AKA Destruction for dummies.
There have been a lot of basic questions on destruction recently, so this guide is here to address that. Please note: while I will be keeping this up to date, this is NOT a substitute for Jmickey's fantastic guide. This is an attempt to condense the information, remove some of the pure math, and add in personal experience. I'll also be adding an FAQ at the end to put good questions inside the guide. Also note this guide will be made prettier. With that said, read on, and experience 500k DPS! (not really)
Currently updating to 4.2
NOTE: This isn't the thread for talking about how your personal dps sucks. This is the thread for asking about specific aspects of destro play or working with theory. If you want to ask about your specific situation, use the [Help Me!] The "Fix My DPS" Thread (Read first post before posting) thread.
Contents
1. Talents
- Glyphs
- Which Pet Should I Use?
2.Stats
- What Stats Mean: Stat Weights and Priorities
3. Ok I Get All That, How Should I Handle My Gear?
- Enchants
- Gemming
- Reforging
- Trinkets
- Tier 11 Bonuses
4. Rotation
5. Professions
6. Flasks, Food, Etc.
7. Tips
- How to CC
- Pre-Raid Gear
- Effective Bane of Havoc Usage
8. FAQ
- When Should I Cast Soul Fire?
- Should I Be Hit Capped?
9. Special Thanks
Talents
As Destro, your spec should be 3/7/31. Whether you go 2/2 Fel Synergy, or put some or all those points in Demonic Embrace, is personal preference. Keep in mind losing your pet is a very large dps loss, and having fel synergy allows you to keep up soul link for 20-25% less damage.
Glyphs
Primes:
Glyph of Immolate
Glyph of Imp
Glyph of Conflagrate
These are mandatory. Conflagrate's -2 seconds means more incinerates at faster cast speed (and faster nice damage insta-cast too). Immolate should be rather obvious, and the imp glyph not only is a BiS glyph, but it is run phase-proof damage (your imp doesn't really have to move).
Majors:
Your choice of
Glyph of Life Tap
Glyph of Fear
Glyph of Soulstone
Glyph of Soul Link
Life tap glyph is the only one that is a direct dps increase. In single-target situations we rarely need to use it, but in AoEs we'll need to use it quite often. If you go demonology off-spec for all your AoE needs, you might be able to skip it, but I wouldn't.
With the recent changes to CCs, making all of them but Fear occur without drawing aggro, Fear has become somewhat less inportant of a glyph choice, especially if you raid with lots of hunters, mages, or shamans. This is a personal preference - if you don't need to CC as destro spec, then don't take it. If you think you might, I'd keep it around.
Now that Soulstone is a battle res, getting someone up with more health means less impact on healers and less risk of them dying a second time before being topped off. Solid choice overall.
Soul link is a pure survivability increase, and an extra 5% is nothing to scoff at, especially with our imps taking little damage themselves. However, of the four, this is lower on the list. I'd take it if you don't need fear or soulstone glyphs.
Minors are completely personal preference. I went with Drain Soul, Ritual of Souls, and Underwater Breathing.
Which pet should I use?
Seriously? Imp. Always.
Theres a slight qualifier here: Succubus and Felhunter are occasionally useful. If an extra spell interrupt is needed (when you're in a group that doesn't have enough decent interrupters), you should go Felhunter as a last resort for Spell Lock. If you are in desperate need of an extra CC, you should go Succubus for Seduction. Hopefully you don't need succubus, since you have Fear glyphed and Seduction only works on humanoids, which Fear also covers.
For any non-warlock reading this, please note that our Imp is a very major portion of our dps, and you shouldn't ask the warlock in your group to switch pets simply because someone else doesn't want to be on interrupts. Switching from imp to a different pet is a major change, due to the loss not only of the imp's own damage, but also from losing Empowered Imp and being unable to keep up Burning Embers on our own. However, if your group/raid is wiping and desperately needs that extra interrupt or cc, and it isn't because someone that has a legit option is sucking it up (like that rogue who doesn't know what Kick is), then kindly ask the warlock if he wouldn't mind switching pet.
For any warlock reading this, actually killing something, even with significantly lower personal dps, is preferable to wiping with ZOMG 1337 dps. I don't know about you, but I'm not so proud to ignore the price of repairing my gear over and over.
In terms of our cool down guardians (Doomguard and Infernal), 4.1's Doomguard buff means its the best choice for single-target dps, and Infernal should still be used for AoE. If you have any on-use trinkets, try using them before summoning a guardian so it can benefit from the proc (the entire time its up).
Stats
Intelligence - Melee have strength and agility, we have intelligence. It adds spellpower, increases our crit chance slightly, and gives us extra mana. This is far and above our best stat point for point.
Stamina - Adds health. This is good, but isn't going to increase our dps. Most gear comes with this anyway.
