[Archived] Destruction Warlock 5.4

[Zagam 1,982]

I think that your understanding of stats needs to be revised. I think that the difference between the possible reforges as a Destruction Warlock is minimal. The difference in DPS between the most extreme reforges at PreRaid gear level is less than 1%. It's about 2% maximum at T15H level. That's why the guide now says that all stats are balanced.

You will never change reforges and go from last to best, so whatever other voodoo magic he had going on, his secondary stats were not the cause of it. Damien is absolutely correct here and as I have ADAMANTLY focused on driving home in the Warlock community...your secondary stats are about 10% of your total DPS component while your skill and mastery of your specialization will contribute the most significant change in your DPS.

There is a reason why at 499 ilvl my Demo parses were better than 505 geared Warlocks with the same setup and reforges. Then they whisper me telling me my reforges are wrong. For Destruction and Demonology, the secondary stats are so close that you pick what you PERSONALLY want to play as. Like crits? Take crit rating. Like faster Shadowbolts and Soulfire casts? Take haste. Like huge spikes in AoE and burst damage? Take mastery. When it's all said and done, they're all the same. When most Warlocks see Mastery > Crit > Haste, they stack one value and this skews the other ratings. What this will do is make Mastery look less valuable and Haste and Crit look more valuable. Your best bet with Demo and Destro is to keep Haste = Crit = Mastery and not really care too much one way or another. Just don't have two charges of Conflagrate, don't Chaos Bolt below 20%, and don't use Backdraft charges on Chaos Bolt. These are mistakes that players make and blame on reforging. Don't be that Warlock.

[Guest Sil]

GoSac is absolutely better for destro AOE which in many -if not most- situations will be the best lock AOE. in single target situations you need GoService. Finally your intro is a little misleading. It should state that destro presently sims worse on non-existing patchwerks fights, with sims changing dayly if not hourly at the present time. An analysis of top 100 lock parses of worldoflogs did show in 5.0/5.1 that destru was highly competitive with affli on many fights, with a few fights being dominated by destru and none by demono, whereas destru was simmed third all the time. (Please don't mention dps cheating as affliction and demono are also perfect specs for people who absolutely want to pad the meters, which is beyond me)

[Guest Zulayka]

One macro i would recommend for destro locks is a mouseover havoc macro. i use mine all the time to apply havoc to a second target without having to worry about changing targets.

This sounds great. Could anyone share such a macro? I don't know how to write them but love using them

[Guest Sil]

#showtooltip Havoc

/cast [@mouseover,harm] Havoc; [harm] Havoc

[SIl 3]

This sounds great. Could anyone share such a macro? I don't know how to write them but love using them

#showtooltip Havoc

/cast [@mouseover,harm] Havoc; [harm] Havoc

[Guest John S]

As of the most recent patch to 5.2 Rain of Fire is a DPS increase when added to single and multi target fights. Because it is an instant-cast you can esentially layer it over your other casting spells. In AoE situations its just not fair as you cast Rain of Fire on the mob and get an un-ending amount of chaos bolts to toss at anyone. Amazing on Horridon.

So the Rotation would be pretty much the same. Keep up Imolate and Curse of the Elements, Use Conflag as much as possible (but make sure to cast the 3 quick incinerates right after), Keep Rain of Fire up, Fill with Incinerate. Nuke with Chaos Bolt.

With this model you gain embers alot quicker and don't need to sit on 3 of them for the whole fight. I found that when i tried to build 3 up, my mana go very low and sometimes depleted leaving me waiting a second to get it back. I like to cast Chaos Bolts around 1.5-2 embers, seems like my DPS is the highest for long sustained fights that way. I'll build it up a little more when Dark Soul is coming off CD but not to the point where i'm losing alot of mana.

Just a thought, Noxxic actually gave me this idea.

[Damien 1,514]

#showtooltip Havoc /cast [@mouseover,harm] Havoc; [harm] Havoc

#showtooltip Havoc /cast [@mouseover,harm] Havoc; [harm] Havoc

I've added the macro, thank you! And my apologies to the person who had originally requested it. It looks as if I didn't see their comment...

