Destruction Warlock Questions for Raiding

Classes Warlock
1

Hello! I am a gnome! I have been looking at the top logs for destruction warlock to learn how to play it, do we not use shadowburn at all even though we talent into this? Is this only to get the bonus critical strike on conflagrate through the conflagration of chaos talent (I only see these taken together so I am wondering about that).

Is it also common to just use infernal on CD or how long do you save it if there is a burn phase coming up? It seems like people only hold it on Larodar, Smolderon, and sometimes Fyrakk (but not all). How do people decide when to run rain of chaos vs grand warlock’s design?

Additionally, do you see any thing about my character like gears to remove or swap out? Thanks! Sock

2
  • People really aren’t using Shadowburn. There’s a few potential use cases but the spell is so bad that you’re better off not even remembering you have the button (in the vast majority of cases)
  • You are correct that it’s only taken because the talent below it isn’t complete trash like most of the rest of that middle tree section
  • Generally, people are using the 2 min GWD build and using Infernal on CD. There may be times you wanna hold but those vary greatly with kill times and what strategy your RL wants to run with. As a general rule, if you might lose a use by holding, don’t hold.
  • 3 min RoC build isn’t awful but it relies heavily on mirror (trinket from Dawn) and performs best when you’re given externals like PI during your Infernal window. Without externals, you may get more value from moving the point from GWD into another stack of Burn To Ashes.
  • As for your gear, it’s hard to make a judgment so early because you’re pretty undergeared. The Green trinket is pretty solid tho, but I’d say farm gear in general. Try to get your hands on a Nymue trinket and either a Nymue staff or Iridal (from the Fall dungeon). Bonus points if you can nab a Belors trinket.
  • Additionally, I don’t think we’re nearly as bad in keys as people have been dooming about and with the buffs on Tuesday, we won’t be Fire mage levels of busted but it should feel pretty nice.
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3

Thanks a lot! Do we use curses as well? Should we use a specific one on each boss? (And can we do this before pull or do we go into combat if we use them?)

4

In raid, you can throw Curse of Weakness out.

In dungeons, there’s a few great uses for Curse of Tongues, like in Everbloom (caster adds by the 3rd boss, the council boss, etc).

You enter combat if you use them.

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5

Thanks x2! Does any warlock spec use drain life, is that good anymore? Additionally, can you just macro soulburn and amplify curse into the relevant spells and not have a special bind for them? Also, is mayhem better in M+ or can I run havoc in M+? Will Cataclysm be the go-to choice with the new buffs?

6

As much as I love Cataclysm, I doubt it’ll end up being the go-to choice. Far as I’m aware, our M+ build is still taking Inferno and Chaos Incarnate and completely ignoring Dimensional Rift despite it being what our tier bonus is designed around.

I would love for our AoE rotation to involve Cataclysm, Fire and Brimstone (and make it generate shards for every target hit, damnit!), and using Cry Havoc for exploding Chaos Bolts for AoE (especially if they made Cry Havoc cause the Chaos Tear to explode as well) but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. :frowning:

As for macroing Soulburn into spells, I haven’t tried that to see if it works TBH. I would assume so since it’s not on the GCD? But I also have times where I’ll need to use several things that could benefit from Soulburn back-to-back (need an instant Gateway to reposition, need to use a Healthstone but don’t need to Soulburn it, etc.) and already have so many keybinds that trying to figure out if I can set up a modifier key for to Soulburn the ability would require me to first free up a modifier key. Easier to just have a separate keybind for Soulburn, at least in my case.

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7
  • Drain Life is used for Affliction in some builds. I hear it feels clunky but I don’t play it.
  • Wouldn’t want to macro amp curse because you may need to use it separately (I put curse of exhaustion on spiteful adds rather frequently). As for Soulburn, because it also can amp a variety of spells, I’d avoid macroing that together. Especially because Soulburn requires a resource.
  • Havoc is typically the play in M+. I’ve seen a few Mayhem users around but they aren’t common and generally don’t perform well.
  • Cataclysm is already being used in a lot of higher M+ keys for Destro. The community as a whole isn’t on board quite yet, so you might see some large resistance to it but I think both Inferno and Cataclysm have strong use cases in M+. Considering the time it takes to ramp right now, I’d lean more towards Cataclysm in all dungeons except Everbloom.
  • As for the buff items specifically, that bonus benefits Inferno build more on paper, but I think it might be just enough to get the community on board to trying out Cata again.
  • Contrary to what some people are saying, you definitely want to run the new 4pc with dimension rift. Chaos Incarnate is good but since DRift cleaves 25%, it’s quite a strong spell.
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8

Hello fellow warlocks, gnome and otherwise!

I’ve been using my own variant of the 2 minute cleave build from wowhead (switched to demonfire instead of shadowburn, because as mentioned here it’s not worth using) in raids and m+. Likely my skill level and experience is a factor, but I just cannot make anything with Rain of Fire competitive. On the positive, I find the 2m cleave build usually is competitive in both mythic and raid boss fights. My place on the meters takes a hit during aoe trash, but who cares about trash right? :slight_smile:

Been getting some good use out of the dimensional rifts with the 4set bonus. If I lump the damage done by shadowy/unstable/chaos tear + flame rift together, they are my second highest dps contributor behind chaos bolt. And they look so pretty!!

Not sure how to determine how much benefit the group receives from curses, but I keep them on the nastiest foes, to try to be a good citizen. Amplify Curse is macroed, because I feel that having control over which curse to amplify is too niche a use to support having a second button.

As for macros - I am all for compounding all the spells that are not on the GCD to reduce button bloat and maximise up-time. If you are in danger of death with low health, do you really want to press the Soulburn button before the Healthstone button? You might lose precious milliseconds and die! This is my thinking anyway.

e.g. here’s my “oh crumbs” macro:
#showtooltip Drain Life
/cast Soulburn
/use Healthstone
/cast Drain Life

Finally, a quality of life macro I’ve been enjoying is to pop a Burning Rush cancel into some of my spell macros, because I’m often triggering Burning Rush to reposition before starting to blast again, and as above I want to keep my button mashing to a minimum.

#showtooltip immolate
/cancelaura burning rush
/cast immolate

Build here FYI: BsQAj5LiEN4VXhSin5RcWeAUgAIJRSCkmCRaJJhUiWwB0SSkAKlmkAAAAAAAAAAAAIIpkEJA

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