So I’m probably in a minority here who doesn’t mind the focus on wither for destruction so much. Would it have been nice to have more fire in a spec named Hellcaller? Absolutely, but I understand that the two areas where destro overlaps with it’s sibling specs is having demons and having a dot so it makes sense to me that in a shared spec those would be the areas that get focused on.
The thing that actually bothers me about hellcaller is that it doesn’t really do much with what it has. After reading through the spec the only things I really took away from it was that it has a suped up immolate with a echoing void style mechanic, and that my curses can be auras instead.
Compare that to say, rider of the apocalypse that gets to mount in combat, and rolls out the red carpet for the four horsemen, or templar raining magic weapons from the sky, spellslinger stacking up massive dots and then making them explode with multiple abilities that seem to very rapidly stack them while they’re cleaving around them, or even within the same class with diabolist summoning what are basically siege demons.
That is to say, aside from the dark soul type ability (that honestly I do not want) you could probably boils the entire spec down to 1-3 class tree talents.
"Wither - instant cast. Replaces corruption and immolate
Inflicts your target with a shadowflame damage over X seconds. While afflicted your spells on the target have a 10% increased critical strike chance."
“Rapid decomposition - While afflicted with wither your other abilities cause wither to gain stacks. Each time wither gains a stack there is an increasing chance it will become empowered, dealing damage more rapidly until all stacks are depleted. Additionally Increases flame and shadow damage by 5%”
“Spreading decay - Casting wither on a target already afflicted with wither spreads it to another nearby target. If the target was not already afflicted with wither or there are less than 4 seconds on the timer, wither will start with 3 stacks.”
And that’s the bread and butter of the spec. I don’t feel like that would feel unbalanced as a 3 point class tree capstone, and really I feel like if the bread and butter of a hero spec would feel balanced as a 3 point class tree capstone, it probably either needs to do more, interact with more things or have a bigger visual impact.
Honestly as it is now wither seems like such a passive ability in the way it interacts with things that I don’t think my gameplay (mechanically or visually) would even change that much other than my immolate probably being a different color than the rest of my fire spells. I don’t mind that on the mechanical side so much as I’m not looking for sweeping mechanical changes (minor differences would be okay), but I would at least like some more pronounced visual variation between a default destro lock and a hellcaller destro lock that goes beyond what I am assuming is a purple immolate.