Thread: [Destruction] A Guide (4.3)

Table of contents: click on any of the links below for easy navigation - will open in a new window

1. Change log

2. Introduction

3. 4.3 Changes

4. Talents/Glyphs

5. Pets

6. Rotation

a. Doomguard

b. Consumables

c. Refreshing Your DoTs

d. Incinerate vs. Chaos Bolt

e. Dark Intent

f. Bane of Havoc

g. Non-DPS Abilities

7. Stats and Gearing

a. Stat Weightings

b. Enchanting Your Gear

c. Gemming Your Gear

d. Reforging Your Gear

e. Haste Thresholds and You

f. Set Bonuses

g. Alternatives to the legendary

8. Race/Professions Selection

9. FAQ

10. Addons/UI

11. Credits/Thanks

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1. Change log

11/08/2011 – Original creation. In progress – adding a Bane of Havoc section, enchants section, adding Icons/Links to all applicable areas, cleaning up formatting

11/9/2011 - Added enchants, links, formatting fixed up for the most part, added Bane of Havoc section. Once the content is in a satisfactory spot I'll look at adding spell icons for the rotation portion

11/10/2011 - Updated intro and FAQ. FAQ is still a work in progress.

11/11/2011 - Changed askmrrobot to wowreforge in my recommendation, clarified the relationship between conflagrate's damage and immolate's damage. Created separate sections for the miscellaneous information found in the rotation section. Changed the imp firebolt macro to specify its use in high latency situations.

11/30/2011 - Added a small section on curse of elements and some slight clarification on bane of havoc.

12/01/2011 - Added a few small notes - mainly in the intro and on hit rating in the stats section. Removed most of the 4.2 references now that 4.3 is live. Included a trinket portion to the FAQ.

1/19/2011 - Updated BoH section to include DS bosses. Added a little more detail in the stats section regarding haste. Updated tier bonuses section. Added a list of alternative weapons to DTR.

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2. Introduction

If there's any points in here that you don't understand/desire further clarification, feel free to leave a post or send me a PM about it and I will either adress you personally as time permits or update the guide to clarify. This is always a work in progress and I will be updating the guide as timely as possible when anything changes/information contained becomes outdated. I request that all of the readers please refrain from posting comments/suggestions/errors for the guide, and instead PM me and I will address them as promptly as time permits on my end. Feel free to ask questions about and discuss the spec! If you are going to post asking questions about your DPS, please provide your armory and a link to a recent parse if available.

In 4.3 The current performance of the different warlock specs are:
Demonology > Destruction >= Affliction

This brings destruction up to par with the other specs and in turn gives us the opportunity to play destruction guilt-free without sacrificing any damage we could be doing by going demonology or affliction instead. However, unless you're an exceptional Destruction player you'll likely see equal if not better damage from Affliction.

With that being said, destruction has a highly engaging playstyle, with multiple damage over time spells to keep up, several short cooldowns to monitor, and of course, the infamously tedious Improved Soul Fire buff to keep up on yourself. Of all of the warlock specs, destruction essentially has the best reliable burst with Conflagrate’s short cooldown and high damage, and very decent long term damaging capabilities as well.

For those of you that wish to play this rewarding spec, read on!

As a special note to those new warlocks looking to this guide for help: if you're looking to start working on your dps, gear is an important part. Consumables, enchants, gemming, reforging all play a role in maximizing your potential. However, the absolute most important thing of all to work on is your rotation. You could have full best in slot gear but without playing correctly it's useless. I would most highly recommend you work on practicing and perfecting your rotation before you get too concerned with getting your gear perfect. That being said...

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3. Patch 4.3 Changes

Patch 4.3 brings destruction warlocks several much needed buffs. These are:

-Soul Fire now scales with 72.6% of spell power, up from 62.5%.

-Fire and Brimstone now increases the damage of Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on Immolated targets by 5/10/15%, up from 2/4/6%.

-Burning Embers now deals damage equal to 25/50% of Soul Fire and Imp’s Firebolt, up from 15/30%.

-Burning Embers damage cap has been raised.

-Shadowburn now deals Shadowflame damage, instead of Shadow damage.

-Improved Soul Fire now lasts 20 sec, up from 15 sec.

-The bonus damage Incinerate gains from being cast on a target with Immolate present now correctly scales with player spellpower.

What these changes mean:

-Most of our spells we cast as destruction’s damage and scaling has been raised by a significant amount.

-Burning Embers’ damage and damage cap being raised means that our DPS will be affected even less by movement since Burning Embers will be present on the boss 99% of the time.

-Our execute – Shadowburn – will scale with our mastery now that it is considered Shadowflame damage, which will make it closer to a real execute as opposed to 4.2 where it hardly does more damage than our filler spell.

-Most importantly, Improved Soul Fire will see MUCH higher uptime now that its duration has been increased by 33%. This means that we will spend less time refreshing it and have a greater chance to get an Empowered Imp proc for an instant Soul Fire to refresh it. In short, this is a major improvement when it comes to playing destruction to its full potential.

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4. Talents/Glyphs

When choosing your talents for destruction there is little room for personal choice if you are looking to maximize your damage in a raid environment. Selecting destruction will grant you the following abilities/bonuses:

Conflagrate – Your hardest hitting ability. Conflagrate’s damage is based off of your Immolate’s damage.

Cataclysm – Increases your fire damage, which just happens to be what almost all of your spells deal!

Mastery – Fiery Apocalypse – Increases all fire damage you do by a fair amount. This bonus damage is increased further by your mastery rating.

The basic spec you will want to go is the standard 3/7/31 build. Here’s a breakdown of the talents you will select and why you want them:

Destruction:

First Tier:
Bane (3/3) – Reduces Chaos Bolt and Immolate cast times, obvious dps boost.

