Highmaul Warlock Style - Normal, Heroic, & Mythic

[JvChequer 43]

I did every 7 fights in Heroic and Destro feels pretty solid.

 

Tectus, Twin ogron and Imperator was the fights that I was worse overral.

 

Tectus and TO I'd probably swap to demo/affli and Imperator I really should go for KJC instead AD, lots of movement.

[Soulzar 42]

I tried Tectus last night Demo/Cata .. and I did really poorly...we walked in and one shot it and I did not really get the pulls under my belt to get any sort of routine down...  I had probably 6 or so pulls in as Destro our previous raid night and was performing much better, though more comfortable with the spec.  Demo def feels like a better QoL spec for it with leap and ToC.  Didn't really feel I had any timing down for anything and was kinda just mashing.  I'll def need more practice to outpace Destro. 

 

Twins Demo felt really good.  I actually did use KJC.  Our positioning has Casters mostly able to stand n plant, but you do need to move a little each fire phase.  KJC was up every time.  I used Cata, I only got off 5 casts in a 7 mins fight, hitting 9 targets.  3rd source of dmg still, but Demon bolt may work better and seems to be what most are using.  Primary reason for choosing Cata was so I could lean a bit more on ToC to ensure I could keep fire phase simple for now.

 

We almost got Ko'ragh down but our raid group is retardedly low on casters (Lock, 2 Spriests, Mage, Ele) which is making it a lot harder than it needs to be.  I was playing Sup/DB and really really liking it on this fight... but DemonBolt going through the shield was killing us, effectively putting us down to only 4 casters.  I had to go destro to do more Magic dmg :(  

 

Brackenspore was an intense fight!  Soft enrage is fairly well tuned for DPS at our lower gear levels.  Will be a rofl show once people's DPS comes up a few k.  I enjoyed this fight a lot, destro... so much cleave.

 

So far I have found Sac Pact, even with pet seems to be the best option in most cases.  With Pet I  am getting a nice ~170k shield.  With the way healing is now, seems mitigating those big bursts is better than mitigating all dmg taken via soul link.

[Strife 6]

Did Heroic Kargath, Butcher, Brackenspore, Ko'grah, and progression currently on Mar'gok as Destro.

 

Twins and Tectus as Demo.

 

Only fight I felt like I needed KJC was on Mar'gok. At least for Heroics the minor amount of movement on the other fights didn't really call for KJC as Destro. Demo has enough things to do during movement that I don't really feel like I'll ever take KJC with it.

 

I do have a problem with our total lack of on the move dps as destro currently since they gutted RoF. It's most apparent on Mar'gok with all the movement. Generally I never needed a full 8s of KJC, I mainly used it for running through novas or if I needed to get out of raid when I was branded. A RoF or Conflag provides enough movement to move for mines. Really wish they would relook at KJC, needs a lower cooldown even at the cost of only 6s of on-use for example or just a revamp overall. 

 

Not really happy with casters in general and not just Warlocks being penalized for movement but not rewarded when we can turret. Getting jelly of hunters pulling top dps on patchwerk and on high movement for ranged 

Edited December 6, 2014 by Strife

[Liquidsteel 279]

I'm feeling fine with Demo on all encounters. Some will be better as Destro, but there's nothing wrong with doing nothing for 5 seconds due to movement.

I got rank 1 on twin ogron and spent a bunch of time casting corruption. It feels shit but that's our cclass now.

[Astynax 24]

I'm feeling fine with Demo on all encounters. Some will be better as Destro, but there's nothing wrong with doing nothing for 5 seconds due to movement.

I got rank 1 on twin ogron and spent a bunch of time casting corruption. It feels shit but that's our cclass now.

Curious, did you ever find yourself in the situation of having to multidot (thinking specifically tectus or brackenspore) with doom, causing you to delay demo bolt rather significantly? Or is this just a function of the fact that RNGesus has gifted me with like 13% crit, but only 5% in unbuffed haste? And if so, what's the priority for these cases?

Oh, and strife: the way I see it, this is just Blizzard's way of apologizing to melee for the other 16 tiers of raiding.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Astynax

[Oldtrout 7]

I'm feeling fine with Demo on all encounters. Some will be better as Destro, but there's nothing wrong with doing nothing for 5 seconds due to movement.

I got rank 1 on twin ogron and spent a bunch of time casting corruption. It feels shit but that's our cclass now.

I notice you and the number 2 rank both used demonbolt, but the next 3 (I'm at 5) all used cataclysm and our top damage was touch of chaos. 

