I disagree about Soul Leech, but that's fairly minor. Otherwise, I think you have some good points made. Pyroclasm is pretty fantastic now that conflag is included and the CD on SF is removed.

Also, Molten core is easily > than cataclysm for anyone in pvp because of the simple fact that with the Sha'tar arcanum and pvp staff can get you 3% +hit quite easily. If you go with the gladiator glyph than you can easily make up the hit with gems. I've 3/3 MC and it's constantly up in pvp. If I have CoA and Corr up on 2 targets, it's pretty much perma-procced.

Spec I've been using has been 14/47 which has been fantastic. Survivability, the best of destro (minus CB, which I don't think outweighs SL), and the best CC around in the form of instant seduce.

Destro isn't fixed, but it's much better than it was. I'm hoping for more as WoTLK progress.

Also, you meant fire and brimstone, not shadow and flame, right? If so, then I agree, pretty underwhelming talent.

You won't keep someone stunlocked with Soulfires even if you get lucky procs due to DR, but Pyroclasm is a very worthwhile talent now (assuming they fixed the stun on Conflag, it was broken for almost all of beta).

I also think Soul Leech is not worth the points simply because there are better talents. Health return on your spells is obviously not bad, but I wouldn't consider it to be worth the damage you'd have to give up - let's be honest here, Destro Warlocks aren't going to outlast people no matter how you try to spec.

I'm glad for the discussion my post generated, it was too quiet here. Let me address these points.

Doogless is correct, Soul leech isn't enough to make a worthwhile difference and its not worth the points compared to other things. Quick math shows if i do 20k dps in one 2v2 arena match (Opponents are double dps, as is often the case) Soul Leech returns me approximately 1200 hp. And that's being conservative, some of that dps comes from spells which aren't tied to Soul Leech. Now that is a waste of three talents for that small amount of hp return, my 2v2 partner is a disc priest. He mana burns, he heals he does a little dps. I need those points for damage, that is my job. Soul Leech doesn't bring the numbers. Final point: If I'm on full HP its a really really big waste.

Okay, Molten Core. When the enemy sees Disc Priest/ SL Lock who are they going for? Priest 80% of the time. If they do this I Immolate Incin, incin, incin, conflag, repeat, etc. With a bit of variation for a fear or so but not heavy on the shadow or the dots. Molten Core works from "Shadow Spells and damage over time effects" The only shadow spells i cast often are Shadowfury, CoE, and corruption. Unless "Shadow Spells" means everything shadow. Does this proc from casting Demon Armor? Fear? Health Funnel? etc. If this is the case i might respec to change it to 0/2 Daze 3/3MC 2/3 Cataclysm. Daze is nice when it procs but i would prefer something a tad better, maybe, 30% chance or lasts 10 seconds, it is quite weak. With Cataclysm I have 6% hit on destruction (gear has 3% on it) but i seem to still miss with affliction spells such as fear and deathcoil, the lifesaving spells. But i also appreciate the mana component of it, mana is an issue for me, the reduction is useful. I'll look into changing this.

1 point in Pyroclasm. That is mostly to fill out the requirement for next level, but it's nice when it procs on occasion. I could move it but its a nice bonus, and the talents higher up aren't worth sacrificing for a 2nd point in there.

Shadow and Flame, Fire and Brimstone. These talents are a lot of my damage. Obviously i won't get off a whole lot of incinerates chained together, but when I'm not being focused i can get some off and its a big boost. Fire and brimstone isn't a very strong 45 point talent but where do we have a strong 45 point talent? I don't have faith in Affliction and hate playing it now, although Everlasting Affliction is decent. And the 45 point demo talent is a mockery of the Elemental Shaman 41 pointer. F&B is good because my immolates are quite strong and if i wait until it counts down its a nice bonus. Although i do feel it's relatively weak considering its depth.

Lastly, I guess I didn't make it clear that our win rate in 2v2 being 45% was mostly due to gear. As easy as i find Elemental Shamans, if i face one in almost full S4 gear with a few high PvE pieces, it suddenly becomes hard. Since my priest partner has gear worse than mine, gear results in loses which should have been wins. Double Destro lock 2v2 had a 10% win rate, and my old partner for that had far better gear than my new priest partner. Other things, like no voice chat and learning how to work with a new team mate, contributed as well.

