5.4 Destruction Tips and Quirks

[Zagam 1,983]

I've been glyphing DS for the added baseline crit lately and really noticing the added crits on the meat of my rotation like conflag and inc. Since I don't read much about this being the norm I was wondering if anyone else was going this route? I've been pushing more mastery than crit/haste normally so the DS glyph is nice for hedging my reforges towards mastery. Since the secondary stats are mostly equal the only downfall would be the damage during DS uptime from CB.

Zagam can you elaborate on your support for the Fel Imp above? (I'll admit I have no idea what I'm looking at on those logs) Are you only using him on horridon? I haven't tried it out yet but I noticed the observer spending a lot of time floating around from add to add so I could see the imp being better over the course of the fight.

You're using the Dark Soul glyph to gain 3% crit and not using the 30% crit cooldown? This sounds like a terrible decision. In fact, it really is a terrible decision. You're nerfing the only decent CD that Destruction has into a crappy passive. And if you are using the Glyph AND using Dark Soul, then you are truly ruining your DPS. As for the Imp, I think I've said enough about it...it might do slightly less DPS in a Patchwerk setting, but Patchwerk settings are extremely rare.

I am also beginning to like the imp more and more. I know I asked a few days ago, but do you still don't like the demon glyph? (The one that makes him fire 3x at once)

Nothing has changed in my view in the past 3 days about this glyph. You have too many other options to consider. The glyph has no meaningful DPS change at all...after 25000 iterations, it came up with a DPS difference of 4 out of 189,000. It's useful for quests and PvP for initial burst, but for sustained anything, just forget it.

[Zagam 1,983]

Hey Zagam, I just recently switched my raiding toon from a Shadow priest (played for 4-5 years) to my lock. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the work you do to provide everyone with up to date information. It has helped me with the finer points of DPS to really help maximize my dps.

That out of the way, I'm not sure if you are aware, and if you are just for those who aren't, you can dispel cinders with Unbound Will on Megaera. You take very little damage as you probably already have a stack of soul link running too.

Also are you now recommending the imp as pet of choice?

When you dispel it, you have to be out of the group or you risk people dying in the newly spawned fire. I was dying because I wasn't receiving any TLC from the healers as I ran out. Also being at 30% HP before using Unbound Will during AoE damage is almost suicide. I'd prefer someone else be responsible for my death instead of me ;)

I'm not recommending anything as "pet of choice." Too many people read a "pet of choice" and then apply it to all fights without thinking about unique situations. I broke down a rationale of what I personally use when deciding between pets, but last night I just kept the Imp out for all the fights I didn't go Grim of Sacrifice because I just didn't care about the sub 1% DPS variance. There are no hard enrage timers yet on any fight I've seen. Everything in this tier is mechanics. It's not like 2nd week Heroic Ultraxion where you had to find that extra 500 DPS to down him...just go with what you personally like.

TL;DR: I choose the Imp because I like what he says more than the Observer's stupid sounds.

[JvChequer 43]

Zagam, about Durumu, stay at Inner circle in the start of the fight and the pet will not dIsapear.

And I prefer the Observer in fights like Megaera, Durumu, tortos, Council - staying at Sul until he dies then - or than, shit my english sucks - on the higher life boss...but I'm considering to use Fel Imp with Glyph in Horridon to help on adds,

BTW, my Teammates hates my Observer and your annoying sound LOL,

Edited April 2, 2013 by JvChequer

[Zagam 1,983]

Yeah, that Observer sounds pretty atrocious. Only thing that could be worse is a big licking sound during Tongue Lash. I've been in melee range and my pet still despawns. My Imp has despawned right beside me at range and in melee. You might have just gotten lucky.

[JvChequer 43]

Yeah, that Observer sounds pretty atrocious. Only thing that could be worse is a big licking sound during Tongue Lash. I've been in melee range and my pet still despawns. My Imp has despawned right beside me at range and in melee. You might have just gotten lucky.

That's awkward 'cause I see it on MMO Champion and worked with several ppl.

