[5.4] Brusalk's Destruction Warlock guide

[wildstyle]

there is a few questions i have in regards to stats. first of all i am wondering if haste should be a priority for the most part only part in due to the fact that most of the time its haste> or mastery==haste. just as an average idea. secondly since i assume this is going to be shot down because of some explanation to the benefits of mastery over haste in the long run and hitting some haste diminishing return, where should we sit comfortably at for haste then as a goal. also i would like to mention that these calculations do not work well with older type gear that can not reach realistic mastery and haste qualifications. i just recently speced into mastery about 55% and haste at 5k and i lost dps. this is due mostly to the fact that my gear is not doing well. (coins and drops never happen for me) but crit does work. i can say though a fellow warlock friend who has a horse shoe in his rear, has got really decent drops and now is speced into sup/obs and went for mastery at 64% 17% crit and 5 k haste and he is rocking 125k dps in most fights. this is just my experience with this. I may have worded it that made some people feel adamant about defending their opinions and this was not my goal, i just wanted to state that this was my experience.

[Deleted]

You can't just consider damage though - you also have to consider cast time. FnB immolate is much faster than chaos bolt, and once you're on 5+ targets you're not going to run out of embers anyway so you might as well do it. It's higher DPS.

Huge mistake on my part indeed!

[Tohkra]

I've been playing with reforges and the more even I can get crit/haste/mast the higher it seems to sim, I don't know if its my gems or gear, but at ilvl 501 I can't break the 111k threshold, I see other locks simming at 155k+, am I missing something vital? If not is there a list anywhere of what "average" dps should run at a given ilvl?

[Davycrocket]

I know the best possible sim is using visions trinket but aside from getting a spam execute with soulburns, is it really that good? Would it not be better to have cosmos for chaos bolt burns?

[Deleted]

I've been playing with reforges and the more even I can get crit/haste/mast the higher it seems to sim, I don't know if its my gems or gear, but at ilvl 501 I can't break the 111k threshold, I see other locks simming at 155k+, am I missing something vital? If not is there a list anywhere of what "average" dps should run at a given ilvl?

Higher ilvl doesnt always mean more dps. If I had heroic thunderforged weapon and trinkets but <ilvl500 jewelery, bracers, back and oh i would still be doing much more dps than someone with exactly opposite setup.

My dps went to another level when i quickly upgraded the most vital items. Currently simming at 140k in 514ilvl.

[Myzou]

So, I swapped from Sacrifice/Mastery to Supremacy/Haste builds, as honestly, as much as I love sacrifice, the DPS difference started to get more noticeable the more gear I got. :S

Anyway, out of curiosity: With Supremacy/Haste, is it still the best thing to do to pool burning embers for cooldowns/procs at the same time to unleash a few chaos bolts, or should we be burning CDs on cooldown to boost Incinerate and Conflagrate?

Also: To those who commented on my Breath of the Hydra situation: With mastery build, it would only proc every 6-8 minutes. When I swapped to my haste build, it was actually proccing OVER itself. (Like it'd have 3-4 seconds left then randomly it'd refresh).

On a side note: I had 1 Loshan and 2 Jin'ya drop last night in the same ToES.

Too bad that Jin'ya is a much worse weapon for my warlock. Being a gnome, I get 1% hit from daggers/swords, so in every situation, 1h/OH is better for a gnome warlock. >_< (also had the OH drop from HoF yesterday as well :P)

[kamikaeo]

Ranked 15 on Megaera after the kill and now I am down to 29

[Gremory1]

So, I swapped from Sacrifice/Mastery to Supremacy/Haste builds, as honestly, as much as I love sacrifice, the DPS difference started to get more noticeable the more gear I got. :S

Anyway, out of curiosity: With Supremacy/Haste, is it still the best thing to do to pool burning embers for cooldowns/procs at the same time to unleash a few chaos bolts, or should we be burning CDs on cooldown to boost Incinerate and Conflagrate?

Also: To those who commented on my Breath of the Hydra situation: With mastery build, it would only proc every 6-8 minutes. When I swapped to my haste build, it was actually proccing OVER itself. (Like it'd have 3-4 seconds left then randomly it'd refresh).

On a side note: I had 1 Loshan and 2 Jin'ya drop last night in the same ToES.

Too bad that Jin'ya is a much worse weapon for my warlock. Being a gnome, I get 1% hit from daggers/swords, so in every situation, 1h/OH is better for a gnome warlock. >_< (also had the OH drop from HoF yesterday as well :P)

Myzou you still definitely want to use it for chaos bolts and not incinerate/conflagrate.

[Eldar45]

is an Fel Imp with glyph of Demon Training not better than the Observer?
I've been testing it out and it seems that the Fel Imp is doing about 4-5000 more DPS.