Shadow and Flame (3/3) – Increases your Incinerate damage by a large amount and provides your raid with a 5% increased chance to critically strike the target that will essentially be up 100% of the time. A large dps boost for you and even bigger one for your raid.

Improved Immolate (2/2) – Self explanatory! Increased damage to one of your largest damage sources and, in turn Conflagrate’s damage since it is based off Immolate’s damage.

Second Tier:
Emberstorm (2/2) – Reduces cast time of your Soul Fire and Incinerate. Reduced Soul Fire cast time means you spend less time hard casting it when you need to refresh Improved Soul fire and reduced Incinerate cast time is more free damage.

Third Tier:
Improved Soul Fire (2/2) – Increases your fire damage by a fair amount for a period of time after you cast Soul Fire. This is an important part of your rotation and should be kept up as much as possible.

Backdraft (3/3) – Reduces cast time of your next three Incinerate and Chaos Bolt spells after you cast Conflagrate. More free damage!

Shadowburn (1/1) – Our execute. Throw this into your rotation when your target is below 20%. Also provides a way to regain soul shards in fights with adds.

Fourth Tier:
Burning Embers (2/2) – On its own, this doesn’t seem like it does a lot of damage. However, when you factor in the fact that your Imp will be casting on your target and keeping this debuff up for 99% of the fight, it adds up. Also a prerequisite for Empowered Imp, giving you all the more incentive to pick this up.

Soul Leech (2/2) – More mana means less time spent life tapping which means more time spent casting your damaging spells! With this and Mana Feed you will almost never need to cast Life Tap.

Nether Ward (1/1) – When combined with Nether Protection this becomes one of the best magic damage mitigation cooldowns in the game. Highly recommended that you pick this up.

Fifth Tier:
Fire and Brimstone (3/3) – Increases damage done by Chaos Bolt and Incinerate when you have Immolate up on your target. Since Immolate should be up on your target at all times, this is free damage. Also increases the crit chance of Conflagrate, which is nice too!

Shadowfury (1/1) – An instant cast, ranged, area of effect on a low cooldown. Even does a little damage! Very useful on fights with stunnable adds.

Nether Protection (2/2) – (See Nether Ward)

Sixth Tier:
Empowered Imp (2/2) – Gives you a chance every time your Imp casts Firebolt for your next Soul Fire to become instant cast. Excellent for helping keep up Improved Soul Fire, as well as give you a boost in mobility with more instant cast spells.

Bane of Havoc (1/1) – An amazing spell as soon as one or more targets with lots of health come into play on boss fights. To be covered later in the Rotation section.

Seventh (Final) Tier:
Chaos Bolt (1/1) – An excellent conclusion to the destruction tree. Well the absorption-piercing effect doesn’t really come into play too often, it has a short cast time and provides a nice damage boost when used on cooldown.

Demonlogy:

First Tier:
Demonic Embrace (1/3) – Provides a small health boost to you. Nothing special, but needed to reach Mana Feed.

Dark Arts (3/3) – Reduced imp cast time means your imp does more damage and has more opportunities to proc Empowered Imp. Excellent damage boost.

Fel Synergy (1/2) – One point is all you really need, this talent basically acts as a safeguard to your imp dying for whatever reason.

Second Tier:
Mana Feed (2/2) - This with Soul Leech means you'll never have to Life Tap.

Affliction:

First Tier:
Improved Corruption (3/3) – Increased corruption damage. Corruption should be up all of the time, so this is just more free damage!




You have 4 free points in destruction that you must spend to reach Chaos Bolt –
I would strongly recommend picking up:

Nether Ward (fourth tier) (1/1)
Nether Protection (fifth tier) (2/2)

These talents provide you with one of the best magic damage mitigation cooldowns in the game, and at only a 30 second cooldown, its pretty much a no brainer.

Your other choices to spend the points on are:

Aftermath (second tier) (1-2/2) – I would recommend against this because it is extremely situational in a raid environment. Seeing as bosses are immune to stuns and dazes, this is really only useful in PvP or on AoE trash packs.

Improved Searing Pain (second tier) (1-2/2) – Honestly, you’ll never use Searing Pain. Just skip this, even with 40% increased crit chance on low health targets it just doesn’t do enough damage to make it worth using.

Backlash (fourth tier) (3/3) – This is the only other viable option you have aside from Nether Ward/Protection. This theoretically can provide a very small damage boost on fights where you’re taking direct physical damage for whatever reason. I would recommend strongly against it but if you prefer this over Nether Ward/Protection feel free to pick it up instead.

Shadowfury (fifth tier) (1/1) – This ability provides excellent utility any time there is a situation with adds that can be stunned in a boss fight. A ranged, area of effect stun with a little bit of damage tacked on to it. Highly recommended.


In the demonology tree you must spend 5 points in the first tier to reach Mana Feed. Aside from Dark Arts, you must spend two of these points in Demonic Embrace and/or Fel Synergy. I would personally recommend putting one point in Fel Synergy and one point in Demonic Embrace. One point in Fel Synergy is all you really need to make sure your pet doesn’t die to any freak accidents so at that point the one point in Demonic Embrace is just a gimme.

Glyphs: When it comes to glyphs, the only viable choices we have for our prime glyph slots are:

Glyph of Imp – Increases Imp damage by a fair amount.
Glyph of Immolate – Increases Immolate (Conflagrate too!) damage
Glyph of Conflagrate – Lower cooldown on our hardest hitting spell. Increases Backdraft uptime as well.

