Question about Destro DPS

[wtfpwndd]

Hello all,

I'm a raid leader and we have a destruction warlock that raids with us. I'm noticing that his DPS is, well, abysmal and I"m wondering if destruction is not a very good spec right now or if he needs some work.

If he needs some work, then where is a good guide I can point him to?

I don't want to post his armory. I can say his top 10 damaging abilities in recount, however:

Incinerate 23%
Soul Fire 15.7%
Immolate (DoT) 14.4%
Burning Embers (DoT) 10.3%
Corruption (DoT) 8.9%
Conflagerate 7.8%
Chaos Bolt 6.8%
Immolate 5.3%

He is one of our best geared DPS in almost all heroic gear with some 333 and 359s thrown in. He did less DPS then both tanks at 9629.7.

I appreciate any help or advice.

[flareside]

destro is very good right now, i have been affliction and demo for a while now. So i am not very sure about the numbers.
His chaos bolt looks like the damage is low, he should be casting that every CD.
Soul fire seems really high. He should only be hard casting that to keep the 15 second buff (think its that long) up. And when he can instant cast it.

This is only from what i can remember, like i said i havn't been destro in a while. I have a destro friend and hes in all 333 pretty much pulling 10k in dungeons.

[Deleted]

Tell him to go demonology, i'd say its the best pve spec for locks atm.

*Edit* As i recall, destro rotation is : Immolate chaos bolt ( or conflagrate depending on your latency ) chaos or conf corruption incinerate spam

Then you can start off with instant soulfire for the haste bonus etc, keep all dots up. Bane can be the opener since its a instant cast ( preferrably bane of doom )

Correct me if i missed anything... havent played destro in a long time

[Lobbas]

I am not a raiding warlock, currently leveling a warlock though at lvl 78. But warlocks got a huge nerf in 4.0.3 (got buffed in 4.0.1 though).

What are his glyphs? Is he using a PvE build and not PvP?

Other than that the spells look good (except for more incinerate and less soul fire) and I wonder why he can't push out more to be honest. Perhaps he is watching movies or stuff while raiding so he isn't 100% focused on the boss. I usually do that when leveling but some people might have taken that to the extreme, you never know!


Edit: Yea demonology is really good as Nocturnalz said. I am at 2k DPS in 5 mans while others lie around 700-1000 dps, at lvl 75 as Demo. Crazy!

[Sabrius]

Hello all,

I'm a raid leader and we have a destruction warlock that raids with us. I'm noticing that his DPS is, well, abysmal and I"m wondering if destruction is not a very good spec right now or if he needs some work.

If he needs some work, then where is a good guide I can point him to?

I don't want to post his armory. I can say his top 10 damaging abilities in recount, however:

Incinerate 23%
Soul Fire 15.7%
Immolate (DoT) 14.4%
Burning Embers (DoT) 10.3%
Corruption (DoT) 8.9%
Conflagerate 7.8%
Chaos Bolt 6.8%
Immolate 5.3%

He is one of our best geared DPS in almost all heroic gear with some 333 and 359s thrown in. He did less DPS then both tanks at 9629.7.

I appreciate any help or advice.

For me it looks like his immolate is doing way to low of damage.. mine is normally 1 or 2 in damage. depending on how many mobs are being attacked. Keeping immolate up 100% of the time is very important because it increases the damage of chaos bolt and incinerate. conflagrate seems to be far down there too.

From what i see as a 6 year experienced lock in all 3 specs. he's not keeping immolate up all the time and he's not casting chaos bolt and conflagrate on cooldown. he's casting soulfire to much. you only need to cast it once every 13ish seconds accounting for cast and flight time. it shouldnt be doing more damage then conf and chaos.

conf and chaos are way way to low down there. he is waiting way to long to cast them

[Deleted]

It's hard to give some good advice when we don't have at least an armoury link or a log, in all honesty. See this thread ( http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ore-posting%29 ) for reasons why. I can point you / him in the direction of:

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t111390-..._demonic_mage/

and

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t105572-...er_compendium/

They may be a little bit involved for some but if you really want to help your Warlock then I'd go there. To be fair, he really needs to want to improve himself, as no amount of cajoling will assist an unwilling participant.

I can understand your reluctance to post his armoury without his consent, so how about ask him to register and ask him for himself? He needs to get involved in his own improvement or it will go pretty badly to be fair. It's admirable that you want to assist your guild mate but I think he needs to do it himself.

Going on what you said about his gear, I'd say it's quite possible to reach around 15k DPS quite comfortably. Though this really depends on how he has gemmed, enchanted, glyphed and reforged. And any number of variables really. We can't know this for sure so any advice we give will purely be speculative.

EDIT: Agree with Sabrius. Immolate damage is very low. Seems like he's letting it drop off and not recasting it. That will have a knock on effect to conflagrate and Incinerate as Immolate is the set up spell for those two.

It would seem that he isn't tracking his spells effectively. A well configured addon like Buttontimers, TellMeWhen or Easy Destro can help. Creating a separate bar/s for his DPS buffs and debuffs (nice and visual where he can see it easily) with something like Satrina Buff Frames is also recommended. He can see when his dots drop (or are about to), when his Conflag and Chaos Bolt come off CD and know how long he has left on his Improved Soulfire.

Good luck with your issue, though I recommend he takes it from here if he's serious about improving. If not, there is nothing you can do I'm afraid.

