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Destro rotation questionsFollow

#1 Oct 09 2009 at 9:17 PM Rating: Good
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I've been using the 3/13/55 spec which is posted around here . . .somewhere.

I like it a lot for the many heroics I run and the couple partial attempts at raids I've had (bad bad pug raids.)

Rotation (or priority list) is supposed to be CoD, Immo, Conflag, CB, Incin spam - hitting Conflag/CB if up & keeping Immo up 100%. Right?

Couple issues I've run into:
Incin usually hits for 3-4k and often crits for 9-10k
Conflag usually hits for 6-9k and often crits for 10-11k
Chaosbolt usually hits for 2-4k never noticed a crit
CoD usually hits for 10-12k

So I have to ask why CoD beats out CoE's, what?, flat 13% increase in damage. And why CB is used when it has the longest casting time of any of them and seems to do far less damage in that time. (I can get 15-20k in incinerates out in the time it takes to cast a 4k CB.)

I'm thinking of maybe trying Soulfire in place of CB and see how that goes. What's the general consensus on Soulfire?
#2 Oct 09 2009 at 9:30 PM Rating: Decent
I haven't used soulfire in a while, but unless their is another lock in the group, I think you should be casting CoE, not CoD. If another lock is in the group, then you decide which casts CoE and which casts CoD.

CoE may not deal dmg on it's own, but it helps everyone else in the group deal more dmg.
#3 Oct 09 2009 at 11:03 PM Rating: Good
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546 posts
Pantherfern wrote:
I've been using the 3/13/55 spec which is posted around here . . .somewhere.

I like it a lot for the many heroics I run and the couple partial attempts at raids I've had (bad bad pug raids.)

Rotation (or priority list) is supposed to be CoD, Immo, Conflag, CB, Incin spam - hitting Conflag/CB if up & keeping Immo up 100%. Right?

Couple issues I've run into:
Incin usually hits for 3-4k and often crits for 9-10k
Conflag usually hits for 6-9k and often crits for 10-11k
Chaosbolt usually hits for 2-4k never noticed a crit
CoD usually hits for 10-12k

So I have to ask why CoD beats out CoE's, what?, flat 13% increase in damage. And why CB is used when it has the longest casting time of any of them and seems to do far less damage in that time. (I can get 15-20k in incinerates out in the time it takes to cast a 4k CB.)

I'm thinking of maybe trying Soulfire in place of CB and see how that goes. What's the general consensus on Soulfire?


Soulfire is not worth using, unless you have the decimation talent. Though I have no clue how your chaosbolt is only hitting for 2-4k. Even with **** poor gear it should be doing more then that, hell I am fairly sure it will do more then that at 80 if you are completely naked.

Also your crit numbers for conflag don't make a lick of sense, on average you are getting less then a 1.5 times damage on crits when you obviously should have ruin. Your curse of doom numbers also seem really low, but I guess possible.

I need to see some sort of log and an armory because the numbers you have just don't make any sense, and yes if you don't have another lock, boomkin, or unholy? DK providing the +13% buff use CoE over CoD.
#4 Oct 09 2009 at 11:25 PM Rating: Good
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Quote:
And why CB is used when it has the longest casting time of any of them and seems to do far less damage in that time. (I can get 15-20k in incinerates out in the time it takes to cast a 4k CB.)


I'm not sure why your chaos bolt takes longer to cast than incinerate, with zero haste and the Bane/Eberstorm talents it should put your CB at 2 seconds and Incinerate at 2.25 seconds, thus making CB the quicker cast.

In a quick test(I took all trinkets and enchants off that could give a short +damage increase including no imp hence why damage is low) I found the following:
Incinerate average hit=4264, average crit=8734
Chaos Bolt average hit=5090, average crit=9913
Conflag Average hit=5134, average crit=10729

The reason you should be casting CB on every cooldown is because it's a quicker cast time and hits harder than Incinerate, or at least it should, not sure why it's not for you.

Quote:
I'm thinking of maybe trying Soulfire in place of CB and see how that goes. What's the general consensus on Soulfire?


Soulfire, as it stands right now, should only be cast by a demon lock with Decimation. If you use it as destruction not only does it cost you a shard each time(pretty much limiting you to 32 casts) but the damage done per cast time is horrible. It's a 4 second cast that does slightly more damage than your other spells, double the cast time for slightly more damage is bad.