Our major glyphs are a bit more flexible, but the ones I would recommend are

Glyph of Soulstone – Turns our weaksauce battle rez into a much stronger one.
Glyph of Soul Link – Less damage taken - how could you go wrong?!
And the third glyph can be whatever you like, although I personally recommend Glyph of Life Tap in case you need to Life Tap during fights like Rhyolith or heroic Maoriak where you’re using Rain of Fire a lot due to its high mana cost.

None of our minor glyphs are useful in a raid environment so you can pick whichever ones you want.

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5. Pets

As destruction, you will want to use the Imp as your minion.

If you have particularly poor latency (~400+) your imp can lose casts. In these situations, I find it helpful to macro his Firebolt ability to all of my abilities, as such:

#showtooltip Spellname
/cast Spellname
/cast Firebolt

Substitute whatever spell the macro is for with “spellname.” These macros ensure that your imp spends as little time in between casts as possible under high latency. Without the macro your imp will wait to begin casting his next firebolt once he finishes casting his current one. You may wish to refrain from using this with your damage over time spells should you choose to multidot on certain bosses to keep your imp only attacking the main target. Again, if your latency is good, this macro is not needed.

Another useful thing I have found is creating a Singe Magic macro like such:

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] !Singe Magic

Singe Magic is a very useful ability that I don't think many warlocks use, or even know it exists. Oops! You just got hit by a magma trap on Ragnaros on accident! NO PROBLEM! DISPEL YOURSELF! BAM! (note that I do not advocate getting hit by magma traps :P)

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6. Rotation (aka Priority List)

The destruction rotation isn’t quite a rotation, but rather a list of spells in order of their damage per cast time – basically, you want to use the highest spell available to you on the following list at any given time. This list is:

1. Soul Fire to keep up your Improved Soul Fire buff – don’t forget to factor in travel time when deciding when to begin casting. Ideally you want to refresh Improved Soul Fire right before it wears off.
2. Demon Soul – use this on cooldown. Worth waiting for a very short while to use during Heroism/Bloodlust if you know ahead of time when Heroism/Bloodlust are going to be used.
3. Immolate – Keep this on your main target at all times!
4. Conflagrate – Your hardest hitting spell. Also provides Backdraft.
5. Bane of Doom - You can refresh Bane of Doom anywhere within the last 15 seconds of its duration and not lose any ticks, just like our other dots.
6. Corruption
7. Shadowflame – Use this only if you happen to be in melee range of the boss. It isn’t worth running up into melee range on a boss just to use this. I’ll stress it again – only use this if you HAPPEN to be in melee range of a boss! Don’t go out of your way to get into range!
8. Soul Fire when Empowered Imp is procced and Improved Soul Fire does not need refreshing in the imminent future.
9. Chaos Bolt
10. Shadowburn - Include this while your target is below 20% health.
11. Incinerate – Cast this when you can’t cast anything else!
12. Soulburn: Soul Fire – To be used before resorting to Fel Flame in unavoidable movement.
13. Fel Flame – Very poor damage, but its better than nothing if you’re moving and Conflagrate is on cooldown, Corruption/Bane of Doom don’t need refreshing, and you have no means to an instant cast Soul Fire.
14. Life Tap

In 4.3 when you obtain the 4 piece t13 set bonus, you'll want to use Soulburn on cooldown. Since it has a 15 second duration, continue your rotation as normal and just use it for instant Soul Fires while moving or to refresh your Improved Soul Fire buff as you normally would. There's no need to cast Soul Fire immediately after - you get the shard back and still get the instant Soul Fire as long as you use it before the 15 second window expires.

On Curse of Elements - apply at the start of the fight if your group doesn't have an unholy deathknight, moonkin, or assassination rogue. If you expect one of these classes to let the 8% spell damage taken debuff fall off at any point in the fight, apply Curse of Elements during the time you can do so to lose the least amount of dps possible - preferably during unavoidable movement and when Conflag is on cooldown and Bane of Doom and Corruption don't need refreshing.

For AoE with 5 or less targets, use your normal rotation on one target except keep up Immolate on as many targets as you can and use Shadowflame on cooldown if you're in melee range of them.

For AoE with more than 5 targets, keep Improved Soul Fire up, use Shadowflame on cooldown, and use Rain of Fire as your filler.

If you make a mistake and start casting the wrong spell; don't worry! Don't get hung up on it, just finish out the cast and try to do better next time. You've already triggered the global cooldown so its a dps loss to stop casting to cast a better spell instead. Work on planning your next couple casts in advance, and play aggressively. Be casting something ALL THE TIME! NEVER STOP CASTING!


6.a. Doomguard

Use your Doomguard whenever you have what you believe will be the most Intellect-based buffs procced at one time in the fight, or during any relevent burn phases.

6.b. Consumables

You should be using Flask of the Draconic Mind or your Guild Flask and Severed Sagefish Head or Seafood Magnifique Feast. You should use Volcanic Potions – two per fight. One just before you initiate combat with the boss and another at any point after it comes off cooldown, preferably during Heroism/Bloodlust (aka prepotting).

And don't forget to summon a soulwell for you raid so that everyone gets health stones before each fight!