[Saaleene]

As Vaell said the player has to really want to improve themselves first and foremost otherwise its just not going to work. I agree that his immolate dmg is very low maybe he should also look into getting a DoTimer so he knows when he needs to refresh it. Also since his Immolate is more than likely not up all the time he is missing out on using his conflag cd.

You may also want to look and see where his hit is at. IF it is very low the problem could simple be that his spells are not hitting the mob. I know one of my warlocks was having that issue so they reforged and re gemmed to get the hit as close to the hit cap as possible and the dps has had a significant increase.

Good luck

[Krunklock]

You can do 9k grinding your too barad dailies.

Also, what is his hit at? Missing with immolate and conflag would severely Gimp dps

[andromalia]

Tell him to take his imp off passive.

[wtfpwndd]

Well here are two links to edited screenshots I made of his armory:

;

Average Item level was something like 339 as it turns out.

Glyphs are:

P: Glyph of Immolate, Glyph of Imp; Glyph of Conlagerate
Maj: Glyph of Soul Link, Glyph of Fear, Glyph of Life Tap
Min: Glyph of Unyielding Death, Glyph of Drain Soul, Glyph of Ritual of Souls

[flareside]

omg, his haste is extremely low, he should be reforging mastery into hit(until capped). Spirit into haste (or hit).
he should never be turning haste into any stat, i see he turned haste into something.
if he needs more hit just gem it.

mastery is the least stat warlocks want.

[WesM63]

I don't play a warlock, but i see one problem. Tia's Grace?! I understand mastery is great, but i'm sure there are better options like Gale of Shadows, Whitching Hourglass or even Anhuur's Hymnal.

[Sunogard]

omg, his haste is extremely low, he should be reforging mastery into hit(until capped). Spirit into haste (or hit).
he should never be turning haste into any stat, i see he turned haste into something.
if he needs more hit just gem it.

mastery is the least stat warlocks want.

Huh? Mastery is pretty good for Destruction

[Keldion]

There are quest trinkets that better serve a warlock for DPS than Tia's Grace, those being Talisman of Sinister Order and Harmlight Token.

He should not have any, and I mean any, items that contain Spirit. He should move more mastery into haste and possibly even favor a little extra haste over crit until the thresholds of 2635 (nongoblin) or 2482 (goblin) can be reached. Finally, you need to examine his spec again and ask him what series of actions he is taking.

---------- Post added 2011-01-08 at 02:13 PM ----------

Mastery is good, but it is not -as- good as crit or haste. Two significant sources of destro DPS, Bane of Doom and Corruption, do not benefit from the mastery bonus.

[Bullarkie]

Hello all,

I'm a raid leader and we have a destruction warlock that raids with us. I'm noticing that his DPS is, well, abysmal and I"m wondering if destruction is not a very good spec right now or if he needs some work.

If he needs some work, then where is a good guide I can point him to?

I don't want to post his armory. I can say his top 10 damaging abilities in recount, however:

Incinerate 23%
Soul Fire 15.7%
Immolate (DoT) 14.4%
Burning Embers (DoT) 10.3%
Corruption (DoT) 8.9%
Conflagerate 7.8%
Chaos Bolt 6.8%
Immolate 5.3%

He is one of our best geared DPS in almost all heroic gear with some 333 and 359s thrown in. He did less DPS then both tanks at 9629.7.

I appreciate any help or advice.

A few things I noticed:

- Immolate damage is way too low
- Where's Bane damage? (agony or doom)
- Haste is way too low

Have him watch some youtube videos like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BieejatGDk

Make sure he's using a mod to track debuffs:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...teWarlock.html

Here's my armory for reference:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tapas/advanced

[wtfpwndd]

All of your replies have been rather thorough and I agree he really needs to want the help. Thank you all for the replies.

[backdraft]

Hello all,
Incinerate 23%
Soul Fire 15.7%
Immolate (DoT) 14.4%
Burning Embers (DoT) 10.3%
Corruption (DoT) 8.9%
Conflagerate 7.8%
Chaos Bolt 6.8%
Immolate 5.3%

there is something terribly wrong with incinerate-chaos bolt-soulfire %, the ratio should not be that way, if he casts CB on cooldown and soulfire every 15s. smells like somebody is just casting randomly

Asking for advice as raid leader, makes you even better leader and helps you improve your raids performance, but in this situation, i dont know if you're your guild's leader or not, but a good thing to do is to get class leaders - very skilled players, who can aid the others with issues like that. It's good to know the class capabilities, but you're not obliged to have complete knowledge of mechanics, rotations, stats prio, talents, etc. etc.

[Mainoff]

Destruction is by far my favourite spec atm, single target.
People saying demonology is better are wrong when it comes to single target fight.
I just done a quick test on Lv 88 Dummy.
Im 355 iLevel destruction warlock

toal damage : 3 047 129 - 15 655 dps
1. Incinerate 27.4%
2. Conflagrate 17.7%
3. Immolate (dot) 13.6%
4. Soul Fire 10.6%
5. Burning embers 9.0%
6. Corruption 6.7%
7. Chaos Bolt 6.5%
8. Bane of doom 5.7%
(Not using doomguard for the test)

[MYOMEGA]

he has 15% crit but only 5% haste, thats #1 problem there, this guy 100% sure just doesnt know his lock

---------- Post added 2011-01-08 at 02:42 PM ----------

Also he has 251 spirit, thats like gemming for dodge as a lock, littler 0 point at all

[Deleted]

its fucking high.