MoP: Destruction Warlock Guide and First Week Gear List

[Aruotnof]

More videos would be very interesting!

Brusalk and Zumzum... I have a question and I think it is the same for many... Please, don´t get me wrong! I admire your playerskills!

Forget the fact that you like to play with destruction, probably if you play (10man for example) with affliction your DPS will be higher than now. So, the raid leader or anybody else in your raid group never asked you to change? I know that both play very well with destro, but playing with the same skill that you have with affliction, don´t you think this will help your group? Because I´m almost certain that your dps with affliction will be better!

I asked this, because I thought: I´m a casual player and sometimes 2 or 3k DPS make a difference in the fight, so I imagine the impact in a group with progression like yours! Or am I wrong to think this?

Thanks!

[Brusalk]

More videos would be very interesting!

Brusalk and Zumzum... I have a question and I think it is the same for many... Please, don´t get me wrong! I admire your playerskills!

Forget the fact that you like to play with destruction, probably if you play (10man for example) with affliction your DPS will be higher than now. So, the raid leader or anybody else in your raid group never asked you to change? I know that both play very well with destro, but playing with the same skill that you have with affliction, don´t you think this will help your group? Because I´m almost certain that your dps with affliction will be better!

I asked this, because I thought: I´m a casual player and sometimes 2 or 3k DPS make a difference in the fight, so I imagine the impact in a group with progression like yours! Or am I wrong to think this?

Thanks!

The only fight where I legitimately do more damage as affliction than I could hope of doing as destruction is Will of the Emps. The RL has questioned why I use destruction so often but I think he's probably realized that I do a lot more damage as Destruction than many, many people do as any spec, so he worries about other things more. I'm rarely not in the top 2, and usually the top in our raids regardless of the fight as destruction so I think he probably is more interested in other people's performance.

That said, I find that my raid awareness when playing as Affliction is no where near my awareness when I'm playing as destruction. As Destro I can easily think about the fight and plan ahead/call stuff out that when I'm playing Aff I just don't have.

I for sure go affliction for fights where it's a requirement. I don't believe in playing a spec (destro) to the detriment of the raid, so fights like Protectors H (where 70% slow is req.) and Will I'm affliction.

[powerstuck]

Um...any of you locks could tell me if there is a way to solo the Panda rares (Pandarian one's) as a Destro lock ?

I know the Void does charm eating up the Spinning Crane Kick but using the void Destruction locks have no interrupts for their MASSIVE heal.

I also know I can use the Observer who will do fine interrupting the heal, but then I need to tank the NPC and two new problems arise. Either I get smashed by the Spinning Crane Kick or I port too far and get one shotted by Chi Blast.

Any of you fellow locks got suggestions ?

[Deleted]

So, the raid leader or anybody else in your raid group never asked you to change?

As I ended up first or Top3 on almost all our first kills, no, but they did ask the two other Locks to go Destro on Gara'jal

I guess they were kind of surprised to see me sticking with Destro at first, but why ask a raider to change his spec if he is already at the top and equaling the Affliction top WoLs ?
Now on some fights for certain roles Affli can be required, like on the Protectors, but as I am in a 25man guild there is already one or two people that can fill this role. This is more of a problem for 10man guilds like Brusalk's.

Because I´m almost certain that your dps with affliction will be better!

In my case that has yet to be proven ! I guess I may try when things will be on farm, my mate Meegosh did have good results trying Affli instead of Demo on some fights where Demo was bad or broken, and it seems pretty easy to play (considering he never played it).

[Zinnin]

...with affliction your DPS will be higher than now. So, the raid leader or anybody else in your raid group never asked you to change?...

The 2 target and AoE damage of all three specs is very similar, I would even go so far as to say that in general affliction is on the lower end of the three specs in 2+ targets depending on the situation. There is no fights this tier where there is only one target to burn the entire time, so if you are efficient as using your specs strengths you can get solid numbers with all of our specs.

I am actually more surprised when people ask me why my guild allows me to play demo \ destro, since it seems like in the lower end guilds that affliction is generally considered to be the only good warlock spec when in reality the top end players across the three specs are putting out very competitive numbers.

[Kirroth]

Um...any of you locks could tell me if there is a way to solo the Panda rares (Pandarian one's) as a Destro lock ?

My tactic is to use Arcane Torrent to interrupt the first and kill them before they try and cast a second. But I recognize that not everyone is a belf in full raid gear.

The most basic suggestion is "get better at kiting". Don't use any special tricks when they do their Spinning Kick, just start running away as soon as they start powering it up and keep running until they're done. If you don't use Circle to go too fast or KjC to go too slow you should stay just out of range of them the entire time. Then move back into melee and return to burninating.

If you wanted to be trickier you could try and mess with their Kick more. You can use Shadowfury to break up their Kicks, so long as you do it after they complete the cast and are channeling the ability. You can use Soulshatter to get them to focus their Kick on your Observer instead of chasing you with it.