Well, go affli + sacrifice this fight until blizzard solves the problem =/

[Zagam 1,983]

Demo Sacrifice, yo. People don't get how good Demo Sacrifice is. I'm going to do it in ToT LFR as soon as I get home today and I'm going to top every single meter...except maybe Horridon where I'll pull out the Wrathguard. There's a reason they're going to nerf it 5% in 5.3...it's pretty damn good right now.

[JvChequer 43]

Demo Sacrifice, yo. People don't get how good Demo Sacrifice is. I'm going to do it in ToT LFR as soon as I get home today and I'm going to top every single meter...except maybe Horridon where I'll pull out the Wrathguard. There's a reason they're going to nerf it 5% in 5.3...it's pretty damn good right now.

With High Gear and 2 RPPM Trinkets + LMGem probably Demo Sacrifice overput Supremacy in Single Target but with average gear I think still about 3-4% dps loss.

Edited April 2, 2013 by JvChequer

[Glorn 1]

Single target is pretty close now and will only be separated by how well you play within your spec. I excel at Demonology while I do decent as Affliction and Destruction. Completely up to you on single target...but I think it's mostly dependent on trinkets and gear. Once I got Unerring, Demo got a huge buff.

As for your logs, I'm only going to look at your Durumu since it's as close to single target as it gets. Your Immolate uptime is 88.1%...not really ideal. Bring that up to 97%+. Remember that Immolate buffs Incinerate. I also see no Rain of Fire damage on your meter. Remember to use this during Dark Soul and other procs to increase your Ember generation, but don't use it so much that it binds you with your mana. Cha-Ye's and Wushoolay's should create some really nice Chaos Bolts, which it looks like you are taking advantage of since your average CB was darn near 500k. I notice 6 uses of Havoc...I can't tell if that means you used 6 Havoc'd Incinerates or if you got 6 Havoc'd Chaos Bolts in...which doesn't make sense considering your raid's DPS looks good enough to only have one add phase. You look like you've got a good grasp on how to play Destruction, so no real tips other than upping your Immo uptime.

If it comes to those havocs,I just put Havoc on boss and shadowburned the adds when it was possible.Other than that after getting new items increase in dps is noticeable for me,currently I have 512ilvl,I expect huge boost in dps once I get a new wep.

Thanks for responding!

Edited April 2, 2013 by Glorn

[Zagam 1,983]

I pushed some insane numbers last night at 520 ilvl with Lei Shen trinket and Volatile Talisman (my next replacement) as Demo Sacrifice. I think it might be one of the stronger pure single target DPS specs available at the moment, especially with Lei Shen trinket because of the infinite Imps you pull out. I can't wait to get that meta gem...COULD be this week. I'm at 14/20 and we have access to 9 LFR bosses and we will kill 12 bosses again this week, so I really just need 6 out of 21 possibilities...hope it comes this week!

[Scaran 0]

So, I just main-switched back to my warlock this tier and have been in the process of gearing him up (at about 497 ilvl currently). Fortunately, my group has strong dps (and a monk tank, zomg) so I've been carried to some degree.

I've been reading and re-reading this forum to try to figure out the best ways to be min-maxing and I've been noticing some somewhat discrepant information and I'm curious what the current state of things as of now is.

1. Stat weights. I realize that for destro (the spec I've been playing) that things have been pretty close for mastery vs. crit vs. haste (although haste has lagged behind somewhat. And, thus far the conventional wisdom has either been "don't pay too much attention to secondary values" or that "crit probably is strongest". However, on top logs for many fights I've noticed that mastery has been the choice for some of the top destro-locks. This led me to model myself in simcraft (10k iterations) and I found that, at my current gear level, indeed mastery returned about 3.3 DPS per rating point, while crit and haste both only returned about 2.8ish. Sooo, in an effort to min-max, I went mastery > crit > haste. My first question is this: Would you say that such min-maxing is best currently (and I realize we're not talking about a 10k boost in DPS here...but my interest is in min-maxing)? Related to this: are there differences in playstyle that change our priorities when we've went mastery > crit rather than crit > mastery?

