Page 1 of 6
1
2
3
... LastLast
  1. #1

    Is Havoc to blame?

    The more the expansion progresses the more apparent it is that Affliction is better suited to deal with a variety of encounters compared to destruction which is left with no niche, aka affliction has a better toolkit

    the more i think about it the more irrational the skill 'Havoc' appears to be: cleave especially spread cleave is de facto a specialty of dot specs, what's the point of giving such a skill to our direct damage spec?

    not only does it put a 'cap' on how good Chaos Bolt can be, but it also suffocates our single target damage out of fear of those duplicated Chaos Bolts getting out of hand, while essentially leaving Affliction the king of... everything... (save perhaps priority burst)

    Havoc also has a similar effect on PvP, severely restraining the damage of Chaos bolt which is fixed via the Focused Chaos honor talent

    so is lock spec imbalance a matter of number tuning or more a matter of poor toolkit design? (and yes i'm deliberately avoiding to mention demo)

  2. #2
    Destro lock was so much more effective and had a higher skillcap when shadowburn was good and baseline. Chaos bolt has been strong before with havoc in a much more powerful state and the spec wasn't out of control.

  3. #3
    Brewmaster Uzkin's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Finland
    Posts
    1,299
    Havoc, just like everything else about destruction, was better designed in MoP and WoD than in Legion -- and didn't cause any imbalance. Blizzard broadband-failed dramatically at destro design in Legion. Incompetence, laziness or spitefulness, I wonder?

  4. #4
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Location
    Israel
    Posts
    20,781
    Destruction only issue is that it's not Affliction. Destruction by itself is actually fine.

  5. #5
    Remember last time we had a spec so versatile it made the other 2 irrelevant?

    It was gutted so people could play the other 2 and was turned into a steaming pile of crap the next expansion.

  6. #6
    Well there's 2 things, the specs a tiny bit under tuned since it scales like crap and they haven't buffed it in forever. In previous xpacs it always got buffed at the beginning of a tier because of this exact reason. Though comparing it to affliction is unfair, because affliction is vastly over performing vs other specs in the game.

    The other thing is how it was designed in general with legion, almost all of its damaged was flattened out. Ember generation skyrocketed to the point where CB was rivaling incinerate for casts. Which means each individual CB has to be weaker to compensate. All of our CD's are basically Dot's. around 4% of our total damage on each fight is wrapped up in lord of flames which is a one time use over 25 seconds with horrendous guardian ai on some of the slowest guardians in the game with a very large chunk of their damage coming from melee hits meaning it isn't even good at aoe. Havoc also had a ludicrous amount of power poured into it by giving it 100% up time with wreak havoc. None of this is to mention that destruction got some of the weakest or most niche / poorly designed legendaries out of all the specs and the only one that was actually good was pure 2 target and got nerfed to the point where its only a couple % ahead of always useful legendaries despite being hyper niche.

    Then when they reworked it it was a compromise rework and not the full rework it needed, which means it got left somewhere in the middle of the old design and the new design. So it still doesn't have enough burst to do what it used to do since generation is still too high and havoc still has too much power wrapped into it as well as all of our CD's still being fairly weak dots that don't scale well.

    And not of that is to mention the damage modifiers like eradication being completely counter intuitive to how the spec should play, rain of fire being a pitiful radius with long duration in an expansion that has extremely high movement, Our aoe kit being completely incoherent, and fights generally being made in a way that actively hurts our abilities and legendaries (Most of the cleave bosses in this xpac had to be tanked too far apart for magistrikes our strongest cleave legendary to work, Cry havoc needs the mobs to be stacked so they basically didn't give us a dps trait that others had, demonic inquisition was a cleave boss that literally prevented us from cleaving).

    I could talk about this all day, there's an incredible amount of design choices that went into destruction that have actively held it back the entire xpac.

    But again, at the end of the day none of that really matters when they could easily have just tuned it to be more relevant. You can always tune past mechanical issues, which means at the end of the day they chose to have the spec be in this position. I can only imagine the reasons why.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  7. #7
    If I were them I'd turn Havoc into a 2 minute debuff that replicates X% of your single target to the debuffed target. Simple, high quality of life and they can decide themselves what the percentage should be that destruction can 2-target cleave without having to gimp single target. I don't think that being able to cleave 2 targets very well is too gamebreaking of a niche or hard to design around, I just think that the current version of havoc is dumb.

