Destruction Warlock - Chaos Bolt Question

[Cardio33 3]

Greetings,

 

I want to begin by saying this is a great site and helped me tremendously.  My question is specifically for Destruction Warlocks.  I'm currently 558 ilevel with 4pc and solid trinkets (immersus & garrosh trinks).

 

I found the majority of stuff I was looking for on the guides but have two remaining questions.

 

1.  My dps seems to be higher when using GoSac over GoSupp, is this normal?  Things I'm reading is that single target GoSupp should be higher but there's adds on every boss.  What are top tier locks running in normal and heroic?

 

 

2.  Chaos bolt + pandemic.  Destro locks running GoSac, is it worth it to double cast Chaos bolt for pandemic effect on the CB tick?  Of course I'm spamming CB when trinkets proc but when I'm about to fill 4 embers without procs, do you 2xCB for the pandemic on dot?

 

I'm also pushing out 300k dps on Garrosh without the Klaxxis cleave trinket.  Does this look like a decent number?

 

Thanks for all the help in advance.

 

 

[Zagam 1,982]

1) Your vision is correct, most notably with Kardris' Toxic Totem.  With all of the Shadowburn opportunities and the skill of maximizing Chaos Bolt, Grimoire of Sacrifice will win over Supremacy.  Plus, pets are annoying to move around, switch targets, etc.

 

2) Cast Chaos Bolt regardless of what small effects Pandemic creates.  With a ton of logs, I found some nuances with how CB gets molded together with casts.  First off, it does accumulate the ticks.  It does it in a weird, wonky way, and I think I found a critical error in how the Pandemic DoT gets added up when back-to-back Chaos Bolts occur mushing the two DoTs together.  It's of no major concern, but I don't think one of the ticks is a guaranteed critical hit, so it diminishes the power by a very small amount.  This can add up over the course of a fight, but it's not meaningful enough to weave Incinerate or Immolate between Chaos Bolts.  This may confuse you if you don't understand what I'm saying, so if you only read and understand part of this, here it is: Use Chaos Bolt during trinket procs without worrying about Pandemic.  Also, do not purposefully use two Chaos Bolts just to capture Pandemic.  Always follow the priority of using them with trinket procs.

 

Klaxxis Cleave trinket?  You mean Focused Crystal of Rage?  You should NEVER have that equipped.  On Garrosh, the only damage that matters is single target damage done to the boss.  AoEing is largely unnecessary padding. 

[Cardio33 3]

1) Your vision is correct, most notably with Kardris' Toxic Totem.  With all of the Shadowburn opportunities and the skill of maximizing Chaos Bolt, Grimoire of Sacrifice will win over Supremacy.  Plus, pets are annoying to move around, switch targets, etc.

 

2) Cast Chaos Bolt regardless of what small effects Pandemic creates.  With a ton of logs, I found some nuances with how CB gets molded together with casts.  First off, it does accumulate the ticks.  It does it in a weird, wonky way, and I think I found a critical error in how the Pandemic DoT gets added up when back-to-back Chaos Bolts occur mushing the two DoTs together.  It's of no major concern, but I don't think one of the ticks is a guaranteed critical hit, so it diminishes the power by a very small amount.  This can add up over the course of a fight, but it's not meaningful enough to weave Incinerate or Immolate between Chaos Bolts.  This may confuse you if you don't understand what I'm saying, so if you only read and understand part of this, here it is: Use Chaos Bolt during trinket procs without worrying about Pandemic.  Also, do not purposefully use two Chaos Bolts just to capture Pandemic.  Always follow the priority of using them with trinket procs.

 

Klaxxis Cleave trinket?  You mean Focused Crystal of Rage?  You should NEVER have that equipped.  On Garrosh, the only damage that matters is single target damage done to the boss.  AoEing is largely unnecessary padding. 

Zagam,

 

Thank you for the timely response that was extremely helpful.

