[Destruction] A Guide (4.3)

[Tristrina]

Reading this made me decide i'm going to be trying destro again. I really liked it in 4.1 when it was above affliction but since the affliction buff it just hasn't been worth it. Can't wait.

[Penguin FTW]

One more thing: Read the Glyph of Soulstone please. The extra heath is only when you used it on yourself.

This was changed awhile ago, it applies to your bres target as well.

With regards to the guide, I'd personally recommend wowreforge over ask mr. robot, but maybe that's just me.

[gakpad]

If you want this to apply to 4.3 you might want to adjust the stat weights from crit>=mastery to maybe just crit=mastery. Crit is only .0019 higher on the weights so for all intensive purposes they are equal. But that choice is up to you. Also, you might want to clarify that conflag's damage is based only off the total ticks of immolate and not all the damage of immolate.

For me as it is righ now, mastery is simming a fair margin above crit even without the PTR changes, which I imagine will exacerbate this difference skewing things even further in favor of mastery. However, these ARE just general stat weights and I'm assuming at the gear level of most people using this guide mastery >= crit should hold true for the most part. Either way I recommend that you sim your character for yourself in the guide so I hope that will correct the majority of cases where my general weights prove faulty to certain characters.

I only said conflag was based on the damage of immolate, which I suppose is a bit ambiguous. I'll change it to specify that its damage is equal to 60% of immolate's total periodic damage just to clarify things.

---------- Post added 2011-11-12 at 07:42 PM ----------

With regards to the guide, I'd personally recommend wowreforge over ask mr. robot, but maybe that's just me.

I'm a huge nerd and get a kick out of manually figuring out my best reforging/gemming so I don't have much experience with the reforge sites. I went to wowreforge just now and after a few minutes of importing different characters and screwing around it seems to be a much nicer website. I'll change my recommendation

edit: could a mod please change the title to "Beginner-Friendly" rather than Noob-Friendly? Seems nicer to not make people coming to a guide for help to label themselves as potential noobs :P edit 2: thanks for the title change!

[8BitSuperHero]

Very well thought-out and written guide. Read some useful things, that I'm gonna be needing for next patch.
Don't know about the rest of you, but Destro was my favorite spec till they neutered it in cata. Glad it's finally making a come back.

[Kivimetsan]

Nice! Thanks for this, im seriously considering dropping affliction for destro next tier (although im still going to be forced to play demo for 10% sp in 10man )

[Hellfury]

As destruction, you will want to use the Imp as your minion. I find it helpful to macro his Firebolt ability to all of my abilities, as such:

#showtooltip Spellname
/cast Spellname
/cast Firebolt
Substitute whatever spell the macro is for with “spellname.” These macros ensure that your imp spends as little time in between casts as possible. Without the macro your imp will wait to begin casting his next firebolt once he finishes casting his current one. You may wish to refrain from using this with your damage over time spells should you choose to multidot on certain bosses to keep your imp only attacking the main target.

This was true in WOTLK, it isnt anymore the Imp queues its spells so server latency doesnt make it cast slow anymore

[gakpad]

This was true in WOTLK, it isnt anymore the Imp queues its spells so server latency doesnt make it cast slow anymore

Source, for my own enrichment?

[Hellfury]

Source, for my own enrichment?

Source its my own tests and experience also there is a old thread arround MMO champ with the same conclusion

I went to PTR and tested it again 200 imp casts

with macro Imp dps: 3568 crit: 22%


without macro Imp dps: 3636 crit: 22,9%

[gakpad]

Interesting, they must have changed that without making a big deal about that. My own further testing has demonstrated an increase of ~7-8 casts per 10 minutes, but I'm assuming this is due to my latency being consistently between 300-400. For a friend with only 100 ms that I had test it he noticed no discernable change in the number of casts his imp did with the macro vs without. When I compared these numbers, however, I found that when we both had 2644 haste at the time (we changed around gear to have the same haste), my number of casts without the macro was less than his, and when I used the macro, it brought my imp's casts up to within 1-2 of his casts without the macro. So the macro doesn't provide a dps gain per se, it just helps to compensates for higher than average latency. This is of course my own speculation based on only 20 minutes of testing so it isn't conclusive, but I'll add in my results and specify that the macro does not technically increase your dps.

