Destruction is doing horribly on WarcraftLogs over the last day

[TummyBoy]

Set range to 1 day, top 75% of parses, and look at Mythic logs:

Nythendra: dead last, losing even to Affliction now which is second worst

Ilgy: middle of the pack, although this boss doesn't mean much because of how ooze padding works

Elerethe: dead last, second worst is Demo

Ursoc: sixth worst. Looking at damage to bosses, second worst.

Dragons of Nightmare: sixth place. With the way Havoc works you'd expect us to do significantly better.

Cenarius: bottom half. Only 8 classes are worse.

Xavius: fourth best. Again, padding. When you look at player damage to bosses we're the fifth worst.

On two bosses Destruction has been the absolute worst, and for both of them the second worst has been another Warlock spec. Our best fight clocks us in at 6th place, and that's a fight where we can use Havoc for 100% of the time.

I don't want to say the sky is falling. I don't want to make the Destruction situation seem worse than it is. I know that one day of data is not much to base an entire generalization of a spec on. With that said, this may show that to a certain extent, although Destruction didn't change all that much in 7.1, the lowest classes (Fury, DK Frost, Mage Frost, Affliction) got some fairly decent buffs and are now standing out a bit better among their competitors, while Destruction is stuck in a relatively bad place.

Are we starting to get left behind?

[Deleted]

Yes look at damage on bosses on fights where add damage is important to further your agenda. Destro is fine.

[penquinn]

Yes look at damage on bosses on fights where add damage is important to further your agenda. Destro is fine.

the way people pad on ily/xavius is not effective dps

[Shimejii]

Because doing 1 day of logs is a good way to determine a spec is good or not. Give the good people a chance to get the logs in for the week, it will balance out and destro should be ahead again for most of these fights. Destro has its ups and downs, elerethe is not a very good destro fight.

[Deleted]

I said it before.

IN RELATIVE TERMS buffing other classes is an indirect nerf to destruction.

One thing that is super weird to me is how even with heavy use of Wreak Havoc, which basically doubles our damage, some classes still outperform Destruction on fights that are basically made for the way destruction is designed.

There is still time though. Blizzard has to act soon. The current state is not unacceptable, but it could be a lot better. The only thing I am worried about is that they trust they own data (which may be skewed) way more than outside influences, including warcraftlogs.

[Kirroth]

One thing that is super weird to me is how even with heavy use of Wreak Havoc, which basically doubles our damage, some classes still outperform Destruction on fights that are basically made for the way destruction is designed.

Ehhh, I know it's a gross generalization, but even so that's overstating it enough I want to prevent the spread of misconceptions.

For starters, Havoc doesn't double pet damage. That's perma-pets (or GrimSac), temp-pet cooldowns, and Dimensional Rifts from the Scepter. Then there's the opportunity cost, and I don't just mean a few GCD. Taking Wreak Havoc means you don't have Channel Demonfire or Soul Conduit, both of which are significant DPS boosts as well. So you should only be counting the amount that Wreak Havoc out performs taking one of the other options.

All told I doubt Wreak Havoc breaks 50% even on a super optimal fight for it. Which, if you actually think about it, there aren't any of in EN. If you take Twin Ogron as the 100% optimal fight design for it and Hans & Franz as maybe 80%, very little in EN comes close to those. Maybe Dragons if you're cheesing it by standing in the middle.

[Deleted]

Ehhh, I know it's a gross generalization, but even so that's overstating it enough I want to prevent the spread of misconceptions.

For starters, Havoc doesn't double pet damage. That's perma-pets (or GrimSac), temp-pet cooldowns, and Dimensional Rifts from the Scepter. Then there's the opportunity cost, and I don't just mean a few GCD. Taking Wreak Havoc means you don't have Channel Demonfire or Soul Conduit, both of which are significant DPS boosts as well. So you should only be counting the amount that Wreak Havoc out performs taking one of the other options.

All told I doubt Wreak Havoc breaks 50% even on a super optimal fight for it. Which, if you actually think about it, there aren't any of in EN. If you take Twin Ogron as the 100% optimal fight design for it and Hans & Franz as maybe 80%, very little in EN comes close to those. Maybe Dragons if you're cheesing it by standing in the middle.

yeah true. I just didn't bother going into the details my bad

[TummyBoy]

Yes look at damage on bosses on fights where add damage is important to further your agenda. Destro is fine.

As a mythic raider you should understand that on certain bosses you can excessively pad meters in ways that do not contribute whatsoever to anything. The oozes on Ilgy are a good examples at they still take damage at 0% health while they explode, which means spamming FnB Incinerate into them is completely pointless. Xavius has multiple adds you can use to just pad the meters at the cost of one GCD.

The only situation in which Destruction actually does well is one with permanent or long-lasting adds that you need to kill. In that case Destruction is absolutely fine. Otherwise, it does have quite a few limitations. This is why Destro remains to be such a strong spec in Mythic+, yet fairly under average in raids.

Because doing 1 day of logs is a good way to determine a spec is good or not. Give the good people a chance to get the logs in for the week, it will balance out and destro should be ahead again for most of these fights. Destro has its ups and downs, elerethe is not a very good destro fight.

I actually talked about this in the OP, although you seemingly missed it. One day is very short term, but like it or not, it is telling to a certain extent. We'll have to wait some time to know for certain (as in, till the end of next week to see one week of parses), but it was quite surprising to see Destruction so low among mythic raiders.

[Deleted]

Well at least Affli got a nice bump to dmg and are now a middle of the pack specc aswell.

[kuLiii]

Well at least Affli got a nice bump to dmg and are now a middle of the pack specc aswell.

Have to agree with this, yesterday it felt somehow a bit easier to (at least) keep up with the others. Still behind, but maybe a few extra levels on my wep and a lot more practice should do the trick.