 

 

1.  GoSac is it, I like it better anyway :D

2.  I always wondered how Pandemic refreshed, very interesting.  I won't make any additional efforts to pandemic the CB dot and just keep with regular rotation.

3.  Sorry I mis-spoke, I meant Toxic Totem trinket.  Most raid leaders I've done Garrosh with freak out about P1 aoe and killing the wind rider so I was curious :D

 

 

One last question that just came up.  I'm all for max/min and enjoy playing all 3 specs.  Do you find any bosses/encounters/mechanics so heavily favor afflic that you swap specs?  Currently I'm finding myself playing destro for all bosses except protectors & dark shaman.

[Zagam 1,982]

I play Destruction on Protectors and Dark Shamans for the following reasons:

 

Protectors: I can push 500k+ on Heroic Protectors as Destruction.  It also gives me more beastly burst for add phases, a ton of survivability, and it's easier to just apply Immolate to all instead of min-max worrying about 3 DoTs, Haunt, and Soul Swapping.  Those 700k+ DPS parses from Affliction require a ton of patience and effort that I don't find worth it for such an early boss.  The DPS requirement isn't strict on it, anyways.  You can get by with 3 healing and using 5 DPS averaging 280k.

 

Shamans: I use Fire and Brimstone to AoE the adds that come out.  Since we use the 3tank-2heal strategy, there isn't typically a secondary target to keep DoTs on.  You may be referencing normal mode when the two Shamans are kept near each other.  Destruction also provides amazing CC and burst on the slimes to protect your raid's healers. 

 

If you look at the top parses for Warlocks, a lot of them are because they got good RNG or the stars aligned.  Affliction has huge swings in DPS because of its heavy RNG reliance.  Destruction maxes out a bit lower, but it has much more consistent damage.  If this doesn't make sense, picture it like this:

 

Affliction Week 1 = 420k

Affliction Week 2 = 360k

Affliction Week 3 = 485k

Affliction Week 4 = 405k

 

Destruction Week 1 = 430k

Destruction Week 2 = 390k

Destruction Week 3 = 415k

Destruction Week 4 = 450k

 

These are actual parses I randomly pulled of one player who plays both specs particularly well.  With no different gear or set up, he generated this variance in DPS.  Notice, the Affliction max parse is higher than any of the Destruction parses, but Destruction averages higher than Affliction.  You'll always see max parses as Affliction except on fights like Heroic Garrosh that are just too long for Aff to keep up. 

[Cardio33 3]

Great thanks for the response!  That cleared up a lot of confusion I had about the disparity with afflic and destruction.  I noticed huge week to week fluctuations on Ordos as afflic, 250k one week, 400k another.  

 

Glancing at your profile it looks like there are several things I can clean up in regards to my reforge/gem selections. 

 

Thanks again for all the help.

 

 

My armory,

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/darkspear/Kittenslayer/advanced

[Soulzar 42]

Just in case your GoSac Chaos Bolt vs Pandemic curiosity goes any deeper than Zag's sum up above, here is where the discussion starts in the Destro sticky..

 

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/1686-54-destruction-tips-and-quirks/?p=41325

[Cardio33 3]

Just in case your GoSac Chaos Bolt vs Pandemic curiosity goes any deeper than Zag's sum up above, here is where the discussion starts in the Destro sticky..

 

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/1686-54-destruction-tips-and-quirks/?p=41325

Very interesting,

 

My best guess is that you might have been standing closer on the 2nd attempt and travel time effected a cut off?  Or you had a haste proc?  I'm speculating and making conversation since you have obviously thought of these things already so I don't mean to offend.

 

The CB dot might also work like afflic dots, which have no travel time.  So the instance your CB "hits" it snapshots your stats.  If you casted a CB at the end of your trinket proc in the first attempt, when it hits the target the trinket expires.  This might be easy to prove with a scaling trinket (like the one from Garrosh) where your dot ticks might be higher than expected.  i.e. cast a CB with 7 stack trinket and it hits with 8 stacks, generating higher dot than expected.

