[6.2] Furty's Destruction Warlock Guide

[Reaper11b]

Read guides, look up videos, watch top warlock streams (there's even a thread for that) and queue for LFR/Normal/Heroic and practice.

I mean, the only way to get your rhythm back is to actually read up on current specs and practice, there's already a wealth of information at your fingertips.

[Restitution]

So i have been running Destro lately to work on getting the spec down before 6.2 comes out since we are just on heroic farm. When we are about to have or have 1 charge of DS, do we always want to build up 3.5-4 embers pop DS and CB dump? Or do you cast DS on CD and just cast CB when its up? I have been working on squeezing in 2 CB's per GSR proc.. as the timing seems to only allow 2 anyways.

[FocusedFelix]

So i have been running Destro lately to work on getting the spec down before 6.2 comes out since we are just on heroic farm. When we are about to have or have 1 charge of DS, do we always want to build up 3.5-4 embers pop DS and CB dump? Or do you cast DS on CD and just cast CB when its up? I have been working on squeezing in 2 CB's per GSR proc.. as the timing seems to only allow 2 anyways.

What is your gear like, do you have 2/4pc? Are you using DemoServ or CR? Since you didn't post it, I'm gonna lay out the full explanation. I don't mean to insult your intelligence : )

Let me start by saying that normally, you'll be at 3.5 embers anyway. The only real reason to burn them outside of DS or procs is if you'd cap on the next Conflag/Incin. If you don't have your 2pc, then, yes; you typically want as close to 4 embers as possible right when DS comes up, or more specifically, if DS is ready and something has proc'd. After burning both DS charges over the encounter, I'll actually wait to pop DS again until I see my trinket weak aura pop up. (I'll start preparing myself when the CD icon goes away). The 2pc changes your stock from 3.5 embers to 2.5 embers since Immolate can and will give you them at the worst times. 2pc + CR means you'll need to be hella aware of what's going on when you have embers to spend. TLDR: You only cast more than one CB at a time under DS or procs or both unless you have your 2pc and the game is shoving embers down your throat. Occasionally you'll be at 2.5 only to get a 2pc proc meaning that you'll need to burn two CB's back to back to set your pool back at it's neutral level. Even if DS is ready, wait for something else as long as it's going to be ready in a reasonable amount of time; you don't want to lose out on overall damage from sitting on a DS charge for ages.

Your issue with GSR can be solved with the DS glyph, if you aren't already using it for fights lasting longer than 6m or so (so basically just not on Gruul). That way you're DS's line up more frequently with procs increasing your overall damage. You can pair that effect with Havoc and really do some sexy stuff.

I know Demo being the go-to ever since snapshotting was removed has been teaching us bad habits (*raises hand*), and Aff is literally a monitor UI spec now... but Destro is more reliant on outside elements effecting DPS than the other specs, so you may as well assume that you snapshot as Destruction (outside of the whole DoT SS dealio). Neither Aff nor Demo has a spell that you literally only want to cast during procs. Even though spells like Soulfire should only be used during certain conditions (Meta), you aren't sitting at 8 MC stacks with 900 fury waiting for a proc to unload your damage.

If you're using Raven or some other buff tracker for trinkets, stop and go get Weak Auras. The individual trinket/enchant strings are much more intuitive and are specific to the buff you're tracking. Can't tell you how many times I see new bars pop thinking I have a trinket only to see irrelevant info.

[Restitution]

What is your gear like, do you have 2/4pc? Are you using DemoServ or CR? Since you didn't post it, I'm gonna lay out the full explanation. I don't mean to insult your intelligence : )

Let me start by saying that normally, you'll be at 3.5 embers anyway. The only real reason to burn them outside of DS or procs is if you'd cap on the next Conflag/Incin. If you don't have your 2pc, then, yes; you typically want as close to 4 embers as possible right when DS comes up, or more specifically, if DS is ready and something has proc'd. After burning both DS charges over the encounter, I'll actually wait to pop DS again until I see my trinket weak aura pop up. (I'll start preparing myself when the CD icon goes away). The 2pc changes your stock from 3.5 embers to 2.5 embers since Immolate can and will give you them at the worst times. 2pc + CR means you'll need to be hella aware of what's going on when you have embers to spend. TLDR: You only cast more than one CB at a time under DS or procs or both unless you have your 2pc and the game is shoving embers down your throat. Occasionally you'll be at 2.5 only to get a 2pc proc meaning that you'll need to burn two CB's back to back to set your pool back at it's neutral level. Even if DS is ready, wait for something else as long as it's going to be ready in a reasonable amount of time; you don't want to lose out on overall damage from sitting on a DS charge for ages.

