Destruction in the cataclysm: a pve guide.
HEY THERE! Ever wanted to be the top dps in your raid? I did, But then i found out all the bugs molten put into our beloved warlocks! Well, in this guide will be everything you need to start dealing some decent damage with Destruction, and how to counter the class bugs.
Table of contents:
-Intro
-Talents
-Glyphs
-Stats/reforging
-Gems
-enchants
-spells
-rotation
-Molten Bugs
-conclusion
[Intro]
In the face of demonic power, most heroes see death. Warlocks see only opportunity. Dominance is their aim, and they have found a path to it in the dark arts. These voracious spellcasters summon demonic minions to fight beside them. At first, they command only the service of imps, but as a warlock’s knowledge grows, seductive succubi, loyal voidwalkers, and horrific felhunters join the dark sorcerer’s ranks to wreak havoc on anyone who stands in their master’s way.
ps. warlocks are currently the lowest dps in molten wow because people think it's completely bugged and can't be played. I WILL PROVE YOU AND EVERYONE WRONG I SWEAR!
[Talents]
Destruction talents are pretty straight up, check it out.
http://imgur.com/ygwuDHx
[Glyphs]
http://imgur.com/IPc1uS5
Almost all warlock glyphs are ****, but these ones work best together, and seem to increase the overall damage output.
[Stats/Reforging]
As a Destruction Warlock, you will need the following stats on your gear;
Intellect>Spell hit(17%)>Haste(soft cap:2681)>Crit>Mastery>Moar haste is good! But the crit cap is 100% so don't haste.
[Gems]
Meta: Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond
Epic:
-Red: Brilliant Queen's Garnet
-Yellow: (orange)Reckless Lava Coral
-Blue: (purple)Veiled Shadow Spinel
Blue:
-Red: Brilliant Inferno Ruby
-Yellow: Reckless Ember Topaz
-Blue: Veiled Demonseye
[Enchants]
Head | 60 Int/35 crit | - Guardians of Hyjal revered
Shoulders | 50 Int/25 haste | - Therazane exalted OR get the inscription enchant
Back | 50 Int | OR the intellect proc from Tailoring
Chest | 20 stats |
Wrists | 50 Int |
Gloves | 50 haste/65 mastery |
Legs | 95 Int/80 Stam |
Boots | Run speed/35 mastery or 50 hit or 50 haste |
Belt | Extra socket | [red gem]
Weapon | 500 Int Proc | [Power Torrent]
Offhand | 40 Int | [/TABLE]
[Spells]
-Bane of Havoc: Banes the target for 5 min, causing 15% of all damage done by the Warlock to other targets to also be dealt to the baned target. DESTRO LOCKS CAN SPELL CLEAVE WTF! You will notice a substantial dps increase on fights with 2 targets like Warmaster and Gonorrhea :> see wt i dd ther??
-Soul Fire: Your biggest nuke spell. Also applies Improved Soul Fire buff which increases spell power. Always keep this up.
-Chaos Bolt: sends a bolt of chaotic fire at the enemy, dealing 836 to 1061 Fire damage. Chaos Bolt cannot be resisted, and pierces through all absorption effects. This is OP as ****, but it has a Spell Power Coefficient problem in molten. Still use it on CD.
-Conflagrate:
Instantly deals fire damage equal to 60% of your Immolate's periodic damage on the target. This should tell you to always have Immolate up for it's dot.
-Incinerate: Your main filler spell.
-Immolate: Burns the target for Fire damage and leaves a DoT. ALWAYS keep this up.
-Bane of Agony: this dot only deals shadow damage, which unlike affliction, is not buffed through our mastery (+fire damage) so it's pretty useless. Use it on trash mobs if they're not gonna live 15 seconds.
Bane of Doom A dot for 1 min duration and it ticks at after 15 second you apply (45th second, 30th second, 15th second and 0th second) so it ticks 4 times and you should use this dot on a target which will survive long enough or to boss. Also it has a 20% chance to summon little demon guardians to deals damage to target. (REMEMBER THIS WITH THE CD BUG PART)
-Corruption: Corrupts the target for 19 second. You should always keep this dot on your target.
Dots are a marginal increase dps increase for Destruction spec, but they're still an increase. So keep them up.
Useful cd's
Demon Soul: increases crit by 30% if you're using the imp.
Soul Harvest It gives you soul shard and small amount of heal.