2. People in this thread have gone back and forth on fights where a pet is optimal about which pets to use. Previously people have mentioned that the observer tops meters (primarily based on simulations) but others have noted a really nice dps return from using the imp (with supremacy, of course). Where have people landed on pet usage?

I know these are sort of nit-picky kinds of questions, but i'm pretty comfortable that i'm doing MOST things right. Just trying to eek out those last few points of damage where I can.

[Omaric 246]

In response to your pet question, it comes down to this:

Are there buffs in the fight that pets don't benefit from? If yes, get sacrifice and take advantage.

If no, will your pet be running around a lot? If yes, pick imp.

If no, pick up the observer.

[Zagam 1,983]

Yup. Simcraft can't model Warlocks at all. It's all how the specs are played per fight with certain situations. You might see some ridiculous things happen like my 152k on Gara'jal...every single Doom tick was a critical hit. If the stars alligned and I got to have the 100% Doom crit buff along with 18000 bonus Mastery from Dark Soul, things could have gotten out of hand. Someone will have something like this happen and they will take the number 1 parse. These trinkets will create large outliers for those with good RNG on a particular kill.

[Mellifleur 0]

So I find my horridon dps to be upwards of 200k, but my single target at 92k at 505 ilvl, I seriously have no idea what I'm doing wrong for single target. http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-re7z9zr102bgcmg4/sum/damageDone/?s=13365&e=13658 this was my best Durumu log every other attempt I was pretty much 85-92k dps. I feel pretty bad about my single target.

[gahhda 95]

Saying "Simcraft can't model Warlocks at all." is a bit of an exaggeration considering the fact that the stat weights practically everyone uses for warlocks are derived from it, and you can in fact sim realistic add distribution for shadowburn/havoc cleaving, if you really want to.

With regards to stat weight changes based around RPPM, haste is highly overrated, because as it has been said many times already, RPPM trinkets are RNG to a new extreme. Sure, haste looks better over 50000 pulls of a boss, but who the hell has ever pulled a boss 50000 times.

Edited April 3, 2013 by gahddo

[Zagam 1,983]

Haste increases your chance to proc trinkets and increases your chance of getting more procs. Haste is not overrated. Simcraft may be able to model stat weights, but stat weights tell you your DPS gain per stat point at that exact gear level...things change dynamically as you hit certain thresholds. Haste gives more procs of your legendary meta gem as well. Since Haste ALSO normally is good for all specs, these extra benefits make it the best stat for all 3 specs. You don't need to pull something 50,000 times to see the benefit of it once.

Simcraft can't model "ideal" play for Warlocks. By "ideal" I mean Simcraft doesn't use Doom when Unerring procs giving you a massive DPS gain for Demonology. It also doesn't properly capture ideal human reactions to procs with snapshotting buffed DoTs. Simcraft also won't delay Havoc 4 or 5 seconds to get off 3 Havoc'd Shadowburns instead of 1 Havoc'd Chaos Bolt. Simcraft won't execute snapshotting your buffed Intellect from Wushoolay's to lock in powerful Affliction DoTs, pop into Meta for an empowered Corruption, or lock in a mega Chaos Bolt.

[JvChequer 43]

Haste increases your chance to proc trinkets and increases your chance of getting more procs. Haste is not overrated. Simcraft may be able to model stat weights, but stat weights tell you your DPS gain per stat point at that exact gear level...things change dynamically as you hit certain thresholds. Haste gives more procs of your legendary meta gem as well. Since Haste ALSO normally is good for all specs, these extra benefits make it the best stat for all 3 specs. You don't need to pull something 50,000 times to see the benefit of it once.

Simcraft can't model "ideal" play for Warlocks. By "ideal" I mean Simcraft doesn't use Doom when Unerring procs giving you a massive DPS gain for Demonology. It also doesn't properly capture ideal human reactions to procs with snapshotting buffed DoTs. Simcraft also won't delay Havoc 4 or 5 seconds to get off 3 Havoc'd Shadowburns instead of 1 Havoc'd Chaos Bolt. Simcraft won't execute snapshotting your buffed Intellect from Wushoolay's to lock in powerful Affliction DoTs, pop into Meta for an empowered Corruption, or lock in a mega Chaos Bolt.

