Glad you feel that way, but I feel this class is now dead in the water with 3.0.
I get the sense Blizzard really has no idea what they want out of warlocks. We've been ignored throughout all of BC -- we're the one class that didn't receive a single change or major buff throughout all of TBC. And I'm sure a lot of it had to do with the community sentiment that we were overpowered, mostly stemming from our dominance in S1 and S2, our PvE dominance from spamming the shadowbolt key, and the strength of our SL/SL spec.
None of our issues were addressed in WotLK. And our one shining grace, our survivability with SL/SL, has been neutered by the sheer amount of burst DPS every other class is putting out. What good is "damage over time" when you don't live to see it through?
I have little hope that Demonic Circle will be more than just a bandaid. Not to be overly pessimistic, but I fear in WotLK, we'll suffer what hunters went through during all of BC. At most, we might still remain strong in 2v2, but even that's in question (casters can now kill felhunters with relative ease).
In all honesty though, it might be for the best, because this class seriously needs a complete overhaul in design. As of now, we have an affliction tree that deals damage over time, but lacks the survivability to actually see it through. We have a boring demo tree that's pigeon-holed more and more into being a "tanking" tree (why?). And a destro tree that relies heavily on cast time spells despite being a melee train's favorite focus. And for a burst spec, where is the crit percentage that every other burst dps class gets?
I'll be looking to play a new class for PvP in the expansion.
I have no love lost for the BC pvp spec, SL/SL. I never liked DoTs and I always preferred to have a strong finisher in PvP in Shadowburn. It didn't work with a lot of specs but it certainly works now.
I ran this build last night which I must say fit my personal playstyle very well. I love utility and the ability to choose between dots/kiting and nuking fast and hard when left alone for a few seconds was exactly what I signed up for when I rolled my Warlock almost 4 years ago.
There are some loose points to play with, but the point of this build is that Blizzard has taken the previous 31 point Soul Link and the previously 21-point Ruin and made them far more accessible. I started with a build that reached these alone and asks, 'What Now?'.
I think the immediate obvious choice is Shadow Mastery, as this build is using 2.5s SBs, Nightfall procs, Glyph of Corruption for another 4% Nightfall proc chance, plus Shadowburn and 3 DoTs.
I am tempted into getting a few extra points in Demo for Demonic Aegis for Fel Dom + Master Summoner, but I didn't try this first.
I was using Demon Armor mostly because I wanted to survive but I could actually see switching between Fel and Demon Armor regularly during PvP. I was still warming up to the mechanics of this build.
I wanted to try out the true utility DPS approach of Siphon Life, Corruption, Curse of Agony, then react accordingly with what they're doing, but have the ability to nuke to finish them off. If they're a healer, you can SB/SBurn hard. (I use the Shadowburn Glyph for this build.)
Anyone think this is interesting or dumb? I felt it was very strong, I didn't get mowed over and I got a lot of killing blows. The best part was it was hella fun.
That build does look interesting. One note: If you are going to pick up SL, it makes since to spend the points and get Fel Dom. and Master Summoner. SL without the ability to recover a pet is pointless. In this build it will be wise to keep the Felhunter out, it benefits from the amount of dots on the target anyway, even if it is minuscule.
This build relies on the dot portion of the affliction tree heavily, with SB, and SBurn fillers. I recommend picking up grim reach and destructive reach as well. Extra range in pvp is a godsend especially with all the ret pallies running around these days.
Another thing you might want to make note of is that if your able to stack a little bit of haste, with one point in eradication, my SB's are at a 2.3 sec cast with eradication procs, with Bane in the mix that drops to a 1.8 sec cast Sb with eradication procs. That's pretty damn good if you ask me.
I never liked ISB now that its a self buff. But it is necessary to get to the rest of the good stuff in destruction. If you wanted you could pick up 2 talents in Tier 2 of the tree, but none of those look very enticing as well, so ISB it is I suppose.
Take a look at it and tell me what you think. Granted I know you mentioned this was for BG/World pvp, however, i do believe it might have some viability in arenas, you never know.
