Destro Q & A

[Kareem42]

OK I know most locks have been going either Hybrid or afflic for raids. My question is why wouldnt destro be the best dps spec for raids? I mean I have seen alot of destro locks not use talent points in demonic power and empowered imp. Its extra dps for u as well as empowered imp increases ur imp's dmg, and all crits made by ur imp increases your spell crit hit chance by 20%. I havent tried out the spec to its full potential cause I have a afflic lock atm. I was just wondering about the destro spec cause i was thinking about respeccing into it. I just need some feedback and ideas on it.

[Deleted]

I agree with you, affliction is a spec i'm not so fond off, and I dont see a reason why chaosbolt should be such a dps loss. I've found a certain rotation for destro locks:

chaosbolt > curse of agony > immolate > incinerate 3x > conflagarate and repeat

I havent been able to try the spec out, still lvling a lock alt ;D.

But i dont see what would be wrong with the spec/rotation.

But your imp is important though, you have talents in destro to improve your imp aswell.

[nomekop251]

Now im a destro lock and after much minor talent changes i found this is the best with major glyphs of imp,immolate and fear its a 19/52 spec with nearly all the talents boostin fire damage. (i have come from lookin at many top raidin destro locks with changes to make me enjoy the game more, feel free to change to ur liking or flame it but its the best a lock can get well without affic and a perfect connection so u can hit those dots at the right time)


http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...31051035031341

the rotation that was give to u aint that good here mine,

Curse of Elements > Corruption > CB >immolate > incinerate x5-6 >conflag > (now backdraft kicks in and ) >refresh corruption > CB > inscineratex2 >(ends backdraft) immolate> and continue. (shadowfury wen needed)

IMO SF is an awesome cc for tanks if healer is in trouble or tank needs a heal it stops the mobs for 3sec to get all the pressure off them or so u can over aggro non elite with SoC den stun and rain of fire... perfection all dead

This requires hit, crit, spell damage and haste so dont mess with it if ur badly geared just stick to ur affic

Hope this helps u max ur dps without the boring repeated doting of an affic lock (this is my opinion dont flame this sentance im not sayin affic lock cant dps excellant its just not 4 me and im giving my best spec for OP)

Edit: put in a paragraph

[Kareem42]

That seems like a long rotation but i bet it gets the job done. I am willing to try anything new but I just wanted to get some options to increase my dps, which hasnt been tested yet. I fail lol...

[nomekop251]

that rotation is for boss fights normal eiltes are dead by the 1 conflagate and the backdraft is used on the next eilte

[Deleted]

This is my spec atm (0/41/30)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZcxczsgMq0stZVcGVR0uV

But i would love to go full destru, but ouer demons still die to easy, so im going for 1/2 Fel Synergy.
And sacrificing the demon is just not enough DPS anymore.

My rotation is: Immo -> Corr -> CoA -> Incinirate x3-5 (depends on my movement)
The seams like an ok DPS, i got about 3300 DPS on VoA 25.

When i tryed 0/19/52 My DPS only got to 2500-2800, and mostly my pet died with in a minute or two of the fight..

[Pezhman]

Been destruction lock for a long time, unfortunately it doesnt do the same damage as hybrid (incinirate spam) or afflication specc. Why u ask ?

Because the chaos bolt is a joke 51 points, it simply doesnt do enough damage, they need to buff it with at least 200SP if its gonna even come close to other talent trees. Try to skipp chaos bolt and your dps drops even more. About the imp yeah i have points in Demonic power/ improved Imp / Empowered imp. the result is the same, Any talent specc that relies to much on a stationary casting pet like imp is a fail. Since u have to make sure it survives and move it when u have to move which leads to loss of DPS, during some fights the imp dies very fast before u have time to react and i am guessing later in harder raids relying on imp to much is even a more failure. So as it is now going deep destruction with chaos bolt is = Fail compared to other talent trees. Even in fights like Patchwerk when you and your imp standing pretty much and nuke, Talent trees like Afflication and hybrid with felguard beats you easily. The information above is not a QQ its just plain facts i love destruction and I am still playing it but if you want to be on top its not the way to go. The problem with the deep Destruction tree not doing well is the failure of Conflagrate/Chaos bolt/fire and birmstone/backdraft. they are just not good enough.

This specc as the player above (0/41/30) is pretty much what most warlocks have nowdays its the shadowblot spamm of the future. ;D

[Kareem42]

well if that is the case i guess locks needs to get some loving from blizz with some buffs to equal out the trees for decent dps. I understand that they may have each class with one tree that is lacking in dps dramatically but come on. I blame the economy for blizzards lack of interests in locks lol....

