Destruction Warlock Guide/How To/Tips and Tricks

[Brusalk]

Hey! I was asked by quite a few people to make a video explaining Destro and also about some of the more fine points of playing. As such I put together this video today. It's not very high production quality or anything like that, but it should work for those who are interested in learning about Destro, one of the most fun warlock specs right now. Below (and the first 30 seconds of the video) is a table of contents with links to where I talk about specific things, in case you don't want to watch the whole thing. (I probably rambled a bit in some sections, but I was attempting to explain things as clearly as possible)

The first section (column in the ToC) I go over the abilities themselves (think for a brand new warlock learning Destro for the first time)

The second section I go over some slightly more advanced stuff (new-ish to somewhat experienced warlocks.) The what to avoid section has some common problems and easy (ish) solutions to those problems that you can expect to see while playing destro.

The last section I go into a bit more on like my personal starting rotation and some useful addons and UI settings, stuff like that.


As it is almost an hour long I do suggest you skip the first section if you're not a brand new warlock, and primarily view only the last section if you are already experienced with destro.


If you have any comments/concerns feel free to let me know. I mostly just threw this together after spending maybe 10mins putting together an outline and doing 1 or 2 takes for each clip.


Destruction Guide/How To

-Brusalk

[Deleted]

Very nice guide mate, helped me out with a few questions I had

[Rayaleith]

That was really nice! Thank you very much for the time you spent on this and the quality. I really wonder how you can really spot your procs up right in the little icons I have some pretty big weak auras showing this info! Thanks again.

[Bloodfire]

Great thanks
This will help me to get off lame aff spec

[Teknicon]

Fantastic, thank you. Even though I am fairly experience myself, I always like watching stuff like this. The fact that it's an hour long really shows the effort put into this.

Kudos, sir. ^^

[shaaba]

very nice guide,
altho the console command doesnt seems to work for me

[Hellfury]

u say "hum" alot it became annoying

[DiParagon]

Likely dumb question as it has probably been answered somewhere else, but how is your RoF showing so many meteors? mine only shows like maybe 10 on ultra settings.

[Randomunknown]

Likely dumb question as it has probably been answered somewhere else, but how is your RoF showing so many meteors? mine only shows like maybe 10 on ultra settings.

Medieve explained this to me on a recent forum post, and thanks to him I can tell you!

You do it by typing the command: /console SpellEffectLevel 75 (you can do any number between 1-5000...I use 75) Which will increase your density of Rain of Fire. Also you should increase your particle density in your video options as high as possible. It may lag your computer if you don't have a high end graphics card.
If you find yourself at the same density level after typing your /console SpellEffectLevel 75 (like what happened to me) I had to go into my World of Warcraft folder and opened my config.wtf file with notepad, then inserted: SET SpellEffectLevel "75" at the bottom of the page. I hope that helps create the epicness you desire!

[Brusalk]

u say "hum" alot it became annoying

Sorry. Tried to avoid it as much as possible.

---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 12:02 PM ----------

Medieve explained this to me on a recent forum post, and thanks to him I can tell you!

You do it by typing the command: /console SpellEffectLevel 75 (you can do any number between 1-5000...I use 75) Which will increase your density of Rain of Fire. Also you should increase your particle density in your video options as high as possible. It may lag your computer if you don't have a high end graphics card.
If you find yourself at the same density level after typing your /console SpellEffectLevel 75 (like what happened to me) I had to go into my World of Warcraft folder and opened my config.wtf file with notepad, then inserted: SET SpellEffectLevel "75" at the bottom of the page. I hope that helps create the epicness you desire!

You have to go into config.wtf and insert that line before the console command will work now. I explained it in the last section called Moar Meteors.

[noaim]

Nice guide, answered a few questions for me too, only been playing aff since mop.

However, infernal is useable on Wind Lord, the adds are stun immune (at least on normal, should be same on hc?)

[Brusalk]

Nice guide, answered a few questions for me too, only been playing aff since mop.

However, infernal is useable on Wind Lord, the adds are stun immune (at least on normal, should be same on hc?)

Never actually tried, just assumed the stun would tigger just like other stuns off of the Engineering Belt and the like. I'd still say go doomguard because of recklessness however, on heroic.

[Iry]

Very nice video. Very informative and covers a lot of the basics as well as some great tips for intermediate and advanced players. The only real con to the video would be the repeated use of "Umm" but we can probably chalk that up to no public speaking experience. Something you said did catch my notice, so I wanted to double check to make absolutely certain.

Is it really true that single target Rain of Fire is a DPS Neutral? I have heard repeatedly it is a DPS loss.

Also, is the spell effect level is client side only? I want to make sure before I lag anyone else to death with tons of meteors.

[vian]

Loved it, not that I needed the info myself, but the confirmation of tactics did alot <3

[Brusalk]

Very nice video. Very informative and covers a lot of the basics as well as some great tips for intermediate and advanced players. The only real con to the video would be the repeated use of "Umm" but we can probably chalk that up to no public speaking experience. Something you said did catch my notice, so I wanted to double check to make absolutely certain.