I've decided that destruction will be a viable PvP spec in Lich King, and ergo this was born.
I want to play destro PvP so badly after the boring warlock PvP choices in TBC... [snip]
edit: Not intended for Arena use. :P World pvp / BG's
I'd agree that this makes more sense for world pvp / bgs (and especially AV, seeing as you have Improved Corruption, of course giving rise to the fun of mass Seed of Corruption spam), but how about something like this?
There seems to be a trend towards burst damage in Wotlk (based on my brief experience in beta, plus comments made by others), and Destruction in BGs and world pvp may be viable. Sure, even if you have Soul Link, your Succubus might die quite quickly, but that's better than nothing. Also, in a scenario where health is everything, as it is in pvp, it seems like a good idea to get Soul Leech maxed out, too, just to compensate as much as you can for not getting Siphon Life.
I've always enjoyed destruction, even in pvp, and I'm keen to try it out in the coming expansion.
Just a little curious, but has anyone else been toying around with SL/Shadowfury. I've been a huge fan of destruction PvP and have always sort of kept a backup destruction set as something to have fun with on off days when I wasn't forced into a SL/SL scenario. But since the advent of 3.0, I've been running with something like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
So far, I've found a pretty immense amount of success with it. The build here is more of a BG spec than anything else, with instant seduce being not really useful for anything outside of chaining soulfires and I'm not hugely sure how good backdraft is, but so far it seems to be getting a lot of use along with the new Nether Protection (which is fantastic). Normally on large patches, I'm respeccing 4-5 times trying out all of the new abilities, but with this spec I haven't bothered to change, mostly because it's just so much fun.
This patch really seemed to fix a whole lot of the things I had a problem with pre-patch with destro PvP mainly being survivability (at least a little) against melee, Corruption not being instant, casttime on Shadowfury, very little spell protection outside of Shadow and Fire. All of these problems seem to have gone away and I really am pretty happy with where things are for destro PvP atm. Anyone else feeling the same way?
All of these problems seem to have gone away and I really am pretty happy with where things are for destro PvP atm. Anyone else feeling the same way?
Haven't tried destro-pvp now, since I consider the game to be in a non-playable state currently. Everything is too far off balance for it to be enjoyed by me. But yeah, the changes at least LOOK like they make destro a viable spec again, standing right up there with affli and demo. It remains to be seen how badly the lvl 80 pvp-gear will fuck us over again. REMOVE RESILIENCE MMKAY!?
edit: lewp; I thought about that, but opted for the dot improvements. CoA is arguable, and I might end up swapping points from there to Soul Leech or Nether Prot. Remains to be seen in a few months
Destro Pvp (Shadowfury/SL at 70) is extremely strong. I am enjoying it a whole lot though I haven't had a chance to play it in 5s due to arena and everything else being broken. They are buffing the damage of every tree which is welcome.
SL is being moved back to 20%, if there was any doubt before about whether you should pick it up or not it is gone now, every spec for pvp should have SL.
Has plenty of survivability, lots of utility (stun city?), and pretty decent damage. Just throw up curse, corr, SB spam while ur pet beats face... Seems pretty OP to me.
Destro Pvp (Shadowfury/SL at 70) is extremely strong. I am enjoying it a whole lot though I haven't had a chance to play it in 5s due to arena and everything else being broken. They are buffing the damage of every tree which is welcome.
SL is being moved back to 20%, if there was any doubt before about whether you should pick it up or not it is gone now, every spec for pvp should have SL.
Agreed, SL became a must. The dots are easy to weaken, and it's more comfortable to do so now with the upcoming damage buff too. Yay, destro love from blizz <3 It's been a while.
After playing with SL/Shadowfury, I feel this'll turn out to be one of our best specs for arenas and BG play.
SL + Nether Protection = no caster will be able to kill you.
We'll still be trained but it just means we'll start forming groups centered around gibbing targets (rogue/lock/priest or rogue/lock/shaman may make a come back), instead of attrition battles.