Hit - Increase your chances of hitting something. With no hit, you have a 6% chance of missing in heroics and 17% chance of missing in raids (acutally, its based on the level of the mob you're attacking, but it works out that way). At 85 you need 102.45 hit rating per %, so to have 100% hit rate you need (rounding up) 615 for heroics and 1742 for raids. Hit is our most important stat *except* for Int.
Haste - Increases our casting speed. This used to increase our dps more or less linearly, however with the way dots work now its kind of different. More on this later. But for now, haste is good.
Critical - the rate at which your attacks do double damage. If you have 10% crit chance, on average, one out of every 10 casts or dot ticks will do double damage. Random numbers are of course random though. For destro, its weight depends on how much haste you have, but in most cases its lower.
Mastery - What mastery does is different for every class and spec, but for destro Mastery increases our fire damage by about 1.35% per point. We get 8 points off the bat, then its 180 mastery rating per additional point. Mastery sounds great, but its so expensive that its generally our worst stat.
Spirit - I'm including this here as a warning. Spirit USED to be useful. But then 4.0 hit, and now its basically a dead stat. In almost every case, it is more worthwhile to use a lower tier piece than it is to take something with spirit on it. Any stat is better than a useless one, even mastery, even if you reforge the spirit.
Resilience - Again, this is a warning. Resilience means PvP gear. You should *not* be using PvP gear if you're not PvPing. Get something else.
What Stats Mean: Stat Weights and Priorities
Well, *IN GENERAL*, a destruction warlock should prioritize his stats like this, with major qualifiers:
Int > Hit > Haste > Crit > Mastery
However, as I said there are qualifications, so we're going to examine this more thoroughly.
First: Hit is great, but theres a "cap." You can't hit 101% of the time. Any hit you have over the cap (615 for heroics, 1742 for raids) is wasted. So ideally we want to at the cap, or as little over it as possible. 1743 is great for raids, but 1900 means you're wasting stats.
Second: Haste affects how quickly you cast spells, but it also affects how quickly dots tick. This gives us some points that we want to try to shoot for. For more information on how this works, check out Gherkins thread. Please note that we don't generally want to get haste to a new dot tick and stop, but it IS worthwhile to get up to them if you're not. Mind your raid bonuses when you do this (3% from Dark Intent, and 5% from Wrath of Air if you have it in the raid). This means haste is worth different amounts depending on how much you have (more so than other stats) and can be more or less useful than crit, depending on your gear.
Third: As I said above, mastery more or less sucks. Its almost always a dps gain to reforge it into something else. Your personal simcraft always trumps a guide though.
Fourth: If you're using Spirit or Resilience gear, get something else pronto. You're gimping yourself. I don't care if the only other piece for that slot is a quest green.
Fifth: Intelligence is better than everything, but don't sacrifice lots of "minor" stats for a tiny amount of int (like getting a higher tier piece with spirit or resilience on it). Do sacrifice a tiny amount of "minor" stats for a tiny amount of int, like when enchanting or gemming.
Sixth: Trinkets can't be weighted by stats alone. Do reforge stats on trinkets you have, but don't take one trinket over another just because of the stat on it. Further down are trinket weights for Destruction, use that instead.
Ok, so I get all that, now how should I handle my gear?
First off, if you want to do things right, you need to learn to love simcraft. Andromalia's thread goes into how it works. Ideally you should use it after every change in gear. I'm going to assume you have run it successfully, and have found your stat weights.
The stat weights I'll use from here are Int = 2.7, Hit = 1.6, Haste = 1.05, Crit = 0.9, Mastery = 0.7. These are about what mine are currently.
Enchants
Best in slot enchants are actually fairly easy:
Head - Arcanum of Hyjal
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone
Back - Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect
Chest - Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats
Wrists - Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect
Gloves - Enchant Gloves - Haste
Legs - Powerful Enchanted Spellthread
Boots - Enchant Boots - Lavawalker
Belt - Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Weapon - Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Offhand - Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect
A few of the enchants use maelstrom crystals (Cata version of Abyss Crystals) which can be very hard to find and very expensive. Cheaper ones are:
Chest - Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats
Wrists - Enchant Bracer - Speed or Critical Strike
Feet - Enchant Boots - Haste
Weapon - Enchant Weapon - Hurricane
Please note I didn't include profession-only enchants, and those are always best in slot.
Gemming
To hell with diamonds, Gems are a lock's best friend. You'll need to start with a meta.
The requirements for Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond are being changed to 3 Reds, so you'll get that, then eventually Burning Shadowspirit Diamond. Three reds to fill meta requirements will be cake! Just use Brilliant Inferno Ruby, hopefully over and over.