6.c. Refreshing Your DoTs

You can and should be timing your casts so that you are not waiting for a damage over time spell to fall off before refreshing it. Rather, you should be refreshing the spell Some time between the second to last tick and the last tick – this ensures maximum uptime for the dot and you do not lose any ticks by doing so. For example, if you have no haste and your Corruption is ticking once every 3 seconds, you can recast Corruption on your target at any point where the current Corruption has less than three seconds remaining on its duration. This will both refresh the dot and add on extra time to the Corruption dot equal to the time remaining until the last tick that would have occurred had you not recast Corruption before. This means that if you recast Corruption with 1.5 seconds remaining on the dot, the new spell would have a duration of 19.5 seconds and tick 7 times instead of having the default 18 second duration and ticking only 6 times.
tl;dr: you want to refresh your dots some time after the second to last tick without letting them fall off

6.d. Incinerate vs. Chaos Bolt

With 4.3 a bug with Incinerate in which the “bonus” portion of its damage that it gains when cast on a target affected by Immolate wasn’t scaling with your spellpower is being fixed. For the most part, this doesn’t affect our priority list at all. The exception to this is that whenever you have lots of haste (from a trinket, Heroism/Bloodlust or any other source) to the effect that your Chaos Bolt cast time drops below .9 seconds, Chaos Bolt is no longer worth casting because at that point Incinerate becomes a stronger spell to cast. This is obviously a very…tedious thing to keep track of, but worth doing it you are looking to maximize your damage.

6.e. Dark Intent

When selecting who to put Dark Intent on, you must first consider the best available targets for it. Generally I group class/specs up into three categories: 1st tier, 2nd tier, and 3rd tier:

First tier classes/specs are the best choices and provide you with 90% or higher uptime on your Dark Intent bonus DoT damage. These should be selected almost invariably as long as one is present. 1st tier classes/specs:

Restoration druid
Shadow priest
Balance druid -- Note that Restoration druids, Shadow priests, and Balance druids are the best of the best for Dark Intent targets
Survival hunter
Feral druid
Fire mage (I only consider very well geared fire mages to be 1st tier, otherwise 2nd.)
Frost mage

2nd tier classes/specs provide you only with modest uptime for your Dark Intent bonus DoT damage. These should be selected only when a first tier class is not present in your raid. 2nd tier classes/specs:

Restoration shaman
Elemental shaman
Enhancement shaman
Raid healing holy priest (using renew a lot)
Unholy death knight

3rd tier classes/specs provide abysmal uptime and are a last resort. They consist of every class/spec not mentioned as a 1st or 2nd tier selection.

Once you have identified potential candidates for Dark Intent you must then decide whether or not giving it to a healer or a dps would be the most beneficial for your raid. Most of the time you’re better off giving it to a dps.

Finally, and most importantly, give it to the best healer/dps of the potential candidates you have concluded on. If you have a 20k dps balance druid and a 25k dps feral druid, give it to the feral druid! Even if sources say that balance druids might give you an extra 2-3% uptime on the Dark Intent bonus DoT damage buff, that would be far outweighed by the fact that the feral druid can simply make more out of the buff than the inferior balance druid.

The Dark Intent portion of this guide is what I have concluded from my own personal results. If you have differing opinions feel free to explore them or let me know via PM!

6.f. Bane of Havoc

Bane of Havoc provides a useful tool when more than one enemy comes in to play for certain boss fights. Generally you will use it on the boss when you will have to spend a large amount of time (roughly, at least 30 seconds for every minute you plan to leave bane of havoc up) damaging a secondary target other than the one you have Bane of Havoc on. Rarely will you use it on an add and dps the boss, simply because 99% of the time when there's an add you need to focus on killing it as quickly as possible and not whoring up meters at the expense of fight mechanics. There are several fights where this can provide a significant dps boost when used properly:

Blackwing Descent:
Magmaw - Cast Bane of Havoc on Magmaw just before his head phase, then on his head just before the head phase ends.

Omnotron Defense System - Cast Bane of Havoc on the previous target every time a new mob becomes active. Use discretion as not to break any shields and cause uneccesary raid damage.

Maloriak - You can cast Bane of Havoc on Maloriak just before green phases in normal, and keep Bane of Havoc up on both green phases and black phases on heroic.

Nefarion - I do not recommend using Bane of Havoc on Nefarion just due to pushing unwanted Crackles, but if you want, you can put it on him during the air phase while you nuke down your pillar adds.

Bastion of Twilight:

Halfus Wyrmbreaker - You can cast Bane of Havoc on Halfus while you dps down the drakes at the start of the fight.

Theralion and Valiona - Keep Bane of Havoc on whichever target is not currently on the ground.

Ascendant Council - If your dps distribution permits, put Bane of Havoc on the enemy you aren't attacking in the first two phases.

Firelands:

Really, the only boss in firelands where Bane of Havoc is useful is Beth'tilac, just get your raid group to let you pull Beth'tilac by casting Bane of Havoc on her so that your dps on the ground is cleaved to her where you normally wouldn't be able to attack her.

You can also use Bane of Havoc on one of the scions in the Ragnaros encounter if your raid's dps is somewhat behind.

Dragonsoul

Morchok - Only useful in heroic mode. Use Bane of Havoc on Morchok or Kohcrom (whichever one you aren't assigned to) when they split. Cast it after they split so that you can ensure that it remains on them for the entirety of the fight. Forgo applying Bane of Doom on the pull if you are assigned to Kohcrom since you won't get enough ticks of it to be worth casting. If the group assigned to the boss you aren't attacking doesn't have a spell damage debuff (probably only a problem if you are raiding 10 man) make sure to stick a CoE on him once Morchok splits so that you can ensure it will be up for the entirety of the fight.

Zon'ozz - Useful only in heroic mode. Cast Bane of Havoc on Zon'ozz during black phases, along with a CoE if you won't have the 8% spell damage buff on him while people are switching.

Yorsahj - In heroic mode you can almost keep Havoc on Yor'sahj for the whole fight, but on normal mode when you won't have as many AoE phases on average, you can put it on Yor'sahj as soon as you see a dark ooze spawn before you switch over to kill the ooze and keep it on him for the whole AoE phase, switching to Doom once the last adds are dead. Generally your raid should be killing the mana voids quick enough that putting Havoc on Yor'sahj while you kill it will not do enough damage to be worth using.

