I’m working on mythic+ 8s through 10s. I’m using the skill tree guide from wowhead for mythic +, ilevel 419. I only seem to be able to average in the high 30ks to mid 40ks. Im not sure for my level where I should be. I was trying to use warcraft logs to look at other people but not sure how to find people at my ilevel to compare. I’m sure Im really short on dps but i dont know by how much.
out side of looking at logs I cant say what is right and wrong about your game play, but keys that low mobs dont have the health for destro aoe ramp. what is your ST looking like?
Yeah, for that ilevel I would expect to be doing more damage. There are a couple of potential problems that destruction warlocks could run into in m+.
1: Destruction requires you to be stationary and m+ can be rough for that. Definitely try to eliminate any unnecessary movements. You might be moving at times without realizing it or not needing to.
2: Destruction AoE requires ramp up time and lower keys aren’t really conducive to that because enemies die before you get going. In smaller keys, you are probably better off doing some chaos bolt + havoc + pandemonium for splash damage than using rain of fire unless the pack is 5+ mobs and you know you can get a few rain of fires off before they start dying.
In lower keys, you could sacrifice a little bit for fire and brimstone since the incinerate cleave does give a bit more upfront burst, but I wouldn’t really use it in higher keys.
3: Madness of Azj’Aqir is extremely important to the playstyle currently but it looks like it’s going away next season. That being said, You generally want to maximize uptime on this for the spell you are casting.
For chaos bolt, do chaos bolt, incinerate, incinerate (or conflag), chaos bolt, etc. This will help you generate enough shards to keep the 4 second buff up for all of your chaos bolts. Of course if you are shard capped, feel free to dump shards.
For rain of fire, you would obviously use this on big packs. However, if it’s large packs of weak enemies like the witherlings in brackenhide or the tiny shardlings in nelth’s lair, don’t bother. They would die so fast that you wouldn’t get to benefit from the madness buff on your rain of fire. In cases like this, chaos bolt with havoc for pandemonium cleave.
At least those are some of the more common problems that I see other destruction warlocks have if they are struggling. Your single target should be decent though for bosses and your 2 or 3 target cleave should be decent. What are your numbers for the single target and cleave target dummies in valdrakken just to make sure you’re getting the cool downs and rotations correct?
on the dungeoneers training dumbie, my sustain is around 40k.
- conflag
- immolate
- demon fire
4.chaosbolt (rain of fire)
5.incinerate - chaosbolt. (rain of fire)
- incinerate
throw in my summon infernal on a boss.
Do you use details or anything that might give a break down of your damage?
I just did one 3 minute test run on the dungeoneer’s training dummy in my M+ spec. It’s not my single target spec, but it’s the one I use in dungeons to get a better comparison. Keep in mind I am a 445 warlock, but here is the breakdown of my damage. I’d focus more on the % of damage just to see if you’re missing something.
Overall DPS- 95k
Chaos Bolt- 29.1%
Incinerate- 22.9%
Channel Demonfire (counting the bonus bolts)- 14%
Immolate Dot- 8.1%
Fel Barrage- 5.6%
Conflagrate- 5.2%
The rest is all trinkets, embellishments, and smaller things. What’s your uptime % of Madness of Azj’Aqir? My details said I was around 77%. It is easier to keep up with better stats though.
I also did a 2 minute aoe test on the 5 cleave target dummies. Here is that breakdown.
Overall DPS- 250k
Rain of Fire- 45.6%
Immolate Dot- 15.9%
Channel Demonfire- 12.7%
Blasphemy- 7.3%
Incinerate- 4.5%
Infernal- 3.1%
Conflagrate- 2.6%
Again some smaller bits of damage from trinkets and embellishments. I had a 90% uptime on Madness that time because it’s really easy to maintain when you have that many targets that are completely stationary. In a real dungeon, mobs would be moving around.
Hopefully you might be able to find something useful as far as sources of damage that might help you pick up on something. It’s kind of hard to be more specific without actual data.
thank you for this. Madness, how is the upkept? just by continuously casting it? I’m at 424 ilevel, doing an lfr boss I was at 50k-55k sustained.
chaos bot or ROF
The big thing with Madness management involves the juggling of Madness with Erad and Burn to Ashes. With low haste, it’s mostly CB/RoF → 1 non-instant cast (+ conflag, potentially) → CB/RoF. With some haste, you can weave a full second non-instant cast between Bolts, especially during bloodlust and haste procs.
Once you get comfortable weaving those together, it becomes about finding times to manage movement without dropping Madness/Erad while still getting 1-2 casts in between bolts. CDF makes the Madness/Erad juggle more of a pain since it also makes movement more awful, but I wouldn’t overly obsess over Madness management right now since the talent is gone in 10.2
what are we going to do after 10.2 then?
We’re receiving some baseline spell buffs plus Madness is being replaced by a node that provides flat damage increases. Without Madness, things will definitely be easier, but we’ll see how things play out.
Next tier, I imagine we’ll be praying for Dimensional Rift procs lol
From my experience destro isn’t ideal at lower keys where the mobs die almost immediately and the tanks pull mobs 2-3 at a time all while dancing around the room
Destro needs big packs and a tank that keeps the packs in your damage radius
Demo is pug friendlier tbh, especially at lower keys
damage radius for rain of fire?
Mostly yeah, especially in terms of keeping the mobs stationary. But just in general mobs need to be plentiful and stacked. And you get the most value on stuff like cry havoc, infernal etc. when the mobs are pulled like this
Warlock shines on big mob pulls. A good tank vs bad tank can cause a 10-15% variance on dps easily
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destro at low keys is pretty rough as destro has to ramp up damage, once you get into higher keys it gets a bit better but only really if the tank does big pp pulls and sits in one spot. demo is honestly the best m+ spec of the 3 imo, its got reasonable mobile aoe, it can still do quite good single target dps, and has a bunch of spells it can cast on the move. afflic is good when you’re looking at a fortified week cause seed of corruption + doom blossom absolutely pumps. but warlock in general only really shines in higher keys with big pulls