[5.4] Brusalk's Destruction Warlock guide

[missbrooklyn25]

I don't have the exact time on how long it took but i just remember the % and on Malk last week it didn't proc till 61%. >_> It's been more shitty than normal the last two weeks.

[Rayaleith]

Has nothing to do with the upgrade. I've had it proccs with Rik'kal on 80% on multiple occasions. Or a personal favorite, just as I get transformed to a scorpion.

This is so typical. Especially if you were lucky enough to have DS active at the same time. When they hear me swear at TS, they know I am a scorpion at the proc :P

[Retro89]

Very quick question. Staff or 1H + OH?

[FurtyIRL]

Very quick question. Staff or 1H + OH?

If you're playing only destruction, the heroic warforged Gaze of Arrogance is your best option. If you're playing affliction as well then Immaculately Preserved Wand/Revelations of Y'shaarj is BiS. Very little difference between the two tbh and you should go with whatever you can pick up first.

[Retro89]

If you're playing only destruction, the heroic warforged Gaze of Arrogance is your best option. If you're playing affliction as well then Immaculately Preserved Wand/Revelations of Y'shaarj is BiS. Very little difference between the two tbh and you should go with whatever you can pick up first.

Ok, thanks for the help.

[gruxxar]

Hi guys, i just picked up my warlock again and after some gearing the last couple of weeks i finally got to ilvl 545 with 4set bonus.

Now most of the rotation I'm able to follow pretty well but i'm having trouble with dark shamans, mainly the opener.

Do you still follow the 'normal rotation' at a pull? since there are 4 targets, you shouldn't use F&B afaik. (need 4+)

Now atm i'm just using the normal opener and when i used my chaos bolt during the 4set window i dot 'm all 4 up with immolate and continue Single target. Is this a good way to go?

[Brusalk]

Hi guys, i just picked up my warlock again and after some gearing the last couple of weeks i finally got to ilvl 545 with 4set bonus.

Now most of the rotation I'm able to follow pretty well but i'm having trouble with dark shamans, mainly the opener.

Do you still follow the 'normal rotation' at a pull? since there are 4 targets, you shouldn't use F&B afaik. (need 4+)

Now atm i'm just using the normal opener and when i used my chaos bolt during the 4set window i dot 'm all 4 up with immolate and continue Single target. Is this a good way to go?

I personally haven't decided on a good way to start that fight. I've tried a few different methods and I kinda feel like using Havoc for 2xConflag + Immo into Chaos Bolt spam during procs does more than using the Havoc on a Chaos Bolt, but I haven't really done any formal analysis or anything for the optimal opener w/ 4 targets.

[Soulzar]

I personally do not use F&B as I don't want the DMG modifier bringing down the power of those super high crit and buffed immolates. You put yourself down an ember to start leaving you generating the second as your trying to fit 2CB into the first T4 proc window. I glyph havoc for this fight, which generally speaking is bad practice since there is a lot of cleave opportunity from the slimes(split strat or I wouldn't), however in 10m I find it virtually impossible to reliably snipe them anyways so just roll with the double CB cleave in opener since it gives me the warm fuzzies.

I precast immo, drop RoF, immo the other 3, double conflag a dog, havoc the other dog then funnel my CB's. You get 4 nice juicy CBs in that first 4p proc window and have more than enough embers to keep funneling CB's.

I follow Brusalks method of using Havoc for ember generation on Klaxxi, but never did on Shaman.

[Crisius]

Hi guys, i just picked up my warlock again and after some gearing the last couple of weeks i finally got to ilvl 545 with 4set bonus.

Now most of the rotation I'm able to follow pretty well but i'm having trouble with dark shamans, mainly the opener.

Do you still follow the 'normal rotation' at a pull? since there are 4 targets, you shouldn't use F&B afaik. (need 4+)

Now atm i'm just using the normal opener and when i used my chaos bolt during the 4set window i dot 'm all 4 up with immolate and continue Single target. Is this a good way to go?

For dark shamans you'll want to do your normal pre-cast immo/incinerate on whatever target, then drop a ROF as your first GCD in combat (to ensure ember regen). Pop DS and open with 2 FNB conflagrates. The less crit you have, the more uptime you need on rain of fire - also keep in mind that you might need to re-toggle fire and brimstone between conflagrates, as there might be a small delay on ember refund from your first ROF and the conflag.

Once you see that you reliably have ~3 embers, apply immolate. Spam incinerate. Once a dog dips below 20% you can apply havoc on one of the bosses and get out 3 shadowburns. If you play it smart you'll shadowburn each of the dogs at least once, and you'll get a 4 ember refund when they die instead of just 2.

[gruxxar]

Thanks guys. Will try it out asap !

[Deleted]

Hi Warlocks, my item level is 569 which I consider ample. In a cross realm normal with a twisting nether grp I was doing my first attempt of Garrosh normal mode for the night and my dps was 235k as i was mostly attacking the desecrated weapon and single target farseers, as such the raid leader claimed my dps was too low and removed me from the group before i could explain. I ask is 235k low for a destruction warlock of my level?
Check my armory page:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anoss/advanced
Is my dps too low and if so any hints / tips / or gear changes i need to make.
All tips are welcome.
Thanks.

