Deathwing’s planning to rain down fire on the world? Oh noes. If there’s one thing Destruction Warlocks are enthusiastic about, it’s rains of fire. But patch 4.3’s sweeping changes have you confused as to how exactly to burn things to a crisp?? Well, we’ll get you sorted out with the correct talent spec, gems and reforging, enchants, stat priorities and rotation for 4.3 so that you can get back to doing what you do best: setting things on fire and cackling while you do it.
Updated Nov 29th for Patch 4.3
Destruction Warlock changes in Patch 4.3
This patch sees some pretty major changes and buffs to Destruction. Fire and Brimstone sees a straight damage buff for Chaos Bolt and Incinerate of 11%. Soul Fire now scales better with spellpower, Improved Soul Fire lasts longer (which actually means less Soul Fire casts!), and the talent Burning Embers does more damage of the Imp’s Firebolt and – yes – Soul Fire.
The good news is that whilst the effects of those changes are internally very complex, they don’t change our play or gearing style. The only thing that will change our play style is getting 4 pieces of Tier 13, at which point Soulburn comes in just under maintaining Improved Soul Fire on the priority tree.
Destruction warlock Priorities / Rotation
Destro locks don’t use a fixed rotation – most fixed rotations went out with Wrath, and good riddance. Instead, they use a FCFS (First Come First Served) priority system:
Soul Fire IF Improved Soul Fire isn’t up > Demon Soul > Immolate > Conflagrate > Bane of Doom > Corruption > Shadowflame > Soul Fire (if hasted from Soul Burn or your imp) > Chaos Bolt > Shadowburn (if the boss is below 20%) > Incinerate
- This is a priority list. If any of the spells or buffs from an earlier step fall off or refresh their cooldown, use that instead of a later step.
- If you reach the end of the list cast Incinerate, which is a spell you cast when there’s nothing else to do. It’s slightly better for your DPS than making a cup of tea.
- If no-one else is using a debuff similar to Curse of the Elements (Balance Druids, Unholy DKs, other Destro locks and some hunter pets will all conflict), put up Curse of the Elements at the start of the fight.
- Remember to use Dark Intent! If you’re on progression, put it on a healer, prioritising the ones that use HoTs – Resto Druid, Holy Priest, Resto Shaman. Otherwise, stick it on a fellow DOT-using DPS – Shadow Priests are probably best, and Balance Druids and Fire Mages are also good.
- Bane of Havok is complicated – see the Elitist Jerks guide linked below, see the discussion in comments, or simply avoid using it, as it can often cause problems.
AOE: Use Rain of Fire and Shadowflame liberally, and use your Infernal if it’s available.
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Destruction talent spec
Stats, reforging and gems as a Destruction warlock
Stats order: Intellect > Hit (until hit capped at 1742/17%) > Haste > Critical Strike Rating > Mastery
- Reforge Mastery, Crit and any Spirit to Hit until Hit Cap, then reforge excess Hit, Mastery, and Crit to Haste.
- Gem Intellect, unless the socket bonus is more than 20 Int or 30 of another stat, when you should use an Int/Haste or Int/Hit gem.
- IF you have an average iLevel above 402 then only reforge Haste to 2681 rating – after that, reforge to Mastery.
Destruction Warlock enchants
Remember to check if your profession enchants are better! (Check the stat weights above – it’s likely to be pretty obvious if so).
| Head | Arcanum of Hyjal |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect |
| Hands | Enchant Gloves – Haste |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Powerful Ghostly Spellthread |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Lavawalker |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent |
| Off-Hand Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Superior Intellect |
Glyphs:
Primes: Glyph of Immolate — Glyph of Conflagrate — Glyph of Imp
Major: Glyph of Life Tap and personal choice. If you’re likely to need to combat res, Glyph of Soulstone. If you are likely to need to CC, Glyph of Fear.
Minor: your choice.
Links:
- Elitist Jerks destro lock guide – REALLY good and updated to 4.3.
- Cynwise’s warlockery section has some great guides to aspects of Warlock play.
- MMO Champion’s Dark Intent Guide – definitely read this if you want to get more advanced.
- WoW insider’s Warlock column – useful for extra warlock information
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{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice quick reference guide, well done
I just have one question: what is the meaning of Haste up to 1200? I don’t quite understand what is meant by it? 1200 rating is hardly any haste and definitely not our cap (in Tier 11 content the haste cap wasn’t achievable, I’m not sure what the deal is atm – but the haste cap is something like 70% for Immolate, ie. 7326 rating)
Also, while it can be nice to give Dark Intent to a healer – it may be worth noting that it should be a healer using HoTs or neither the Warlock or the healer will be getting the proc.
All in all, a very good guide
Saga recently posted..Warlock Gear (4.2)
Thanks for the comment!
Dark Intent – good catch. I’ll fix that.
Haste – whoops, typo. That’s snuck in from another guide, I think. Removing. Thanks!
What about your curse ?
@Thorahis – If you’re referring to Bane of Havok, it’s a very complicated question, which is why I didn’t cover it. The EJ guide has a pretty complete section on BoH – in general, stick it on something that isn’t your primary target and isn’t going to cause major problems, if at all possible. That’s often not possible.
As for your other Curses – they’re generally called Banes now, I believe. Bane of Doom is in your priority sytem, as above. Because you can only have one Bane per target, that’s the one you want to be using.
Soul fire has no cooldown, so having it first in the priority list would mean that you never cast anything else.
Possibly a clarification is needed – do you mean that you should be casting Soul fire whenever Improved Soul Fire isnt up?
