Destruction Warlock and Horridon HC

[Deleted]

Currently my guild is progressing on Horridon HC and I'm playing Demonology, sustaining about 180k on the gates, although I feel I could be doing much more if I was Destruction.

Can anyone give me some tips and tricks for Destruction on Horridon HC? E.G. macros, best places to use Havoc, stat priorities and best talents, any general tips to maximise my dps.

Link to armoury - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Telchis/simple

Thanks.

[Cirque]

Hello -

I've been destro on Horridon hc a couple of times (though now we went 25 so I'm almost always aff nowadays), so here's my personal experience. First, I can highly recommend the use of a pet despite that sac may increase your dps overall: making the imp switch to the pink dino when it gets sort-of close takes away such a large headache on that fight. Using fel flame to keep the pink dino at bay is a huge drain on your mana and I found it incredibly undesirable. Note that I prefer the imp for this, as the room is huge and the pink dino will be chased to Africa by your pet resulting in a despawn (or it will spend half its life running back and forth between dino and target), and if it's 25man it'll just get killed by the boss aoe to boot. This is all much less likely with the ranged imp. Depending on your raid positioning (which is likely melee/pink dino-mobs->tank->you), you can rely on fire and brimstone-immo/conflag aoe to keep the pink dino at bay which works pretty well, but in practice you'll find it is needed to use additional fel flames for safety's sake. That said, don't know if it's been fixed, but when I progressed this ages ago, other people's pink dino's could in fact hit other players. This was totally random and always led to a wipe, and as a result having a pink dino close to the raid was undesirable (yet often unavoidable). Additionally, the range at which the pink dino hit us varied widely too, an extra reason I had to keep it well at bay.

As a result I would suggest a mastery heavy build, which I believe is what I did when we progressed but I may be mistaken. Other people surely will have better insights on your stat weights, and I believe there's a pet+stat weights sticky in this forum for Destro.

As for havoc; I usually havoc'd to the boss, because getting the boss as low as you can before the last phase is a plus, but also because if you have many adds it's such a clusterfuck that it's near impossible to get your havoc properly on the add you want it to be on without losing precious time with your mouseover macro or trying to select the correct mob if you don't have a mouseover macro for havoc. However, in the scenario where, for example, there's two venom priests up and I had a clear havoc shot, there's no reason to not use havoc on the other priest.

Other things really depend on your guild tactic. We were relying on killing the first venom priest before it spawned the clone whose name I always forget, so we had to make sure we had cooldowns ready for that. Having T14 p4 this was not really an issue for me, though. I don't know what your guild's gear looks like but ours was shit back then so we needed every scrap of dps to make this happen. Depending on things like this, invariably your use of cooldowns will change, so it's hard to give solid tips on this.

RoF. It is of paramount importance you keep this up at all times. If movement were not such a big thing here, taking Mannoroth's fury would surely make us cry tears of joy, especially in the early stages of progress when adds tend to be all over the place. Yet as movement is so huge here, I'd still recommend KJC. Rof and immo on all targets will make you drown in embers, which of course you will all be channeling in the main target that needs to die.

Shadowburn. Though embers is probably the last thing you need, snipe those kills. 2 extra embers per shadowburn is just too good to let go away.

Keep Immo on the boss. There's no reason not to.

Soul Leech is the totally OP talent to take here as any spec, as it will mitigate all the stomps that Horridon does without a problem at all. Additionally, I recommend Soul Link if you run a pet, being a great talent as always. Sac pact is usually also a great pick, though it has little use here as there shouldn't be any Quills-like damage on this fight - again, the stomp thing is completely soaked by Soul Leech. Furthermore, I'd definitely suggest Burning Rush, the go-to talent for practically any fight except perhaps Iron Qon, and even more so here where you will basically be permanently snared.

Hope I helped somewhat.

[Deleted]

Using fel flame to keep the pink dino at bay is a huge drain on your mana and I found it incredibly undesirable.

I guess you better use CoE than Fel Flame, you'll only spend a 0.5s GCD doing it this way, and will benefit from GoSac easier.

Here's the macro you should use :
#Showtooltip
/target Direhorn Spirit
/cast Curse of the Elements
/targetlasttarget

Obviously, you should go for a mastery build which will improve significantly your SB and CB.

[Alarinth]

Also, I see someone suggesting a gosup / goserv build as destro with mastery. I disagree, GoSac still will be better, and you can either just resummon the imp in the last phase, or just stick your doomguard on the direhorn. Both are viable options.

edit: Reading through again, I see he didn't actually suggest gosup/serv, but my point remains the same - don't summon the imp until the last phase, stay sac'ed until then.

[a little Kappa]

Mannoroths fury, mouseover havoc macros, tidyplates....

Fel flame macro for the spirit in focus.

[Deleted]

Currently my guild is progressing on Horridon HC and I'm playing Demonology, sustaining about 180k on the gates, although I feel I could be doing much more if I was Destruction.

Can anyone give me some tips and tricks for Destruction on Horridon HC? E.G. macros, best places to use Havoc, stat priorities and best talents, any general tips to maximise my dps.

Link to armoury - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Telchis/simple

Thanks.

