Wanting to main Destro in Shadowlands, so I wanted to start this thread to get help and get others to share/talk about destro in mythic plus and more.
I def need help with my aoe rotation; I feel like im all over the place trying to press everythinig and its just making me clunky.
All tips welcome!
Feel free to share anything and everything about destruction warlock to make this a helpful thread. Thanks in advanced
You pretty much just hit Cataclysm and use your 3 charges on RoF. Throw some cleave in on the elites or the mobs with the highest HP and then do it all over again. Thats what I do, anyone else is free to share their tips.
AoE seems pretty straightforward for Warlock.
Yeah… aoe is really easy right now. If all ur CD’s are available… Prepot, Cataclysm, Infernal, Rain, use a few seconds to use DSI (if using), havoc on a target and conflag on another to build shards and then just spam rain as the shards start flowing in. Easier now coz it doesn’t matter when u press DSI now, and stay away from the chaos bolt key in aoe.
Something the game doesn’t really tell you is that Rain of Fire stacks. You can cast it as much as you want as often as you want and you won’t lose damage for overlapping.
With that in mind, AoE is pretty much just generating shards as quickly as you can and casting as much Rain of Fire as possible. Start with Rain of Fire and then pretty much just continue your single target/cleave rotation, replacing Chaos Bolt with Rain of Fire. Make sure to Havoc when it’s up and make the most of the Havoc window. If anything is going to be alive for longer than 6-10 seconds, I would Immolate it as well as it will generate more shards for you over time than Incinerate would for the cast time.
EDIT: It’s also important to know when to AoE. Rain of Fire will always be the better choice over Chaos Bolt when fighting 5+ enemies. Chaos Bolt will always be the better choice when fighting 2 or less enemies. Havoc makes 3-5 enemy situations more complicated.
Since Chaos Bolt is duplicated by Havoc, Chaos Bolt is the much better shard spender while Havoc is active and there are less than 5 enemies, as you’re quite literally getting double the normal Chaos Bolt damage for the exact same cost. In those situations, you want to build up to 5 shards before casting Havoc on the highest HP enemy. Then swap to another target and spam Chaos Bolt as much as you can while Havoc is active. Once Havoc ends, you go back to using Chaos Bolt for 2 or less enemies and Rain of Fire for 3+.
Wouldn’t fire and brimstone be better for aoe since it got buffed?
Wait. How do you guys have 6 shards. Isn’t 5 the max?
Just throwing it out there, for pure AoE you’re better running Inferno over Cataclysm right now. It’ll slightly hurt your single target but with Soul Conduit and RoC, the shard refund synergy is super strong and it helps with your Rain of Fire damage. Any scenario where you’re stacking RoF up, it’ll pay off as you’ll be dumping 3 (assuming no refunds) shards almost every GCD.
I typo’d, meant to type 5.
All 3 in the row are good actually. Without CD’s F&B should be very good. With CD’s available I don’t really find myself pressing Incinerate a lot. Cataclysm is useful Single Target too.
I tested a bunch of talent combos and I get the most aoe by a huge margin out of cataclysm + rain of chaos + dark instability. If you have the right azerite traits dark instability lines up with infernal. Popping all of it is super good for aoe.
I didn’t test demon fire though. I can’t because it bugs out.
I would expect that Fire and Brimstone would be good at low haste levels such as the beginning of the expansion, especially since we’re going to lose Vision of Perfection, Azerite Powers and Lucid Dreams. Cataclysm is good for Tyrannical weeks but is probably going to lose out to Inferno on Fortified weeks.
Part of the reason Inferno is good right now is because of how little we cast Incinerate and how often we cast Rain of Fire, which will change at 60 with the loss of powers/essences.
I keep trying to play destro but after being used to affliction for so long it’s like going from playing a piano to playing a kazoo… Affliction is like 10 buttons while desto is what … 4 or 5 max? lol I felt confused trying to figure out what to do with all the empty keybinds lol
while that is an exaggeration, have to admit destro feels horribly simple if you grab passive talents like F&B / inferno / soul Conduit. Sadly could actually be a thing in a hivemind-like fight. Or for a big trash pull. Otherwise it’s actually fun once u get into it. Similarly I seem to have a lot of free time when playing aff, but that’s because I’m not playing it well yet.
what’s the fastest rotation to regen shards?
If you run flashover, reverse entropy, rain of chaos, inferno, and dark soul: you immolate a few targets if they will live a decent amount of time (at most dot 4 targets), drop infernal, havoc a enemy, conflag twice on another enemy. Then pop dark soul and spam rain of fire and conflag
on cooldown . Shard gen is insane and you sometimes find yourself having to many shards during these windows.
You could dark soul right before or after infernal also.
Problem with this is that when kiting is required then you lose a lot of damage because you’ll be missing out on rain of fire damage so tanks need to work around you.
I would run flashover, reverse entropy, rain of chaos, dark soul. And choose fire and brimstone or Cataclysm based on if you want more trash damage (brimstone), or more single target damage (cataslysm).
Immolate or cataclysm the pack and follow the rotation that was mentioned above by Zazona.
At least this is what I learned by watching and reading guides by the top warlocks.