MoP: Destruction Warlock Guide and First Week Gear List

[Grubjuice]

People tend to ignore the fact that scale factors are dynamic, as you increase one stat in favor of another the scaling factor of all secondary stats shift.

Use simcraft on your own character to find your own scaling factors for the gear you are wearing, then reforge based on those results and sim it again and you will see the scaling factors shift in response.

[EvreliaGaming]

That's not the only thing he changed : "reworking embers to be saved for Havoc \ Execute"

Got a link to this?

[Deleted]

Yup : http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t130019-...9/#post2207983

[Biiru]

I must be doing something wrong. Yesterday I simulated my destruction warlock simcraft said Crit > Haste > Mastery, few hours after this I changed my bracer and simulated again and it was Haste > Crit > Mastery. Today with same gear it is Crit > Mastery > Haste. I'm really confused cuz every guide I read shows I shoud priorize mastery.

[Szemere]

I must be doing something wrong. Yesterday I simulated my destruction warlock simcraft said Crit > Haste > Mastery, few hours after this I changed my bracer and simulated again and it was Haste > Crit > Mastery. Today with same gear it is Crit > Mastery > Haste. I'm really confused cuz every guide I read shows I shoud priorize mastery.

Stat prio can change depending on which Grimoire you use, and you should also make sure you have the latest version of simcraft, with a decent number of iterations (1000 or 100 is most likely a bit too low, if haste and crit were really close together, doing more iterations could make the difference of one getting ahead of the other).

Also, did you reforge in between your last 2 sims? Those reforges might increase the value of other stats (for example, crit increases the damage and frequency of Chaos Bolt by 1-100%, whereas Haste only increases the frequency of it, and Mastery increases the damage straight up, and once you get more of one, a single rating of the other might become worth more than before due to these effects increasing eachother), so it's always wise to just reforge slightly toward what the sim says, sim again and again and again between reforges, and stop reforging mastery to haste when they get really close in value for example.

[Deleted]

Anyway Simcraft is giving you reforges for Feng & Spirit Kings in normal mode, on the other encounters the scale factors would be totally different.

[Deleted]

GoSac is a MUST, only if you need to move a lot I would change it for Observer...

If not GoSac...

I still believe hit cap > crit > mastery

...

[Deleted]

i dont read all pages now but the 5.1 changes changes much fpr destro pve? i hope so im so bored of affliction :/

[Szemere]

i dont read all pages now but the 5.1 changes changes much fpr destro pve? i hope so im so bored of affliction :/

Apart from an incoming Chaos Bolt nerf due to it being too good in arena (lol), it is mainly getting buffs. So it all depends on what that Chaos Bolt nerf is, and if it affects PvE (anything not specifying that it's only vs players or anything is gonna be majorly bad basically)

I doubt the new spell is actively going to be used in PvE (re-applying a weak-ass DoT on stuff and a knockback after 4 seconds), so it's mainly the Conflag giving Embers that's gonna majorly improve AE (due to lack of flight-time compared to Incinerate) and slightly improve single-target (cause hey, more embers), but with not following Affliction notes, I have no clue whether that's gonna bridge the 10%ish gap between the specs.

[Grizelda]

A little concerned about Chaosbolts DoTs over riding one another for a dps loss. Would be nice if each Chaosbolt added it's own independent DoT, so that 3 fast (lol) CBs resulted in 3 ticking DoTs. And it really should be undispellable.

Or they could just leave it the fuck alone but...whatev.

[Szemere]

A little concerned about Chaosbolts DoTs over riding one another for a dps loss. Would be nice if each Chaosbolt added it's own independent DoT, so that 3 fast (lol) CBs resulted in 3 ticking DoTs. And it really should be undispellable.

Or they could just leave it the fuck alone but...whatev.

Chaos Bolt DoTs? Where did you hear about that? (I sure as hell haven't heard about it yet).

Also, if that's true, and that would kill casting 4 Chaos Bolts in a Dark Soul (talking IF, don't know how the DoT would work obv), I know I'm gonna be pretty pissed, cause that's going to be a considerable PvE nerf.

[Deleted]

The 25% bonus from GoSac on CB is now a 3-sec DoT.

[Medieve]

As long as it doesn't "munch" like Ignite did, I could care less. I don't think it will, it'll probably update and reapply with no threshold cap, since at most we're getting 4 off, and there's a very good chance the DoT will finish before the next CB lands. I can see it being a small issue on fights where we have to swap targets, but I don't see it being that huge, since it's looking like 1 tick per second for 3 seconds, so in most cases we'll lose a tick at most. We might have to plan better when some windows are closing, but it shouldn't be devistating. What I'm more curious about is if there's a possibility of us stacking enough haste for an extra tick, like we can do with many other DoT's.

I'm also under the impression it is best to build up 3.8/9 embers before using DS+trink/everything else rather than using DS/trink/pot prepull and precasting the first CB. Is one way surely better than the other? I haven't been able to test consistently lately, so I'm relying on your collective wisdom .

[Szemere]

As long as it doesn't "munch" like Ignite did, I could care less. I don't think it will, it'll probably update and reapply with no threshold cap, since at most we're getting 4 off, and there's a very good chance the DoT will finish before the next CB lands. I can see it being a small issue on fights where we have to swap targets, but I don't see it being that huge, since it's looking like 1 tick per second for 3 seconds, so in most cases we'll lose a tick at most. We might have to plan better when some windows are closing, but it shouldn't be devistating. What I'm more curious about is if there's a possibility of us stacking enough haste for an extra tick, like we can do with many other DoT's.

