Destruction in BfA - feedback

[Kirroth]

The talent build I've been happy with on Beta is Soul Fire, Internal Combustion, Grim of Sup, Soul Conduit.

The extra button from SF and the extra Immolate oversight from IC add enough moment to moment complexity to the rotation to keep me entertained. The extra resource generation from SF and SC means I can reliably Conflag into a Backdrafted Chaos Bolt nearly every time. There's a satisfying rhythm of a few Incinerates, throw Soul Fire as it comes off cooldown, refresh Immo, Conflag, Backdrafted Chaos Bolt, repeat.

More active buttons like Shadowburn or CDF feels crowded. More passive choices like Reverse Entropy feels boring and unsatisfying. This build hits the happy Little Bear spot for me, and I hope the tuning passes make it a viable one.

ETA: I think the key to Internal Combustion is that you stop thinking of Immolate as a DoT to refresh in the right window and start thinking of it as a resource meter to refill either when it's running low or when you need to top it off before a burst phase. Those extra Immo casts are sort of taking the place of Life Tap as a decaying resource you need to refill regularly. And with SS flowing so freely the extra check of "Do I have enough Immo charge?" before casting Chaos Bolt isn't particularly heavy, once you get used to it.

[Gaidax]

Eradication, Reverse Entropy, Cataclysm, Supremacy, Dark Soul.

Why? Because stuff I am doing there now favors ability to pop all your shit once per 3 minutes and annihilate.

[Baconeggcheese]

After some pretty extensive testing with different talents, I honestly liked the Cata AoE situation better, just to play through.

Cataclysm is already the go to talent on live for aoe, all they did was move the dps CD from the row, nerf F&B down to 40% of incinerate dmg, and reduce the cast time on cataclysm. Like I said you couple that with the lower havoc CD and its just better.

This design of cata doesn't seem to know what its trying to be so it ends up just edging everything else out. It has a decent direct damage component while also having sustained via the immolates it applies and the dot dmg / shards from those immolates. We always used it exclusively as a burst AoE CD on demo, but they've just continued to push it to this awkward little bit of everything talent.

The specs entire aoe kit (or lack thereof) needs a hard look at though... or an aoe talent row likely won't ever make sense since the talents right now need to be designed to fill the holes in the baseline aoe kit.

Not sure how Blizz can fix this. Either they find a way to naturally make Roaring Blaze and Grimoire of Sacrifice scale or it will always be a problem.

I don't believe they can or will.

They'd have to make roaring blaze / gosac scale in a way that they won't. I honestly don't think these petless talents will ever be balanceable talents. They're doing the smart thing by making lone wolf baseline for marksman, I have no idea why they aren't doing the same for destro.

And then gosup is a very obvious problem talent design right off the bat, I have no idea how they plan to make it not inevitably dominate the row and spec. I can already see it becoming this spec that bursts high during lust due to CD stacking around Gosup and then just peters out over the course of the rest of the fight since the rest of the spec will need to be tuned around those 30 seconds.

OKAY YOU TALKED ME INTO IT. GoSAC NEEDS TO BE VIABLE.

I can be convincing when I don't talk

Eh. CDF fits well enough with it's Immo reliance and it's a useful spell to have, cause it more easily means some cleave or AoE options.

The thing is CDF is not an aoe talent, its a ST talent that happens to have a tiny amount of aoe attached to it. That's why it didn't have the aoe component at launch, and they added it in later on. If they really wanted it to be an aoe talent, they would've moved it to the 60 row with the rest of them.

Also its a talent that doesn't benefit from anything else in the kit, it doesn't generate shards which means you don't want to use it during gosup, It doesn't get copied when you havoc, if F&B becomes a viable option you won't be casting immolate during aoe, so you won't be casting CDF.

It has nothing tying it to the kit besides an arbitrary immolate requirement. Its just poorly designed and shoehorned in.

But I personally LOATHE the channeling.

IIRC there's macro commands so you don't interrupt channeling. People who are used to spamming buttons used it for malefic grasp etc, though iirc it makes it so you can't que the next spell which means you end up delaying your next cast a tiny bit. Not as big of an issue for CDF as it was for MG since it was your filler.

[Gaidax]

It has nothing tying it to the kit besides an arbitrary immolate requirement. Its just poorly designed and shoehorned in.

But you get to press a button once in a while! That instantly makes it awesome, fun and good design for people around here apparently. Imagine the uproar if it gets the "p" word done to it.