As of the most recent patch to 5.2 Rain of Fire is a DPS increase when added to single and multi target fights. Because it is an instant-cast you can esentially layer it over your other casting spells. In AoE situations its just not fair as you cast Rain of Fire on the mob and get an un-ending amount of chaos bolts to toss at anyone. Amazing on Horridon. So the Rotation would be pretty much the same. Keep up Imolate and Curse of the Elements, Use Conflag as much as possible (but make sure to cast the 3 quick incinerates right after), Keep Rain of Fire up, Fill with Incinerate. Nuke with Chaos Bolt. With this model you gain embers alot quicker and don't need to sit on 3 of them for the whole fight. I found that when i tried to build 3 up, my mana go very low and sometimes depleted leaving me waiting a second to get it back. I like to cast Chaos Bolts around 1.5-2 embers, seems like my DPS is the highest for long sustained fights that way. I'll build it up a little more when Dark Soul is coming off CD but not to the point where i'm losing alot of mana. Just a thought, Noxxic actually gave me this idea.

Thank you for that! I completely forgot to add Rain of Fire to the single-target rotation when I updated the guide for 5.2. Good thing you reminded me, I don't know how long it would have taken me to notice it otherwise :P

[Guest Zalgoret STORMRAGE]

Hello Fellow Warlocks,

I have been a master of the chaotic nether for many years now, and I've noticed an incorrect rotation, You may want to follow this rotation and see for yourself the better results:

SINGLE TARGET:

Curse of Elements

Immolate

Conflag. x1 (procs Backdraft reducing the next 3 Incinerates mana cost by 30%) (By this time all your buffs should proc)

Incinerate x3

By this time you should have at least one Chaos bolt ready, use it.

Rinse and repeat starting from immolate, if you want you can do this to save mana.

Curse of Elements

Immolate

Conflag. x1 (procs Backdraft reducing the next 3 Incinerates or next Chaos bolt mana cost by 30%) (By this time all your buffs should proc)

Incinerate x3

Conflag. x1 (Backdraft is up again, this time do chaos bolt)

Chaos Bolt

Rinse and repeat starting from Immolate.

Stat priority AFTER HIT CAP: Mastery>Crit>Haste. OR Mastery>Haste> Crit. Intellect being the variable here.

Haste is good for Des as it is for afflic, it gives your DoT a better tick time. Immolate is the only DoT you have, everything else is a steady burst, so you want to make sure that Immolate is doing some good ticks and damage.

Mastery is the controlling factor in Destruction, keep it high, you will be amazed at the DPS you can pump out.

Have any questions mail me on Stormrage US, Alliance. Or find me on YouTube.com/WoWWarlockChannel and follow me on Twitch.tv/zalgoret.

Thanks and happy hunting.

[Guest Jason]

First, correct me if I'm wrong, but the DPET of CB and Immo are approximately equal. Why then is immolate so low on the priority list?

Next, There's more nuance to playing Destro than the guide goes into. In particular, players have a lot of latitude on when to fire off ember spells (CB & SB). Timing these with procs/buffs will get you noticeably higher DPS.

1. CB/SB should be fired off when available during Skull Banner (+20% crit for 10 seconds). It's a mini DS and should not be missed.

2. CB/SB should be fired off when procs are available if the player will end up capping before the next DS or Skull Banner.

3. During execute, SB's should be held until DS if possible (single target). If the target will die before the next DS they should be held until a proc.

4. For multi-target that includes a lot of adds (looking at Horridon or Will for instance), Mastery will easily overtake crit and haste. It will also make GoSac preferrable. I'm still working on the math for that, but it seems like somewhere in the range of "I can use Havoc almost on CD, and I can consistently get 3-4 extra embers from Shadowburning adds (and from RoF over them) every minute".

[Guest LockRock]

Can anyone do a DPS test with the Glyph: Demon Training for destro locks?

i feel it would be a dps booster with imp rather than the observer.

