#1 - Aug. 24, 2012, 2:32 a.m.
Seeing the recent buff to hot streak putting its DPE actually ahead of chaosbolt and obviously how bent that is in terms of balance I started to rethink the spec. Shadowburn and CB do about the same thing, CB itself is a mana tool as much as anything else, embers are slow in slow out which isn't okay. I've tossed the idea of 33/66/100 backdraft reduction on CB which would work...but doesn't seem to be popular. New direction is needed.
Chaosbolt is no longer on the ember system. Its simply a hard hitting spell you cast when you need mana. Unlike other damage spells it doesn't generate embers. Its purely there for doing damage while regenerating mana. That keeps it from being preferred but rewards the long cast too. The other change is to let shadowburn be used at any HP level with a damage adjustment to approx what hot streak hits for.
4x shadowburns would really hurt but so do 3x instant pyroblasts....simple to do: hot streak pyro > alter time pyro > hot streak pyro > combust for super damage. It would take quite some time to build or just have a mechanic that halves the damage of shadowburn vs PLAYER targets that already have the shadowburn debuff on them.
Insert plug for dropping FF's mana cost so we can use it at least occasionally. Even if you cut it to 1/4 the present cost, then have it double in mana cost to where it is now each time we use it on a 3'ish sec cd. Useable/affordable but not spammable should be its design.
Also looking at the mage versions immolate either needs some kind of dispel deterrent (ie lock gets an ember when dispelled) or it needs to go instant while losing its initial tick but gaining one on the back end.
Numbers will always flux up and down but mechanics tend to make or break specs in terms of both fights and especially fun. Right now stationary hardcasting a pretty basic rotation that culminates in an even longer cast is just meh. Even if its numbers didn't suck, which they do, but it seems the community is at a loss for how blizz sees destro even close to the front runners. With so few spells there just are not alot of permutations or priority adjustments possible. Especially when mana is so tight pooling embers is completely out of the question.
Hopefully devs will consider bringing destro's mechanics a bit closer to what ele, mages x3, and shadow deal with in terms of fun factor and hard mode/pvp compadible mechanics. Once that is done balancing the numbers will actually be easier. Probably a 5.1 at the soonest so here we are...3rd expansion in row....with "XXX will fix it".
