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Kilydan

[MoP] 5.4 Destruction PvE Guide

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Destru Guide:
i made this guide for players in guilds i used to be in, but i'll release it for everyone now because, why not? if something is not clear yet plz ask it below so i can update/answer it i understand its alot and i tried my best and i still think something is missing!

i will look if i can make a demonology pve guide on how i like to play the spec and how i deal with the class etc. but that might need some time because demonology is one of the more complicated specs to play its not as organized as my affliction guide

 

destruction guide: (you are looking at it)
affliction guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/40013-affliction-warlock-pve-guide
demonology guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/41704-demonology-warlock-pve-guide/

*note! i'm not a pro retail player, i'm speaking about my own experiences which where comfortable for me and which worked out for me.*

i will go trough the following things in this guide:

1. all classes 1 by 1
2. stat priority
3. posible reforge/gem tips
4. rotations (both AoE and single target)
5. macro's i like to use
6. enchanting/glyphs

lets go


Destruction.

right now the best way to go single target wise

 

priority:

Spoiler

hitcap (15% (wait till the spell caster fix)) > int > mastery > crit=haste

you want to stack the hell out of mastery because it is the best way to improve your damage AFTER intellect. critical hit chance and haste rating does only affect your damage in a small way, it isn't worth stacking it.

 

reforge/gems:

Spoiler

always aim for the 15% hitcap at least, you cna use expertise reforging to achieve easy hitcaps (1 expertise counts towards 2 hit)
after the hitcap try to reforge everything to mastery if you have a hit overcap, if you lack on hit reforge haste/crit to hit rating, if you have items with haste+crit (wouldn't recommend it, but it might in some cases be better) reforge one of these 2 stats which one you think you don't want to have into mastery so you keep having the mastery as high as possible.

a Great addon i can recommand for reforging is ReForge Lite. it will try to min-max your reforge so you will stay as close as possible to the 15% hitcap and thus giving the rest into your main stat to gain the most benefit from it!

(choose the correct version ofc)
download link: http://www.wowace.com/addons/reforgelite/files/

 

rotations single target:

Spoiler

for single target i like to pre-cast a incinerate which will hit when the boss will be pulled, immediately cast curse of the elements to gain the benefit of the curse while your incinerate is still traveling, then cast a immolate and 2x conflagrate, you will have 6x the backdraft proc cast a couple of incinerates to let your trinket proc and then go(mostly in the very start of the raid everyone is bursting, so i have the most use of my burst together with other bursts) and then cast 2x a chaos bolt from the embers you have build up. then for the rest of the encounter > just make sure you have immolate up on the target at all time, and spam incinerate > DONT build up 4 embers then consuming and repeat for the rest of the fight, this might even lose in dps because you could miss on a double chaos bolt (havoc on add) or you could lose dps because you didn't use chaos bolt on some strong procs you might have meanwhile trying to build up embers. i like to use chaos bolt only together with one of my trinket/enchant procs or together with my cooldowns (or even better combined)
as soon as your target goes below 20% hp don't cast chaos bolt anymore and use shadowburn instead, it might have a lower damage if it doesnt crit, but does deal more damage when it crits + it is an instant cast which over time will give your the small dps improvement

 

rotation AoE:

Spoiler


do NOT use this in boss fights unless its a very heavy aoe boss fight which you doesnt meet very often!

try to keep an uptime on rain of fire at ALL time because it is ONE of your main damage of AoE, im saying *one of your main damage* because 90% of the destruction warlock uses this spell as only AoE ability.

after you done rain of fire spam fire and brimstone + incinerate/conflagrate till rain of fire nearly loses it duration, then refresh and repeat (i will make a fire and brimstone macro/explanation in the next section)

when the targets drop below 20% then i consider using shadowburn over fire and brimstone + incinerate/conflagrate becouse when you cast a spell and the targets dies before you could finish your cast you would have lost dps because it interupted the cast, use shadowburn + rain of fire for the ensured dps

 

Usefull Macro's:

Spoiler

fire and brimstone:
/cast Fire and Brimstone
/cast Incinerate

(*little tip: there is currently a small bug where you can use a fire and brimstone empowered conflagrate directly after you casted a incinerate > when you pressed the macro just spam conflagrate aswell, you will have 2 fire and brimstone affected spells casted on all the enemy targets

shadowburn:
#showtooltip shadowburn
/stopcasting
/cast Shadowburn

what this macro does is interupting your current cast if you are not sure if you will finish the cast and cast a shadowburn, this interrupts it and uses shadowburn, in most situations casting a shadowburn is more effective then your current cast

havoc:

#showtooltip havoc
/cast [target=focus] havoc

does does cast a havoc on your focus, i take my off-target as focus, use this button and use incinerate/chaosbolt w/e is needed in my case (building or spending embers)

 

enchants and glyphs

Spoiler

something im not a huge fan of is telling other players what they NEED to do like its the only way to go > for example taking intellect or hit on your cape, it just really depends on if you are hit capped or not, just follow the stat priorities on picking up enchants, for glyphs just take what ever you like, there is not a single glyph in destruction that greatly improves your dps, only 1 i rly prefer to take which is:http://www.wowhead.com/item=42464 for clearing small packs of mobs/thresh the rest is just something you like to have, myself i like to take the curse of elements glyphed and other 2 major glyphs for survivabilty for example health stone + siphon soul (if im correct, the one who heals 0.5% of your immolate dmg, just a small way of sustaining yourself)

 

Edited by Kilydan

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Nice guide ^^

BTW why whould someone use focus/stopcasting macros for PvE? :D

Just open an other topic for macros only :P

Edited by Imi.

