Not your fault, I should have quoted originally to avoid confusion.

As far as casting rotations go, anyone else been toying with demonology? It's not that incinerate is that bad, but shadowbolt just feels dominant. I'm not sure why they thought molten core would help, especially when demo has even more reason to gear for crit, imp shadowbolt just seems like a given.

Hence the impression And from some others posts above that say pretty much the same. However, I am relieved to hear that this opinion isn't the only truth. My confusion came from a lack of knowledge as it often is the case, thank you for your enlightening informations which should prevent me from nightmaring about the template every night till the 3.0

I'm really pondering the possibility to cast Incinerate when Molten Core procs (wow, Inci, Immo, Corrupt, Confla, Curse, SB, who said locks chain spam one spell :p ?), but still using SB the rest of the time. Which leads to another question: while we're at taking improved Corruption, could it be worth it to reach Nightfall in the affli tree, sacrficing the Improved Imp?

Tough rotations seem to be the name of the game for Warlocks in WotLK. Affliction's... well... Affliction. Demo has insane micro-management and Destro is pure entertainment. I believe on the first Naxx25 clear the destro warlock was running Immo-Incinx3-Conflag-SBx3 rotations. Nowadays, that rotatio applies, along with maintaining Corruption and dropping a Chaos Bolt on cooldown. Easy bolt-spam seems to be a thing of the past

I was only incinerating without immolate to check out the base damage (so if you know how much DPS Nightfall adds you can compare the contribution of the 2 DoTs to the two fillers). Yea immolate increases Incinerate to about 75 above non-ISB Shadowbolt (and about 50 DPS below ISB SB), and 3190 with molten core, about 70 above ISB Shadowbolt.

Let's see if we can make that more definitive.
SB DPS: 1130, 1340
Incin DPS: 1289, 1417
x = ISB uptime in decimal form (percent / 100).
y = MC uptime in decimal form.

SB DPS = 1340 * x + 1130 * (1 - x)
Incin DPS = 1417 * y + 1289 * (1 - y)

The point where they are equal is then (skipping the math):
y = (1.640625)*x - (1.2421875)
x = (~0.6095238)*y + (~0.7571429)

Of course the answer will vary with the uptime of the corresponding buffs.

Case 1:
Rotation includes no shadow spells except Corruption. MC has a 15% chance to proc for 12 seconds every 3 seconds.
The chance to lose MC (no proc in 12 seconds) is 52%.

Case 2:
Going to assume static crit chance and calculate ISB uptime. That will let me determine the MC uptime required to equal SB dps.
No buffs, not so great 80 gear: ~20% crit + 5% destruction. Imp has 15% crit (really guessing here), so Emp. Imp procs about once every 15 seconds. Ug, gonna have to assume 0% haste here again. Given a 2.5 second cast, that's 3.3% increased crit chance.
The chance to lose ISB (no crit in 4 casts) with 28% crit is 26.9%

Raid buffs:
+18% crit, +18% imp crit.
Imp with 33% crit, gives +7% crit on average to the warlock (assuming 2.5 second lock cast time).
So the chance to lose ISB (no crit in 4 casts) with 50% crit is 6.25%

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That's not exactly what we want, but from what I can see, it's very hard to tell what the total "uptime" is going to be. Relatively, every 3 seconds the chance to lose MC is almost twice as much as the chance to lose ISB every 2.5 seconds, and 8 times as much raid buffed.

Just turning the numbers around with no real mathematical reason, let's say x = 0.90.
The DPS will be equal with y = 0.234375.

With x = 1, the equation simplifies down to y = 0.3984375

So (surprise to me), if your MC uptime is more than about 40%, incinerate is better.

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Crit obviously benefits SB more than Incinerate, because of the increased ISB uptime.

Haste lowers the effect of empowered Imp, but the slower cast of SB in the first place compared to Incinerate means it gets more benefit from Emp. Imp (the longer your cast time, the more likely it is to have the +20% crit buff on any given spell).

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A few problems with this model though. For one, Chaos Bolt is extremely powerful. And it now benefits from ISB. Not having ISB up for your Chaos Bolts is going to put a dent in your DPS. Having it up might not be very likely if you aren't casting Shadowbolt that much.

Also, it doesn't take Nightfall or the glyph of corruption into account.

Seems to me the optimal rotation would be to weave the two together. I think you're going to have to use a Backdraft charge on Immolate no matter what though, personally. Otherwise, either you don't conflag the moment it's up, or you cut your Immolate off WAY short (making F&B wasted AND giving Immo a shitty DPCT).
So something like Conflag->Immolate->SBx2->Chaos Bolt->Incinerate->Conflag and repeat.
The question is, do you weave corruption in there? And you're obviously going to have to cut off stuff for Life Tap in some cycles. And maybe you should keep Shadowbolting until ISB *and* Molten Core proc, THEN do Chaos Bolt + Incinerate.

