The 5% overall damage increase in abilities is not going to amount in a significant increase to move it from being the worst dps spec in the game. It is a 5% increase from the base damage and that results in less than an overall 5% increase in damage
The issue with Destro locks is the terrible DPS gains from Azerite. General traits that are available to every dps is better than picking a destro specific trait. This means all other classses have a huge advantage when they have specific traits that do more damage. 10% increase damage to all Lock Azerite traits would be a great start. Revert the 30% nerf to crashing chaos and remove the garbage 15 sec reduction in CD. the 15 Sec CD reduction to Summon Infernal was pointless and changed nothing. in a fight where you cast infernal twice or three times you will not get any benifit from having a 15 sec CD reduction even with rank 3 Vision of Perfection.
Druids are a better destruction warlock than a destro lock. Arcane pulsar vs Crashing Chaos is not even comparable, the increase damage from Arcane Pulsar far exceeds even the best damage boost any Azerite gives to destro locks by a huge margin. Druids have an Instant cast Starsurge that does the same or more damage than Chaos Bolt that has a cast time of over 2 seconds. Locks have Cataclysm that has a large CD before it can be used again, Druids have an Instant cast AOE damage and dot they can spam.
You should re-roll to a boomkin for the ease of gear and the incredible additional utility you gain such as the ability to heal your raid/group/self. the instant click to other animal forms that each have more abilities and things you can bring to the group. The only reason you should bring a Destro lock is for Stones and gateway. the health increase you have as a lock is negated by the amount of heals you gain as a druid. Druids have instant cast chaos bolts, instant cast with no cd cataclysms, after 10 casts of starsurge u get a huge boost in damage with the proc from arcane pulsar. You do more damage in AOE and ST with more movement, more heals, more utility, instant cast abilities, plus you get innervate for healers. the only question to you is do you need healthstones and gateway? if so bring an aff lock or demo lock and reroll to druid. Druids are by far easier to gear as well and Azerite has much more of a positive impact.
What do you mean worst? Ive seen destro locks pull amazing numbers.
Especially in PvP with Visions making infernals rain from above and constantly stun everything and murder everything. Lets not forget chaos bolt and the insane amount of damage it can do.
According to logs destro is bottom dps in every difficulty in EP. OP is talking from a PvE perspective.
As far as buffs and stuff are concerned: For some reason Blizz has always been reluctant to give destro a proper buff when needed. 5% is a test buff really to see how that will scale with azerite and essences. If we were talking about real spec buffs this should be done:
FnB baseline for cleave that most other classes have on their regular rotation.
RoF dmg increase
Havoc dmg reduction reverted
Incinerate dmg increase in order to maintain some portion of dps between infernal casts.
5% is literally a week of raiding for other classes with hearts and essences lvl up. Destro scaling is super bad, nothing will change.
This just isn’t true for all Destro traits. We saw in BoD that Destro performed extremely well when traits like Rolling Havoc and Flashpoint were able to be leveraged for a large part or the entirety of an encounter.
You later point to CC being underpowered after its nerf, which I generally agree with (though I think the power CC lost should have been rolled into the spec, personally), and I do think that the other general and ST focused Destro traits may need buffs/work, but acting like we weren’t destroying practically every other spec while leaning on Destro traits in the last full raid is just fantasy.
Personally, I’d be much more in favor of a mechanical change to RoF than just buffing it in general. It deals fairly strong damage over its full duration, but the length of time and relatively small area it damages has been more of a problem in my experience than its potential damage.
An increased AoE, dealing its damage quicker or even in one strike (which would be my dream) would go much further to addressing its issues than just a few percent of extra damage imo.
This isn’t going to happen, and probably shouldn’t. Giving Havoc a tuning value independent of Destro’s ST rotation is, theoretically, the best thing to happen to the spec in terms of being balanced in both ST and Cleave whilst maintaining Destro’s strength specifically in Cleave.
Now the balance is off, we’re significantly worse in ST than cleave as evidenced by the change in relative rankings from BoD to EP, but I don’t think that warrants removing this particular aspect of Havoc.
Honestly, I probably would have buffed Unholy and Destro by an additional 5% and then in the long term take a look at CC and similar traits to bring Destro up slightly in ST only. The 5% probably takes us out of the very bottom of raid logs, at least reducing the margin we were behind, but I do share a similar worry that longer term balancing of traits vs baseline power may not happen.
Talking about mythic TEP only: Affliction is mid tier, demon and destro are both under the mid tier , ok? Arms warrior is in a better position than all 3 warlock specs… why arms warrior got 5% buff , but affliction and demon didn’t? Why destro got only 5% buff? Why spriests and fury warriors didn’t get a nerf?