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stop casting on my shadowburn is because you might want to kill of a target that dies rly quick, if you have to finish your cast you might miss the shaduwburn which results in 1 ember loss which you dont want, since embers are really powerfull for destruction warlocks to deal damage or to heal up yourself in some scenario's :)

for the focus macro: easy answer: you have adds... maybe sometimes more important then the boss itself, but you also want to keep track of both targets, a great example is sha of fear

you want to kill off the adds at the side, and still watches the boss his energy which you can easily do if you have the boss on focus, if you want to put out some extra dps to the boss while not losing any dps on the adds, you can easily use a focus macro to use a havoc for example so you can damage the add and the boss at the same time, pushing your dps higher. this way you are not only increasing your overal dmg output on the adds and the boss together but you are also keeping track of his energy bar

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I believe for the Havoc macro you need [target=mouseover] instead of [target=focus] but IDK bc your description of it is a bit hard to read.

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There are many ways to make a macro. And there is no "right or wrong" macro (unless it doesn't work) But if you prefer a mouse over macro you can indeed use [target=mouseover] (which i recently switched to aswell) but if you like to have a focus macro you can easily use [target=focus] aswell. It's about personal preference 

I've to admit that this guide is not the best written guide you will see. Some mistakes here and there etc. That's because i once made it for a guild i had and basicly copy pasted it and later on made my affli/demo guide aswell. I'm also not able to edit my post to clean it up abit. But it should all still be fine i hope :)

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I've read through your PvE guides and they've been quite helpful. I don't typically play PvE as I've always thought of it to be less satisfying than PvP but your guides sound convincing enough to give it a try. It's also been very helpful as I've been able to somewhat execute a "rotation" for maximum DPS in a PvP environment upon players between the situational actions/reactions. Thank you for putting in the time and effort into making them. 

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I've read through your PvE guides and they've been quite helpful. I don't typically play PvE as I've always thought of it to be less satisfying than PvP but your guides sound convincing enough to give it a try. It's also been very helpful as I've been able to somewhat execute a "rotation" for maximum DPS in a PvP environment upon players between the situational actions/reactions. Thank you for putting in the time and effort into making them. 

the rotations will probably work in pvp aswell for optimizing your dmg output, but the pve rotation focusses more on heavy dmg output rather then tactical discissions you have to make in pvp with CC'ing the opponent. even tho pve has some situational stuff aswell where you have to think out of the box to still optimize your dps and then move around or CC, maybe i could make something for that aswell but i don't think it will be as helpfull tho

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the rotations will probably work in pvp aswell for optimizing your dmg output, but the pve rotation focusses more on heavy dmg output rather then tactical discissions you have to make in pvp with CC'ing the opponent. even tho pve has some situational stuff aswell where you have to think out of the box to still optimize your dps and then move around or CC, maybe i could make something for that aswell but i don't think it will be as helpfull tho

That's true. It would be nice to have a thread where warlocks could pool their knowledge, tricks, and provide tips to enhance their performance in both PvP and PvE environments. Nevertheless, thank you. 

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The damage increase that comes from Haunt, only applies when the spell haunt is present on the target. because i placed my Dot to test it out, cause haunt followed by Soulburn+Soulswap. and the ticking damage was increase only for the duration of Haunt

 

"Dont mind the expansion my profile says i am, i am from MoP."

Edited by Phonso

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About stat priority at destro, before 550 is better to go as haste>mastery...

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there are no macro's there hook me up please tired of spamming 6 different spells

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(taken from the post)

shadowburn:
#showtooltip shadowburn
/stopcasting
/cast Shadowburn

what this macro does is interupting your current cast if you are not sure if you will finish the cast and cast a shadowburn, this interrupts it and uses shadowburn, in most situations casting a shadowburn is more effective then your current cast

havoc:

#showtooltip havoc
/cast [target=focus] havoc

it does cast a havoc on your focus, i take my off-target as focus, use this button and use incinerate/chaosbolt w/e is needed in my case (building or spending embers)

i personally dont use more macro's then these 2 (besides a burst macro, but that speaks for itself)

Edited by Kilydan

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On 29-1-2016 at 2:47 PM, wraegoth said:

About stat priority at destro, before 550 is better to go as haste>mastery...

any proof/reason for that? never been aware of this, and going hit > int > mastery > crit=haste has worked for me since ilv 489 in msv (always pushed hard on the dps with this) i've never heard haste being usefull as destru before besides on very high value's when you have meta gems etc to place a rain of fire. since then your tickspeed is so high that its becoming beneficial

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updated the spoilers that bugged out from the copy-paste i did from pandashan's forum awhile ago. might clean up the affliction and demonology guide aswell at some point or maybe even rework them + add video's if requested for all specs.

the guide should look cleaner now :) 

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