I’m trying destro lock in M+ and when I play with a coordinated group of friends, we can do huge pulls through the whole dungeon and I can end at around 4m+ dps overall.
But when I play with pugs who are doing at most double pulls with a lot of single pack chain pulling, my overall damage in the same dungeons and key levels falls off a cliff.
Is there a good build or strategy to optimize damage for tanks who do smaller, chained trash pulls?
Not really. The issue isn’t just pull size, it’s also Destro’s spec design.
Destro has entirely uncapped AoE, and it’s balanced around that. To fully utilize its potential you have to pull big or it’s just not worth it. There really isn’t much you can do to up your damage in smaller pulls. Destro does the same damage to every target in AoE so you just have to add more targets to add more damage.
It’s a high risk high reward spec unfortunately. You simply need big pulls to do big damage.
It’s why a lot of people run demo. It’s strong in small and large AoE, less than destro of course but overall its damage is much more consistent pull to pull. And it does pretty good boss damage
I appreciate your insight on this! Your explanation lines up with what I’m seeing with destro locks who push high keys. They are giga pulling almost the entire dungeon to make use of their damage. Their single target boss damage lines up with what I’m able to do so I figured I was doing something correct. But their overall dps must be getting a massive boost from all the huge trash pulls at the end of the day.
Destro is a spec that your tank needs to pull around. If you have CDs pull everything. It’s actually a waste to not pull big when destro has CDs. But the downside is pugs usually aren’t comfortable or coordinated enough to play around the spec
Our single target is okay. Our massive AoE is very good. Our 3-8 target is pretty bad compared to most other specs and classes. If your group is constantly baby pulling and you’re playing destro, you’re gonna have a bad time. There isn’t much you can do on your end to resolve that.
Anticipate where tank will move to.
Don’t use the RoF that fall on your target. Keep ground-based talent. Use the @cursor macro so you don’t have to place the targeting circle for better mobility while tank is moving.
e.g in Priory you know that tank will be pulling mobs to avoid bad, so you pop Dark Pact and drop RoF where the tank will be after next toll.
Use Chaos Bolt + Incinerate + Shadowburn weave instead of RoF if mobs won’t be in RoF for long. You’re just wasting shards, unless Infernal is down and you need to dump.
There is nothing you can do about it.
Locks are made for big pulls. TWW is a bit better than DF when it comes to smaller pulls, but still.