[steroni]

i dont understand how every single lock say deep destro spec do less dmg than 0/41/30

I have test all spec and the full destro spec is always better for me than anything else and is almost on par with affliction (not the haunt fail lock that do 1k dps)

dont say me I fail cause the rotation of the hybrid is easier to execute than deep destro

my rotation is corruption and coa (if not on coe duty) immolate chaosbolt inci until less than 3 second to immolate conflag repeat

I am sure people who say deep destro suck its because they dont get improve soul leech which is just wonderfull for your mana it generally give me same mana as replenishement when raid buff

add to that i have shadowfury which is usefull on trash and some boss

I have conflag immolate and imp glyph

[Vidara]

I actually went to raid yesterday with destro. I like the idea of the specc and just rerolled lock preLK so I never really got to see those BIG numbers before as I used to play spriest/hunter in PvE, So basically I am still quite curious about what this class has to offer. We had 2 Aff locks in the raid already so I thought at least I'll get full benefit from my work instead of getting screwed over by a bug (SE). Usually I run as Aff however, its the specc I enjoy the most and what does the most dmg from what I have seen.

However after just 2 wings in Naxx I absolutely hated everything about it. The dps was horrible, the shardburning was just plain annoying since you had to just spam DS (which ticks for shit as destro) on trash just to keep your shards from disappearing into Soulfires. We cleared Spider and Plague and even on Loatheb with those 80-90% crit it fell terrible behind what I am used to seeing.

So to avoid the complete humiliation and to actually start having fun again I went to respecc before Patchwerk and the comparison is just embarrasing for destro. There is a reason why both BD and CB gets buffed in patch. Perhaps at that time I will come back to visit, but for now, deep destro is just appauling in every way. Just the fact that the two top tier talents plain suck considering how much points you put into them makes it miserable.

At the current state of the game combined with the gear situation Affliction is by far the best specc out there for any boss, at least for me. Even on movement fights, destro lose more than Aff, since the dots just keep ticking while destro dps simply fades completely while running.

[lrs078]

The reason people say 0/41/30 is that it presently outperforms deep destro. However, on the PTR chaos bolt and backdraft are buffed and should probably overtake the hybrid demo/destro builds. Don't know if its enough to dethrone affliction but its a start. Doesn't fix the awkward state of the talent tree though.

[Nabbles]

i dont understand how every single lock say deep destro spec do less dmg than 0/41/30

I think one of the reasons so many are switching to this spec is it is lock on easy mode again. THere is a great deal of room for error in affliction, which if you make any mistakes at all can cripple your dps, Even in deep destro the rotation which I used (which didn't include soulfire, as it barely hits for more then incin or CB) there is room for error which will result in lowered dps. While SB spam may pull some flashy numbers on the screen I don't see any talented locks using it in the future unless things change significantly, which they of course might. For now Deep destro is IMO the easiest good dps (0/20/51) is what I used or 56/0/15 for the best overall dps...on a stationary boss

[Deleted]

As should be clear from my other thread I am quite a newbie when it comes to Wotlk locks..My lock was in OG for about a year before Wotlk, so I have lost a lot of touch to the class. Anyhow, I still play as destro for the moment. I feel a lot more fragile than either affliction or demonology locks, but it doesn't quite bother me.

As for the damage output..well, against a target dummy at my current level of 74 I can do 1400ish, in instances it's 900ish. I do curse of elements as it increases my own damage output and it also increases almost everyone else's. Then I just do immolate, corruption , 2-3 incinerate, one chaos bolt, conflagrate and start over. Thanks to Molten Core proccing quite often I get some pretty heavy chaos bolt crits (6.2k for lvl 74 lock seems quite good).

I don't really see any reason yet why destro locks couldn't fare well in raids.

[Tombfyre]

The only reason hybrid currently outperforms deep destro currently is that the deep destro talents simply arent as good as you can get in mid demo. Chaos bolt is solid (and getting buffed more), however fire and brimstone is a joke, and the rest of the talents are just a bit lackluster.

I love a lot of the things blizz has done with warlock (getting us to use different pets, making affliction viable, making destruction not a one button spec), they even made master conjuror a semi-decent talent for a change. However they just designed deep destro poorly.

Maybe after a few number tweaks (I would love to see Fire and Brimstone change), destro will become competitive. I am looking forward to leaving this silly hybrid spec and pumping big numbers as destro again.

