Destruction help

[Gwemul 0]

Hello dear fellow Warlockans (or what ever your boat floats),

I just started playing WoW again after 3months-ish breaks.

My gear ATM is kinda low still, but here is the armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/frostmane/Xandahr/advanced

Even tho I out-dps most of the higher ilevel in my raiding team, I still feel like I can do more with what I currently have.

The spec I use is Destruction (I got Affliction offspec, for when I get the meta gem).

The link to the logs are here: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ju4pf3x4uwz9rcel/

Bosses that I'm on were: Jin'rokh (both HC and normal), Council, Megaera and Durumu.

(We're a 10-man group, but since another Elemental Shaman is also on the gearing up phase, she will get a weapon before me, except for the Twin Consorts one).

I'm not very lucky with the trinkets or any other loot yet tho.

The reforges+gems prios I currently use are: Mastery > Haste > Crit.

I still have 2 haste gems in belt, because I needed the cap, but I will also replace that item anytime soon, reason I don't really change it anymore.

Please help this poor Warlock? :( <3

Kind regards,

Xandahr

[Ilion 8]

Why aren't you using RoF on single target? It should be part of your rotation.

[Gwemul 0]

Why aren't you using RoF on single target? It should be part of your rotation.

Hey,

That had to do with when I started playing Destruction, I was far too fast OOM, without even charging up my Burning Embers, thats the reason why I didn't use RoF. I'll try to use RoF more often then.

Any more tips for me?

Kind regards,

Xandahr

[Vestion 8]

For your gems, replace all your flat mastery gems with int/mastery ones. This is normally better that flat gems. Also, as most of the time on locks, destruction especially, haste brakepoints shouldnt be worried about, so remove thoes haste gems and get some more int and mastery. On your ring I noticed you reforged to crit, and while its minor I just thought I would point that out. Overall though, it seems ok. Just fix the gems and keep your current reforge prio.

[Gwemul 0]

For your gems, replace all your flat mastery gems with int/mastery ones. This is normally better that flat gems. Also, as most of the time on locks, destruction especially, haste brakepoints shouldnt be worried about, so remove thoes haste gems and get some more int and mastery. On your ring I noticed you reforged to crit, and while its minor I just thought I would point that out. Overall though, it seems ok. Just fix the gems and keep your current reforge prio.

Care to explain why the int/mastery is better than flat mastery? Cause I've seen like all the warlocks I inspect, no matter what or where, going full flat mastery/haste.

Its not that I don't want to change it or something, but there might be a chance that after changing it, people will say: go flat mastery its better blabla. (if you get what I mean :P)

Kind regards,

Xandahr

[Vestion 8]

Care to explain why the int/mastery is better than flat mastery? Cause I've seen like all the warlocks I inspect, no matter what or where, going full flat mastery/haste.

Its not that I don't want to change it or something, but there might be a chance that after changing it, people will say: go flat mastery its better blabla. (if you get what I mean :P)

Kind regards,

Xandahr

I understand why you might be concernred about that

the reason i say this is because a lot of things like ask mr.robot will say hybrid gems are beyter because int is your most important stat, but ofc you can gem red into everything, so getting int where you can is normally better. This sometimes isnt the case for high ilev affliction, but thats an exception. Ofc, i could be wrong about all of that, so some confirmation wouls be nice.

[Gwemul 0]

I kind of not trust AsMrRobot with reforges and gemming anymore. Usually it doesn't even let me get the haste cap or something (in 5.1 when Affliction was the way to go, it never got me to the breakpoints, so I started using wowreforge.com just for reforging).

I still use it for other classes tho like Enhancement Shaman, Death Knight etc.

