BFA Alpha Destro

[Aestereal]

There's a thread for Demo and one for Aff, but there's no tread for Destro. I'm not on the alpha, but I'm curious. How are the changes treating us?

[Gaidax]

Since I am a no.1 one Destruction fanboy and of course played it in Alpha first of all - in general you can play it live right now:

Remove Life Tap, Rift, Grimoire of Service, Summon Doomguard and either Channel Demonfire or Dark Soul from your bars, unequip Artifact and you get Alpha Destruction live.

I'd say that baseline Destruction kit is already pretty much complete, so I think overall it will be fine with proper tuning - gameplay-wise there aren't many changes to write about, I'd say the biggest new mechanic is Grimoire of Supremacy and Internal Combustion and these are talents, so if you don't take these - little changes.

As for me, I am pretty much content they did not mess much with it and started slapping some new weird-ass mechanics to it, so I just hope tuning will be right and it will be solid.

[Deleted]

Destruction on alpha feels great tbh. Wreak havoc is now baseline and you now have a talent row only for aoe. Cataclysm is very solid even for singletarget in that row. The new grimoire of supremacy chaosbolt burst is nice too. Personally I don't like the soulfire talent because it feels useless. Also reverse entropy feels too strong in comparison to Infernal Combustion or shadowburn. So yeah overall the gameplay is super fluid.

[Gaidax]

Infernal Combustion.

It's Internal Combustion and I hope it never becomes a thing to use, pure cancer talent.

[Baconeggcheese]

As was said, its basically the same minus a few things.

What this equates to is movement is going to be worse, aoe is still terrible, but the base kit for ST / cleave is what you'd expect. Really comes down to numbers.

It's Internal Combustion and I hope it never becomes a thing to use, pure cancer talent.

Really? I don't love the idea, but I don't quite hate it either. I have my issues with it but it does bring some good as well.

The way the row is designed right now though that talents going to dominate the row unless undertuned / other things are overtuned. SB gonna remain a dead talent and I only see RE being used maybe in dungeons or heavy aoe situations but again I don't see why we would play destro in heavy aoe situations unless it ends up overtuned since its kit mechanically is awful.

[Deleted]

I like the new Supremacy talent, but then again it competes with Grimoire of Sacrifice which sucks because petless for the win, and the Voidwalker ability is nice to have. The new animations are pretty good, but I want them to also update the green ones. But I fully expect them to never touch them again. Anyway, it's pretty good all in all, but I still feel we cast too many Chaosbolts and they don't hit as hard as they should as a result.

[Baconeggcheese]

I highly doubt they'll make gosac worth using ever even with them making it balanceable now. Its the only talent on the row that doesn't benefit from cleave, more than likely won't scale well, and is completely passive while getting rid of the awful pet. Its more than likely going to be made the worst talent on the row on purpose.

[Lucrece]

Still don't know why they haven't baselined demonic circle and burning rush yet. Put howl of terror in the gaps there, and replace burning rush with dark regeneration.

Eradication can go burn in hell as well.

[Gaidax]

Personally could not care less about either being baseline. I prefer being indestructible baseline, rather than trying to be shitty mage with poor man's blink

Rush was never baseline to begin with, so I am not sure what basis is to even ask for it being baseline. Teleport, I think yes, they could make it baseline, but that one is not in my list of issues personally, especially because I mostly raid and with the way trees are setup it's nobrainer pick in BfA for raiding.

[SpikeySquad]

Still don't know why they haven't baselined demonic circle and burning rush yet. Put howl of terror in the gaps there, and replace burning rush with dark regeneration.

Eradication can go burn in hell as well.

I personally think the rotation is actually much blander without Eradication.

[Deleted]

Haven't played on Alpha but judging by the changes looks pretty good so far! Destro is going back to the basics and in this particular case it' a BIG plus. No more portals and all kinds of other jazz to eat up the damage pie which means they can shift more dps to the basic kit which most of know and love.

Talent choices also seem more interesting and fun than in this expansion, Shadowfury is baseline praise the Lord, the new animations look great! For the first time in two expansions I feel like I'm being unpruned even though we are losing tons of things from the artifact.

[wholol]

With shadowburn being it's own spell again destro feels quite mobile on alpha, only thing I would comment on is how weak CB is relative to general burst spells.

[Hyrja]

still really silly they dont revert soul shard to burning embers, class fantasy wise that would make much more sense.

[trm90]

As "boring" as Eradication, Internal Combustion, or Roaring Blaze look, like it or not they add more pacing to the spec. Without them, our kit becomes a simple case of refresh Immo --> spam Conflag/Incin --> dump CBs. With them, you have to space out your CBs and Conflags more effectively.

I mean, I'm not a huge of Eradication on live but at least it raises the skill ceiling of the spec. When I play Destro without Erad (or e.g. current tier bonuses) and/or Lessons, there isn't really much to think about. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure RE+Sup+Dark Soul is gonna be hella fun and fast paced when you pop them together, but it doesn't hurt to have a slightly interesting sustained DPS rotation.

[traumabrew]

The destro talent tree feels awkward on some tiers. Like tier 45; you got defensive CD's and burning rush. Tier 75 you get CC with demonic circle. On tier 60 which is the aoe tier, Inferno seems very lackluster, giving RoF 20% chance to generate a soul shard fragment (not a whole shard but just a fragment). In tier 90, roaring blaze feels like it was jammed into it to fill the spot created by removing GoServ. All in all, it just feels like there is a lack of unity and cohesiveness.

One thing that is nice is you can alter the play style with talents. Most tiers offer 2 passive and 1 active skill which can make the play style more engaging or more mundane.

[Felbrecht]

One question. What the hell happened to hellfire? I was super psyched that we were finally getting it back; tho on destro, which in all honesty makes more thematic sense, but we were at least getting it back. And now, it have vanished from wowhead's BFA talent calculator. I just want some aoe with no hardcast for my casual farming, is that too much to ask?

[Warning]

Don't really like the new Grimoire of Supremacy since having a temporary buff able to increase chaosbolt by about 100% probably means its going to be weak outside that buff. I guess the best thing they could do is nerf that talent in PVP so CB doesn't have to be balanced around it. Besides that I'd like it if Darksoul was baseline and current artifact rifts took its spot in the tree. Also darksoul being on GCD kinda feels bad, but that's not destro specific.

[Maleific]

I highly doubt they'll make gosac worth using ever even with them making it balanceable now. Its the only talent on the row that doesn't benefit from cleave, more than likely won't scale well, and is completely passive while getting rid of the awful pet. Its more than likely going to be made the worst talent on the row on purpose.

This does grind my gears a little. MM and frost's petless alternatives scale but they're set on ours being a damage proc.

Currently it does do a fair amount of damage as aff, I can see this being toned down.

[Lucrece]

This does grind my gears a little. MM and frost's petless alternatives scale but they're set on ours being a damage proc.

Currently it does do a fair amount of damage as aff, I can see this being toned down.

And the outcome is neither frost or MM have the option of using a pet. They are clearly inferior alternatives.

In the case of MM it's even worse because now they give up the access to heroism via the pet and the speed/damage reduction/leech bonuses they offer.

[Baconeggcheese]

And the outcome is neither frost or MM have the option of using a pet. They are clearly inferior alternatives.

In the case of MM it's even worse because now they give up the access to heroism via the pet and the speed/damage reduction/leech bonuses they offer.

Which is why imo the petlessness shouldn't be a talent, it should be baseline.

Then you can give a balanced option on the row where 1 option brings the pet back and has to compete with the other 2 talents on the row instead of a modifier that will always outscale the other options unless under tuned.