[Damien 1,514]

Hello Fellow Warlocks,

I have been a master of the chaotic nether for many years now, and I've noticed an incorrect rotation, You may want to follow this rotation and see for yourself the better results:

SINGLE TARGET:

Curse of Elements

Immolate

Conflag. x1 (procs Backdraft reducing the next 3 Incinerates mana cost by 30%) (By this time all your buffs should proc)

Incinerate x3

By this time you should have at least one Chaos bolt ready, use it.

Rinse and repeat starting from immolate, if you want you can do this to save mana.

Curse of Elements

Immolate

Conflag. x1 (procs Backdraft reducing the next 3 Incinerates or next Chaos bolt mana cost by 30%) (By this time all your buffs should proc)

Incinerate x3

Conflag. x1 (Backdraft is up again, this time do chaos bolt)

Chaos Bolt

Rinse and repeat starting from Immolate.

Stat priority AFTER HIT CAP: Mastery>Crit>Haste. OR Mastery>Haste> Crit. Intellect being the variable here.

Haste is good for Des as it is for afflic, it gives your DoT a better tick time. Immolate is the only DoT you have, everything else is a steady burst, so you want to make sure that Immolate is doing some good ticks and damage.

Mastery is the controlling factor in Destruction, keep it high, you will be amazed at the DPS you can pump out.

Have any questions mail me on Stormrage US, Alliance. Or find me on YouTube.com/WoWWarlockChannel and follow me on Twitch.tv/zalgoret.

Thanks and happy hunting.

First, correct me if I'm wrong, but the DPET of CB and Immo are approximately equal. Why then is immolate so low on the priority list?

Next, There's more nuance to playing Destro than the guide goes into. In particular, players have a lot of latitude on when to fire off ember spells (CB & SB). Timing these with procs/buffs will get you noticeably higher DPS.

1. CB/SB should be fired off when available during Skull Banner (+20% crit for 10 seconds). It's a mini DS and should not be missed.

2. CB/SB should be fired off when procs are available if the player will end up capping before the next DS or Skull Banner.

3. During execute, SB's should be held until DS if possible (single target). If the target will die before the next DS they should be held until a proc.

4. For multi-target that includes a lot of adds (looking at Horridon or Will for instance), Mastery will easily overtake crit and haste. It will also make GoSac preferrable. I'm still working on the math for that, but it seems like somewhere in the range of "I can use Havoc almost on CD, and I can consistently get 3-4 extra embers from Shadowburning adds (and from RoF over them) every minute".

We had a respected theory crafter proofread our guides for 5.2, so I didn't want to change anything until I received his input, which arrived earlier this week. Now the guide is updated, following his advice. It's very much on par with what you guys were saying. Thanks for posting.

[Damien 1,514]

Can anyone do a DPS test with the Glyph: Demon Training for destro locks?

i feel it would be a dps booster with imp rather than the observer.

Why do you feel it would be a DPS boost?

[Guest Kretin]

2 reasons why I think it would be a boost, observer has to get to the mob to attack, walk time is not dps time, and 50% faster firebolts is very noticable. I did a test, 5 minutes each, with and without the glyph. no glyph observer won 9.5k to the imps 8.5k. then i swapped on the glyph and my imp did 11k vs the 9.5k the observer did. maybe check it out? I think it's a viable option.

[Zagam 1,982]

2 reasons why I think it would be a boost, observer has to get to the mob to attack, walk time is not dps time, and 50% faster firebolts is very noticable. I did a test, 5 minutes each, with and without the glyph. no glyph observer won 9.5k to the imps 8.5k. then i swapped on the glyph and my imp did 11k vs the 9.5k the observer did. maybe check it out? I think it's a viable option.

It's not. You're showing incorrect values because if you're simply letting your pet attack, your damage recording device, Skada or Recount, goes into pause mode while your Imp is recharging his Fel Energy for another blast. What you're recording is the Imp's burst, not his sustained DPS. With the glyph, your Imp simply does more in shorter windows but has no measureable change in regards to sustained DPS. In order to properly test this, have your Warlock melee the target dummy while your pets are DPSing. This will prevent Skada/Recount from going into passive/fight change mode and recording true sustained DPS.