Now here comes the math part. Because INT is so good, we want nothing more than to put Brilliant Inferno Rubies into every slot. But, we have slot bonuses. Generally, if the slot bonus is less than +20 Int or its equivalent per non-red socket, simply add Brilliants. If you should gem for the socket, use either Reckless Ember Topaz or Potent Ember Topaz for yellow slots or Veiled Demonseye for blue. However if you want to do the math, here's how to calculate whether to ignore your slot bonus or not. I'll use Meadow Mantle as an example:
We've got a yellow socket, with a +10 INT bonus. So we'll be comparing Brilliant Inferno Ruby (+40 INT, best dps gem out there) with Reckless Ember Topaz (+20 INT/+20 Haste, to get the bonus)
Brilliant: 40 INT * 2.7 = 108
Reckless: 20+10 INT * 2.7 + 20 Haste * 1.05 = 102
So as you see here, gemming for the bonus is actually a loss compared to sticking in a red. You'll find most slots work like this right now. So unless you need to fulfill the meta requirements, this slot should be a Brilliant.
One caveat here: Hit works differently. The key with hit is that it caps, and we can reach that cap by reforging gear, where we can trade it for a less desirable stat. That means we do NOT need to trade Int for hit when we're gemming. Int is a much better dps increase than hit. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be hit capped, it just means we shouldn't sacrifice Int to do it. See Gherkin's thread for more info. Remember, gem for Int, or the socket bonus if its not Hit and its a dps increase (do the math!)
Reforging
I don't know about you, but I love reforging. I would have killed for it in Wrath. Reforging makes our somewhat crappy gear somewhat less crappy. Ideally you should be reforging almost all your gear. I'll talk a little about how it works.
Next to the enchanting trainer, you'll see a reforger. Talk to him, and give him a piece of gear. He'll let you trade 40% of one of the stats on it (not Int or Stam) for a different stat that isn't on it. For example, with Meadow Mantle again, I can take 40% of the Crit or Mastery on it (60 points), and I can reforge them to equal amounts of Hit or Haste. this means we can reforge all the crappy stats on a piece into good ones.
When you're reforging, you first want to make sure you're hit capped. Hit cap is important; aside from Int its our best stat. But we want as close to 1742 as possible! Its not too often that we can simply reforge to exactly 1742 in one step. So the reforge calculator is perfect: import your character, change the stat weights, and change the drop downs at the bottom to
Hit - Close to - 1742
Click go, and it will tell you how to reforge your gear near 1742 hit while sacrificing as few "good stats" as possible. The reason you use "Close to" is because it will prioritize reforging lesser stats like mastery to get to the cap. Now there are times where the best dps option wowreforge comes up with isn't quite at 1742, more like 1738 or something. Thats because the 0.05% hit chance you're losing is less of a dps loss than what you'd have to reforge to get it at or over the cap. In the grand scheme of things a couple points of hit from 1742 won't affect things, but if you're insistent on being completely capped, either switch the drop down from "close to" to "at least" or go through the options wowreforge calculated until you find one thats at least 1742.
After you reforge to hit, you'll want to reforge all your crappy stats to better ones. Anything that is not reforged yet should be reforged according to your stat weights. For my example above:
Any piece with Mastery and Crit or Hit should have Mastery reforged to Haste.
Any piece With Mastery and Haste should have Mastery reforged to Crit
Any piece with Crit and Hit should have Crit reforged to Haste.
Any piece with Haste and Hit should be left alone.
Again this depends on your gear, and could very well see Crit and haste switch places. But in general, After reforging hit to cap, hit should be left alone and mastery should always be reforged. If you want wowreforge to make these decisions for you, add your stat weights, then click the Optimize button at the bottom, instead of Go. Make sure you add the hit bit again.
Trinkets
Still working on the new 4.2 trinkets, so I'll leave the 4.1 ones up for now.
Thanks to Zakalwe over at ElitistJerks, we now have a more or less definitive list for trinket dps. There's a big caveat here: this listing assumes you're hit capped without the trinket, and they were all reforged to haste if they didn't give haste already (hit trinkets were reforged to haste, then the remainder changed to crit to cover for the effects of reforging back down to hit cap).
so, in order, with links:
Darkmoon Card: Volcano
Theralion's Mirror (Heroic)
Figurine - Jeweled Serpent
Bell of Enraging Resonance (Heroic)
Heart of Ignacious (Heroic)
Theralion's Mirror
Bell of Enraging Resonance
Witching Hourglass
Stump of Time
Heart of Ignacious
Soul Casket
Tendrils of Burrowing Dark
Anhuur's Hymnal
Gale of Shadows
Sorrowsong
Alchemist I believe means the new Vibrant Alchemist Stone that will be added in 4.0.6, the current one wouldn't make any sense that high.
Also, its interesting to note that Darkmoon Card: Volcano ends up being a couple steps above every trinket in every spec. Make friends with your local scribes people!