[Beskar]

At first glance I don't see anything glaringly incorrect, nice work!

[gakpad]

At first glance I don't see anything glaringly incorrect, nice work!

A soaring endorsement!

[Beskar]

A soaring endorsement!

More than you might expect, considering how bad most guides that get written tend to be :P

[gakpad]

Few more changes, I'm fairly certain all the formatting/grammatical errors are out...other than that if anyone has any further suggestions just let me know!

[Brauhm]

Few more changes, I'm fairly certain all the formatting/grammatical errors are out...other than that if anyone has any further suggestions just let me know!

The only thing I could see being updated on this guide is to move Soul Burn: Soulfire up higher if you have t13 4pc, it should be very very high up as well, mondo priority. Other than that nothing is wrong. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of continuity with your anchors, as in some have the entire bullet anchored and some have just the title and not the number/letter behind it and my ocd is kicking in.

Ooo oo wait I just saw something, just poped into my head, theorycraft with me.

Assuming you ran synapse springs, would it be better to wait for the second soulburn for when your demon soul and synapse was off cd and your haste trinket would be coming up, considering the spellpower would stack with the 480 int and the haste would grant an additional tick of immolate which would increase conflags damage exponentially but I'm not sure if pushing the cd of soulburn to a minute instead of 45 seconds would be wise. D: I don't have simcraft on this computer so I have absolutely no idea and I don't even have a pen and paper to do the basic math on but it seems like something that might make or break min/maxing and is something to look into.

[gakpad]

The only thing I could see being updated on this guide is to move Soul Burn: Soulfire up higher if you have t13 4pc, it should be very very high up as well, mondo priority. Other than that nothing is wrong. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of continuity with your anchors, as in some have the entire bullet anchored and some have just the title and not the number/letter behind it and my ocd is kicking in.

Ooo oo wait I just saw something, just poped into my head, theorycraft with me.

Assuming you ran synapse springs, would it be better to wait for the second soulburn for when your demon soul and synapse was off cd and your haste trinket would be coming up, considering the spellpower would stack with the 480 int and the haste would grant an additional tick of immolate which would increase conflags damage exponentially but I'm not sure if pushing the cd of soulburn to a minute instead of 45 seconds would be wise. D: I don't have simcraft on this computer so I have absolutely no idea and I don't even have a pen and paper to do the basic math on but it seems like something that might make or break min/maxing and is something to look into.

Ah, I've actually been meaning to provide a second priority list for when you get 4pc t13, I keep forgetting tho >_> And I can see maybe waiting for everything to line up would be viable in the first few seconds of the fight when everything starts out not being on ICD/CD, but after that...even just waiting 15 seconds on a soulburn would be decreasing the value by 33% because its only a 45 second cooldown to begin with. Feel free to sim and test that more thoroughly but I don't have the time or brainpower right now to do some comparisons right now.

I imagine that the answer would also depend on whether or not the 10% spellpower the 4t13 grants updates dynamically or not. Even if you only get synapse springs up for 50% of the duration I would be willing to bet that that would be enough to make it almost certainly not worth waiting.

[Brauhm]

Ah, I've actually been meaning to provide a second priority list for when you get 4pc t13, I keep forgetting tho >_> And I can see maybe waiting for everything to line up would be viable in the first few seconds of the fight when everything starts out not being on ICD/CD, but after that...even just waiting 15 seconds on a soulburn would be decreasing the value by 33% because its only a 45 second cooldown to begin with. Feel free to sim and test that more thoroughly but I don't have the time or brainpower right now to do some comparisons right now.

I imagine that the answer would also depend on whether or not the 10% spellpower the 4t13 grants updates dynamically or not. Even if you only get synapse springs up for 50% of the duration I would be willing to bet that that would be enough to make it almost certainly not worth waiting.

I would assume its not dynamic considering its blizzard but in the case that it is then my idea is moot.