Is it really true that single target Rain of Fire is a DPS Neutral? I have heard repeatedly it is a DPS loss.

Also, is the spell effect level is client side only? I want to make sure before I lag anyone else to death with tons of meteors.

I mostly just wanted to get it out there and I have no real experience with video editing. I pretty much did one or two takes for each of the sections so the ums were most from me forgetting the word I needed or trying to find where in my UI what I was talking about was.

As for the single target RoF, it is dps neutral. Before 5.1 it wasn't but with the change that made it tick every second and gen more embers because of that, it's an ember gain but a slight damage loss in the short term. Once you use those extra embers though it's pretty much neutral. I can simcraft up some proof if you like, I did it myself seeing how the new RoF was and the two results were within each other's margin of error.

---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 04:56 PM ----------

I mostly just wanted to get it out there and I have no real experience with video editing. I pretty much did one or two takes for each of the sections so the ums were most from me forgetting the word I needed or trying to find where in my UI what I was talking about was.

As for the single target RoF, it is dps neutral. Before 5.1 it wasn't but with the change that made it tick every second and gen more embers because of that, it's an ember gain but a slight damage loss in the short term. Once you use those extra embers though it's pretty much neutral. I can simcraft up some proof if you like, I did it myself seeing how the new RoF was and the two results were within each other's margin of error.

Keep in mind though that the single target needs to be in the RoF for pretty much the whole duration of it. If they move out early then it's a dps loss to use over fel flame.

[Bonkura]

Thanks a lot for this. Gonna watch it when I have time and got a fresh mind. I'll probably have some comments/questions afterwards but I'm just gonna ask this now:

How confident are you in your knowledge about how to play the spec optimally both in theory and in practice right now? Do you think as theorycrafting goes it's a simple, straightforward spec (just as many people seem to think) or is there a lot of undiscovered potential in it?

I'm not sure you've stated it already, so I'm sorry if you've made it clear already. I just think it's relevant to any guide people release to express how good they think their knowledge is about the topic so we can tell who will benefit the most from this.

I'll probably spend a lot of time on Destro myself now during the holidays when I'm just doing farm raids so hopefully I can provide some own opinions on how to play it or just bring up questions to keep the theorycrafting going.

[Brusalk]

Thanks a lot for this. Gonna watch it when I have time and got a fresh mind. I'll probably have some comments/questions afterwards but I'm just gonna ask this now:

How confident are you in your knowledge about how to play the spec optimally both in theory and in practice right now? Do you think as theorycrafting goes it's a simple, straightforward spec (just as many people seem to think) or is there a lot of undiscovered potential in it?

I'm not sure you've stated it already, so I'm sorry if you've made it clear already. I just think it's relevant to any guide people release to express how good they think their knowledge is about the topic so we can tell who will benefit the most from this.

I'll probably spend a lot of time on Destro myself now during the holidays when I'm just doing farm raids so hopefully I can provide some own opinions on how to play it or just bring up questions to keep the theorycrafting going.

In theory, I'm very confident. In practice I'm also extremely confident as I have #1 or top 3 ranks as destro on every fight, multiple times.

As for theorycrafting, I think it's relatively straight forward, however to simulate optimal usage of embers in large burns and mini-burns is very, very difficult so even on single target I think destro is simulated suboptimally. To a limited extent the same is true with affliction, but proc stacking and ember usage is such a huge part of destruction damage I think it has more of an effect on destruction sims.

In practice destruction is easy to understand, but the potential skill cap for destruction is so high I honestly don't think that affliction's compares. Fight knowledge is key as destruction and being able to think ahead on when to use embers/cds is extremely important as destro. Havoc makes everything more complicated as well. Couple that with RoF with 2 targets and destro is one of the more difficult specs to pull off at the highest level, in my opinion. Anyone can pick up destro and do decent with it however. It's the top 3-5 ranks (in 10man H at least) that require a lot of skill (and a bit of luck) as destro to pull off.

[Iry]

As for the single target RoF, it is dps neutral. Before 5.1 it wasn't but with the change that made it tick every second and gen more embers because of that, it's an ember gain but a slight damage loss in the short term. Once you use those extra embers though it's pretty much neutral. I can simcraft up some proof if you like, I did it myself seeing how the new RoF was and the two results were within each other's margin of error.

If you feel inclined to provide some simcraft proof that would be wonderful. It is not that I doubt you on this issue, but the implications are very large.

For example, my current rotation allows me keep Havoc on cooldown except 20 seconds prior to Dark Soul coming off cooldown to ensure 4 embers for Dark Soul. If RoF increases ember generation then it might be just enough to keep Havoc on permanent cooldown (when the fight allows), with Havoc coming back up on the 4th Chaos Bolt during a Dark Soul.

Going to need to test this, and see if the extra mana expense messes up the mana regeneration rhythm.

[Micke]

Would have liked a section on macros if you use any.

[eScar95]

Ew...Worgen. But on a serious note, this is really help and informative. Thank you.