Your issue with GSR can be solved with the DS glyph, if you aren't already using it for fights lasting longer than 6m or so (so basically just not on Gruul). That way you're DS's line up more frequently with procs increasing your overall damage. You can pair that effect with Havoc and really do some sexy stuff.

I know Demo being the go-to ever since snapshotting was removed has been teaching us bad habits (*raises hand*), and Aff is literally a monitor UI spec now... but Destro is more reliant on outside elements effecting DPS than the other specs, so you may as well assume that you snapshot as Destruction (outside of the whole DoT SS dealio). Neither Aff nor Demo has a spell that you literally only want to cast during procs. Even though spells like Soulfire should only be used during certain conditions (Meta), you aren't sitting at 8 MC stacks with 900 fury waiting for a proc to unload your damage.

If you're using Raven or some other buff tracker for trinkets, stop and go get Weak Auras. The individual trinket/enchant strings are much more intuitive and are specific to the buff you're tracking. Can't tell you how many times I see new bars pop thinking I have a trinket only to see irrelevant info.

Yep i have a 685 ilvl with 4 pc, CR, and Tarmac and GSR trinkets. I am running unglyphed and thought it made more sense to glyph ds so that it has more chaos bolts during it and procs. I felt like the 20 second spam was just clunky myself. I still use demo on pure single target but trying to learn destro as the new cleave/aoe spec I'll try and glyph and see how that plays out.

- - - Updated - - -

So after spending more time in the spec, i still find myself way low on dps. To try an grasp a better understanding of the priority system of destro can someone point out the flaws, agree, or disagree with my below thought process for when to cast CB's? I am currently running 4pc + GSR with CR/Supremacy. I am running in my demo gear so my crit will be lower then it should be for a properly geared destro but i feel like if i play the spec right, i'll still be fine.

Keep 1 ember in the chamber for potential procs
keep immolate up on target
keep confrag on cd and cast 3 incinerates or 2 incinerates + 1 immolate per Confrag charge
cast CB on any proc's
DS is off CD so build up embers to 3.5 and CB dump, working in incinerates/confrag/immolates to keep embers coming for more CBs while DS is up.
cast CB if embers are above 2.5 and DS is on CD and no procs are active

of course havoc on cd for cleave fights, using CB above 20% and then SB below 20% trying to line them up with procs/DS.

I am willing to try anything as i am learning Destro from scratch basically so no muscle memory bad habits.

[Fayan]

Can someone explain why Glyph of Dark Soul isn't great? It seems like it'd be ideal for Destro to have a 10 second Dark Soul length, perfect for 4 Chaos Bolts, whereas you only get 6 in a 20 second Dark Soul. Explain?

[bio347]

Here, I've bolded the parts you might be interested in:

Glyph of Dark Soul halves the duration and cooldown of Dark Soul. Generally speaking this glyph is rarely used unless you're speccing Charred Remains. If you're playing Charred Remains this glyph is very strong on low movement fights, as it increases the number of buffed Chaos Bolts you can get off per minute. Regardless of what spec you play this glyph gets weak the shorter the fight gets as it hurts your uptime, so you'll want to avoid it on fights like Butcher and Tectus.

It doesn't play nice with lots of movement, because you need to make sure you have enough time for the four CBs every minute - if you don't, then it's no gain and potentially a loss. It's an uptime loss regardless, but shorter fights obviously magnify how much you're losing. And, of course, non-CR Destro can have trouble trying to keep up with the ember requirements.

[Darkheart]

They fixed the long-standing mouseover Havoc bug, so you can go back to a simple mouseover macro for Havoc and Shadowburn

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead][]Shadowburn

Can someone please explain what this macro does and why it is useful?

[Ultramad]

Can someone please explain what this macro does and why it is useful?

If you're mouseover is a harmful, read enemy, target then it will cast shadowburn on it. If it is not, then it will try to cast shadowburn on your target.

[SpikeySquad]

Darkheart,

It is useful for casting SB on low HP mobs without having to keep changing target which takes more time/effort.