Quote:
So I have to ask why CoD beats out CoE'

Whether to put CoE or CoD depends on a few things. If you are the only caster you can use either. At lower gear levels CoD will give you more damage but at higher gear levels CoE will benefit you more as none of our talents buff CoD, so it's kinda up to you to decide which is better. However, if there is a mage with you CoE will be better as it increases their damage as well giving your group more dps.

There are 2 classes to be aware of when it comes to CoE, Boomkins and Unholy Death Knights. Both these classes have talents that do the exact same thing as CoE but they are tacked onto spells, meaning they will always be up. I see many Warlocks(damn pugs) who put up CoE when grouped with a boomkin/Unholy DK, it just turns into a meaningless debuff as they do not stack, CoD should always be used as long as they are alive.

While we are talking about other classes to watch out for, keep an eye out for shadow priests as well. Shadow priests and boomkins(I love boomkins) will add a dubuff that decreases the hit needed by 3%. What this means is that if you have a shadow priest in your raid you can switch out gear, get rid of that piece of gear that has 78 hit on it and replace it with something that has 78 haste on it. As long as that shadow priest/boomkin is there that 78 hit is worthless to you anyway, might as well boost your damage up.
#5 Oct 10 2009 at 8:19 AM Rating: Good
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436 posts
Thanks for the replies everyone.

Armory Link
*I see I forgot to enchant the cape I picked up yesterday - must fix.

My bonus damage usually sits around 22-2300 iirc with armor up and lifetap boosted.

@ Handsofdeath: I guess a lot of my problem with CoD is that in heroics we blaze through so fast it is very rarely even an option as most bosses are down in under the 60s it takes to go off. If this is the case and there is another 'lock (there are 2 others in guild that I run with occasionally) what other option is there? CoA I suppose but in destro is the GCD worth it or should I just skip the curse altogether?

@ Twird: I've only ever used soulfire maybe a few times ******** around which is why I ask if it's even really a viable option. And regarding the numbers, this is just what I seem to see from number flying up on the screen from hits. I have no idea how to get actual, solid numbers as far as what spell does what damage or if that's even possible to do.

I'm not sure what a boomkin is even I guess. All our druids are in treeform 99% of the time and in pugs I see the occasional bear or cat. Is boomkin some spec of one of these forms or . . .? I have zero clue how druids work, sorry. And I think every DK I've run with was blood specced but, again, knowing nothing about them I don't really know how to tell.

@ ccbutch: How did you draw those numbers and averages? As I said above, all I have to go off of is watching the hits and the numbers fly up so maybe I'm just misreading hits.

As for the cast time, perhaps it's just a matter of when the haste proc (backdraft I think?) hits and the fact that incinerate is on spam while CB's cd causes it to miss the proc most of the time.

I guess it could also be that both of my +590sp procs just happen to be hitting while not casting CB.




I'm not doing terribad; I usually run at 2-3k dps & 1st or 2nd on Damage Done during heroics depending on the instance and group makeup (melee-heavy groups tend to have mobs at 60% before my first immolate hits) and the couple of attempts I *have* made at raids I've been around 4-4.5k dps. But I would like to see if I can't do even a bit better than where I am now. But this also includes just the running Recount of the instance - I have no idea how to differentiate trash from bosses or how I did on any particular thing. Running trash packs with RoF spam seems to yield around 1800dps but I', guessing my boss dps is higher. I have no idea how to tell though and don't see anything in the Recount config to figure it out.
#6 Oct 10 2009 at 12:04 PM Rating: Good
Bosses downed so fast, I'd still throw up a CoD, for the slim chance it goes off and gives the chance of a Doomguard. If their is really no chance of that happening, then yeah, I'd go with CoA or CoW instead. I'd try not to get used to having it in rotation though.

Also, a Boomkin is the big owl-like form of druids.
#7 Oct 10 2009 at 1:27 PM Rating: Good
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546 posts
Pantherfern wrote:
Thanks for the replies everyone.

@ Twird: I've only ever used soulfire maybe a few times ******** around which is why I ask if it's even really a viable option. And regarding the numbers, this is just what I seem to see from number flying up on the screen from hits. I have no idea how to get actual, solid numbers as far as what spell does what damage or if that's even possible to do.

