Update on Destruction build, checking out Demonology; Spell rotation
Deimonia, my Affliction Warlock, respecced to Destruction. I run a lot of instances although I’m in a friendly guild I mainly PUG. I’ve met a lot of nice people that way but anyway although Affliction is still my favorite spec I cannot help but be blown away by the pew pew power of Destruction.
Destruction Spell rotation
What’s my rotation as a Destruction Warlock?
Boss Fights
- Curse of Doom (this is a Damage over Time spell. Since the damage takes a minute before it affects a mob, don’t use it if you know the mob will be downed before that time.)
- Immolate
- Conflagration
- Chaos Bolt
- Incinerate —> 3 times
- Rinse and repeat
*On bosses, once COD is off of Cooldown, refresh it.
Trash Mob(s)
*If there is more than one mob, I add Rain of Fire.
The main minion I’m using is the imp. As Affliction, my main companion while questing was my Voidwalker. The reason was simple The Voidwalker, although nerfed healthwise, was able to distract the mobs while I dotted them. In instances I used the Imp and the Succubus. As Destruction they don’t last long enough to get to me so my first minion is getting a lot of play.
Initially I tested Destruction Build 3/13/53 on the Heroic test dummies located in Iron Forge. I moved to testing Destruction spec on mobs within Northrend. How did things go? Let me just say that things were usually dead in about three casts. Once I felt ‘comfortable’ with my rotation I immediately moved onward to the Looking For Group channel to see where I could test my brand new spec within a Heroic instance.
Although Deimonia is in a guild she really enjoys PUGs and runs them every chance she gets. It’s a great way to meet people. I was able to call on a few of my buddies I met from PUGs to tag along with me as I tried out my new spec.
I purposely chose to run Gun’Drak first as Destro. You see, just a few hours before I made the switch from Affliction to Destruction I was in Gun’Drak. Let’s just say Deim struggled to keep the snakes at bay, I’m thinking this might be a combination of things… although Deimonia has come a long way gearwise and can run all heroics and ten man raids now I’m still not capped for my beloved Affliction. Additionally since Deimonia’s spec was deep Affliction, a lot of my damage is done over time, not so good with trash mobs. Also, I was second guessing what I should be doing. This was a first for me, Affliction has been a zen like experience up until this point but that hesitation was affecting my DPS even more.
Fast forward a few hours later (instance server reset FTW) same Heroic but I’m specced as Destruction. I worked on downing the first boss, along with the other DPS, but when the snakes came along to take a bite out of our Druid healer, I was ready. Initially they came one at a time so I used my Trash mob rotation but when they came in waves I used Rain of Fire. It worked well. The snakes forgot about the healer to come take a chomp at the little gnome, however they were dead before they reached little Deim.
In that sense Destruction feels similar to my Fire Mage, I burned things down quickly with that spec and I’m doing the same as Destruction. WHen it comes to spell rotation, Destruction is definitely a lot easier than Affliction, but Affliction is still my preferred spec and I will be adding that once I have the appropriate gear to really make it shine.
Anyway back to the Heroics…
In Violet Hold we got the Ethereal boss and I was able to keep up my rotation without any problems. Violet Hold, and to some extent GunDrak, was great practice for keeping a solid rotation while I was on the move.
Swapped Destruction briefly for Demonology
Since I had a lot of time on my hands this weekend, my daughter was hanging with her grandparents, so I logged onto World of Warcraft and swapped Destruction for Demonology. I tried out the Fel/Emberstorm spec. Although I hate dailies I ran several to get a feel for the rotation. I also ran two Heroics with this build; Violet Hold and Azol’Nerub.
Not too surprisingly I didn’t like the spec too much. To a certain extent, it made me think of my first toon a Night Elf BeastMastery Hunter. Nope, definitely not my playstyle. After the last Heroic I played around with Demonology a little bit longer before switching back to the Destruction build.
WOTLK: Are you over Hit Cap for Heroics?
Ok, so Deim is back to Destro. Her new build is 0/14/57. Why did I delete the points in Affliction? The reason is simple. Checking out WOWWiki and The Warlocks Den I realized that Deimonia is way over hit cap for Heroics. She was at 346 hit rating. I promptly started removing +Hit gems and replacing them +Spellpower gems. Also, I removed the 3 points out of the Affliction tree and distributed those points in Demonology and Destruction. Deim doesn’t need those extra points at the moment.
Although Deim is ready gear wise to run WOTLK raids I plan on holding off a bit longer before I actively run them. I want to get comfortable running heroics as DPS.
Once I start running raids regularly I’ll have the gear needed for Affliction. I’ll definitely go back to that but will keep Destruction too. You got to love Dual spec!
