HWF Totem enough to warrant a spec change?

[Deleted]

[B]Only fight I'd say Affliction is better for than Destro is Protectors. All the spread damage is equally important on protectors compared to other fights where Destros high, focused damage is better.

Untrue. Depending on combat lenght/number of targets and your trinkets Affliction is better on every fight except Dark Shamans if you're doing the spread tactic and aoeing the blobs.

[Deleted]

Untrue. Depending on combat lenght/number of targets and your trinkets Affliction is better on every fight except Dark Shamans if you're doing the spread tactic and aoeing the blobs.

i dont know what to make of this statement, bcoz there are fights where destro is just plain better.

[Deleted]

i dont know what to make of this statement, bcoz there are fights where destro is just plain better.

- I wouldnt consider Immerseus a boss.

[Tramzh]

This is somewhat off-topic but would you mind explaining what you mean by AoE/Shadowburn 'cheesing'? I see the term used a lot with regards to Destruction but I'm not sure I fully understand how people are intending to use the term cheesing.

There aren't too many instances where AoE cheesing is possible in SoO but some main examples are Nazgrim faithfuls and to some extent Sha of Pride adds ( you really don't have to nuke the living sh*t out of them when they spawn, it honestly doesn't matter). Shadowburn cheesing can be used together with what I mentioned before but also when you havoc something that is completely useless and spend a triple sb just for the extra damage, bosses that comes to mind are paragons and Garrosh.

[Deleted]

- I wouldnt consider Immerseus a boss.

immerseus is however a boss and there are other bosses like say garrosh where destro is so much better in every way possible than afflic.

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There aren't too many instances where AoE cheesing is possible in SoO but some main examples are Nazgrim faithfuls and to some extent Sha of Pride adds ( you really don't have to nuke the living sh*t out of them when they spawn, it honestly doesn't matter). Shadowburn cheesing can be used together with what I mentioned before but also when you havoc something that is completely useless and spend a triple sb just for the extra damage, bosses that comes to mind are paragons and Garrosh.

by that account the constant soulswap in fights like protectors and dark shamans and to a lesser extent paragons/spoils or as demo taking MF on nazgrim to be sure to hit every mob that stands between you and nazgrim with hellfire/immolation aura is cheesing as well or is that just clever use of game mechanics *cough*, might not be a good idea to confuse padding with cheesing. padding= dpsing useless shit, cheesing=maximizing dps on stuff that needs to die. there is a distinct difference.

[Tramzh]

by that account the constant soulswap in fights like protectors and dark shamans and to a lesser extent paragons/spoils or as demo taking MF on nazgrim to be sure to hit every mob that stands between you and nazgrim with hellfire/immolation aura is cheesing as well or is that just clever use of game mechanics *cough*, might not be a good idea to confuse padding with cheesing. padding= dpsing useless shit, cheesing=maximizing dps on stuff that needs to die. there is a distinct difference.

Maybe I mixed up cheesing and padding as 2 completely different meanings, but I don't see the big difference being honest. You can go ahead and call whatever you want cheesing or padding or whatever, does it matter? I only tried to give a few examples to what I previously wrote. To me cheesing is doing an encounter the way it is not intended or using "cheesy" methods to increase your own dps but doesn't actually benefit the raid (~=padding I guess?), if that is completely wrong then I'm sorry if I caused misunderstandings.

[Gravityx]

I thought Afflic was much better on a single target fight like Jug where you don't start off with enough embers to burst well?

That depends on the length of the fight. In a short fight, Aff will ride the burst to the end. But if the fight is longer, procs have a chance of lining up and super CBs are nice. TBH it all depends on how your guild does the fights/how good they are.

As for OP, PBI is better for both specs. A 580 KTT is better than a 561 BBoY. But once you get a heroic BBoY, that will be better.

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Untrue. Depending on combat lenght/number of targets and your trinkets Affliction is better on every fight except Dark Shamans if you're doing the spread tactic and aoeing the blobs.

Umm Sha of Pride, Galakras, Garrosh, Spoils, etc...?

[fiestatastic]

Only fight I'd say Affliction is better for than Destro is Protectors. All the spread damage is equally important on protectors compared to other fights where Destros high, focused damage is better.

destros high focused damage? hitting the top of the meters as destro is all about meter padding / shadowburning adds (cheesing dps) ...

single target at decent ilvl they are maybe close to even, with aff slightly ahead. Once you have enough gear to hit the 13.7k haste pt affliction is noticeably better purely single target unless it's not played decently.