[direlock]

I pretty much run 2 specs. 41/30 for 5 man and 10 man raids. Then i go 30/41 for 25 man. The additional buffs in 25 man make up for the crit loss and spell power loss you get switching to 30/41, and then your dps can go up substantially due to shadow and flame5/5. Just run your Imp, and on shitty fights phase him.

[Screecher]

The reason people say 0/41/30 is that it presently outperforms deep destro. However, on the PTR chaos bolt and backdraft are buffed and should probably overtake the hybrid demo/destro builds. Don't know if its enough to dethrone affliction but its a start. Doesn't fix the awkward state of the talent tree though.

this (:

[nomekop251]

I actually went to raid yesterday with destro. I like the idea of the specc and just rerolled lock preLK so I never really got to see those BIG numbers before as I used to play spriest/hunter in PvE, So basically I am still quite curious about what this class has to offer. We had 2 Aff locks in the raid already so I thought at least I'll get full benefit from my work instead of getting screwed over by a bug (SE). Usually I run as Aff however, its the specc I enjoy the most and what does the most dmg from what I have seen.

However after just 2 wings in Naxx I absolutely hated everything about it. The dps was horrible, the shardburning was just plain annoying since you had to just spam DS (which ticks for shit as destro) on trash just to keep your shards from disappearing into Soulfires. We cleared Spider and Plague and even on Loatheb with those 80-90% crit it fell terrible behind what I am used to seeing.

So to avoid the complete humiliation and to actually start having fun again I went to respecc before Patchwerk and the comparison is just embarrasing for destro. There is a reason why both BD and CB gets buffed in patch. Perhaps at that time I will come back to visit, but for now, deep destro is just appauling in every way. Just the fact that the two top tier talents plain suck considering how much points you put into them makes it miserable.

At the current state of the game combined with the gear situation Affliction is by far the best specc out there for any boss, at least for me. Even on movement fights, destro lose more than Aff, since the dots just keep ticking while destro dps simply fades completely while running.

Lol please come on, destro aint dat hard to reaad up on m8, 1stly u dont use any shards in fights as shadowburn and soulfire are NEVER used by a gud raidin destro lock (Shadowburn is a waste of a talent pts and is for pvp) u will never ever need to drain soul unless again ur a bad lock and came to a raid unprepared. Dont dis a class cause u cant play it if ur affic den plz learn the simple destro rotation and yes u deserved to be laughed at in a raid for using DS and SF (if u fell behind an affic lock on trash can i be another person to laugh at u)

No offence but look at some of the destro rotation and if u see SF plz tell me so i can laugh at another fake destro lock...yes affic is better but destro is so close to its dps it hurts

[Deleted]

I tried looking for the changes to chaos bolt on the blue posts on MMO-Champion front pages, but I don't find any mention of that. So, what gives?

[Urgganzish]

The change for chaos bolt was already ninja'd into Live, used to hit for 1384 now hits for 1512 base dmg. however 0/30/41 beats 0/20/51, the extra 5% crit /Dmg from IMP out using master demonologist is worth it.

Currently pushing out close to 4600-4700 using 0/30/41 , for aoe i open with shadowfury (procs molten core 90% of the time) followed by rain of fire which wil crit 5k+ .

Current stats = 2271 spldmg (felarmor) , 32% crit with talents and 400 haste.

Trinkets i use = sundial of the exiled, embrace of the spider, hyjal ring, blood fury, and flamecap. (learn to live in flamecap its an excellent dps increase).

[FallenPie]

I'm fairly sure simcraft shows 2/13/56 as beating everything except the affliction builds right now. But remember that's with optimum available gear, so there may be something of a gear requirement for it to overtake the demo/destro hybrids. No one has really calced out exactly what the threshold is though, so you'll just have to play it by ear. Alot of people leave the deeper destro spec with a bad taste in their mouth because there's an _incredible_ amount of misinformation on how to play it floating around. The biggest lie I've seen is that you should use soulfire after BD. This will make you lose dps; until they "fix it", which they've semi-promised to do, soulfire is an obsolete spell. There is some weird situation where you'll get a tiny boost to dps if you BD during heroism and use SF there, but you really shouldn't be using conflag during heroism anyway, so it's kind of a moot tidbit.

