5.4 Top DPS Spec?

[Soulrender]

Hey guys, I just picked up my Warlock again after completing his green-fire quest chain (so happy lol).

I was curious, what is the top DPS spec for Warlocks when it comes to raiding? How about solo'ing content?

Last time I played him was as soon as ToT came out, and after I cleared it I felt no urge to play again until very recently. Im sorry if there's threads on this already. I appreciate your times guys

[Crisius]

It kind of depends on your gear, but overall destruction is the best performer. In lower gear it is miles ahead of affliction and demonology, but the gap closes in once your mastery and haste levels go up and fights become shorter. Affliction will still outperform destruction on fights involving heavy multi-dotting, and once in appropriate gear, also on fights that are short - this due to afflictions strong burst.

For soloing you'll want to go destruction with soul link, soul leech, grimoire of supremacy and the voidlord. It's not as strong as it was pre-5.4, but it's still very viable for soloing a lot of content, up to and including Dragon Soul for the better geared players.

[Soulrender]

It kind of depends on your gear, but overall destruction is the best performer. In lower gear it is miles ahead of affliction and demonology, but the gap closes in once your mastery and haste levels go up and fights become shorter. Affliction will still outperform destruction on fights involving heavy multi-dotting, and once in appropriate gear, also on fights that are short - this due to afflictions strong burst.

For soloing you'll want to go destruction with soul link, soul leech, grimoire of supremacy and the voidlord. It's not as strong as it was pre-5.4, but it's still very viable for soloing a lot of content, up to and including Dragon Soul for the better geared players.

You are the best my friend

[Deleted]

I'm more partial for affliction when i'm soloing, but I guess it's whatever floats your boat.

Just don't bother looking at demo. Since a certain trinket nerf it is crippled beyond repair and I suggest not playing it unless you enjoy it enough to offset the 'meh' dps it produces.

[Deleted]

Just don't bother looking at demo. Since a certain trinket nerf it is crippled beyond repair and I suggest not playing it unless you enjoy it enough to offset the 'meh' dps it produces.

Havent tried it for a long time, but theoretically it should be better than Affliction and only little worse than Destruction?
At least thats what my Simcraft output says...

[ApeDosMil]

It kind of depends on your gear, but overall destruction is the best performer. In lower gear it is miles ahead of affliction and demonology, but the gap closes in once your mastery and haste levels go up and fights become shorter. Affliction will still outperform destruction on fights involving heavy multi-dotting, and once in appropriate gear, also on fights that are short - this due to afflictions strong burst.

For soloing you'll want to go destruction with soul link, soul leech, grimoire of supremacy and the voidlord. It's not as strong as it was pre-5.4, but it's still very viable for soloing a lot of content, up to and including Dragon Soul for the better geared players.

Destruction is pretty fun to play, icing on the cake. Getting a button that turns your single target abilities into aoe abilities is just too amazing!

Also OP, if you ever just wanna know about sim numbers, consult Noxxic.com. They have sims (sims don't account for aoe damage) and dps rankings; and guides on gearing, talents, stat priorities, rotations, and glyphs.

[cryptic662]

Why not point them to the stickies at the top of the page?

[Strifey]

Noxxic is garbage and so are their dps sims.

Use something like raidbots which gives you control to set different variables to something that is more around your percentile and also shows how each spec actually performs depending on the fight since each SoO fight is vastly different depending on mechanics.

Generally what I do is set raidbots to all parses, measure to 90th percentile, and for a rolling 2 week timeframe for 10M Heroics which is what I run. I wouldn't really look at top 100 parses because there's alot of gaming and cheesing going on to actually parse that doesn't necessarily reflect actual mechanics, if you're heroic geared 90th percentile should give you a decent idea of dps to spec if you play well though. If you're lower geared and running normals maybe set it to a lower percentile that reflects your sims by using a fight like Malkorok and then using that percentile for the other bosses.

But yes, Destro is good as a beginner and overall spec for SoO if you were to only play one spec. If you want to get the most out of your class for SoO go Destro/Aff and learn the strengths of each for a given fight.