If all else fails, what I did the first month was call for help. Send out a plea to your guild mates, ask for partners in General chat, whatever it takes to get someone with a reliable interrupt to show up. Then you get go back to the Voidlord and make easy work of it.

[Aruotnof]

The 2 target and AoE damage of all three specs is very similar, I would even go so far as to say that in general affliction is on the lower end of the three specs in 2+ targets depending on the situation. There is no fights this tier where there is only one target to burn the entire time, so if you are efficient as using your specs strengths you can get solid numbers with all of our specs.

I am actually more surprised when people ask me why my guild allows me to play demo \ destro, since it seems like in the lower end guilds that affliction is generally considered to be the only good warlock spec when in reality the top end players across the three specs are putting out very competitive numbers.

I put destro to be my off spec now to try play with this... Demo is my main spec and I don´t want change! hehe! I ran some LFR to test, and I made a several mistakes in time to cast CB. I put better dps with affliction in all fights (comparing with destro), but it´s probably my fault.

I simulated with my gear (destro and affliction) and affliction has a 3~4k dps highter than destro in single target (light movements). In my opinion, this difference is negligible.

The main problem is my raid core... I play in a 10man, so I have the same Brusalk´s problem... But I will give a chance for destro spec... I reconigze that I need to get practice! So, I will try! =)

Thanks!

[Medieve]

I've got a couple months worth of Destro parses, and now that I've hit a stagnant point in gearing I'm going to put a few weeks in as Affliction just to see how they compare. I stay pretty current and practiced with both specs. I'm curious to see just how much more Affliction actually does, or if it's something in the sim code that's making it higher than it truly is (while hit capped, I know that moving stats from hit to mastery/haste is a theoretical gain and partially explains why aff sims higher, I just can't stand missing). Currently raiding 10 man, so it should be a significant upgrade going aff from destro. We'll find out soon enough.

[Brusalk]

I've got a couple months worth of Destro parses, and now that I've hit a stagnant point in gearing I'm going to put a few weeks in as Affliction just to see how they compare. I stay pretty current and practiced with both specs. I'm curious to see just how much more Affliction actually does, or if it's something in the sim code that's making it higher than it truly is (while hit capped, I know that moving stats from hit to mastery/haste is a theoretical gain and partially explains why aff sims higher, I just can't stand missing). Currently raiding 10 man, so it should be a significant upgrade going aff from destro. We'll find out soon enough.

I did the same thing last week and my numbers were around the same or even less in some cases as aff compared to my destro parses. You could blame it on that I haven't been aff for many of the fights already so I don't know effective CD timings or tricks, etc, but I'm fairly confident in being destro and posting great numbers for pretty much every fight where it isn't required or aff isn't so far ahead in damage.

[Kirroth]

Unless you're in a guild doing serious heroic progression raiding, IMO your choice of spec revolves around two points.

Priority #1: Are you having fun playing it?
Priority #2: Is your performance appropriate for your skill and gear level?

Spec performance only really matters when a spec is significantly above or below average. A theoretical different of 3% is just so much smoke and air until you're as practiced and comfortable with the new spec as the old one, and you could probably manage a 3% increase by spending half as much time sharpening your execution on the old spec. I have a low opinion of any raid leader who pressures their raiders to switch to the FotM spec instead of helping them theorycraft optimal reforges or planning how to best use their current spec in the group's raid comp.

But none of that matters compared to the question of if you're having fun. Not having fun is the leading cause of flirtation with non-Warlock alts, as well as complete burnout and unsubbing from WoW to go play whatever new MMO just launched for a couple months. People should not be swapping to a spec they don't enjoy just because Simcraft shows one number to be potentially bigger than another one. Which is not to say that experimenting with different specs is a bad thing. I'd have never found out how much fun Destro is if I hadn't be open to trying ones I'd never used before. But execution matters so much more than Simcraft numbers, and having fun makes good execution far easier.

[Aruotnof]

First of all, I would like to thanks all the answers!

I think the problem is also the WoL. The top 10 Affliction in Mogushan(N), for example, usually win with a good margin compared with destro. But maybe if the same player who are in affliction top 10 plays with destro, suddenly destro shine more!

With affliction and demonology, my dps in RL is very similar in simulationcraft, sometimes I do ~5% more or less in single target. With destro, I still suffering to align cds. But training will certainly improve this. In Elegon (yesterday), I felt more useful than affliction to kill the orbs and towers!

I´m a casual player now (I got married this year XD)... In my core (10man Normal mode), I always first or second in dps with affliction! Sometimes our mage perform better than me! But the final dps is practically the same! I will play with destro this week and next to compare better!

Thanks again for your attention (Zinnin, Brusalk, Zûmzum, Medieve and Kirroth)!