The other big lie is that you should use 3 incinerates after BD, because immolate wastes the backdraft charge due to GCD. While it _is_ true that immolate is a complete waste of a charge, no matter how much or how little haste you have, casting it immediately after conflag is also what is best for your dps. Getting immolate back up there and ticking is far more important than making sure that first BD charge goes to a spell that will actually benefit from it. You then follow that up with two incinerates, or a CB and an incinerate, if CB comes off of cooldown.

Heading down the list, I see a lot of people conflagging as early as possible. Even if you don't have points in F & B, it's best to wait till the last possible moment to conflag. Conflagging early makes immolate's DPCT go down the toilet, as well as your mana efficiency. At least wait until immo's next-to-last tick, always.

Others:

-People stack crit like there's no tomorrow; Crit is great, crit is wonderful, it increases dps, by no means should you _avoid_ it. However, spellpower, hit and haste beat it hands down. The hit and spellpower should be a no-brainer for most, but it's the haste over crit that gets a lot of people. This is partially because people still think destro "needs" to crit to maintain optimum dps. This _was_ true back in the sbolt spam days, when you _needed_ a certain crit percentage to maintain the ISB debuff on the boss, but these days are gone. There's no reason whatsoever to stack crit, much less think that we "need" some random magic crit rating to dps properly. That said, don't take this the wrong way, if you have to choose between an upgrade that that has 14 haste rating vs. one that has 32 crit rating, you of course want the much higher crit-bearing one.

Also, don't use the firestone. I know it makes no sense at first, but just use the spellstone. One percent more to your direct damage really isn't as much as it sounds, and almost 2 percent haste beats the only one percent crit given by the FS. Remember, 32 haste rating = 1 percent haste = 1 percent higher dps. Compare that to 45 crit rating = 1 percent crit. And yet crit rating and haste rating are "valued" the same by blizz in item budgeting.

-People use corruption in their rotations. This spell really has no place in your regular stand and fire sequences. Corr is actually a very very weak damage dealer without a full run of affliction talents to bolster it (and no, 5/5 Improved Corruption alone is NOT enough to change this). CoA alone provides 60 percent Molten Core uptime, adding corruption to the mix only bumps this up to 80 percent. It's just not enough to justify wasting a gcd on when you could have started casting another incinerate instead.

However, it does have its uses: if you find yourself in the unlikely position of having to provide CoE for the raid (no boomkin or Unholy DK), by all means use corruption as a backup for MC procs. It's also a handy thing to slap up on the boss while you're running out of fire to sneak in a bit more damage.

-People don't realize that this build needs raid buffs in order to truly shine. Specifically Empowered Imp more or less _needs_ the 18 percent bonus to crit from raid buffs in order for the imp to crit at any appreciable rate. Thus, your gain from EI on a dummy or in heroics is not going to be substantial in the least. The same is true for the oft-skipped talent improved soul leech, to a degree. Fully raid buffed you should be close to or hitting 20k mana, and thus the return from imp SL is going to be 400 or so a pop. Consider that most destro spells cost around 500 mana, or less. 'Your destro spells have a 30 percent chance to refund 80 percent of their mana cost" sounds a lot better, right? If the talent worked that way it would actually be _worse_. Imp SL, assuming a decent and raid buffed mana pool, actually improves your dps _more_ than improved lifetap does (this was recently calced out on an EJ post; I'll have to dig it up if you want to peruse) because the mana gain from it does not require to actually spend a gcd on lifetap itself. This is all to say nothing about the mana regen it provides for your imp, which, while a bit lackluster, adds to its value.

Here's the logic/math on Imp SL being better than Improved Lifetap (not mine): http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t38033-m...6/#post1023552

Only other thing I'll add is that simcraft if I remember shows _current_ 2/13/56 out dpsing the demo hybrids, but not by all that much--50 dps or so. If you have a rotation problem as deep destro your dps is most certainly going to fall below what you could get with the fairly idiot/lag-proof 0/31/40 and 0/41/30 build rotations. This will likely change with the buffs planned for CB, conflag and BD in 3.08, and _not_ in the hybrid's favor.

Only other other thing I'll add is that the chaos bolt change is almost certainly not live yet--the change to what you're seeing in the tooltip's damage(from 1314 to 1500-something max base damage) is an effect of 5/5 emberstorm, points in which _will_ alter the damage numbers shown in all fire spell tooltips. If the change were live, the tooltip would be showing much higher, closer to 1700. Having firestone on your weapon will also bump the tooltip.

Sorry for the wall of text, but seeing these same misconceptions about the destro rotation come up again and again for weeks on end is irritating as hell.