Hagara - If you are raiding 10 man, the only time you'll use Havoc is during frost phases - put it on the pillar that generally dies last for your group (the pillar to the left of the one your group starts on). This applies for heroic mode and to a lesser extent, normal - as in, use it at your own discretion. What I mean by this is that if your ice phase goes fast enough on normal mode that you can put up a BoD just before she goes immune and it will still have at least one tick left on it once the phase ends, you should skip Havoc and just leave BoD up on Hagara so you get the additional tick during the next feedback. The same advice in regards to pillars applies to 25 man raids as in 10 man. However, in 25 man, due to the increased number of tombs, it is a dps gain to throw up havoc just before tombs go out if you aren't targetted for one. Then just do your normal AoE rotation; Shadowflame as many tombs as you can on cooldown and Rain of Fire them while Shadowflame is on cooldown. Switch back to Doom once tombs are down.

Ultraxion - Havoc serves no purpose on this fight.

Warmaster Blackhorn - In the back of the ship there is an area with the aspects channeling. If you stand as far back on the ledge surrounding the area they are channeling (on the right side, facing the main cabin), you can cast Havoc and CoE on Goriana as soon as the fight starts and cleave to her for all of phase 1. During phase 2, put Havoc on whichever target you aren't dpsing (most likely Warmaster Blachorn) and use Doom on whichever target you are.

Spine - Havoc serves no real purpose on this fight since the only part that really matters is during tendon burst.

Madness of Deathwing - I have found the best practice on this fight is to position yourself at the last platform your group kills before the encounter starts and to put a Havoc and CoE on the arm/wing tentacle on that platform once the encounter starts before immediately moving to the platform the rest of the group starts on. Since you will more than likely spend more than 5 minutes between your first and last platform, Havoc may fall off at some point, at which point you should reapply it if you happen to be in range at any point before the last platform (you can often reach adjacent platform's tentacles with your spells by standing on the edge closest to the platform you are trying to reach). I wouldn't go too far out of your way to refresh/reapply it during the first phase though. During the last phase, you can put Havoc on the head while you dps the two sets of adds that spawn each wave. Depending on how many waves of adds your group pushes, you can switch back to Doom on the head for the remainder of the fight after the first or second wave of adds (once you are done with adds and are switching back to the head for the rest of the fight).

6.g. Non-DPS abilities

As a warlock, you have several abilities that you will frequently use that do not do any damage. These, along with their uses, are:

Demonic Circle: Summon and Demonic Circle: Teleport - This provides a useful way to get from point A (unknown position at some point in the fight that you need to get out of) to point B (a predetermined safe zone that you set up beforehand, ideally before the fight starts) quickly, with the press of a button. There are absolutely numberous ways to use this creatively in almost any fight that requires movement, so use your imagination

If you specced into it, Nether Ward combined with Nether Protection is an amazing cooldown. Use this whenever you have a period of predictable, large amounts of magic damage and it will significantly reduce the damage you take, likely for the entire duration of the damage. Any fight with magic damage that you can sacrifice a little bit of damage to take a lot less damage this should be used as often as possible to help out your healers.

Soulstones, especially when glyphed provide excellent utility in the form of a combat ressurection. Typically you want to avoid using a soulstone on anyone that isn't dead, as there's no way of guaranteeing that whoever you'll put it on will die, and if someone else dies you won't be able to ressurect them and the soulstone will be wasted. In 10 man raids you can use one combat ressurection per fight and in 25 man raids you can use three, so choose your targets wisely if you expect more people to die than can be ressurected during a fight.

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7. Stats and Gearing

7.a. Stat Weightings

Stat weightings simply refers to how much DPS gain one point of a given stat results in. I’m not comfortable giving you a general table of specific stat weights so in regards to that, I direct you to SimulationCraft (See this thread). I am, however, comfortable giving you a general guideline to follow when choosing gear, as follows:

Intellect >> Hit Rating (as close to 1742 rating as you can reach without going over) > Haste Rating (to 2589) >> Haste Rating (to 2681) >= Critical Strike Rating >= Mastery Rating

Once you reach 2589 haste, it is still a good stat until 2681. Any haste that lets you reach 2681 haste from 2589 haste is just about in line with crit or mastery (whichever one is better for your gear level). Note that if you can't reach 2681 haste quite yet, don't bother going for it - just reforge into crit or mastery until you will be able to reach 2681 haste.

Against bosses (skull level mobs), your spells have a default 17% chance to miss. To make this up so that your spells never miss, you need to get +17% hit chance from the hit rating on your gear. This requires 1742 hit rating. Up to this number, hit is our best stat next to intellect, and after it - it's useless. There are no enemies in raids that have a higher than 17% chance to miss our spells against, so once you reach this number hit rating is no longer a conern for you.

This is, of course, only a general guideline and should be taken with a grain of salt. While these values hold true for most people, you should always Sim your character to get the most accurate results possible.

To sum up – keep your intellect as high as possible while maintaining as close to 1742 hit rating as possible, and then focus on haste rating followed by critical strike rating and mastery rating.

7.b. Enchanting Your Gear

Generally you will want to use the following enchants (profession-specific enchants have been excluded)
Head - Arcanum of Hyjal
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone
Cloak - Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect
Chest - Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats
Bracer - Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect
Gloves - Enchant Gloves - Haste or Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery if mastery is worth more to you than haste at the moment
Leggings - Powerful Enchanted Spellthread
Boots - Enchant Boots - Lavawalker, Enchant Boots - Precision, or Enchant Boots - Haste
Belt - Ebonsteel Belt Buckle + Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Main hand weapon or Staff - Power Torrent
Offhand (if using a one handed weapon in the main hand) - Enchant Off-hand - Superior Intellect

7.c. Gemming Your Gear

When gemming non-meta sockets, you have three choices:

Red gems – Brilliant Inferno Ruby or the epic equivalent with 4.3
Blue gems – Veiled Demonseye or the epic equivalent with 4.3
Yellow gems – Reckless Ember Topaz or the epic equivalent with 4.3

And for your meta gem you will always use Burning Shadowspirit Diamond.