Good catch, thanks. Fixed!
Why arent you using CoE in the rotation? this increases fire damage.
CoE – good catch.
The general assumption is that there’ll be a similar debuff on from another class (Unholy DK or Boomkin), but that’s unrealistic. So I’ve modified the guide accordingly.
@Saga –
Behind hit rating, haste is typically the best scaling stat for destruction until you start approaching the GCD cap – 50% haste. That requires 4956 haste rating when taking Dark Intent and the 5% spell haste aura into consideration.
In addition to your own casting speed, haste will improve your imp’s Firebolt cast speed and your Conflagrate damage when you gain additional Immolate ticks.
@saga: Keldion has it right – Haste has all the normal benefits for Destro (casting speed, faster dots) but also increases Conflagrate’s damage. If you gain additional ticks to Immolate, Conflagrate’s damage increases. It’s really sweet.
Here’s a post of mine from the beginning of Cataclysm which goes into more detail: http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/how-warlock-dots-work-in-cataclysm/
What about Curse of Elements? I always use it together with Bane of Doom
@VikzeLink – If no-one else is using a debuff similar to Curse of the Elements (Balance Druids, Unholy DKs, other Destro locks and some hunter pets will all conflict), put up Curse of the Elements at the start of the fight.
in my personal opinion, why go for haste??? well looking at it if you use conflag that means your next 3 incins/CB will be 30% quicker…… and if your doing your piority right then after the 3rd your Conflag should be CDed (if you have it glyphed to 8 secs) and if not then throw a fel flame on the target to increase the immo on it….
i tried with the haste/crit, but only seeming to get out 20k ish………..
so i did what i normally do and do my own thing…. (keeping some haste, and some crit) and changing the rest to master = more damage by your fire spells and as destro thats all you use pretty much apart from bane/curse/corruption……………….
and having said that i was doing 23k dps…… tho in my guild i am probs the worste geared player and have a ilvl of 370 ish, at the end of every boss fight i end with about 4-15% extra on my damage done…… thats cuz im amazing lol……
what do you guys think about that?
here is the link of my toon also check out my talents….. i did them myself also..
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/aggramar/Handsomeant/simple
@Handsomeant – You want Haste not just because it reduces your cast time of your nukes, not just because it makes your DoTs tick faster, and not just because it reduces your GCD – but because it can massively increase Conflag’s damage.
Conflag is based off of Immolate’s total DoT damage. If you can stack enough Haste to get additional ticks added to it, then Conflag’s damage goes up. After you get additional ticks, Haste’s value drops and Crit/Mastery rises.
@Handsomeant – You need Mana Feed. Losing globals to mana starvation outweighs any benefit you would gain from the other available talents in Affliction.
Because Incinerate has the lowest DPET in the destruction warlock arsenal, Backlash is next to worthless.
question? Do you want to cast Conflag right AFTER you cast Immolate? Or do you wait right before it drops off then cast?
@Faÿe – Conflagrate does not consume Immolate anymore, so cast it ASAP.*
*Client-server delay will prevent you casting Conflagrate immediately after a fresh application of Immolate, so rolling another instant cast at the end of a new Immolate is a good idea. I favor Bane of Doom for this purpose.
@Keldion – Thanks for helping out!
@Hugh Hancock – Actually a Curse and a Bane are two different things. Bane is a DoT while a curse will debuff the boss in some way to help with dps, or weaken said target.
@Chris – True – I misspoke there.
To be more accurate – SOME things that used to be Curses are now called Banes.
Ty, now if you could only show me in person i would be set. lol, but really, thanks for composing all this info. just one thing, should we reapply immolate or boost it back up with fel flame?
Refreshing Immolate with a hardcast is always preferable over Fel Flame.
Fixed! Or do you wait right before it drops off then cast?
Does corruption really helps on the dps? when i tested on a dummy, the rotation without corruption did 2k more dps
Yes corruption should be used because along with the glyph of corruption the instant shadow bolts make the difference.
You can refresh Immolate when it has 3 or less seconds remaining.
Corruption is a DPS improvement, but not due to any interaction with glyphs. Since destruction focuses on getting more haste for Conflagrate, Corruption’s DPET inevitably pulls ahead of Incinerate as it adds in extra ticks to stay close to its 18-second duration.
you have no clue bro i tried to follow what you said and no go loss 5k dps from it
here try this CoE then Imm then Chaos Bolt at the end of cast hit Conflagrate
you well get a haste buff then spam Incinerate about 4 times then fel flame to reflesh imm then repeat lol hiting 30k dps and i have my imp out
@varbarlock85386ilvl – The rotation here is taken from the theorycraft at EJ and other similar sites. If you believe you can improve upon their suggestions, I encourage you to post there – obviously, they’re likely to be very interested if they can indeed get more DPS from their characters. I’ll pick up on any suggestions of yours that they incorporate.
Having said that, modern theorycrafting tends to shy away from inflexible rotations in favour of a priority system. I haven’t simmed it, but I’m fairly sure you’ll find in a raid situation the priority system here will generate higher DPS.
@Saga
the rating at 17% 1742 rating is for hit m8, haste is around 2691 rating, (for goblins 2591) if im not mistaken i think these are the correct numbers.
Generally very good. I for one don’t believe you NEED the life tap glyph as you don’t have mana issues in this spec. Also, in the talents, you will get a little more from DOOM and GLOOM rather than Fel Synergy. You should be using your imp who doesnt have problems staying alive considering the ranged damage.
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