Ya, all my math shows that is the best course of action. Eventually you may be socketing potent noble topaz to fulfill the 15 yellow socket bonuses if you are hit capped, but aside from that +damage is the way to go. Boots of blasting are one of the many examples of items budgeted significantly better for destruction. Despite being less +damage it is clearly better due to huge gains in hit and crit.

I would not go destruction with that gear. I think the gear tipping point is more of a mid tier 5 point, not t4 decked, early t5 point. You should probably resocket your stuff with better gems and stick affliction for a month or two. You are getting closer, but I don't think quite there. I'd say ideal is every guild (assuming 5 lock) having 2 aff locks, 2 shadow destro, and 1 soul link lock overall.

I raid as a 0/21/40 spec with about 1100 dmg, 30%crit and 13.5% hit self buffed. I still feel i need for a bit more dmg/hit gear to put out better dps. I pretty much just spam SB and put up CoS and can put up between 1100-1350dps depending on the boss. I also have found that the 2p T4 is way to good to give up for destro, keeping the T4 gloves and shoulders i feel is a good idea until i can get 4p T6. I believe if i can get one of the affliction locks to spec improved CoS and let me start to use CoD i could get my dps over 1400 fairly easy. I have seen great things with fire and i do think it can be better then shadow if the raid is setup for it. My guild doesn't use any fire mages atm so going for deep fire is pretty useless imo.

As far as haste is concerned, i don't think its worth it with the current gear out. Giving up Hit/crit seem a bit much for 10% faster cast assuming you have all of the haste gear available.

Here is a WWS of what destro can do just spaming SB's compared to some well geared affliction locks
Wow Web Stats

You don't need T5 gear to do destro, nor must you be hit capped. T4/FSW with decent Kara gear is good enough to keep up. No, you don't need a shadowpriest (in your group, you definitely need one in the raid), shaman or moonkin.

Really, the answer to "Should I spec Destro?" is just to try it. Measure how you do on a known, ranged-friendly fight. Attumen is good for Kara-level guilds and Mags and Gruul are also good when you've got the fights down. Lurker is my favorite for T5 instances right now. I'm sure the T6 guilds can chime in for that level of instances, as I've seen none of them personally. Make sure you compare apples-to-apples WRT to group composition (I recommend running sans SP/shaman/moonkin, as it provides a good baseline).

Hey, I had a question about raiding as destruction. I've been affliction pre-BC as well as post-BC, I have 3/3 FSW and I'm working on gearing towards a 0/21/40 shadow destruction build.

I've figured out the timing to keep up sustained DPS as affliction, but I was wondering what timing is most effective as destruction. Is corruption worth it? Immolate? If Immolate, Conflagrate? etc.

This depends on your gear, your role in the raid and your raids composition. Read the whole thread for education is my advice.


Hey all, long time lurker and all that.

I just wanted to say that I think LT gets alot of attention as a horrible dps loss, and this is not the case in most encounters. While you may spend a minimum of 13% of your time casting LT (as mentioned previously), you certainly dont spend 13% of your DPS time LT'ing. Now I understand that from a theorycrafting standpoint and on some static encounters (ie. Gruul, Prince), you have to consider it a dps loss, I'm just saying that in practice, it doesn't matter that much.

Let me take a number of examples that most of you are probably familiar with.
In SSC you're threat capped on Hydros in every transition, leaving free time to stand around doing nothing. When Lurker ducks under, you can lifetap to 100% while waiting for adds. When Leo whirlwinds out of range you have time, and if your killing Vashj's elementals, you'll also have plenty of time to stay on 100% mana. Theres some running involved on Karathress, and in SSC you're only getting into trouble on Morogrim. You can have 100% dps time here if you're lucky with tombs, but you'll be facing the threat cap then with decent gear, so you'll probably not be nuking 100% all the time anyway.

In The Eye you have to run to keep up with Al'ar, and wait for him to Meteor to the ground. On Void Reaver you're pretty much threat capped and must scramble from the odd Arcane Orb, and when Solarian escapes into the portals you have plenty of time. On Kael LT is a dps loss in phase 4, but in phase 5 you have time on gravity lapse.


