So I play several classes, alternating focus between Mage, Lock and Shaman. Right now, my primary content focus is m+, so Fire Mage and Ele sham have taken most of play time–but I would like to play my lock. This brings me to scratching my head when it comes to destro. Rain of Fire is our primary AoE spender ability. It is ground targeted, and is effectively a dot, similar to Ele Sham’s earthquake, yet it does terrible damage. Ele and Destro have a somewhat similar builder/spender profile, though Ele has a faster cycle on aoe dumps with Earthquake. Furthermore, on a 220 warlock, rain of fire does about half the damage as a 214 ele shaman’s Earthquake. Why? It might be useful to dig into the spell power coefficients, but it’s pretty obvious rain of fire just doesn’t do damage.
While it’s understandable that it should do less damage than 2 target havoc’d chaos bolts, it’s spell power is just so low, that you are better off havocing chaos bolt until five targets. You do admittedly have other tools, CDF, Cata, etc, but what might be the most fun potential build for keys (Rain of Chaos, big Rain of Fire, soul conduit, wilfred’s) just isn’t viable because rain of fire is so undertuned. Please please, look at this ability. It’s not quite as bad as BfA starfall (especially because we have havoc) but it still feels terrible. It is a 3 soul shards, ground targeted dot, make it useful, please.
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It’s almost as if classes are designed to have different strengths and weaknesses…
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Sure. I don’t expect every class to have combust levels of burst, but I do expect every spec to have the tools to make it viable. Destro has a solid kit for dungeons, but rain of fire is a glaring deficiency. I really think with some tuning adjustments Destro could be very good for m+. Using the argument that specs have strenths and weaknesses doesn’t account for a core tool of a spec to be categorically inferior than all of it’s analogues. Weakness already exist for RoF. Like I said, it is ground targeted, and effectively a dot. It costs 3 soul shards, but tickles everything it touches. In the kiting meta, Earthquake, RoF and other similar abilities have an incredible mechanical disadvantage.
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Sorry, but what you’re asking for leads to one thing, every class being able to do the same things.
Tuning Rain of Fire is the class homogenization Armageddon? Please. This is an argument approaching tuning classes to the same level is homogenization. If this is because of the comparisons to Earthquake and Starfall, I really don’t get it. Functionally, Earthquake and Rain of Fire are very similar. There is no reason to say Destro shouldn’t have better tuning, because it will make it more similar to Ele. That is ridiculous. If you’re worried about spec homogenization then Blizzard, Earthquake, and RoF need to draw sticks to see who stays.
I am not advocating for class homogenization. I’m advocating for class balance, using Ele shaman as a benchmark, because of a similar mechanic.
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Sorry but it’s not. Your primary aoe spending ability is chaos bolt with havoc. RoF is weak on anything below 5 stacked targets. Don’t waste your shards on it.
Now if they do buff RoF substantially, we can talk about it again.
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It’s a bit disingenous to say it’s just outright not our primary AoE resource spender. Sure, priority damage is great, but considering the cast time of CB, RoF is generally your main AoE spender. The 2-4 target range is more akin to ‘cleave’ and 4+ is AoE although it’s obviously open to interpretation.
RoF feels a little weak right now but I don’t think it needs significant tuning, otherwise Infernal’s Immolation would need to be dialed back before it became super busted. RoF gains more value when using the DS talent as well, because you can layer it all faster.
Is it ‘weak’ on anything below 5 stacked targets? …somewhat. Even at 4 stacked targets with CDs, you’d generally defer to RoF unless you needed priority damage with large urgency.
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Actually you use it for huge infernal spawns, you just keep spamming rain of fire while all your infernals are spawning and you do insane aoe burst with it. Only problem is you need a pack to stay alive long enough for you to build up to your infernals.
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They keep buffing Chaos Bolt, making Rain of Fire less effective per soul shard by comparison. They just need to lower the cost of Rain of Fire to 2 shards, or just buff it’s damage.
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This sounds a LOT like a “Buff whirlwind!” “Use sweeping strikes instead” conversation. Sorry destro, you are the arms warrior of ranged dps.
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Theirs is a bit different since you always prioritize Sweeping Strikes + ST rotation over Whirlwind no matter how many targets, but still pretty apt analogy.
P.S.: Imagine playing a class with capped AoE.
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I say it is best to let the experts in this matter chime in and see what they think honestly. They will have the best advice
If they buff rain of fire, they will need to nerf inferno.
Tbh i like it as it is. Destro is very mobility-impaired, I find it very convenient to cast while running even if there’s only 3 targets, because doing no dps while executing mechanics would end up being a dps loss tbh.
It also synergises with Roaring Blaze quite nicely.
Roaring Blaze doesn’t affect Rain of Fire.
Damn when did this change? I only started playing SL about a month ago but I defs recall it synergised with it when reading about changes before SL release
It changed sometime during SL beta. At one point there was talk of a “fire build” and I think Blizz wanted to put a stop to those naughty thoughts, so they changed the wording to only affect Incin, Immo, Conflag, Soul Fire, and CDF.
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Lol I’m reading this thread and I’m like uhhhhh what??? I didn’t realize it was last year and not last week…
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Unless you play Paladin, Rogue or Mage…hell even Warrior… then you do it all!!