Destruction: Rain of Fire isn't baseline but it is required

Classes Warlock
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I know one fairly common request has been to give destruction warlocks some kind of baseline AoE, whether it’s Rain of Fire or Cataclysm since we have no true AoE otherwise while some classes have a fair amount of it.

I was looking at talents in the alpha, and while neither of those spells are baseline, every destruction build will get Rain of Fire because it’s impossible to spend enough points to progress further down the tree without it.

That means that every destruction build will have Rain of Fire, even our single target ones, but we have to spend a talent point on it just to continue on. Perhaps they’ve taken that into account and it’s intentional, but that just feels weird to me. At that point, why not make Rain of Fire baseline and just put some other generic talent in its spot?

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This is true for all 3 lock specs. Demo can’t skip implosion and Aff can’t skip seed.

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Not a huge fan of this weeks built. But if this is what we are working with here it goes.

At this point they might as well take Inferno with Pyrogenics and just fuse them all together with Rain of Fire in to one talent.

All the locks get the better ROF and then next maybe we can grab Cataclysm for the AOE builds?

Why are Diabolic embers a captstone now?..

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It might be too much but, what if they baselined RoF movied D Rift to its place and moved D Ripper to replace Pyrogenics? That way Infernal could be moved back to the middle of the tree and the design intention of getting D Rift sooner can be fullfilled?

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The basics of our AOE kit should be baseline for all.

Multi-Shot. Seed of Corruption. Blizzard. Rain of Fire.
You name it. If it’s the base mechanic of our AOE kit, it needs to be baseline.

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Yeah, the basic AoE should be baseline. With the current setup, we will all get it, but having to spend a talent point to get it feels kind of bad.

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My guess is this is on purpose. Most classes have an AoE ability they gave to take. Whether it’s for pathing thru the tree or it has some interaction with single target damage.

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The very essentials of the kit should be baseline, RoF for instance…

Hells imagine the outrage if Metamorphosis for Demon hunters was made into a talent.

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RoF or cata should be baseline, and infernal imo needs to be moved cause now no one is going to take soulfire, over infernal, and avatar

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I believe its intentional and they plan to account for this in terms of overall tunning.

One of the complaints that happened during Dragonflight in regards to tunning is some classes would lose a lot of single target to spec in AOE or lose a lot of AOE to spec in single target.

Doing this would allow the difference between going full ST or full AOE to be smaller as long as you account in how you balance the specs.

Now, they could make Rain of Fire, Implosion, Seed of Corruption baseline, and there is an argument for that.

There is argument to make a lot of talents baseline as many of them existed as baseline before Dragonflight or fill an objective who essentially is a core aspect of the spec nowadays.

Honestly, this is a direction who came with Dragonflight baseline stuff/required stuff became talents (Tyrant,Dreadstalkers, Havoc, Chaos Bolt, Rain of Fire, Implosion, Seed of corruption)

But hear me out, i don’t think it changes much as its in the 2nd of talents (you must pick Rain of Fire as much as you must pick Backdraft, or Demonology must pick Dreadstalkers or Affliction pick Writhe in agony)

they made Chaos bolt baseline in TWW and now Conflag is Talent 1(Who is another spell who is required and have ground to argue could be baseline) and you kind of picks either ROF or Havoc/Mayhem (who also could have an argument to be baseline) to progress

Now, they could make make Rain of Fire baseline, but here is the thing, i don’t think there are nice solutions to it.

Yes, people will say “Break Inferno/Cata and put Cata in there so we can acess both” but that is an illusion, it as much likely to happen as the removal of all the 2talent points while not filling the tree with new fodder nodes like the brickening did (leaving you with 39 nodes while picking 30 of them) i doubt they want to give both Inferno and Cata at the same time.

I can see them bricking Chaos Bolt back to the tree, in case probably some people will be satisfied as “chaos bolt you use everywhere, Rain of Fire you don’t” but point investment wise it ends as the same thing.

I can see it becoming just “Improved Rain of Fire” or “Talent who is mostly AOE” and just being a less impactfull progression than just Rain of Fire (As we must remember, they also use Talent Trees as a level up progression system).

And best, or worse case depending on point of view, a good, must pick, talent who is always good in single target and aoe who you are balanced around.