Surviving 3.0: Destruction PvP
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"Ahh. Destruction, we meet again."
Horns beat me to a nice, comprehensive post about 3.0. Yes, my Warlock brothers, it is as he says. However, in spite of the patch, I’ve found a way to survive the gimpage—Destruction PvP.
In the days before BC and resilience, Destruction was fantastic in PvP. Crits were plentiful, Shadowburn and Conflagrate scaled excellently, pets weren’t getting two-shotted, Fear was useful—sounds like fantasy, right? There was also a little tactic called Seduce-nuking. Throughout BC, it was thought dead. Now, however, it’s made its return and—I’ll tell you what—it’s fun. To be honest, I have never had so much fun since the days of Seduce-nuking.
The Build
Known as SL/Backdraft, the build features several key components that synergize very well:
- Improved Succubus - A ranged Blind with no cooldown that is independant of the Warlock’s GCD.
- Soul Link - Essential for any PvPing Warlock. It’s getting buffed back up to 20% before Wrath, too.
- Nether Protection - Helps significantly when fighting casters, namely Mages.
- Shadowfury - Controls the battle.
- Conflagrate - The bread and butter of the strategy.
- Backdraft - The playmaker. Plain and simple. 30% haste makes the entire build work.
The Strategy
Seduce-nuking is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not just Seduction -> Nuke. In the modern PvP world, there are many ways to avoid getting CC’d, especially with diminishing returns. Here’s the basic strategy:
- Curse of the Elements
- Shadowfury
- Immolate -> Conflagrate
- Seduction
- Soul Fire -> Shadowburn
Now, of course, it’s not going to be this easy. A smart opponent will trinket the first Seduction and (if possible) interrupt your casting. However, you have a bit of an advantage here as you can re-seduce instantly. If your reaction is good, this should be no problem. Yet, if your opponent is a Paladin or Mage, he may Bubble or Iceblock out of the second seduce, leaving you with your final seduce lasting only 3 seconds. On the other hand, with Backdraft, Soul Fire will be about a 2.8 second cast which is all you will need. If your opponent doesn’t trinket/stop the first Seduction, make sure to make use of the remaining 2 Backdraft charges (I’d suggest Shadowbolt, as Soul Fire can become a bit unwieldy to cast in heated combat).
Why It Works
The sheer amount of control tools in this build is fantastic. You’ve got Seduction; you’ve got Fear; you’ve got Shadowfury; you’ve got Pyroclasm procs; you’ve got Deathcoil. While Fear and Seduction are on the same diminishing return, you can have one target Seduced and another Feared (and another netted).
Backdraft makes your once-uncastable nukes castable in PvP. The 30% haste is invaluable. Even without crits (thanks a lot, resilience), the burst damage is fantastic.
The Cons
A lot of Warlocks will be hesitant to give up their Felhunters for PvP; they’ll miss Spell Lock and Devour Magic. However, once you realize that instant-cast Seduction works just as well (if not better) than Spell Lock, you’ll never go back. This is mostly because Seduction’s duration is longer, prevents all action from the opponent, and works on non-casters. While it does suck to lose the Felhunter’s tools, you do gain a lot in return.
Pets are still weak. The Succubus is still weak. Thankfully, though, she’s received a health and armor buff in 3.0, making Soul Linking her less painless. She can still be two-shotted, however. Yet, she still has invisibility, so you will get off that first Seduction. Nevertheless, even if she’s not being hit, she has relatively low health and Soul Link will eat away at her. Make sure to Health Funnel her back up every chance you get.
SL/Backdraft eats through shards like candy. Soul Fire and Shadowburn are the main offenders here. The solution I’ve found for this is to keep upwards of 40 shards on me at all times. This does mean occasional shard-farming. Every few BGs, I’ll go into an AV, follow around a crowd of allies, and just Drain Soul. Glyph of Drain Soul certainly helps as well. Nonetheless, the soul shard system is still a mess. Fortunately, Ghostcrawler has acknowledged that the system needs some work and that something will be done. Until then, keep farming.
