Mythic Gruul - Help Our Lock, Destro (with Logs)

[Broccoliz]

Hey guys! Our warlock, Erthelmi, usually performs exceptionally well, 35k+ depending on the fight. He was really struggling with mythic Gruul last night, pulling below 30k. For a fight with little movement, I am hoping I can get some great tips for him on how to improve, as I feel he is capable of much higher output.

Here are logs from last night:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...s=1691&wipes=1

Any suggestions I can bring back to him on how to increase his DPS? Is he picking the appropriate talents/glyphs for this fight?

Thank you so much in advance!!!

[Spelorzi]

Hi, this is not the right place where to post this, there is a FIX MY DPS thread.

Anyways, i will start off by saying he should play Demonology (Service, DServ) for this fight if you're in progression, its much more stable and less RNG dependent.

Hes not using the right talents for Destruction either, he should be speccing into Sacrifice and CR but like i said, i would not recommend playing destruction on Gruul unless you're in farm since your DPS will depend on how good RNG you get on procs, and kill time needs to be pretty low.

If he really wants to play destruction then tell him to read this guide and learn his spec, since hes not doing it right.

[Soulzar]

As already pointed out, he is not using the most optimal Talents... Though by the looks of it he is doing more damage than the dead people.

I know you are probably looking specifically for advice to help your lock, but if you have no already done so, take a look through the problems tab for your attempts.

In your 10 attempts, half your raid never once used a healing tonic... as example.

[Deleted]

play demonology

[Verothous]

Not trying to be mean, but I really don't understand why you are surprised. Looking at logs from other fights, he is really not performing any better or worse on gruul then he is on other fights. Like Spelorzi said, he isn't playing the optimal spec and isn't even playing the correct talents for the spec he is playing. His immolate uptime is at 89% on your longest gruul attempt. It should be very close to 100%. It doesn't look like he is tracking and reacting to procs either. He also isn't using demonic circle.

To be completely honest looking at his demo parses he is worse at demo than destro. Contrary to what most ppl around here would have you believe playing destro/aff is more than acceptable this patch. Destro really needs the 4pc but he has that. Demo isn't ahead by a large margin, unless needlessly padding, and its future in 6.2 is questionable at best. Also the more gear you get the smaller the gap in most situations becomes. I wouldn't suggest trying to get him to play a spec he obviously is even worse at and probably doesn't like. You guys aren't pushing for world or server first so he can play w/e he wants, all our specs are viable. This is coming from an avid demo player who is beyond pissed about the state of the PTR.

That being said as mentioned above Furty has a wonderful demo guide here in these forums. I highly recommend that he checks it out. Also you should make sure that he is reacting to trinket procs and he has a proper way of tracking them. Also from a gear standpoint I will also note that having a 670 weapon doesn't help. He is also missing a gem and enchant from his cloak.

Edit: grammar

[sadface]

All it is is the Procs, he's not saving cd's for procs and buff up time is not good as someone said

[Broccoliz]

Thanks for the tips - No one is requiring him to play one spec over the other, that is his choice. If one spec performs best at Gruul, I would like to suggest that and will also suggest he refreshes himself on the basics and gets some weak auras to track things better.

(If we can keep the "not playing class right bad bad bad" comments to a minimum? That's not exactly helpful. If he was playing the class right I wouldn't be here. We'd like constructive criticism and actual changes we can implement. As stated I will be sure he refreshes on the basics, I'm not familiar with locks so that is good to know. )

Thanks for the help!

- - - Updated - - -

As already pointed out, he is not using the most optimal Talents... Though by the looks of it he is doing more damage than the dead people.

I know you are probably looking specifically for advice to help your lock, but if you have no already done so, take a look through the problems tab for your attempts.

In your 10 attempts, half your raid never once used a healing tonic... as example.

Well aware of the actual raid problems but thank you for the tip Looking to improve at all areas hence making a post specifically on this topic. Other problems will be addressed elsewhere.

