Need some advice mastering SoO (Destro)

[Gruxa 1]

Hello everyone,

 

Long time reader, first time poster! I recently started playing WoW again, and I reached lvl 90 in May, 2014, with my warlock.

 

Geared up fast and had the wicked oppurtunity to join a 14/14 HC guild straight away in July.

 

Long story short, I know the tactics and how to play destruction (played warlock for 7 years now). But having missed all the progression i'm having a bit of trouble catching up to the other destruction locks in the guild.

 

My 3 main worries are Norushen, Shamans & Thok, as I pretty much got single target bosses down.

 

I'm looking for those fine tuning tricks that you guys perhaps could advice me to use in these fights

 

Here is my personal logs page (undead warlock ilvl 579) :

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/373793/latest/

 

Best week to use would be Thu 28 August, (except for shamans where September 2 would be best)

 

I would like to point out i'm aware my Immolate uptime isn't always up to par, but  for every occurance I know why it fell off, still working on that.

 

The reason I posted this was mainly because of our last Dark Shamans kill (scored 95% this time). I actually thought i performed bad because our other warlock scored a way higher dmg done/dps score than me ( even though he's 9 ilvls higher than me). I'm just looking for ways to improve on these fights.

 

(PS: on thok i do lose alot of uptime on boss due to wanting to be 100% sure the gate is up and running for the kiting, perhaps you guys have any tips on when would be the perfect timing to place it, or how to approach this)

[Zagam 1,982]

Looking at August 28 parses.

 

*Note - whoever does your logs, tell them to turn Advanced Logging on.  You can track resources such as Burning Embers with Adv Logging on.

 

Norushen

 

1. You didn't die, yet you sported a very low 68.23% activity time, meaning 1/3 of the time, no one was recording your log.  For best log analysis, you should run logs yourself.  No one else was that low, so that tells me you spent too much time in the cleansing room.  Remember to utilize Havoc and drop RoF on all the mobs to get out quickly.

 

2. Since your activity time is low, I can't comment on DoT uptimes or anything else.  I can comment that your 15 Shadowburns was fantastic.  Chaos Bolt damage was very good as well.  You got mad crazy RNG on Multistrike for it to be 7.4% of your damage. 

 

3. I notice oddly enough that Fire and Brimstone Incinerate is your #3 damage source.  Makes me think you got lazies in your group who don't switch to adds - or you do a Chinese firedrill strategy where you send 8 people and spawn 24 adds.  On the small adds, you're #2.  On the large adds, you're #5.  So you're not the problem wtih add switching, which facilitates your FnB casts.  Well done in this case.

 

4. Your PBI proc'd right off the bat but then never again.  I'm baffled as to how you could get boned by RNG for a solid 1:54.  That's horrible RNG beyond horrible.  No lottery tickets for you.  Two procs of Tempus Repit?  Ugh.  1 proc of KTT?  I'm not sure what you did to the RNG gods, but go sacrifice something - anything - to them.  I've never seen such horrid procs of trinkets.

 

Dark Shamans

 

500k DPS - not often I analyze someone in this ballpark.  Great opener - spiking up to 2M DPS. 

 

1. Average Chaos Bolt was 1.202M - this is relatively low considering your gear.  http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FzG3TWfgM7hmqDK6#fight=17&type=casts&source=21&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2497589580.0.0.Warlock%24false%24113858%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2497589580.0.0.Warlock%24false%24148906%5E0%24Separate%24%23a04D8A%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2497589580.0.0.Warlock%24false%24146046&ability=116858 This shows your Chaos Bolt casts with procs.  No Chaos Bolt cast until 1:45 raises an alarm.  You did a high amount of AoE at the start, so understandable to not see CBs there, but remember if you Havoc CBs in the opener, it's a DPS gain over spamming Incinerate, especially if you capture trinkets and glyph Havoc.  At 1:45, you cast 2 CBs, neither of whcih were buffed.  You unloaded 3 with KTT and DS up, but you missed KTT with 2 of them.  If you had held off at 1:45 with only 1 CB, you woulda had another Ember to capture another KTT buffed CB.  You also cast two CBs at 2:50 with PBI up, which was good.  During Bloodlust, you cast two CBs around 3:20 with only Bloodlust up.  You then got a KTT proc and had no embers to use them.  We're talking about 2 2M+ CBs.  After that, you got some Shadowburns in.  Your CB use here could use a slight upgrade.

 

2. Tons of Shadowburns - nice job. 

 

3. Immo uptime is 82% - pretty nice for a fight where you often switch around to other adds and stuff.  Try to watch DBM timers for the next Toxic Totem so you can refresh Immolate on primary target and swap to full-time AoE.  Refresh Immo when you come back to target to increase uptime.  Very small increase here in this situation.

 

4. Slightly better RNG, but KTT still only 19% uptime.  Nice use of 2nd potion - lined up with Dark Soul.  TR still boning you with only 4 procs.  Perfect Havoc use.

 

Thok

 

Curious as to you guys' strat.  It looks like you're a solid guild considering you're 14/14H, but on Thok, no one is over 450k DPS except one Hunter.  Only 1 other person breaks 400k.  In our 10 man, no one is below 430k and we often have 3 people over 500k.  This is likely strat dependent, so curious as to what you're doing with who.  Also, in your log, there is no combat damage done to the bats.  How is this possible?

