Destruction PvE Guide!

[Deleted]

Considering that Destro will actually be a contender in 4.3, bump for sticky? I can always update it as and when new details come out.

[Uriel]

i played Desto once but lost interest in cata... so i dont know the "new" Souldfire mechanics...
do you start a fight with hardcasting it or do you use it instant?
how often do you have to hardcast it because the stupid Imp didnt procc it?
does the imps Fireboltcasttime scales with haste from gear?

[Penguin FTW]

You should link to everything, see the Affliction and Demonology guides for some examples.

[Deleted]

You should link to everything, see the Affliction and Demonology guides for some examples.

I'm a bit of a newbie with the coding, how do you link things? *shame*

---------- Post added 2011-11-08 at 10:00 PM ----------

i played Desto once but lost interest in cata... so i dont know the "new" Souldfire mechanics...
do you start a fight with hardcasting it or do you use it instant?
how often do you have to hardcast it because the stupid Imp didnt procc it?
does the imps Fireboltcasttime scales with haste from gear?

Start by hardcasting to save Soul Shards.

Hardcast when you're going to need a soulburn in the next 45 seconds, otherwise it'll be on cooldown and you'll lose dps in your burst phase.

I think it does, but i'd have to check in-game.

[Dastey]

This topic is nowhere near good enough for sticky tbh.

Regarding destruction just tested on PTR. It is certainly better than before but didnt seem that good to me on a boss like ultraxion. Ofc I have 200ms and it seemed insanely laggy which is not that good with all those instant casts. So hard to say, but definitely better than demo for fight like hagara, the ping pong boss, gunship and most likely morchokk. Seems also better on deathwing fights due to not that much aoe and good opportunities to bane of havoc.
However I think affliction will be insanely good on a lot of theese fights aswell due to multi dotting, so despite wanting to play destruction I mighe be forced into affliction once again

Edit:
Regarding soul fire at the start of the fight I prefer the following:
- If you have the ability to pre-cast do it so you can use instant soul fire on the next instead.
- If you dont have the opportunity to pre-cast simply pop soulburn and use soul harvest to regain the shard

[Deleted]

This topic is nowhere near good enough for sticky tbh.

Regarding destruction just tested on PTR. It is certainly better than before but didnt seem that good to me on a boss like ultraxion. Ofc I have 200ms and it seemed insanely laggy which is not that good with all those instant casts. So hard to say, but definitely better than demo for fight like hagara, the ping pong boss, gunship and most likely morchokk. Seems also better on deathwing fights due to not that much aoe and good opportunities to bane of havoc.
However I think affliction will be insanely good on a lot of theese fights aswell due to multi dotting, so despite wanting to play destruction I mighe be forced into affliction once again.

Admittedly, I'll more than likely get tunneled into raiding as Affliction by my guild, but i'm still going to test it out and see what numbers it does with the finished product.

Won't it be pretty much best on Morchok HC due to his Anti-Morchokk mechanic?

[Crisiszone]

Admittedly, I'll more than likely get tunneled into raiding as Affliction by my guild, but i'm still going to test it out and see what numbers it does with the finished product.

Won't it be pretty much best on Morchok HC due to his Anti-Morchokk mechanic?

Getting free damage on an extra target won't make it the best. I vividly remember myself and another Aff lock destroying a Destro lock on H Valiona, but its been a while. Assuming you can maintain 100% uptime on both targets, Aff should win by a little.

[gakpad]

Might want to include that the only reason haste doesn't scale linearly is that conflag damage is based off immolate damage. Immolate is the only haste threshhold relevent to gearing up as destruction. Namely, 2589 haste rating. This is over a thousand dps gain just by reaching it so if you're close to it, go for it even if it means sacrificing a little bit of hit. The DPET of BoD is also higher than corruption so not sure why you have it in there before BoD. It's never worth holding on to empowered imp procs "to refresh ISF later" - the only time I would advocate holding on to empowered imp procs is if you know there will be movement in the next few seconds and you will have to cast fel flame and soulburn will be on cooldown. if you're properly reforging, 50 haste will provide a greater dps gain than 50 hit since you Gould be able to reach your hit cap by reforging first. haste also takes a fairly large dip in value once you reach 3100-3200 areas at which point mastery becomes our best stat and haste becomes our worst, and that will remain that way until you are able to reach ~3600-3700 (I don't know theexactvalues but simming your toon while manually adjusting your haste value will show this of you are interested in testing this. it also almost sounds like you are advocating reapplying your non-ISF buffed dots if it falls off for some reason when you get ISF up again. This is not the case. It should also be noted in your rotation that demon soul should more or less be used off cooldown. I would include something about prepotting as well. Needs a lot of work, and I HUMBLY apologize for the wall of uninterrupted text, posting from my phone and my enter button is broken >.>

[Faradin]

Getting free damage on an extra target won't make it the best. I vividly remember myself and another Aff lock destroying a Destro lock on H Valiona, but its been a while. Assuming you can maintain 100% uptime on both targets, Aff should win by a little.

