T15 Warlock Style - Normal & Heroic

[Sifon 25]

Any tips for Megaera heroic? I think destro would be best spec there but I want to dump destro and stick with affli and demo so mostly likely I will be demo. How optimal that would be?

[Zagam 1,982]

I just spent a night on Heroic Meg. I was consistently really high, moreso when I went Grim of Sac. Toyed around with Grim of Service for add burst. We hit a wall on the 5th head each time. DPS was so variable that it was hard to find timing of when things were happening. Demo is very usable here. We were wiping at the 5th head with me at 190k when using Grim of Sac and this is without my 2nd pot and no Doomguard or senseless cleaving. 190k woulda put me at #1 as Demo on that fight, so I don't know what's going on. I feel that in 10 man, the adds have such little life that Shadowburn inflates DPS. Adds have 1.6M hp, so at 2%, they're at 320k. If you Shadowburn for 500k, you're making it look like you did 500k damage, but you really only did 320k. Destro also doesn't have the pressure Demo has on other targets if you're doing adds. I'm not sure how we'll fix what we did, but Demo is fine for the fight.

[Sifon 25]

Okay then demo it is, thanks Zagam

[gahhda 95]

I just spent a night on Heroic Meg. I was consistently really high, moreso when I went Grim of Sac. Toyed around with Grim of Service for add burst. We hit a wall on the 5th head each time. DPS was so variable that it was hard to find timing of when things were happening. Demo is very usable here. We were wiping at the 5th head with me at 190k when using Grim of Sac and this is without my 2nd pot and no Doomguard or senseless cleaving. 190k woulda put me at #1 as Demo on that fight, so I don't know what's going on. I feel that in 10 man, the adds have such little life that Shadowburn inflates DPS. Adds have 1.6M hp, so at 2%, they're at 320k. If you Shadowburn for 500k, you're making it look like you did 500k damage, but you really only did 320k. Destro also doesn't have the pressure Demo has on other targets if you're doing adds. I'm not sure how we'll fix what we did, but Demo is fine for the fight.

Demo having...more pressure...are we in a parallel universe where suddenly having a large part of your dps tied to non burst source makes you better at pressure ._.

Also, I blow almost every destro out of the water without even getting shadowburn on 90% of the adds. First set die before I can even blink, I'm lucky to havoc cleave ONE of them. Every set after that has 6 or 9 adds, so we aoe nuke the fuck out of them. Destros strength comes from the insanely high potential of 1 minute heads making other specs that require more ramp up less powerful, combined with RoF generating BUTT TONS of embers. I spend half that fight spamming chaos bolt.

Edited April 25, 2013 by gahddo

[Wolland 1]

...I was ... really high...

Yeah I guess that explains why we didn't get your notes on Heroic Tortos

I was looking forward to hear from you on that fight since my guild is trying it at the moment. But I guess you did it on normal mode?

[Zagam 1,982]

Way to leave out a word and manipulate my quote! You'd make a great reporter one day. I'm doing the Tortos notes today because we did it last night. Then we spent a night on Megaera. I'm pretty sure I know the fight well enough to write about it, but I haven't seen the 6th or 7th head, so I feel my write up would be incomplete. Same goes with the other bosses. I don't want to put out incomplete info, but if you have questions about some of the bosses I've attempted (H Meg, H Jikun), let me know. Not sure this group will try H Primordius or H Iron Qon (they already downed this) since we only raid 12 hours, so I'll update accordingly.

[Zagam 1,982]

Heroic Tortos updated. Won't be as exciting as you thought, I'm sure.

[Wolland 1]

Thank you Zagam. You are absolutely right about the Chrystal Shell "buff", but I have to follow orders and take it... so I macro'ed it with CoE and use it when it drops off. I mention this because players tend to think they actually have to "hit" the crystal with a DD spell, and they don't realize that a debuff works as well.

