Question about Destro DPS

[andromalia]

Honestly, the best thing you or this lock could do is import his armory into SimulationCraft and see what pops up. Haste and Crit seem to yoyo a fair bit for Destro at lower gear levels and even going into the higher gear levels, but neither is way ahead of the other, and which is better is totally dependent on individual setup.

Warlock Simcraft Thread: elitistjerks.com/f80/t110222-simulationcraft_warlocks_cataclysm_edition/

Download from here: code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/downloads/list

You can also point him towards the Destro link in my Sig. Hopefully the information there can be helpful.



Only at certain thresholds. Fully raid buffed the damage Immolate or Corruption does at 1200 haste and 1400 haste is no different. Having said that, if the warlock in question is missing the 5% haste buff in a raid, then he does not have anywhere near enough haste.

I also explained in that thread how looking at dot ticks and judging your haste solely off of that is a bad idea. Look at your primary filler spell on a parse and tell me where it sits on damage done vs the other spells. It's quite significant. If you can speed that filler up (and in turn cast it more often), your damage will go up. That's what the sim is for. You can throw on a bit of extra haste or crit and see how your dps will change over the course of thousands and thousands of pulls.

[Jmickey]

I also explained in that thread how looking at dot ticks and judging your haste solely off of that is a bad idea. Look at your primary filler spell on a parse and tell me where it sits on damage done vs the other spells. It's quite significant. If you can speed that filler up (and in turn cast it more often), your damage will go up. That's what the sim is for. You can throw on a bit of extra haste or crit and see how your dps will change over the course of thousands and thousands of pulls.

I never argued that. The original post made it sound like adding any haste to gear will effect dot damage. Which is obviously not the case. I was simply making clarification on the mechanic.

As I said, each gear setup will be different, running a sim and following it will generally net better results than following word of mouth advice.

[Jenerena]

I do think people forget that haste affects your DD spells, not just dots. A lot of people are confused when simcraft values haste over crit when they are way over the 581 threshold, but nowhere near the next one (26XX can't remember). If you are between thresholds haste still has a lot of value - you can't just presume it loses all its value relatively as soon as you gain an extra tick. After all, the time between ticks still reduces as you gain more haste, the DPET just remains the same until you reach the next threshold. In effect you actually do get more ticks per fight overall but you also use more GCDs because the dot gets slightly shorter until the tick interval gets short enough to round up the number of ticks (see the sticky for more info). I think it is mostly the benefit to shadow/bolt/incinerate/soul fire that keeps its value decent. I might need a bit of clarification on those points but I think that's how I understand it.

Not to mention that in certain specs more haste can affect certain talents such as impending doom - higher meta uptime can only increase the value of haste on DD spells.

[andromalia]

I never argued that. The original post made it sound like adding any haste to gear will effect dot damage. Which is obviously not the case. I was simply making clarification on the mechanic.

As I said, each gear setup will be different, running a sim and following it will generally net better results than following word of mouth advice.

Wasn't really directed at you, more of a supporting argument. :P

[Jmickey]

Wasn't really directed at you, more of a supporting argument. :P

Oh. My bad

[gualdhar]

stepping around the flame wars here...

Something else the OP needs to look at is DoT uptimes. Immolate, Conflagrate, and Bane of Doom should be damn near 100% (no one is perfect and sometimes immo comes off at the worst time). Improved Soul Fire should also be near 100%, though it won't ever actually be 100% due to its mechanic. Imp should be doing a significant portion of damage too, and I didn't see that in the list, though it may because you left out pet damage. Check for cooldowns too: demon soul should have about a 33% uptime, and he should be using infernal every boss fight if he can swing it.

Also, check his talents and glyphs, make sure they're correct. Glyphs should be Conflagrate, Immolate, and Imp. Talents should be 3/7/31. Elitistjerks has a rundown of the actual spec.

Additionally he's using the wrong meta. He should be using Ember Shadowspirit diamond for now, as the requirements for Chaotic are too high until 4.0.6 comes along (more blues than reads leads to a ton of hit, he could have int instead). Once 4.0.6 drops, switch back to chaotic, then to burning as soon as the price is reasonable. Once he changes his meta, he should be gemming two reckless for the meta, then almost all brilliants (he can reforge for hit, and since Int is usually worth upwards of 2.5x any other stat, the gemming bonuses aren't worth the extra int).

In terms of reforges, he should be reforging any piece with mastery, preferably to haste. With as low as his haste is, he should be reforging to that every opportunity after he's hit capped.

And he needs to get rid of his spirit gear. Seriously, thats just sad. Its almost as bad as having pvp gear on.

Other than those, theres not too much you can do as a raid leader. He's got problems, and he's probably not casting with any set rotation, but its hard to prove that with only recount numbers. But getting his gear situated and talking to him about spell priorities (again, elitistjerks) should get him moving in the right direction. After that, its all about spamming the hell out of heroics to get the drops and rep you need for decent gear.

[Sweeterdee]

Mastery is a good stat for destro, but by no means should be taken from haste, or crit. Immolate should be at the top of that list for dps meters.

[Kotix]

Just get the rotation right and the dmg will come, pretty easy. All these people talking about stat priorities and crap are over looking the fact that your locks rotation is so out of whack you could have perfect stats and it still wont make a difference.

CoE > BoD > SF (every 15 secs) > Corruption > Immo > SB (Once every 30 secs) Conflag > Chaos Bolt > Incin spam. Then use chaos bolt and conflag whenever its up. Reapply Corruption and BoD whene it drops off. Use FF or recast immo depending on fight and preference. Due to raid design, FF will be most viable because of the movement involved.

Thats pretty much it. Once the blue start turing to epics, the dps scales a lot better for warlocks. Im top 2 dps in raid atm, dependant on fight. Its amazing how things like not casting SB every 30 secs, or not keeping SF haste buff up affect DPS. People tend to get lazy because it makes for a difficult rotation/priority order. get that right first then look at reforging and what not.

And mastery v haste has a break-even point Dependant on gear is when you achieve and when you start stacking mastery, espeically after the upcoming patch.

[Deleted]

We can drop Shadowbolt now incinerate does the same deal. (4.0.6)

[Deleted]

Once you get the 2nd extra tick of immolate (581 haste rating) all you get from further haste is quicker cast times (which I know is still good, but for destro the main reason for haste is extra immolate ticks) until the next immolate tick threshold at 2639 haste. As long as he is over 581 haste isn't such a massive deal as everyone is making it out to be.

The more haste you have the more ticks you get from immolate giving your conflag higher crits. The more crit you have the more often you see the higher numbers.

I do agree however that even if he has the 2nd extra tick from immolate, 5% is too low. Atm I also am needing to balance my crit/haste raitings out a bit.