[Vestion 8]

Yea, ask mr.robot isnt great, it was just an example. Its good for casual players though, and a lot of the time it can get me to 15.00% hit exactly, so thats useful. I do not like its problem with hit capping though, it dosnt understand how to bonus for not capping is minamal and a miss can fuck up a whole rotation, if not put the player off.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Vestion

[gahhda 95]

Yea, ask mr.robot isnt great, it was just an example. Its good for casual players though, and a lot of the time it can get me to 15.00% hit exactly, so thats useful. I do not like its problem with hit capping though, it dosnt understand how to bonus for not capping is minamal and a miss can fuck up a whole rotation, if not put the player off.

1. If I am 0.05% under hit cap, that means every 1 in 2000 abilities will miss. Do you realize how many abilities you use in any given fight? You will miss once every other fight if you have perfect RoF uptime, because it makes up roughly half the hits you do in a fight. Now ask yourself, if 50% of the hits I do are RoF ticks, and half of the fights you go into you will miss 1 ability, thats a 50% chance for that miss to be RoF. 8 ticks in a RoF, 20% chance to generate 2 embers, thats 0.4 embers per tick. Once every other fight, there is a 50% chance that you will lose less than 1 ember, how would that actually effect anything at all?

2. AMR has a feature to force hit cap...because people seemingly don't understand how absolutely miniscule the difference between 14.95% and 15% is.

Its a reforging tool. A damn good one. It isn't meant to spit out weights that tell you how you're supposed to gear, that's why they're called default. They're actually constantly responding on their forums w/ regards to discussion on statistics. Use it for what it is for, a reforgelite thats 20x better.

Edited April 28, 2013 by gahhda

[vladvii 0]

I honestly don't believe either of these sites are working correctly atm. Askmrrobot like stated previously never gets you to breakpoints, however I notice that wowreforge.com actually does not calculate all of the stats correctly. For example wowreforge show's my character with 9430 haste while in fact I do have 9834. I've seen it do the same thing on hit before. So I use a combination of both sites plus a wow addon reforgelite or simulationcraft to get the correct numbers then put it to the calculator to make sure what I'll end up with before spending the gold to reforge only to have to regem / reforge again.

http://wowreforge.com/US/Gnomeregan/Vladvii

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/gnomeregan/Vladvii/advanced

[Gwemul 0]

Neither of this does anwser any of my given questions :(

[Vestion 8]

1. If I am 0.05% under hit cap, that means every 1 in 2000 abilities will miss. Do you realize how many abilities you use in any given fight? You will miss once every other fight if you have perfect RoF uptime, because it makes up roughly half the hits you do in a fight. Now ask yourself, if 50% of the hits I do are RoF ticks, and half of the fights you go into you will miss 1 ability, thats a 50% chance for that miss to be RoF. 8 ticks in a RoF, 20% chance to generate 2 embers, thats 0.4 embers per tick. Once every other fight, there is a 50% chance that you will lose less than 1 ember, how would that actually effect anything at all?

2. AMR has a feature to force hit cap...because people seemingly don't understand how absolutely miniscule the difference between 14.95% and 15% is.

Its a reforging tool. A damn good one. It isn't meant to spit out weights that tell you how you're supposed to gear, that's why they're called default. They're actually constantly responding on their forums w/ regards to discussion on statistics. Use it for what it is for, a reforgelite thats 20x better.

1. For a start, I was talking about more than 0.05%, and you're also talking about destruction, which is much simpler and there is less to worry about if you miss. However, losing an ember during a fight with CDs would definitely make a dent in your dps, and reforging 0.05% more hit to avoid the chance of that or even having to worry about that during your rotation is definitely worth it. Granted, there is a small chance that you will actually miss being so close to the hit cap, but how much dps are you gaining from that? And then, how much dps are you losing if you miss something important. While embers are the only really important thing for destruction, what if your demo? Hand of gul'dan misses and thats a huge dps loss. ToC misses and corruption falls off. Doom misses and thats a huge chunk of demonic fury gone. I can go on, and again with Affliction. What i'm saying is that, while yes, there is a small chance you will actually miss during a raid, if you were to miss an important spell, or any spell at that, its going to be more of a dps loss than the minor dps gain.

