Destro post 3.1.2Follow

well, I'm stuck at work, bored and with little to do, so gonna make a topic about the recent destruction changes and how destro rocks again for pve.

spec choice:
Spec.1 3/13/55 for if you're aiming for the 11% hit cap (10% for alliance with draenai aura). optimum glyphs are incinerate, conflagorate and lifetap

Spec.2 0/13/58 for if you're aiming for the 14% hit cap (13% for alliance with draenai aura). optimum glyphs are incinerate, conflagorate and immolate

Spells to be used for both specs for dps:
Curse of Doom (as long as boss has over 60seconds remaining alive.. a general presumption you can make is after 25%, don't renew CoD, use CoA instead for incase)
Immolate
Conflagorate
Chaos Bolt
Incinerate

Pet: Imp

ok... random little facts..
fact.1:
for Spec.1 due to the lack of improved soul-leach, the mana efficiency of the spec is greatly reduced and as such, you end up lifetapping alot more, hence why glyph of lifetap becomes more viable than glyph of immolate. something i'm currently still undecided upon is whether or not you should actively lifetap once every 20seconds to keep the buff up, or if you should still aim to 'run OOM' just as the boss dies.. which could mean lifetapping every 25-30seconds instead...

fact.2:
for both specs, the Firestone is the better choice. these 2 specs are the only specs in the game for us that benefit more from the Firestone than the Spellstone.


stat order:
Hit (up until cap) > spell power > haste > crit ~= spirit


umm.. can't think of anything else to add right now...umm... according to EJ, these specs are the top dps specs now for us, from my own experience they do feel a bit better than the old top spec 0/41/30... also this spec is the best scaling spec for us, i can't be ***** to find the thread on EJs, but for this spec each of the stats listed above provide a larger dps increase than they do for almost any other spec, so as you gain better and better gear the specs will pull ahead of the rest more and more

Sounds juicy, what's your recommended spell rotation? And no Corruption?

COD
Immolate
Conflagorate
Chaos Bolt
Incinerate until Conflag/Chaos is off CD

Juggle the immolate/Conflag/Chaos/COD CD's after that, interspersing incinerate when others are on CD?

done 25man emalon earlier, was a good raid setup, moonkin, Spriest and some other stuff that'd give me buffs (no elemental shaman sadly), i was pushing 5.6-5.8 dps with only raid buffs.. no consumables, never managed even close to that in a pug before.. lol, I quite impressed myself :)

if you don't have a moonkin or unholy DK, then you will want to use CoE.

the reason for CoD over CoA is that once you take into account the addition 2-2.5 GCDs (so 3-4seconds) of cast time for your nuke spell, you end up doing more damage with CoD than you do CoA

in terms of scaling... CoD is one of the highiest scaling spells in the game. 200% +SP scaling (should be 400% but blizzard states that as being to 'OP'). +hit shouldn't be an issue 'cos in theory you should already be hit capped (if you're not you're doing something very very wrong)

it scales a tiny bit less than affliction with +SP (literally almost identically), but it scales better with crit and haste... so with raid buffs you gain like 13% crit from raid buffs and the 3% haste and increased spirit scaling... so yeah scaling ways when raid buffed/flasked etc.. the dps increase is massive. the destruction specs are the best scaling for warlocks for almost all stats.

here's a list of the scalings:

Warlock_T8_00_13_58 Sta=0.00 Int=0.56 Spi=0.75 SP=1.55 Hit=3.27 Crit=1.01 Haste=1.52
Warlock_T8_03_13_55 Sta=0.00 Int=0.30 Spi=0.94 SP=1.48 Hit=3.25 Crit=1.00 Haste=1.46
Warlock_T8_53_00_18 Sta=0.00 Int=0.32 Spi=0.73 SP=1.56 Hit=2.16 Crit=0.82 Haste=1.04

Ahh so the scaling of the raid buffs are what set Destro apart from Affliction. Self buff testing is pretty much irrelevant in this case.


Thanks for the explanation. I'll give it a whirl in Ulduar tonight.

i sharn't answer the question about CB, i'll just simply point you in the direction of the destruction tree talents and let you figure that one out for yourself, little hint you're looking at the bottom half :P

in terms of renewing/spell priorities of stuff...

CoD > Imm > Conflag > CB > inc

BUT

if conflagorate comes off CD JUST before immolate wears off, do a conflagorate before renewing immolate, there is nothing at all wrong with casting immolate with a backdraft proc contrary to popular belief.

looking at your hit and crit rating.. you should go for either of these specs:

53/0/18 with glyph of haunt, CoA and lifetap + using the succubus pet
3/13/55 with glyph of conflag, incinerate and lifetap + using the imp pet

also you need to change some of your enchants.. you chest enchant should be +8/10 stats and your leg enchant should be +50sp and 30spirit


you may enjoy your felguard spec... but simply put you don't have the hit rating to raid as any demo spec properly.

none need 400+hit... they all need a total of 17% hit... now in a raid you get 3% hit from shadow priests or moonkins, meaning you need 14% hit from gear maximum... seeing as you've got a bit over 11% hit you should get the 3% hit talent and then you're hit capped

I probably said that you need like 420-ish to reach the hit cap without any raid debuffs (spriest/moonkin) or talents (suppression) and then carried on to say the hit rating needed to get the lower hit caps... i'm just presuming you skim-read it and missed the later parts

well being hit capped would definitely help :)

well seeing as you're a horde warlock... the hitcap (presuming you always have a Spriest in the raid) is 14% from yourself... which is 368 hit rating... now presuming you have 3% talented hit as well, the hitcap now becomes 11%, so 289 hit rating.

in terms of the duel specs... you only need 1 gear set for PVE. the main purpose of duel speccing is to have 1 off spec for, usually, PvP... in which case you will want a seperate gear set.