Generally you can just gem straight Brilliant Inferno Rubys, and ignore socket bonuses unless that grant less than 20 Intellect or the equivalent in other secondary stats per non-red gem you would have to use. For example, if Boots A have one red socket and one yellow socket and grant a 20 Intellect socket bonus, you would put a Brilliant Inferno Ruby in the red socket and a Reckless Ember Topaz in the yellow one, resulting in a total of +80 Intellect and +20 haste rating, as opposed to putting two Brilliant Inferno Rubys in them which would only result in 80 Intellect and no haste rating.

For more accurate information your best bet is to Sim your character to get your stat weights and figure out if the total stats you gain by gemming for the socket bonus are higher than the value of gemming all Brilliant Inferno Rubys and ignorin the socket bonus.


7.d. Reforging Your Gear

ElitistJerks has a nice writeup on reforging that I will share with you (credit for this part goes to ElitistJerks):

How you reforge will be based on the following rules:

Are you hit capped?
Yes: Reforge any extra hit to haste where possible.
No: Reforge mastery first then crit to hit.

Does it have haste on it?
Yes: Goto the next rule.
No: Reforge mastery first then crit to haste, leave hit as it is.

Reforge mastery to crit if the above has been done.

These rules may be different depending on you actual gear setup, if you are unsure - Sim it!.

wowreforge.com also provides a very useful tool for reforging and gemming. For the best and most accurate results I recommend you sim your character and manually input your own stat weights you get.

7.e. Haste Thresholds and You!

Disclosure: if you’re generally new to the spec/class, you can ignore this until you’re much more comfortable with the spec in general.

For destruction, because Conflagrate is based off of Immolate’s total damage (Conflagrate does damage equal to 60% of your Immolate's total periodic damage), gaining an extra tick on Immolate through your haste consequentially results in increased Conflagrate damage as well. It is for this reason that the values of haste rating that, when combined with raid buffs, grant Immolate an additional tick are of particular concern to you.

Note that Immolate haste thresholds are the ONLY ones relevant to your dps. All other ones – Corruption and Shadowflame end up scaling linearly – that is, haste affects them equally at all levels. Immolate thresholds do NOT scale linearly, that is, haste rating that pushes you over an Immolate threshold gives much more dps than haste rating that doesn’t.

There are two obtainable Immolate haste thresholds – one at 218 haste rating that grants you one extra tick on Immolate, and another at 2589 haste rating that grants you a total of two extra ticks on Immolate. (For you goblins out there, the values are 90 haste rating and 2437 haste rating for you due to your 1% haste racial.) If you’re close to one of these thresholds (within 100-200 rating) the value of haste will temporarily increase to nearly as good as Intellect, so reaching the threshold should be your #1 priority. If you’re not close to one of these thresholds, don’t go out of your way to reach them. Also please note that these haste rating values assume that you have +5% spell haste from a Balance druid or Shadow Priest and another +3% haste from Dark Intent. Without these buffs, the haste rating you need to achieve the extra ticks becomes significantly higher.

For a list of more haste thresholds (albeit much less important than the immolate thresholds), see this spreadsheet if you're curious.



7.f. Set Bonuses

Taken from ElitistJerks:

T12 2pc is ~1% DPS increase
T12 4pc is ~2% DPS increase

T13 2pc - The 2 peice bonus is a ~2% DPS increase, dependant on fight time.
T13 4pc - The 4 piece bonus is a ~2.5% DPS increase if used on CD.

Generally you want to make the switch to 2t13 ASAP even if you have to use LFR pieces to get it just because having the Doomguard available for every attempt is such a critical improvement.

7.g. Alternatives to the Legendary

As many of you know Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest is our best in slot weapon by a tremendous margin. However, due to any number of reasons, not everybody has or will have this weapon. There is a lot of misconception and misinformation being spread in regards to best in slot weapons outside of the legendary, mainly in regards to Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind and Ti'Tahk, the Steps of Time.

Here's the short-n-sweet breakdown of our best weapons outside of the legendary:

Heroic Lightning Rod > Heroic Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind > Heroic Ti'Tahk, the Steps of Time > Normal Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind > Normal Lightning Rod > Normal Ti'Tahk, the Steps of Time > LFR Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind > LFR Ti'Tahk, the Steps of Time

This list assumes you can get at least an item level 378 offhand or higher for Rathrak - the difference between the 378 offhand and the 397 offhand is small enough that it does not change the overall rankings for these weapons. This list excludes all Firelands weapons, of which all heroic mode versions are superior to both LFR weapons, and all normal mode versions are inferior. Also note that for any fights with secondary targets, Rathrak may move up oneor two ranks, varying on the number of secondary targets present throughout the fight, and time they spend alive and in range of your main target.

Yes, Rathrak is that good - even single target, and yes, Ti'tahk is that bad, even with the extremely small raid buff it provides. Remember - the raid buff that it procs can go to anything in the raid - tanks, pets, healers, or any of your lower dps. With Rathrak you at least get the secondary stats on your offhand while with Ti'Tahk you are giving up secondary stats altogether.