Also, after DMC:V, the top 10 trinkets are all within about 300 dps of each other, making it possible that, for given stats that aren't BiS 359 gear like the ones this test used, the order of trinkets would be different. It would be worth your time to simcraft your own specific gear and change out the trinkets. Check out page three of andromalia's simcraft thread, or given a bit of time I'll whip up the code for each trinket.
Tier 12 Bonuses
I think Blizzard was paying attention to us this time. Our tier bonuses are actually quite nice this time around. 2T12 bonus seems to be around 320-350 dps, and 4T12 looks like 650. Add to this that our gloves, chest, and shoulders are all hit/haste andwe're left with a very desirable route to 4T12. It looks like legs will be the fourth piece you want, since its possible to get a Flickering Cowl off of Rhyolith with hit/crit, but either way you should strive for 4T12 as quickly as you can.
Tier 11 Bonuses
Our tier 11 bonuses are, well, sucky. You'll probably get the 2T11 bonus simply because we have some decent pieces - the shoulders and legs especially are best in slot - but don't feel like you need to rush to 4T11. The 300% normal damage for your next two Fel Flames is a marginal dps gain, especially when you consider you'll have to take non-Best In Slot pieces to get it. If you're upgrading to those pieces from blues, then feel free to go for 4T11, but if you can get the nice drops from raids, use those instead.
Rotation
Ha, I lied, we don't have a rotation. We have priorities. Certain spells are so good that they should be cast whenever possible, and certain spells are so-so and should only be cast when not doing anything else, and some spells shouldn't be cast at all.
Standard Rotation:
Heres roughly what the basic priority should be:
Curse of Elements - Assuming no one else got this. Unholy DKs, Balance Druids, and some hunter pets can.
Soul Fire - To grant ISF, this should be cast every 15 seconds.
Immolate - Our best dot, and it makes some of our nukes better
Conflagrate - Great damage and it makes CB and Incinerate cast faster. Cast on cooldown
Bane of Doom - Long dot and it gives more imps!
Corruption - Another great dot
Soul Fire - If instant cast from Empowered Imp
Shadowflame - If you can use it, see the note below
Chaos Bolt - Should be cast on cool down. Heals you through Soul Leech and grants the raid replenishment.
Shadowburn can only be used when the mob is under 20% health. See note below.
Incinerate - This is our filler spell, cast it when you're not doing anything else.
A couple notes:
Demon Soul, unless you're nearing Bloodlust, should be used on cool down.
Dark Intent is a rather important buff. Please don't just cast it on your pet, or another warlock. Give it to someone useful. Your shadow priests, fire mages, and resto druids will adore you. Check out Gherkin's thread
Dots like Immolate, Corruption, and Bane of Doom should only be cast when they're almost done. This is called clipping. If you finish casting the dot when there is only one tick remaining, it continues going and the new duration is added to the old one. For example, if your immolate ticks every 2.7 seconds, you'd want to recast it so it *lands* with less than 2.7 seconds left on the duration (Immolate has a little more than a 1 second cast time, so you'd want to start casting with about 3.7 seconds remaining). See Gherkin's other thread for more info.
Shadowflame is actually a great DPS spell, especially when there's more than one target, but it requires you to get close. Not worth it if there's a cleave or small-range AoE effect from the boss, or if you need to be in a certain place due to a mechanic. If you can get close though, it should be cast on cool down.
Shadow Bolt used to be used to get Shadow and Flame procs when fire mages weren't in the group. With incincerate now able to add the spell crit debuff, theres no need to use this anymore.
Fel Flame is actually a horrible spell. We get better DPS from simply recasting Immolate than refreshing it with Fel Flame. However, if you're moving, its a decent spam spell and refreshes Immolate. So Make sure your dots are up, cast those instant Soul Fires, then spam this if you still have nothing to do. If you happen to get 4T11, Fel Flame is somewhat useful in stand-up fights. You'll want to use those procs to refresh immolate, or spam it if you're moving.
Soul Fire can occasionally be instant cast due to Empowered Imp. Empowered Imp procs should always be used before any spell except immolate, conflagrate, or corruption. With the removal of ISF's cooldown, there should be no need or desire to hold onto the empowered imp proc to refresh Improved Soul Fire. Just cast soul fire every time you get it, but still hard-cast Soul Fire if Improved Soul Fire buff is about to wear. If you have soul burn ready, use it to cast Soul Fire when you'd normally hard cast it.
Shadowburn is a slight dps increase on a boss over Incinerate, however if you can get it on an add, it can refresh your soul shards. More soul shards = more instant cast Soul Fires. Yay!
Incinerate is our spam spell. If you've got nothing else to do and you're standing still, cast this. Benefiting from Backdraft and adding Shadow and Flame debuff is a nice bonus.
Chaos Bolt is a slight dps gain over Incincerate, and it procs Soul Leech for extra mana and health. It also benefits from backdraft, however its a bigger dps increase to use those procs on incinerate if you can.