470 ilvl and reforging for crit.

Infact my Imp is doing almost 8k more. The Observer was doing 5.6k, the Imp 13.5k

[weakdots]

is an Fel Imp with glyph of Demon Training not better than the Observer?
I've been testing it out and it seems that the Fel Imp is doing about 4-5000 more DPS.

470 ilvl and reforging for crit.

Infact my Imp is doing almost 8k more. The Observer was doing 5.6k, the Imp 13.5k

this has been brought up so many times over the past few months by people who dont read the thread before posting.

[Dercas]

I asked a similar question to this a couple weeks back and got some good feedback from the community but since then I've gotten a good amount of upgrades and again have questions about my gear stat distribution. My question is since all my recent gear has a combination of hit/haste/crit and very little mastery gear would I be better off just staying with my current stat prio of crit<haste<mastery. I've been recently thinking of trying a mastery build since I read these forums alot and it seems like mastery may be a good way to go. Also with a crit/haste build is there a point where I should stop with crit and start stacking more haste? When in raids fully buffed I'm at 29 and change i believe right now. Any help would be appreciated.

Armory current 517ilvl: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...omous/advanced

Recent Logs:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/vdi45...?s=8081&e=8663 specifically H Jikun I was GoSac with my crit prio which isn't optimal i know.

[Delvaz]

I asked a similar question to this a couple weeks back and got some good feedback from the community but since then I've gotten a good amount of upgrades and again have questions about my gear stat distribution. My question is since all my recent gear has a combination of hit/haste/crit and very little mastery gear would I be better off just staying with my current stat prio of crit<haste<mastery. I've been recently thinking of trying a mastery build since I read these forums alot and it seems like mastery may be a good way to go. Also with a crit/haste build is there a point where I should stop with crit and start stacking more haste? When in raids fully buffed I'm at 29 and change i believe right now. Any help would be appreciated.

Armory current 517ilvl: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...omous/advanced

Recent Logs:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/vdi45...?s=8081&e=8663 specifically H Jikun I was GoSac with my crit prio which isn't optimal i know.

I'm no expert, but you prolly want to roll with more than 2k mastery under every circumstance. It doesn't mean you necessarily want to stack everything in mastery but at least have have 5k+ in it for when you are in fights with 3 or more mobs. At that point mastery becomes more valuable and most tot fights will have at least that many mobs.

[xskarma]

is an Fel Imp with glyph of Demon Training not better than the Observer?
I've been testing it out and it seems that the Fel Imp is doing about 4-5000 more DPS.

470 ilvl and reforging for crit.

Infact my Imp is doing almost 8k more. The Observer was doing 5.6k, the Imp 13.5k

This is not a Demon problem, but a testing issue. Damage meters (Recount in particular) stop their tracking in between volleys of Fel Bolts, artificially inflating the measured DPS. If you were to take a fixed amount of damage, and then measure the time, or take a fixed amount of time and then measure the damage, you'd see that there is very little between all the demons. Most of the differences that you still have are down to (de)buffs present or mostly not present.

So try testing it yourself, if you like, but the Demons are nicely balanced, with choices mostly coming down to benefit in the fight (i.e. Imp when target switching a lot).

[Sinj]

Been trying forever now to find a good 'one size fits all'-reforge for my destro-lock.

I know it'd be optimal to reforge for every single fight, but that would be impossible to do as well since you'd need to regem and re-enchant too to get perfectly reforged stats.

I know very well how the different stats interact, which stats are best for specific encounters, etc., but i'm still unsure as to how to gem if i want a reforge/gem/enchant-setup that's "best" for most fights.

So far I'm going for a 4:3:3 or a 5:3:3 stat allocation (mastery:haste:crit). My line of thinking is:

-Most fights in ToT have adds, thus CB/SB make up a larger portion of total dmg done which means mastery would be preferable, even if its single-target dmg potential is lower than crit:haste

-If I go with 4:3:3 or 5:3:3 as mentioned above, I'll be able to reap the benefits of going GoSac as well (haste/crit > mastery would be pretty terrible for GoSac, I would imagine)

To me, the key has been to find this fragile balance...too much mastery and too little crit/haste and you'll risk doing not-so-great on single target fights (at least compared to single target sims). Too much haste/crit and you'll probably end up doing really bad on add-fights + you can basically rule out going GoSac ever.

[Deleted]

Been trying forever now to find a good 'one size fits all'-reforge for my destro-lock.

I know it'd be optimal to reforge for every single fight, but that would be impossible to do as well since you'd need to regem and re-enchant too to get perfectly reforged stats.

I know very well how the different stats interact, which stats are best for specific encounters, etc., but i'm still unsure as to how to gem if i want a reforge/gem/enchant-setup that's "best" for most fights.