I am also curious about a few things that I don't feel like doing the math/looking up.

a. Does burning embers work like ignite? If not then with the current increase to soulfire's damage is it worth it using it every 7 seconds to keep the damage on burning embers at its cap?
b. I saw somewhere that the felhunter can actually replace the imp with this method, but I haven't seen any hard evidence.
c. Have the other glyphs been tested? With Incinerates damage boost with FaB and the phantom 1/6 scaling with spellpower, does the glyph outweigh the imp?
d. What's a good AoE rotation priority? How many targets until we stop multi-doting and use hellfire/rain of fire?

I'd answer all these, but this ins't my guide and I have no tools to do so, though I'm extremely curious to find out the answers and I'm sure a few others are as well, especially the multi-doting one.

Also, I can wait a few days for an answer, min/maxing tends to be tedious and a lot of ideas need to be searched and explained. I assume you want this guide sticky'd so we should aim to make it as good as possible, with as much useful information as possible.

[gakpad]

I would assume its not dynamic considering its blizzard but in the case that it is then my idea is moot.

I am also curious about a few things that I don't feel like doing the math/looking up.

a. Does burning embers work like ignite? If not then with the current increase to soulfire's damage is it worth it using it every 7 seconds to keep the damage on burning embers at its cap?
b. I saw somewhere that the felhunter can actually replace the imp with this method, but I haven't seen any hard evidence.
c. Have the other glyphs been tested? With Incinerates damage boost with FaB and the phantom 1/6 scaling with spellpower, does the glyph outweigh the imp?
d. What's a good AoE rotation priority? How many targets until we stop multi-doting and use hellfire/rain of fire?

I'd answer all these, but this ins't my guide and I have no tools to do so, though I'm extremely curious to find out the answers and I'm sure a few others are as well, especially the multi-doting one.

Also, I can wait a few days for an answer, min/maxing tends to be tedious and a lot of ideas need to be searched and explained. I assume you want this guide sticky'd so we should aim to make it as good as possible, with as much useful information as possible.

Yes, the imp can keep burning embers at its cap 100% of the time, and no, I don't think that devoting a 2+ second cast every 7 seconds to one of our worst spells could make up that difference. There was a thread recently that showed that in live, the imp and felhunter are within very close margins of each other, but with the change to burning embers, with 4.3 the imp outperforms the felhunter by nearly a thousand dps. I don't think hardcasting soulfire every 7 seconds to keep up burning embers would equate to a thousand dps in 4.3.

The imp glyph provides ~500 dps if your imp does 5k. Incinerate would have to consist of over 9000 of your dps for this to become a viable alternative, however the imp glpyh provides better dps for movement fights so I'd imagine that practically you'd want to use the imp glyph all the time.

For AoE i use 5 as the general rule of thumb when i switch from multidotting to rain of fire.

For 5 or less targets:

keep immolate on all targets
shadowflame on cooldown
normal rotation on the first one

for more than five:
shadowflame on cooldown
rain of fire

i'll edit this in to the main post when i have the time

[Brauhm]

Yes, the imp can keep burning embers at its cap 100% of the time, and no, I don't think that devoting a 2+ second cast every 7 seconds to one of our worst spells could make up that difference. There was a thread recently that showed that in live, the imp and felhunter are within very close margins of each other, but with the change to burning embers, with 4.3 the imp outperforms the felhunter by nearly a thousand dps. I don't think hardcasting soulfire every 7 seconds to keep up burning embers would equate to a thousand dps in 4.3.

The imp glyph provides ~500 dps if your imp does 5k. Incinerate would have to consist of over 9000 of your dps for this to become a viable alternative, however the imp glpyh provides better dps for movement fights so I'd imagine that practically you'd want to use the imp glyph all the time.

For AoE i use 5 as the general rule of thumb when i switch from multidotting to rain of fire.

For 5 or less targets:

keep immolate on all targets
shadowflame on cooldown
normal rotation on the first one

for more than five:
shadowflame on cooldown
rain of fire

i'll edit this in to the main post when i have the time

I just ran the sims and Imp definitely outweighs Incinerate.

Also, something very interesting came up in the sims. Apparently soul fire does slightly more damage than incinerate does with the change, but also would keep burning embers at its cap, I wounder how much haste you'd need to take soul fire to a 1sgcd, because at that point it would be a slightly higher dpet than Incinerate. Obviously this is extremely situational but it is interesting to think about considering haste is as common as air this tier.