I'm also digging the discussion that's happening thanks to the 3.0.2 changes (see my failed destro pvp thread). I gotta say, F&B just feels wasteful to me. It's a 5-point hog for not a lot of bonus to your immolates and gives a good boost to conflag, but at the price of needing to time it, rather than just conflagging whenever you want. I understand that it demands a bit more skill/timing, but I feel like it'd be more of an inconvenience than it's worth. With the 5 points you've got in F&B you could max out S&F, pyroclasm, and get 3/3 MC. My interpretation of the MC tooltip is "damaging shadow spells and DoTs", so SB, CoA, Corr should proc it. I use the corruption glyph, so I make sure to keep corruption up as much as possible to get glyph procs, which also contribute to MC procs. It's some quality synergy.

I tried both specs a fair bit yesterday, and I think Eyago is right on most accounts. MC is very good and procs very often if you just throw a corruption or two on targets, and it's also awesome if you have glyph of corruption to get a backlash and nightfall at the same time for even MORE burst. MC procs a LOT. I'm not sure if it has an internal CD (It never seems to renew itself, so it might be like a 12 second internal CD) F&B in a PvP setting was difficult to use, perhaps it could be worthwhile if I got better at it, but I'm HEARTILY enjoying 0/14/47 right now.

Imp. Succubus is fucking SWEET. Sure it doesn't school lock like spell lock does, but it has no CD, and having A) a constant interrupt always castable B) Extra CC for holding off other targets is an invaluable tool. I still need to get better at it, I don't think I'm controlling my burst well enough or using SF as good as I could be, got any tips?

Also main problem I've been running into is mana issues, but I suppose that's expected with destro pvp

SHADOW AND FLAME:
No, I meant Shadow and Flame. I don't think it's worth the points at least with my 2v2 team makeup - hunter/lock (and damn it's hard to beat some teams). I find myself getting focused a good bit of time with no healer to back me up so I rely mostly on instant cast spells, stuns, fears, and silences to open up windows of opportunity and knock the guys back on their heels a bit so I can breath and cast some of the spells S&F benefits.

SOUL LEECH:
The small amount of health Soul Leech regens does actually come in handy in our group, it's almost like an extra healthstone by the end of the match in some cases. That along with the other health regen methods mentioned in my last post adds up to give me the few extra seconds we need to end the match.

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE:
The reason I think this talent is worth it:
1) Again I find myself relying mostly on instant spells for damage with our team makeup (hunter + warlock)
2) Having good finishers is key and overcoming the massive resilience out there to actually make use of Ruin in PvP is great. I can actually count on my conflag critting for dbl damage a good bit of the time. This paired with glyph of Shadowburn gives both of my finishers a great chance to deal twice the damage they would normally do...

====

Wanted to add a note before people start spamming about "you play with a hunter, you're an idiot, etc.".. Well, the hunter is my brother IRL and we've been trying to make it work for a few seasons now. Yes, the highest sustained rating we've had is fairly low at 1850 but every match is a challenge and I really feel like it makes me a better player. I pull off some amazing things in arena that I like to think others might not be able to do sometimes

In closing, if you're trying to find the right spec for arena it really depends on your team's class makeup and their specs+glyphs. These varying factors could easily make some talents/glyphs useless while making others extremely beneficial...

Hey all, new member speaking for the first time !

From my testing it seems that Fire And Brimestone is useless at the moment for 70, espically when compared to having an instant CC via Succubus or extra damage and regen in Fel Armor.

When 3.0.2 hit I attempted to use a 0/54/7 build, this was effective but not as much as the new fancy 0/14/47. The new destro burst spec is by far the most suited spec against any caster. The 60% damage reduction from NP is crippiling to anyone trying to burst you done, like a mage, or a boomkin. It's also effective against meele, albiet I think meta specs will take less damage, whereas this one will allow you to get instant Incinerates off.

I'd rather get more control/utility out of F&B. Something along the lines of 20/40/60/80/100 chance on conflag to proc pyroclasm if cast with less than 5 seconds left. That would give me reason to let immolates tick down, then conflagging to abuse the stun + backdraft, allowing for some sweet synergy and a much needed element of control.

We're offensive enough, imo. Getting something to aid us with controlling the fight, escaping melee, etc would be much more useful than more +dmg and +crit.

Good mages will just spell steal NP. Currently Mages have more of an advantage over all casters than warlocks had over casters in TBC. This will just get worse at 71 when all mage armor will reduce the duration of magic effects on mages by 50%. PvP is in an awful state right now which is pretty depressing as I can't see any real changes been made until season 6 which won't be for 5-6 months.
I tried destro a little on my warlock and it seemed much better. This was probably down to having instant corruption, soul link and master summoner/fel dom. Instant shadowfury is nice but they might look at increasing the stun duration to 4s so that is possible to get one incinerate/SB off.

