When i said 40k damage i was talking about constrictors and their needing to be killed ASAP. Second, what 3 gcds? Your only insta-cast spells are corruption and coa. Coa doesn't crit, and corruption won't crit 8k on a target without coe or haunt on it, it won't crit as much on a target without imp scorch on tow on it, not to mention with my ~20% crit shown in my stats my conflag has an actual 50%+ chance to crit without any raid buffs. Third, don't assume you'll always dot everything on your way to the crushers. Crushers can spawn one next to each other or far away from corruptor tentacles. Fourth, yes you'll do a bit more damage *on the meters* if you dot while running, but you won't necessarily fulfill the objective of phase 2 which is "kill crushers faster", especially towards the end.

I hope you're not talking about phase 3 here because that would just mean you're trying to argue something that no one's denying.

Things were blurry before but as of 3.1.2 destruction wins hands down on phases 1 and 2 when it comes to raid efficiency. Phase 1 could be problematic now however, we tend to generate a lot of threat from my experience.

This is really to add to a discussion going on in the Simcraft thread (that shouldn't be in there) about deep destro specs after the patch.

After trying out a 0/13/58 build yesterday I'm pretty impressed. It does very good single target DPS which is great when you need to burn something fast like XTs heart or Razor on landing phase (as you can guess I'm not in a guild that is clearing Yogg just yet ). I still think that I'll be spec-dancing for the time being and doing what's best for the raid overall. On fights with a lot of adds then the AOE from deep destro is still comparatively weak compared to affliction and 40/30+1 hybrid builds.

Overall it's a huge improvement from where deep destro was before 3.1.2 but anyone hoping for the easy and overpowered DPS of the old 21/40 days is going to be disappointed. Right now destro is raid-viable nothing more, which is probably where the developers want it to be.

EDIT: and yes, threat is again an issue. I found myself skirting tank threat for the first time in ages, but that just means they get to work a bit harder.

First of all when mentioning the 40k damage you never said anything about constrictors you just said you could get it in 3-4 gcds, second on the training dummys with no raid buffs/haunt/SE and only lightweave proc + fel armor + 3 IotDS stacks I get 4400 crit from corruption (yes not even life tap buff). So with even simple math it should be easy for you to see that with 40% more damage and alot more spell power from raid buffs someone CAN get a 8k crit with corruption w/o aformentioned debuffs. Please do a little research before you post missinformation. It seems you appear to be defending dest for the yogg fight, but I do not think anyone was bashing it , also affliction is not as terrible in p1 and p2 of the fight like you seem to think it is. If you raid with affliction locks who do badly in the first two phases of the yogg fight send them here to get better at their class. Just please don't state that it does bad in thoes phases cause you are very wrong there.

Hey guys stop being assholes to each other. Thanks in advance.

Same threat problem for me, normally in the first 60 seconds of a fight, after which its generally fine.
I'm now working in a soulshatter as standard after the second backdraft has cleared rather than leaving it as an emergency button.

The other option might be to spec 2/2 destructive reach, 2/3 empowered imp, but given that the issue seems to be the early burst damage rather than the long term threat I'll probably stick to the soulshatter method.

Simulations have been done within the last week to show that Emp imp is a larger DPS loss to drop a point out of than Backlash. Please refer to this post for the details.

Can't speak for Ulduar.

First hours with 0/13/58 in 3.1.2 in Naxxramas 10 & 25, I get about 10% damage from the imp.

Empowered Imp
Increases the damage done by your Imp by 15%, and all critical hits done by your Imp have a 100% chance to increase your spell critical hit chance for your next spell by 20%. This effect lasts 8 sec.

I'd ignore the tests done on the dummy as your imp won't be raid buffed. But in answer to your question mine was doing 8-10% damage on various bosses in Ulduar - using the standard 0/13/58

Imps get an extreme increase from raid buffs which is not represented on training dummies. I have not retested since BC, back then they received almost a 1:1 increase to firebolt from external spellpower.

I have a side topic question about what I call "gimmick" fights and the best specs to use for them. For example, I normally run deep destro for most raid encounters, but I found my DPS and raid damage jumped on Vexax 10 Hard Mode when I went Meta and only spammed shadow bolts in crashes. (I term it a gimmick since there is no mana return, and it is extremely buff dependant based on the encounter mechanics.)

I tried to use the same setup for Hard Mode Hodir this week and didn't break 7k, which was about 3-4k shy of our top performers. Now maybe it is because we had all casters on Flash Freeze duty and I was swapping targets a lot to bust out NPCs, or maybe it was because I was more focused on keeping Singed up via Toasty Fires than chasing whoever had Storm Power, but I still feel like I could consistently do more damage on that fight.

My specific question is, for those of you who have completed or put a lot of time in on these "gimmick" encounters, is which spec are you seeing the highest raid damage with consistently? Is there a modified rotation you're using outside of what you'd run with on a normal fight that didn't have encounter-specific buffs?

Thanks in advance for your time.

http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/4570064
I did the fight as Affliction before and rocked the Animus with close to 1 mio damage - but less total damage done.

Deep destro is definitly ok on Vezax 25.

At the time we were splitting ranged into 2 groups and kiting him through the middle when he gained Surge. That meant RNG could play hell with how often crashes fell on your side. This meant using a cooldown like Meta once I was in a crash made for better DPS. This past week we finally convinced our druid tank (nicknamed "OSHA, The Safety Bear") to skip kiting all together and just have one ranged group. This did in fact make Deep Destro a better build for the fight in 25 man. I still may use Meta for 10s where I don't have an Elemental Shaman just so caster DPS and healers can benefit from the spellpower buff.

Ok, so Vezax aside, any other specs and/or modified rotations working out really well on Hodir? I'm watching our Elemental Shaman and Boomkin put up exceptional numbers on this fight by spamming nukes, and I'm wondering if rolling in with normal Deep Destro will do the trick or if there is something I can do differently to better take advantage of the fight mechanics (other than just being better at getting all 3 buffs up as often as possible).

I've had good success doing Hodir as deep Destro. And when I tried going for spotlights over fires I got even better. This makes sense when you see the scaling factor for haste for this build (1.5!). Getting the crit buffs is a little random as even in a good group you might not be one of the 6 people (4 in 10man) it gets passed to so while it's amazing you can't rely on it.

@Menestheus This only works if there are still enough people standing near the fire who damage Hodir, otherwise the singed effect won't stack which results in a dps loss.

We normally have at least one hunter (who doesn't benefit much from the haste buff) and you can get it stacked up quickly at the beginning and then he can maintain it.