Another important thing to take into account when deciding whether or not to use Ti'tahk is whether or not you can maintain your main haste threshold of 2589 and/or your secondary threshold of 2681, depending on how close you are with with Ti'tahk equipped. If you cannot, it probably isn't worth using, depending on the weapon you would be using otherwise. If you are unsure, simulationcraft is always an excellent tool in deciding which gear to equip.

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8. Race/Profession Selection

Alliance races (from best DPS racials to worst):
1. Worgen - +1% crit and a 2 minute cooldown, 10 second duration 40% sprint
2. Human - Every Man for Himself, very useful in certain situations
3. Gnome - Escape Artist, similar to Every Man for Himself
4. Dwarf - Stone Form, provides no DPS

Horde races (from best DPS racials to worst):
1. Orc - +5% pet damage, and a small spellpower cooldown
2. Troll - A small haste cooldown, bonus damage when fighting beasts, and reduced duration of movement impairing effects
3. Goblin - +1% haste, and a small mobility cooldown
4. Undead - A small utility cooldown
5. Blood elf - Provides no potential DPS-increasing benefits



Here is a list of all professions, from highest DPS provided to lowest (all professions that provide an 80 intellect bonus are equal in dps value):

1. Tailoring – Lightweave Embroidery, averages to ~135 Intellect, an 85 intellect gain over the normal 50 intellect enchant
2. Engineering – Synapse Springs, averages to 80 Intellect but timeable with cooldowns/Bane of Doom
3. Jewelcrafting – 3x Brilliant Chimera’s Eye – grants 81 Intellect over 3x Brilliant Inferno Ruby s
4. Leatherworking – 130 Intellect to bracers in place of normal 50 Intellect enchant. Gives 80 Intellect.
5. Blacksmithing – Grants two extra sockets which equates to 80 additional Intellect from two extra Brilliant Inferno Ruby s.
6. Inscription – Shoulder enchant grants 80 additional Intellect over the normal shoulder enchant.
7. Alchemy – Increases Intellect gained from flasks by 80. Also doubles flask durations
8. Enchanting - 40 intellect to ring enchant x2 - 80 intellect bonus
9. Herbalism – 480 haste for 20 seconds on a two minute cooldown, averaging to 80 haste. Not ideal.
10. Skinning – Grants 80 critical strike rating at 525 skill. Not ideal.
11. Mining – Toughness grants 120 stamina at 525 skill. Does not give any DPS.

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9. FAQ

(work in progress)

Q: Why do you only talk about the Immolate haste thresholds? Aren't Corruption/Shadowflame/Bane of Agony thresholds also important points to make?

A: If you run your character through SimulationCraft and use the plot function to show the DPS gain per point of haste, you'll see that the only noticeable increases come when you reach the Immolate extra tick thresholds. This is simply because of the increase in Conflagrate damage an extra Immolate tick grants you. The other thresholds simply are not relevent.

Q: I followed the guide you linked to for SimulationCraft and ran my character, and it says I should be doing a lot more dps than I am in raids right now. I'm doing everything this guide suggests, should I just play another spec?

A: Naw, chances are you're playing pretty well if you're within ~20% of what SimulationCraft says you should be doing. Don't forget to uncheck the Focus Magic box in the buffs (it is checked by default) if you're not actually getting focus magic. SimulationCraft also assumes the perfect Dark Intent target which in most cases, sadly, we are not afforded the luxury of. If you're outside of the ~20% range of your simulated DPS, the main things that I would predict are problem areas are DoT uptime, making sure you're using Conflagrate on cooldown, and low Improved Soul Fire uptime. If your guild uses World of Logs and you don't know how to analyze your logs, feel free to post a link as a response and I'm sure I or someone else knowledgable about the spec would be happy to help you

Q: I ran my character through SimulationCraft and the stat weights are much different than what you posted. Is your guide out of date?

A: The stats I posted are merely generalized guidelines. Everyone's specific stat weightings will change with every piece of gear they get. My stat weightings hold true for most levels of gear but make no mistake, there are numerous circumstances where these weightings will chance. Good job checking SimulationCraft for yourself - use the values you got from your sim. They're always going to be the most accurate!

Q: AMAGAWD I just got a ton of buffs procced on myself, should I reapply my dots early so that they all benefit from them?

A: Despite your intuition, reapplying dots early is hardly ever worth it. As a general rule of thumb the only time you would recast dots early is when the new dot would be doing twice as much as the one it would overwrite. The only times you can ever potentially reach this in current content is on heroic Majordomo, if you apply your dots at the start of the fight and they haven't worn off before you reach a high level of concentration, and on Alysrazor if you are flying or going into the burn phase if you got a lot of rings in the tornado phase.

Q: What trinkets should I use?

A: Neubs986 took the time to compose a list of a very rough list (he explains the accuracy problems in his post) that can be found here. If the trinket you're curious about isn't on there and you aren't sure how to sim it to find out which is better, either PM me with the question or post here and I or someone else will help you.

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10. Addons/UI

The only thing I would say is required for playing destruction is any addon that enables you to easily track your Improved Soul Fire buff duration. I would personally recommend PowerAuras but there is a plethora of other addons that can accomplish this as well. I use a pretty basic aura-- ou can use it as a basic templacte:

Version:4.22; icon:Spell_Fire_Fireball02; buffname:Improved Soul Fire; timer.h:1.85; timer.enabled:true; timer.cents:false; timer.y:-100

Recount is also nice for keeping an eye on your performance. If demand is present I will update this to be a little more thorough.

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11. Credits/Thanks

First and foremost I would like to thank ElitistJerks for their thorough analysis of the warlock class that has helped me play to the best of my ability since I first started playing and for their reforging explanation and set bonus analysis. Thanks to everyone that has contributed to this post and thanks to everyone that will contribute to it in the future. Thank you so much to the MMO champ warlock forums for your (mostly :P) insightful conversation on the class that helps keep me playing this game in the first place. I’m Horrendous on [A][US] Destromath if anyone is interested in contacting me in game and you may also contact me via email at olgaflow13@gmail.com with anything regarding this piece of work.