Has plenty of survivability, lots of utility (stun city?), and pretty decent damage. Just throw up curse, corr, SB spam while ur pet beats face... Seems pretty OP to me.
Just wanted to follow up on this demo spec. I finally got a chance to try it out in arena last night with my hunter partner. And umm, yeah, its pretty OP. I don't see how Blizz can let us keep all the stuff we have right now in the tree. And guess what? This tree is getting two buffs soon. Our 2v2 won twice as many games as we lost and even beat some double-ret pally teams. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot. Immolation aura is hilarious for pulling out stealth and on top of that does good dmg with your pet beating on them too... I feel like it's pretty ridiculous OP right now.
I first specced demo when the patch came out because Metamorphosis looked to be god mode vs melee, and they were what gave me trouble as SL/SL when they were geared enough. MM definitely is God Mode. Every 3minutes. Rest of the time i feel extremely pet reliant and kind of like i should just dot and fear, filler was like um... Searing Pain? Yea, that'll do. Numbers were 9/52/0 possibly should have gone the other points in destruction for a better filler.
Then after pressure from my flatmate to try out the other specs 3.0 had to offer i changed to affliction. Affliction had always pretty much been my bread and butter endgame tree. I used Demo for leveling most of the time, and will again in wrath. But something like the old SL/SL, which i quite enjoyed, is useless now. Affliction is like a piece of paper that takes far too long to kill anyone. If you get Haunt you go down in seconds without Soul link and if you get soul link you either need the points 4 instant summon, and your DPS lacks so you die a tad slower, or your pet goes down and you're now a weaker piece of paper. I found i just don't like what the Affliction tree has become. It was getting to the point where i didn't want to play the game anymore. Since Warlock is the only class I have ever wanted to play since release, I was desperately looking for a way to revive my enthusiasm.
I started looking around, mostly on these forums, for Destruction ideas. I had never really played Destruction seriously, I specced it once to raid as a very weird spec that was fun but mana inefficient. When i used to raid it 41/0/20 before 0/21/40 was pretty much mandatory. Anyway, i came up with 0/17/44 and it turns out to be awesome for soloing and PvP, it's also surprisingly versatile. To wear someone down I put up Corruption, CoA, Immolate and then Fear or throw Shadowbolts till Immolate is low then Conflag, then with Backdraft up i can go hard. To burn I Immolate, Conflag and throw 1.7sec Shadowbolts. And the crits are so much higher and more often than I'm used to I find it really OP. 3.0 is the patch of burn it to the ground, and Destruction PvP has really delivered.
In terms of survivability the new Nether protection is awesome versus casters and Shadowfury is awesome against everything. If i have multiple melee attack me I'm not even concerned, Shadowfury + Howl of Terror is better than afflictions instant because you've also hit all of them for 1k, excluding crits. And it costs 1 talent point. The few talents that give the odd Daze or Stun are nice too when they proc as well as Soul Leech. Backlash combined with glyph of Corruption works great, uptime of instant Shadowbolts is really high. Once the melee have been through a Shadowfury and Fear dots have bought them down a bit, and i have Deathcoil, Conflag and Shadowburn still to go.
Lastly, i run with a Felhunter. In terms of surprise, Soul Linked Warlocks with Felhunters scream Affliction. But once someone knows you're Destro the pet is all but forgotten. Having its silence, dispel and extra dps from Shadowbite is great as well as increased stats. I think a lot of the success I'm having may be due to the fact that a Destro PvP was quite rare. Most of the people that PvP'd as Destro were raiders having a go. But hey, the tree i once shunned has got me sold, I suggest trying it, apologies for the long post.
Lastly, i know that Arena is all but dead atm, but any suggestions for a class to run with as Destro? I'd like to do a bit to get a better feel for the spec. I can play with an Ice Mage and possibly an Arcane/POM Pyro/Fire Mage that has the gear to pull it off. I feel double DPS is the best shot with Destro, but any ideas?