[Werst]

Another thing that can help him but its sort of cherry picking is put him against the wall near (but not on) a grate. Just so long as he is still in his group's slash radius. That should have him moving very little from balls which will do a ton for destro which suffers the most from mobility issues. Sure gruul can slam his area often or drop 4x cave ins around him but most pulls that should be one of the safer and more movement free spots. That is just fight positioning but its a high value bit of real estate so up to you if his damage is worth it or putting a hpal there might be better for the raid (just picking on them for lesser mobile healing than other healers as an example) If he isn't using it get him weak auras and import the strings listed in the thread on this forum. Have him import any your raid uses to help. Get him a bar mod dot tracker like tidy plates and set it up to indicate shadowburnable targets. To get the most from destro CR you really need to be able to see when your ring is up, your trinkets, and your weapon enchant along with potion/darksoul/racials. You can almost always dump a bolt during one of those. This is stuff not in the guide afaik but just sort of uncommon common sense. If he needs a UI that shows embers midscreen that may help too...CR dest generates and NEEDS to spend embers far faster than any other spec's secondary resources. Almost more rogue/hpal/hunter like than how long it takes to shard or DF up under normal single target circumstances. Yes healing tonics are better than soulstones but most locks glyph SS which makes it superior to a tonic. No excuse for other classes though.

Destro isn't the most complex spec, its quite easy, however there is a finesse to it of knowing when to spend secondary resources that actually makes a larger difference than people think. Dot snapshotting may be gone but nuke snapshotting will always be with us. Thus casting during a proc is critical whereas affliction's dots would just tick harder/faster/etc during the duration of any trinket proc or buff.

He can try serv/Dserv demo even if he doesn't get the spec fully. Just have him soulfire in caster and ToC and his dps will be so mobile he should never get hit by anything. Once he learns the spec he should wean himself off ToC in lieu of soulfire in meta but alive and ToC'ing is better than dead mid SF cast. Plus at a lower ilvl the gap between ToC and soulfire isn't as significant. As far as HoG goes the simplest version is tell him to wait on 2x charges and cast the first charge, 2x shadowbolts in between or a shadowbolt and a corruption refresh, then the second charge of HoG. Yes you have 3x charges with 4pc, yes you can get procs, etc but if you know the spacing/timing and can keep 2x stacks up the rest is less relevant on a fight like gruul. Long as he knows what he can fit in between each use of HoG his DF generation will be better.

Not trying to overly dissect things just some basics he may not be doing in their most straight forward terms. Demo has tons of exceptions to its "rules" and finesse traits but that is why there is a huge guide on it instead of a couple paragraphs....

When he is spec'd into CR destro+grim of sac explain to him the concept of FIFO and spending during procs when at all possible. IE don't cap, don't run out, spend 1 during a proc of any kind and dump during darksoul+procs of any kind. Don't glyph darksoul for CR destro even if it looks good at a glance...already been discussed in another thread. Also remind him that gosac + voidwalker = a big HP increase you can pop right before hitting some of your own %HP based heals...another thing to help keep him stay alive that isn't talked about much. To clarify the ember tap HoT stacks if you pop multiple embers overlapping. 30% more HP + a coil+couple of ember taps (esp with the talent) and you are pretty hard to kill while still having good survival due to a massive HP pool. All those are instant so useable during the most convoluted "oh snit" moments.

[dawawe]

Also remind him that gosac + voidwalker = a big HP increase you can pop right before hitting some of your own %HP based heals...another thing to help keep him stay alive that isn't talked about much. To clarify the ember tap HoT stacks if you pop multiple embers overlapping. 30% more HP + a coil+couple of ember taps (esp with the talent) and you are pretty hard to kill while still having good survival due to a massive HP pool. All those are instant so useable during the most convoluted "oh snit" moments.

Coil doesnt heal unless the horror effect happens. its useless on bosses. He also isnt playng sac/CR


He is casting CB with backdraft way too much, isnt precasting, doesnt use DS till almost 3 minutes into fights and doesnt prepot. Some small details i saw at a glance.

[DeadmanWalking]

Destro is a bit of a pain on Gruul in that most likely what will happen is he will save up enough embers to unleash with chaos bolt, use his buff Dark Soul and gety halfway through a cast when they go flying from petrify which stops his cast, forces him to move and get 1 cast off before being stuck in stone. It blows the dark soul buff to hell and then you are hitting like a wet noodle because you have to get lucky to not get chosen for a petrify, a slam or a debris circle. You really won't get time to unleash properly on gruul.

Demo can cast its most important spell to time on the move, Hand of guldan and as long as you are casting demon fire when it procs all the casts are fast enough that having to move won't kill your dps. That and imps continue to spray regardless if you are moving or not.

That being said, from what we can tell on the ptr that in 6.2 demonology is getting bent over a table, tied down and treated like a storm trooper in George Lucas and Steven Spielburg's sex dungeon. You may get about 2-3 months worth of value out of demonology and since they don't know the spec it will take time to get muscle memory going and that may be too later to reap much benefit.