[Zagam 1,982]

Hello Fellow Warlocks,

I have been a master of the chaotic nether for many years now, and I've noticed an incorrect rotation, You may want to follow this rotation and see for yourself the better results:

SINGLE TARGET:

Curse of Elements

Immolate

Conflag. x1 (procs Backdraft reducing the next 3 Incinerates mana cost by 30%) (By this time all your buffs should proc)

Incinerate x3

By this time you should have at least one Chaos bolt ready, use it.

Rinse and repeat starting from immolate, if you want you can do this to save mana.

Curse of Elements

Immolate

Conflag. x1 (procs Backdraft reducing the next 3 Incinerates or next Chaos bolt mana cost by 30%) (By this time all your buffs should proc)

Incinerate x3

Conflag. x1 (Backdraft is up again, this time do chaos bolt)

Chaos Bolt

Rinse and repeat starting from Immolate.

Stat priority AFTER HIT CAP: Mastery>Crit>Haste. OR Mastery>Haste> Crit. Intellect being the variable here.

Haste is good for Des as it is for afflic, it gives your DoT a better tick time. Immolate is the only DoT you have, everything else is a steady burst, so you want to make sure that Immolate is doing some good ticks and damage.

Mastery is the controlling factor in Destruction, keep it high, you will be amazed at the DPS you can pump out.

Have any questions mail me on Stormrage US, Alliance. Or find me on YouTube.com/WoWWarlockChannel and follow me on Twitch.tv/zalgoret.

Thanks and happy hunting.

Haste trumps Mastery with the effects that Haste brings to trinkets, meta gem procs, and pet scaling with Grimoire of Supremacy. Very few fights should you be having Mastery > Haste. Mastery should only trump Haste when you're primarily casting Shadowburn and Chaos Bolt which is situational at best unless you're running Grimoire of Sacrifice. Supremacy is a higher sustained single target DPS Grimoire, but if your comfort is with Sacrifice, then Mastery > Haste is the way to run.

Rotation wise, things change drastically with your trinkets. You don't have a 'rotation' if you're carefully monitoring your procs. For example:

Unerring Vision of Lei Shen requires you monitor the first few seconds of any fight with tight scrutiny. More often than not, Perfect Aim will proc. You'll want to take advantage of this situation by applying Immolate and IMMEDIATELY begin casting Chaos Bolt. Since your spells are snapshotted at the beginning of your cast, you'll now have a 100% crit chance Immolate ticking as well as a mega empowered Chaos Bolt. As soon as Perfect Aim's buff wears off, then you pop Dark Soul:Instability. DS is wasted with a 100% Crit chance, so if Perfect Aim procs while Dark Soul is up, you're wasting 4 seconds (20%) of Dark Soul. If Perfect Aim does NOT proc immediately, count on it procing within the first 15 seconds, so spend that time building embers without Dark Soul. When it procs, do the same (Immo + CB cast) and proceed from there. From this point on, whenever Perfect Aim procs, you'll want to apply Immo and get off a Chaos Bolt. If pressed for time, simply cast the CB.

Wushoolay's Final Choice provides you with a slowly-empowering buff that accumulates over 20 seconds. You don't want to cast a Chaos Bolt without this proc if you can help it. Essentially this trinket makes you pool embers until this trinket procs. Then, you can unload them similarly to what you do with Dark Soul. If you unload Chaos Bolts when Wush's Lightning is between 7 and 10 stacks, you're going to be seeing Chaos Bolts empowered by 9-13k Intellect.

Breath of the Hydra is a 20 second proc with a 7k+ Intellect bonus. It has a reasonable uptime (30-35%), so you can reliably pool embers until you get a proc in order to make the best use of Chaos Bolt.

You also say to cast Conflagrate and then immediately cast Chaos Bolt. This is a no-no as Chaos Bolt will consume all 3 charges of Backdraft leaving you with potential mana problems. You never want to put yourself in a situation where you cast Chaos Bolt with more than 2 stacks of Backdraft. If you cast Conflagrate then want to fire out a Chaos Bolt, use Incinerate first to get below 3 charges of Backdraft.