 

With such few kills and probably so many of the parses being without players doing their best, it's pointless right now to declare what's the optimal spec for each fight, but for any warlocks complaining that demo feels clunky or that they hate being gimped by movement, having touch of chaos in our toolkit can feel like a godsend. Every fight that I'm using Demo / Cata on feels very smooth and very comfortable and it's almost entirely down to the fact I can keep up good damage on the move without having to worry about positioning or talenting KJC.

[Strife 6]

To be clear I'm not complaining on movement for demo/aff, only destro.

 

I play demo on Tectus/Twins and have more than enough to do with lifetapping, refreshing dots, HoG, and occassional ToC during movement.

 

Destro can basically conflag once and use a terribly useless RoF now, MF is basically a useless talent, and KJC is really unoptimized because fights generally have frequent movement and other than maybe Twins fire (which I don't play destro on anyways) you're never going to need 8s of movement but you'll definitely need it more frequently than once a minute. I'd rather have charges like Ice Floes for movement then 8s every 60s...

[Astynax 24]

Yeah, it's for this reason I feel I'll be steering away from destro this expansion (I hope). That's just the joke we ranged have been telling in normal tectus PuGs after being LoSed by bad timing, or having someone accidentally bring smoke through the raid, meanwhile the rogue is sitting up pulling 18K.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Yeah, it's for this reason I feel I'll be steering away from destro this expansion (I hope). That's just the joke we ranged have been telling in normal tectus PuGs after being LoSed by bad timing, or having someone accidentally bring smoke through the raid, meanwhile the rogue is sitting up pulling 18K.

I did 27k ^^

 

I'm probably going to use the infernal next time and persuade my raid to kill both mediums at the same time so we get 8 smalls haha.

[Astynax 24]

I did 27k ^^

 

I'm probably going to use the infernal next time and persuade my raid to kill both mediums at the same time so we get 8 smalls haha.

Lol. Our PuGs were more concerned with just getting it down. And we often wiped somewhere right before or during the medium -> small transition, so dps is a big misleading there, as it's mostly single target with minor cleave.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Last three bosses added, some additions else where. 

 

I haven't gone through all the comments yet so there is still more to be added for normal and a lot for heroic. Sorry this is a little slow, I'm REALLY busy.

[Zagam 1,982]

"Best spec" can be very different than what someone can do with any spec. Top parses are outliers, not the final rule. We will need multiple weeks to compile worthwhile conclusions about what specs are optimal for fights. Even then, some groups will do it differently and skew numbers. Some warlocks will look better with a "sub-optimal" spec because of RNG, better skill, or group alteration.

For now, don't make any declarations of best spec. They're all very much in place to be very close to each other in equally skilled hands. What should be the focus is what helps your individual group succeed more. If you lack burst, Destruction may be best for your group even if you're lower than other guild warlocks. If you have more melee and no multi dotters, Affliction may win FOR YOUR GROUP.

Use the spec that helps you win. If numbers become an issue in regards to enrage, then your entire group needs to adjust. Use the spec that is best for your group and helps you beat bosses.

Just like secondary stats, they don't play your spec for you. Going from Demo to Destro isn't going to increase your DPS magically like swapping crit to mastery. Find the spec you play the best. That is your best spec.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Charred Remains worked well on Imperator Mar'gok for me. I had burst for all the adds when I wanted it, and at the end when we broke one of the aberrations it made it really easy to start dumping a ton of Shadowburns on the boss.

[Gruxa 1]

I'm not sure anyone else tried Destro on Ko'ragh HC yet, but when I was destro on this fight, it seemed to have a nice synergy with glyph of havoc during the add phase (I was not on AOE duty).

 

The adds seem to die very fast in our raid, and cata was hard to pull off.

 

(on a different note, demo + demonbolt outdpsed me on this fight, again, barely any add dmg to dish out, so it might be the optimal spec anyways if you're not on add duty)

Edited December 8, 2014 by Gruxa

[Liquidsteel 279]

Cleared the last 3 bosses yesterday.

 

Twin Ogron - Demonology with GoSyn / AD / Demonbolt and no Dark Soul glyph. Was mid pack finishing around 25k DPS. Beaten by the 3 MM hunters, a rogue and a Boomkin. Lots of room for improvement. 

 

Ko-ragh - Same set up this time managing to finish 5th with 25.4K DPS. When the boss going into the recharge phase we ignore the adds til he comes out, at which point they get AoE'd down by the range. I made sure to drop double stack of HoG on them. Tried to Immolation Aura but this is pointless and won't be doing it again.