You may just have to come to grips with them not doing stellar dps on all bosses. So long as they are staying alive in the fight, not costing you a lot of healing, knows the mechanics and does acceptable damage you should still be knocking over bosses. There are fights that destro excells on, and then there are ones they do not. Single target fight with no adds is rough on a destro, but they can manage.

[Deleted]

The key to not getting boned by the knockback and petrify is to not pop cooldowns right before it happens

[mitbrandir]

you have to get lucky to not get chosen for a petrify

All ranged get targeted by petrify on mythic.

[Deleted]

General
If you ask me, Warlock is one of the most dynamic classes in wow. Your rotation(next spell) can differ from the second. where other classes have a more static rotation to follow, where a few class specific procs occur to change a little up now and then to react to. But as warlock, you are the master of when to cast strong spells and when to generate. This is true for all specs. Therefore tracking trinket, ring and other procs are crucial as a warlock. If you mindlessly cast chaosbolt/Haunt/Soulfire(in meta) when ever you fell like doing so, you quickly see you don't do very much dmg. By that reason it's very effective to build up (Shards/Embers/Demonic fury) For these procs to occur and then fire off the powerfull spells. I see so many warlocks that aren't doing this, which burns my soul inside. Ofcause there can be some occasions where you have to ignore looking for procs and just fire off chaos bolt. (If you're allmost capped on embers, or specific mechanics require you to have 3,4 embers stocked) Aka. Kromog when hands are about to occur or pillars(On mythic). But 90% of the time chaos bolt should be fired with procs.
I've looked at logs, and can give a few pointers of what your mate can do.

Improvement
Things you can do to make your warlock stronger in raids.
1. Increase dmg on hard hitting spells, by tracking procs. - (So he knows when and when not to cast chaosbolt)
This can be done either by weakauras, or tellmewhen or many other addons. It's even integrated in many unitframe addons. But i suggest using weakauras.
I use this weakaura to track proc when i'm playing destruction on kromog or having fun. (Usualy plays demo)
http://pastebin.com/sec6PNgu

-Note: I do know Darksoul don't give mastery as destruction, and can't get synergy as destruction, and your warlock presumably use crit weapon proc. Just cba. to change when i'm usualy playing demo xD you can change yourself if need be.
Gorren soul repository is the most important proc besides darksoul. So tell him if this procs, he gotta fire off everything he got. Also, when darksoul is about to come off cooldown, he should save up some embers for the burn.

2. Choosing optimal talents.
As stated in previus posts, Destruction is pretty viable when you have the gear. If the requirements are meet, Which is 4-tier set bonus, Gorren soul repository and using Charred remains as the 100-tier talent. Which he can do, if he changes to Charred remains. Also as stated in previus post, using Grimoire of sacrifice is optimal. Even so when you use Charred remains.
- Change to Charred remains(100) and Grimoire of Sacrifice(75). Sacrificing different pets for different fights can be a good help. Like a voidwalker will give you the ability to gain an increase in max health, not exceptionally good, but still something in some cases. (When you get fixated on Blast furnace or fixated on Flamebender-mythic.)

3. Increase activity - Push harder on those buttons man xD
In logs you can see his Casts per minut is VERY low. It can be seen here : WarcraftLogs Cast activity
90% active time = only casted an ability 90% of the time (included global cooldown) Which means 10% of the fight. Which is about 36 seconds in a 6min fight. where he just stands and looks or are moving. I do know destruction warlocks has a hard time to do anything on the move. but at least use useless spells like rain of fire, or perhaps time conflag with the movement, or keep movement to a minimum(To just avoid flares and not by a mile). You could even argue that taking a flare if you're not soon being sliced is acceptable(provided you have half decent healers). Which i would say you have, also as you're going with 5 healers.

4. Increase uptime on immolate and time conflag(Backdraft).
Logs says 89,49% avr uptime, on cutuff for 5 people dead. As destrction you don't have many abilities to keep track off. Pandemic comes in and makes this very easy. you can reaply immolate i think it's 4 or 5 seconds before it runs out and still not loose anything on it. The only times immolate should come of the target, is if you come into an odd situation where you have to use chaos bolt with a gorren soul repository proc. but those situations are rare and the time immolate is down is minimal.
- You can help this by using good unitframes and/or weakauras to track it. On encounters with more than 1 target, aka. Iron maidens and Hans'gar&Franzok. Good boss frames are godly here aswell. Incenerate is the lowest priority spell allways. I would even argue it's better to overcast immolate and Conflag to keep uptime and not capping the cooldown on conflag that it is to mindlessly casting incenerate.