[Baconeggcheese]

destros high focused damage? hitting the top of the meters as destro is all about meter padding / shadowburning adds (cheesing dps) ...

single target at decent ilvl they are maybe close to even, with aff slightly ahead. Once you have enough gear to hit the 13.7k haste pt affliction is noticeably better purely single target unless it's not played decently.

This is completely incorrect, afflictions single target is extremely low without powerful snapshots. On most fights you're not hoping that you luck out on procs to say... burst down the shamans on nazgrim, or any other priority adds.

In any tangible mechanics cases destruction has better high focused damage. We're not talking about padding the top of the meter, we're talking actual effective damage for putting important damage where it matters.

For the umpteenth time, afflictions dps is carried by its opener and short fight lengths this late into the tier. That's literally all it has going for it.

[squee666]

destros high focused damage? hitting the top of the meters as destro is all about meter padding / shadowburning adds (cheesing dps) ...

single target at decent ilvl they are maybe close to even, with aff slightly ahead. Once you have enough gear to hit the 13.7k haste pt affliction is noticeably better purely single target unless it's not played decently.

O rly? Please do tell me more how destro actually cheeses damage other than those obvious bad player logs those few people did for rankings on nazgrim.

Shadowburn cheesing how so? I instantly cast an execute for a free Ember I can then use on boss or Havoc the boss and *shadowburn snipe* adds for full boss dmg.

Either way its not a loss. Oh and those adds have to die in raids I'm pretty sure you can agree shadowburn is pretty fast.

Affliction is known to deteriorate the longer the fight lasts (oh and you can *cheese* adds with drain soul for shards)

Oh and come tell me how it padding meters on fights like Paragons and I also admit it feels cheap being multidotting on Protectors.Shamans also with that GG 4 Target opener

Destro will pull ahead and 100% of the fights in SoO you can effectively use Havoc even juggernaut. (Havoc him and dps mines double embers same as single targetting him)

Aff only pulls ahead depending on the raid comp tricks etc and how long the fight is.

[Deleted]

Fun Fact:
You can also pull 500k destro DPS on Sha without even 1 tiny bit of cheesing.

All this "Aff is always better", "Destro is just cheesing" or vice versa is realy annoying!
Yes there are several bosses where you CAN cheese with a spec. But even if the first 20 people in WoL have cheesed that way, that does not mean that the same specc is completely inferior if you do not cheese on the boss.

Both speccs have their viability and getting ranked in the top 50 never has anything to do with the viability of the specc but only with a high ammount of proccluck, cheesing and an encounter tactic that favors exactly this specc you play.

And btw it is completely retarded to tell a player who is in progress (especially if he doesn't play 25men aka "lol ignore all boss mechanics and pop heal CDs") to play aff, as destro has so much more survivability.

[Baconeggcheese]

(especially if he doesn't play 25men aka "lol ignore all boss mechanics and pop heal CDs")

I lol'd at this, even if that were true the amount of spreadsheet planning my guild does around managing cooldowns etc is ludicrous vs the week we were on break and some of us did a 10 man heroic and basically 1 shot every boss with literally 0 planning and just winging everything all the way through thok in a few hours. Granted those are all the easy bosses, but the fact that we just threw ourselves at them like it was a flex or LFR speaks to itself.

Not that I want to start a debate about 10 vs 25, I was just taken back that you potentially actually think that you can just "lol ignore!" mechanics in either difficulty.

On topic: Totally agree with the point that its a poor idea to recommend someone play aff while they're still doing progression.

[Valq]

On topic: Totally agree with the point that its a poor idea to recommend someone play aff while they're still doing progression.

Can you elaborate on why you think its poor? (Assuming the person has the gear to play aff and is capable of playing it)
Aff blatantly outperforms destro on all bosses but garrosh and perhaps shamans if the blobs need aoe damage.
And since its progress, aff is a much better specc than destro in terms of movement and so on, which tends to happen a lot on progress bosses. So I don't see how its a poor choice.

[Strifey]

I did Aff on 6 fights during H progression.

Protectors, Norushen, Nazgrim, IJ, Malk, and Thok.

Pulled better numbers then our Destro Locks.


