Destruction help request.

[Hemical]

Hey guys,

I've posted a shorter version of my damage issue in the "Fix my DPS" topic, but unfortunately didn't get a reply there. Therefor I was hoping to get some advice by creating an own topic. To start off, I am a new WoW player only playing since 2 weeks before the WoD release. I wasted those two weeks on playing a monk, and decided to charboost a warlock to 90 and continue from there. So I'm not only new to warlocks, but the game in general. This will probably be one of the reasons that my damage is far below than others with equal gear.

Another reason will probably be the lack of informational addons and rotational issues ( like how I used Chaos Bolts on Backdraft ). Below I will tell you my rotation that I usually follow:

I start with Immolate, followed by conflagrate x2 + the 1,337 haste trinket in order to cast Incenerate faster for the embers. I keep using Incenerate and refresh Immolate at roughly 4secs, and use Conflagrate on CD. When I've reached 4 embers I will activate Dark Soul + Greater Draenic Intellect Potion
and launch off 4 chaos bolts in a row. If needed, I will refresh my Immolate inbetween to keep it ticking, and continue with Chaos Bolt after.

From here on I continue using Incinerate with refreshing Immolate and using Conflagrate on CD untill I have built up 4 embers again. I once again active my second charge of Dark Soul (glyph) to cast 4 Chaos Bolts, and again only interrupt them in case Immolate runs off. When after casting
4 Chaos Bolts, I try to rebuild one ember back fast enough to cast a 5th Chaos Bolt within the Dark Soul buff.

Then I will continue this way untill I reach 3.5 embers and cast 1 unbuffed Chaos Bolt, as Dark Soul will probably still be on CD. I read that you should never cast an unbuffed Chaos Bolt, but you also shouldn't cap on embers, correct?

Other than that I only use Shadowburn on dieing adds in order to get embers, I feel like Shadowburn is useless on a boss when he gets below 20%, unless I really need to move and he's at 1% I will use it.

Despite using Conflagrate on CD I do run out of mana occasionally, and I've seen several people say this should be impossible. I don't know how to pull that off, so advice would be great. I guess because I hear everyone say "Only cast Chaos Bolt at 3.5 embers", and when I'm spamming spells for embers and haven't reached 3.5 yet, despite being low on mana, I don't cast Chaos Bolt yet. Should I?



As there are no other warlocks in my current guild there's really no one to talk to. So I'm really hoping you guys can guide me some in the world of warlocks. Keep in mind that any advice/tips/tricks, how common and simple they are to you, will probably be new to me and are more than welcome.

Currently my DPS was at 21.5K vs The Butcher at Heroic with iLvl 653. Armory link can be found here: eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/shattered-hand/W%C3%B8ndermike/advanced

Thank in advance guys!

[DeadmanWalking]

Well off the top of my head you should begin casting chaos bolts at 3.5 embers, as in the time that it takes to cast 3 of those long casts your dot should add on .5 more for the 4th chaos bolt. If you wait until 4 you are wasting any dot crits that generate embers until the chaos bolt goes off and clears up ember space.

When you use backdraft stacks get down to 2 stacks before you start casting Chaos bolt or it will consume 3 stacks and that is a dps loss because you could be casting faster ember generators.

If you use fire and brimstone to make your attacks AOE on 4 targets you will slowly deplete your embers but on 5+ you can maintain your aoe ember supply. On 3 targets you have to know you will deplete your resources quite quickly and should switch to Havok. With Havok if you are low on embers use it to put embers back, if you are full on embers use it on Chaos bolt unless you can use it to shadow burn.

Shadowburning adds with havok on a boss is good, not only does it give you the dps but the add dieing gives you embers which you turn into chaos bolts on the boss. Shadowburn is good on havok and when buffed up, otherwise go with chaos bolt. If you cant get off a chaos bolt before the boss dies then pop off a shadowburn. If you are casting a bolt and are forced to move use shadowburn while you move.

You can't always fire off a buffed chaos bolt, don't sit on full embers just because something hasn't procced and your buff is on cooldown. Use a bolt and buld back up to 3.5 embers, when the procs pop then unload all 4. Dont sit on full embers, full embers is a waste of dps.

[Killface1]

Are you using the stock UI? You can probably pinpoint where you need to improve with making adjustments to your UI.

