Destruction Warlock (Essences / Corruption / Talents)

Vision of Perfect, Grimiore of Supremacy and Haste corruption stack is making Destruction Warlock excessively powerful and here is why.

GoS allows for each Soul Shard spent to increase Chaos Bolt by 4% for 30 seconds. Now before Haste corruption there was a finite amount of Soul Shard that could be spent to amplify Chaos Bolt damage. However since Haste Corruption, the Soul Shard generation has increased by 30-50% depending on the persons haste leveling, in-addition the Soul Shard spending has increased 30-50%. Meaning that the benefit of GoS drastically scales with Corruption.

Now this wouldn’t be that much of a problem as Infernal is 30 seconds every 3 minute, however Vision of Perfect is the last of the stacks that tips how strong the combination between these 3 aspect of the Warlock class into overdrive.

Vision allows for any Warlock spell activation to proc an infernal for 35% of it’s duration i.e 10.5 seconds. Now unlike other classes, Vision for Warlocks doesn’t extend the duration of their Cool-down but actual duplicates the cool-down, so rather than extending the duration of Infernal by 10.5 seconds, they get a second Infernal for 10.5 seconds. Now this itself presents a problem has Infernal currently does

(50% spell power) * (88) / 100) - every 2 seconds.
Subsequent Vision procs means that this damage is increased by 100%

Now when you look at a baseline Chaos Bolt which deals 240% spell power, if you was to get 3 or more Vision procs at any one time, you’re doing the same dps as Chaos Bolt, every 2 seconds for 10.5 to all players around the Infernal. Which is some pretty insane DPS.

Now again, this isn’t a huge problem on it’s own because Chaos Bolt doesn’t hit that hard when GOS and Focused Chaos aren’t stacked.

Now here is the problem.

When you combine Haste Corruption, Grim of Suprem and Vision of perfect you create a perfect "s**tstorm* resulting in an insane amount of output that leaves very little room for counter play.

Infernal with Grim of Suprem means every soul shard you spend increases your chaos bolt damage by 4%.

Vision has a chance to proc per spell cast to summon an infernal for 10.5 seconds which can duplicate and as such increase shard generation even further.

Haste Corruption now massively amplifies to soul shard production and spending

Haste Corruption now massively increases the proc per minute of Vision due to the cast rate of spells.

GOS is now stackable higher during Summon Infernal and/or even during Vision Infernal.

This is producing vastly too much damage, some of which is completely counterable due to the amount of crowd control a warlock brings, team play in-addition to the sheer speed a warlock can now cast.

However this becomes even further problematic that the more damage output a destruction warlock does, the harder he becomes to kill as 8% of his total damage regenerates his shield. Now given 8% of his damage is now dealt 30-50% faster, that means his shield regenerates 30-50% faster creating an even further power gap that a warlock pumps out too much damage while additional becoming harder to kill.

that being said I understand that Corruption is the “main expansion feature” at this point and you don’t want to outright nerf one AMP or seems you don’t want to turn off corruption in pvp. However i would make the following suggestions to prevent Destruction from being too strong.

  1. Grim of Suprem can now be stack a maximum of 10 stacks (40% damage)
  2. Vision of Perfection Infernal does not benefit of Grim of Suprem
  3. Soul leech now restores at 4% damage dealt down from 8%
2 Likes

Good points man! being in meta 70% of the game is disgusting
nerf dh

1 Like

Then nerf Paladins, DK, DH, Monks, rogues as well as Destro.
Destro is op…do doubt here, but what alternative warlocks have right now?
Affli? It is severely weak, and underdesigned spec that has zero survivability in pvp. And great weakness agains all classes, because many of them can disspell all dots with ease and don’t suffer any penalty for that.
Demo? Good luck with getting demo work with corruptions and any other proc effects, because demo can proc any effect only with four spells - Shadow bolt, demonbolt, hand of Gul’Dan and implosion. Demo doesn’t benefit from corruptions like TD or TA, because it basicaly has extremely low chance to proc it.
And only destro is viable. And again, it is not perfect, it is OP as hell. But it is not as dangerous as DH or DK, yes DK was nerfed, but still their overall spellkit allows them to deal with any problem in their way. Rogues is another example of overdesigned class that has every tool for the win in any scenario. Mages same as rogues. Monks are extremely OP - mobile as DH/Rogues, deals stupid amount of damage, scales well with gear and corruptions, has amazing synergy with other classes.

2 Likes

Why does my suggestion make Destruction none-viable? it’ll just bring it into normal strength,

Ok, start with soul leech. You know that this passive is only viable with Demon Skin talent, without it destro and any other warlock won’t be able to generate any sufficiant amount of shields to survive any attack from the enemy.