There are a few classes/specs that give Destruction Warlocks problems:
- Arcane Mages - Between Slow, Improved Counterspell, Arcane Barrage, Blink, Iceblock, Dampen Magic, and absurd spell resistances, it’s very difficult to keep a Mage CC’d.
- Feral Druids - Seduce doesn’t work on them; they’re not humanoids. Use Fear or force them to shapeshift.
- Rogues - Can CC you and obliterate the Succubus very quickly.
- Bladestorming Warriors - Run away for 6 seconds.
- Beast Mastery Hunters - When un-CCable, resort to light of sight abuse.
Finally, the biggest problem Destruction Warlocks face is mana. Our spells are ludicrously expensive. Shadowfury alone is a whopping 700 mana. Sure, we can Life Tap our mana back—but it scales with spirit now. Good luck finding spirit on PvP gear.
Final Thoughts
Seduce-nuking is plain fun. If you’re not a fan of the Destruction playstyle, I’d suggest you give it another shot. Warlocks are squishier than ever, but if left alone we can wreak havoc.
This build is particularly effective against Warriors. I’ve dominated a good many of them without taking any damage. Retribution Paladins are chump change too—I can kite them from Vandaar to Drek’Thar.
This will only get better at 80. We’re getting some buffs next patch and we’re getting Demonic Circle. Even if it doesn’t help, it can still buy us a few seconds. We will also get Chaos Bolt, which will work nicely with Backdraft and won’t use shards like Soul Fire. I imagine this will be my build at 80.
It’s all a matter of control. Once you master the controlling part, you can easily swing battles in your favor.
Destruction, it’s great to have you back.
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I’m glad to hear all of the pro-Destruction PVP news. Brings me back to the pre-BC PVP days where seduce nuking was king.
Fantastic post, I love destruction and also my Succubus.
I just finished my BGs for the night, but was wondering if it was worth getting Improved Succubus, and after reading this, the first thing I’m doing when I wake up is respeccing!
Yeah, destruction is a lot better now. Imp Succubus is really, really good. But on the other side of the coin, the felhunter was never bad, and fear works a lot better with destruction now. It’s also a lot easier to fear things as destruction due to shadowfury/pyroclasm. So I dunno. Both seem to excel in different situations. And giving up self-dispel is a really big loss. /shrug
1) What do you do when Immolate gets dispelled almost instantly in all matches above 1650?
2) I think Glyph of Drain soul is bugged. I farmed about 50 shards earlier and it didn’t proc once.
3) Your way to “survive the gimpage” is spec destruction, but by your own admission it cannot beat or has trouble against: pallys, rogues, feral druids, warriors, BM hunters, and mages. Still sounds pretty gimp to me =/
Yes, I forgot to mention that this spec doesn’t work in the arena at all. It is, however, still loads of fun in BGs (and soon Wintergrasp!).
It would be gimp if Warlocks were weak against all classes and all specs. Some are easier than others. This is the case for all classes and specs.
Also, Drain Soul isn’t bugged for me; it has worked pretty well, actually.
I also had a lot of fun in bgs with destro/SL Shadowfury as an instant cast is great.
I guess I should have explained point 3 better. My point was that this spec, while fun to play, is no more better off than UA/SL or 5/51/5. All these builds get steamrolled by paladins, and are generally weak against everything else.
I don’t get steamrolled by Paladins. They’re actually fairly easy to beat; you just have to kite them. Netherweave Nets help infinitely.
Yeah I wish those things worked in Arena.. at least until I was on the receiving end of them.
How do nets help? Bubble + wings = you’re dead.
You just need to keep your distance when they bubble. They’re not as bursty as they were before. I’m able to survive. You just got to trinket the HoJ.
Also, they usually don’t cast wings until AFTER they’ve been netted. That nets me (LOL) one global cooldown worth of time. That’s just enough for a Fear.
