Trying several games as Deathwing with different talent combinations, it seems that Deathwing is unlikely to ever complete his Pinnacle quest for dealing damage or getting kills with Molten Flame.
Against AI opponents of various levels, the most I ever managed to stack the quest was 1750/2000, and that was going out of my way to use breath on every predictable AI enemy I could see, and chasing kills to get the extra 50 stacks.
I can see that it’s a game-ending ability to unlock, but at the current settings, with how many stacks you get for damage, if you’re hitting enough and getting kills enough to hit 2000 stacks, you’ll win the game easily well before reaching the total.
If you’re losing ground and hoping for a comeback by completing the quest, you’ll still just push back and win naturally if you’re hitting enough enemy heroes with your breath or securing takedowns, even without the quest completion. Or you won’t hit them or put yourself in dangerous situations trying to land breaths and lose anyway.
Also, if you pick talents to focus on Destroyer form and doing damage with Incinerate and Onslaught, you’ll probably ignore the Pinnacle quest entirely as the energy management and required damage/finshers with breath just won’t happen.
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I don’t know if you’ve observed this, but you don’t need to get last hits with molten flame. You just need to have the enemy die in your vicinity or within a time window of hitting them. I’ve triggered kill stacks by STARTING to land near where the enemy died. I didn’t even need to be on the ground, only having the landing circle activated.
Completing this quest is basically game-ending, particularly on Towers of Doom (it’s worse than Hammer’s orbital BFG when it damaged structures). Given that Deathwing is now a 15 second global, if you full-spec into Cataclysm, you can almost one-shot a keep with your ult, quckly finish it off with a wave and some attacks, reset the cooldown upon destruction, fly away, and repeat.
It’s really hard to gauge how difficult it is to complete the quest in AI games. On one hand, they tend to stand in your molten flame more, so you tend to get more stacks that way. On the other hand, the AI’s tend to be very conservative and don’t go for kills which I feel is how you will get the bulk of your stacks. If you’re around for 40 kills, you get the quest.
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Do you mean getting kills after hitting them with Molten Flame? Or just kills in general?
Playing as ‘naturally’ as possible vs AI I found I was either using Incinerate and Onslaught and didn’t have the energy to also add a Q, or the time between hitting the breath and confirming the kill was too long to count as stacks, but that may be a combination of me not being that much of a Q-build player, and it being all AI heroes so unnatural behaviour.
I think the point still stands that even if you’re getting the takedown credit for the breath to get the extra 50 stacks, if you’re getting enough stacks to complete the quest, you’re probably winning the game already without getting the reward, and by enough of a margin that how unstoppably gamewinning the reward is doesn’t matter, you already won.