Destro vs Affliction

[Dravidor]

So, im leveling up a lock atm. Im dual-specced Destro and Affliction and im completely hooked on Affliction. I was talking to a lock in my guild and he kept telling me to go give Destro a try and i couldnt do it... with Affliction im not really watching much besides a few dots, while with Destro ive got 20 million timers going off every 2 seconds. My questions are: How do yall keep up with all of the timers without going nuts or letting em fall off? And why would you use a much more complex rotation that does less damage?

[Deleted]

Destro used to be the best dps spec at the start of Cata. And some like it, even with the annoying hardcast Soul Fires. It has a few advantages in the form of almost no mana problems (thus no life tap need), Shadow Fury, Nether Ward + Protection, Shadow Burn for a quick finisher and of course the relative high burst on demand. If something needs to die in 10 seconds every minute or so, Destro is by far our best spec.
There is no real reason in speccing destro now, considering it's too low damage compared to Aff and even Demon. Unless you like playing the spec with the most buttons in a raid .
I have Destro as offspec for Ragnaros' adds, but I'm seriously considering going Demon next time and hope the Axe Toss stun is sufficient to compensate for the lack of Fury.

As for the timers and cooldowns, PowerAuras and ButtonTimers are key addons for me to play Destro to any decent degree. Others use ForteExorsist or some other timers addon. If you set them up properly Destro is very manageable. Spend some time on dummies trying out several to see which works best for you.
Oh you should also get a feel for the spell priority. If 2 timers will drop off at the same time, you should not even have to think but mash the correct button first.

[Deleted]

I'm a complete Destruction fangirl, but sadly, even though my Affliction skills are poor (or rather - it's not as intuitive for me as Destro), I've outdpsed myself on all of the firelands bosses so far, including Shannox which I thought was a great place for Destruction to play around with BoH.

So yeah, if you like Affli, stay Affli. Good for ya.