People have different opinions, and I haven't really crunched any numbers on it, but my affliction-->destruction requirements were 15% hit, 20%crit (inc talents) and 1000 shadow dmg unbuffed. After that I've been trying to up crit, while staying above 1000 shadow dmg unbuffed. I plan to swap quag's trinket for karathress trinket if i can get my motivation up to raid SSC, I just wanna go hyjal/BT =(

I see people debating how much hit, how much crit, is dmg better than crit etc etc. There is only one answer. After you've reached 16% hit (or adjusted if you have shammy/dranei in party) balance between crit and damage is what you need to do. At one point the one becomes better than the other, and you have to shift focus again. You'll have no problems hitting hit-cap (without suffering noticable loss in crit/dmg) after a raiding in SSC/Eye thats for sure.

We usually raid shadowheavy, with only 1 or 2 mages, usually 3-4 locks and 1-3 sp, and frequently I find myself in the dreamgroup of destrolock, destrolock, sp, ele shammy and oomkin. I only cast 2 spells, curse and sb. I don't waste time on immolate/corruption due to sb critchance and ISB uptime.

My 2p anyway. Take care.

I don't think corruption should be cast generally unless you have 4pc tier 5, or really low crit for a destro lock. Immolate I think should always be cast unless you have a weird gear set(like +shadow neck, cape, enchant, few pieces of shadowweave, and wand) or no imp scorch.

I do agree that smart life tapping can usually avoid most of the dps loss on many fights (al'ar being the best example)

Thats funny because I can do al'ar phase 1 as destro without a spriest, with doing all my tapping/CoDing during movement. About the lifetapping during aoe being too dangerous, well if you get yourself more hp you can worry about that alot less.

I have never even heard of a lock that gets a shadow priest and chain chugs mana pots, that seems absurd to me. If you saved your health pot cooldown for when this strategic tapping is dangerous instead of chugging mana pots I think it would be better overall (like on solarian doing heavy tapping before and after aoe, and if you get targeted by missles you can pot/stone)

VR/Al'ar you should be able to get all tapping during movement for sure. Vashj if your on elementals you should be able to get your tapping in after you crit 2 shot a elemental. Hydross should be able to get your tabbing in while hydross is being moved for the most part. Leo, again before all the various deaggros.


Apparently you decided to remove all your gear before you logged off so I can't armory you but I am willing to bet you don't have enough stamina to be destruction.

If you need an Spriest and are chain popping mana potions you are doing something wrong. Yeah both of those are very nice but are not needed. On 99% of fights you should be able to LT without fear of being killed by an AE of some sort if your one of those who over taps. Something that I am rather suprised to see not being asked is are your healers any good? A holy priest or Resto Druids HoT(Either or) should be more than sufficient to keep you topped off and give you the freedom to tap. If your dying on fights like Al'ar in Phase 2 then your healers aren't paying enough attention to you or you yourself are mismanaging your Healthstone/Health Pot cooldowns. 1 or both should be up at any given time unless you encounter some real bad luck.

(.....resisting the urge to break your post down into multiple points and respond point by point........)

Shrug. Maybe I cast more than you do, maybe I move less (I always move the minimum distance, and move to minimize the next movement as well)?

Thinking about how often he moves, and how little distance you have to cover to be in position again, I can't honestly imagine how you aren't running OOM without a spriest unless you're tapping right before you stop moving, or tapping in between bolts and not realizing it?


Sorry you've never heard of it -- but I've found a lot of warlocks unwilling to spend a very little bit of gold (TK pots are so cheap) to save some global cooldowns, while they run themselves silly to fully buff, use stopcasting macros, etc. -- why ignore one easy way to increase damage? I can run myself OOM very easily with a combination of good positioning, a spellcasting macro, and never stopping for anything, come hell or high water.

I use health pots on Solarian, yes, but there's also some *very* good times to tap in that fight because you want to get the Agents moving to a reliable location anyways. And if you're lucky enough to get Wrath, well, you can tap while running back.

Mana pots in P1 on Al'ar because it's fun to see how much DPS I can put out . P1 speed doesn't matter of course, but hitting close to 1800 dps (P1 only hehe) on a single-target fight is quite a rush.

On VR, take an orb, tap, run into another one that overlapped with the first in your visual field when you decided which way to run, and they are close enough in succession that you don't have time to reverse course. Happened to me once. I run out now, if I decide I want to tap, but now I've wasted time when I could've run sideways instead, because I have to run back in to DPS again.