On an unrelated note, WHY DO ALCHEMISTS GET TO USE POTIONS IN THE ARENA AND I CAN’T USE MY NETS?
You can kite them for only so long. As destro you must sit still to cast, and when that happens they will be on you out damaging you by a crapton.
I can’t say I’ve encountered that problem. =/
I guess it really only happens in arenas. In BGs pallys are too busy facerolling everyone around them to spend too much time paying attention to one target
I tried it and really had to get used to it, I had dreadweave gear because I always have been affliction.
For the tactic itself, I get smacked down to the ground from healers and people that dispell CoE + Immolate.
I will try it again sometime tough, for now I like Haunt more.
Mace- no, you aren’t an exception. I had it [the glyph] for two weeks on the beta and it procced less than ten times.
As it is, destruction sucks monster cocks competetively due to the aforementioned reasons, metamorphosis/destro isn’t -too- bad but until level 75+ where ruin is grabbable it’s underwhelming. Affliction has lost its charm for me so I’ll refrain from talking about it, but … as ‘weak’ as we are on paper, I still find myself able to bend over most classes in a 1v1 if I work hard enough. That is, unless it’s a ret paladin with anywhere remotely near my own skill level or an arms warrior when my trinket’s on cooldown. Being hamstrung or secondary-target-feared* into the spinrape really fucking hurts.
Admittedly this is on my fresh 70 lock who has absolutely rubbish gear, and my only experience on my old one with mostly s3/s4 gear was hitting Meta and winning a 1v3 against two warriors and a rogue … MORE TESTS!
I actually laughed out loud at your use of the word “spinrape.” That’s fucking hilarious.
I live to serve.
Destruction - Dispell resistance
We’ll try to get some dispel resistance in Destro — either a generic talent up high that all locks can get or something specific to Destruction that you’ll probably already have. (Source)
Might help with Immo/Conf issues
Blizzard said they wanted to rework the entire dispel system as the are currently unhappy with the way it works. By this did they mean add resistance to dispelling to most spells via talents? I was hoping for something else =/
Well, almost everyone else has it, so adding more isn’t particularly surprising nor gamebreaking - especially for destruction. It would be much nicer to have it conflagrate on dispel, though. >_>
I am against destro pvp for the following reasons:
1)you are missing some instant dots and others all together
2)you lose mobility
3)you need to hide behind melee otherwise you are done fast
4)drains mana like crazy
After spending 500g on respeccing i ended up again to SL/SL: http://eu.wowarmory.com/charac.....n=Wlambros
I dont know if it will work with all warlocks but it works for me. This spec is more affli than demonology. This specc is focusing on survivability and pure damage. I can safely again walk to and dot a hunter while a mage a rogue and possibly someone else hit me. The specc will increase spell power and spell haste as I level through affliction.
I see the problem not in the warlock talent trees but the latest warlock nerfs and lastly the insane damage blizzard gave to all other classes. The build is around the felhunter and also gives you fel intellect which is quite valuable. Just to let you know i have 438 resilience, 12k HP full merciless and 1.2k spell damage.
Tried this build for the first time last night. I’ve played affliction or sl/sl almost exclusively for a year, granted my dmg seemed to be higher as affliction I may just need more crit. None the less I’m having a blast with this build, the learning curve was steep but after about 3 hours I was soloing ret pallies in season 4 gear. The key to this build really is instant seduce. The only serious weakness I’ve come across so far is you have to farm shards and the succubus can be two shotted no problem which leaves you with just shadowfury to control.
I personally think a more superior spec would be one the uses Meta with the Imp succy. At Lvl 80 you can spec down the Destro tree to DESTRUCTIVE REACH and INTENSITY. Meta spec is superior in arenas with a dps like a Rogue or ret pally. It would give the team more breathing room and nothing is better than a sap, spam seduce, and a blind on a single target. I was able to get my Vengeful Shoulders running this combo.