To burn I Immolate, Conflag and throw 1.7sec Shadowbolts. And the crits are so much higher and more often than I'm used to I find it really OP. 3.0 is the patch of burn it to the ground, and Destruction PvP has really delivered.
I could see how you can make that work great in BGs or even in higher occupancy arena matches (prolly 5s). My problem with destro is that you don't have survivability against OUR counter-classes... melee. Nether Protection is great? Well, I don't ever remember having problems beating down casters so big whoop. Shadowfury + HoT is going to save you against melee? Please, they're built to be our counter: warrior - immune to fear, rogue - cloak of shadows, pally - a few different ways to be immune to the fear.
This spec has the same problem affliction has - little survivability against our counterclasses. I personally don't like having this weakness, especially in arena, and tremendously more so in 2s. I would much rather deal with lower personal DPS and get another DPS partner that has good survivability and rely on well-coordinated attacks to take someone down.
Demo gives you the extra survivability against our counter-classes. MM is huge but on top of that you take 5% less damage with MD+felguard AND demonic resilience is a nice extra.
I personally would love to play a destro spec but there's nothing I hate more than a melee monkey class thrashing my face with auto-attack. Until Blizzard adds some type of survivability against melee to destro, I won't be playing it.
I personally would love to play a destro spec but there's nothing I hate more than a melee monkey class thrashing my face with auto-attack. Until Blizzard adds some type of survivability against melee to destro, I won't be playing it.
They did, in wotlk in the form of more talent points. Destro has to be played with a different mindset, it's even more of a hit and run spec than Affliction. You burst, cc and run. In a varying order. Running being the key.
I disagree about melee classes. My gear isn't particularly suited to this spec, I'm full Dreadweave, 1 brutal 1 veng 3 merc. My crit with talents is less than 20%. But i still find i burst melee down before they burst me. You have to be smart about it, i hardly stand there like a Shadowbolt cannon, i have a lot of mobility going with a fair few instants up my sleeve and i often conflag early just for the proc of brackdraft. Aftermath and Pyroclasm have saved my ass a few times. I was skeptical about it at first, but like i said it was my last hope.
With rogues, trinket the kidney followed by a shadowfury, its 3 sec stun i can usually get off anything then. It's hard for them to CloS vanish with pet on them. 20 seconds isn't a long cd either, you'd be surprised how quickly you can use it again.
Admittedly its still untested in arena, but i know a destro lock/frost mage combo that got to S3 weapons in S3. And it's more powerful now than it was then, especially vs casters. I can now kill healers which was a lot harder as SL/SL especially dreamstate druids.
I think you'd be very enlightened if you would jump into some 2v2 arena and try it out. Don't take my word for it. I've been there, done that. Even SL/SL rogues will rape your face under the right circumstances.
They did, in wotlk in the form of more talent points. Destro has to be played with a different mindset, it's even more of a hit and run spec than Affliction. You burst, cc and run. In a varying order. Running being the key.
Doesn't work in 2v2. Don't believe me? Look at top 2v2 teams for all 4 seasons... See any destro locks? No? Oh ok. Hit and run might work in BGs and possibly 5s... like I said...
I for myself believe warlocks will have a very very hard time at lvl 80 arena(arena is very different than 1v1 and bgs, i believe we still will be doing fine 1vs1) because most of the classes we had easy time with, have almost become unbetable without forcing them to go oom and since burst damage is pretty high atm i don't think we will survive enough to ensure that. Our main succes(not overall but how we survived the melee outburst) at s3,s4 came from our survival (26%more healing received due to armor, high resistance from master demon, demonic resilience),the power of cot against certain healers/classes, and felhunters survival against magic dps,power of chain fearing some classes.
Looking what other classes have gained at WOTLK.. arcane mages having 12-14% resists due to talent/resistance mechanic changes( i didnt see any spell penetration on s5 honor rings) and 50%magic timer with mage armor on... shamans having decurse and a very strong instant heal against our dots now... holy paladins not having to engage in combat judge/instant heal big numbers from far away... feral druids real good damage and having fear immunity/less time in fear,cat form charge... now i amnot complaining on these characters gaining these abilities but i believe these changes are all breaking warlock more than what we are gaining atm. I have done arena at high end with my warlock and i can say Cot alone was one of our best abilities(it also was the main reason why paladin/shaman healers were bad at low bracket high end arena coupled with druids imba cc) and now it is pretty useless accept maybe if we spec for destruction and are able to kill things super fast.
What we gained are
Affliction gained some burst through dots but lost mobility due to having to cast at least UA and Haunt and i can say 4 dots are definitely not enough to bring someone down before u die u definitely need to have haunt cycles in pvp. Instant aoe fear which can help a bit in some situations.
With Demonology spec as long as u don't pop MM u are nothing* your felguard dies against casters very easily and is also easy to control, your dps without MM is ridiculous. The only way u can achieve something as demon spec is for your enemies to be a noob in arena.(might work early on arenas but when common knowledge on what to do against demon warlocks is spread around people, it won't work)
Old SL/SL varients with master demon and demonice resilience wont even work because they lack survival-damage a lot.
Destruction is quite good for 1vs1, bgs and might work on 2v2 atm it has nice burst but still it is very weak against melee and pet survival is very low with this spec any team with brains will kill your pet and then train u till u die which wont take long .Also has low mobility though better than it was in TBC.
Overall except maybe some deep demon specs i don't think our pets will survive against any kind of damage more than 5secs(since blizzard sees soullink as our important survival talent and include their dps when balancing our damage it will suck a lot) and without pets all our specs are very easyy to kill for melee and except destruction by casters too. With armor changes we also lost our teams mana survival advantage so it is quite gg for warlocks at lvl 80 arena.(back in tbc we had a good survival/damage armor but we now have to choose between damage and survival, the survival 1.2k armor provides is lol at our rate of survival) I still believe we might see some people doing very good at s1 with some demon/destruction varient specs at low brackets but when death knights find their respective places and strategies are kind of sorted it is going to be very bad days for us. And if Arcane is still the dominant pvp spec of mages then warlocks will suck all kind of pvp at lvl 80.
To end it,although it seems like we gained some damage at WOTLK, we also lost lots of survival,mana advantage,pet survival and some classes we pawned easy became our nemesis for our main spec(dots) pvp.Still i will be in arenas with my warlock instead of my mage.
I guess I have to agree about the 2on2 situation in wotlk. To be fair, we're so crumbled up with our "uniqueness" that there aren't many viable ways to fix it, without making us ridiculously good in PvE again. Making dots crit? PvE gets twisted. One way I can think of to at least ease the burden is separating Seduce and Fear from the same DR category, allowing us more CC and thus, time to get away. It won't help against Clos, blade flurry or tbw, and that's not including paladins and whoever else has ways to escape CC and/or becoming immune to it. Yet, it'd provide situational survivability.
edit: Also, for the love of god, make health funnel like Mend pet and rework the talent.
Succubus is even squishier than Felhunter atm, so even if seduce and DR were on separate diminishing returns, it'll just make us stronger in duels, which isn't something we need.
1) Right now, affliction is the most broken tree for PvP atm. The fundamental concept of the tree is to deal damage over time but the tree lacks any survivability or on demand burst to really contribute in arenas. You'll get focused hard the entire match, and even if you do manage to pull off a Haunt or UA, the damage is still negligible.
Even Shadowplay teams may take a dump since we've lost the synergy with Shadow Vulnerability. Destruction would likely end up working better with shadowpriests.
What it needs, and countless people on beta forums have asked for, is an instant cast Haunt. This has the double bonus of giving affliction locks an instant nuke (who have to sacrifice getting Shadowburn if they want SL/Haunt) and easing our PvE rotations.
2) A variant of SL/SL with either 40 points in Demo to get Fel Synergy or 37 points in Affliction to get Instant Howl may still be viable, depending on how well our health pools and resilience scale w/ DPS at level 80. However, pet survivability is going to again be the biggest concern. Moreover, given the longevity some healers have, playing to outlast may not be as viable, and certainly won't be fun after 2-3 seasons of it.
In regards to pet survivability, one suggestion I've rarely seen is to give all locks the ability to "recall" their pet back to their side, even if it's stunned. We can then quickly health funnel it back up. Or, give the talent Demonic Sacrifice the ability to reduce the cast time and mana/shard cost of our next summon spell by 100%. So if we think our pet's going to die, if you preemptively sacrifice it, you can summon a new pet.
3) Haven't played Metamorphosis enough to really comment, but from the locks I've faced, it seems more of a gimmick than anything. It's like Bestial Wrath for BM hunters, except BM hunters can put out an absurd amount of damage while trinketed. However, the same strategy that we've always used against BM hunters will also work against Meta locks -- just wait out the buff.
4) Destro/SL I think is our most complete tree. It also provides the best caster defenses. This spec should be viable in all brackets, mostly in DPS gib teams. As an example, Rogue/destro should work very well in 2's and Frost mage/destro/resto shaman should do well in 3's. Shadowfury alone makes me never want to spec out of destro again. Such a great defensive and offensive tool.
The only tweak the tree needs imo is a change to our worthless 51 pt talent. I'm fine with Chaos Bolt's cast time if the flavor effect was more useful. I think a) it needs to hit even ice blocked and divine shielded players, and b) needs to dispel the shield as well, or at least have a chance to. I don't feel that that would overpower it, since it essentially adds another class besides priests who can dispel a bubble to the arena metagame. Chaos Bolt still has a cast time, so is LoS'able and interruptable, so good players can still work around it.
I put two points into Improved Health Funnel, because pallies will take your demon out with a quickness. The 30% lowered damage while it's being cast, on top of the healing, may keep you from needing to harvest one more soul shard due to a pally 2 shotting your demon. I put 2 in Master Conjuror for the simple fact that you apply them to your weapons now like wizard oil, and you gain new benefits from the spell and fire stone (such as more damage for dots, or more damage for direct hits).
I'm not a big fan of Soul Siphon with this spec. You will only have two affliction effects on any one target creating only 4% more health from the funnel. One drawback about this spec is, if your demon goes down and you cant get him up, you're going down.
As far as playing this spec, I recommend kiting; I like to park my fel guard a few yards away from me so he can intercept any attackers and stun them long enough for me to fear them. Then, in demon form you have a 2nd stun, so if you play your cards right you can stun lock someone then fear lock them.
I recommend using Demonskin armor rather than fel armor for this spec as well. Watch out for warlocks while in demon form, they can banish you, just like you can banish a druid in tree form. They can then proceed to molest your poor demon all alone. I recommend this spec against most classes but affliction warlocks, they seem to give me a hard time; or at least the one afflition warlock in my guild in full s4 does.
The AOE in demon form is great against melee, especially on suspecting stealth players. Nothing like going into a BG, running in all demon like, and group fearing everyone while you dot and laugh at their wimpy melee attacks against your 17k armor, healthstones and drain life. Major CC going on in this spec.
Well I've been up for 24+ hours, i think I'm rambling on. Good luck, hope this helps, and don't banish me if you see me in a bg
P.S.
Quick note, if you want to try fire destruction spec with succubus, I recommend binding her seduce key to something easy to get to. She can keep seducing instantly as long as no damage is done to them and she has mana. I don't recommend dotting with this spec, and I haven't figured it out 100% but here is one a PVP destro I've been trying: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator
In this version, I chose to favor searing pain for the quick cast time and low mana cost. I can't log in right now to compare searing pains cast time with incinerates, but im sure its still quicker and cheaper. The implementation of this spec is tricky; bind a key to seduce, find target, seduce (19sec seduce is a long time) CoE, then soulfire them. Re-seduce as you gain ground. You may need to fear or Deathcoil but her instant seduce makes kiting a possibility. Today was my 1st day to try this method. I don't have all the glyphs or gems i need for this spec just yet, but I topped damage in wsg on alliance side (we got stomped) and had about 5-7 more honor kills than the guy behind me. Its tricky, you die easy. Oh, and yes how can I forget, shadowfury is now instant and was buffed with 1 more sec of stun time. This can allow you to stun a group attacking you, howl of terror and run and pray your healer is helping you. Up side to this is high damage, down side is hard to cc and dps at the same time with a ret pali breathing down your neck.