Is it a huge dps loss? No, but it's a loss, and that's what I'm talking about.

I can easily, if I pick my positioning well on VR, use up a full mana bar and then need to stand there tapping because I still haven't had to move. It's all about seeing where everyone else is, and working (each time you move) to a quieter area of the room, and then casting like a mofo in peace.


As for Vashj, I'm not on elementals. I will fully agree that the reason I died was due to healing issues - but that, in fact, is indeed my point . When everything goes according to plan, yes it's perfect -- but that's also when you care less about the DPS loss, eh? We're going in for day 2 tonight, and I've already talked with the healers about the mana issues, and they're going to try to pay closer attention to the non-stairs locks.


Lifetapping is dangerous because not all damage is predictable.

If you tap twice, and then take two forked lightning from vashj, you're in trouble.

Most of the time it works out, *most* of the time you're okay, but when it doesn't the consequences are pretty severe. And I plan so I don't put myself into those situations.

Successful raiding is about removing the uncontrollable elements when you can, and controlling the others. You should always be thinking not only about your own dps when you choose when to tap, but about whether it's putting you (or your healers!) into a riskier situation than is necessary.

Sometimes you trade DPS for safety, and sometimes that safety isn't even *your* safety (lifetapping down when a bunch of folks had to move because of incidental damage is potentially asking for extra healing at a time when the healers are scrambling anyways. Being aware of how much the hots heal for, how much healing has to be done, etc. can help in planning too.)


I run with 11k or so buffed. I don't remember the exact amount. Armory says 9150 right now, which is probably close to correct unbuffed -- I swap gear a bit depending on the fight, but the hit/crit/dmg/trinket changes don't affect HP overly much. Looks like it's the same HP that you have, assuming your current armory is accurate.

I idled out while playing around with Vashj positioning, and was doing it naked in case I accidentally pulled her.

It may not be quite accurate right now, since I logged in on a different computer and threw random gear on to hearth to shat to do an enchant for someone and logged out again, but it's close.

My comments were based solely around Destruction Spec. Naturally LT is more of an issue for an affliction locks. Dot locks have longer range (grim & destructive reach), and they also have dots which could need application while on the move. The world of Destruction lock is pretty damn simple. You either stand still (in range) or you don't. Granted, the range issue is minimal, especially if on Coe/Cos duty on single target bosses. If adds, you're gonna feel the range issue. When adjusting from Affliction to Destruction I had a difficult time without grim reach.

I don't know about you guys, but when I raid my intention is to win damage meter on bosses, or at least do what I can to try to. Since mana pots are more effective than LT, I will drink them if I got them (and I usually bring plenty), unless I'm in the "comfort zone" mana wise, and know that I will have spare time to LT. Just makes sense to me.

We have kickass healers, and 1 healer specifically dedicated to raid healing. Usually a druid, which rejuvenation ticks on me for around 1100+. If he just smells an incoming series of LT, I will have hots up my ass. If he's preoccupied elsewhere, I will LT down to around 50%, or stay above the area where I could die from a couple of flame buffets, tomb or whatnot, and usually I never even reach the 50% mark before some paladin has topped me off. Naturally LT'ing down low sometimes can be reckless, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. On farm-bosses anyway. On new bosses I have to restrain myself of course, and here mana pots are even more important than LT due to efficiency/risk levels. I know some of you will claim that heavy LT'ing is a bad strategy and puts exessive strain on the healers, but so far healer OOM is almost never heard of in our raids. I won't pretend to know healer classes well, but I assume it's because of using correct classes on correct roles, planning innervates, and putting healers with heavy mana usage into sp groups, etc.

As an affliction lock with a "roaming" role on Vashj, certainly any LT or DP will be a dps loss, because you'll always have a target to dps, perfectly understandable, so I only mentioned elementals role on this encounter. I don't however understand how you can spend 100% mana on VR and not be threat-capped. I have to pretty much chill and hope some orbs comes my way, until around 60-65%, when I soul-shatter and go all-in.

Edit: I remembered that you said that you didn't always have a sp in group, so ok, I can see you going oom quite alot faster than me.