TL;DR: Don't mindlessly cast your Chaos Bolts without being aware of procs lining up. This is especially important once you acquire one of the T15 trinkets.

[Zagam 1,982]

First, correct me if I'm wrong, but the DPET of CB and Immo are approximately equal. Why then is immolate so low on the priority list?

Next, There's more nuance to playing Destro than the guide goes into. In particular, players have a lot of latitude on when to fire off ember spells (CB & SB). Timing these with procs/buffs will get you noticeably higher DPS.

1. CB/SB should be fired off when available during Skull Banner (+20% crit for 10 seconds). It's a mini DS and should not be missed.

2. CB/SB should be fired off when procs are available if the player will end up capping before the next DS or Skull Banner.

3. During execute, SB's should be held until DS if possible (single target). If the target will die before the next DS they should be held until a proc.

4. For multi-target that includes a lot of adds (looking at Horridon or Will for instance), Mastery will easily overtake crit and haste. It will also make GoSac preferrable. I'm still working on the math for that, but it seems like somewhere in the range of "I can use Havoc almost on CD, and I can consistently get 3-4 extra embers from Shadowburning adds (and from RoF over them) every minute".

Immolate should be low on the priority list because of it's damage component, but the priority list is assuming that you never let it fall off. This is especially true with Pandemic...Immolate should never NOT be on your target. Abilities aren't ranked necessarily by DPET, but with the synergy of all other abilities. You wouldn't want to use Chaos Bolt over Incinerate with 3+ Backdraft charges just because CB has a higher DPET than Incinerate. You also would never NOT want Immolate up because DoT ticks generate embers as well as empowering your Incinerates that land while this DoT is up.

1. Absolutely. I use a Weak Aura notification when Skull Banner is detected. Simple conversations with your Warriors can also help here.

2. Chaos Bolts should be fired when certain procs align REGARDLESS of Skull Banner and Dark Soul. Not sure on the math of it, but I'm pretty sure a 7+ stack of Wushoolay's Lightning will empower a Chaos Bolt more than the 30% bonus crit from Dark Soul.

3. Shadowburn should follow the same logic as Chaos Bolt in regards to buffs. Don't hold onto it and bypass a Wushoolay's proc or Unerring Vision proc just to make it last until Dark Soul is up. Also, if the target will die, you should consume embers at a rate that will ensure you that you end a fight with 2 embers, only because you used your last one and got refunded 2 when your target died.

4. This is correct. If you're truly min/maxing per fight, then you can adjust some stats on the fly like this. It's typically safe to just go Haste > Mastery and abandon Crit so that you can swap between the two Grimoires with small variances. Your decision to play both Grimoires to a very high level or to maximize each one at the cost of a lot of gold with the swapping.

[Guest Sicra]

Hey, i'd like to add to the hit cap part. If you're orc and you use wands, it's considered as unarmed and you get 1% expertise for using it

[Guest Eierdotter]

After the recent updates, this guide became really useful!

But still there are some misleading things i want to point out.

casting Doomguard while bloodlust/heroism is up is pointless, since the Doomguard has to spend his demonic Felenergy-thingy for his Doom Bolts and therefore he casts 17 Bolts in 1min, no matter if he has 5% oder 50% haste. It may be viable if you consider the increased RPPM trinkets to fire off much more often during bloodlust but IMHO i suggest to maximise the 20% dmg Bonus sub 20% Boss HP. But it is important to note, that you should cast the Doomguard when the Boss lives at least the 1min duration. (check some logs, you won't find one with more than 17 Doom Bolts)

And i made some testing with RoF and i noticed the proc yields always 20% of a Burning Ember instead of your stated 10%. i had a procchance of about 20% but that may be RNG. So for 1 GCD spent to cast RoF you will end up with ~3/10 Ember (8*0,2*0,2) per Enemy hit!