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Copyright: This literature is the original work of Gakpad (Destromath-US) (now Horrendous of Destromath-US) with the aid of various contributors as named in said literature. Reposting this literature in full or in part is prohibited, unless a link to the original article and name of the author is clearly stated and visible, or with express permission from the original author (Horrendous [Destromath-US]). Content of this literature may not be used for commercial purposes.

A bit more *complete* then some of the others that have been floated on these forums.

However an issue that I do have is in your professions list: "Tailoring – Lightweave Embroidery, averages to ~135 Intellect" we have literally got 3 different numbers on guides for each spec.

Whilst tailoring is considered *better* than other professions since it gain is slightly higher I have serious doubts thats it anywhere as high as 135 intellect (its more like +81 intellect or so). Is this reflecting that the total benefit is ~135 and you haven't subtracted the difference between the standard available enchant of +50 intellect to cloak? If this is in fact the case then you should update your numbers to either show the total raw gains for all professions or fix this number to reflect the actual gain given as is the case with other professions you listed so as to avoid confusing your guides audience.

I'd also suggest you list the haste thresholds since they are important to include for this guide if you wish to be detailed about the spec. I have attached an example list for you so you can see what I mean (taken from EJ) and of this it would be important to explain how out of these we focus on immolate extra ticks since it has the most direct impact on your dps as destro. This would just help make it easier for people to read as opposed to a block of text

"Immolate Extra Tick Thresholds: 9.9% - 30% - 49.9% - 70%

Corruption Extra Tick Thresholds: 8.3% - 25% - 41.7% - 58.4%

Bane of Agony Extra Tick Thresholds: 4.1% - 12.5% - 20.8% - 29.7% - 37.5% - 45.8% - 54.1%"

Would also be worth it imo to add the formulas used to determine these values:

1) Tick.Speed.Required = (Base.Frequency * Base.Tick.Speed) / (No.of.Ticks - 0.5)

and 2) Haste.Percent = (Base.Tick.Speed / (Tick.Speed.Required + 0.00049999)) - 1

which then lead to 3) Haste.Rating = ((Haste.Percent / 5%.Aura / Dark.Intent) - 1) * 12805.716 for when DI is up and running which is what we end up using as the values for haste thresholds.

No, he's correct, I forgot to subtract 80 from the 135 intellect it gives, making it a total of 85 intellect on average.

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 07:16 PM ----------

On another note when I first made this, the links were providing mouseover tooltips, and now they aren't. Any idea what I did to get rid of them/what I can do to bring them back? edit: Nevermind I was just lagging >_>

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 07:25 PM ----------

I debated adding all of the haste thresholds but since they really don't matter except for immolate I wasn't going to risk drowning out any important information with what is essentially just trivia. And since this guide is to be noob friendly I decided against adding the formulas, for the time being. Suggestions noted, though. Regardless of that, you were correct that it was just a block of text. Separated it into smaller paragraphs for ease of reading :P Also added that those values assume raid buffs which I somehow neglected earlier. The toll this took on me for writing it from midnight to 3 in the morning showed up in weird ways like that lol

Originally Posted by gakpad

I debated adding all of the haste thresholds but since they really don't matter except for immolate I wasn't going to risk drowning out any important information with what is essentially just trivia. And since this guide is to be noob friendly I decided against adding the formulas, for the time being. Suggestions noted, though. Regardless of that, you were correct that it was just a block of text. Separated it into smaller paragraphs for ease of reading :P Also added that those values assume raid buffs which I somehow neglected earlier. The toll this took on me for writing it from midnight to 3 in the morning showed up in weird ways like that lol

The reason I mention adding them is because this way people can get a bit more detailed overview than just shoving random numbers down people without at least some ideas as to where they came from initially.

Since your wishing this to be a more *advanced* guide I feel it would truly be beneficial to add at least the immolate thresholds since it would give those looking into the workings of how these numbers arose and give perspective on why you would want to aim for a haste value of X. This also helps stem the tide of topics and posts on alternative, and often incorrect, calculations regarding haste points and enables people to check the number for themselves.

Edit- Even you could make a quick *facts section* with quick fire information and then list specific values and how they were calculated in more detailed underneath.

8. Race/Profession Selection

Alliance races (from best DPS racials to worst):
1. Worgen (+1% crit and a 2 minute cooldown, 10 second duration 40% sprint)
2. Draenei (+1% hit chance and a 3 minute cooldown HoT for 20% of target health)
3. Human (Every Man for Himself, very useful in certain situations)
4. Gnome (Escape Artist, similar to Every Man for Himself

Im pretty sure you cant be a draenai warlock. You want Dwarf there.

Fixed all the typos/errors pointed out so far, namely the draenei warlocks (lol) and set bonus numbers. And in 4.2 it is best to hang on to soul shards for when you need to move. For fights without movement (because they exist lol) yes, theoretically you should use them whenever you can. With 4.3 this will change to pretty much using them on cooldown.

awesome guide, easy to read and understand!!!

If you want this to apply to 4.3 you might want to adjust the stat weights from crit>=mastery to maybe just crit=mastery. Crit is only .0019 higher on the weights so for all intensive purposes they are equal. But that choice is up to you. Also, you might want to clarify that conflag's damage is based only off the total ticks of immolate and not all the damage of immolate. Small stuff but overall gj.

One more thing: Read the Glyph of Soulstone please. The extra heath is only when you used it on yourself.