.

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This spec is really returning back to Cata Destruction where every lock stopped playing. This has become a dot spec. Affliction, watch out.

uhm, tell me in what way destro has become a dot spec? it has literally not changed since MoP, well atleast not in any major way and i fail to see how it can be a dot spec with only 1 dot. if i didnt know better i would call you a troll tbh.

[Deleted]

Over the course of a fight you should gain about 25% more shards. SC generated shards have 20% to gain more shards aswell, etc etc.

Demonfire is however 2 free shards per 15s and should be a worthy talent for the start of the gearing. It might be redundant at a certain gear level as SC should give us more shards with more haste/gear/artifact power.

Demonfire doesn't benefit from any artifact traits though, and doesn't work with Havoc. Demonfire needs a pretty massive buff to make it better than soul conduit.

Also (Not directed at you), 20% is 20%. On average 1 shard every 5 shards spent, no idea where 11% comes from. The artifact trait also only has a chance to refund a single shard, not two individual chances for a shard. Soul conduit and soul snatcher combined can even make you end up with one shard more than before casting chaos bolt. Combined with immolate ticking on one or more targets, you can easily end up never having to cast anything but conflag, immolate and chaos bolt.

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yeah, that sounds about right in terms of how many it takes on average to get a shard refunded, 1 every 9 is only when you have the worst possible luck in order to get a shard refund, with average luck you'll most likely get a shard refund around every 6-7 shards spent.

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uhm, tell me in what way destro has become a dot spec? it has literally not changed since MoP, well atleast not in any major way and i fail to see how it can be a dot spec with only 1 dot. if i didnt know better i would call you a troll tbh.

Yeah, Destro is definitely not a dot spec. You cast chaos bolt more than ever in Legion!

[Deleted]

yeah, that sounds about right in terms of how many it takes on average to get a shard refunded, 1 every 9 is only when you have the worst possible luck in order to get a shard refund, with average luck you'll most likely get a shard refund around every 6-7 shards spent.

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uhm, tell me in what way destro has become a dot spec? it has literally not changed since MoP, well atleast not in any major way and i fail to see how it can be a dot spec with only 1 dot. if i didnt know better i would call you a troll tbh.

Average luck is 1 shard for every 5 spend, that's what 20% means. Combined with 15% per chaosbolt for a shard refund, up to 30% with 3 relics invested into it.

[Baconeggcheese]

Channel demonfires cd is reduced by haste, so gear shouldn't be making it irrelevant.

[Deleted]

So destro main stat is mastery or crit ?

[Dastey]

So destro main stat is mastery or crit ?

From what I'm seing atm. mastery will be our best stat. But wait for simulationcraft if you wanna be sure.

Mastery does however have the nice benefit that it also improves your survivability. I had 135& mastery resulting in up to 30% less damage taken.
On Krosus this did 18 million absorb, whereas my Soul Leach did 42 million in comparison.

In general destruction survivability is really good with 1 minute CD on both our major defensive cooldowns.

[garonne]

one thing i didnt expect is that quite a bit of destro's single target damage is pet/guardian damage (because of dimensional rift)

the rifts, main pet and service pet, plus doomguard/infernals is giving me around 35% of my overall damage.

this may be a good thing for wreak havoc as we can't cleave pet/guardian damage so they dont have to nerf it.