[Baconeggcheese]

But you get to press a button once in a while! That instantly makes it awesome, fun and good design for people around here apparently. Imagine the uproar if it gets the "p" word done to it.

Honestly don't want to see it removed entirely, I think the animations a lot of fun.

I honestly think it'd make for a good aoe talent, Just redesigned. Maybe as a replacement to rain of fire that could potentially address some of rain of fires biggest issues especially in situations with highly mobile mobs like dungeons.

[Lucrece]

CDF needs to have the immolation requirement removed and make it usable on the move. Move it to replace Eradication at lv15 talent row.

[Kirroth]

CDF needs to have the immolation requirement removed and make it usable on the move. Move it to replace Eradication at lv15 talent row.

How would that even work? The Immo requirement is only half limitation. It's also a way for you to actively designate targets. "Everything I'm in combat with" is fuzzy, prone to bugs, and not even what you always want. "Currently selected target only" would be a fairly significant change in the other direction, and also not what you always want. The current design has its limitations, sure, but limitations aren't always bad. They give things character and introduce skill mastery rewards.

[Baconeggcheese]

How would that even work? The Immo requirement is only half limitation. It's also a way for you to actively designate targets. "Everything I'm in combat with" is fuzzy, prone to bugs, and not even what you always want. "Currently selected target only" would be a fairly significant change in the other direction, and also not what you always want. The current design has its limitations, sure, but limitations aren't always bad. They give things character and introduce skill mastery rewards.

There's pretty much no situation where you want them flying around at every target immolated, there are definitely situations where you absolutely don't want it flying at certain targets that you want immolated, I don't really see when you would want it to split damage by having immolate on multiple targets.

The real easy / obvious solution is to make it shoot at your currently selected target, which I don't see any problems with.

[Lucrece]

How would that even work? The Immo requirement is only half limitation. It's also a way for you to actively designate targets. "Everything I'm in combat with" is fuzzy, prone to bugs, and not even what you always want. "Currently selected target only" would be a fairly significant change in the other direction, and also not what you always want. The current design has its limitations, sure, but limitations aren't always bad. They give things character and introduce skill mastery rewards.

Or it could be as simple as "This spell explodes on the target and cleaves enemies within 5-10 yards for X% of the damage". Sort of a warlock equivalent to eyebeam or fists of fury. But then Blizzard would be tempted to put it in the aoe row, so I'd rather they make it a single target spell usable on the move and swap it with Eradication so the lv15 talent row becomes our mobility row (as I've said before, Flashover should make incinerates affected by backdraft castable on the move).

[Deleted]

There's pretty much no situation where you want them flying around at every target immolated, there are definitely situations where you absolutely don't want it flying at certain targets that you want immolated, I don't really see when you would want it to split damage by having immolate on multiple targets.

When you have a bunch of "half HP left"-monsters and the target you selected dies way faster than the rest of the pack because a hunter or second Warlock used it for their AiS/CBs. Your channel is stopped and you lost 50% of that spell's power.

You can always choose to immolate only 1 target, which will result in your "only target selected" -scenario.

And you mentioned a scenario where you want to immolate targets, but not damage them with CDF... I can't think of a situation where this is helpful right now. Where or when would you want that?

[Orwell7]

When you have a bunch of "half HP left"-monsters and the target you selected dies way faster than the rest of the pack because a hunter or second Warlock used it for their AiS/CBs. Your channel is stopped and you lost 50% of that spell's power.

You can always choose to immolate only 1 target, which will result in your "only target selected" -scenario.

And you mentioned a scenario where you want to immolate targets, but not damage them with CDF... I can't think of a situation where this is helpful right now. Where or when would you want that?

1,) you talk about trash-aoe. Nobody really cares about AoE where a few AiS/CBs delete 50% of a health bar.

2,) immolate generates shards -> you want to dot targets that are not priority, so you can spend more shards (or CDF) on priority targets. This is disabled with the current iteration of CDF.

[SpikeySquad]

And you mentioned a scenario where you want to immolate targets, but not damage them with CDF... I can't think of a situation where this is helpful right now. Where or when would you want that?

Any boss that has a non-full damage immunity so KG is a good example as you still gain shard fragments to pump more damage into the adds. There's always SC for this sort of situation though.

Basically anytime you want to prioritise damage on one mob the random CDFs bolts are less than ideal and more so if the targets are not stacked.

[Deleted]

1,) you talk about trash-aoe. Nobody really cares about AoE where a few AiS/CBs delete 50% of a health bar.