    - - - Updated - - -

    I would also return shadowburn and ember-whoring back to destruction. That is where the skillcap of destruction should be imo.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Uzkin View Post
    Havoc, just like everything else about destruction, was better designed in MoP and WoD than in Legion -- and didn't cause any imbalance. Blizzard broadband-failed dramatically at destro design in Legion. Incompetence, laziness or spitefulness, I wonder?
    is there a website i can go to to see WOD rotations? everyone always says thye were the best and most fun

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Hisholyness View Post
    is there a website i can go to to see WOD rotations? everyone always says thye were the best and most fun
    Think of a current state of Destrucion. Now add...

    A) Chaosbolt costs 1 shard
    B) Shadowburn (baseline) - costs 1 shard, instant, can only be cast on sub 20% hp targets, hits for half of the Chaosbolt (non-crit), if the target dies in 5-sec window of being shadowburned, you get 2 shards back
    C) Fire and Brimstone - toggleable ability instead of passive, while active all ST spells bar Chaosbolt and Shadowburn hit all targets near the current one for reduced damage at the cost of 1 shard
    D) Havoc - 15s CD, has 3 charges of the debuff to copy your spells, each single target spell consumes one charge (INCLUDING Shadowburn), Chaosbolt consumes all three. Old trick - use shadowburn on sub-20% target to copy that damage via havoc on a healthy target (glyphable into 55 sec CD with 6 charges)
    E) Rain of Fire is useless and doesn't cost anything
    F) Mastery - increases the damage of shard-consuming abilities (that applies to Fire and Brimstone spells too)
    G) Dark Soul - basically baseline Soul Harvest, 30% Crit for 20 sec, 2 min CD (talentable into having 2 charges and glyphable to cut the duration and cooldown in half)

    And...

    The main dish - Charred Remains (talent) - Incinerate and Conflag hit for less damage, but generate more shard bits (75% less and 200% more, IIRC, could be wrong on numbers). Chaos Bolt can now be affected by Fire and Brimstone (costing 2 shards that way, naturally).


    Basically it meant the majority of your damage came in form of the Chaosbolt, Immolate and Shadowburn, while Inci and Conflag hit like the wet noodles, yet a full FnB rotation in decent gear was self-sustainable on 4 or more targets. Naturally, that also gave you A LOT of switching potential with always having shards ready, and Shadowburn allowing you to generate even more (plus to cleave those onto the main target via Havoc). And AoE Chaosbolt paired with a glyph that halved the cd and duration of the Dark Soul gave you means of frequent AoE bursts (like Mannoroth). Overall, Destruction had very little downsides, only being outshone by Affliction once the "POP RING AND BURST IT DOWN LOL" tactics in HFC became the go-to standart.
    Last edited by Halwyn; 2017-12-20 at 02:21 AM.
    It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic... No, what the heck, I'll laugh anyway.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Halwyn View Post
    Think of a current state of Destrucion. Now add...

    A) Chaosbolt costs 1 shard
    B) Shadowburn (baseline) - costs 1 shard, instant, can only be cast on sub 20% hp targets, hits for half of the Chaosbolt (non-crit), if the target dies in 5-sec window of being shadowburned, you get 2 shards back
    C) Fire and Brimstone - toggleable ability instead of passive, while active all ST spells bar Chaosbolt and Shadowburn hit all targets near the current one for reduced damage at the cost of 1 shard
    D) Havoc - 15s CD, has 3 charges of the debuff to copy your spells, each single target spell consumes one charge (INCLUDING Shadowburn), Chaosbolt consumes all three. Old trick - use shadowburn on sub-20% target to copy that damage via havoc on a healthy target (glyphable into 55 sec CD with 6 charges)
    E) Rain of Fire is useless and doesn't cost anything
    F) Mastery - increases the damage of shard-consuming abilities (that applies to Fire and Brimstone spells too)
    G) Dark Soul - basically baseline Soul Harvest, 30% Crit for 20 sec, 2 min CD (talentable into having 2 charges and glyphable to cut the duration and cooldown in half)

    And...