[Deleted]

Havent tried it for a long time, but theoretically it should be better than Affliction and only little worse than Destruction?
At least thats what my Simcraft output says...

Yeah, I know it's exactly the same for me. But it would rarely even come close to the other two specs when in practice.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I know it's exactly the same for me. But it would rarely even come close to the other two specs when in practice.

Not to sound harsh but that's because you're either playing it wrong or don't have the ilvl to support it.

Myself and a few others have produced some very favourable results with the spec, but you need lots of gear to support it. Not all fights will allow you to stand still and tunnel the boss, and this is an area where Demo has a distinct advantage over destro. It is a lot more mobile and doesn't see its damage crippled by having to interrupt multiple chaos bolts.

[Deleted]

+ it's actually fun to play, unlike destruction and affliction

[Noxate]

+ it's actually fun to play, unlike destruction and affliction

I find affliction fun to play. Demo is alright mesomorph is cool idk. It's still decent on some fights at least.

[Nerfarien]

I find it kinda fun: I hate affliction with passion and demo just fell out of grace in my eyes, thus I love Destro: very fun and it makes me very happy to see those 3.4 mill CBs melting the face of the bosses.
As you can see however 3 comments after each other, and all 3 of us loves a different spec. There is no virtual "best spec": a spec becomes good if you like it and you can play it competetively. So choose as your heart says ( or what your GM lol)

[Deleted]

Though you can't really go wrong with Destro at the moment...

[Noxate]

Though you can't really go wrong with Destro at the moment...

Yeah that's what kind of sucks. Most people look at you weird if you run something other then Destro on anything but protectors. Though really I ran Affliction for the first time in awhile on every fight this week and the DPS was a lot closer then I expected it to be and that's with me being pretty rusty on Aff. Granted it was all farm content which is where Affliction seems to shine. I don't mind that Destro is far better on fights like Galakras, Immerseus, Nazgrim and Spoils. It just makes it hard to justify Aff or demo when Destro is also slightly ahead of both of them on every other fight besides Aff for protectors and 1 or 2 where it is maybe 5% behind. Then you still have to take into account that for most people at least Destro is easier to play.

[Werst]

If you had to play only one spec right now the numbers support destro over the broadest list of scenarios. All 3x are viable and all 3x have their fans/critics. Destro is also the most forgiving of itemization since you basically max mastery and then balance haste vs crit as your 2nd spec/personal taste/gear rng/etc prefers. If you are casual play what you enjoy. If you are progression oriented play what the fight/guild strat needs most. Also if you are progression its your responsibility to know that on a fight by fight basis.

[magazz]

what are the best glyphs for destro lock?

[striderZA]

Just don't bother looking at demo. Since a certain trinket nerf it is crippled beyond repair and I suggest not playing it unless you enjoy it enough to offset the 'meh' dps it produces.

That's just not true.

'Meh' DPS most likely stems from bad play, considering 5.4 Demo is quite different from UVLS Demo. As Shizwix pointed out, a lot of people are doing great numbers with Demonology.

[Hellfury]

Demo does good in a handfull of bosses, demo doesnt do good at all in some bosses(using normal tatics)
Aff does excelent in a handfull of bosses, still does good in all bosses
Destro does great in all bosses.

This is the difference, demo lacks some versatility cause there is alot of pitfalls that doesnt let it perform good in some of bosses like the tower boss and spoils. Aff does out of this world DPS in some bosses because of snapshotting and dot spreading and still does good in most bosses. Destro is the all arround spec.

Problem with demo is that it needs to be paired with destro to perform well in some cases, if you guild needs your AOE for Siegefracter mines, burst for engineers in Garrosh, tower clearing, spoils constant AOE etc. This are areas that Demo fails short.

[yoloswagginz]

i don't understand how ppl have reached the conclusion that destro is better than aff. they're not even comparable. Especially when you compare the top 5 percentile of aff to destro. The only fight where destro is better is paragons and galakras. http://www.warcraftlogs.com/statisti...lock&boss=1598 can see the stats here.