PvE help

[Tetsnoobin 0]

Hello. I've been playing Destro since day 1 of my raiding days in MoP (Was a Warrior, switched to Warlock to adjust guild demands for solid players....easier to find melee than spell casters.)

Anyways, I've gotten pretty decent at it, but I know Supremacy > Sac usually, even though I enjoy using Sac.

I tried out Demo and haven't tried out Affliction, but I feel as both would increase my DPS in raids. I've gotten very good at Destro rotation, but it feels too....RNG-y to me. Embers are becoming more of a hassle to me as I get better. I know, sounds weird. I feel as Afflic or Demo would be better for me. I have gripes with them, though.

I've been Demo for some Brawler Guild fights, and tested on dummies, and while my burst is insanely better than Destro burst, I feel like sustained is much lower. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I'd have to tweak the rotation a bit, but it drops quite a bit, to the point of doing 10k or so lower than destro sustained. And for Affliction, well, I haven't tried it in a raid yet simply because I feel my gear isn't optimal for it. I have a lot of hit pieces atm, I know, were starting to hit up heroic bosses, and waiting for the proper items to drop, and then I may try it.

My question is, is my gear reforgable/gemmable for either of these two specs to out-do Destro? I know mastering your spec is more important, but I can do both of those in a fairly quick time frame. I've read/checked AMR a lot, but I never trust it. I know Haste is valueable, but how valueable for Demo? My haste is rather low atm, due to destro. And I don't have my LMG yet (1 secret... x_x, since I had to re-main).

Any tips on reforges, gems, or gear advice for going Demo or Afflic (whichever would be a better number puller) would be greatly helpful. If you need to Armory me, check Tetsnoobin on Area 52. Thank you!

[Zagam 1,982]

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/1570-53-demonology-tips-and-quirks/

All of your answers are found here in this thread. I just updated this yesterday, so if you read it and still have some specific questions, let me know.

[Tetsnoobin 0]

Read the whole thing, but it doesn't really answer much. I've already read most of that on the guide on this website awhile back. I'm more curious to if my current gear needs pieces shifted in/out, and what to obtain. I'm not going for the 4pc set bonus, since tier is lackluster and the bonus isn't exactly that great. If my gear will do better numbers as Demo than Destro through whatever shifting I can manage, I'd gladly go Demo, but I'm terrible at math, believe AMR is a robot that enjoys lying, and bad at math.

And as far as trinket's go, Lei Shen's I need, and we kill him on Normal this Sunday, but is the LFR version > 530 Wushoo's? If so I'll have to suffer LFR this week in hopes.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/area-52/Tetsnoobin/simple

Armory link for easy access.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Tetsnoobin

[Zagam 1,982]

I mean...you're asking what would be best to acquire. The best thing to acquire is better gear. The decision isn't swapping out pieces and exchanging them for others. You've gotta kill stuff and actually acquire it before making the decision what to use. Thankfully, reforging has done most of the work for us, but all of the specs rely on a mix of Haste and Mastery, so you really don't even need to change much.

Any version of UVoLS > all other trinkets for Demo. Not for what the trinket's Intellect is, but the ability to generate Wild Imps, your highest damage source, is unparalled by any other trinket. If you don't have it, I don't recommend Demonology. The trinket takes the spec from meh to BOOYA!

As for the guide not answering much, what do you feel I can do to make it better? It seems you feel information is left out, but everything I'm answering now is sprinkled into the guide already, particularly where I say the spec isn't really that great until you get UVoLS.

[Tetsnoobin 0]

I asked about gear because as of this moment as Destro, I don't see any other pieces really all that valueable in Normal ToT. I was going to exchange out some pieces when I got them via Heroic bosses to go Afflic or Demo. My haste is rather low, about 13.5% unbuffed. Is there any stat weights I could toss into AMR for Optimizing tool? I'll at least trust that.

And as far as UVoLS, I understand its use, but I didn't know if different ilvl's of the trinket have different proc rates. Should be interesting to see if any SoO trinkets can replace it.

[Zagam 1,982]

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/1654-52-warlock-trinkets/

Trinket guide. Different item levels do, indeed, have different proc levels in terms of how often they proc. The 100% Crit proc rate is consistent from 502 all the way to 549 item level.

[Cruzan 71]

I asked about gear because as of this moment as Destro, I don't see any other pieces really all that valueable in Normal ToT. I was going to exchange out some pieces when I got them via Heroic bosses to go Afflic or Demo. My haste is rather low, about 13.5% unbuffed. Is there any stat weights I could toss into AMR for Optimizing tool? I'll at least trust that.

And as far as UVoLS, I understand its use, but I didn't know if different ilvl's of the trinket have different proc rates. Should be interesting to see if any SoO trinkets can replace it.

All the specs use essentially the same gear. "Crit is shit" is still going strong as the warlock motto I believe. So with that in mind switching between the specs with any given set of gear is very easy. As Zagam said, without UVLS Demo is iffy, but doable if you really want to give it a go. Having a good understanding of how the spec plays will be good for when you do actually get UVLS to drop. If not, then Affl is a great spec as well. As for which is the "best" isn't something that can just be stated. The best spec depends on the encounter and is why we make the best use of having two different DPS specs available.

If you roll Affl, i'd say use Affl's breakpoints for your gearing strategy, as anything above 8064 haste is going to work out fine for Destro as well if you keep it as an offspec. I'd recommend the 9778 haste breakpoint as it is very easy to reach at your gear level. If you go Demo, then its hard to give a recommendation until you get UVLS since when you use that trinket, you'll also be taking the Glyph of Everlasting Affliction which moves the breakpoints around a little. If you hit 8094 (Doom+EA) for haste you'll be set though regardless. 8064 works until you get the trinket though if you want to bump down a notch lol.

As for AMR, what exactly makes you not trust it? If you're basing your opinion of AMR purely off of the default stat priorities then you're missing out on a lot that AMR has to offer. Krazyito made a pretty interesting post talking about AMR that you can find here. Learn how to put in your own stat weights and pick your own haste caps and you should be pretty happy with the results. Also check in to using their new "beta optimizer" as it seems to be working very well. I've never got the impression that AMR gives me wrong or bad results. If you get bad results it's because you provided bad inputs.