Destruction used to be so good in wotlk

Classes Warlock
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This thread is just to remember how cool destruction was (especially in PvP), compared to what it is now. Possibly some blizzard staff could even see this and have a 0.00001% chance of influencing future class design :slight_smile:

I just remember when destro warlocks (my main) wasn’t a chaosbolt bot. Like we used to have loads of damaging abilities that all had a purpose, let me list the core dps skills and their uses:
Immolate: had a short cast time, dealt highly mana efficient damage, and was required for conflagrate
Conflagrate: dealt instant damage, had a short cooldown, consumed immolate or shadowflame
Shadowflame: close range, instant cast, short cd, slowed targets, had a DoT.
Corruption: instant cast, mana efficient, was a normal dot to keep up during longer fights
Chaosbolt: dealt medium-high damage, had a long cast time, had a short cooldown, ignored most defensives, mana efficient
Soulfire: dealt medium-high damage, long cast time, short cd, consumed a soulshard.
Shadowburn: instant cast, medium damage, short CD, consumed a soulshard, refunded if the target died.
Incinerate: medium cast time, medium damage, no CD, high mana cost, bonus dmg if immolate on target.
searing pain: short cast time, low damage, high threat generation, meh mana cost, filler in PvP.
curses: DoT curse, shadow dmg curse, fire dmg curse, anti-melee curse, slow curse. Used for utility or burst, had to pick one at a time.

Also a couple of important notes:
-confalgrate made your next 3 destro spells enjoy 30% shorter cast times and GCDs

  • getting hit with phys attacks had a 25% chance of making your next incinerate instant cast, helping with melees sitting on you
    -demonic circle was baseline
    -mortal coil was baseline
    -destro had instant shadowfury
    -destro could get chaosbolt (final talent), and still have soul link (20% dmg redirected to demon) and a 3min cd to almost instantly summon a demon with half the mana cost, from the demonology tree.
    -mana was an important resourece

In a nutshell, a lot of the destruction warlock gameplay revolved around decisions over various resources. Thoughts like:
-“is casting incinerate here really worth the mana cost, or should I just use a cheaper filler or refresh my dots?”
-“should I really use a soulshard here to instantly cast shadowburn, would it create enough pressure to force defensive CDs or get a kill?”
-“should I cast conflagrate before my chaosbolt to get it off faster, or use it after my chaosbolt to get a bigger surprise chunk of dmg?”
-“can I afford to lifetap soon for more mana? or do I need to conserve it… should I just use shards to deal more mana efficient damage instead?”
-“should I let my pet die here, and use a 3min cd to summon a new one fast so I dont lose soul link, or retreat and heal it back?”
-“is it really worth casting fear here, the mana cost is quite high, does it prevent enough damage or force CDs if I just cast it here?”

Currently you just spam everything that’s available:
Mana? not even a resource!
Soulshards? doesn’t matter just spam chaosbolts if you CAN, wont do anything without 3min burst CDs anyway!
Fear? Just spam it away, 50 casts will make you oom for 10 seconds!
Any firespell? SPAM IT! Won’t even tickle or make 10% of your dps! Only used on CD or as fillers to get soulshards so you can spam chaosbolt!
Chaosbolt? Only deals damage when infernal and dark soul are combined (3min and 2min CDs!). And It’s the only thing that can deal any meaningful damage in your whole toolkit!
Also mortal coil and demonic circle are on the same talent row… And shadowfury has a cast time… Howl of terror has been removed too.

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I think that our class design has been sh!t since WoD…

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Sadly this is very true. I personally don’t miss all of the WotLK abilities you mentioned. I’m more a fan of MoP Destruction warlocks.

But yeah, the state of destro right now is kind of sad, just like most other classes tbh. BFA class design has been especially bad. I really wish they wouldn’t throw this BS at us like “we’ll fix it next epansion”. They should fix it ASAP, they owe it to us.

Classes and specs are like the lens through which you experience the game. If the lens is broken, i.e. if the class design is bad, the entire game will look and feel worse because of it.

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I quite liked MoP design too. But for me the spec was a bit too much of a “you cast chaosbolt” for my tastes. Although not as much since embers built kinda slow, your fire spells hit kinda hard to compensate, and chaosbolt was just a powerful finisher. The “ultimate ability”.