Also not sure people think Aff is only better on Protectors.
-Without cheesing on the adds on H Nazgrim and resetting him, I've destroyed Destro Locks on the meters and have way more damage on Nazgrim while having good add damage, all about unlimited shards and high Haunt uptime.
-For Norushen I'd say it's preference but again I have over 70% haunt uptime on alot of my parses and again beat all the destro locks I've run with, although this one depends alot on when you go down. You can also get trinket dots on Amalgam, swap it to all the adds, then swap it back to Amalgam at the end of the chain and have insane uptime on empowered dots like on Protectors while swimming in shards.
-For H IJ everything I've seen has Aff doing better on progression, especially since you sit back during progression where trinkets proc/2 min come up right at the Assault phase which lets Aff snapshot buffed dots and then reapply them between shock pulses, not to mention speccing KJC and losing like no dps when moving from all the mechanics in P1.
-Malk they're pretty even, depends on fight length and what you're comfortable really.
-Thok I pull way more dps on Thok while still having about 30M on the bats vs 40M on Destro, so I prefer it. This depends on running AV, saving on of your DS and 2nd pot for bats, and being comfortable with SS SoC and just constantly spreading it with empowered dots so you literally have 100% uptime on the very least DS+Pot dots + constant SoC AoE Spam.

Depends if you're comfortable with Aff though, I like Demo and Aff way more than Destro whether its progression or not. If you know how to play a spec and understand if it's good or not on bosses based on the mechanics it doesn't matter if it's progression. You would only play destro on progression because you aren't comfortable with other specs.

[Brusalk]

... some of us did a 10 man heroic and basically 1 shot every boss with literally 0 planning and just winging everything all the way through thok in a few hours. Granted those are all the easy bosses, but the fact that we just threw ourselves at them like it was a flex or LFR speaks to itself.

How in the world do you expect content to be challenging when you massively outgear the content and already know the core mechanics. How much warforged gear do you have? I have 1 and I've been clearing 14/14H in 10 since November. You cannot make any sort of comparison between the two difficulties unless you experience the content on unique characters with their own gear progression.

[Valq]

O rly? Please do tell me more how destro actually cheeses damage other than those obvious bad player logs those few people did for rankings on nazgrim.

Shadowburn cheesing how so? I instantly cast an execute for a free Ember I can then use on boss or Havoc the boss and *shadowburn snipe* adds for full boss dmg.

Either way its not a loss. Oh and those adds have to die in raids I'm pretty sure you can agree shadowburn is pretty fast.

Affliction is known to deteriorate the longer the fight lasts (oh and you can *cheese* adds with drain soul for shards)

Oh and come tell me how it padding meters on fights like Paragons and I also admit it feels cheap being multidotting on Protectors.Shamans also with that GG 4 Target opener

Destro will pull ahead and 100% of the fights in SoO you can effectively use Havoc even juggernaut. (Havoc him and dps mines double embers same as single targetting him)

Aff only pulls ahead depending on the raid comp tricks etc and how long the fight is.

While I agree that there's nothing wrong with shadowburning adds for embers, I don't see how multi-dotting on Protectors is "padding". Its more dps in the rook phase due to the adds sharing health. And the bosses generally need to die, so there's nothing wrong with running dots on them?

Shamans opener on 4 targets is padding? So you're saying its best to just single target 1 boss or 1 wolf? Don't all 4 targets need to die? Don't the bosses share health? And so by dotting them both, you're effectively doing double the damage to them? But wait, according to your logic its not padding to havoc and chaos bolt or havoc shadowburn but it is padding to multi dot?

Can you explain how effectively using havoc will make you pull ahead on 100% of the fights please? How's it going to help you beat an aff on shamans, protectors, malkorok, nazgrim, thok, norushen, sha, juggernaut (that mine example doesn't really result in much dps, surely not enough dps to make up for dots ticking during pulse phase and the long opener)..

[Baconeggcheese]

How in the world do you expect content to be challenging when you massively outgear the content and already know the core mechanics. How much warforged gear do you have? I have 1 and I've been clearing 14/14H in 10 since November. You cannot make any sort of comparison between the two difficulties unless you experience the content on unique characters with their own gear progression.

I think you didn't read this sentence or completely missed my point.

Not that I want to start a debate about 10 vs 25, I was just taken back that you potentially actually think that you can just "lol ignore!" mechanics in either difficulty.

One could say we knew all the core mechanics because in fact we *do not* LOL ignore! them with stacking healing cds and that's why we were so capable and able to do that. I am not trying to start a debate about 10 and 25 man at all, my entire point was that I couldn't believe this guy actually thought that.

Can you elaborate on why you think its poor? (Assuming the person has the gear to play aff and is capable of playing it)
Aff blatantly outperforms destro on all bosses but garrosh and perhaps shamans if the blobs need aoe damage.
And since its progress, aff is a much better specc than destro in terms of movement and so on, which tends to happen a lot on progress bosses. So I don't see how its a poor choice.

Because aff absolutely doesn't outperform destro on anything besides protectors. I'm not sure where you're getting that information, but you should read the rest of the posts in this thread where your questions already been answered.