Exactly.

SMC is amazing for stats weight and see how well your character theoretically do in a premade fight, but, this tool cannot play better than an high-level player with human reactions and knowledge of the fight.

And haste it's not overrated at all, mainly at Affliction, Mastery and Haste was even in 5.1 pretty tie, now with Supremacy and RPPM, Haste totally overput Mastery.

Edited April 3, 2013 by JvChequer

[vladMTL 1]

In response to your pet question, it comes down to this:

Are there buffs in the fight that pets don't benefit from? If yes, get sacrifice and take advantage.

If no, will your pet be running around a lot? If yes, pick imp.

If no, pick up the observer.

hey man

by sacrifice I assume you refer to Grimoire of Sacrifice ?!

[JvChequer 43]

#UP

Yes.

[Asme 0]

Zagam....You said that Immolate buffs Incinerate. Can you explain how that works?

Thank you

[Omaric 246]

Zagam....You said that Immolate buffs Incinerate. Can you explain how that works?

Thank you

I'm not seeing that either. I see that Rain of Fire does more damage on Immolated targets, but not Incinerate.

[Zagam 1,983]

Wow, old school mechanic change I never noticed. Incinerate used to do a lot more if it hit someone Immolated...good to know that you don't need Immo up for Incinerate anymore in burst situations...blah, I feel dumb.

[Sifon 25]

I've been reading that old school mastery build is still viable for destruction(can't remember with which grimoire) so I made 2 simulations 1 with full haste 1 with mastery, with my current gear(2pc T14, 2pc T15). Results were close enough to give a shot but the question bugs me is can I trust simcraft's trinket uptimes? Because between 11k haste and 3k haste there is only %1-3 difference between Cha-Ye's, BotH, and legendary meta gem uptime. And mastery build simmed 2-3k higher by the way.

[JvChequer 43]

I've been reading that old school mastery build is still viable for destruction(can't remember with which grimoire) so I made 2 simulations 1 with full haste 1 with mastery, with my current gear(2pc T14, 2pc T15). Results were close enough to give a shot but the question bugs me is can I trust simcraft's trinket uptimes? Because between 11k haste and 3k haste there is only %1-3 difference between Cha-Ye's, BotH, and legendary meta gem uptime. And mastery build simmed 2-3k higher by the way.

I dont think 1-3% more uptime it's that trustable, but you need to test yourself.

[Sifon 25]

I dont think 1-3% more uptime it's that trustable, but you need to test yourself.

I'm gonna try all in mastery build in tomorrow's raid so I will have some data about Cha-Ye's and BoTH but I don't have the gem yet.

[Zagam 1,983]

Your logs look solid, man. Keep up the good work. Maybe point a couple of the Warlocks in your raid this way or help them yourself. You're outperforming the crap out of a couple of them, so helping them might boost your raid team a bit.

That said, don't focus on the stats. They're going to be dependent on the fight and what your job is in the fight. Personally I don't like Destruction so much because I like stacking Haste and then I get absurdly fast Incinerates under Backdraft, especially during Bloodlust. If I were to play Destruction as my main spec, I'd likely find that perfect value of Haste that would ensure I'd never go below 1.0 sec Incinerate, but that's unreasonable. It looks like you're playing very well, so keep up that work and just try to improve each week.

Also, don't listen to Simcraft. It's a fantastic model for finding certain things, but it is not very optimal for finding the DPS you'll do on a particular fight because there are way too many variables. I sim at 145k single target but do 168k. There are just some things that can't be modeled. Try not to think of your Simcraft simulated DPS value as anything but a VERY broad value in some ballpark of how you could actually perform. Use that number as a benchmark and always try to beat it. Just be aware that there are only a few modes in Simcraft (most people default to the Patchwerk type style which NEVER happens) so you'd need to fully customize it for a real approximation. The best way to test things is in LFR. That's how I run my tests when I'm curious. I know it's not timely, but live data >>>>>> simulated data.