[DeadmanWalking]

I also suggest an mmo mouse with 8+ buttons on the side, pointing and clicking slows your reaction time and clicking number keys leaves you incapable of moving and casting at the same time. Your thumb isn't doing anything on your mouse so might as well make it pick up the slack. :P It's like having a third hand.

[Hemical]

Well off the top of my head you should begin casting chaos bolts at 3.5 embers, as in the time that it takes to cast 3 of those long casts your dot should add on .5 more for the 4th chaos bolt. If you wait until 4 you are wasting any dot crits that generate embers until the chaos bolt goes off and clears up ember space.

When you use backdraft stacks get down to 2 stacks before you start casting Chaos bolt or it will consume 3 stacks and that is a dps loss because you could be casting faster ember generators.

If you use fire and brimstone to make your attacks AOE on 4 targets you will slowly deplete your embers but on 5+ you can maintain your aoe ember supply. On 3 targets you have to know you will deplete your resources quite quickly and should switch to Havok. With Havok if you are low on embers use it to put embers back, if you are full on embers use it on Chaos bolt unless you can use it to shadow burn.

Shadowburning adds with havok on a boss is good, not only does it give you the dps but the add dieing gives you embers which you turn into chaos bolts on the boss. Shadowburn is good on havok and when buffed up, otherwise go with chaos bolt. If you cant get off a chaos bolt before the boss dies then pop off a shadowburn. If you are casting a bolt and are forced to move use shadowburn while you move.

You can't always fire off a buffed chaos bolt, don't sit on full embers just because something hasn't procced and your buff is on cooldown. Use a bolt and buld back up to 3.5 embers, when the procs pop then unload all 4. Dont sit on full embers, full embers is a waste of dps.

Thanks for your reply. I will start using CB's at all times from now on whenever it hits 3.5 embers. Any advice on the mana issue? I do run out at times, should I just cast a Chaos Bolt when I do in order for it to regen a bit? Plus, having 21.5k on a no movement fight like Butcher with my gear seems a bit low right? Any ideas on how to improve this?

Are you using the stock UI? You can probably pinpoint where you need to improve with making adjustments to your UI.

Well, I've been using Tukui mainly. Other than that I use DBM. That's about it, but I'm open to all suggestion on how to improve my UI and thus my gameplay. Any must-have addons for warlocks? Or in general?

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Bumping, hoping for more replies.

[DeadmanWalking]

Thanks for your reply. I will start using CB's at all times from now on whenever it hits 3.5 embers. Any advice on the mana issue? I do run out at times, should I just cast a Chaos Bolt when I do in order for it to regen a bit? Plus, having 21.5k on a no movement fight like Butcher with my gear seems a bit low right? Any ideas on how to improve this?

21.5K DPS being good or bad depends on what level of difficulty you are playing on and what level of gear you have. I also notice that Skada and recount work differently, 17k in recount shows up as 20k in skada. The best gauge is to check the dps of other players who are capable players that you are in groups with and simular ilevel, if you are right around thier numbers you are doing fine, if you are way lower then you are doing something wrong. If you are doing 20% less dps than someone 10 ilevels lower than you then something is wrong.

Also you shouldn't be running out of mana as a destro, Destro has 99 problems but mana aint one. Right now Destro warlocks are not using Rain of Fire as it no longer generates embers and was nerfed 60%. If you have more than 7 targets it might be useful, but otherwise it is a huge mana drain for no pay out. If you are spamming RoF then you could tap out on mana. If your mana gets low let off a Bolt of Chaos or two to let your mana recharge while you are still creating damage. You don't have to always have 3.5 embers to use chaos bolts. If your buff is on cool down and your procs are over or nearly over, you have no conflag ready to use and no stacks of backdraft for faster incinerates then use a chaos bolt. Its better to not OOM by using a chaos bolt than it is to only use chaos bolts at the ideal time.

The only other reason you could oom is if you don't have enough crit and you have to spend a lot of mana on spell to generate embers, crits will make that all much faster.

[Extremity]

Most of your issues will go away as you gear and are common. You'll have better mana as you get more haste, and you'll have better ember generation as you gain more crit. Remember that you don't always want to be at exactly 4 embers to start your ember dumping with dark soul, as during the first cast you could be missing ember generation. You're better off starting your "nuke" a few seconds earlier around 3.7 embers; with the crit from dark soul and any other buffs you have up, chances are you'll make up the .3 ember difference while you're casting the first three chaos bolts.