    The main dish - Charred Remains (talent) - Incinerate and Conflag hit for less damage, but generate more shard bits (75% less and 200% more, IIRC, could be wrong on numbers). Chaos Bolt can now be affected by Fire and Brimstone (costing 2 shards that way, naturally).


    Basically it meant the majority of your damage came in form of the Chaosbolt, Immolate and Shadowburn, while Inci and Conflag hit like the wet noodles, yet a full FnB rotation in decent gear was self-sustainable on 4 or more targets. Naturally, that also gave you A LOT of switching potential with always having shards ready, and Shadowburn allowing you to generate even more (plus to cleave those onto the main target via Havoc). And AoE Chaosbolt paired with a glyph that halved the cd and duration of the Dark Soul gave you means of frequent AoE bursts (like Mannoroth). Overall, Destruction had very little downsides, only being outshone by Affliction once the "POP RING AND BURST IT DOWN LOL" tactics in HFC became the go-to standart.
    thanks for typing this out, it probly took a few minutes. I'm designing classes for a game and needed a burster

  11. #11
    Deleted
    I miss MoP Destruction, yep i know i'm swinging the lantern but it was such a great spec to play, just really don't know why they felt the need to change it.

    Afflictions weapon is to blame, its just a poorly designed system that scales insanely with stats, as we are seeing. It is so intrisically locked into every aspect of the spec that it has become impossible to tune one area i.e single target without have massive knock on effects in other departments.

    Cant nerf multi-dotting/cleave as ST will nose dive, cant buff ST as Cleave/multi-dot will sky rocket. Give us adds we shoot up the meters, give us movement we dont suffer that much as dots still tick hard and can talent for it. All the weapon does is take every issue and either multiply the good aspect or subtract the negative so much now with the level of stats we have it has basically become more work that its worth at this stage of the expac to fix.

    The only way to fix affliction at this point is make every encounter pure single target with no adds whatsoever and no movement and still it will be middle of the pack because of scaling. I mean i'm enjoying myself this tier immensely but i do feel sorry for destro as there is literally no reason to play it.

    As for some of the talents for destro, i mean i dunno wtf they were thinking in designing talents like Eradication?? Ever since the implementation of chaos bolt the spec has been about................well huge fucking chaos bolts and how to make your huge fucking chaos bolts even huger lol. Not something to cast to maintain a buff?? Way to water down the spec tbh, it feel so counter intuitive to be casting a non buffed CB just to put up this poxy buff, especially when they cost 2 shards!!
    Last edited by mmoc6c2e0bc3b9; 2017-12-21 at 11:01 AM.

  12. #12
    All I want for christmas is Life tap removal and GoSaC giving pet ability and the specc would be near perfect

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Halwyn View Post
    Think of a current state of Destrucion. Now add...

    A) Chaosbolt costs 1 shard
    B) Shadowburn (baseline) - costs 1 shard, instant, can only be cast on sub 20% hp targets, hits for half of the Chaosbolt (non-crit), if the target dies in 5-sec window of being shadowburned, you get 2 shards back
    C) Fire and Brimstone - toggleable ability instead of passive, while active all ST spells bar Chaosbolt and Shadowburn hit all targets near the current one for reduced damage at the cost of 1 shard
    D) Havoc - 15s CD, has 3 charges of the debuff to copy your spells, each single target spell consumes one charge (INCLUDING Shadowburn), Chaosbolt consumes all three. Old trick - use shadowburn on sub-20% target to copy that damage via havoc on a healthy target (glyphable into 55 sec CD with 6 charges)
    E) Rain of Fire is useless and doesn't cost anything
    F) Mastery - increases the damage of shard-consuming abilities (that applies to Fire and Brimstone spells too)
    G) Dark Soul - basically baseline Soul Harvest, 30% Crit for 20 sec, 2 min CD (talentable into having 2 charges and glyphable to cut the duration and cooldown in half)
    i have to say it.. the good old days, i can never seem to pick up destro this expansion, because it feels like a half finished product. ALL of the three warlock specs, affliction is the closest to what it used to be, the other two are completely ruined by blizzard.
    Last edited by Realmerc; 2017-12-21 at 03:04 PM.