Lately I've been using a 44/17/0 build ( Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ) And I must say that I'm quite pleased with it. Plenty of survivability, decent damage output, and it allows you to stay mobile. Only classes that I've had trouble with are rogues. But lets be honest , when havent we had trouble with rogues.

I haven't come up with a definitive answer for this: How much damage will Fear withstand before breaking? Some sources suggest it's 40% of the target's max health, some say 30%, some something in between.

Any tips on what to look out for when fighting DKs, and how to beat them?

Their weakness is kiteability. They can pull you to them and root you every now and then, so save your cc's for those moments, otherwise keep distance. Besides that, it's like fighting a warrior that heals a lot if it hits you, so avoiding confrontation and keeping distance becomes even more important.

Well i run like a madman, and after deathgrip i just run through them. Save my trinket for the superslow-walk debuff thingie. If i try to fear without coiling first, they allways interrupt... And then i cant use howl for like 5s (right?), so end up standing there taking it. That was with felguard tho (at lvl 63), just specced affliction and questing became a breeze, havent tried pvp tho.

But the DKs do have some easily recognizable spells, tho im not sure exactly what they do. Some have this huge orb, is that the anti-magic-shell that heals them if u attack them?

The bloodworms, what hp do they have? Is one hellfire tick enough?

The resurrection (in human form), is it a temporary thing and does it have any limitations, or is it basically a soulstone? Do they res with any buffs? And what about hp/mana?

A few basics for fighting a DK:

- Chains of Ice (ranged snare) and Strangulate (ranged silence) are both magic effects that can be devoured.
- Silences prevent them from using basically all of their abilities
- They're immune to the application of new DoTs while AMS is up (the green glowy ball around them)

As I inch closer to 80, I was wondering what my plan of attack should be regarding PVP gear. I'm wearing 3/5 S1 felweave, S2 felweave shoulders, s4 felweave gloves with pretty much everything else being pvp/honor gear. My goal is to craft the frostsavage set while gaining honor/arena points for the starter kit. For the time being should I stick w/ my level 70 stuff for the resilience or try to wrangle some lvl 80 gear for the higher item level? My thoughts are slightly less stats, but more resil from the lvl 70 gear will outweight any lvl 80 instance gear I could get as a fresh 80.

In regards to gearing I'd like to point out the new resilience soft cap of roughly 1230.

A full set of the new blue PvP set (which I will be replacing every piece of my S4 with) comes out at 195 emblems of heroism. This is mirrored with the Hateful set and emblems of valor, though I am a little reluctant to part with my valor emblems for PvP just yet. That said, the upgrade in stats from the blue set to Hateful is marginal at best, and in some cases almost a downgrade (shoulders).

The arena sets' sockets are mirrored throughout each season, the full set giving a total of 3 blue sockets, 4 yellow sockets and 2 red. I will personally be using prismatic JC 27 resilience gems in all 3 blue sockets, though if I did not have access to those, would settle for Mysterious Twilight Opal (9 spellpower and 10 spell pen) instead. The yellow sockets speak for themselves. A 20 resilience gem from Wintergrasp, and the remaining 3 being crafted 16 resilience gems. The red sockets I am undecided between raw 19 spellpower gems, or the new 9 spellpower + 8 resilience gems. I am leaning towards raw 19 spellpower.

A full set of savage gear, combined with the Deadly set, gemmed in this fashion, should net around 850 resilience. This includes Wintergrasp resilience enchants, and the TBC 15 resilience chest enchant. It does not include belt buckle gems, which I am leaning towards gemming with resilience too.

This leaves the question of what to place in the second trinket slot. I am rather partial to this new trinket;

[Darkmoon Card: Berserker!]

Effectively granting 105 resilience and 105 crit when focused. I would love to hear other warlocks' ideas on what to spend their second trinket slot on.

[Essence of Gossamer] is something I've been trying out a bit lately. It simply feels like for example rogue / feral or tbh any meleeteam can burst you down so fast you don't even have time to trinket+demonic circle blink. This item really helps out, and paired with a specced curse of weakness takes that extreme edge of melee's.

[Essence of Gossamer] is something I've been trying out a bit lately. It simply feels like for example rogue / feral or tbh any meleeteam can burst you down so fast you don't even have time to trinket+demonic circle blink. This item really helps out, and paired with a specced curse of weakness takes that extreme edge of melee's.