Last edited by biberon : 11/01/08 at 1:47 AM.
Reason: Not my post, rogue is my only toon. I will tidy up the format however and leave it for anyone who may find use.
Well, its been a week of playing Destruction since I last posted (Or almost), and this spec is ridiculously good at the moment. If I'm left alone for a few seconds i can do amazing burst. I had trouble with being focused in battlegrounds because after they attack your node for the 5th time they've realized you will burn the tree druid to a crisp before Stun/Spell lock wears off. Most Pallies don't bubble because I've killed them faster than they thought they'd need it.
I took Fel Dom, Demonic Aegis and Master Summoner out of Demo because i could get so much more dps using them in Destro. I left out Soul Leech because its really gimmicky, unreliable and not worth 3 points. When Warlocks are patched my damage will go up 5% and survivability 5% also with soul link and Emberstorm. I'm not worried about pet survivability because it's a nifty silence and dispell and mitigates 20% damage. And most people try kill it first. Thank you, you've just given me free casting time on you. It usually lives and they don't.
I was put down for this spec because "It won't work in arenas, maybe in 5v5" Well that's wrong. I 2v2'd with a Disc Priest in full S1 gear and my gear is only marginally better, it's Dreadweave S2. My crit is really bad. We won about 45% of our games, pretty good for after Season 4 with our low gear.
The changes to push back make Destro a lot more solid against melee, and with a good healer and Demon Armor on with soul link it's easy to heal. My one complaint with Destro is Immolate being a spell that requires you to be facing your target. All destruction spells suffer from this, except AoE. And I think having one that doesn't would make it a bit more flexible. Oceanic lag is hard to deal with for keeping a rogue in front of you that has sprint on. Heck, even without sprint its hard.
Another surprising benefit of this spec is how it competes in PvE. It is definitely not optimized for it, but I can now turn up to a raid (Not Sunwell, I'm talking casual here) in PvP Spec and gear with 6% hit (3%gear, 3% talents) and do competitive dps. If you nail that conflag in the 3 second window before immolates last tick every time, and if you can borrow another warlocks immolate for your next 3 backdrafted Incinerates, it really cranks out the dps. And it's not a boring rotation, makes Magtheridon/Kara fun.
Warlocks didn't get a great deal on the patch but if Warlock has become a "class that you don't play unless you're skilled" then I'll take it. It was like that when I first rolled a Warlock and I like being distinguished from other classes.
I think you made a couple of mistakes in your destro tree (if spec'ing for arena).
Originally Posted by Davorien
I left out Soul Leech because its really gimmicky, unreliable and not worth 3 points.
I think you're being a little bit blind here sir. Soul Leech is definitely worth it. All of your instant spells (conflag, shadowburn, shadowbolt w/ glyph, incinerate/shadowbolt w/ backdraft) now have a chance to give you life back, that combined with death coil, fel armor, healthstone, battlemaster trinket all adds up man. I think you're really undervaluing Soul Leech.
Also, I don't think you should be missing the other point in pyroclasm. +13% chance of stun on your insta conflags and soul fire which is a 2.8s cast time while backdraft is up. Let's picture this scenario: conflag procs 26% stun and stuns targ, you get backdraft, you go for soul fire and get it off, it procs the stun. Repeat 2x more soul fire to stunlock and bomb dude...
I also think passing Molten Core isn't the best idea. If you have corruption glyph you're likely gonna have corr up on your target. Why pass up an easy 10% increase to your damage? Even just throwing one point in it could be worth it.
10/17/08, 7:11 AM
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