  14. #14
    Destro's problems have very little to do with Havoc, or with Destro as a spec. In a vacuum, it's a perfectly viable spec that's got good tools for most of the bosses in Antorus (ranged cleave, decent movement options if it can plan it out, good defensives, decent to good fingertip burst, etc.). The trouble with it is that all of those tools are things that Affliction can do just as well. Multidotting, the same movement options, the same defensives coupled with personal healing, acceptable burst if shards can be saved...there's not much that Destro can do that Affliction can't, and with a simpler overall rotation.

    Add to that Affliction's skill cap. It can generate shards quickly with Drain Soul sniping low-HP adds, something Destro can't do. Its multi-add cleave is stronger than Destro's, and doesn't require a respec to Fire and Brimstone/Cataclysm. Multidotting three or four sustained targets takes a lot of practice to be good at and a lot of juggling. Managing two resource types with maximum efficiency (souls and soul shards) adds to the skill cap. Souls give the spec even more potential power.

    Against that, Destro is harder to get basically right and has less overall reward than Affliction if played well. Havoc's insane power at the EN/NH era was a problem, but the "fixed" version seems balanced enough.

  15. #15
    Deleted
    I think destro is easier to balance than affy. I think the problem is they can't balance affy. Dot classes are usually difficult to balance at the best of times, but then you throw reap souls and wrath of consumption into the mix and they have given themselves a massive problem to deal with

    If affy didn't exist destro wouldn't have much to groan about damage wise itbvoukd use a little buff. Gosac rework, fnb baseline, soul harvest baseline, shadow burn baseline or moving so it can be picked, I personally loved charred remains and toggle fnb I hate rof

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Maleific View Post
    Remember last time we had a spec so versatile it made the other 2 irrelevant?

    It was gutted so people could play the other 2 and was turned into a steaming pile of crap the next expansion.
    No, it was gutted because of demon hunter's class fantasy.

  17. #17
    Over 9000! Kithelle's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    Somewhere where canon still exists
    Posts
    9,476
    Quote Originally Posted by Uzkin View Post
    Havoc, just like everything else about destruction, was better designed in MoP and WoD than in Legion -- and didn't cause any imbalance. Blizzard broadband-failed dramatically at destro design in Legion. Incompetence, laziness or spitefulness, I wonder?
    Failed a lot when it comes to Warlocks in Legion...the epic fail that is Demo and then the fact they basically tell you were to lazy to fix it so don't play Demo till the next expansion.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Soulreaper9 View Post
    I think destro is easier to balance than affy. I think the problem is they can't balance affy. Dot classes are usually difficult to balance at the best of times, but then you throw reap souls and wrath of consumption into the mix and they have given themselves a massive problem to deal with

    If affy didn't exist destro wouldn't have much to groan about damage wise itbvoukd use a little buff. Gosac rework, fnb baseline, soul harvest baseline, shadow burn baseline or moving so it can be picked, I personally loved charred remains and toggle fnb I hate rof
    Aff's on-death traits are actually insanely simple to balance; make them proc at a certain minimum rate whether things are dying or not, and a certain maximum rate no matter how many things are dying.

    Done.
    I am the one who knocks ... because I need your permission to enter.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Thelxi View Post
    If I were them I'd turn Havoc into a 2 minute debuff that replicates X% of your single target to the debuffed target. Simple, high quality of life and they can decide themselves what the percentage should be that destruction can 2-target cleave without having to gimp single target. I don't think that being able to cleave 2 targets very well is too gamebreaking of a niche or hard to design around, I just think that the current version of havoc is dumb.

    - - - Updated - - -

    I would also return shadowburn and ember-whoring back to destruction. That is where the skillcap of destruction should be imo.
    That’s basically pre MoP Havoc.

  20. #20
    Stood in the Fire
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    Canada!
    Posts
    426
    Destructions current big issue is poor scaling, less so Havoc.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •