Patch Notes 22/9/2017

[Nefarian78]

Waaagh also has the corp debuff attached, when ya factor that in I imagine there's plenty of situations you will get more use out of a waaagh than a skullthumper, especially in pug SCs where most people aren't gonna be focusing your skullthumped target anyways. SM definitely has an easier time applying the buff with not needing to be in melee, but BO has 30+ foot range and also does damage when they use it so it's at least got some benefits.

Pug Scs should never be considered when discussing balance. In organized groups, Skull Thumper will always be on the kill-target and everyone will focus the kill target, making it proc.

The Corporeal debuff sure is nice, but it's not like there's much Corporeal Dmg around. Sorcs and Skullthumper are the only steady sources of Corp dmg in Destro, most of non-physical dmg is Spirit.

While you increase your sorcs corp dmg with Waaaagh, a Skull Thumper Procs hits for 90+ dmg each crit. Considering Dmg-procs are one, if not the main strenght of Destro, it's better to keep Skull Thumper up, and not the 20% AA. Simply increasing Red Frenzy duration to 7-8s would fix the issue in smallscale pvp without having an impact on largescale pvp.

[Foomy44]

DPS zealot had many recent buffs so I imagine we will see more of them soon and they do plenty of corp damage, and stabbity SH after rework will hopefully be a decent source of corp damage. I'm not implying they should balance abilities around pug SCs, but plenty of people do play them and your post seemed to imply skullthumper would be better in every possible scenario, just pointing out that's not the case.

[Nefarian78]

DPS zealot had many recent buffs so I imagine we will see more of them soon and they do plenty of corp damage, and stabbity SH after rework will hopefully be a decent source of corp damage. I'm not implying they should balance abilities around pug SCs, but plenty of people do play them and your post seemed to imply skullthumper would be better in every possible scenario, just pointing out that's not the case.

Zealots have been buffed, but no one is ever going to seriously consider bringing a zealot for dmg (for now at least), and the damage they deal built as healers is negligible. Maybe one day Stabbity Sh will indeed be a source of corp damage, but as things are right now, they aren't.

Skull Thumper IS better 99% of the time compared to Red Frenzy, even with a full melee-train group Skullthumper procs would still be better than 20% more AA.

I'd argue that even in pug scs it's better. Lately Destro seem to be much more organized in Pug scs and is able to focus one target down easily, but that's my personal experience with scs and it changes frequently.

[hulkhug]

Magus

Path of Havoc
- Tzeentch's Firestorm has been moved back to a 13 point ability
- Tzeentch's Firestorm can now be cast on the move
- Tzeentch's Firestorm now has a medium snare effect on anyone within its effect radius
- Chaos Unleashed tactic also reduces the cooldown on Tzeentch's Firestorm by 10s
- Bolt of Change moved back to a 9 point ability

Not big fan of this change. Before this we were able to have mist+firestorm+2 aoe range dots which gave us an option to play range aoe pressure character.

Firestorm is a really nice spell and slow is a really nice touch but problem is that due to mastery points now this spell will only have use as a crowd control spell since damage on its own is nothing special (even before you needed 2 aoe dots, storm and mist to do anything with x8 damage stack).

@ other Magus players: is anyone going to even spec into Firestorm now? What is the point of it when other classes can bring aoe snare, slow*

@devs: great work overall. Unrelated to the class change but how come we are not able to move and cast Indigo Fire of Change with flamer pet up?

[Foomy44]

Skullthumper lasts 10 seconds right? So you can apply it first, then next Best Plan use WAAAGH and get more crits + bigger procs out of your group thx to AA buff and corp debuff, or am I missing something?

[freshour]

So no one is going to mention the SM bubble proc? Kiiiiiinda figured it was that good lol. Usually only the destro things that are a tad too good get mentioned.

[freshour]

Also kinda curious if lifetaps are going to work through bubbles after all of this? As it stands there are quite a few of them already. But I'm kinda worried that with this change seeing how every single SM runs this bubble... it could make the melee healer melee dok even more obsolete.

[GodlessCrom]

whoa repairable weapons sound awesome Torq

[Nefarian78]

Skullthumper lasts 10 seconds right? So you can apply it first, then next Best Plan use WAAAGH and get more crits + bigger procs out of your group thx to AA buff and corp debuff, or am I missing something?

You can't have 100% uptime with Red Frenzy. There's some downtime between the middle GCDs after applying Skull Thumper and going for the refresh.(should be something like 1s+ downtime). You can have a 100% uptime with Skull Thumper on targets that have 0 avoidance, do not fight back and stand still. To have the exact numbers you'd need to do the math, but i'll screw it up somewhere if i do it at 5am, and tbh, i'm a bit too lazy to do it.

Problem is that people do not stand still in the middle of a fight, they do fight back and you're not going to only use your rotation to build and spend plans over and over again. Movement, Punts, Slows, KDs, Disarms, Parries/Dodges/Blocks, other Best Plan spenders, Skills outside Builders, Swapping Targets, Guard Switching, Ap drains and more. All those things need to be kept in mind too, and if you do your role as a tank correctly, (and your enemy isn't sleeping) You'll never have high uptime on Red Frenzy. You will be forced to choose one or the other, and Skull Thumper appears to be the best choice (to me). Whether you start with Waaaaagh! or Skull Thumper doesn't matter, you won't have enough time to keep both of them up.

[Niakahn]

Were the birds by Ghalnaros removed?