 

Imperator - Did a few pulls as Demonology before switching to Destruction with GoServ / AD / Servitude. Do NOT glyph Havoc. Loved this set up and ended up finishing top with 28.6k DPS. Movement is predictable and you can bank conflag charges for the Force Nova or the Destructive Resonance. For the small Arcane Aberrations I just Havoc'd a Chaos Bolt and sniped a Shadowburn. For the larger ones I would copy 2x Shadowburn and an Incinerate. Not enough time for 3x Shadowburn. Going into an intermission you can copy 3x Shadowburn from one Mage to the other, before also copying 3x Shadowburns from the small adds to the second mage, before again copying shadowburns from remaining adds to the boss.

 

In the final phase there is a load of further opportunities to cleave Shadowburns left right and center, whilst also getting your FnB rotation on with the packs of small adds.

 

Defensive's are best saved for the final phase where there is a ton of raid damage. Glyphed HS plus Dark Regen is nice, as is Sac Pact and Unending Resolve (don't glyph it).

 

Using second charge of AD during the second intermission helps burn down those mages asap. 

[Zagam 1,982]

Grats on finishing Heroics. Mind telling us approximately how many hours your group put in this week?

[Liquidsteel 279]

Heroic took about 5 hours. We one shot the first 5, 2 shot Ko'ragh and took 14 attempts to down Imperator.

Before this we did split runs on Normal and also Kargath Heroic was done in two groups.

We'll do some heroic on alts tonight maybe.

All in all 16 hours across 3 nights. Pretty good going.

[Oldtrout 7]

We only had time for 3 pulls on Imperator last night after downing Ko'ragh, I was using Sac / CR and it felt okay, but I was doing about the same dps as 4 nights before on normal when my item level was about 10-15 lower - probably some of that is down to me being slightly less used to CR than standard destruction, but I will definitely be trying out serv / serv first on our next raid.

 

You have to kill Imperator on heroic to unlock mythic, right? Hopefully we'll get him in the 3 hours we have on tuesday.

[Soulzar 42]

Twin Ogron - Demonology with GoSyn / AD / Demonbolt and no Dark Soul glyph. Was mid pack finishing around 25k DPS. Beaten by the 3 MM hunters, a rogue and a Boomkin. Lots of room for improvement. 

 

Ko-ragh - Same set up this time managing to finish 5th with 25.4K DPS. When the boss going into the recharge phase we ignore the adds til he comes out, at which point they get AoE'd down by the range. I made sure to drop double stack of HoG on them. Tried to Immolation Aura but this is pointless and won't be doing it again.

 

 

Any specific reason you are not glyphing DS while running with DB?  

 

Ko'Ragh I had to go Destro as our raid did not have a good enough spread of magic dealer to afford most of my dmg going through the shield (Demonbolt/Pet).  when I was demo, I tried to land a Double Chaos Wave to snipe killing blows on those adds.  I feel well timed it could be a quick refill on Fury. ... Or a complete waste of fury.. lol

 

For Destro, glyphed Havoc is great on this fight as you can cleave shadowburns off those ads to the boss.  I was not able to reliably get more than 3, but you don't get any other opportunities to cleave, so no reason to not have those extra charges in hand.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Soulzar

[Zagam 1,982]

Any specific reason you are not glyphing DS while running with DB?  

After looking at logs, it's looking a lot more like you use DB every 40 seconds, not delaying it for DS.  The trade off is DS uptime because of how you delay it.  DB is too much damage to delay, so every 20 seconds you delay it for DS is a DPS loss, although combining it with Dark Soul compensates a small bit.  

 

Without glyphing it, this is how it looks:

 

0 seconds - DS + DB

40 seconds - DB

80 seconds - DB

120 seconds - DS + DB

160 seconds - DB

200 seconds - DB

240 seconds - DS + DB

 

DS uptime through 260 seconds would be 60/260 = 23%.

 

Basically without glyphing it, every 3rd one is DB phase + 30%.  Since DB is by far the highest damage source, you want to push it out as much as possible.  This is, of course, if you use it right in line every time.  This discredits trinket syncronization.

 

If you were to instead delay DB for a glyphed DS, you obviously would lose a lot.  No need to evaluate this.

 

If you glyph DS, then your values look like this if you do NOT delay DB for DS.