AoE
Destruction isn't the best at AoE, however there are some things you can do to maximize your AoE damage. Rain of Fire is our go-to spell, however Shadowflame is a strict dps increase when you use it on cooldown. After Rain of Fire was buffed in 4.1, shadowfury is no longer a dps increase over rain of fire, however its still useful to have around as an AoE stun.
If the group you are AoEing is going to be up for a while, its useful to dot around the group with Immolate and Corruption as well as stick CoE on them and BoH on the longest lasting one. To do this, target the guy you think will die last, hit CoE, BoH, immolate, and Corruption, then cast Shadowfury or Shadowflame at the group while you tab or click the next target. Then add CoE, Immo and Conflag to the new target, and cast whichever instant AoE you didn't cast last time while you switch. Dot up your third target, then repeat the process until either your group is completely dotted or your first target's dots are about to fall off. If you've got them all dotted, and your shadowflame and shadowfury spells are down, either use Soul Fire to get the ISF buff, or cast Rain of Fire. This will usually lead to higher dps, so long as the adds are up for at least 15 seconds - enough time for all your dots to finish. If you're pressed for time you can leave corruption out of the mix.
Professions
More or less, professions are a personal preference. They do however provide some pretty sweet bonuses (well maybe not mining, but the others do)
Engineering - Tinkers can stack with regular enchants, and there are some interesting situational enchants. They also can make decent i359 head pieces. Useful overall.
Tailoring - The Lightweave cloak enchant makes this the best overall profession for gear enchants, and making two i359 pieces and really cheap leg enchants doesn't hurt either. The tailoring-only self leg enchants have the same bonuses as the regular one, but is made much more cheaply (3 Eternium threads compared to a dreamcloth).
Leatherworking - Has a 130 Int enchant for bracers, which instead of the 50 Int bracer enchant anyone can use, the leatherworking bonus falls to 80 Int over normal enchants, just like most other professions. If you switched to this recently, I feel sorry for you.
Jewelcrafting - you get 3 JC-only gems. Using brilliants, its an 81 Int bonus over regular gems. Plus, you get a trinket that's nearly best in slot, even compared to heroic raid trinkets.
Alchemy - Mixology gives extra stats when using a flask, and with Flask of the Draconic Mind you get about 80 Int. Plus flasks last longer, yum.
Enchanting - 40 Int Ring enchants, for 80 Int total. Plus being able to disenchant your quest rewards and enchant your own gear.
Blacksmithing - Two extra sockets, one in wrists and one in gloves, for 80 Int. Don't know why you'd go with this, but I guess your epic plate gear would look shiny in your bags?
Herbalism - Lifeblood averages 80 Haste over the course of a fight. Not bad, but not Int.
Skinning - straight 80 crit.
Mining - 80 Stamina. Really, you need health that bad?
Flasks, Food, Etc.
For food, you should be eating Severed Sagefish Head. Fish it in open water in Twilight Highlands. Or bug your friendly fisherman/chef.
For Flasks, Flask of the Draconic Mind is a must. Lasts an hour (two with alchemy) and persists through death.
For potions, Volcanic Potion grants 1200 spellpower. Since you can only use it once during a fight, use it before the boss is pulled (so combat hasn't started yet), and again during Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp. They're really not that expensive either, at least on my server.
Tips
Gonna add some stuff that I find useful that may not be completely obvious to beginner locks here.
How to CC
As Destruction warlocks, we get two easy CCs, a situational one, an "oh-shit" one, and one our DPS must suffer for:
Fear - Before 4.0 this was the red-headed stepchild of CCs. You fear a mob, it runs into another group, pulls the other group and wipes everyone. Fun. Now, with the invention of Glyph of Fear, they stand still! Yay! This makes it our most useful CC. Always useful on humanoids, and most other mob types can be feared. Just be aware that there are a handful of mobs which are immune to the root portion but not the fear (Force of Earth in Stonecore comes to mind right away). So be prepared for a runner if its your first time through content.
Banish - The CC that can't be broken! Well except by us. You can banish elemental and demon-type mobs. In Wrath these were so rare it made it almost useless, but now we have entire instances where we can banish everything in sight! Unlike other CCs (like Fear and Polymorph), the only way Banish can be removed before the duration is over is by recasting it. So think of it like a clapper: Cast on, cast off. Though be aware that if you are trying to refresh Banish, and the cast lands before the duration is up, you are only removing the banish effect. So be prepared to cast twice. Also, you can only have one target Banished at any given time, so choose wisely.
Enslave Demon - This spell makes an enemy demon our pet, instead of our imp. Think like a priest's Mind Control, but we can still cast our normal stuff. This used to be very prevalent in Burning Crusade, but since then its died in importance. Most of the time we're only getting other warlock pets, which aren't usually that important to cc anyway.