 

1. Max CB was 2.5M - I think you can do better.  Could be RNG with trinkets, but you barely reached 1M DPS for 2 seconds around 18 seconds into fight.  This is no good because you had KTT, Lightweave, Jade Spirit, PBI, DS, potion, and TR up at the start.  Curious as to why you're not using Synapse Springs at the start?  You only used it 3 times in a 6.5 minute fight.  Macro that shit.  http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FzG3TWfgM7hmqDK6#fight=30&type=casts&source=21&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2497589580.0.0.Warlock%24false%24146046%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2497589580.0.0.Warlock%24false%24148906%5E0%24Separate%24%23a04D8A%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2497589580.0.0.Warlock%24false%24113858&ability=116858 shows your Chaos Bolt casts with procs.  You got in 5 casts in first 35 seconds, which is solid.  All 5 were buffed.  At 1:00, you fired off 3 more with no procs up.  You're very hit and miss with procs - looks like you're doing a good job capturing some procs, but you're offloading embers at some bad times leaving you down an ember or two when a proc does come up.  If you're going to capture a non-trinket or non-DS proc, make it be the 4pc bonus.

 

2. Only 3 Havoc uses.  Use it on Jailers, Bats, Yeti, whatever.  Use it more. 

 

3. Immolate uptime is solid - 93%.  Conflag use is good.  Only 8 Shadowburns?  Again, this ties back into the bats - where the hell are they?  26 Fel Flames?  Why are you using Fel Flame?  You don't have enough Dark Soul uses to show that you're using AD - so why are you using Fel Flame instead of Incinerate?  Either use AD or don't (just unsure which talent you took).  Never cast Fel Flame if you have KJC. 

 

Overall - very solid conceptual understanding of Destruction.  Fine tuning will be your DPS gaining opportunites as you improve Chaos Bolt use and keep your Immolate uptime high.  Also, Shadowburn use is fantastic - combine it with more Havocs. 

[Gruxa 1]

Cheers for the speedy reply Zagam. i'll definately take the hints into account

 

About thok, we use a tactic where we don't do the bats, that's probably the reason behind the overal low DPS: there is no aoe whatsoever. (kinda means we'll never rank high on this fight anyways. Thank you cheesing!)

 

Thok is prolly weird to analyse if you guys use a different method. I reckon we stay stacked alot longer and hence i use alot of Fel flames to cover the GCD on the cast of Thok's Shout so i don't get interupted.

 

Also i tend to spam fel flame if i get interupted to get back into rotation :D it's more or less a panicky rotation.

Edited September 5, 2014 by gruxa

[Zagam 1,982]

Ah, makes sense in regards to Fel Flame.  You can't just not do the bats - do you use a 3rd tank that holds them somewhere?  They can be destroyed in like 10 seconds with focused AoE.  That's an odd strat for sure. 

[Avido 1]

Couldn't they just open a different jail instead of bats?  Yeti first I'm guessing.

 

I fel flame often on Thok.  During the stack phase I cast either incinerate or a backdrafted chaos bolt between interrupts.  Whenever I conflag or immolate, though, I immediately fel flame after and the GCD and interrupt line up in such a way that I can cast those incinerates or chaos bolts right away.  It's a rythm that makes the stack phase feel smoother to me.

 

That, or I when I get locked out of fire and have to hit fel flame for a couple globals.  Fel flames of shame, those ones.

[Gruxa 1]

Avido is right. We open up the yeti cage and there is no phase after. Either we kill him on the 2nd stack phase or during the 2nd kite phase. so we don't have anything to AOE T.T

 

and idd avido, that's what I'm trying to do , but goddamn that muscle memory when your conflagrate goes off cd and you use it straight away intead of waiting for the shout :<

 

Dark Shamans

 

500k DPS - not often I analyze someone in this ballpark.  Great opener - spiking up to 2M DPS. 

 

Heh, Thanks! Altough the parse of Sept 4 (the week after) was alot better than the one you mentioned, the one from Sept. 4 was the main reason i made this topic.

 

Even though it seemed i did fine, dmg done/dps-wise, I was still miles behind the other warlock. perhaps someone here could see something in the logs that I can't cause i'm not really experienced in analysing them. 

So far the thing  that I can see which stands out the most, is that the other destro lock pulled of alot more FnB Incinerates than me. kinda baffled at how he managed that since our adds usually die so fast that the target you try to pull a FnB incinerate of on, dies before you can end the cast!

Edited September 6, 2014 by Gruxa

[Liquidsteel 279]

Poison Gate = Bats

Water Gate = Yeti

Fire Gate = Fire

[Eljin 0]

Gruxa, i guess you're talking about me since Adayode is running affliction. The "key" to cheese on those adds is simply to plan it ahead of time, make sure that immolate is up on the boss and have a good placement. Then i basicly try and find a little fucker who spawned abit away from the rest, although the best way to cheese here is if the bosses are tanked near enough the little fuckers so you can just FnB with the boss as your target. It's pretty much all about luck as it's the first guy who gets the first cast off who gets in the "rythm". You've been improving a lot the last weeks, there's still some bosses that are a struggle but i'll use my next week to guide you trough whatever the problems is. Just keep this dedication up, it's really fun to see!

I will also start log myself, with advanced combat log enabled next week.

 

And about Thok... We've pretty much done both tactics, we're doing quite fine with what we are doing now and we don't really care about going back to the poison. Ranks in SoO is a joke anyways, but we can still Havoc the Yeti for some extra embers tho. I'm not sure if he gives you the return of SB.. Gotta test that out.

 

If you want i have a couple of hours so we can discuss more on mumble, Gruxa. :-)

[Zagam 1,982]

As for Thok, I never thought about doing it any other way.  We've managed to kill him during the 2nd Fixate, so I wonder if our kill time would be shorter if we went Fire instead of Poison...

[Eljin 0]

As long as your raid team isn't THAT interested in ranking on that specific boss, i'd say at least try it out. It's really smooth once you get into that rythm, he dies so fast it's funny. Kill times>Ranks these days anyways.

 

It's also a good way to get some variation in the farm raids as most people is really bored of MoP, and it's fun to see all the different abillities with different tactics on bosses.