[5.4] Brusalk's Destruction Warlock guide

[mmokid527]

Ask Ghost Crawler? LOL yeah I'm sure he will tell me more than its fine..

[Moruff]

thanks again for an updated guide on destruction you seem to be the major voice for destro right now and I know all of us few and far between destro players appreciate that. One question I have for you that I have been having trouble finding any information on anywhere. For 5.4 all you seem to hear about is affliction and demo and people seem to be throwing destro to the unviable category or just not saying much about it at all..So my question to you is how viable is destro right now? Have the buffs we received to Chaos Bolt and incerinerate made up of for the killjadens and rain of fire nerfs? And if destro is still viable how much is it still behind the other two specs right now? I basically have only played destruction and I'm best at that but with all these changes people seem to be nudging me toward other specs which I dont mind learning but id rather not if destruction is indeed competitive.. I do not want to play a spec that will land me at the bottom of the meters just because I'm playing that particular spec..Any insight or advice on my predicament would help out huge. Thanks again man for all your work on all stuff destruction.

If you rock at the spec, you won't bottom the meters. It's still comparable to many other dps specs. Since you can use fel flame as a filler now, you pretty much won't ever need kjc. However, for single target and council fights, it's going to be behind affl and demo.

[Werst]

Basically every situation that isn't shadowburn sniping low HP adds and cleaving that damage via havoc onto high HP adds destro will be trampled on by nearly everyone. Even during those ideal situations its a midpack spec which falls to the bottom percentiles the moment its out of that niche.

KJC? Who needs it...fel flame feels more than fine as a filler and sneaking in CB's isn't that bad. However the numbers are just not there. At this point I'd favor nerfing the niche (say shadowburn consumes 3x havoc charges) and buffing the whole spec the 15%-20% it would need to start to not suck in terms of competing with the other ranged out there.

MF feels more like a ember generation tool than real damage. Especially since F&B doesn't scale up with MF last I checked. Since RoF's damage still gets doubled vs immolated targets its not like you can even get immolate on the radius of RoF so its a double whammy.

Darksoul for destro is fractionally as powerful as darksoul for aff or demo and the spec isn't more powerful off CD by a looooong shot to make up for it. So even outside of gear scaling whatsoever its just a more feeble spec at its core. Fun at times? Sure...who doesn't like nuking the piss out of things. It just severely lacks the numbers to compete.

[Biomega]

After watching a few streamed attempts on 10m Garrosh, it's quite sad to see their Affliction lock top the meter, while their Destro lock does about half his damage. On a fight with lots of adds to cleave off off/SB snipe. Sadness

[jason1975]

Are you folks using fel flame as a filler all the time, or just when you don't have backdraft up?

[Deleted]

Since everyone here is on about Aff and Demo being better in every other situation..

I'm a Warlock sporting ~515 ilvl without UVLS, would Demo or Aff still be better than Destruction?

[Brusalk]

Are you folks using fel flame as a filler all the time, or just when you don't have backdraft up?

Without Backdraft or a bunch of haste (from procs, or gear, or hero) Fel Flame is essentially the same DPS as Incinerate. I'll be using it as my filler w/o haste procs.

- - - Updated - - -

Since everyone here is on about Aff and Demo being better in every other situation..

I'm a Warlock sporting ~515 ilvl without UVLS, would Demo or Aff still be better than Destruction?

Probably Demo, but that is highly dependant on your skill level as each spec. Play the one you're best at and that'll probably be the most damage you can do.

[Deleted]

Probably Demo, but that is highly dependant on your skill level as each spec. Play the one you're best at and that'll probably be the most damage you can do.

I appreciate the response but honestly that's such a boring answer. Would it be right of me to assume that Demo and Aff are so dependant on UVLS that I'm not going to be up to par without it?

[Brusalk]

I appreciate the response but honestly that's such a boring answer. Would it be right of me to assume that Demo and Aff are so dependant on UVLS that I'm not going to be up to par without it?

Aff isn't dependant on UVLS, but it's extremely beneficial to have the legendary meta. It also scales well but has somewhat low (compared to Demo) damage with lesser stats.
Demo is good at lower ilevels compared to Aff, and is still very good with UVLS. Without it it's still good, but not exceptional.
Destro is the warlock spec that doesn't require as much gear and is thus better at low ilevels, however it's so far behind Aff/Demo I'm not sure it's any better than the other specs even at low ilevels.