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I know that rotation's been thrown around a lot in this thread. Personally I didn't buy it until I did this math. :P Now I still don't think a purely Immo/Incinerate build will be the best, but I do think pure Shadowbolt (talking filler only) won't be the best either. It's probably going to be a pain, but personally I think we're going to be Shadowbolting until ISB and MC proc, then switching to Chaos Bolt + Incinerate.

I am assuming here that you would want to keep Immolate at all times still. With that in mind would it be worth cutting Immolate short with a conflag the second you get both ISB and MC up? Then diving into a Incinerate and CB rotation? Or would you want to follow a pattern of waiting for the end of Immolate then Conflaging and just keep weaving spells depending on what buffs are up?

The problem with waiting for ISB and MC procs for CB is CB's cooldown. There's no point in waiting for the buffs to proc, you're going to have to cast it as soon as it's off CD to get the most benefit from it, buff or no buff.

I have spent hours on the PTR the last few days and this rotation was what I came up with that felt the best. With the mana cost reduction being removed from Backdraft, Immolate now really isn't one of the best spells to be casting under backdraft, which is why I did entertain the SBx3, however I soon felt that I was not able to cast Chaos Bolt on its cooldown as reliably, as well as not being able to maintain a smooth casting flow with ISB charges for Chaos Bolt.

Destro scales incredibly well with group buffs. While solo, I was able to push 2400, average about 2100 DPS. When I grouped up with a Elemental Shaman, Frost mage and moonkin I peaked at 3700 during a hero and maintained 3k after that.

Using Immo - SB x2 - CB - Incin filler (tap here) - Conflag, I was able to maintain almost 100% ISB uptime for Chaos Bolt, as well as always have any molten core procs up for Chaos Bolt as well as the fire spam to follow in the rotation.

Chaos bolt is always off timer ~2 seconds before its recast in this cycle, and you have lots of time to tap without tossing off any of the cast rotations timing. if you happen to miss a conflag, simply recast immo toss out 1 shadowbolt, chaos bolt, and your back into the rotation with no fuss.

I didnt find that I was able to boost my damage from casting corruption for Molten core procs, though did find that molten core procs were far from high up time. Currently Improved Shadowbolt is a bit funky in its application. Any DoT on the target when you proc it will remain the same, however any dot cast while it is active will get the bonus, and maintain that bonus once ISB drops from the target. For this reason and because Corruptions durations makes it a pain to fit into a 12 second rotation, I have experimented with casting it following a chaos bolt as this is when ISB would be on the target get gain its effects. i have not done much testing with this yet to see if its Molten core procs out weigh the lower damage per cast time of the spell.

Immolate is quickly becoming one of destructions worst damage per cast time spells because half of its damage doesn't scale with the incredibly high crit rate destruction is now seeing, and this is further hurt by losing 20% of its dot dmg with conflag. Immo is staple for us with its modifier on Incin, however thus far its showing to be about 6% of my total dmg out. A shame

Edit: It was pointed out to me that I should have linked the build I was using. This was the build I used in this particular test. I have since dropped 2/2 Intencity, 2 from backlash, and 1 from Shadow fury to pick up 5/5 soul leach for better output. Wile the mana return to yourself only slightly offsets the huge amounts of mana you burn with backdraft, it goes a long way to keeping your imp giong which is basically the only thing allowing destruction to still hold water.

I tested almost every destro rotation on the Beta servers mentioned in this thread and got some surprising results. My setup was: lvl 70 gear at 80, hitcapped for the simple target dummies, 1535 spellpower, 11.92% crit, 3.29% haste, no buffs and debuffs (numbers at 0/0/0 with fel armor, no glyphs). I made long term tests, meaning I tapped till I ran out of hitpoints.
The use of immolate, incinerate, corruption or conflagrate lowered my dps. I used castsequence macros to avoid human errors and copied the rotations you figured out here. The best performances were with 0/31/40 (1 point Demonic Knowledge) and 0/20/51 - only with this destruction specs I surpassed 1300 dps (not counting the 200+ dps from succubus/imp).

For me it seems like nothing, except Chaosbolt, beats pure Shadowbolt spam at fairly low gear.

On this page alone we have 4-5 different conclusions as to what is the best DPS rotation for Destruction. In some ways this is good, as it indicates a fair degree of freedom/personal preference. On the other hand too much freedom will ultimately make the simplest rotations better.