 

0 seconds - DS + DB

40 seconds - DB

60 seconds - DS

80 seconds - DB

120 seconds - DS + DB

160 seconds - DB

180 seconds - DS

200 seconds - DB

240 seconds - DS + DB

 

DS uptime through 260 seconds = 50/260 = 19%

 

Here, you are getting 3 DB phases with DS, the same as you would without the glyph, so this is ok.  It'll be goofy to use DS without DB especially in the instance where you could delay DS by 20 seconds, BUT if you ever delay it, you will only delay the next DS + DB phase.  You will, however, have a slightly lower overall DS uptime if you glyph it and don't delay it.

 

If you DO delay DS for DB, it looks like this:

 

0 seconds - DS + DB

40 seconds - DB

80 seconds - DS + DB

120 seconds - DB

160 seconds - DB + DS

200 seconds - DB

240 seconds - DB + DS

 

DS uptime over 260 seconds = 40/260 = 15%.

 

Here, you get FOUR phases with DB + DS IF YOU DELAY DARK SOUL UNTIL YOUR NEXT DB PHASE.  Basically, every other DB phase will be empowered.  If you talent AD, and it's not broken, you should theoretically be able to pick any other 40 second interval and also combine DB with DS, but you can only do this once.  This would, however, give you the flexibility of having another burst window.  However, notice that your overall DS uptime drops to 15%.  This is important to keep in mind because by glyphing it, you increase your DB + DS phases by 1 but have an 8% decrease in DS uptime over 260 seconds.  Basically, you choose if you want higher burst during DB or higher uptime with DS.  Since DB is intricate and by far our most valuable spell, choosing the glyph is fine but not choosing the glyph is ok, too.  The difference should be very small, but if you glyph it, you MUST delay DS for DB for the value to come out ahead.  

 

All of this evaluation is done with 240-260 seconds, so longer fights will have different feedback numbers, but they won't be different enough to come up with a steadfast conclusion.  This, however, WILL be different if a fight lasts with lengths of 3:00, 5:00, or 7:00, where a non-glyphed DS wouldn't be usable and would be 60 seconds away from being used again.  Glyphing DS gives you more flexibility on fight durations to maximize your uptime.  This is similar in difference between GoSupremacy and GoService in terms of burst potential with your Felguard - if a fight lasts even minutes (2, 4, 6:00, etc), Service tends to win out.  However, the window of of 2:00-2:20 and 6:00-6:20 is smaller than 6:20-8:00 and 4:20-6:00.  

 

Basically, you're nitpicking very small numbers, but it will have SOME impact.  Overall, I suggest glyphing Dark Soul and delaying it for DB but only if you can do this perfectly on schedule every time.  Not glyphing it is ok and will make your opening burst even more powerful.  

 

God does it feel good to get into numbers again.  I'm on my way home in 45 minutes and will be at my computer at home in the mountains of WV in 12 hours.  Hope this wasn't confusing...I may or may not be enjoying my last rum punch.

[KoragonArt 0]

My guild started normals last night after ironing out scheduling stuff. We'll be back to regular schedules next lockout. At 641, my item level isn't as high as others here, but I felt good on the fights as demo. Everyone is around that 635-640 range and the only people I wasn't beating were the hunters (we don't really have a wind walker). Talent wise the best combo I found was goserv, ad glyphed and demonbolt. Gosynergy didn't feel as good but was close. I even tried out servitude with goserv doomguard on the butcher, but it was bad. Mostly was a curiosity thing. Haven't tried destro in highmaul yet but my favorite spec feels good, so I'm happy.

Edited December 8, 2014 by KoragonArt

[Liquidsteel 279]

I didn't glyph because I cba with the bug, and I don't need KJC.

I'm still experimenting with Demonbolt. I think glyph and ad will be best but we'll see.

As Destruction I did 28.5k on heroic imperator but unfortunately logs for him are private for a couple weeks.

Happy to answer questions in detail with screenshots but its a guild rule to stop server competition stealing our strats \o/

[Soulzar 42]

Dont make me send you Temporal Crystals for your rings Mr Shizwix!! :D

[Desos 18]

Tried Demo too for the first 6 bosses on heroic, but for the Imperator destro provided higher numbers(GoSup, AD, DemServ). Ended up at 23,5 k dps @ ilvl 642. I did not take KJC, because the mines can be perfectly planned around, just like the nova and knockback.

BTW: Coined the trinket from Imperator with socket^^

[Liquidsteel 279]

Yeah Destro is a no brainer on Imperator. Far too many opportunities to snipe embers. I feel Demo should be given a better Fury return mechanic, it only ever reliably occurs on burst AoE.