Hey guys, playing destro lock at M+ and just wondering, at how many targets does it make sense to cast Rain of Fire instead of Chaos Bolt?
There are a lot of conditionals on what you are asking, the warlock discord has a pretty comprehensive guide section on the proper way to diagnose certain situations and when you should use either ability.
However, the general rule of thumb is:
If you are using inferno you start using rain of fire at 3 targets (unless you have havoc up)
If you are using cataclysm as hellcaller, you also start to rain of fire at 3 targets (unless havoc is up).
Other than that, as diabolist and no inferno you use rof at 5 targets always.
It gets slightly more complex when you take into consideration when to use shadowburn as well, and whether you have a priority target involved. The discord also has a section on that.
TLDR: never use shadowburn ever on your touch of rancorra procs (spawning the demons as diabolist) as it’s just a massive downgrade compared to using it on chaos bolt or rain of fire (with the above logic).
To add to the general rules, the other thing to consider is movement, i.e. whether the mobs are going to be inside the RoF for its duration or not.
This is a frustrating dps loss for me, despite what every guide says.
Run out of shards so fast and the RoF infernal cycle slows down. With 5+ targets, you can many times don’t touch incinerate or conflag and keep layering RoF and CDF into Shadowburn spam… fueling the fiend + infernal cycle.