I'm particularly wary of the latter issue. Chaos Bolt + Spam of Choice isn't much of an upgrade over what Destruction does on live. I suppose that so long as we do competitive DPS there isn't much issue, but a lot of talents seem largely wasted if that's the best we can do (Conflagrate, Backdraft, Fire and Brimstone to name a few).

As awkward as it is currently, I'd like to think that Backdraft should be a key part of a raiding Warlock's arsenal.

I cant seem to get as much dps with destro as with affliction.

My normal rotation for afflic has been Corruption-UA-Haunt-SB-SB-SB-UA-Haunt-SB-SB-SB

I've tried numerous destro rotations/specs and just cant seem to get the same amt of dps. Affliction im pulling about 1840 DPS at lvl 80 while destro im hitting maybe 1700.

I'm sure part of it is my timing because I find myself not chain casting at times trying to catch chaos bolt's CD, Conflag for immolate and make trying to make use of molten core.

Idk the destro tree in general to me seems way too spread out and chaotic to make use of all the talents. I cant seem to get a good rotation down. You SB spam to keep up ISB till molten core procs...then you spam incinerate which requires immolate...but wait CB is up so hit that and oh crap a free soulfire! AHHH immolate is almost gone so hit conflag and SB for molten core then it procs so put up immolate and incinerate...but crap CB is up again!

It's just friken chaos for me, i feel like im just slamming my head on the keyboard. I hope they organize it a little better because they seem to be spreading the talents out for too many spells.

I'm gonna stick with affliction for now, but knowing how destro scales better then affliction I might not be able to do it forever.

In my opinion you'd be better off starting with UA and then Corruption since that way they'd end up on the target at the same time.

I like how for over a year I've heard (and agree) that raiding warlocks are boring to play with one offensive spell spam. Throughout the raiding thread you can find wishes that "skill" was somehow rewarded by allowing more DPS if you are capable of doing some arbitrary feat. Now we see that example wished-for model, where you can "get by" with simple rotations, but have the ability to crank up the DPS by putting some extra effort into it.

Personally I hope they make the spectrum that way. However, worrying too much about the raw DPS of spec/rotations at this stage seems a little futile, since we're likely to see retuning that mixes things up.

One good thing from this thread is that people are coming up with many of the right ways of looking at rotations so that when the coefficients/buffs/debuffs/etc are finalized some of us can plug them all into an equation and rank. And once those numbers come in we can learn to train ourselves to deal with potentially "awkward" rotations.

Metamorphosis was also reduced to a 30 second duration with a 20% damage boost, down from 45 seconds and 40%.
Corruption now increases the crit chance of Seed of Corruption in addition to the damage of regular Corruption.
Haunt appears to now heal you for 200% of the damage it did, up from 20%?

Try the rotations out at 80, I have in 10 man Naxx gear. Incinerate, Corr, CoD and Chaos Bolt; conflagging only before the last tick of immolate with the conflag glyph. It worked out to 400 dps higher on a heroic dummy than weaving in sbolts with any rotation including conflagging every cooldown etc...

Try it.

Edit: Sbolt in your rotation is even worse now that Imp Sbolt is down to 10%.

The damage to regular corruption is down to 2%/rank, from 4% on Improved Corruption. We get the crit bonus on Seed, though, but I'm not convinced that's a good trade.

Duration/damage reduced on Metamorphosis, any word on the cooldown?

Corruption is 2/4/12/16/20. Probably a typo somewhere.

Yup. >_< Your rotation seems to be much better now that ISB got nerfed AGAIN. It's too bad, more a personal preference, but I prefer shadowbolt as a filler over incinerate (I just wish blizz would give us a CHOICE). Doesn't seem like it's going to be viable anymore.

And I guess I should try to start doing Naxx and such, my premade is still walking around in full low level PVP gear.

After reading the thread and being overwhelmed with tons of information, is there a definitive raid spec come patch time?

I'm not sure what they're saying with this one. It looks like Backdraft is now 2 talents for 20% reduction instead of 3 for 30%, but this isn't reflected in their calculator. The "Old" doesn't help but confuse the matter further, nor does the presence of such wonderful chances as "Sunder Armor now lasts until cancelled".

If Backdraft has been nerfed, will it still be useable in our rotations? I've been under the impression that the difference between Backdraft and non-Backdraft DPS was notable but not amazing.

No.

We've narrowed it down to demo, destro or affliction with 51+ in either.
My guess would be 0/3/58. Still a toss up for wotlk.

Which is exactly where I would like it to be, I think.