I'm not sure what a boomkin is even I guess. All our druids are in treeform 99% of the time and in pugs I see the occasional bear or cat. Is boomkin some spec of one of these forms or . . .? I have zero clue how druids work, sorry. And I think every DK I've run with was blood specced but, again, knowing nothing about them I don't really know how to tell.



Well to get numbers for individual spells you can open recount then click on you name in the list. This will give you a detailed list your damage, from there you can click on an individual spell and it will tell you how much that spell did on average for hit and crit and it will also tell you the max.

Well Hand already pointed out a boomkin is a type of druid specifically the owlbear. The only way to tell for a DK is to right click and inspect him then it will tell you his spec. If he is unholy then you don't need CoE.

I suggest sitting at a target dummy for a little while and see the numbers you get on that and if there are any other questions just ask.
#8 Oct 10 2009 at 5:31 PM Rating: Good
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357 posts
Like twirdman said, it's best to test this stuff on a target dummy(they can be found in any capitol city), you can check for your self if the dps is better with CoD/CoE in a controlled environment. The problem with watching numbers pop up is you can get them confused, was that crit from the incinerate that just reached him or the conflag?

Recount is a great tool, however most people just see it as damage done/dps. While that's important Recount can show you so much more. Click on someones name and it'll show you all kind of information, including lowest, average, & highest hit/crit for each spell and how many you cast and which spells did the most overall damage.

When I started out as destro(when they made affliction boring) I was looking at recount and noticed another lock got off 12 more incinerates during a raid fight than me. It struck me as odd but I finally figured out that with all the random haste procs I can't push the buttons at a steady pace any more, depending on whats going on I may have a 1 second global cooldown or a 1.4 and incinerate may be a 2 second cast or 1.5 second cast. If I wasn't looking at recount there's a good chance I'd still be pushing the buttons based on a full global cooldown or cast time(I hate spamming buttons).

It can also tell you thing like which target you attacked most, which helps determine after a wipe which raid member wasn't killing the adds and was instead padding his/her dps meter. A very nice thing to know when pugging certain raids.

As said, try all this out on a target dummy, or anytime you change your rotation, spec or just want to try something out. That's what they are there for, the controlled environment to figure everything out so your not doing things for the first time in a raid.
#9 Oct 10 2009 at 10:23 PM Rating: Good
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436 posts
Had no idea about all the charts and stuff in Recount. Just got done running reg ToC twice in a row to help some alts gear up.

1. Incinerate: 4418(avg reg)/9135(avg crit); critted 34% of the time; cast 243 times
2. Conflagrate: 5148(avg reg)/10445(avg crit); critted 54% of the time; cast 84 times
3. Immolate DoT: 1193 avg; hit 323 times
4. Chaos Bolt: 2552(avg reg)/5092(avg crit); critted 34% of the time; cast 69 times

The biggest hitters were Incinerate at 13135 and Conflagrate at 13032

Incin crits 33% of the time for 6605 to 13135. Chaos Bolt's biggest hit was 6172 . . .not even as high as the lowest Incin crit.

So, as I brought up earlier, Incin can be spammed incessantly for far higher damage than CB, so CB is important because . . .?




#10 Oct 10 2009 at 10:34 PM Rating: Good
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546 posts
Pantherfern wrote:

4. Chaos Bolt: 2552(avg reg)/5092(avg crit); critted 34% of the time; cast 69 times

The biggest hitters were Incinerate at 13135 and Conflagrate at 13032




That seems really really low for chaos bolt. Chaos bolts base damage is 1429-1813 and it has a .81 sp coefficent. So going off your earlier numbers for spell power it should be hitting for roughly 3400 without taking into consideration all the other talents and debuffs affecting the mob. With everything added in it should be hit for around 4500-5k for non crits.

My only guestion is are you sure you have trained the highest rank of chaos bolt since all the theory crafting and logs show that it should be hitting for far more then both conflagerate and incinerate.
#11 Oct 13 2009 at 9:00 AM Rating: Good
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436 posts
Yeah, about that . . .

Apparently I had somehow never trained CB or Shadowfury over rank 1. /facpalm

Thanks.
#12 Oct 13 2009 at 1:34 PM Rating: Good
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546 posts
Pantherfern wrote:
Yeah, about that . . .

Apparently I had somehow never trained CB or Shadowfury over rank 1. /facpalm

Thanks.


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