We have tested both tactics: bat kiting and bat aoe'ing, going affli and destro accordingly. Pretty straight forward for destro with awesome numbers. Pretty straight forward for affli as well, I am doing the SB:SoC tactic you mentioned and flinging around SB:SS on turtles and Tortos. Thanks for pointing out to keep haunt up on Tortos, I'll do that tonight.

[Zagam 1,982]

Follow orders? If I told you to jump off a bridge even though you know it wasn't necessary, would you still do it? If your raid leader is so oblivious to your capabilities as a Warlock to force you into something that could end up hurting you in the long run, point him towards my post.

Also, your prime time for Haunt will be right as a kick shell happens because he also takes 25% additional damage. Why not stack buffs?

[gahhda 95]

I'll assume that without even looking at the update you suggest not taking the shell because warlocks op?

I stopped taking the shell half way into our first night of attempts on tortos because our healers were freaking ooming themselves trying to rejuv blanket the raid. Even when I don't have a cd/leech stack, I can just hit the shell onces before it happens, get the 15% bubble, immediately spam ember tap to 100%. WIN THE GAME.

Edited April 25, 2013 by gahddo

[Zagam 1,982]

That's exactly right. My raid leader was like 'take it, just makes the fight easier.' I was like 'honestly man, you won't notice if I don't take it, but I'll take it just to make you feel better.'

I didn't take it and he noticed mid-fight going 'I guess good Warlocks really don't need that buff...'

[gahhda 95]

Please direct your attention to the healing by actor tab:

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ilolfztsnxiygwve/details/2/

[Zagam 1,982]

Location: Maryland? What part? I'm in Morgantown, WV...which means you're max 4 hours away! I have many lady friends in Maryland in random places...ha!

[Omaric 246]

It says Stalkersville. It's right there, clear as purple crayon!

[jtta073 1]

For Tortos HC, if you have to take Crystal Shell and need to Life Tap, you can use a glyph most ppl have probably forgotten exists:

Glyph of Life Tap

[Omaric 246]

For Tortos HC, if you have to take Crystal Shell and need to Life Tap, you can use a glyph most ppl have probably forgotten exists:

Glyph of Life Tap

Well played sir.

[vladMTL 1]

For Tortos HC, if you have to take Crystal Shell and need to Life Tap, you can use a glyph most ppl have probably forgotten exists:

Glyph of Life Tap

haha been using that to the dismay of my healers since 1907

[Zagam 1,982]

Nice tip. I won't even tell the healers.

[Nikthas 6]

Greetings,

I've read your guides for some of the heroic bosses you made in this post (as well as pretty much everything else related to warlocks in 5.2 on this site). I felt that it could be useful that I provide my own feedback for those fights. Important to note - this is 10-man I'm talking about.

About Jin'rokh heroic, if you're feeling confident, you don't have to spec for Unbound Will to dispel the Ionization, you can, instead, sac your Imp (as we're using GoSac) and dispel yourself with Singe Magic (this will cost you your Shadow Bulwark, but instead give you your Burning Rush back). You can then continue to help the healers by dispelling other members of your raid. Additionally, whereas Sacrificial Pact is an absolutely amazing survival cooldown, I found Dark Bargain to be of more use on this one for me. The reason for this is that, with our 3-healing setup, we have a round of strong active healing cooldowns at 1st storm. If I dispel myself as soon as Ionization pops up, then continue to bolt the boss, I'll build up a SL shield that will provide sufficient absorption, while also being backed up with UR, MR healing or HS healing (even Ember healing) if it's really needed. As for the other storms (we usually get 3 since people fail here and there), I've almost always encountered such horrid RNG that it's actually laughable. Getting hit in the face with like four or five colliding balls that don't even look like they are hitting me is just ridiculous. Whether it's my own lag (that I had on Zorlok circles too) or just me having a bad camera angle, I don't know. But for these situations, I just pop DB and sit there, dpsing the boss, ready to heal the damage back up with glyphed HS and MC. It's a somewhat noobish thing to do to ignore Sac Pact just so you could have a ''guaranteed survival card'' for one storm, but that helped us nail our first kill, so it works if you can dodge well occasionally.

