How to use conflagrate...? And be a better warlock

Last night in raid, I went in as destro, and did well, or what I thought was well, but then my guildie switched to destro and started killing me on the meters. After a boss fight, I would look at his timeline and saw, A: he was running a NON-CDF build in ST, so A: Ill look into maybe a better specc than CDF, but he was also using conflagrate much more methodical, instead of my original method of on CD. This helped me on my last fight, Duirna, which I have provided the log below (as I would love to be guided on how I can get to be a better warlock) On this fight, I was counting out loud the entire fight, and popping a Conflagrate every 5 seconds, in between my Incinerates and Demon Bolts. I opted to not use soul fire/CDF even though I was talented into it because I figured I would just manually apply the DoT and I would do more damage focusing on Chaos Bolts and Incinerate/Conflagrates.

https: //wowanalyzer. com/report/31FKzNvjtaqL4HBc/19-4+Broodkeeper+Diurna/Chimairian/standard
SPACES IN LINK

I guess, my question is how do I be a better warlock?

Should I be using Conflagrate every 5 seconds?

Can I set up a weak aura to beep every 5 seconds I am in a boss fight until this becomes more second nature?

Thanks!

The reason for spacing conflagrates out is to maximize roaring blaze uptime.

Never let immolate drop, but also try to cast SF on CD, even if you have a lot of time left on immolate. It can crit > 100k so it’s a big dmg spell that you want to be using on CD as often as possible. Same with CdF. Try to cast either after a Chaos Bolt to ensure you are catching the eradicate buff.

Assuming you are in madness talent, A snippet would be something like: conflag > incinerate > CB > CdF/SF > CB > conflag > incinerate > CB etc.

It’s not going to be the same pattern all the time due to rng and mechanics and what not, but basically you want to be spacing things out to try and maintain higher uptimes on roaring blaze, eradication and madness, which should lead to more casts per minute within buff windows.

Also, in havoc windows when cleave is possible, I am not trying to space conflags out and spamming it to try and squeeze in as many CB’s as I can before havoc expires. Then I return to the normal spacing things out after I build up some shards with a chain of incinerates.

Kalamazi has a decent WA set, as well as Luxathos. They have timers and shard counters clustered closer to your character to track it all.

You might also try Conflagration of Chaos over Soul Fire. It is a minor dps loss without the headache of the lengthy SF cast time.

Yea that was one of my points, I am sure you just missed it in my lengthy subject, but I think I do want to drop soul fire, even though it doesnt get in the way of mechanics, its still such a long cast time.

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Gonna unpack the report start to finish, although obv some of this can vary depending on how much add dmg your group has and how much you can basically pad.

Eranog:
Build isn’t bad. Soul Fire is good for boss dmg if you’re being super ethical here on a throwaway boss, you just need to micromanage the hell out of it. Roaring Blaze must be active on the target by the time Soul Fire reaches it, plus you’d ideally have enough empty shards to not overcap and you want to use it to refresh/apply an Immolate that wasn’t refreshed recently. You didn’t have RB up on the boss until just over 4 seconds into the fight, meaning your Soul Fire wasn’t empowered. With this build, you precast SF but you need to conflag immediately after before the Soul Fire reaches the boss. In general, it looks like you really gotta work on your RB uptime. I think this boss dies too quickly to get value from Decimation, so I’d skip it. If you’re going pure ST, go into Shadowburn for Conflagration of Chaos and really make sure you ‘clip’ your roaring blaze uptime for the empowered Conflags (you’ll want 20%+ Haste for this).

Council:
If you wanna really pipe as Destro here, you usually gotta roll with an Inferno/Rolling Havoc build where you don’t even cast Chaos Bolt once. You basically keep Immolate up on all 4 homies, drop Infernal, and spam Rain of Fire from your Havoc windows for big damage. Not overly complex but a lil position reliant. Your build on that fight was mostly in the right direction, but you went a lil off the rails and it hurt your bottom line.
Run something like- BsQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAcACSSkIBSLtIItkkQaQScgSSioE0KFJBAAAAAAAAAAAQAlkE

Dathea:
Again, not running Explosive Potential is hurting you real bad because you don’t have the haste to lose 2 seconds from conflag charges. Also, FnB is kinda trolling here until you’re going up every add phase and even then, kinda meme-tier. Adds die too fast to get a good Inferno ramp most of the time, so if you’re trying to be an add daddy, I’d opt for el classico Cata+CDF with a hybrid build, but big single target single you’re chilling on ground floor most of the time. Big advice on this fight is to setup a gate to counter act the cyclone, and use circle against knocks. If you’re really optimal, you can set an immo at the start of a cyclone, hit conflag, then CDF channel as you get pulled most of the way in before gating to reset. When you pull it off, it feels real smooth. Your Burn to Ashes management also needs some work, but I’d focus on fixing your RB issues first.

Terros:
Immolate uptime is only 90%. RB isn’t being clipped correctly. Several SF hits where RB isn’t active. CDF hits where RB isn’t active (make sure to adjust for travel time during the channel as well). Simpler fixes here since the boss is pretty simple. Side note: Dark Pact is busted, be sure to use it very regularly when damage is coming out (soaks, pillar dunks, etc).

Frost Spider:
With how heavy movement is here, Soul Fire feels like a war crime. If you wanna pad adds, hit some Cata CDF. If you wanna be an ethical boss dmg gamer, use the ST build but with SB instead. Snipe some baby spiders and have a good time. This one looks like a hot mess, so I won’t dig into it. When big spider pops, set an immo and put havoc on it, then go right back to hitting the boss.

Kurog:
Soul Fire here also makes me wanna contact the UN. Best part of this fight is the heavy 2-target setup you get with frost-fire pair in intermission. Your group went for Thunder/Earth, which seems a lil weird, but this really just gives you even more adds to cleave from. Run a single target build here but with Havoc+RH and you’d be much better off, otherwise run a better hybrid build.

Brood:
You were on boss duty the entire time but have sub 80% immo uptime. Should be as close to 99% as possible. RB uptime looks better here at least. Erad should be higher if you’re on boss duty though. Soul Fire on boss duty can totally work here, you ran the talent too, but I don’t see a single SF cast here.

General:

  1. Get Immolate uptime higher.
  2. Explosive Potential good.
  3. ‘Clip’ your RB in the last 0.1-1.0 seconds of the duration to maintain as much uptime as possible.
  4. Run Soul Fire less. Sure it sims higher but if you’re not using it optimally and accounting for travel time with RB, it’s not worth it.
  5. That tome OH seems really bad. Some people might have success with it but it’s not doing much. I think you’re be better off getting a tier helm, and replacing your shoulders with a crafted Amice of the Blue. The embellish effect just seems better. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong here.

If you have more logs you’d like me to look over or if you’re interesting in hopping in a discord call and having me explaining things more thoroughly, I can do that too. I can also show my WAs if you wanna get an idea of how I do/track things. Even I still learn things on how to optimize, I can def point you in the right direction (just ignore that my heal parses are looking better than my dmg parses lately).

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Yea id love to talk more about this. I did have the same plan to get the teir helm, and get those shoulders you mentioned, but this was how I could maximize my character for this week. As for the tome, its just the best ilvl item ive had so far for off hand and i just mainly used it for the ilvl increase. That being said, the tome sims better than the shoulders for my character

My discord is NuQues#0440. Id love to talk more and get going better