Table of Contents
Introduction
This thread is for theory crafting and for serious raiders who know their spec well enough to understand all the points in this thread. For those of you who don't, please refer to this guide before posting in this thread. For clarification purposes, here is a link to my armory: Brauhm
Raid Performance
In 4.3 Destruction makes a come-back through a few talent tweaks and a buff to Incinerate. This puts the DPS order as: Demonology > Destruction >= Affliction. The distance between Affliction and Destruction are so minute that RNG and player skill are more likely to affect your damage output. Destruction is the lowest damage on Multi-target fights. Destruction does have a utility if one specs into Aftermath or Shadowfury.
Talents
3/7/31.
Glyphs
Prime Glyphs:
Major Glyphs:
- Individual's Choice
- Individual's Choice
- Individual's Choice
Recommendations:
Minor Glyphs:
- Individual's Choice
- Individual's Choice
- Individual's Choice
Stats
Intellect:
1 Intellect provides 1 spellpower (before bonuses) and 0.00154% crit, as well as 17.53 mana.
Hit Rating:
102.45 hit rating gives 1% to hit with spells. Until Hit Cap (17% or 1742 Rating). Once the Cap has been reached, Hit becomes useless.
Haste Rating:
128.05 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. Haste rating scales multiplicatively with other sources of haste - and haste cannot reduce the duration of the global cooldown below 1.0 second.
Critical Strike Rating:
179.28 crit rating gives 1% to crit. With a Burning Shadowspirit Diamond, crits will do 2.06 times the damage of normal hits.
Mastery Rating:
179.28 mastery provides a 1.35% increase to all fire damage we do. As 90%+ of our damage comes from fire spells, mastery is not a bad stat, however, the increase per point is low enough that we will not prioritise mastery over crit or haste until much higher gear levels.
Stat Priorities:
Below ~384: Int >> Hit (to cap) > Haste > Crit > Mastery
Above ~384: Int >> Hit (to cap) > Haste > Crit = Mastery
At ~37% haste raid buffed: Int >> Hit (to cap) > Mastery < Crit = Haste
Haste becomes devalued once your backdraft forces your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt under a 1 second GCD, At that point, any extra haste will no longer effect any backdrafted spells, and since 3/4 of your Incinerates/Chaos Bolts are backdrafted, this is a substantial loss of haste value.
Dark Intent
Dark Intent is a beautiful haste bonus that warlocks get at level 85. It gives you and the target 3% spell haste and you share periodic damage (or healing) bonuses depending on your periodic damage critical strikes. Basically, every time you crit with Immolate/corruption/burning embers/bane of doom your friend will receive 1% addition periodic damage or healing, stacking up to 3 times. You, however, gain 3% increased periodic damage, which is why you must make sure that dark intent is on a valuable target.
Dark Intent is your buff first, before its someone else's, its like a druid's innervate, its for him first, then someone else if they need it. You should always give it to someone who will proc it often enough for a full uptime, but you should also take in the raids issues. If your resto druid is just a little off of being where he should be for healing, give it to him. If you find yourself wiping at 2% on heroic rag, make sure a DPS has it.
The order that I would advise giving Dark Intent to is as follows:
Shadow Priest/Restoration Druid
Boomkin
Fire Mage
Frost Mage
Feral Druid
Restoration Shaman
Survival Hunter
If you, for some reason, do not have any of those in your party, then I'd suggest:
Assassination Rogue
Unholy DK
Frost DK
Holy Priest
Elemental Shaman
Haste and its way of being awesome:
Haste stacks multiplicatively with itself to calculate how much haste you'll have with buffs, you simply take your haste rating, convert it into spell haste, then turn that into an absolute percent (I.E 1280 is 10% haste, but that's 110% absolute haste, or how much haste you really have) After that multiply it by your other sources of haste. So 110% * 105% (wrath) * 103% (dark intent) = 119% total haste or 19% spell haste fully raid buffed. These effects stack higher and higher as you gain more haste rating, here you'll notice we've only gained 1% additional spell haste, but if we have 30% haste rating and blood lust, the effect scales much much higher. 130% *130% *105% *103% = 183%. That's a 15% increase in haste just from it stacking.
Formula: ((dark intent absolute haste) * (wrath absolute haste) * (your absolute spell haste) * (external absolute haste effects)) = total haste.
Note: Its usually easier to convert the percents to decimals (110% haste is 1.1, 130% haste is 1.3, etc) then multiply.