So far I'm going for a 4:3:3 or a 5:3:3 stat allocation (mastery:haste:crit). My line of thinking is:

-Most fights in ToT have adds, thus CB/SB make up a larger portion of total dmg done which means mastery would be preferable, even if its single-target dmg potential is lower than crit:haste

-If I go with 4:3:3 or 5:3:3 as mentioned above, I'll be able to reap the benefits of going GoSac as well (haste/crit > mastery would be pretty terrible for GoSac, I would imagine)

To me, the key has been to find this fragile balance...too much mastery and too little crit/haste and you'll risk doing not-so-great on single target fights (at least compared to single target sims). Too much haste/crit and you'll probably end up doing really bad on add-fights + you can basically rule out going GoSac ever.

Tbh i'm torn a bit by this as well.. i only started 4 weeks ago with playing again so I was kinda dumped directly in 5.2 which was very confusing at the start!
Atm i'm usually runnning with a Haste > crit > mastery setup which worked quite well ( at least with simcraft, it kept telling me to reforge to haste (both crit & mast) for SINGLE target (i have an ilvl of 506 now).
the thing is, i'm thinking i can do better but i'm not convinced I should go for a mixed setup. I always thought you'd max out 1 stat and let the others follow up.

I'm trying out a Master > crit > haste built now and tbh i'm not really impressed. the dps is not really improving but i have a feelings it's due to my lack of Mastery gear (with mastery reforge, gems & enchants i only go up to 7k mastery self buffed).

my guild is currently on durumu the forgotten so i'm thinking of staying Haste>crit>mast for now ... any advice if I should reforge perhaps "some" mastery?

PS: the info on how to cleave for pure single target dps (immolate + FF wasn't it?) was really helpfull thx for that altough I find it weird since immolate has a base duration of 15 sec & FF prolonges it with 6. since the max duration is around 22,5 secs, is it worthwile to immediately cast the 2nd FF as well ? (assuming you're not able to cast a Chaos bolt in between which would obviously solve that problem a bit)

[Deleted]

I chose to gem for mastery, when sockets don't want me to gem pure int.
That way I can still easily reforge to a haste/crit > mastery setup for the GoSup-Fights like Jin'Rokh and always have the possibility to go all out mastery for the heavy emberfest-fights. I need to reforge a couple of times throughout a ToT lockout, but I don't need to regem or re-enchant, which is a solution I can live with.

[Caides]

I chose to gem for mastery, when sockets don't want me to gem pure int.
That way I can still easily reforge to a haste/crit > mastery setup for the GoSup-Fights like Jin'Rokh and always have the possibility to go all out mastery for the heavy emberfest-fights. I need to reforge a couple of times throughout a ToT lockout, but I don't need to regem or re-enchant, which is a solution I can live with.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but even on Jin'rohk the pools make GoSac with Mastery perfectly fine if played properly. I can't think of a fight where moderate mastery stacking would be completely terrible on this tier except maybe Iron Qon and -possibly- Twin Consorts. But Twin Consorts changes on Heroic so there are adds which nullifies that argument. Iron Qon Heroic there's a brief period where there are multiple mobs but I'm not sure it's worth Mastery stacking.

[Deleted]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but even on Jin'rohk the pools make GoSac with Mastery perfectly fine if played properly. I can't think of a fight where moderate mastery stacking would be completely terrible on this tier except maybe Iron Qon and -possibly- Twin Consorts. But Twin Consorts changes on Heroic so there are adds which nullifies that argument. Iron Qon Heroic there's a brief period where there are multiple mobs but I'm not sure it's worth Mastery stacking.

so you rather opt for "moderate stack mastery", kinda contradicts itself in my book. how can you "stack" something "moderately" .. :s but I like Wyand1337 's method though! I'm trying it out as we speak and see what gives!

basicalyl i'm running now with GoSUP with haste>crit>Mast with int+mast gems & mast ench on gloves. I still have haste as my highest rating but considering Mastery isn't valued as high in Simcraft i should get a small dps increase right?

[Deleted]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...k%C3%AD/simple

Try getting this much mastery, I dont raid with skull banner and i still see chaos bolt crit 1.1 million before the dot (Pot + double trinket + jade) on boss's without a damage increase, the TL;DR of mastery is this, if you can react and build around trinket procs you will do monstrous dps if you cant stick with haste and crit as then your damage isint so effected by your own reactions.

[Ilir]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...k%C3%AD/simple

Try getting this much mastery, I dont raid with skull banner and i still see chaos bolt crit 1.1 million before the dot (Pot + double trinket + jade) on boss's without a damage increase, the TL;DR of mastery is this, if you can react and build around trinket procs you will do monstrous dps if you cant stick with haste and crit as then your damage isint so effected by your own reactions.

1.1 Million crit without damage increase ? o_O O_o O_O