- when i'm playing destruction, i'm often not looking to optimize and do mad deeps. I'm just in for the fun and relaxtion. I use weakaura to tell me when it's okay or would be ideal to cast immolate. It pops up if i don't have immolate on target or there's only 5 sec or so left on immolate.
Weakaura string: Immolate


Regarding Conflagrate. I'm not very sure on this. But i believe it's best to not use both charges, Hold 1 charge but never cap it. Reason is, you can have a conflag on demand for movement, or when a important proc occurs. you can fire off chaos bolts quickly to be able to squeze in more chaos bolts during good proc. if i'm not mistaken, it's best to use backdraft on chaos bolt if you have good procs and use it on incenerate to generate embers faster for when procs aren't there. It looks to me that you never hold that one charge, casts back to back conflags in the start which can be viable in some situations if you ask me. But then just keeps it at 0 charges and casts as soon as 1 charge gets off cooldown. Tho if holding 1 charge allways, it's very important not to cap on 2 charges aswell. use conflag just before 2nd charge is ready.

5. Choosing optimal spec
For your warlock mate to perform better(Optimal). As stated in previus posts, as you're not looking for ranks or anything he can play what ever he wants. But if you want him to perform better in general. Have him check out demonology. A vast majority of fights in Blackrock foundry will demonology perform alot better. Demonology is very mobile and alot more flexible and dynamic to some of the more unpredictable and heavy movement requiring fights. Tho harder and more complicated for some people. But you could even argue that it's a waste of time, since the nerfbat will come swining at demonology for 6.2. But it would help your raid if he went demology and got decent at it. Definitely helps raids if people was interested in playing their best in the best performing spec they could. Even tho you don't seek ranks, it still increases chances of success and fast progress.

Last comment
Woops i think i went a little overboard on this one. We have a warlock too in our guild which has trouble with core warlock mechanics, like yours have. So i've allready made something similar to this. I'm sorry about spelling/grammar mistakes and such.

I hope this can help your warlock to perform better in your raids. Most of the time, it's the lack of know how, On how to improve.
Tools to improve

WarcraftLogs
- Introduce him to warcraftlogs and teach him to compare logs from higher ranks so he can spot his own mistakes by himself.

MMO-Champion forums
- Also Introduce him to MMO-Champion so he can stalk the forums himself and look for things to learn about.

Summonstone
- Introduce him to this website. summonstone, it's guides which are written by very good players of the specific class. I usualy use this for my alts, when i cant be bothered to go in-depth. I take a look at this, it has tips and tricks for each boss on mythic for your specific class and role. Also talents and such for each boss. They also go in-depth with rotation and core mechanics and what not. Also recommend addons and weakauras to have. Very good site in my opinion.

Simulationcraft
- Introduce him to simulationcraft: Simulationcraft. It's a free simulator which imports your char from armory and calculates what you should do in dmg theoretically. Options such as (Heavy movement fight, Helter skelter, patchwerk) Can be set. Even if your wish to calculate dps not having a specific buff in your raid to further accurately predict what he should do. (can be set to Ouch fire bad(LFR) average(Normal), good(Heroic) and elite(Mythic) player)

I Hope this helps. Good luck with progress. :-D

[Broccoliz]

Thank you so much Rak! That is great advice. Really appreciate you taking the time to prepare that post. He has looked into all suggested tips, changed up his talents, and we downed Gruul I am posting updated logs - he is still adjusting to the suggestions and working on tracking everything including procs better, but here are the logs from last night just in case there are any other adjustments he needs to make as he is working on this new style -

It is for Erthelmi (you can ignore Suzaku, he was a backup for the evening though he should read this thread too haha!):
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...RvjYL#fight=19

Thanks guys, you were a huge help and I (and the lock) appreciate it!

[syrento]

nice to see other specs of locks getting up there

[Caolela]

Also check out this site: http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/forum/27-warlock/ Great warlock guides, raid guides, and several excellent warlocks there, a few that I've pugged with in MoP before I unsubbed.

[demitrisln]

Improvement
Things you can do to make your warlock stronger in raids.
1. Increase dmg on hard hitting spells, by tracking procs. - (So he knows when and when not to cast chaosbolt)
This can be done either by weakauras, or tellmewhen or many other addons. It's even integrated in many unitframe addons. But i suggest using weakauras.
I use this weakaura to track proc when i'm playing destruction on kromog or having fun. (Usualy plays demo)
pastbin

Hey Rakhoal for some reason I can't seem to get this proc weak string to work. Can you double check it? Looks awesome bth