 

Also, seeing 2 mil CB crits makes me hard.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Affliction is basically about the opener. You open insanely high and rely on that to carry you through. When fights become farm and bosses are being killed in half the time, Affliction pulls ahead in theoretical max.

 

The issue with Affliction is that it is inconsistent. If both trinkets and meta gem don't proc in the opening 10 seconds then your dps for the whole fight can vary by over 100k. I had some pulls on garrosh about 5 weeks ago where I played Affliction, and I swear out of about 10 pulls we had, I only had everything proc nicely twice. Takes you from near the top on boss damage to comfortably mid pack, which sucks.

 

Having said that, if you can do the soul swap 'trick' (prolonging initial dots by up to 2 minutes) then Affliction is insane on multi dot fights, but it's a tricky technique for beginners for sure, and for pure progression on 10 man the destruction burst will be much more valuable.

[Cardio33 3]

Affliction is basically about the opener. You open insanely high and rely on that to carry you through. When fights become farm and bosses are being killed in half the time, Affliction pulls ahead in theoretical max.

 

The issue with Affliction is that it is inconsistent. If both trinkets and meta gem don't proc in the opening 10 seconds then your dps for the whole fight can vary by over 100k. I had some pulls on garrosh about 5 weeks ago where I played Affliction, and I swear out of about 10 pulls we had, I only had everything proc nicely twice. Takes you from near the top on boss damage to comfortably mid pack, which sucks.

 

Having said that, if you can do the soul swap 'trick' (prolonging initial dots by up to 2 minutes) then Affliction is insane on multi dot fights, but it's a tricky technique for beginners for sure, and for pure progression on 10 man the destruction burst will be much more valuable.

Not to derail the thread too much but 2 min prolonged initial dots?  How does that work?

 

My opener is:

 

Haunt -> DS -> soulburn a row of dots -> MG until all procs are up -> soulburn to refresh dots -> soulswap dots to all available targets.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Trinkets proc>Soulburn SoulSwap>SoulSwap (inhale)>MG>newtarget>SoulSwap(exhale)?SoulSwap (inhale)>MG>Newtarget>SoulSwap (exhale)>SoulSwap (inhale)>repeat.

 

What is happening is that you're snap shotting your amazing dots, using the max amount of time that you can hold the dots and then breathing them out at full power/duration. Everytime you do this you're only losing a few tenths of a second off the max duration, thus by the end extending the full power time to about 2 min. Vs. ~40seconds.

 

It's a pain in the ass to do, takes some getting used to, but if you want to pull 1.2mil on Protectors, this is how.

[Elro 47]

Since it was discussed briefly in Zagam's first response, I just wanted to clarify the difference between GoSac and GoSup: is there a rough ilvl in which GoSac is just better regardless, or is it dependent upon having KTT? I understand that KTT makes GoSac much more attractive, as Multistrike doesn't proc from pet attacks, but is GoSup always superior until KTT?

[Liquidsteel 279]

I'd say just use GoSac on everything. There are some here that will disagree, and it depends on a few things, but I'll list my reasons why I believe GoSac > GoSup regardless.

 

1) Pet AI is annoying.

2) Pretty much every fight in SoO is an ember rich environment. You can immolate/RoF on multiple targets, you can Shadowburn the shit out of stuff for even more embers, and depending on how you use Havoc, you can either opt for more ember generation or more damage from copying your ember consumers. This leads into the next point...

3) Having such high ember generation means a greater portion of your damage comes from ember consumers, primarily Chaos Bolt, but also Shadowburn itself. As a result...

4) If you're good at maximising Chaos Bolt damage, then you'll get more out of GoSac then you will GoSup.

 

Basically, if you're good at maximising Chaos Bolt damage with trinket procs, and you properly abuse the ember rich environment, GoSac should pull ahead in every situation.

 

Really, the only time I'd use GoSac is on a pure Single Target fight such as Iron Juggernaut where the guild opted for the knockback strategy, as it can also be a pain to time Chaos Bolts due to saw blades. But even then I'd probably still use GoSac once I was in heroic ilvl.