^This

Though it's worth noting that destro would be better when splitting up the raid and treating the Morchoks as two separate raid bosses. However, I'd be surprised if this strategy was still viable come 4.3.

[gakpad]

macroig firebolt to all of your abilities almost invariably results in several more firebolts from your imp over the course of a fight as well unless you have godlike latency.

[Deleted]

macroig firebolt to all of your abilities almost invariably results in several more foreclose from your imp over the course of a fight as well unless you have godlike latency.

I'm a little confused to what you mean here. You mean that macroing Firebolt to everything results in a DPS increase unless you have like 1ms/1ms?

[gakpad]

Yes. It basically is a faux-cast queuing system for your imp. Otherwise your imp will wait to queue his next firebolt until AFTER the one he's casting finishes, resulting in a wait period between casts more or less equal to your latency. As a small added benefit it also helps him switch targets faster for fights where target switching is required.

[Deleted]

Yes. It basically is a faux-cast queuing system for your imp. Otherwise your imp will wait to queue his next firebolt until AFTER the one he's casting finishes, resulting in a wait period between casts more or less equal to your latency. As a small added benefit it also helps him switch targets faster for fights where target switching is required.

Ah okay, thanks for that, i'll add that into the pet section

[nocturnus]

Admittedly, I'll more than likely get tunneled into raiding as Affliction by my guild, but i'm still going to test it out and see what numbers it does with the finished product.

Won't it be pretty much best on Morchok HC due to his Anti-Morchokk mechanic?

Why would you? Destro's DPS is very solid (in my PTR XP even better than aff and demo), it provides way more utility, survivability and burst than Aff. Any leader pidgeon-holing you into Aff over Destro is ignorant.

[Deleted]

Why would you? Destro's DPS is very solid (in my PTR XP even better than aff and demo), it provides way more utility, survivability and burst than Aff. Any leader pidgeon-holing you into Aff over Destro is ignorant.

I know it's solid, but i'll get made to play Afflic, at which point I'll do less dps as I find affliction more clunky, and I'll swap back to Destro again. I can vaguely play demo aswell, been learning quite recently and I like the changes they've made since the last time I played Demo, which was in BC, Kara-era :P

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 10:39 AM ----------

Bump for a well needed edit:

Links to everything!
Extended the Pet, Spec and Glyph sections!
Added in a Consumables section!

Going to add in the Immolate thresholds next, if anyone could make my life easier and point me in the right direction that'd be great. Else i'm going to go scout around for it.

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 11:38 AM ----------

Edited in thresholds for immolate, turns out they're the standard thresholds so they've been dropped in the haste section.

[Bodygrinder]

Thanks for this thread, some of us destro locks still play.

[Deleted]

Thanks for this thread, some of us destro locks still play.

No problem, the moment I saw the buffs, I knew it was time to bring Destro back into the limelight again. The only thing i'm still waiting on is that damned green fire though xD

[squee666]

50 haste on boots is stupid.
More health on you is better than healing pet in 99% of the cases since aoe healing from healers usually heal your pet.

Yea say that in 10man on bosses with high constant raid dmg. and why is 50haste on boots stupid haste rates high and you only need to get hit on boots if your under the cap.
pet mitigates 25% dmg so if that dies would you like to insta cast a new one with the soulfires your are saving or take 25% more dmg.

[Deleted]

Yea say that in 10man on bosses with high constant raid dmg. and why is 50haste on boots stupid haste rates high and you only need to get hit on boots if your under the cap.
pet mitigates 25% dmg so if that dies would you like to insta cast a new one with the soulfires your are saving or take 25% more dmg.

To your first point. Pets get that pro thing called Avoidance, which drops AoE damage taken by 90% or something crazily OP.

Secondly, yes I did say Haste OR Precision, meaning the choice is up to you, your values might work out differently to mine for example.

And the chances of your pet dying are remarkably low. So in the long run, you dying is more of a DPS loss than your pet dying. Take the stam, pets can be resummoned without wasting a BRes.

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 03:01 PM ----------

Bump for added macro section

[Obsidian9]

To your first point. Pets get that pro thing called Avoidance, which drops AoE damage taken by 90% or something crazily OP.

Secondly, yes I did say Haste OR Precision, meaning the choice is up to you, your values might work out differently to mine for example.

And the chances of your pet dying are remarkably low. So in the long run, you dying is more of a DPS loss than your pet dying. Take the stam, pets can be resummoned without wasting a BRes.

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 03:01 PM ----------

Bump for added macro section

Except your pet is also taking damage from you. In 10 mans especially depending upon group composition and positioning your pet can eventually die. That being said 2/2 Fel Syn is beyond overkill, 1 Fel Syn is more than enough in most cases. Keeping the 25% damage reduction up is worth far more than 3% stamina.