Totally agree with you. I was just writing from a cellphone and I took the short path
Tbh if FnB was baseline, I wouldn’t care about havoc and the way it is right now. Most dps classes get a huge benefit from some sort of passive cleave which is completely non existent in destro. I would be totally ok with having the same pure ST dps we have now if we were given a passive cleave and a little resource generation to go with it. FnB in other words.
Because classic is balanced? Lmao what a joke, if you like the class fantasy of a paladin good luck playing a dps spec and getting brought to anythjng.
i mean the destructino buff is nice, but it’s still going to be poor due to the way the fights in EP / class are designed destruction just lacks cleave / aoe like demo & aff have, and destro is very very weak in that department. Rain of fire feels bad as an AOE, and not good when i use it. it takes 3 soul shards vs, seed is 1, phantom singularity is free, and ,demo bats 1 or 2 hand of gul’dan is your single target that is AOE, your pet just spins to win. Also those 2 specs get 1 full guaranteed soul shard vs. destro gets fragments, and is a real pain in the dick to get 3 soul shards to use ROF for sub-par damage. Also considering our main ability cost 2 soul shards; it feels a struggle to get back on track; because after 1 or 2 ROF i always feel shard starved for awhile; while the other specs. I can usually hold my own in a single target fight, but when AOE phases, or add’s come out i move down to middle or bottom of the damage meters even if i am able to get off cataclysm + 1-2 ROF’s. Destruction will never be good it’s always going to be a bad / worse version of a fire mage in PVE; until the fix the overall design of the spec to be fair with the other two warlock specs.
Also they Screwed destruction talents this expac for having nearly all our best talents in the first 2 tiers. not being able to have eradication with flashover feels bad, and i like soulfire, but we can’t play it cause erad / flashover are just too good; and soul fire should just be a destruction skill instead of a talent. reverse entropy, and infernal combustion in the same tier just feel bad as well in the same tier, but not as bad as the first tier. Not to mention the azerite traits when i upgrade my azerite pieces, or even stack 3 of a kind. I don’t feel strong, or like i gained some type of progression significant, or just feels unnoticed increase on my warlock vs. when i go on my mage, or priest it’s night and day i feel like i actually got a boost.
we have havoc tho… AOE ill agree, we can aoe burst insanely hard, but our sustained is poor. but Cleave specifically is the only reason destro is played in the raid when it is.
Ya I was about to say…lol 2TC is our bread n’ butter. If you know how to create useful havoc macros for priority / focus targets our cleave can get straight nasty. I am pushing 75-80k on pull on Azshara (heroic) due to the split cleave and cds / buffs / procs. Granted, once that burst phase wanes my DPS steadies to around 34 - 40k depending on the decress / add placement / beckon / etc.
That last phase though…omg cheeze do I frickin LOVE IT. I do not think for the life of me we (as destruction locks) have ever had INSTANT CHAOS BOLT and let me just say that final phase has me feeling like a frickin super saiyan chaos weaving menace and I LOVE IT!
ya when my guild first arrived at heroic I guess we had just never gotten to P4 (and I must have not read that part while digging through the dungeon journal). When I randomly got the buff and I fired off my first instant CB I literally look at my hands and said out loud “what sorcery is this?!?!” and then just went HAM. Most fun in a P4 encounter I have had in a loooooooong time.
woopdidoo destro can hit 1 other target with havoc… when demo, can hit everything with bats, pet spin, and hand of gul’dan, and aff can dot everything, and every other class / spec which is performing really well right now can hit pretty much every other target passively while single targeting.
both mages can ignite the entire room while single target, warriors can just aoe cleave which is their filler in the rotation, SP, and aff locks dot the entire room, and still use a big AOE with little to no resource cost etc. most classes that are successful right now can do both stacked or spread cleave. Havoc can only hit 1 target vs the 3+ targets you normally encounter M+, orogoza, za’qul, radiance, ashvane ( bubbles) when stacked near boss, even in Azshara on the big naga wave i can be high on the meters then drop down cause ROF is a laughable joke of an AOE 3 shards for no results that can honestly just get deleted from the class. Queens court is like our only good fight, and even then most classes can pad / passively dps sparks when they come up leaving us in the dust. In single target fights i can hold my own, but when it comes to adds forget it the class cannot compete cause our aoe’s are a f**king joke; also i put immolate on everything, and havoc on cd on these fights, and even padd on pufferfish in behemoth and doing everything i can on every fight to put out as much dmg as possible. the numbers just are not there to call destro warlock a good spec. Destro is just a worse version of a fire mage.