I levelled a DK to 75 just to learn what these guys can do.

We actually counter them pretty bad. In arenas, when they don't have a rogue or a warrior partner to put an MS debuff and keep a target snared, they are easily kitable. Teleport is great here after they use their Death Grip.

General tips:

1) Chains of Ice (their snare) is dispellable. Use your felhunter self-dispel macro.
2) They only have one ranged interrupt on a 2 minute cooldown. The silence lasts for 5 seconds and guess what...is also dispellable. In other words, once you get range, you can reliably fear them most of the time.
3) One of their diseases and death coils are shadow damage. Use Shadow Ward.
4) Death Grip is on a 35 second cooldown, 25 if talented. Save your Teleport for when you get pulled. If not applicable, Death Coil him.
5) Their Green Bubble Shield is their Anti-Magic Shell ability, which is similar to cloak (you can't reapply magic effects/DoT's), but does not clear DoT's. It's a short duration, so wait it out.
6) If you're destro, try and get Shadowfury + Fear as early as possible, before they pop Icebound Fortitude (immune to stuns).

Also, if you spell lock them, they can't use snare or their ranged interrupt or abilities like Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Shell, and I think even Death Grip. So if you're lining up a kill, and worrying that they're going to silence your Chaos Bolt or just toss up an Anti-Magic Shell/IBF, silence them first.

I have found this not to be true. Especially with the unbalanced burst damage right now from melee high resilience is a must.

After a week doing all three levels of arena and getting a feel for what the new make-ups are I see destro locks fitting in well into burst 5mans and meta/nightfall 2v, 5v....meta/ruin 2v's 3v's. I say meta/nightfall for 5man due to the fact I play it as a moving immolation bomb for burst at start then i play the chain fear healer game.....which nightmare effect is wonderful for.

At roughly 700 resilience i started seeing a marked difference in my survivability.....up until that point I really got smoked hard. Right now at 740res the only class I still /shiver at is a fresh retardin...all cd's up he can still burn me before immunity wears if hes geared at all.

Rogues become very killable with meta form and 700+ resilience. Dk's are a pain in the ass, but very few have any resil...so use your demon circle after grip and kite em till your felguard and dot's take their toll.

These opinions are from someone with 1719 dmg, 19% crit, 98 haste(with stone), 740 resil.....I am using 2P S5 for bonus resil and 2P S4 for bonus to resil stack ...full S4 offset shit..and two resil trinkets....the handmedown one from WG for 64 and the old 45 resil. Everything is gemmed resil or stam minus 1 32 sp pwr jc gem.

In my opinion, if you've got the PvE gear - don't even think about putting on those old brutal. Basically all my gear from 25-mans aswell as 10-mans have more stamina than that old brutal, and the spellpower/haste/crit is so incredibly much higher that a little bit of resilience simply doesn't cover it. Using PvE epics paired with so far 3 mainset savage parts and 3 offset parts aswell as the old epic trinket I am still up to 500 resilience, and everything else is PvE. This gives me buffed with fel armor and spellpower from demonology specc about 2.2k spellpower, ~400 haste with stone and about 26% crit.

Even if the old brutal parts would give me more resilience, it still wouldn't make it easier for me to survive a melee, since with this gear the fight is half as long as it would be with that old junk. Thus I only have to survive half as long before I acctually kill them, and the ~200 resilience it would give me does not give me 50% more survivability.

Have started to notice that if I manage to go into metamorphosis before the rogue/feral strikes at me from invis I can acctually survive pretty long. Playing with a hunter 2v2, I almost always instantly trinket to use death coil aswell as healthstone. If done correctly, immolation aura has been ticking all this time and your felguard has been smacking them up. My hunter almost always has one down and we're 2 against 1. Would I still be near-death after deathcoil/healthstone I just blink back to my trusty circle.

Basically, we win almost 90% when facing dual dps so far. Unfortunately the holypala / <put dps here> setup still holds us down to <1700 at the moment. Hopefully we'll be able to specc affliction when reaching ~1k resilience and still survive those terrible bursts, since affli at the moment imo is a terrific anti-healer specc. With the new Howl of Terror glyph you can acctually chain-fear a healer for about ~16 seconds if you're left alone with him before he goes immune. Felhunter silence gives another 6 seconds if you get it right, and deathcoil + in my case arcane torrent adds another 5 sec.