Destro now and 9.2

Is Destro going to be worth playing now and in 9.2. I love the spec always have. I just want to know if it’s going to be worth playing? Never have been a big fan of affliction or demo. This is for keys 16+ and heroic/mythic raiding.
Thanks :slight_smile:

Too early to tell.

No balance changes yet, we don’t know how the fights in the raid are[if havoc is an advantage in there] etc…

Only thing we can expect is the tier set is looks good in dungeons.

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Its fine in 15s and 17s now it will be better in 9.2 with the tier sets and double lego

Should definitely be better for m+. The tier sets seem to be made for that. Raids, as others have said, we’ll just have to see the fights. SoD was good for us… but sire was painful with having to constantly move.
But for 15-16’s & heroic raiding (even for first few mythic) ultimately everything is great & works. Issues come up beyond it.

Raiding is going to be hard to judge. There are ceetain advantages to progressing with Destro (its simple and can target switch easily with straightforward burst not requiring a ton of setup), but its tier looks pretty RNG heavy which could inpact your inter-attempt damage profile and can be a problem if your team has some tight timings early on.

Destruction is the most recommended raiding spec for Sanctum. Demo slightly outperforms it in single target fights, but those are few and far between.

haha you’re funny

On heroic, it’s fine and can work well on a lot of fights. On Mythic, it’s the worst DPS spec in the game. You could still force the issue and get value if you’re an absolute god at it but if I’m not bothering, I wouldn’t expect anyone else to either.

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If you’d like numbers to back that up:
https://
docs. google.com
/spreadsheets/d/1qPDVn9oCBRqjjFmfulHoOT-qTzvHq7gIeVjQjJI8iJA/edit#gid=0

EDIT: commentary on google docs…

That list was something Kalamazi did before the SoD progression meta developed to what it is now, as you can see it already a few months old, and involves his speculation and opinions based on PTR.

Things have changed since then, and some aspects and notions that existed on PTR changed even on launch[like Demo showing itself better for fights like The Nine than Destro]

Love his work and lots of respect for him, but this list you link is outdated.

Other sources who better reflect current [or even historical progression of SOD]
Warcraft logs Graph: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/28 and please, if you don’t agree with mythic, do adjust for heroic or normal or any %

Or Warcraft logs Ranking: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/28#class=Warlock&spec=Demonology vs https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/28#class=Warlock&spec=Destruction

Or maybe subcreation [not an endorcement to it tough, i don’t agree with this tier list of theirs] https://raid.subcreation.net/

Maybe something less bound to fight specifics and just overalloutput: simulationcraft? https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/T27_Raid.html

The truth is that early SoD we had a belief that Destruction would be pretty good for SoD, we had fights like Eye of the Jailer, The Nine, Nez’hul and Painsmith who would have good uses of Havoc meaning Destro grows a lot stronger with that.

but turns out that every secondary target was either dying way too fast, was just a small part of the fight [The Nine] then became single target fights or people approached it as a AOE stacked cleave instead.

The nerfs to the Health of enemies also helped making some of those mechanics even more trivial, making Demonology higher single target more desirable than Destro Havoc-Cleave.

Destro isn’t bad, but its not the best spec for SoD, hell even affliction have some fights where its shining better than Destro or Demo a big part due to DSS legendary.

here: historical progression fo Mythic SoD for all 3 specs

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/794376626632785935/913082170099261450/unknown.png

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Well, now that you mention it, the Sanctum section of his web site hasn’t been updated in three months. I guess after a certain amount of time he figured everyone was done with Sanctum and didn’t bother to keep up.

there really wasnt a ton for us to keep up to date or update post Sanctum - basically it became “play demo if youre getting externals” play whatever you want otherwise. after the first couple rounds of nerfs every spec becomes pretty much entirely viable. once PTR testing opens up for 9.2 (hopefully this week) the sheet will start to get updated with new info as things get ironed out

I’ll be honest, I’m not holding out much hope. Destruction, by its very design, is a turret caster with very little mobility. Combine that with only 2 AoE spells (Rain of Fire, Havoc – I don’t think there’s AoE common to all 3 specs and one could argue that Havoc is not AoE but merely cleave) built into the spec and you’ve got a grim situation.

I’m not saying Destruction is bad or that you can’t have fun. I’m just saying compared to other DPS specs that I play, I rely upon my covenant and talent choices to ameliorate the deficiencies in the spec more than the others.

Havoc is not AoE, it’s 2-target cleave, do you have an second target to die asap but also want to keep doing single target on boss? Destro is your man.

Rain of Fire, Cataclysm (well, all the talents in that row), Infernal are spells who deal AoE damage.

Now, Rain of Fire isn’t a bad AoE, you can stack multiple RoF’s together and it together with Infernal and RoC scales rly well with multiple targets, like, https://youtu.be/BYNjZ2PKwG8?t=24 rly well.

the issue is that Destro is very lacking in single target in a expansion where the majority of the raids have been single target focused or had secondary targets health nerfed[Nez’hul] or quickly transitions to single target [The Nine] .

I understand that Havoc have a “single target tax” but even then, Destro current single is very sad on how much it deals.

But in terms of AOE, the spec does have a lot of potential.

there is also Destro Venthyr build who seems to be gaining popularity since a Chinese Streamed showed it dealing 400k AOE in a necrotic wake (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1rQ4y1U7qm?p=1&share_medium=android&share_plat=android&share_session_id=1cafb09c-6a7a-4db4-9ba3-e520a70050d5&share_source=COPY&share_tag=s_i&timestamp=1637874508&unique_k=YKgKI78)

Edit: On the other hand if 9.2 raid have lots of havoc potential it can be quite good.

Honestly, single target doesn’t seem to be that bad to me. Granted, I’m not a hardcore player by any stretch and go weeks without doing much at times. That being said, destruction seems adequate in a Patchwerk-style fight… but very few fights are like that nowadays. I’m ok with a spec missing some AoE or some mobility or some single target damage but Destruction seems deficient in EVERYTHING and this notion of 9.2 somehow changing that seems like misplaced optimism.

At the very least, in a Patchwerk-style fight, Destruction should be one of the top ranged DPS spec in the game and I don’t think that’s the case.