I'm also under the impression it is best to build up 3.8/9 embers before using DS+trink/everything else rather than using DS/trink/pot prepull and precasting the first CB. Is one way surely better than the other? I haven't been able to test consistently lately, so I'm relying on your collective wisdom .

Ignite only "munched" when 2 spells landed at the same time, when you for example could fire off an instant pyro right after a casted fireball. If they would both crit, it would only count one of the 2 for ignite or something like that.

About the second part: My Chaos Bolts on pull with Skull Banner up with Sac, could deal 750k crits, in Affliction reforges (mastery haste crit instead of mastery crit haste, which might have gotten bigger chaos bolts). Nowhere else in a fight do I notice crits of this size, thus I think it's safe to say that getting 2 Chaos Bolts in on your pot and dark soul and ICD's is more than worth it. Also, getting in the know of when Skull Banner is coming up is great too, I can usually get off 2 Chaos Bolts during most banners, although due to no communication at all, this can be hard (most warriors use it like a personal DPS cooldown rather than a big raid cooldown, like lust and stormlash)

[Medieve]

Ignite only "munched" when 2 spells landed at the same time, when you for example could fire off an instant pyro right after a casted fireball. If they would both crit, it would only count one of the 2 for ignite or something like that.

About the second part: My Chaos Bolts on pull with Skull Banner up with Sac, could deal 750k crits, in Affliction reforges (mastery haste crit instead of mastery crit haste, which might have gotten bigger chaos bolts). Nowhere else in a fight do I notice crits of this size, thus I think it's safe to say that getting 2 Chaos Bolts in on your pot and dark soul and ICD's is more than worth it. Also, getting in the know of when Skull Banner is coming up is great too, I can usually get off 2 Chaos Bolts during most banners, although due to no communication at all, this can be hard (most warriors use it like a personal DPS cooldown rather than a big raid cooldown, like lust and stormlash)

By "munched" I simply meant damage wasn't calculated properly, nothing more. I didn't mean to imply that the exact scenario would happen with CB. I apologize for being unclear.

I also run with Aff reforge and run Destro with Sac, since it allows me to be more flexible from boss to boss with less downtime reforging. It makes sense in your scenario, and is pretty close to what I try to do. I try to cap my haste at 3050 and dump the rest of my secondaries into mastery > crit where possible, but I don't think it'd be much of a difference based on what little secondaries there are left that are moveable after capping hit. Thanks for your response! I do appreciate it greatly .

[Grubjuice]

considering that Ignite, Explosive Shot, Blackout Kick, and Devouring plague all roll the dot now i think Chaos Bolt DoTs will also roll but you can hardly cast chaos bolt fast enough to clip 3 seconds of dot anyway. since even with blood lust it's a two second cast.

[Brusalk]

considering that Ignite, Explosive Shot, Blackout Kick, and Devouring plague all roll the dot now i think Chaos Bolt DoTs will also roll but you can hardly cast chaos bolt fast enough to clip 3 seconds of dot anyway. since even with blood lust it's a two second cast.

Standing on the boss + 2 second cast means your second cast hits the boss before the DoTs done.

[Medieve]

Standing on the boss + 2 second cast means your second cast hits the boss before the DoTs done.

I don't think it's worth getting bogged down in this rather minor detail. I'm actually sorry I brought it up. I was just using it as a way to introduce the topic and explore how the DoT portion might, but probably wouldn't be a problem. If proper rollover doesn't happen, it'll be a fairly substantial nerf for GoSac/mastery and Destro doesn't warrant a nerf. The aim is to nerf overall burst, not DPS. If it doesn't turn out that way, we'll bomb the bug report forum until its fixed or we get told we're too high. Either way, I think I've detracted the discussion far enough. Something that would be a bit more worthwhile to discuss would be bosses or mechanics that specifically prevent us from casting CB, or would be very detrimental with the DoT attached to it.

[Deleted]

Well for example on Elegon's sparks it will be hard to Havoc+CB and have all the ticks before they die/reach the pillar.

[Brusalk]

I don't think it's worth getting bogged down in this rather minor detail. I'm actually sorry I brought it up. I was just using it as a way to introduce the topic and explore how the DoT portion might, but probably wouldn't be a problem. If proper rollover doesn't happen, it'll be a fairly substantial nerf for GoSac/mastery and Destro doesn't warrant a nerf. The aim is to nerf overall burst, not DPS. If it doesn't turn out that way, we'll bomb the bug report forum until its fixed or we get told we're too high. Either way, I think I've detracted the discussion far enough. Something that would be a bit more worthwhile to discuss would be bosses or mechanics that specifically prevent us from casting CB, or would be very detrimental with the DoT attached to it.

I understand, but you were making it seem as if it was a non-issue which it is an issue. There's no reason to wait to bomb them with questions about how it works and how it should be fixed until it's an actual live problem. That's the whole point of the PTR. If it IS an issue, then we tell them now so they fix it before it does go live.


As for boss mechanics, Elegon sparks is one. Another type of mechanic which could be a problem would be like how in BoT there was the trash that had to be hit by a certain threshold of damage. If using sac would've let us get to that threshold, and instead the DoT doesn't, then there's another problem with the change.