Howl of Terror - A small AoE fear effect. This is great in PvP, but in heroics and raids you run the risk of fearing someone into another group, which would make the situation worse. Unless you're about to wipe, and you're far away from other groups of mobs or fighting a boss where this is useful, leave it alone. In fact, unless you're told otherwise for a specific situation, ignore it.
Seduction - For this one, we have to drop Imp for Succubus, and have it channel the CC. So we're out a pet, and our DPS suffers pretty badly. I can't think of a situation off the top of my head that would require the use of Seduction instead of Fear, really the only time we'd use it is if we have to cc multiple targets. Even then, we can probably get away with using fear twice. Just glyph fear and use that. Or banish, even better.
CCing is actually very easy. Before the pull, ideally someone (usually the tank) will set raid icons on the mobs (skull, x, diamond, etc.) Usually Skull is the first target to attack, and X is second, and beyond that specific players will be assigned a given raid icon to cc. Usually icons will be assigned during the first pull or before you start (one person always has diamond, another always has triangle, etc). The leader assigns the target, says go, and you cast your CC of choice.
When you have to cc for a long time, its easiest to assign your cc target as your focus. Do this by selecting the target, then typing "/focus" without the quotes. You'll be able to see your fear or banish slowly tick away. The easiest way to refresh your cc is with a macro like this:
#showtooltip Fear
/cast [@focus, exists] Fear
/cast [button:2] Fear
/cast [@target] Fear
This will cause your macro to cast fear at the focus target if it exists, otherwise it will cast it at your normal target if you left click. If you right click, it will cast at your current target regardless. This works for Banish as well.
Something to keep in mind when CCing: Fear and seduction both break with damage. If your party is stupid, they might target your mob, or even just AoE it on accident. You'll want to cc it as early into the pull as possible, to keep it away from the rest of the group. Banish does not suffer this problem, and can safely be CCed anywhere.
Also, if your imp is on defensive, and you cast a breakable CC like Fear, your imp will attack your Fear target and will break Fear. So instead, leave your imp on passive, and make a macro with either Soul Fire, or Immolate, and add:
/petattack [target=target]
This will tell your imp to attack whoever you're targetting. If you use this with the CC focus target macro above, you'll be able to cc your focus and attack your target without worrying about CCs breaking.
Pre-Raid Gear
Work in Progress
I've seen a lot of people, warlocks or not, who have wanted to join a raid, but have been refused because of "their gear" and not know why. While a decent portion of these people are those who honestly don't know what the hell they're doing, you may be following this guide to the letter, and still find yourself lacking because your pieces simply don't stack up. Most of the time, this is because we go to random heroics, and get the same two or three, which only has that one last boss that can't be bothered to drop the piece we want. We've all been there, and some of us are raiding and are STILL there. So this section is for you. This isn't a guide on what is Best In Slot, this is a guide of what gear is somewhat easy to get and good enough to get you in the right direction, and where to go if you still need a piece in slot X that will perform in a raid.
First, you need to work on rep. This can be done in any dungeon, heroic or regular, and simply requires you to kill stuff. Some even have dailies you can do. Luckily, most of the factions we have this expansion offer great items at exalted rep, and some even at revered. Heres a breakdown:
Baradin's Wardens/Hellscream's Reach - These are the Alliance and Horde factions, respectively, in Tol Barad. You gain reps with these guys by doing dailies, 5-6 in the Peninsula, then 6 in the Tol Barad Battleground area when your faction controls it (three that are constant, and three sets of three that change each time your faction wins). You may be thinking "but that's PvP! I hate PvP!," and for the most part you can't be more wrong. On PvE realms, except for the actual Battlegrounds when the Horde are desperately trying to kill the Alliance (ha! fat chance), you can do your dailies and worry about nothing more than someone grabbing a spawn before you do. On PvP realms you're open to attacking and being attacked by the other side, but that's why you joined a PvP realm, right? I'd hope so.
Anyway, when you hit exalted rep with these guys you get access to Stump of Time, an epic trinket with lots of hit and that actually performs pretty well. Its rather quick to get to exalted, especially if you do all your dailies and control Tol Barad on a regular basis.
Dragonmaw Clan/Wildhammer Clan - Pesky orcs attacking poor defenseless midgets. You can use their tabard to get rep in dungeons, and do their 5 or so dailies to get some nice rep.
Honored and Revered with either faction gives decent rewards, but the best one is Lightning Flash Pendant at exalted. Not horrid, but as its a necklace it won't quite have the stats as some of the other items.
Earthen Ring - A bunch of hippies that have to be in tune with "Mother Earth." Even though "Mother Earth" hates their guts. YAY! If you want rep with these guys, get their tabard, and do quests in Vash'ir and Deepholm. Unfortunately these guys don't have dailies.