[britishbubba]

Hi Warlocks, my item level is 569 which I consider ample. In a cross realm normal with a twisting nether grp I was doing my first attempt of Garrosh normal mode for the night and my dps was 235k as i was mostly attacking the desecrated weapon and single target farseers, as such the raid leader claimed my dps was too low and removed me from the group before i could explain. I ask is 235k low for a destruction warlock of my level?
Check my armory page:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anoss/advanced
Is my dps too low and if so any hints / tips / or gear changes i need to make.
All tips are welcome.
Thanks.

Link to your armory didn't work in your post: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anoss/advanced
I assume that's your character.

You should really be up closer to around 300k dps in that gear, and in terms of gearing that only change I could really suggest would be upping your haste (don't know how you can stand playing at sub 4k haste, that sounds awful for any fight with any movement.) I mean, play what haste is comfortable, but that just seems ungodly low even for someone that prefers a crit > haste build.

Do you have weakauras to show your procs? Are you only casting ember spells when you're going to cap, or when you have a proc? Are you using 4pc properly? Without logs there's very little anyone is going to be able to do to help you other than speculate what you could be doing wrong that would cause you to pull low damage.

[Deleted]

Link to your armory didn't work in your post: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anoss/advanced
I assume that's your character.

You should really be up closer to around 300k dps in that gear, and in terms of gearing that only change I could really suggest would be upping your haste (don't know how you can stand playing at sub 4k haste, that sounds awful for any fight with any movement.) I mean, play what haste is comfortable, but that just seems ungodly low even for someone that prefers a crit > haste build.

Do you have weakauras to show your procs? Are you only casting ember spells when you're going to cap, or when you have a proc? Are you using 4pc properly? Without logs there's very little anyone is going to be able to do to help you other than speculate what you could be doing wrong that would cause you to pull low damage.

Thank you for the feedback, now that you mention what is the better spec, mastery / haste or mastery / crit? I am crit atm but I imagine that with garrosh haste would be needed more since there are more adds to handle.
It happened at 9:30 last night the fact i was removed from the cross realm raid grp. I was getting tired and it was a while since i did garrosh. I got kicked after first attempt which we got him to 5% on last phase which means we were close. Tough group really.
If you want to see my character. He is Tyranoss on the Hellscream EU server.

[Crisius]

Hi Warlocks, my item level is 569 which I consider ample. In a cross realm normal with a twisting nether grp I was doing my first attempt of Garrosh normal mode for the night and my dps was 235k as i was mostly attacking the desecrated weapon and single target farseers, as such the raid leader claimed my dps was too low and removed me from the group before i could explain. I ask is 235k low for a destruction warlock of my level?
Check my armory page:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anoss/advanced
Is my dps too low and if so any hints / tips / or gear changes i need to make.
All tips are welcome.
Thanks.

Short answer is yes. Long answer is a bit more complicated.

For Garrosh in particular, even if you are focusing single-target on the farseer (which isn't destructions most obvious strength), there are quite a few things you can do to improve your overall performance.

First off, you'll want to use the adds in phase 1 to your advantage. Keep fire and brimstone immolate up on adds that are going to stay alive for more than a couple of seconds. With a crit-modifier such as the T16 4-set this will be even more rewarding, as you'll get a massive refund in embers. Keep up rain of fire regardless, the embers you get make it worthwhile as long as there are 2 or more targets getting hit for the full duration. Use the embers you gain to burn chaos bolts on the boss or the farseers. If not, simply kill the adds with fire and brimstone incinerates. The arguably most important part of using the adds to your single-target advantage is putting havoc on the boss and getting off three shadowburns on the adds. You'll want to use a macro such as this;

#showtooltip Shadowburn
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover] Shadowburn

This will not only do immense burst damage on the boss, but will leave you with 4 embers to spend on additional chaos bolts. (This is the reason our mastery is so strong!)


For all phases onwards, be sure to keep immolate up on both Garrosh and the weapon(s). Use havoc on cooldown, either with chaos bolt, or with immolate, incinerate or conflagrate coupled with a shadowburn. If you are playing in 25m, pre-emptively putting a rain of fire on the raid/ranged team a second before mind controls happen will grant you an immense amount of emberbits if you get MC'ed. If you have the whole raid stacking behind the boss it's more than worth the effort.


Regarding your gear, it seems decent. If you really want to minmax I suggest you put some +160exp/+160 mastery gems in your red slots. With your itemlevel, all three secondaries have outscaled int. Ideally you'll want the hit on all your items (rings, belt, etc.) to be reforged to something else, and the other secondary left intact.

/edit: Just noticed you have mastery/stamina gems in your shoulders and belt. I assume you once upon a time were way over hitcap, but you'll want to get that fixed now. As far as I can see you can fit 5 expertise/mastery gems, and put a hit/mastery in belt, two in your shoulders and one in your weapon. Reforge the hit from your belt and reforge back to crit on your cloak and you should sit at ~15%.