[Medieve]

I actually prefer Destro for a lot of fights in this tier. HC Stone Guard, the cleave is amazing, HC Feng the AoE is far superior to Aff, HC Gara'jal I can clear the spirit realm solo still which leaves our ret and a healer to pop in and out for buffs and back to boss, and Will if you time your SB's well you can snipe a ton of embers to lob at the bosses. Lots of cleave to go around. Even Elegon I can AoE sparks far easier as Destro than with aff and still put significant damage on the boss that has me competing for the top thanks to the Conflag changes. The only fight I don't really prefer Destro on is Spirit Kings. HoF and Terrace are pretty similar to MSV, actually. Only fights I like Aff on are single target spank fights, and there's not many of them.

Edit: It's unfotunate, because Destro mechanically functions very well for most raid encounters. I'm finding it to be a fair amount behind Aff though in 10 man, which is to be expected. I actually enjoy it quite a bit more than I thought I would after testing it on the Beta. I will admit that it really is playing better than simmed, as Xelnath said in another thread before his leave. It is still behind Demo and Aff though, especially in the 10 man environment. I'm not really sure how to fix it without overbuffing it in another environment.

The only thing really making it look as competitive as the other two specs is abusing overkill cleaves, which really isn't helping the raid to a great extent. It's nice being able to snipe all the adds from Feng, but that's a lot of DPS gone to waste that has little effect on the outcome of the raid. If you control for that, Destro doesn't look nearly as good as it does in WoL paper.

[Brusalk]

More videos would be very interesting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jOhJzUKlU

Our whatever'th kill of Stone Guard. Rank 1 WoL for Destro. I was going to record more kills this week, but fraps decided to be dumb and freeze WoW every other time I tried to start recording. I was frozen for the entire Feng kill this week. :/

[kuLiii]

...Our whatever'th kill of Spirit Kings...

You mean Stone Guard?

[Brusalk]

You mean Stone Guard?

YES. DOH. Fixing that XD

[Apero]

Whats with your rain of fire animation? Doesnt look like the regular one. Soooooooooo much fire and meteors. I want that too.

And you should let the song play ,at least in the video, sounds pretty annoying with all that interupts for the voicechat you can only hear with max volume..

[Brusalk]

Whats with your rain of fire animation? Doesnt look like the regular one. Soooooooooo much fire and meteors. I want that too.

And you should let the song play ,at least in the video, sounds pretty annoying with all that interupts for the voicechat you can only hear with max volume..

It's just mumble doing it's thing. I love to listen to music while raiding but I also need to be able to listen to what's being said, so I attenuate other applications fairly heavily. It might be a bit overkill on it's current setting, but I at least get to always hear what I need to.


As for the RoF animation, it's some CVar/console command that increases the particle density of AoE spells. It looks great for Blizzard and RoF but can really slow down your computer big-time in places like Mogushan Palace and the guys ground stomp. I have it up because it's super easy to see when it's not on the boss.

[bryanmathis]

im always surprised no-one ever brings up how much abuse destro can take. ember-tap + DR is an insane amount of healing, not counting that destro does not life tap. (i know its a dps loss, but its not as bad as dying.)

[Modez]

The question was posed of how to change your rain of fire to increase its intensity of spell effects on the screen, and it was mentioned that this may have to do with particle effects. This is actually independent of the particle effects. What this means is you can increase the number of meteors without increasing the intensity of the flame effects on said meteors. I will explain, and also provide the steps to create these effects for any other users.

How to 'beef' up your spell (graphics)

Step 1 : This must be complete exactly as prescribed or this will not work, and this includes case of characters. You will never have to repeat this step again - any other changes can be done as noted in Step 2 while in game.

• Navigate to your WoW folder
• Open WTF folder
• Right click the config.wtf file and open with a text editor (you may have to go into properties and select notepad as the program to use)
• At the very bottom type (or copy and paste what I have here)

  SET SpellEffectLevel "500"

• Exit the file and save
• Reload WoW and cast AoE

That was fun! Now let's take a look at this...

Step 2 : To change the effect level from now on in game you can use

/console SET SpellEffectLevel "500"

where you can change the 500 to any number. The standard effect seems to be around 20, and I like 125-150 or so to see if the pack is still in the AoE without covering things up too much.

▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬

Particle effects can still be controlled via Esc > System > Graphics > Right hand side of the Graphics tab, right column, 2nd from the very bottom.
[CENTER]

▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬█▬▬▬▬▬

By adjusting both numbers (Spell and Particle) you should be able to get a better rain even on budget machines. You may just need to tweak it a little, but you'll find the numbers which work for you.

[Bloodfire]

Hi, a thanks there for a nice guide.
Currently, our 2nd 10ppl found a warlock, and he prefers destro as main spec (I'm unable to play this spec, I tried, but eeeh, that's not my style )
So, he asks, how should he reforge? (any haste caps or smth).