[Jessicka]

I said it before.

IN RELATIVE TERMS buffing other classes is an indirect nerf to destruction.

One thing that is super weird to me is how even with heavy use of Wreak Havoc, which basically doubles our damage, some classes still outperform Destruction on fights that are basically made for the way destruction is designed.

There is still time though. Blizzard has to act soon. The current state is not unacceptable, but it could be a lot better. The only thing I am worried about is that they trust they own data (which may be skewed) way more than outside influences, including warcraftlogs.

No, they don't. We're at 7.1 now, and they're still talking about balances and fixes being months away. The class design team has seriously dropped the ball in so many places, none moreso than Warlocks, but Mages are stuck playing Fire, Shadow Priests are stuck with StM, while Holy Priest is still not in a good place after the umpteenth overhaul.

Artifacts have only served to entrench the problems, since a) Players now feel 'stuck' to a spec, and b) data for 'weaker' specs is wholly unreliable because people don't have the artifact traits on their weaker artifacts. So, Blizzard are waiting to see how things play out while people build up multiple artifacts to see if catching up with traits fixes anything.

Then there are legendaries, which are wildly variable in quality, and spec-locking in and of themselves.

[Deleted]

Yes look at damage on bosses on fights where add damage is important to further your agenda. Destro is fine.

What it actually reveals is that destruction is in the same boat as affliction: the moment you cant use you crutch (affliction is AOE, destruction is endless cleave with Havoc)...it's pretty crap

Both suffer fromthe sam eproblem: low single target damage, which is kept low to stop it getting out of hand when you can multiply it

So basically, destruction has low single damage because oops, you can double it with permanent Havoc Cleave, affliction, because oops it would become too high when you could multidot

That's the issue. They designed the class badly and balanced them around being able to use their crutch, the result is you're boned when you can't and in plenty of current raid you can't.

It wold have been way better to make Chaos Bolt strong and then keep cleave under control by having Havoc/Wreak Havoc with a recuding element

They didn't. Instead they left Havoc essentially double full-power spells, result, destruction is balanced around using it because they see it as preferable to have it perform badly in some fights rather than beat mages, I mean, be overpowered, in others.

That's bad design - tuning around being able to use one ability means you're screwed when you can't, it makes it harder to balance destruction because of the potential pendulum swings between Havoc and non-Havoc fights, it makes destruction less flexible which is what we are seeing, and it makes Havoc the absolutely indispensible talent that renders the others more less pointless

Now we have seen in the past that such talents tend to get nerfed because they are "too strong and everyone is picking it", which is the (ludicrous) justification for stopping anyone having Demon Skin and Dark Pact (after saying in the Q&A "we aren;t likely to change the basic idea of warlock tankiness and would rather double down on strenghts" lolololol

But without Wreak Havoc destro would be truly fucked and worse than affliction

The reason destruction is being pushed down is that other classes/specs got buffs, pushing down affliction and destruction even further, because destruction wasn't touched at all, and affliction got welfare buffs to compensate for nerfs

And then we get bullshit from Ornyx saying affliction is fine you are top on many fights and posting logs which show the opposite if you actuall yknow what the data means lmao

What's really noticeable is that other classes still beat Destruction where it should be undisputed king. Which says, their single target damage is outstripping destruction's doubled damage in some cases rofl

Now all this will be blasphemy incarnate to certain posters, which is why the ignore function is so useful.

[Koloss]

Both suffer fromthe sam eproblem: low single target damage, which is kept low to stop it getting out of hand when you can multiply it

You have a point, but then what about Shadow priests? They would be just about the same as Affliction WLs, but they're good in single as well. Or is it okay to do a single target punishment for locks only?

[Jessicka]

You have a point, but then what about Shadow priests? They would be just about the same as Affliction WLs, but they're good in single as well. Or is it okay to do a single target punishment for locks only?

Shadow has Surrender to Madness as its default 100 talent. It's almost like compensation for having to put up with that shit.

[Auracle]

I'd wondered if maybe we've been pre-designed a touch weak so that we can start to shine once our T19 kicks in. Guess time will tell. I do hope they introduce some changes to address the weakness in our single target, since it does make us a bit less punchy when it comes to mythic progression.

[Deleted]

The sims, which I know should be taken with care, say otherwise.

Afflicton and destruction a good 10-15% below the highest, demonology is top, which is otherwise dominated by melee, including fury warriors with their 8% across the board buff

In any case, even if what you say was so, then it's a case of starve for a month with a promise of extra jam at the end of it.

If you're not in a good guild GL with getting those tier pieces

[Violetti]

All they need to do is bring shadows in line with the rest

[adamswagem]

All they need to do is bring shadows in line with the rest

lol no. they need to do that, IN ADDITION TO, fixing up destro and affliction.

[Baconeggcheese]

the way people pad on ily/xavius is not effective dps

If you're killing tentacles while not losing damage on the boss its absolutely effective dps on xavius, destro does this well.

Ilgy is a controlled dps fight, so honestly all parsing on that fight is whoever is allowed to hit the bloods. So the parses on that fight don't matter at all. Figure out how to measure people doing mechanics properly and give rankings based on that.

lol no. they need to do that, IN ADDITION TO, fixing up destro and affliction.

It'd be funny if they buffed destro again, it'd be 5.4 all over again.

[Dwill]

Ilgy is a controlled dps fight, so honestly all parsing on that fight is whoever is allowed to hit the bloods. So the parses on that fight don't matter at all. Figure out how to measure people doing mechanics properly and give rankings based on that.

I agree with you but it also makes me question why Ornyx would actually use these kind of logs out of context to justify how Affliction is performing.