[Deleted]

Short answer is yes. Long answer is a bit more complicated.

For Garrosh in particular, even if you are focusing single-target on the farseer (which isn't destructions most obvious strength), there are quite a few things you can do to improve your overall performance.

First off, you'll want to use the adds in phase 1 to your advantage. Keep fire and brimstone immolate up on adds that are going to stay alive for more than a couple of seconds. With a crit-modifier such as the T16 4-set this will be even more rewarding, as you'll get a massive refund in embers. Keep up rain of fire regardless, the embers you get make it worthwhile as long as there are 2 or more targets getting hit for the full duration. Use the embers you gain to burn chaos bolts on the boss or the farseers. If not, simply kill the adds with fire and brimstone incinerates. The arguably most important part of using the adds to your single-target advantage is putting havoc on the boss and getting off three shadowburns on the adds. You'll want to use a macro such as this;

#showtooltip Shadowburn
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover] Shadowburn

This will not only do immense burst damage on the boss, but will leave you with 4 embers to spend on additional chaos bolts. (This is the reason our mastery is so strong!)


For all phases onwards, be sure to keep immolate up on both Garrosh and the weapon(s). Use havoc on cooldown, either with chaos bolt, or with immolate, incinerate or conflagrate coupled with a shadowburn. If you are playing in 25m, pre-emptively putting a rain of fire on the raid/ranged team a second before mind controls happen will grant you an immense amount of emberbits if you get MC'ed. If you have the whole raid stacking behind the boss it's more than worth the effort.


Regarding your gear, it seems decent. If you really want to minmax I suggest you put some +160exp/+160 mastery gems in your red slots. With your itemlevel, all three secondaries have outscaled int. Ideally you'll want the hit on all your items (rings, belt, etc.) to be reforged to something else, and the other secondary left intact.

/edit: Just noticed you have mastery/stamina gems in your shoulders and belt. I assume you once upon a time were way over hitcap, but you'll want to get that fixed now. As far as I can see you can fit 5 expertise/mastery gems, and put a hit/mastery in belt, two in your shoulders and one in your weapon. Reforge the hit from your belt and reforge back to crit on your cloak and you should sit at ~15%.

Thanks, I just did ^^

[Soulzar]

One thing to keep in mind is that your dmg can vary a lot on that fight by riding your opening burst. If you pad like a Mofo, your dmg will look much more impressive later in the fight. hopefully the raid leader was smart enough to kick you based on Garrosh dmg, and not lack of padding dmg. That said, as a Warlock you can be effective at both since RoF, F&B Immo, and Conflag on add waves when you have all that extra crit from your int procs is Ember positive.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the tips, I do allot of what you recommended, It was close to 10pm uk time and I had done one raid already that day and was tired and not done garrosh normal for awile and forgot things. It was the first attempt that I was kicked after and no time to explain myself and since it was cross realm i could not explain after. earlier that day I was on fallen pretectors and was easily doing 295k dmg and on that fight there are ample opportunities. I guess another reason for my dps was since this was a group I had never been with I did not know how good they were so I was being careful in case a healer died or when I needed to stun a mind control.
Some people have no patience. :P

[britishbubba]

Thank you for the feedback, now that you mention what is the better spec, mastery / haste or mastery / crit? I am crit atm but I imagine that with garrosh haste would be needed more since there are more adds to handle.

It depends on a lot of things. Personally for most of the bosses in SoO I run ~12k haste in destro because I like the way it feels on most of the fights due to cleave (could drop a bunch for more ST fights like jugg, but I'm lazy). On garrosh though I run ~6k haste and bump up my crit because the AoE part of the fight is pretty irrelevant and I'd rather get more damage on the boss.

Play around with different forges and see what works for you, I don't think the difference between mastery > crit and Mastery > haste is really the different, I just wouldn't want to ever drop down lower than ~6k haste personally because it feels sluggish. More haste is also nice for having to move often like you do in garrosh, makes it easier to get CBs off without having to move cuz of mechanic X Y or Z.

[JV Chequer]

Brusalk and fellow Warlocks.

For Destro it's a fact that a great use of BBOY makes that trinket better than KTT.
What hurts in BBOY it's the big window to mistakes and bad use of proc but put that aside it tends to be better than KTT for someone who likely do 90%+ of the class.

But an Regular Heroic BBOY vs Heroic WF KTT fight, which one it's better in your opinion guys?

If u play properly even with lower ilvl BBOY surpasses WF KTT or the 6ilvl higher will make more reasonable go to the simple choice?

[Chrispotter]

bboy is more rng because over the 10 second proc you could have to move at the last 5 seconds of the proc, it hurts alot more than if you had KTT equiped.
The same is true in reverse, if you have BBOY equiped and you have to move during the first few seconds of the proc you are losing alot less dps than if you had to move during the first few seconds of a KTT proc. Generally you have higher risk/reward with using BBOY and KTT is the 'safer' option for more consistent dps.