2. I know there is an option to do that, but why do that when you can just have AMR reforge you 0.05% under the cap, and then just reforge one other item to hit and be at the most 0.25% over the cap?

[gahhda 95]

1. For a start, I was talking about more than 0.05%, and you're also talking about destruction, which is much simpler and there is less to worry about if you miss. However, losing an ember during a fight with CDs would definitely make a dent in your dps, and reforging 0.05% more hit to avoid the chance of that or even having to worry about that during your rotation is definitely worth it. Granted, there is a small chance that you will actually miss being so close to the hit cap, but how much dps are you gaining from that? And then, how much dps are you losing if you miss something important. While embers are the only really important thing for destruction, what if your demo? Hand of gul'dan misses and thats a huge dps loss. ToC misses and corruption falls off. Doom misses and thats a huge chunk of demonic fury gone. I can go on, and again with Affliction. What i'm saying is that, while yes, there is a small chance you will actually miss during a raid, if you were to miss an important spell, or any spell at that, its going to be more of a dps loss than the minor dps gain.

2. I know there is an option to do that, but why do that when you can just have AMR reforge you 0.05% under the cap, and then just reforge one other item to hit and be at the most 0.25% over the cap?

1. 1 ember as in 1/10th of a full ember, which was a typo anyway. 0.4 embers, as in 4/100ths of an ember. HoG and corruption make up tiny portions of the dps. Refreshing corruption via ToC is such a minimal dps increase that manually reapplying it once makes absolutely no difference, the only reason we do it is because we're going to have to spend the DF either way. Doom misses, even in the worst case scenario where you have a perfect aim proc, that still leaves you 2 GCDs, not only is it horrifyingly unlikely for it to miss on either of the next two applications, you lose nothing but a gcd, and you get a full 150% duration doom. Affliction literally loses almost nothing if a dot misses because most of the time they're refreshed early via pandemic. In fact, affliction is the only spec which actually gains dps from being significantly below hit cap, and the vast majority of top locks last tier played with 12-13% because of the tiny impact it has on affliction.

Sims account for reaction time, if you can't see your dot miss and react in 300 ms, then the hard hit cap will win, otherwise, it makes no difference.

2. Inefficient, the entire point of using things like AMR is to find the *best* way to reforge, not a decent way.

All three specs will eventually end up with secondary gems this tier. They fucked up the scale factors for every spec in the game with their little op trinkets/meta stunt. Affliction has ALWAYS used secondary gems since the start of the expansion. Demo/destruction start using them towards 530 ilvl. Until then 1/2 int > secondary.

-edit- Sorry if it sounded like I was being pissy, I tend to get annoyed when people criticize AMR for these things.

Edited April 28, 2013 by gahhda

[Cruzan 71]

Hi Xandahr/Gwemul,

So the first trend I'm seeing is either a lack of using two Potions of the Jade Serpent for a fight, or not using them entirely. Those pots are awesome man and make sure you're getting two in to every fight, every attempt. Lining those up with a DS or when something really needs to be burned down can make a difference not only for your DPS, but also for getting a kill.

For Jin'rok you're going to want to be lining up your DS with time spent in the pools. You guys obliterated that fight in Normal, but they're Heroing on the first pool it looks like so spend you're time before that pool building embers and get ready to unload. You could easily have been in the 180+ range if you had waited to use DS inside of a pool. Not entirely sure about H mode since I haven't done it yet, but I doubt the DS + pool strategy changes much. Use pots.

Why were you sat for Horridon? Destro locks are da bomb for that fight.

Council: Go Affliction unless your group really needs focused burst on a Loa or something. Mediocre Affliction play will outperform good destro play on that fight imo. If you do go destro then you should be getting better than single-target types of output. It's pretty much single target + RoF onto multiple targets whenever possible + Havoc cleaving on cooldown (5 Havocs over the course of a 6+ minute mutli-target fight is not good ). Use pots.