Some people, myself included, also use mouseover macros for DoT applications for basically the same reason.

[Fayan]

Here, I've bolded the parts you might be interested in:


It doesn't play nice with lots of movement, because you need to make sure you have enough time for the four CBs every minute - if you don't, then it's no gain and potentially a loss. It's an uptime loss regardless, but shorter fights obviously magnify how much you're losing. And, of course, non-CR Destro can have trouble trying to keep up with the ember requirements.

Okay, so I did read this, but I'm having trouble understanding. The mobility bit makes sense, but how is it less uptime? Is it just the idea that you'd get 7 10 second dark souls in a 6 minute fight (70 sec total) vs 4 20 second dark souls (80sec total) due to Archimonde's Darkness?

[Gaidax]

Okay, so I did read this, but I'm having trouble understanding. The mobility bit makes sense, but how is it less uptime? Is it just the idea that you'd get 7 10 second dark souls in a 6 minute fight (70 sec total) vs 4 20 second dark souls (80sec total) due to Archimonde's Darkness?

You start with 2 Charges of DS, without Glyph it's 40 seconds of DS, with a Glyph it's 20 seconds. You MAY be able to reduce it to 10 seconds gap IF encounter timing allows it, but you are still definitely at a loss and the shorter the fight is the bigger the loss.

Then besides the movement concern, another thing is that it is much easier to fish for procs in a 20 seconds window compared to 10 seconds one.

Finally, without glyph you can potentially withhold not using DS for up to 4 mins, giving you strong execute phase. With glyph you can hold for more than 2 minutes, without losing uptime.

Oh, and a derivative from the above, without glyph you can cover whole Bloodlust duration and much of a Doomguard duration.

Basivally while with glyph you can optimize Chaos Bolt usage, you lose a lot of flexibility that directly reduces your damage output.

[FocusedFelix]

Here, I've bolded the parts you might be interested in:


It doesn't play nice with lots of movement, because you need to make sure you have enough time for the four CBs every minute - if you don't, then it's no gain and potentially a loss. It's an uptime loss regardless, but shorter fights obviously magnify how much you're losing. And, of course, non-CR Destro can have trouble trying to keep up with the ember requirements.

I played around with both and worked numbers before finally just accepting that the glyph is worth using. CR gets all its damage from CB, and while you can build embers every couple of casts to use the full duration of DS (after your first dump), Incinerate does trash damage. I'd personally rather buff selective CB's (and have more control over when to align burst with procs) over buffing filler Incinerates and Conflags during the normal duration of DS.


I can see where Supremacy and DServ wouldn't use it, but GoSac/CR works really damn well with it.

To the guy seeking confirmation: outside of very few select encounters, you will be pulling lower dps than Aff or Demo on ST. Gotta remember that Destruction is ST/Cleave burst and the best sustained AoE spec. Right now, you will see lower damage because Demo can just rock GoServ/DServ and win on almost every ST fight, and Aff can pull more with half the effort and awareness that Destro takes. (It's funny how things change haha)

Prior to coming to this forum, I hadn't been playing WoD Destro (RIP moving while casting Incin) for more than a couple of weeks, so I hadn't had time to break down which spec is best where... but it performs well on fights like Brackenspore/Flamebender (maybe H//F, though Demo owns that fight) where you can focus a primary target and Havoc the living daylights out of a secondary target. OR fights like Blast Furnace where you can Fire and Brimstone+Chaos Bolt your way onto logs. It's position will be much clearer once the patch drops and people get their hands on tier, but eventually, I'm guessing it will fill the AoE role while Aff becomes the ST king.

[FurtyIRL]

I played around with both and worked numbers before finally just accepting that the glyph is worth using. CR gets all its damage from CB, and while you can build embers every couple of casts to use the full duration of DS (after your first dump), Incinerate does trash damage. I'd personally rather buff selective CB's (and have more control over when to align burst with procs) over buffing filler Incinerates and Conflags during the normal duration of DS.

I think there is very little difference between them on a low-movement, 8+ minute encounter, but on your average encounter I tend to gravitate towards unglyphed. On PTR a lot of the fights are high movement or have phases where extended burst is essential. One thing to point out as well as that with GoDS you need to go into your DS with 4 embers, which eliminates the possibility of getting a 2-set proc and getting extra chaos bolts. Next tier we have a chance to get a free chaos bolt every time we cast, which is also eliminated if you are playing GoDS. Not trying to convince you either way, but generally speaking I think there are more pros to unglyphed.