As for Horridon heroic, the post suggests that adds should be piled up on the tank during the phases and that MF shouldn't be picked over KJC. I understand that KJC is amazing on this as it provides a lot of mobility, but I've found that having big RoFs has a twofold advantage in my raid setting:

1. The adds are definitely not always on the tank or the tank is not sitting in place / is on the move. There's almost always some sort of movement, running from sand traps, poison clouds, frost orbs, then loose adds on G3 all over the place, then casters on G4 who are outside the pile and even Horridon in close proximity so you can catch him in the AoE too. Maybe it's us being a bit sloppy, or too nervous, causing too much tank movement. I've noticed that things always somehow ended up outside of my RoFs (or I had to cast multiple) if they were not big due to MF.

2. MF also increases your FnB AoE. This is gold for this fight. It allows you to keep knocking the Dino add back if you position yourself accordingly, while just AoE-ing the packs occasionally. It's only on Gate 4 that you may actually be forced to use the pet macro to have the Imp bolt back the dino, or maybe bolt it yourself, depending on what Grimoire you went for. You can do this even in the execute phase, hit a FnB Incinerate on the boss to knock the dino back. Using FnB hits to keep the Dino away from you requires some skill in positioning and perhaps even depends on how your raid prefers to handle gate phases and the execution of Horridon in the end, but I've found this to be so much more comfortable than constantly using the Imp (or Fel Imp) to knock it back, then making sure it doesn't go out of range so I can use Flee to bring him back.

Edit: Fixed obvious typos.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Nikthas

[Omaric 246]

^^^

If you enjoy using singed magic, then you can actually just keep your imp out. Everytime you get into a pool have your imp use his "flee" ability to go right next to you and benefit from the effects.

[JvChequer 43]

Singe magic did not work anymore in Jin'rohk and Primordius.

[Omaric 246]

It doesn't work on auto-cast or it doesn't work at all?

[Zagam 1,982]

Greetings,

I've read your guides for some of the heroic bosses you made in this post (as well as pretty much everything else related to warlocks in 5.2 on this site). I felt that it could be useful that I provide my own feedback for those fights. Important to note - this is 10-man I'm talking about.

About Jin'rokh heroic, if you're feeling confident, you don't have to spec for Unbound Will to dispel the Ionization, you can, instead, sac your Imp (as we're using GoSac) and dispel yourself with Singe Magic (this will cost you your Shadow Bulwark, but instead give you your Burning Rush back). You can then continue to help the healers by dispelling other members of your raid. Additionally, whereas Sacrificial Pact is an absolutely amazing survival cooldown, I found Dark Bargain to be of more use on this one for me. The reason for this is that, with our 3-healing setup, we have a round of strong active healing cooldowns at 1st storm. If I dispel myself as soon as Ionization pops up, then continue to bolt the boss, I'll build up a SL shield that will provide sufficient absorption, while also being backed up with UR, MR healing or HS healing (even Ember healing) if it's really needed. As for the other storms (we usually get 3 since people fail here and there), I've almost always encountered such horrid RNG that it's actually laughable. Getting hit in the face with like four or five colliding balls that don't even look like they are hitting me is just ridiculous. Whether it's my own lag (that I had on Zorlok circles too) or just me having a bad camera angle, I don't know. But for these situations, I just pop DB and sit there, dpsing the boss, ready to heal the damage back up with glyphed HS and MC. It's a somewhat noobish thing to do to ignore Sac Pact just so you could have a ''guaranteed survival card'' for one storm, but that helped us nail our first kill, so it works if you can dodge well occasionally.

As for Horridon heroic, the post suggests that adds should be piled up on the tank during the phases and that MF shouldn't be picked over KJC. I understand that KJC is amazing on this as it provides a lot of mobility, but I've found that having big RoFs has a twofold advantage in my raid setting:

1. The adds are definitely not always on the tank or the tank is not sitting in place / is on the move. There's almost always some sort of movement, running from sand traps, poison clouds, frost orbs, then loose adds on G3 all over the place, then casters on G4 who are outside the pile and even Horridon in close proximity so you can catch him in the AoE too. Maybe it's us being a bit sloppy, or too nervous, causing too much tank movement. I've noticed that things always somehow ended up outside of my RoFs (or I had to cast multiple) if they were not big due to MF.

