Please help our Warlock

[Hindsgaul]

Our dear warlock is struggling to keep up with the rest of our raid and could use some help and guidance.

We are currently progressing HC Margok were he is underperforming, but the trend is general across all bosses. Do keep in mind we are a Social 2 days a week guild having fun, but taking it rather serious the 2x3 hours we raid.
You are also very welcome to comment on other ppl you can see could use some help.

WoL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/oazog4hz54h3661o/

WCL: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Af8QBK1adXkYwTPh/

[Deleted]

7 shadowburns is extremely low, so are 23 chaos bolts over 10 minutes. He should try more shadowburn sniping on the adds, and generally spend/generate embers better

[Shiennar]

- Affliction on Tectus. Wut?

- Doesnt seem to touch the adds during Margok, neither does he seem to Havoc them?

- He is specced into Kiljaedens cunning while its far from superior.

There are so many glaring mistakes. He should have a read through the guides on these forums.

[Hindsgaul]

The affliction thing was something he tried out to see if he could do more dps. Did not really work.
Problem is he have read all the guides here and on Icy.

If you can be even more specific about improvements he can do on specific fights that would be great

[Shiennar]

He needs to reread those guide thoroughly this time. He doesnt seem to be using Havoc at all at the right targets. I mean, I can show you a comparison of my own kill of yesterdays HC;
His: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e=72&by=target
Mine: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e=26&by=target

You can see clear as day that I am attacking more targets than him and getting benefit from it. It doesnt need more than one Chaos bolt per abberation and then having shadowburn on it to gain two embers. This is basic stuff that he should know and figure out. He has a arsenal, and yet he is not using it.

He isnt specced into Archimonde's darkness which is far superior to Kiljaedens Cunning he used a whooping once during one of your tries.

He isnt using the best enchants for either of his items.

Most of his pieces have poor itemization for destruction, he would be far better off going affliction for the bosses that allows it i.e Twins, Butcher, Kargath etc.

[Deleted]

Can u ask your warlock t take a ss of his ui in raid combat? He might be missing some procs and not tracking some cds (kjc for instance)

[gunchix]

On Mar'gok he should use Havoc on the big adds and in intermissions on mages/reaver, shadowburn each big add when it's about to die, and shadowburn the little exploding buggers when they're low on hp. F&B immolate on the little adds helps too.
well yes, his gear itemization ain't the best, but still he should be able to pull off at least 20k with that overall gear

edit. Tbf I see more point using soul link rather than sacrificial pact, if he manages to teleport through bosses aoe, he should be pretty good with his shield from soul link without major heals needed. also I'd use glyph of healthstone and soulstone (if he hasn't changed one of them for fear to go CM's)

[Novx]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=21

My last heroic Margok kill ^^

To add to what Shienna and Tsae said: He just isn't shadowburning and he doesn't understand the optimal times to use havoc and just doesn't cast it the other half of the time. Is there any chance you can get him to post so we can speak directly with him rather than having to go through a middle-man of sorts? Not that I don't appreciate you trying to help out a guild member but it can get extremely messy and messages may not be understood correctly at times.

[Hindsgaul]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=21

My last heroic Margok kill ^^

To add to what Shienna and Tsae said: He just isn't shadowburning and he doesn't understand the optimal times to use havoc and just doesn't cast it the other half of the time. Is there any chance you can get him to post so we can speak directly with him rather than having to go through a middle-man of sorts? Not that I don't appreciate you trying to help out a guild member but it can get extremely messy and messages may not be understood correctly at times.

I just pointed him towards this forum
and thx for all the replies guys!

[Morath]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=21

My last heroic Margok kill ^^

To add to what Shienna and Tsae said: He just isn't shadowburning and he doesn't understand the optimal times to use havoc and just doesn't cast it the other half of the time. Is there any chance you can get him to post so we can speak directly with him rather than having to go through a middle-man of sorts? Not that I don't appreciate you trying to help out a guild member but it can get extremely messy and messages may not be understood correctly at times.

Hi, did you had any issues with Monks Touch of Death and other executes? In our raid adds just die too fast when they are under 20%. I saw in lot of logs Warlocks with big numbers on Imperator with Shadowburn (like yours) and I had quite big problems with this 3,5 GCD (1x Havoc and 3x Shadowburn) under 20% of mobs health (I could not do it even in case of Fortificated adds in phase 3). We killed him yesterday (I was Cataclysm specced because lack of good AoE in raid and specific tactic) but despite my efforts I was not able do enought damage with Shadowburn.

- - - Updated - - -

- Affliction on Tectus. Wut?

- Doesnt seem to touch the adds during Margok, neither does he seem to Havoc them?

- He is specced into Kiljaedens cunning while its far from superior.

There are so many glaring mistakes. He should have a read through the guides on these forums.

Why do you think that Affliction on Tectus is not strong enought? Yes based on TOP logs is Destro a lot stronger, but why? Because players overkill with Shadowburns on death adds (they are at 0% 3-4 seconds), Shards of Tectus are under 20% just few seconds (especially in that top rank guilds), not enought to do correctly 3x Havocburn of effective damage. On other side Affliction with Soulburn Havoc is able hold dots on all targets (if we are talkning about 4-5 of them) with +20% boost on all of them and do effective damage.

Best solution is Demonology, but top Demo locks have they ranks done on tactic with 8 Shards of Tectus and massive AoE.

So from my point of view is Affliction absolutelly viable as effective spec on Tectus, but absolutelly not with Cataclysm like last talent.

[Shiennar]

Best solution is Demonology, but top Demo locks have they ranks done on tactic with 8 Shards of Tectus and massive AoE.

