Warlock vs Dragon Soul [4.3 GUIDE]

[Ràvøn]

Hey Ravøn,

first off you are in PvP gear on armory, that being said you are pretty much saying your main issue as destruction SMF uptime. You need to cast it so it has time to travel to the target, hit, and rebuff you. Remember Soul Fire's damage pr cast isn't 0, so even if you clip soul fire buff, its still better then letting it fall off. Rather too early then too late. Cast it at a safe time, before Fading Lights and such. Doing an extra incinerate over loosing soul fire buff is a DPS loss.

If you put the main things as destruction on one hand, its Conflagerate on CD, roll good Immolates (redo during heroism + haste trinket proc) and dont loose Soul Fire buff.

Morchok remember to multidot with immolate / corruption if you can reach it from the middle, else it's hard to do any proper DPS here. Only Morchok + Ultraxion can you give you some indication of DPS, rest of the bosses are weird and bad for warlocks and raid dps testing in general. Ultraxion is also about the kill and RNG and who logs the kill can change your DPS.
Spine i wouldn't want to comment on Destruction since i dont find it viable if you want to push DPS on tendons, it simple isnt good for it.
Madness is impossible to do good DPS on now, because of the nerfs making multi dotting horrible and add whoring impossible.

I dont think you should bother too much with Dragon Soul, it's a shit tier and we will have 5.0.1 at some point where all warlock specs and spells get revamped to complete new standards, which means we can barely use any of our base knowledge now. It becomes easier to play and there isn't as many tricky situations to maximize DPS as there is now for a warlock.

Overall you said it, try to optimize not loosing Soul Fire buff, and be sure not to waste Conflagerate time and get big Immolate's rolling with haste trinket / heroism.

Keeping track of Soul Fire buff, i use TellMeWhen to give me a big icon showing exactly how long is left, so i can precast in time depending on the boss.

Good luck trying to improve!

Thanks for the quick reply,

Yeah I understand it was a horrible tier just trying to have fun with Dragon Soul since I raided mostly on my H-Pally before rerolling for my new guild. Trying to make the most out of it. For the Morchok encounter we aren't close enough to the middle to attempt what you said, I'd really like to though. We just have everyone stack near the boss for stops then have the non-soakers head to the crystal. All ranged is on the left side. Would it be better to just go Destruction for Madness? And just BoH another Arm?

Have you had any positive experiences with Destro in the Beta? I've been rolling Affliction mostly with alittle bit of Demo.

Thanks again for the information.

[Sparkuggz]

Thanks for the quick reply,

Yeah I understand it was a horrible tier just trying to have fun with Dragon Soul since I raided mostly on my H-Pally before rerolling for my new guild. Trying to make the most out of it. For the Morchok encounter we aren't close enough to the middle to attempt what you said, I'd really like to though. We just have everyone stack near the boss for stops then have the non-soakers head to the crystal. All ranged is on the left side. Would it be better to just go Destruction for Madness? And just BoH another Arm?

Have you had any positive experiences with Destro in the Beta? I've been rolling Affliction mostly with alittle bit of Demo.

Thanks again for the information.

Destruction is okay for Madness, but in general all specs are rather shit. If your guild doesn't have a lot of multi dotting you can still rape with affliction if you are allowed to DPS everything. I normally jump to the right platform and bane it before cataclysm and keep it on the left one until.

Beta Warlock DPS is atm

Affliction > Demonology > Destruction

Things will change and get closer, becuase destruction is the worst by a good margain. I did try destruction on todays test, it went okay tbh, but nothing impressive.

[Ràvøn]

We do have 2 shadow priest who multidot alot, however during the Regen bloods I save the SBurn+SoC with a ShadowFlame and RoF spam before they get a chance to. We don't kill the add in p2 exceptionally well, although we do manage to get them down in time. I'll destruction next week. How important is CoC with an Afflictions spec? Would I be pulling alot more than with my WoU+H:IOTC?

[Sparkuggz]

We do have 2 shadow priest who multidot alot, however during the Regen bloods I save the SBurn+SoC with a ShadowFlame and RoF spam before they get a chance to. We don't kill the add in p2 exceptionally well, although we do manage to get them down in time. I'll destruction next week. How important is CoC with an Afflictions spec? Would I be pulling alot more than with my WoU+H:IOTC?

It's a must on AOE fights, else you will be millions behind, on single target it's not that major impact.

[Bude]

Hey Sparkuggz, thank you for your previous reply to my question.

I now have a new one, I have a few Brilliant Queen's Garnet (I find them to be expensive lol) but I'm not sure where to put them. My armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...irata/advanced
Where should I put them? We are starting HC progression, but only Morchok and Ultraxion and developing from there.

And yes, I do have a spirit robe because I had a 312 robe for a long time and I was the only cloth wearer in the PuG where it dropped.

Oh and, regarding 4p T13, when do I use it? I'm guessing I don't use at pull because I can just precast Soul Fire, so should I just try and line it up with ICM and Demon Soul buff?

[bigben4879]

I must say this is an excellent guide! Will be recommending this to my other guild members.

[Ashkelon]

I'm not sparkuggz but i can tell you what i do on pull where i can precast
prepot, precast a soul fire and then soulburn (without cast soul fire), apply dots and then use your normal rotation until soulburn buff is about to finish or you need ISF buff
in this way your immolate (and then conflagrate) will benefit from ISF and t13 4p
regarding queen's garnet, i'd put them on feet (BiS are from blackhorn), helm (same as feet) and shoulder/ring (biS from hagara/random boss), it depends on wich boss will you kill first

[Sparkuggz]

Hey Sparkuggz, thank you for your previous reply to my question.

I now have a new one, I have a few Brilliant Queen's Garnet (I find them to be expensive lol) but I'm not sure where to put them. My armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...irata/advanced
Where should I put them? We are starting HC progression, but only Morchok and Ultraxion and developing from there.

And yes, I do have a spirit robe because I had a 312 robe for a long time and I was the only cloth wearer in the PuG where it dropped.

Oh and, regarding 4p T13, when do I use it? I'm guessing I don't use at pull because I can just precast Soul Fire, so should I just try and line it up with ICM and Demon Soul buff?

Put them on whichever item you think you will get last or save them for 410 upgrades. Pretty much RNG what you will get, so impossible to say really.

As ash said:
You can use it on CD, You can use soulburn before you cast immolate to gain 10% sp and save the soulfire for later on in the rotation because SB stays up. But since you use all other CD's in start use it together with those. Else just use it on CD.

[Apocalex]

After studying this post, I went from "useless" on Spine to Top DPS on the fight (4th out of five, on tendons). Demo, with WoU and IotCM (better than valor trinket).

On overall encounters I can say that Affliction and Destruction are mostly the same, so pick the one you feel more confortable.

Thanks for the info, time and patience.

[Bude]

Hey Sparkuggz, I have a question. I'm currently Affliction/Destro spec, but I seem to be really bad at playing destro, even with 95%+ ISF uptime etc. So I was wondering if Demonology would be viable as an off spec? What would I need to reforge into? http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...irata/advanced is my armory.
Currently doing HC progression but feel Affliction would be more useful anyway... and I really want to try out the mastery gear swapping thing which you uploaded a video of recently.