Originally Posted by
Halwyn
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.