Edit: I did quick napkin math for those not with Dragonwrath and using the haste proc staff. Assuming the haste trinket procs, the staff procs, and you have bloodlust, you'd have over 120% haste. (3% from DI, 70% from static haste/trinket haste/staff haste, and 30% from bloodlust| 1.7*1.03*1.3 = 2.2763 = 127% haste. I think that's enough to push Soul Fire down to the needed time for it to take precedence over your filler.

also: http://www.simulationcraft.org/430/Warlock.html

Shows that Chaos Bolt is doing less damage than Incinerate almost always and has a lower DEPT, I wonder if it'd be best to just leave it out of your rotation, sure you'd have less Mana Feed but the increased crit from int and static crit on gear should allow your pet to crit enough to keep your mana up, also, a life tap every 2 minutes or so might be better than using chaos bolt, but I'm not sure, the total more damage that incin does would have to outweigh the gcd damage of a spell (so Incin over 2 minutes would need to do about 25k total more damage than using chaos bolt, or its not worth it).

I don't have access to a 4.3 sim atm so I'll have to wait until one is released since i don't' feel like patching my own.

[gakpad]

I just ran the sims and Imp definitely outweighs Incinerate.

Also, something very interesting came up in the sims. Apparently soul fire does slightly more damage than incinerate does with the change, but also would keep burning embers at its cap, I wounder how much haste you'd need to take soul fire to a 1sgcd, because at that point it would be a slightly higher dpet than Incinerate. Obviously this is extremely situational but it is interesting to think about considering haste is as common as air this tier.

Edit: I did quick napkin math for those not with Dragonwrath and using the haste proc staff. Assuming the haste trinket procs, the staff procs, and you have bloodlust, you'd have over 120% haste. (3% from DI, 70% from static haste/trinket haste/staff haste, and 30% from bloodlust| 1.7*1.03*1.3 = 2.2763 = 127% haste. I think that's enough to push Soul Fire down to the needed time for it to take precedence over your filler.

also: http://www.simulationcraft.org/430/Warlock.html

Shows that Chaos Bolt is doing less damage than Incinerate almost always and has a lower DEPT, I wonder if it'd be best to just leave it out of your rotation, sure you'd have less Mana Feed but the increased crit from int and static crit on gear should allow your pet to crit enough to keep your mana up, also, a life tap every 2 minutes or so might be better than using chaos bolt, but I'm not sure, the total more damage that incin does would have to outweigh the gcd damage of a spell (so Incin over 2 minutes would need to do about 25k total more damage than using chaos bolt, or its not worth it).

I don't have access to a 4.3 sim atm so I'll have to wait until one is released since i don't' feel like patching my own.

By dropping chaos bolt you'd essentially be losing almost half of your soul leech mana...I'll run a sim in a moment to see in how many life taps that causes you to do. As it is chaos bolt is only barely below incinerate's dpet so the only thing keeping it in the rotation with 4.3 bis is the mana return. well I can't download files as im at a work computer atm but on the live simcraft dropping chaos bolt results in no extra life taps needed. I feel like there's something I'm missing here because it seems odd that we'd essentially be able to just drop chaos bolt at higher gear levels. I'll wait until 4.3 comes out before I say anything definitively.

[Brauhm]

By dropping chaos bolt you'd essentially be losing almost half of your soul leech mana...I'll run a sim in a moment to see in how many life taps that causes you to do. As it is chaos bolt is only barely below incinerate's dpet so the only thing keeping it in the rotation with 4.3 bis is the mana return. well I can't download files as im at a work computer atm but on the live simcraft dropping chaos bolt results in no extra life taps needed. I feel like there's something I'm missing here because it seems odd that we'd essentially be able to just drop chaos bolt at higher gear levels. I'll wait until 4.3 comes out before I say anything definitively.

Same, because for all caster destro spells, chaos bolt is the best for movement (since when its backdrafted you only need to stop for a brief second). It's amazing how badly this tree is screwed up.

Also, you didn't say anything about soul fire, just making sure you didn't forget about it. Also, I can't find anywhere to get the 422-7 build for PTR, and i don't want to patch my own, do you know where I can get one? Cheers, mate.