So from my point of view is Affliction absolutelly viable as effective spec on Tectus, but absolutelly not with Cataclysm like last talent.

I dont see what is bad about the bolded part, thats the reason they are demonology, because on mythic you need to take down the eight shards as fast as possible, which is what demo is specialized at - burst aoe.

It highly depends on how each guild executes the fight on anything but mythic, as affliction is the least viable spec for mythic.

[Ichifails]

He suffers from something that affects a lot of people apparently. I call it "the not doing jack shit syndrome" or "familial Mediterranean fever". That is when for some reason, somehow, a player has around 25-50% less spells used than people doing decent DPS (ranking high most of the time).

I theorized that this is due to simply not understanding a fight and reacting to what you see. This will destroy Destro DPS. It's the reason why I'd say it's one of the harder specs in game to master. You simply can't be reactive, you have to be proactive.

If you have to dodge from a spell when you have 0.5 seconds of a CB cast left, you either not dodge (take damage, deplete healer mana) or you cancel your cast and for Destro, difference between a buffed Chaos Bolt and unbuffed are simply insane (for me it's 59k vs 110k). You could avoid that choice by knowing what will happen in the next 10-15 seconds in the fight.

For example on Imperator, it took me around 5 attempts to understand the correct add and trap spawn sequence for Phase 2. That allows me to cast 1 extra Chaos Bolt 3 times that fight even though a trap is under my feet. It is because an add dies and pushes people away before the trap activates. There's not enough time to finish the cast and run away but there is enough time to finish the cast and be thrown away

He barely touches the adds. I know it's hard as a warlock, depending on the add my Chaos Bolt might still be traveling when the add dies however there are ways to work around that and it's extremely beneficial to DPS them:

• you can target the add when the spawn animation starts (when he's still a cloud on the floor)
• you should manage your resources and have 2 embers for each add
• due to how fast adds die, I found that the optimal way to do things is Havoc before the add spawns. This accomplishes 3 things: 1. Havoc will copy a Chaos Bolt; 2. You will not lose time trying to put Havoc on Imperator while the add is low causing you to probably miss the Shadowburn; 3. If you are good enough at it, you can copy 1 Chaos Bolt and 1 or 2 Shadowburns because you can have 2 Havocs on Imperator for the same add
• CD's are very good to pop for adds. Add dies faster=> less healing required=> more p4 mana for healers. You should get 1 Chaos Bolt and 1 Shadowburn at least for each add and that translates to a lot of damage (Havoc CB, Havoc SB, 1 more CB generated by casting and 2 more CB's generated by SB; if you play your cards correctly, you will do 5 CB's and 4 SB's within 20 seconds)

I didn't play the fight properly myself on our last kill because of the holiday break and the raid being basically people talking and laughing but still, here's a few spell cast differences(our kill was 11:11 and your best attempt 10:13):
Me: 54 CB's, 50 SB's, 158 incin, 81% uptime Immolate, 46 Conflagrate
Yw: 24 CB's, 9 SB's, 144 incin, 92% uptime Immolate, 44(47 hits) Conflagrate

The Immolate uptime is also pointing to (besides different strategies) to simply inefficient spell usage. He's using Immolate(a 15seconds DoT with cast time) on THE ADDS. Not only the transition adds but the Aberrations that should die almost instantly.

[Morath]

I dont see what is bad about the bolded part, thats the reason they are demonology, because on mythic you need to take down the eight shards as fast as possible, which is what demo is specialized at - burst aoe.

It highly depends on how each guild executes the fight on anything but mythic, as affliction is the least viable spec for mythic.

Yes, but they are killing HC and progress Imperator HC, so they probably kill 4 Shards + 1 Mote, not 8 Shards With this tactic and this level of progress is Afflication very usable But yes, on Tectus it is Demo > Affli >= Destro

[Tyrean]

I am going to say a couple of things, and please take them with a grain of I understand you are not super serious salt.

Destruction competes DPS wise with everyone else by cheesing meters. Things like shadowburn, and havoc are what make destruction work. This is the main reason it falls behind on pure single target but is very good on something like Brackenspore. If your player is not clever or quick enough he will not be able to take advantage of these tools to eek out that damage.

He is choosing his talents and his spell usage in such a manner that he either thinks he is not going to get healed, or he is making up for being bad and standing in fire. He cast 4 ember taps that fight, which could have been 4 havoc chaos bolts. He is has chosen the shield over the much better soul link. He got hit by an orb at the end. He has chosen a talent he does not need on this fight and then only used it once at the cost of 60 seconds of dark soul uptime.

He is not using spells effectively. Should be almost twice as many havoc casts. Should be a ton more shadowburn damage which tells me he is probably doing something like burning all of his embers and not having any for shadowburn.

Honestly, while the general idea among the wow community is that destruction warlocks are the easiest dps, they depend very much on being aware of what is going on and preplanning resources in order to maximize damage done. This involves a lot of thought and planning mid fight using havoc, ember usage and shadowburns.

It sounds to me like he would be better off playing an easier spec to do damage with like demonology. Demo is arguably easier to do damage with than destruction because there is no havoc/shadowburn style cheesing. You simply build resource and dump. One dot lasts a whole minute, the other lasts 18 seconds. A big chunk of the damage is from the fire and forget pet. The hardest thing for new demonology players to grasp is HoG dot stacking, but even that is easy to do once you get used to it.

Outside of that, I would recommend that he create macros specific to the encounter to maybe help him with specific shortcomings. Something like a havoc macro so when an add pops up he can target the add and cast havoc on boss and then bolt/burn the add. So like when an add comes out his macro casts havoc on boss, targets add and starts a cast of something. That will save a bunch of time and automate a lot of what that fight needs a destruction lock to do.