The Rule to not use CB with 3 or more Backdraft stacks seems viable overall,

but to maximise the amount of CB´s you cast during high INT-proc / DS:I / other insane DMG buffs (like Jin'rokh pool, Ji'kun feed young, etc.)

you may want to use the Backdraft stacks for CB´s rather than for Incinerates, well at least for DS:I.

Reasons:

T15 2pc Bonus makes CB cheaper therefore it is less likely you run out of Embers for CB´s (during DS:I only)

RoF yields insane amounts of Embers

procc duration usually is higher, than the Conflagrate cooldown (you do not want to get capped on 2 charges)

You hardly cast Incinerates if you have such a DMG buff (Buffed Immolate + uptime of RoF is more important)

Casting mostly CB during these proccs means you do not have mana issues --> RoF

So after taking this in consideration and ingame testing i find myself capped at the cast time of CB rather than the Ember costs! (6-7 CB during DS:I without Bloodlust is possible with T15 2pc)

Usually you want to cast 2 Conflagrate + RoF before you use DS:I, then starting of with the CB´s.

Regarding the Unerring Vision (Lei Shen trinket) the proc Perfect aim adds 100% crit, so the character sheet shows for example 121,3% crit instead of only flat 100%, means CB gets buffed by more than 100%(talking about the buff from critrating not from resulting dmg output) so if you may have cast DS:i you would end up at about 150% critchance, that is of course pointless for incinerate or immolate to have more than 100% crit, but CB will get buffed further. But regardless of this, the Trinket is much more beneficial to a caster who relies on DoT dmg.

[gahhda 95]

In extreme damage increase cases, haven't tested an exact number but, backdraft stacks become ignorable. If you look at the current simc action list for destruction, it uses chaos bolt if perfect aim is up, regardless of backdraft, because getting off a +100% crit chance chaos bolt far outweighs the mana cost/cast time reduction on 3 incinerates. I could test an exact % at which this happens, but its at the bottom of my priority right now.

And, yes, ji-kun is another great example, 100% damage is well worth getting the chaos bolt off regardless. 47% of my damage on heroic ki-kun was chaos bolt :D.

[dooms 1]

how does the lock stats affect the minion stats ?

is it haste / crit / mastery

Edited April 14, 2013 by dooms

[Guest Chloe_Burns]

Okay. I am from vanilla times. I played HARDCORE up into WotLK and then quit; which means I skipped Cata and recently started playing MoP. I feel like I am finally starting to get a handle on things (trying to adjust to the fact that a warlock doesn't have a shadowbolt was quite strange).

I guess that I need advice on everything. I felt like I had my rotations figured out as I was out dps'ing everyone in my raid but then I get with other people and even in LFR and my dps is sub par to everyone else and my ilevel is higher than everyone else's. My item level is 502. I am not using any add-ons at the moment but would like advice on which ones to use (when to know when a proc happens, when to know when to do what)... there is just so much going on and trying to get out of old-school habits... I'm lost. Any advice is extremely helpful and I appreciate it.

..I wanna do 130K+ dps like I see other locks! (right now.. I am barely scraping with 90k... embarassing)

[Guest robbie]

so is it just me or is anyone else noticing that imp with glyph of demon training is giving a very noticable dps increase over observer? I dont use simcraft at all, this is all from 10 man throne of thunder. i mean like 5-10k higher with imp.

[Damien 1,514]

so is it just me or is anyone else noticing that imp with glyph of demon training is giving a very noticable dps increase over observer? I dont use simcraft at all, this is all from 10 man throne of thunder. i mean like 5-10k higher with imp.

Are you using recount?

[Guest Pímpmylmp]

I'm noticing higher dps with my Fel Imp then my Observer during Lei Shen, Difference is about 5-7k but it is noticeable. Also I'm using Glyph of Demon Training. I am using skada for this. The Imp might win because of the movement of the boss so on a fight like jin'rokh the Observer might win.

[Raow 0]

I cleaned up your havoc macro and included focus target

#showtooltip

/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] Havoc

/cast [@focus.harm.nodead] Havoc

/cast [@target,harm,nodead] Havoc