Dark Intent
You and your target link together and increases both of your haste by 3%. If you or other person do a critical periodic damage or healing over time, you will get 3% and other person will get 1% haste buff and it stacks to 3. So here is a chart which shows the priority of di rankings on other classes :
Dps: Healers:
1) Shadow Priest-----1) Resto Druid
2) Fire Mage----------2) Holy Priest
3) Balance Druid-----3)Resto Shaman
4) Arcane Mage------4) Disc Priest
5) Feral Druid--------5) Holy Paladin
Although this is the dark intent ranking for who price it most, I found that in molten balance Druids and resto shamans proc it more than others. Idk if it's fixed or not but yeah
[Rotation]
ok so this may sound very complicated, but i will try to be very detailed. Don't get confused!
Before anything you need combat readiness. You should have your imp up, fel armor, soul link, dark intent, and 3 soul shards. once you have the following, you will follow this spell priority:
Soul Fire | Improved Soul Fire
Soulburn | T13 4pc Set Bonus
Demon Soul | -
Immolate | -
Conflagrate | -
Bane of Doom | If target will be alive atleast 15sec
Corruption | -
Shadowburn | Target HP <20%
Shadowflame | Melee Range
Soul Fire | Empowered Imp
Chaos Bolt | Unless under haste effects
Incinerate |
My personal raid boss rotation is a little something like:
Soulburn>Curse of the Elements>Soul Fire>Immolate>Corruption>Bane of Doom>Trinket+demon soul>Summon Doomguard>Chaos bolt>Conflagrate>x3 Incinerate> rinse and repeat.
Refresh improved soul fire along with your dots, use incinerate as a filler, always have conflag and chaos bolt on cd, (use chaos bolt first) and never use chaos bolt under bl/tw/hero effects. Damage becomes marginal then and it's better if you refresh dots and keep improved soul fire and spam incinerate.
you will use chaos bolt before conflag because Conflag gives the next 3 casts of incinerate or chaos bolt a reduced cast time. Chaos bolt should be under the gcd, so just finish the stacks on incinerate.
AOE: your aoe as destro is absolute ****. Just afk or something, but if you really wanna try, go ahead and multidot everything using immolate, curse of elements and corruption. Have bane of havoc on the target with most health, and bane of doom on your main target. You should be able to judge using name of doom or agony depending on the length of the fight. Doom ticks 4 times every 15 seconds, so use agony if the mob is gonna die before 15 seconds.
[Molten Bugs]
Knowing lol10, not everything works as expected. Warlocks may be the most bugged class, buuuuut there are only a few bugs that affect gameplay. The main bugs are Dot clipping, Snapshotting, and Pet damage.
1) Dot clipping: your dots do not become longer if you refresh them before the duration ends.
Example: If you have 0.1 seconds left on corruption, and you refresh it, you lose the last tick.
How it should work: Corruption will add 0.1 seconds to its original duration once refreshed, thus not losing any ticks.
2) Snapshotting: Your dots should take a snapshot of your current buffs and stats the instant they are applied. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to molten.
Example: before applying corruption, use Demon soul + trinket. Your corruption damage will increase according to your increased stats due to cooldowns. This doesn't work here. If you pop cooldowns in the middle of a dot, the dot will benefit from the cooldown while it's active.
Bane of doom is a great explanation to this. As you know, Demon soul is 18 seconds long, and most on-use trinkets have 15 second long procs. Bane of doom ticks pretty fkn hard every 15 seconds at 45, 30, 15, 0 seconds. The best way to encounter this is to pop Demon soul+Trinket at exactly 45 seconds of Bane of Doom. This way, your 1st and 2nd dots will be affected by your cooldowns.
3) Pets: Your demon pets in molten don't inherit your stats properly. Their spell damage is ****. They can miss, even if you're hit capped. Their spells don't scale with your spell power. Their intellect and stamina doesn't scale properly with yours. They don't inherit your resilience (yeah 1shot in pvp). they are just generally ****ed.
[Conclusion]
I really hope this guide made you a better destro lock, and i hope i covered everything needed to be discussed. If you would like anything added, please comment.
Destro locks are really HELLA OPIE OP AS ****, and it's a shame no one plays them. I hope to see more people rolling this spec for fun.
ps. this spec is not viable in dragon soul. you will to be carried unless you absolutely are certain of your damage. Play it for fun, as it is one of the most fun specs in 4.3 and all of wow, but don't expect a permanent raid spot if you're rolling destro. or any warlock spec.