2,) immolate generates shards -> you want to dot targets that are not priority, so you can spend more shards (or CDF) on priority targets. This is disabled with the current iteration of CDF.

to 1#

thats how most mythic+ runs are done from +15-17. That's the difficulties most people do on a weekly basis. My AiS can and will chunk away a good portion of a mobs health in that diffculty - at least in legion.
Tough life for destro warlocks in general then, because their burst damage for short lived adds - or burst damage in general is kinda their trademark.
However, that's not even that important, because it's just stupid to have it cancel and on cooldown because of that.
For every reason you find against it, you could also find one reason for it.

Personally, I think the talent is already broken because it's a 3s channel and channel spells are the worst thing in skill design that ever happened to WoW. So it's not like I want to try too hard to defend that abomination.


to 2#

you don't *start* dotting targets when priority targets are up, the extra shards aren't worth the loss of GCDs.
Either way, at worst you lose out on 2 immolation ticks and you should pick talents according to their uses.
CDF isn't useful for priority adds. It's much better on AoE and your generic trashpulls in m+ - believe it or not you have something else for priority adds in that same row.

[Grevmak]

Unrelated to the recent discussion here, but the new Soulfire is really fun. Incase you don't know:



Having a juicy soulshard generator that's stronger than incinerate but weaker than Chaosbolt which reduces its CD because of Soulshards demands you to track its CD so you don't waste its cooldown with a Chaosbolt or Rain of Fire, which is really fun if you play around it perfectly. Also works nicely with Internal Combustion, so that's nice.

Really hope they stick to this and it'll become viable, this is a really fun talent to play around IMO. I also love Grimoire of Supremacy, now THIS should be baseline. More and more damage with chaosbolt during infernal? Hell yeah.

[Deleted]

Unrelated to the recent discussion here, but the new Soulfire is really fun. Incase you don't know:



Having a juicy soulshard generator that's stronger than incinerate but weaker than Chaosbolt which reduces its CD because of Soulshards demands you to track its CD so you don't waste its cooldown with a Chaosbolt or Rain of Fire, which is really fun if you play around it perfectly. Also works nicely with Internal Combustion, so that's nice.

Really hope they stick to this and it'll become viable, this is a really fun talent to play around IMO. I also love Grimoire of Supremacy, now THIS should be baseline. More and more damage with chaosbolt during infernal? Hell yeah.

I too enjoy the new Soulfire. I think it plays well into the spec, and requires you consider if you should soulfire or chaos bolt first (math will be worked out on this, but both scenarios exist).

The Supremacy though, I think is really bad. It requires you to stand still for 30 secs to get the full benefit, that can be quite punishing if you get hit by some mechanic. Obv you can delay your infernal sometimes, but thats not always the case.

[Grevmak]

The Supremacy though, I think is really bad. It requires you to stand still for 30 secs to get the full benefit, that can be quite punishing if you get hit by some mechanic. Obv you can delay your infernal sometimes, but thats not always the case.

Yes, that is true. Mobility is a problem with that talent, I'm just a sucker for gameplay mechanics that, in theory, scale really really high. With a ton of haste, Lust etc. you could get so many of those stacks, which sounds like a fun thing to do, similar to the val'kyr of the DK.

If you asked me, Warlock needs MoP Shadowburn baseline back but Blizz loves their pruning and as such we are not allowed to get mobility if we're casters because that would not be part of the class fantasy. Oh well.

[Jahrastafari]

Yipz does Destro.

https://hooktube.com/watch?v=nQtUTmEkPBw

[Kirroth]

Having a juicy soulshard generator that's stronger than incinerate but weaker than Chaosbolt which reduces its CD because of Soulshards demands you to track its CD so you don't waste its cooldown with a Chaosbolt or Rain of Fire, which is really fun if you play around it perfectly. Also works nicely with Internal Combustion, so that's nice.

I've found the same thing. I'm also finding that the extra Immolate babysitting plus watching SF's cooldown are just the right amount of extra complexity to make the Destro rotation fun for me without upsetting the core build/spend mechanic of the spec. I'm not sure it's the most optimal talent spec, but it's probably what I'm going to run with unless it's super sub-par.

[Warning]

New "during casting" sounds for destro imo are pretty bad, especially immolate and chaos bolt. Sounds like some kind of weird wind tunnel effect rather than rising flame.

[Gaidax]

I am pretty concerned about AoE now actually. Downtimes between Cataclysms are pretty bad.