Vision. Why we should nerf vision interaction with Grim? No other class has such penalty/limitation. I will tell you more, DK for example has more interesting interaction between Vision and Unholy talents/Azerites/Essences.

Grim yet again why we should nerf this talent? It is already requires you to cast rains and CB in order to ramp up stacks, it is not easy mechanic like wings or Meta, when you just use that ability and you are good to go. Second the vulnerability of warlock to any CC chains easily ruins it’s potential during bursts. Destro is predictable class, yes it deasl stupid amount of damage, but DK and DH deals the same, has better self sustain mechanics, team utility and overall designed not around one spell, like destro.
If you wanna make destro balanced, you need a diffirent spec desing.
Yet again, i agree that Destro is OP as hell, but its desing is too messy and fragile, any nerf will ruin its for good. Nerf Soul leech and destro will be destroyed in BGSes, Nerf vision, and Damage of the class would be nerfed severely, nerf supr it would be the same.
We need diffirent desing for destro and many other classes that was overdesigned or underdesigned, current class desing is garbage.

Massive wall of text.

tl;dr: nerf lock.

I do somewhat agree with what you say, but if a warlock has built full haste and runs Vision major they are, no joke, extremely squishy. Especially when you compare them to everyone else who is stacking versa + conflict major. If you see a warlock casting really fast, they have very low mastery, and very low versa. It’s sort of the glass cannon build.

In fact I played against a ret team who were stacking versa, and I played Vision major and got very lucky with procs (had 20 stacks for about 20 seconds) and my max chaos bolt on him was 95k coz of versa. Compared to his 250k templars on me. And compared to the usual ~180k chaos bolt with 20 stacks and no dark soul.

So yeah, there is a pay off for this kind of build. And I think a lot of warlocks will be swapping to a versa stacking build when it rolls around in venders again, I know I will, because you just die without it to any melee cleave.

I think the full haste builds with Vision major will only be good into wizard cleaves, in my opinion, once everyone has got all of their BiS corruptions.

Tl’Dr: If you see a lock casting insanely fast, hit him hard, stop his dark soul and he dies before you die unless you let him kill you.

Destruction warlocks with that build aren’t weak at all.

I’ve seen destruction warlocks with around 20% verse whle still maintaining an optimal haste build. specially using PVP trinkets for the additional verse,

20% verse plus Soul leech / Demon Armour is more than enough to survive with a decent healer (specifically a MW).

At the end of the day the AWC proves my point as virtually every team was rocking a Destruction Warlock (although not as common as MW monk). Destruction itself is a full package with high survival, high burst, high pressure, high crowd control. The additional haste/vision/GOS stacking has made that package too powerful when combining it with Fear, Infernal Stun, 2 target Horror, and Shadowfury

Wat

You know that the majority of items in wow have 2 secondary stats? There is a bunch of items with haste/versa on them so saying high haste = low versa is completely wrong.

Apart from that lock is not squishy with demon armor and Soul leech. Mastery rng and versa only come on top of that.

Exactly what i thought,

i’m a verse build and have a minimum of 45% verse in pvp combat, however i still have 16% crit, 29% haste and 40% mastery… I guess when a lock stacks 45+% Haste they have 0% mastery and 0% verse?

I mean, he is not 100% wrong, I am pretty squishy in my full haste set compared to my vers set but that comes down what %amp my gear has.

So what he is saying is probably if you see lock with 70% haste he probably has no versa amps.

1 Like

but corruption forces you to stack only one stat, doesn’t it?
e.g. if you have +12% haste and 12% vers corruptions, then you lose stats compared to having +12% vers corruption twice, don’t you?
most people (according to Maldiva, locks included) run only one stat and that is vers
so while your gear probably has Vers / Haste, your corruption are Vers only
and the insane Haste comes from corruptions, which you generally don’t have in PvP, do you? Maybe you can sneak some insane 4 sec Haste procs, but I doubt you can run full Haste build (or some weird half Haste half Vers build) and win against full Vers teams.

Yes, of course. However having full haste/versa gear results in around 28% versa (wild guess ofc) which in combination with Demon Armor and Soul Leech is more than good imho.

Ofc you can run full versa amps and end up as practically immortal. The question is just if the missing haste is worth it. Having to cast forever for one bolt is kinda bad when you reached 99% damp. :sweat_smile:

I cant live without my haste amps, haste is love.

But soul leech directly feeds you tankiness by dealing more damage.

1 Like

Im not talking about surviving in arena but how much fun having high haste is. You silly goose.

Ye its a lot of fun
i love playing high haste (30%+) on my warrior

Buuuuut you were speaking for Cal, and Cal claims having high haste means you’re low on durability :slight_smile:

Well yes, compared to if you’re running vers amps haste amps is squisher, even if you deal more damage with haste for soul leech its affected by damp unlike vers stacking.

This does not mean you’re not tanky by default ofc.

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