Refreshing Immolate at 4-4.5 seconds is fine and exactly when you should be doing it. As far as refreshing it during your burst phase, I'm torn on that sometimes. With fewer big procs at this gear level to rely on and fewer times to dump embers, there are situations where I'll let Immolate sit off for a *very* small amount of time if it means squeezing one more Chaos Bolt out during my Dark Soul. basically if I have the choice of letting immolate sit off for two seconds or getting a Chaos Bolt out with Dark Soul, I'll take the CB and put the immolate up immediately afterwards.

The AD talent works with the Dark Soul now and I really love it at the moment. With the glyph, the reduced duration Dark Soul is just enough to get four chaos bolts with, and that's really all you need. Try a run with both the glyph and talent for Dark Soul and it literally feels like it is *always* up. Try it out once and let me know what you think.

[Hemical]

Thanks again for replying. My 21k DPS is based on Heroic difficulty vs The Butcher where my ilvl is 653.
When I checked warcraftlogs the top 10 did an average 27k DPS with an average ilvl of 660. When I checked the 0-647 ilvl group the top 10 all do more damage than me, with a 630 ilvl guy at 23k DPS.

I never use RoF, unless I really need to move a lot and can't cast anything for a period. My unbuffed crit is at 12.45% atm. So it might be a gear issue? Wrong stats?

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Most of your issues will go away as you gear and are common. You'll have better mana as you get more haste, and you'll have better ember generation as you gain more crit. Remember that you don't always want to be at exactly 4 embers to start your ember dumping with dark soul, as during the first cast you could be missing ember generation. You're better off starting your "nuke" a few seconds earlier around 3.7 embers; with the crit from dark soul and any other buffs you have up, chances are you'll make up the .3 ember difference while you're casting the first three chaos bolts.

Refreshing Immolate at 4-4.5 seconds is fine and exactly when you should be doing it. As far as refreshing it during your burst phase, I'm torn on that sometimes. With fewer big procs at this gear level to rely on and fewer times to dump embers, there are situations where I'll let Immolate sit off for a *very* small amount of time if it means squeezing one more Chaos Bolt out during my Dark Soul. basically if I have the choice of letting immolate sit off for two seconds or getting a Chaos Bolt out with Dark Soul, I'll take the CB and put the immolate up immediately afterwards.

The AD talent works with the Dark Soul now and I really love it at the moment. With the glyph, the reduced duration Dark Soul is just enough to get four chaos bolts with, and that's really all you need. Try a run with both the glyph and talent for Dark Soul and it literally feels like it is *always* up. Try it out once and let me know what you think.

Heya, thanks for your reply. I made a mistake in my opening post. Am already using the Dark Soul talent, and not the glyph. You suggest trying both?

[DeadmanWalking]

Thanks again for replying. My 21k DPS is based on Heroic difficulty vs The Butcher where my ilvl is 653.
When I checked warcraftlogs the top 10 did an average 27k DPS with an average ilvl of 660. When I checked the 0-647 ilvl group the top 10 all do more damage than me, with a 630 ilvl guy at 23k DPS.

I never use RoF, unless I really need to move a lot and can't cast anything for a period. My unbuffed crit is at 12.45% atm. So it might be a gear issue? Wrong stats?

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Heya, thanks for your reply. I made a mistake in my opening post. Am already using the Dark Soul talent, and not the glyph. You suggest trying both?

The dark soul talent/glyph combo works very well on fights that have random or lots of movement, if you have 4 chaos bolts lined up and smack dark soul but suddenly tectus has you running from his crystal smoke ability you just wasted a huge cool down for nearly the entirety of the buff. Since the double gives you 10 seconds instead of 20 in 2 stacks you can do the movement and know you can reapply it once you are back in a turret situation and not waste a whole cooldown. If you are required by your guild to do butcher switching you can use the 2 10 second buffs when you know you won't be moving for 10 seconds. 20 seconds would mean loosing a cast or two of something you want or need to cast.

It was also useful in dungeons on trash since it cools down everytime cataclysm is up and you can pound trash every minute right at the beginning of the fight. If we have any raid fights where we have lots of targets every minute that combo is very useful to send your dps through the sky. For example Galakras before you get Galakras to come down, that spell would of eaten up those orc packs.