These guys also have a couple decent pieces at honored and revered, but the one you'll want the most is Flamebloom Gloves at exalted, a lovely little piece of hand-warming heaven.
Guardians of Hyjal - These are the tree-huggers (eew) in Mount Hyjal. Honestly, they're probably the worst of the bunch in terms of rep rewards. Their cloth epic has spirit on it, which means we don't want it. But if you do desperately want these commie pinkos to love you, quest in Hyjal or get their tabard.
The best item you can get from these guys is actually at revered, with Arcanum of Hyjal. You really don't need to go beyond unless you're an achievement monger, and if you need any of the other reps to exalted you should do that before finishing the last 21k here.
Ramkahen These lovely little furries are the faction based out of Uldum. Go quest there if you need more rep, get their tabard, or do their single, pitiful daily which involves hitting midgets with hammers (yay!).
These guys are actually probably the best faction to go with. You get a nice rare chest piece Robes of Orsis at Revered and at exalted, Desert Walker Sandals, which are actually best in slot, or pretty damn close, for i359 items.
Therazane - Finally, the demigod everyone loves to hate. You can get a little bit of rep from them by doing quests in Deepholm, or by getting their tabard, but once you get to the Seat of Therazane in the Deepholm quest line you'll want to immediately start on their dailies. More rep with them means more dailies, and I've seen as many as 9 dailies any given day, all of which net very nice rep.
Therazane doesn't give gear per say (except a ring Diamant's Ring of Temperance at revered) but you'll want these guys mostly for their epic shoulder enchant Greater Inscription of the Charged Lodestone at exalted.
With all these factions at exalted, slots you should have at least 346 gear for are:
Weapon - Insidious Staff - Baradin's Wardens / Hellscream's Reach Revered
Neck - Lightning Flash Pendant or Yellow Smoke Pendant - Wildhammer Clan / Dragonmaw Clan - Exalted
Back - Cloak of Ancient Wisdom - Earthen Ring Revered
Chest - Robes of Orsis - Ramkahen Revered
Hands - Flamebloom Gloves - Earthen Ring Exalted
Feet - Desert Walker Sandals - Ramkahen Exalted
Ring 1 - Band of Lamentation or Band of Singing Grass - Wildhammer Clan / Dragonmaw Clan - Revered
Ring 2 - Diamant's Ring of Temperance - Therazane Exalted
Trinket - Stump of Time - Baradin's Wardens / Hellscream's Reach Exalted
This leaves a few notable slots that can be filled through other means:
Offhand - Hermit's Lamp - 950 Justice Points
Head - Cowl of Pleasant Doom - 2200 Justice Points
Shoulder - Meadow Mantle - 1650 Justice Points
Waist - Dreamless Belt - Tailoring
Legs - Breeches of Mended Nightmares - Tailoring
And finally the items that you pretty much have to go to specific heroics for:
Wrists - Sand Silk Wristband - Lost city of Tol'Vir
Wand - Cookie's Stirring Rod - Deadmines or Corla's Baton - Blackrock Caverns
Trinket 2 - Witching Hourglass - Blackrock Caverns
Effective Bane of Havoc Usage
Bane of Havoc is a 26 point talent that, when cast on a target, deals 15% of the damage you do to anything else to the target with Bane of Havoc on it.
For a slightly better explanation, lets assume you have three targets, Big Bad Guys A, B, and C. You cast Bane of Havoc on A. Any damage you deal to A will do normal damage, and Bane of Havoc won't do anything. For every 100 damage to B or C however, Bane of Havoc does 15 to A.
This spell is actually very important for our multi-target damage, especially where there are only a small handful of targets, and there are a few important situations where it should be used. I'm not going to go in-depth into how it should be used on every boss in every raid, but once you get the idea you should hopefully be able to understand how its applied to each encounter.
First, we'll take an encounter with two targets, like Valiona and Theralion. During this encounter, you have two big baddies, who share a health pool. Bascially any damage you do to either takes away from their health, and you can cast on either if you really wanted to. The hard part is that at the start, one flies in the air and won't stand still, and the other stays on the ground keeping the tank busy. However, any damage you do to either reduces their health, so you pop Bane of Havoc on the one flying, then do your normal DPS stuff to the one on the ground. When the dragons switch positions, bane the one thats going to fly, and DPS the one on the ground. This method effectively makes you do 115% normal damage, a great trick for staying on top of the damage meters.
This method can be used any time you're fighting more than one target. Bane one, dps another.