I just preferred a destruction design where we had multiple 10-15sec CDs that could be combo’d with our cc to force defensives or set up kills. And with our resource pools (shards, mana, cooldowns) forcing us to choose the best ways to deal damage for the situation.

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This is exactly the difference that is missing from current WoW though. We build soul shards so fast that we basically cast chaos bolt all the time. There’s no thinking involved. And even worse, they cost 2 soul shards so you can’t save up more than 2 of them. I loved that back in MoP I could linger around 4-5 burning embers and then just dump all my chaos bolts whenever I had cooldowns or good trinket procs.

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And I’m more of a PvP guy, and I liked the fact that it was always a powerful spell in MoP, it was never a good idea to take 2 back to back chaosbolts. But it wasn’t the only meaningful dps tool in your kit.

Now destruction PvP suffers from the “turret” issue, you just sit in the middle of the map. Face tank damage, don’t even bother kiting since it won’t work anyway. And you just spam cast chaosbolt. If the enemy makes the mistake of putting their cc on cooldown when you have infernal, they will have a bad time.
But once infernal is gone, you have very little pressure unless freecasting constant chaosbolts.

Contrast this to wotlk, when every 15-20 seconds you could try and chain your cc and bursty spells for a setup. Fear into a chaosbolt, followed up by shadowfury into an incinerate or a soulfire, finished off with a conflagrate and a shadowburn.
During those 15 secs of downtime you would use things like mortal coil, demonic circle, and shadowflame (cone effect that slowed 70%) to survive. Oh and conveniently the finisher of every combo, conflag dazed the target for 5sec which helped you kite and survive until your next chunk of burst damage.

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Agree, WotLK and even Cata despite the low tier damage was the pinnacle of destruction design. I hated the way it played in MoP so much I pretty much stayed away for the whole expansion, I’m just here hoping it’ll return to its roots some day. This resource generation crap and a short burst window every 3 min can go to hell honestly.

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Indeed Dogslayer. It used to feel so good! The spec was kind of slow paced, with a lot of heavy hitting 10-15sec CDs, and heavy mana costs that limited the use of the most powerful spells like incinerate. But most importantly every core direct damage spell had a big impact. The impact wasn’t too great to be OP, since there was no amplifying massive 100% bonus dmg burst CD every 3 minutes.
But it was enough for a skilled warlock to weave and combo his spells into a deadly chain of control and bursty damage.
But noobs couldn’t just spam incinerate to win, in arenas or bgs, they would go oom in a minute and die. Or cause massive stress in arenas on their healers, with constant life taps.
In duels you had to kite when you couldn’t set up a cc chain, you couldn’t facetank a melee and spam incinerate to kill him.

There was a massive difference between a bad warlock, a decent warlock, a good warlock, and an amazing warlock.
The spec punished you and your team for poor management of your mana, health, pets, cooldowns, and soulshards.
Like the spec could literally be the weakest spec in a match of bad players, or top tier in a match between the best players.

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There was a massive difference between a bad warlock, a decent warlock, a good warlock, and an amazing warlock.

I feel like this is true for most classes, which is really sad tbh. We’ve lost so many small details that could really set you apart from other locks.

Our old whiplash is gone, so you can’t knock a disengaging hunter towards you anymore, or knock people into your shadowfury - imagine the usefulness of that right now when it has a cast time that makes it too easy to avoid. Demonic circle is practically useless as destro outside of certain 3v3 comps when compared to the alternative. There’s no self dispel on felhunter, can’t buff yourself with detect invis or waterbreathing for dispel protection. Grimoire of Service was my most favorite talent of all time, that double succubus seduce in 1vX situations was gold, and it was removed to further push our only way to do decent damage into a 3 min cooldown??

I just don’t understand why so much utility is removed and replaced with just pure damage buffs, making everything essentially a damage race :confused: Like you say they got this right in WotLK, there were never any need for big cooldowns when the spells were good enough on their own.

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I remember… I remember the days…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJqsqK7o-w&ab_channel=Zukuu

I don’t need to say any other words.