Doomguard and Infernal
The Doomguard and Infernal are very powerful summons that we can do once every 10 minutes (6 in 4.3 with two piece). On a heavy AoE fight its best to use the Infernal, due to his powerful Immolation Aura that lasts his enture duration, for single target, its best to use the Doomguard, due to his very powerful nukage.
You should NEVER use a Doomguard or Infernal without almost full buffs, they scaled tremendously with spell power and intellect. (Note, neither scale with %damage or %haste or %critical strike chance increases, thought they do scale from %spell power/%intellect or buffs that grant rating instead of a percent. (So they won't gain damage with bloodlust but a proc from a haste trinket that grants 2000 haste raiting, they will) Thus, the best time to use either creature is to summon him at the beginning of each fight, usually with a Volcanic Potion effect.
The Doomguard is a very powerful cooldown, it can single target increase your damage but as much as 3k (10k if you're demo and the fight isn't too long). The Infernal is very useful on fights like Rhyolith and can help take out the (H:Mode) Obsidians or just the Fragments if you're having trouble.
Gems
As a general rule of thumb, you only want to match sockets when the bonus is 20 int+ or 30 of any secondary stat+. However, that's not always the case. You should be sure that you calculate your stat weights and then decide if the int that you are losing is worth the secondary stat that you are gaining.
Meta:[Burning Shadowspirit Diamond]
Red: [Brilliant Inferno Ruby]
Yellow:[Reckless Ember Topaz]
Blue: [Veiled Demonseye]
Enchants:
Head: [Arcanum of Hyjal] - Guardians of Hyjal revered
Shoulders:[Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone] - Therazane exalted
Back:[Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect]
Chest :[Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats]
Wrists:[Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect]
Gloves:[Enchant Gloves - Haste]** / [Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery]
Legs:[Powerful Enchanted Spellthread]
Boots :[Enchant Boots - Lavawalker] / [Enchant Boots - Precision] / [Enchant Boots - Haste]
Belt:[Ebonsteel Belt Buckle]
Weapon:[Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent]
Offhand:[Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect]
**Which you use will depend on how close you are to a haste threshold for an additional tick of Immolate. If the enchant is stopping you from getting a Immolate tick, then use haste, if you are just above a new tick and can afford to lose the haste, go for mastery. This is at ~384ilevel or above.
*
Spell Rotation
Destruction does not have a "rotation" but instead a priority list, this changes under Bloodlust.
Non-bloodlust:
Improved Soul Fire (Keep this buff up!)
Demon Soul
Immolate
Conflagrate
Bane of Doom
Corruption
Shadowburn (Sub 20% HP)
Shadowflame
Soul Fire (Empowered Imp)
Chaos Bolt
Incinerate
Bloodlusted:
Improved Soul Fire (Keep this buff up!)
Demon Soul
Immolate
Conflagrate
Bane of Doom
Corruption
Shadowflame
Soul Fire (Empowered Imp)
Shadowburn (Sub 20% HP)
Incinerate (backdraft)
Chaos Bolt
Incinerate
Chaos Bolt (backdraft)
in 4.3 we will be given our soul shards back when we soul burn and an bonus to spell power. You DO want to use this on cooldown, while it is nice to time it with haste procs (if you're watching your trinket cooldowns and it comes up in a second, I'd wait) its not worth it to wait for demon soul if the time exceeds 10 seconds.
Bane of Havoc:
Bane of Havoc is a powerful spell that can make two target fights a joke. Don't forget to apply Curse of Elements to the Bane of Havoc target since Bane of Havoc double dips into debuffs.
On fights with many adds, its proper to apply Bane of Havoc to the boss and multi-dot the adds with Bane of Agony, Immolate, and Corruption, then rotation Conflagrate, Incinerate, and Chaos Bolt. This should evenly distribute the damage and allow you do deal insane cleave damage to the boss.
Bane of Havoc: Boss Encounter Mechanics
Shannox-N: Use Bane of Havoc on Riplimb if you're on Rageface and vice versa. When you swap to the other dog you should apply it to Shannox.
Shannox-H: Use Bane of Havoc on Shannox if you are on Rageface Duty.
Beth'tilac-N/H: Throw Bane of Havoc to start the encounter, then stay below and DPS the adds and watch as her health drop.
Alyzrazor N/H: If you're not flying, toss it on her at the beginning before you begin add duty. If you are flying, feel free to dip down a bit and toss one on an add, it'll help your tanks out.
Rhyolith N/H: If your melee dps are comfortable with damage, you can apply Bane of Havoc to one leg as you dps the adds. This cleave will make Rhyolith harder to turn.