2. MF also increases your FnB AoE. This is gold for this fight. It allows you to keep knocking the Dino add back if you position yourself accordingly, while just AoE-ing the packs occasionally. It's only on Gate 4 that you may actually be forced to use the pet macro to have the Imp bolt back the dino, or maybe bolt it yourself, depending on what Grimoire you went for. You can do this even in the execute phase, hit a FnB Incinerate on the boss to knock the dino back. Using FnB hits to keep the Dino away from you requires some skill in positioning and perhaps even depends on how your raid prefers to handle gate phases and the execution of Horridon in the end, but I've found this to be so much more comfortable than constantly using the Imp (or Fel Imp) to knock it back, then making sure it doesn't go out of range so I can use Flee to bring him back.

Edit: Fixed obvious typos.

I strongly disagree with taking Dark Bargain over Sacrificial Pact. Regardless of any situation, I cannot see how an 8 second "immunity" with a penalty on a 3 minute CD can be higher valued than something that absorbs just about every type of boss damage CD on a 60 second CD with no penalty. As you admit, using something to bypass a mechanic for your first kill shouldn't really be a priority. Those unable to dance during the storm aren't going to just use this CD as a crutch to make it through. If your healers are suffering because others are failing, then you have to ask for better play from your raiders instead of sacrificing a much better talent for a more mediocre one that allows healers to point direction elsewhere then come back to you at a higher need. The horrible part of Dark Bargain is when you 'immune' yourself and then begin to take 50% of that absorbed damage while still taking environmental damage. Dark Bargain could be useful for some abilities that do VERY high damage once in a while in short bursts, not during sustained AoE damage or focused damage lasting more than 8 seconds.

For the Horridon suggestion, you aren't specializing in massive AoE here. The focus is on the important adds. You shouldn't be worried about trying to catch extra adds with Fire and Brimstone Incinerate. Your primary focus should be keeping Rain of Fire up to cleave at least 2 things while focusing down important adds. Dinomancer > Door Special Add (Wastewalker, Venom Priest, etc) > Horridon. Because Horridon has a tight enrage timer, you shouldn't be killing the smaller adds anyways. Your focus should, instead, be on the order listed above. With melee having to walk all over the place to get back on Horridon, they should be left to AoE cleave the small adds down. This fight does, indeed, have many required movement scenarios. Not taking KJC would stunt your capable DPS when targetted by Charge, Sandtrap, Ice Orb, etc. Positioning yourself so that your AoE hits the Direhorn as well as the important mobs COULD work out if the spawn of the Direhorn lines itself up. If it spawns in a poor position, spending time to line him up would be detrimental to your contribution to proper damage going out on priority targets. Anyone who spent a ton of wipes on this fight will tell you that AoE damage is NEVER the problem. It's killing the Venom Priest before it gets an Effusion off. It's about killing the Frost Lord before he puts out another Frost Orb. It's about killing the Dinomancer before he heals Horridon. Cleaving looks great on the meters, but that's not what you're best suited to do as a Destruction Warlock.

[Nikthas 6]

In response to Zagam:

I know very well that Dark Bargain is definitely sub par in almost every scenario, but like I pointed out before, that move could be somewhat helpful under extreme circumstances and that's why I mentioned it. The way I was on some of our pulls: ''oh, I didn't really need my Pact on this one'', on the first storm, then on the next one ''Omg, Pact, UR, HEAL HEAL HEAL'' then dead or barely alive. I do agree that, in general, Pact is a better solution.