 

Similarly, if all you do is FnB for most of the fight then GoSup might be better (I'm looking at you, Heroic Immerseus).

Edited February 12, 2014 by Liquidsteel

[Lockybalboa 618]

In a perfect world I would say that without KTT GoSup is better, but even if I did not have KTT I would still take GoSac for all of SoO.

 

1) Pet AI is annoying.

 

 

^that's why.

[Soulzar 42]

Very interesting,

 

My best guess is that you might have been standing closer on the 2nd attempt and travel time effected a cut off?  Or you had a haste proc?  I'm speculating and making conversation since you have obviously thought of these things already so I don't mean to offend.

 

The CB dot might also work like afflic dots, which have no travel time.  So the instance your CB "hits" it snapshots your stats.  If you casted a CB at the end of your trinket proc in the first attempt, when it hits the target the trinket expires.  This might be easy to prove with a scaling trinket (like the one from Garrosh) where your dot ticks might be higher than expected.  i.e. cast a CB with 7 stack trinket and it hits with 8 stacks, generating higher dot than expected.

 

Also, seeing 2 mil CB crits makes me hard.

 

Yah that was basically it, The Dot Base dmg (15% of your CB) is calculated by your CB's snapshot value when cast finishes and leaves your hands, however when the Dot itself is actually applied, it is modified again to your current stats at the time of application.  Any procs lost during travel of CB (or gained) would reduce(or increase) the Dot.  Most cases it ends up being a loss as later CB casts (stack 10 with BBoY as example) have procs dropping during transit.  This is why my Dot value fluctuated from the initial CB value.

 

Additionally if you back to back CB's under high haste, if your second one hits before the second tick Pandemic wont cover it and a tick is lost as well as having the final tick(s) of your first CB dot get refreshed to whatever the second CB dot was calculated too, again usually a lower value than the initial dot.

 

If you think about your opener and the first 2 CB you shoot out, you can have 4pc proc drop, Skull Banner, both trinkets int procs while that second CB is traveling.

 

Again, i think the loss of Dot clip will only happen if you are humping boss and are under Lust/meta with backdraft.. and the Dot snapshot is really unavoidable.

[Cardio33 3]

Trinkets proc>Soulburn SoulSwap>SoulSwap (inhale)>MG>newtarget>SoulSwap(exhale)?SoulSwap (inhale)>MG>Newtarget>SoulSwap (exhale)>SoulSwap (inhale)>repeat.

 

What is happening is that you're snap shotting your amazing dots, using the max amount of time that you can hold the dots and then breathing them out at full power/duration. Everytime you do this you're only losing a few tenths of a second off the max duration, thus by the end extending the full power time to about 2 min. Vs. ~40seconds.

 

It's a pain in the ass to do, takes some getting used to, but if you want to pull 1.2mil on Protectors, this is how.

Interesting,

 

I'm having trouble visualizing how this works.  I would think when you MG after inhaling the buff will drop off after 3-4 sec before MG expires.  Unless it's bugged somehow and channeling MG refreshes your inhale.

 

Does anyone know of a video explaining this technique?  Again I'm having trouble visualizing it.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Poked around and could't find the video I've seen of it.

 

The MG filler is just a filler to do SOMETHING as you want for your SS to max out. You have to exhale right before the buff falls off. That's the point of this, to extend your DoTs just a little bit every time, buying yourself 3 extra seconds at a time. MG is just to do something in between besides standing there.

[Liquidsteel 279]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htHBLT8lMC8

 

I dont know how to do the thing on this forum to turn the link into text, but w.e.

 

Above is the video by Ignocia highlighting how to do this trick.

 

Below is Xyronic's stream highlight of his rank 1 parse.

 

http://www.twitch.tv/xyronic/c/3513627

 

Just remember that as Malefic Grasp is a channel. It is OKAY to interrupt it! Just Inhale, then either haunt or MG for 2 ticks and exhale.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Liquidsteel