Baleroc N/H: There are no adds.
Majordomo Staghelm N/H: Toss a Bane of Havoc on the Boss when he spawns the Flaming Kitties and dps them down, assuming they'll be alive for more than 5 seconds (usually a 0707 strat) or if your melee dps (such as my group) can't handle the kitties alone, be sure that you'll be doing enough damage to cleave more dps over than Bane of Doom will do, or its not an increase. (Personally, I can cleave bane of doom's tick in 66% of the time.
Ragnaros-N: Toss a Bane of Havoc on a Scion when going into third phase as you dps the adds down.
FAQ:
Why does Incinerate take precedence over Chaos Bolt when lusted?
At the haste rating and levels you have in 4.3 gear you have a situation where your Chaos Bolt falls below a one second gcd, but Incinerate does not. The increased damage to Incinerates bonus damage when hitting a target effected by Immolate outdoes the damage that Chaos bolt does. In addition, with Soul Fire's bonus to damage, it's a viable filler on fights like Alysrazor.
Why 37% haste?
This is a theoretical number and is subject to change depending on gear. At this point in haste you're getting extremely low addition damage simply because haste is effecting only a few spells. At this point is much better to go for crit/mastery because they still effect all spells. To balance this I'd recommend getting as much crit/mastery gear as possible while keeping the total haste on your gear (without reforges) somewhere around 25%, that way when reforging into haste (at that point haste isn't devalued) you'll be able to maintain a good hold on your gear, you can reforge more into crit/mastery if you need too or you can reforge into haste if you need to. Flexibility will provide a much easier and solid raiding experience then just stacking one stat, be sure to sim your character if you ever are in doubt.
If we can get to 50% haste, should we?
Personally? No. The haste is so devalued at that point that the mastery/crit that you could have instead is much much more valuable then the additional tick in Immolate. You should sim your gear to check however, its different for everyone depending on exactly what pieces they have.
Do burning embers scale from haste?
No.
What haste thresholds are most important?
Immolate, by far, while corruption thresholds give you a ~slight damage boost, Immolate gives a rather significant one because it increases the damage that conflagrate does.
At 37% haste, should I stack mastery and crit evenly? or should I balance them?
For that you should really be using simcraft to check your stat weights, because its personal for each person, down to their own unique gems. For me, I'll be stacking crit because that means more mana feed from my imp, however, mastery is just as viable and at about 30% crit, I'll most likely swap to stacking mastery, but that's me personally.
How do I know you know what you're talking about?
My character can be found here. I have experiences raiding in all three specs and know them all inside and out.
Felflame
Felflame is almost useless, but there are mechanics in which Felflame is actually useful. They are few and far between but this section will cover when and where to use Fel Flame.
1. When moving and you don't need mana from life tap and none of your DoTs need to be refreshed.
2. If you've casted Immolate >= 6 seconds ago and you've received a significant increase to spellpower/crit/mastery/haste. (I.E power torrent, 6+ stacks of Necromantic Focus, Bloodlust, T12 4pc procs.)
3. You are moving. Immolate will fall off in 2 seconds, conflagrate comes off cd in one second, and you will not stop moving for another 3 seconds. In this case you should cast Felflame, Conflagrate, Felflame and continue dpsing as normal.
BiS List: (Incomplete until proc rate/chances are determined)
Weapon:Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest or Ti'tahk, the Steps of Time
Head: Hood of the Faceless Shroud
Chest: Robes of the Faceless Shroud
Gloves: Gloves of Liquid Smoke
Legs: Leggings of the Faceless Shroud
Shoulders: Mantle of the Faceless Shroud
Wrists: Bracers of the Banished
Boots: Janglespur Jackboots
Neck: Opal of the Secret Order
Cloak: Nanoprecise Cape
Ring 1: Ring of the Riven
Ring 2: Seal of the Grand Architect
Trinket 1: Will of Unbinding
Trinket 2: Insignia of the Corrupted Mind
Wand: Finger of Zon'ozz
Credits and Thanks
(Note: This guide is incomplete, it will be updated as more information is released for 4.3, if you see anything you think should be added to the guide, please post it below, also please point out any errors and mistakes.)
This entire guide was put together by me, Brauhm, in addition to using some mathematical information from this guide. You may not repost this guide without a link directly to this one and stating the author. You may repost this information and edit it as you please as long as you state which edits are yours. (I don't want you making me look like an idiot by mistake. xD)
A special thanks to everyone who's posted in this thread and a thanks to Blizzard and Mmo-champion for giving us a great make experience.