You'll be up to par with Demo and Aff. Not sure you will be with Destro. That said, Aff and Demo have a much lower lower-bound than Destro with low skill, and Destro can do better than the other specs with little skill. With high skill Demo does exceptionally, Aff does exceptionally, and Destro can do exceptionally depending on fight mechanics.


It's mostly dependant on your individual skill with each spec as opposed to what gear you have. (Hence my original answer.)


Hope that helps some.

[Deleted]

That's a lot better, thanks!

[jason1975]

So Icy Veins just posted their update to the Destro guide for 5.4. They (I'm guessing Gahddo) are saying that stat priorities have not changed, and aren't recommending the use of Fel Flame.

Brusalk, have you been in touch with Gahddo? If so, are you both just in disagreement over this? Obviously more will come within the next week, but this seems to be a point of divergence.

[Brusalk]

So Icy Veins just posted their update to the Destro guide for 5.4. They (I'm guessing Gahddo) are saying that stat priorities have not changed, and aren't recommending the use of Fel Flame.

Brusalk, have you been in touch with Gahddo? If so, are you both just in disagreement over this? Obviously more will come within the next week, but this seems to be a point of divergence.

I've been in touch with Gahddo and AFAIK his testing has been showing the exact same things as I've found.

I'm not familiar with what Icy Veins had before. What exactly are they stating stat wise?

[Mazda]

I've been in touch with Gahddo and AFAIK his testing has been showing the exact same things as I've found.

I'm not familiar with what Icy Veins had before. What exactly are they stating stat wise?

It's not surprising that they are different. I suspect that "Zagam" (sp?) is the one creating them, and I've disagreed extensively with him before.

[Delequoi]

Decided to test destro this week in normals, Thok 10 man was pretty much completely patchwerk before the hotfix (just timed fel flame through the screeches) with mastery>crit>haste (unbuffed 11804 mastery, 8414 crit, 5897 haste), grim sup w/observer, fel flame filler, legendary meta, 549 ilvl, no RoF. Topped the meter at ~239k.

[EvreliaGaming]

It's not surprising that they are different. I suspect that "Zagam" (sp?) is the one creating them, and I've disagreed extensively with him before.

Actually, i'll take responsibility there. I suggested to hold off adding in the Fel Flame thing due to the Incinerate buff, wasn't sure how it would affect it. Haven't updated him since, but i'm sure it will be corrected soon. There's no disagreement.

[Mazda]

Actually, i'll take responsibility there. I suggested to hold off adding in the Fel Flame thing due to the Incinerate buff, wasn't sure how it would affect it. Haven't updated him since, but i'm sure it will be corrected soon. There's no disagreement.

Very well! I'll hold off the lynch mob... for now...

[Delequoi]

Actually, i'll take responsibility there. I suggested to hold off adding in the Fel Flame thing due to the Incinerate buff, wasn't sure how it would affect it. Haven't updated him since, but i'm sure it will be corrected soon. There's no disagreement.

I've raided completely destruction through SoO so far and I've observed that SoO is very much a "don't stand in the bad things" instance - sha pools, corrupted brew, blind hatred, self-reflections, fire arrows, tar/missiles, toxic pools/purple tornados, heroic shockwave/blades, arcing smash, bombs etc. Seeing as you should be looking to take Archimonde's Vengeance every fight, having fel flame as a filler pretty much serves the same purpose as taking the new KJC - being able to move out of fire quickly outside of chaos bolts. While fel flame remains relatively close to incinerate (until the dps gain is greater than taking AV instead of KJC) I don't see myself using incinerate outside of backdraft/hero/haste buffs.

[Deleted]

HI,
its hard to go trough 100 pages on this post. So can anyone tell me what are best stats for destro? I'm doing crit-haste-mastery now and dps is around 200k.
EU, Alonsus, Kasajunior

Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

Hey there.
This guide says that I should prioritize Haste over mastery over crit. More importantly crit always seems to be the worst stat to go for.
However when I go to the mr.robot website it tells me to go fullout for crit, in literally everything.
Is mr.robot wrong? Should I just not use it or why does it say that is the best stat to go for?

My character is Sensen on Al'Akir EU server if anyone was interested.

[Berthold]

latest simcraft release fully supports 5.4 locks. Happy theorycrafting. If you find some bugs, let us know.
Looks like mastery ~= crit > haste for typical setups (especially if you use RoF only for movement as it is only a measly upgrade for stand-still)