Regarding Horridon, I think you're overseeing the fact that cleaving with a huge RoF will feed you a lot more embers than cleaving with a small one. It's the fact you're always high on embers that makes you always able to cleave Horridon with Havoc+3 Shadowburns and to always CB / SB a priority target. You'll want to apply Immolate to your priority targets and you'll want to Conflagrate for faster Bolts, so why not make it a huge AoE and hit everything, along with the small dino, too? Hitting FnB spells will also help you get your embers back for several CBs / SBs that you have to unleash upon the prio adds, in case you're running low. The argument of your damage being gimped because you have to move is only valid if you're not able to use any instant - no CF, no Shadowburn, no Havoc and no RoF. I don't think it's very likely you'll spend these few seconds moving doing absolutely nothing, you'll have at least some of the things I listed previously to use while you move. Regarding the spawn placement of the Dino add, I've always seen it spawn under the boss for me. No matter which gate it appeared from, I've managed to place myself so that the priority targets are in close proximity to the red line between me and the add. Again, people have different strategies and most importantly, different boss placements on this fight. On our pulls, everything just gets dragged around somehow and the whole raid seems to travel around the arena slowly, supporting the whole ''FnB-knockback'' game I'm playing.

Regarding numbers on important things, I compared your Horridon heroic log to my own, or, to be precise, the damage done to each of the add groups, to see the difference. Now, I assume that there is always some kind of human error involved, as no one is perfect. I also assume that, since we're following different strategies and our gear is fairly similar, that it would be a somewhat valid comparison between two approaches to this fight that I compare the results the two of us achieved. After reading your reply, I assumed that you would be owning me on each of the priority add groups, by at least a considerable margin, but here are the results:

Mine - http://www.worldoflo.../?s=5507&e=6185

Yours - http://worldoflogs.c.../?s=2454&e=3061

From what I can see, you only beat me on Venom Priests, by approximately 10% and on Frozen Warlords, by approximately 5%. I did significantly more on Wastewalkers , Dinomancers, Beast Shaman and Flame Casters (we had to focus these ones down too, due to being short on interrupts, so this was a prio target for me too). I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, because I can't know how the fight revolves for you and how long the adds actually last. As far as comparison goes, these logs are the best I can do at the moment.

Please don't take this one-sample comparison as my offence to you or anything along the lines of ''oh but I do bigger deeps, you must be bad''. I only wanted to point out, that if my way of going bigger RoF + FnB cleaving to hit the add too was wrong, I would only be doing higher numbers on non-priority targets, whereas you would be way ahead on the priority ones.

In response to JvChequer:

It did work for me, last Wednesday, as you may see in this log: http://www.worldoflo.../?s=2390&e=2745 (my name under Dispels)

Was that some sort of fix in the meantime that I missed?

Edited April 29, 2013 by Nikthas

[Zagam 1,982]

The capabilities in 10 man versus 25 man are quite significant. The log you posted is my first kill on Horridon all together, but it was my second attempt on 10 man. The other 95 attempts I had, Shadowburn played a much larger role in my group's success. In those attempts, I was as high as 295k DPS because I always got Shadowburns in on the right enemies to fuel embers instead of depending on Rain of Fire. I was always ember capped whenever there was an add up. In 10 man, enemies have much less HP. In 25 man, a Venom Priest at 18% gives you plenty of time to Havoc 3 Shadowburns onto Horridon. In 10 man, 1 Shadowburn usually finishes off the Venom Priest, especially if the rest of your group's DPS is high. Notice your kill time of 11:17 versus my kill time of 10:06. Your raid DPS was over 200k less than my groups and the standard deviation of your group's DPS was much higher than mine. In my group, max DPS was 220 and lowest was 175. In your group, your max was 280 while you carried an Ele Shaman doing 133k. It's easy for me to see how things adjust in 10 man...but I also believe that the skill level of my group is much tighter while it is evident that you and your Hunter were making up for some of the DPS in your group that aren't as capable as you are. You'll likely always do more DPS on a fight like that where there is a lot of sniping and cleaving to do if the rest of your group isn't doing as much leaving you a bigger window of opportunity to max your DPS out. You and I are not insulting each other and are only comparing, but you can't really compare apples to oranges here. What matters is we both managed to down it...the difference is I think you're carrying your guild while I'm surrounded by like-skilled players.