I went Mastery GoSac with MF.

I mainly used my Havoc on other adds, as it was dps on adds needed not boss. I used it pretty much on cd, if 1 add up I did it on horridon, else I did it on 1 add and Chaob Bolted the other.

On gate 1 I focused mostly on wastewalkers.
On gate 2 I focused mostly on priests.
On gate 3 I focused on the 2 small adds, not the big one (You can easily burst the small ones down with CB-stun-CB).
On gate 4 I was on Flamecaster duty, so I focused those.

Keep RoF up all the time, it can easily hit everything.
Keeping Immolate (FoB) up is easily achived.
I switch between AoEing and single target.


The pink dinosaur is easily dealt with as destro, you can wait for it to be on top of the other mobs, then use AoE spells to knock it back. Else CoE is ½ global.

Some guilds pools their cds, but I personaly used them azap, and on CD: The only time I pooled was @ second gate, where Dark Soul comes off cooldown alittle early, which I pop on the first add.

Hope this helped!

[Cirque]

Also, I see someone suggesting a gosup / goserv build as destro with mastery. I disagree, GoSac still will be better, and you can either just resummon the imp in the last phase, or just stick your doomguard on the direhorn. Both are viable options.

edit: Reading through again, I see he didn't actually suggest gosup/serv, but my point remains the same - don't summon the imp until the last phase, stay sac'ed until then.

Why would you ever put the doomguard on the direhorn, when you'll need every scrap of it during the boss burn? And last phase? You can get the pink dino as soon as the first door as ranged dps. I don't put to question that sac will of course be better dps. I was merely pointing out the benefit of a pet despite that sac will net you theoretical dps increase.



---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 09:18 AM ----------

I guess you better use CoE than Fel Flame, you'll only spend a 0.5s GCD doing it this way, and will benefit from GoSac easier.

Here's the macro you should use :
#Showtooltip
/target Direhorn Spirit
/cast Curse of the Elements
/targetlasttarget

Obviously, you should go for a mastery build which will improve significantly your SB and CB.

That's an excellent suggestion and I don't even know why that never occurred to me.

[Alarinth]

Why would you ever put the doomguard on the direhorn, when you'll need every scrap of it during the boss burn? And last phase? You can get the pink dino as soon as the first door as ranged dps. I don't put to question that sac will of course be better dps. I was merely pointing out the benefit of a pet despite that sac will net you theoretical dps increase.



---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 09:18 AM ----------



That's an excellent suggestion and I don't even know why that never occurred to me.

We've never had a problem with the enrage on that fight, so haven't really got to the point of absolutely minmaxing it.

[Deleted]

During the first phase (gates) the spirit will almost alway be knocked back by your FnB-AoE-spells and you won't have to deal with it yourself. For the last phase (after Jalak died) I cast havoc on the dire horn spirit as often as possible and cleave single target spells from my normal rotation off horridon. If done correctly I have to cast CoE only once between two havoc cooldowns.
Just make sure to cast Chaos Bolt or Rain of Fire between two copied spells, or the spirit might end up not being knocked back by your second spell.

That saves me 3 out of 4 CoE-gcds I would otherwise have to spend for things that don't do damage.

[Deleted]

Just killed it in 25 HC as a destro lock so here's my thoughts on what to do (though I haven't been pushing that much dps on the kill cause I was too busy raidleading)

Go manhorot fury and try to place the adds between you and the direhorn or the so called "oh god, not him again". When you'll be aoeing (supposedly in the middle of à door), the direhorn will be pushed by your incinerates & conflagration.

Even if you can definitely push very high numbers by aoeing like a goose, try to still listen to your leader and really focus the important adds (priests and warbears/shaman are the most important to nuke in single target).

Make sure your imo and havoc are always on the boss as soon as it's off cooldown. You can also have your pet dps it all the time, just switching 10 secs on your direhorn everyonce in a while. I thought this was a better option that the curse of elements maccro which bugs a lot for me. Just bind your pet attack and focus your direhorn so you can keep track of the distance between you and him (just need a UI that switched opacity when the focus is out of range).

As for other talents, you of course want to have soulleech and sacrificial pact (use it before every direcall) to help your healers. KJC is useless and Will slow you too much, which is a problem for horridon's charge, unless you have a portal placed at every door.

For the last phase, try having all your embers for the wargod. Havoc horridon at 20% of the war god and let the power of destruction be released ! Haha. Last phase is mostly a dps run. Be close to the boss for an eventual charge and don't forget your direhorn. Also, if you have enough druides and dks in the raid, you can certainly have a soulstone on the tank which is gonna get obliterated by the boss if you re not careful.

[dahri]

Use havoc when you can get of 3 shadowburns. Dont waste havoc on anything else. Use GoSac for sure. If you need the imp in P2 to handle the direhorn, just summon it.

[Deleted]

You also need to know which adds die quickly so you dont waste havoc shadowburns on them (they die too quick for you to get 3 shadowburns off, and others are too high HP to shadowburn), but that comes with practice as you do the fight more and more.

Tidy plates really help for this, but once you get used to the HP's you can use the default name plates as well.