[Restitution]

I think there is very little difference between them on a low-movement, 8+ minute encounter, but on your average encounter I tend to gravitate towards unglyphed. On PTR a lot of the fights are high movement or have phases where extended burst is essential. One thing to point out as well as that with GoDS you need to go into your DS with 4 embers, which eliminates the possibility of getting a 2-set proc and getting extra chaos bolts. Next tier we have a chance to get a free chaos bolt every time we cast, which is also eliminated if you are playing GoDS. Not trying to convince you either way, but generally speaking I think there are more pros to unglyphed.

Yea after trying glyphed and unglyphed, i found unglpyhed was just more reliable and smooth gameplay. Depending on the encounter, having 20 seconds not only allows you to more easily cast CBs on high movement but also on aoe burst (operator), you can go into fire and brimstone and literally destroy everything and not feel "rushed" and so RNG dependent. Glyphed has it's place in theory but in actual progression...reliable and dependent dps is more important than potential and unreliable dps. Just my personal findings and opinion.

On another note, does anyone use destro for mythic beastlord? I was switching back and forth between destro and demo, found strengths from both but felt like destro was more controlled damage to literally everything in the room rather then demo aoe burst on adds/stacked spears.

[Gaidax]

Destro is kickass on Mythic Beastlord, depending on the needs. I am permanently assigned for spears and adds clearing, you basically rolling AoE Chaos Bolts, Shadowburns and spamming Chaos Bolts while swimming in Embers. I don't think any other class or spec is capable of this spear carnage.

All that frees up a lot of DPS for others to nuke the boss and mounts.

Of course, on the other hand, if I would not be on spears duty, I'd probably go Demo instead.

[Deleted]

Destro is kickass on Mythic Beastlord, depending on the needs. I am permanently assigned for spears and adds clearing, you basically rolling AoE Chaos Bolts, Shadowburns and spamming Chaos Bolts while swimming in Embers. I don't think any other class or spec is capable of this spear carnage.

All that frees up a lot of DPS for others to nuke the boss and mounts.

Of course, on the other hand, if I would not be on spears duty, I'd probably go Demo instead.

Don't you have a Shadow Priest?

[Turturin the Warlock]

Don't you have a Shadow Priest?

or a boomkin?

[MegaVolti]

Well, to be fair, Destro does gain a lot of priority target dps by sniping low HP spears with Havoc, Shadow Priests get lots of priority target dps by keeping SWP up on high HP spears while Boomkins would sacrifice single target damage on the boss in order to Starfall.
Shadow to bring spreads down and Destro to finish them off seems pretty perfect.

[Restitution]

Yea we had a shadow priest, fire mage, boomkin, and me for dealing with spears and mass aoe. I find destro is smooth on that fight but was just curious. The shadowburn spam is insane!!!! Time to start getting crit/mastery gear for mythic

[Werst]

The locks randomly shoot from midpack to top every time a beastlord add pack spawns. I run cata/syn demo like most but I can see destro having a role. Just not sure if the movement requirements late in the fight would cause you to be less of an asset as destro during the final burn phase compared to demo. No doubt you can do great to spears and destro surely gains dps from dotting spears (whereas aff gets nothing to its primary target). Demo gains as well so having doom on half a dozen spears that ticks even half the way through plus the chaoswave/HoG procs from corruption on multiple targets you should have MC procs out the wazoo and tons of DF. If the adds and spears aren't a problem then you could run whatever and just push boss damage. One of these weeks I may try destro for S&G. The thought of a chaosbolt set bonus proc on an AOE volley to the adds does give me a bit of a chub. Then again that takes luck, timing, and a cast time. Demo simply drops 3x+ chaoswaves on the adds instant cast while running from raid hazards. Destro can't take cata without losing CR so its a totally different build, gearing, and playstyle. Plus if you hold 1x CW until the adds are nearly dead you can sometimes snipe the killing blow thus refilling your DF bar so you can go nuts on the boss. CR destro also has the fastest resource generation so if you see a pack is spawning soon its easy to quick fill the embers so you can dump on the adds or whatever your job is based on needs of the comp.