The second situation involves lots of mobs, with one big baddie that needs to die. Magmaw is a good example. During one phase of this fight, he'll send up Pillars of Flame, which will spew worms after its cast. These worms need to die or they'll blow up doing decent damage to anyone hit, so as Destruction we need to use our AoE tricks (Shadowfury and Rain of Fire) to kill them. But with Bane of Havoc, we can slap that on the boss and have it take 15% of the damage each worm takes. This adds up very, very quickly. For this specific encounter, leave BoH on the body while you dps the head during phase 2, then place BoH on the head right before it retracts and begins phase 1 again, and BoH will get the extra damage from the head while its hidden. Normally though, if you use this method you'll want to put Bane of Doom on your target if the adds will be dead for an extended period.
FAQ
When Should I Cast Soul Fire?
By itself, Soul Fire is actually less dps than incinerate due to its obscenely long cast time. However, two talents (Empowered Imp and Improved Soul Fire) make it our best spell when its cast smartly.
First, and most important, Soul Fire casts proc Improved Soul Fire, a 15 second buff that gives us 8% increased damage. This is so powerful that we want it up with as close to 100% up time as possible. With the internal cool down disappearing since the 4.0.6 patch, you could, theoretically, spam soul Fire over and over and keep ISF up. However, as I said earlier casting soul fire over and over is worse dps than spamming incinerate. So, you want to cast it so Soul Fire lands as close to the time ISF ends as possible. Many people (including myself) use addons to track how much time is remaining, with notable addons including PowerAuras and ForteXorcist. Find your favorite addon, figure out how it works, and make it give some sort of warning when ISF has 2.5 seconds left, or watch a timer and time it right. If the soul fire you're using is instant-cast, you'll want to cast it with less than 0.5 second remaining on the buff, depending on how far away you are.
The other reason to cast is due to Empowered Imp. Empowered Imp makes our imp's firebolt have a 4% chance to proc the next Soul Fire you cast within 8 seconds to be instant cast. Before the change to ISF's cool down, some people suggested "sitting" on the Empowered Imp proc to use it to refresh ISF. Now that any soul fire cast can refresh ISF, there is absolutely no reason to do so. As soon as you see empowered imp proc, cast it ASAP to prevent you from waiting too long and having it run over to the next.
Other than these two specific cases, you want to leave Soul Fire alone. Its a long cast time for relatively little benefit.
Should I be hit capped?
Yes and no.
This expansion has brought about two major changes with higher tiers in terms of hit: a complete lack of hit gear, and a slight demotion from the "end-all-be-all" stat it was before.
Before Cataclysm released, it was very important for someone to be hit capped. The requirements to get 17% hit were relatively low, hit gear was plentiful, and stat weights ended up with hit being on top, by a sizable margin. Before cata, it was the sign of a bad player if you weren't hit capped (or extremely close) for the content you were running. Anything under 16% hit and you were usually laughed out of raids.
With cataclysm however, Int was changed significantly. It adds to our MP, crit rate, and increase spellpower point-for-point. Hit was also changed significantly - the the amount of hit rate you get for 1 point of hit rating on gear became more expensive by a lot. We now need almost 4 times the hit we did in Wrath, and the amount of hit on gear hasn't increased by anything near that amount. The stat weights now have Int about 1.5 times the dps increase of hit, point-for-point.
Add to this that epic hit gear is nigh-non-existent, and you have the perfect storm for hit being less important than before the sundering.
Now hit does have two things going for it: Its better than haste, crit, or mastery, and you can reforge pieces that don't have it.
This means that you should do everything you can to be hit capped, except sacrifice int to do it.
Int can be increased by gems and enchants, and unfortunately there's no longer an enchant slot where you can add hit but not int. So unless you have a blue socket with a +20 int socket bonus or better, you shouldn't be gemming for hit, and you definitely shouldn't be enchanting for it.
This leaves reforging. You should *always* reforge other stats to hit if you're not capped. Use wowreforge.com to get as close as you can to 1742.
Now don't get me wrong - if you can reach hit cap, you need to. Just don't use enchants or gems to get there. Use reforges.
If after reforging you can't get to hit cap, then don't be too concerned. You've done everything you can. You'll just have to recast some spells.
Now, there are people out there who claim you *must* be hit capped, damn the consequences. Their basic argument is "what happens if you miss something important? You're screwing yourself out of extra dps by messing up your rotation! You must be hit capped! [insert random bestial noises]" It is true being under hit cap will lead to missing spells, sometimes very important ones. The important point here is that, over time, the extra damage you do will make up for the occasional missed spell. Over time, the streaks of bad luck people dwell on will even out with the streaks of good.
If you *want* to sacrifice int to reach hit cap, no one will stop you. Just realize that, by doing so, you're lowering your average dps to smooth out some of the RNG. That's fine to do if you're realizing you're doing it.
Special Thanks
Thats pretty much it for this guide. Special thanks to Jmickey, Gherkin, and Andromalia for their great guides, Zakalwe's work with simcraft, and Gherkin again for helping fix this one. If you have any pertient questions, or want to point out errors in here, please do so. Please don't start a flame war. Thanks again!
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