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Warlock was such interesting and complicated class with many possibilities in any situation. Now it is shadow of itself and chaos bolt bot.

Dev’s totaly lost somewhere in class design and should go back to wotlk (and wod/cata for me) class design and principles.

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Oh yes wotlk destruction was something truly beautiful to behold.
It actually felt awesome every time you sent your chaos bolt in PvP because you knew it would wreck some serious havoc.
A spell on 12 sec cd that did sick damage and nothing of that “shoot 2-5” chaos bolts garbage in a row.

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I remember my Durotar duels in TBC, Cata, o WotlK against skilled players, and how they felt awesome because both had a lot of options to counter each other. You would have to know your opponents, decide how to counter them, and properly execute your counters.

Now I have nothing but a stun every 3 minutes and death coil, if talented. Pvp feels like killing npcs: you just stand there, like a turret, simply trying to deal more damage than your opponent does, and waiting to avoid a couple very obvious CDs.

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Destro was op tbh. I play since vanilla and remember winning 1v1 with combo of fear/sb/seduce/sb. But that chaos bolt conflagrate shadow burn was unfair. Not because damage was high, but because you could eliminate almost everyone every 12 secs.

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destro had had indeed his best combat design in wotlk

now it’s boring as hell

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“We cant have a good class desgin cause that would be OP”?

If it was so op, you can tune the numbers… -.-

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I never was a destro enthusiast but i had my moments of fun with this spec in the past, i remember that i played sometimes in destro during Cata/MoP.
Current destro gameplay design focuses too much on the Chaos Bolt, forgetting that rest of destro toolkit was as dangerous as CB and not for sole damage reasons.

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Yesterday I did a mythic+ with guildies who I’m new with. At the end the GM told me to go destro. I thought about it for 0.1 sec and the first thought was: No man, cant do that… too boring.

It’s really a shame what destro has become. Both for pve and pvp. You’re so right with this post. I think the difference between destruction now and from WoTLK is a perfect example of how bad the game has become.

RIP destro rip affliction…

I want to be positive but all this sh!t blizzard has thrown at us… it’s hard

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Honestly Warlocks have gone so badly downhill over the years after each xpac. But since wod, it has become significantly worse. There is no identity now.

Fear is weak, one baby tiny hit and it is gone. Mortal coil is a talent, and i’ll stop it here because most problems this thread has brought up is already in the first post.

You now just stand there having no other choices but to cast incinerate or shadow bolt. Everything is so slow. There is no dynamic.
I used to looove Warlocks and had a main for years. The only thing i still like about it is the lore and the new effects but that’s it.

Serious changes needs to be made and not just some minor damage buffs.

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When in MoP the greenfire challenge was released I had to get it and got my Destro lock to slightly undergeared (504-508 not sure precisly) without enchants, gems etc. to the challenge, took me a good hour of making macro’s and learning how to play the spec. Enjoyed it ever since (orignally it was meant as a scribe bot when created and leveled/geared in dungeons during Cata). Now I utterly hate it, Legion was fun with the portal from the staff and combining legendaries but not stellar. WoD I barely played it and BfA is going back to the same but worse, bars are very empty and I’m I just spamming 4 spells.

Now I always did brawlers guild and I hate it now even more, atleast in the world my pet could tank for a few secs but brawlers really showed what’s wrong. Not only is our rotation boring our kit is bad. Bosses I oneshotted on chars without a pet or healing while lower geared are a wipefest on my lock. The voidwalker doesn’t hold aggro at all, against any boss… Where is my shatter soul aggro reset button? Ohwait 1 spell and I outaggro my pet anyhow! My defensives as destro are 1 defensive, soulstone, 1 AoE stun but have to aim and cast and a fear which has to be casted and breaks the moment you tickle the boss.

Having done all 4 seasons and heavily played destro from MoP to now, BfA is the worst state I have seen it in, not only because it’s boring, it’s soul has been ripped out (prunning) and you’re a sitting duck against any melee. Melee bosses solo with a voidwalker who can’t hold threat are the bane of my existence, every melee hit also slows down your cast ontop of it while it’s are already 2.5+ sec casts where you just stare at the screen.

Sorry for the rant but had to get it of me.

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