Tortos: Zomg why are you getting sat for these? Tortos and Horr are pretty sweet fights for destro. I'd try to get in to these this week.

Megaera: You were Havoc+Shadowburn-cleaving to pad your numbers a bit I see . Its not bad, but havoc + incin would be slightly better for effective DPS as each havoc'd incin helps generate embers as well. Try RoF between two heads to generate more embers. Use pots.

Durumu: Havoc the boss while you burn an add. Not sure if on normal there is enough HP to peel 3 shadowburns off or not, but it might be close. Use another pot.

Your trinkets are holding you back a bit. I saw a couple cases where LotC didn't proc until your opener was finished so that's a bummer.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Cruzan

[Gwemul 0]

Hey Cruzan,

It is true that I'm sit out for bosses who are the most fun/promising for me as in DPS.

This is because we have Loot Council and we are a 10-man group with currently 14 players. We have 2-3 ranged on sitout (depending on the fight), so in order to get them what they need from that boss, I'm on sitout.

We are in the progress of getting "rid" of 1 ranged, so we have only 1-2players to swap.

The moment our Elemental Shaman gets a weapon (basicly any weapon), I'm in for more bosses, since I also need weapon.

And as for potions, I usualy forget them :( It's plain stupid and a lame excuse. I will look out for that! :P

Thanks for your help <3

Kind regards,

Xandahr

[Vestion 8]

1. 1 ember as in 1/10th of a full ember, which was a typo anyway. 0.4 embers, as in 4/100ths of an ember. HoG and corruption make up tiny portions of the dps. Refreshing corruption via ToC is such a minimal dps increase that manually reapplying it once makes absolutely no difference, the only reason we do it is because we're going to have to spend the DF either way. Doom misses, even in the worst case scenario where you have a perfect aim proc, that still leaves you 2 GCDs, not only is it horrifyingly unlikely for it to miss on either of the next two applications, you lose nothing but a gcd, and you get a full 150% duration doom. Affliction literally loses almost nothing if a dot misses because most of the time they're refreshed early via pandemic. In fact, affliction is the only spec which actually gains dps from being significantly below hit cap, and the vast majority of top locks last tier played with 12-13% because of the tiny impact it has on affliction.

Sims account for reaction time, if you can't see your dot miss and react in 300 ms, then the hard hit cap will win, otherwise, it makes no difference.

2. Inefficient, the entire point of using things like AMR is to find the *best* way to reforge, not a decent way.

All three specs will eventually end up with secondary gems this tier. They fucked up the scale factors for every spec in the game with their little op trinkets/meta stunt. Affliction has ALWAYS used secondary gems since the start of the expansion. Demo/destruction start using them towards 530 ilvl. Until then 1/2 int > secondary.

-edit- Sorry if it sounded like I was being pissy, I tend to get annoyed when people criticize AMR for these things.

No problem, in fact I enjoy these discussions. There are just a few things I really need to say about that though..

While corruption may hit for almost nothing, even more so if demo locks are using EA now, the main use of it is for DF. While in meta, its important to have things like corruption rolling to stay in meta while CDs are up longer. Having corruption fall off during meta means less time in meta, as the alternative of going out and 10 seconds later going back in is stupid if CDs are up.

HoG is a very big part of demo dps. If you miss a charge and it doesn't stack with the first, that means when you go into meta the DoT will just fall off, won't have been affected by meta in which not only results in less dps, but also less DF.

For doom missing during that beast of a trinket proc, granted its unlikely, but oh god I think any warlock would break down in tears if it happened. And again, why risk that for such a minimal dps gain?

Ok you're right with Affliction, but I suppose I was thinking about haunt and SB:SS.

Thanks for getting some clarification on hybrid gems, I had an idea but I wasn't too sure myself.