[Extremity]

Thanks again for replying. My 21k DPS is based on Heroic difficulty vs The Butcher where my ilvl is 653.
When I checked warcraftlogs the top 10 did an average 27k DPS with an average ilvl of 660. When I checked the 0-647 ilvl group the top 10 all do more damage than me, with a 630 ilvl guy at 23k DPS.

I never use RoF, unless I really need to move a lot and can't cast anything for a period. My unbuffed crit is at 12.45% atm. So it might be a gear issue? Wrong stats?

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Heya, thanks for your reply. I made a mistake in my opening post. Am already using the Dark Soul talent, and not the glyph. You suggest trying both?

Yeah, I love it. They work great together, and it's not like you'd lose out on another major DPS glyph. The only time I don't run it is when I really feel that KJC would give me more of an advantage overall, which is starting to be less and less fights. Try it out with both the glyph and talent, but just remember that when you pop DS youll have *just* enough time to squeeze out four chaos bolts. Try to refresh immolate beforehand if you think it'll go down during the dark soul, etc. If you get used to it I think you'll really like it, it's a lot more fun to have Dark Soul up almost *ever* time you need it. I can almost guarantee that every time you are close to four embers you will have a Dark Soul up, obviously not counting gaining them quickly to to shadowburn kills. And because you don't ever want to be sitting at two stacks of it, you'll probably even have to use a DS to help BUILD those embers now and then.

[Hemical]

Will certainly try this out. Any comments on my gear? Something I should focus?

[DeadmanWalking]

Mastery, crit and multishot give the biggest bang for the buck, if you are ooming then I suggest focusing on crit because crits fill embers faster and it wont take as many fillers to get to chaos bolt time. Some warlocks who play multiple specs swear by mastery as it is important for all 3 specs. At this point in the game put on anything that is an ilevel increase but keep an eye out for gear with 2 of those 3 stats for bis. Anything with 1 good stat is Good enough in slot.

The other stats, while not primo will still help you in smaller ways. Highmaul does not have a lot of BIS gear options and no tier gear. GEIS sometimes has to do. Crafted gear however can be stat switched to give you the stats you want and bis is not hard to get.

[Extremity]

It seems that people are forgetting that haste increases your mana regen. While I would not specifically gear haste, it's definitely not bad to have on a few pieces. As you gain "passive" haste over time as you gear up you'll notice you have fewer and fewer mana issues.

Crit is definitely the way to go at this early part of the expansion and gearing in general, just as it was in MoP for low ilvl. It's not only a great stat weight in general, but it's increased resource generation. Mastery is very close to crit in terms of item weight, yet does not contribute to ember generation. While ember generation itself wont reduce mana usage or increase your base regen, it does mean casting a Chaos Bolt more often, and mana regen during chaos bolt casts is generally a big portion of our overall time spent getting mana back.

Remember that with the DS glyph/talent combo I suggested you'll have a VERY high Dark Soul uptime which means higher average crit overall throughout the fight, which should be a pretty big help regarding your mana issues. Let me know if/when you try that out and let me know what you think!

[Hemical]

Awesome, well just looted a new neck and put the gift crit on it ^^

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It seems that people are forgetting that haste increases your mana regen. While I would not specifically gear haste, it's definitely not bad to have on a few pieces. As you gain "passive" haste over time as you gear up you'll notice you have fewer and fewer mana issues.

Crit is definitely the way to go at this early part of the expansion and gearing in general, just as it was in MoP for low ilvl. It's not only a great stat weight in general, but it's increased resource generation. Mastery is very close to crit in terms of item weight, yet does not contribute to ember generation. While ember generation itself wont reduce mana usage or increase your base regen, it does mean casting a Chaos Bolt more often, and mana regen during chaos bolt casts is generally a big portion of our overall time spent getting mana back.

Remember that with the DS glyph/talent combo I suggested you'll have a VERY high Dark Soul uptime which means higher average crit overall throughout the fight, which should be a pretty big help regarding your mana issues. Let me know if/when you try that out and let me know what you think!

I did notice an increase on my CB damage, and more casts obviously. My total damage however looked about the same. I was talking to another warlock and she told me that I didn't use my havoc good enough to cleave. And for some reason her Terrorguard did 300k/400k more damage than mine..