I've been playing with Destro in the last couple of days, for whatever reason there doesn't appear to be a lot of information on the internet about this spec, which is odd as overall it seems now to be comparable to affliction in HC raids. (Or at least Raidbots leads me to believe this is the case!)

Obviously the big hitter for Destro is the Chaos Bolt, so it would seem logical that we'd want to be casting it as much as possible. Obviously to do this we need burning embers, so looking at the spells that generate embers it seems that we're missing out what appears to be the biggest generator in Rain of Fire. RoF has a 25% change to generate 10% of an ember per tick of the 8 ticks, so on average will generate 2 per cast.

So I tried putting it in the normal Destro rotation as a filler ahead of Incin which would only generate 1+crit 10ths per cast. Of course the downsides, ignoring boss movement, are the increased mana cost thus more downtime plus that RoF does less damage than Incin.

Using SimulationCraft 510-9, on a Patchwerk fight there really doesn't appear to be much in it, however we don't get these any more, using a light movement fight with 'Warlock_Destruction_T14H' gear we get 113.8k dps vs 110.2k, a 3.2% increase. On heavy movement its 74.1k vs 67.8k, or 9%!

I'd imagine dps would only go up if there was another add to hit, say when people get MCd during the Vizier encounter, where you'd not use a full AoE rotation.

Obviously there could be ways to negate this difference, with talents maybe, so I was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts on using RoF on a single target encounter?

The idea is to maximise the number of chaos bolts your casting between dark soul, as well as shadowburns in the execute phase, simulcraft sees ~3 extra CBs and .6 or so shadowburns for a 450s fight.

Switching the talent in the sim, it changes to 116.2k vs 115.7k so only .4% better for both light and heavy movement. (Which is actually interesting in itself!)

Although while moving because HoF is now instant you can cast it and do a similar amount of damage to Incin but without triggering the movement slowdown debuff.

Anyway, was just wondering if anyone had looked at it. One thing I've not done in all this is recalc the weights for the extra cast of HoF and apply that to the same gear. Maybe that gives it more edge?

Apologies for the spam.

Everything sim I've run points to a tiny like .5% dps increase by using RoF on a single target.

However on two targets RoF should be kept up as it seems to yield a 15% increase. (Which is unsurprising given RoF hits one target for the equiv of a Incin, and you'd get more embers from hitting two.)

So at the very least I'd suggest adding the following to the simcraft action list after Havoc:
actions+=/rain_of_fire,if=!ticking&!in_flight&active_enemies>1

I'd also suggest any guides should also mention casting it when there will be any adds where an aoe rotation isn't usable -- short lifespan, on MC'd players, etc -- or when moving as it doesn't give you the Kil'jaeden's Cunning movement debuff.

So, am I the only lock that only just now found out that shadowflame benefits from the meta dmg buff if you pop into meta while hand of gul'dan is in flight? I'm glad I often was doing that anyway, on the 2nd HoG of a spaced-out pair to get a 2-stack ticking, without sitting on 2 HoG charges while I wanted to be in meta.

Are there any guides or repositories of tricks / class mechanics that anyone's keeping updated, with tricks like that? I don't know what else I'm missing for demo or aff. Mostly I've just been looking at the simcraft action lists to see what I'm supposed to do, but that doesn't even try to save up HoG charges to HoG, filler, filler, HoG for a 2-stack of shadowflame, except when it doesn't cast HoG for other reasons (e.g. fury dump burn phase).

Ok, so I have a problem with my Warlock. When I simulate my character with Simulation Craft it shows that I should be able to do 74k dps, but I'm barely doing 65k. My spec is affli, and I think my rotation is good. It goes like:
- Cast Doomguard
- Dark Soul
- Soulburn + Soulswap
- Haunt
- Malefic Grasp
- Reapply DoTs that are almost finished
- Malefic Grasp
I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. Maybe it's because I'm not good ebough as Affli? Or maybe my rotation is bad?

@Edit:
I've just noticed, that SimulationCraft was simming with player on "Elite" skill level, but after changing to "Average" it showed 69k dps, so I still should be pulling out more.

After reading through this thread, I am still unsure exactly how I should be playing my lock correctly. This is a question discussing the mechanics of maximizing your damage with the use of procs.

Lets start with terminology. Refresh vs. Extend. Refresh, for the purposes of this post, means to re apply your dots either manually(clicking the individual spells) or using Soulburn and then Soulswap to put on your US, corr, and agony instantly. Both these methods, as far as I can understand, for MoP, recalculate your haste, int, and mast values at the time of cast(end) and will continue ticking with those values until they either fall off or you Refresh again.

Extend however, applies to Fel Flame I believe, where it will extend the time your UA and Corr have by 6 seconds each. This extension does not affect the SP/int/haste/mast values, only takes the values you have when you either initially put them on or refreshed them, and extends that by 6 seconds(Up to max value of 150 percent of the dots original dot time).

If this is correct, could you not just wait until you have 3 or 4 lucky procs from things like your weapon buff, some trinqs and your Dark Soul, then never "refresh" again, just extend with fel flame? If you never have to "refresh" that would save you shards you would usually be spending on SB then SS to catch a random proc and use them for haunts, giving you a much better up time?

To recap, can anyone tell me why I should not wait for 3-4 procs at once (which happens about 92 percent of the time within the first 4 seconds of every fight) then cast agony again (bumping it up to 32ish seconds before it falls off) and just keep up UA and Corr the rest of the fight with FF which will "extend" not "refresh" the original damage calculations, which have most my procs still on it from the initial pull.

This is wrong - extension via fel flame recalculates everything as well.