Darkwind

Welcome back to this week's edition of the Fel Libram. 

Today I'd like to point out some of the tricks Kulwych uses to practice his trade.  I'd like to emphasize that he IS NOT EVEN CLOSE to good enough to track his spells by instinct....that moron.....

For starters, he uses ButtonTimers.  This is an addon that can be found on curse and is useful for tracking cooldowns of any and every kind.  I would recommend it for any class that needs to track cooldowns personally.  The tool itself can track auras on yourself or targets(including dots).  Cooldowns of abilities, and it can even track supplemental auras like shadow and flame that are triggered by abilities like shadow bolt.  You can also set these to be tracked on a focused target.  The primary set up is quite straight forward, and with a bit of extra work, you'll be tracking abilities on multiple targets in no time. 

On the topic of focused targets, I'd like to take a moment to explain the importance of using focus macros.  There are a few skills that should be almost exclusively used on a focused target.  Fear, banish, and Bane of Havoc.  All three of these skills should be cast on things that aren't being attacked by you.  To that end, you should set those targets as your focus and use @focus macros.  I will spell out some examples at the end of this post.  Hopefully that IDIOT Kulwych will take a hint and refine his wall-o-text macros a bit.  The idea here is that you set a focus at the start of a fight and hit your macro while targeting anything else that you want.  Your fear/banish/bane of havoc should hit your focus target as long as it's within range.  No re-targeting necessary.  You can even cast these while facing the wrong way. 

So without further adeiu.  Here are some useful macros that Kulwych uses to help clean up his rotation.

Shift Modifier Macro: pressing this macro uses spell1, shift+press casts spell2.  Notice the colon and semicolon locations.
/cast [mod:shift] spell2; spell1

Focus macro: Casts the ability at a focus... I will include a couple versions of this.  Notice that @focus and target=focus work the same way.

/cast [@focus] spell1

combined with the shift macro

/cast [mod:shift, target = focus] spell2; spell1

Castsequence macro... for things like curses and whatnot that are long term debuffs.  You can link as many as you want together and it will cycle through them sequentially. 

/castsequence spell1, spell2, spell3, spell4, spell5

Kul uses a shift modified castsequence to apply his debuffs, and to cast one of his primary attack spells

/castsequence [mod:shift] debuff1, debuff2; spell1
So he cast his debuffs by shift pressing twice, and then cast a spell by simply pressing this macro.

Well, I'm sure that's far more than any of you fleshies can comprehend, so I'd better stop... Ask questions if you MUST and I may just grace you with an answer.

as always

-STOP EMBARRASSING ME!!!!

Hello Darkwind!!

As per introductions, I'm Rulkin... Kulwych's badass imp.  I'll never understand why he gets all the glory charging in to battle pew pewing with shadow bolts, while I'm melting other demon's faces off with fireballs... Yeah, that's right, that warlock has nothing on me.

Anyway, I'm here to tell you how it's really done…  None of that weak spell spamming garbage.  The real key to destruction is knowledge.  Knowing your full capabilities and when to use them will save you and make you entirely more useful at your role. 

We'll begin with the most important thing first… Me

As I said I’m an imp, and as such, I am the keystone of any destruction warlock.  I do all the heavy lifting so that he can take the glory.  How does he repay me… He binds his soul to mine and lets me take his heaviest blows… Sure, send the little guy!!!  In all seriousness though, he gives me a little bit of instruction as to where I can go…  I usually listen to him because he can’t handle any pressure at all and he tends to react like an idiot and get us both killed!!!

On to the tricks of the trade.  Warlocks have Banes, Curses, and a myriad of other useful destructive tools with which to destroy their foes.  The destruction empowered Warlocks take their hint from us imps and primarily use fire to deal with their victims.

First up is curses

Curse of Tongues – Situational, mostly used in pvp vs casters…This skill slows the cast speed of the target for 30 seconds… not critical

Curse of Exhaustion – Useful for solo play or when your tank somehow dies on trash…  This skill slows enemies for 30 seconds... situational, not critical

****Curse of  the Elements – This decreases a mob’s resistance to all elements.  This not only boosts damage for Kulwych, but all the rest of you humanoids as well.  This should be the first thing that goes up on a target.****

Curse of Weakness – reduces the melee damage of the target.  Cast this on stuff that’s pummeling you or your tank when he needs it…. Not critical

Banes are the next order of business for a solid lock

Bane of agony… no… and here’s why.  This bane takes up a gcd and lasts for around 30 seconds.  Glyphed, it gets a little bit better, but it shouldn’t be glyphed for a destro lock… there are higher priorities than this.  Anything that dies in less than 30 seconds doesn’t need that much extra damage anyway, so one or two more incinerates should do the same job faster. 

****Bane of Doom… every 15 seconds the mob gets a tick of damage…  This is pretty much the bane to use as destruction.  If a mob lasts for more than a minute, this spell is helpful… and if it lasts less than a minute, it still doesn’t hurt.  The upside to that is you cast it once in a short fight, and it lasts the entire time.  One key note… Let this spell expire from the enemy before you renew it.  Its refresh doesn’t extend the same way immolate does with fel flame. 

Bane of Havoc… Situational.  Personally, I don’t use it much.  If you have a scenario where you can attack two enemies for a prolonged period, you might consider using this.  It causes a percentage of your damage to be dealt to the target with the bane on it.

Now for your main spells…

On a trash fight, you would soul burn and soul fire to get the haste boost right out of the gate.  This is because the fights are short and agro isn’t usually much of a problem… On a boss fight, slow cast soul burn at this point.  This gives the tank plenty of time to build agro before you start bursting him down.  Slow casting your first soul fire also allows save those soul shards for when you need them.

Immolate – Next up is immolate.  If you’re doing it right, you should only ever cast this on a target once.  This applies a dot on your target which you can renew with the Fel Flame spell.  The perk of this spell is that it is instant cast so it’s extremely easy to weave in no matter what is going on.

Corruption – This should be next out of the gate.  The reason is that there is a delay between casting immolate and being able to cast conflagrate

Conflagrate – This the Atom Bomb of the destruction build.  This spell can melt the flesh of Arthas’ frozen bones.  This is your highest priority bar one.  Immolate enables this spell, so always make sure that it is up.  Other than that, cast this on every cooldown. 

Chaos bolt – This spell is another key ability for any self respecting master of the dark arts.  Include it in your rotation.  It has a long cool down so you’ll only be using it occasionally.

Incinerate – The filler of the destruction build.  If nothing else is available, cast this.  It does very respectable damage and has a quick cast time, so it acts well as a filler.

Soul Fire – This spell has a large cast time and a larger burst damage.  I’ll hand it to that pansy Kulwych… He learned well from me and can summon a fireball almost as good as mine.  In most fights, This will be used in conjunction with Soul burn so that it is instant cast.  That is the best tactic considering the three seconds it takes to charge this spell.

Shadowburn is another skill that you’ll likely end up with mostly for its utility in recharging shards.  This can only be cast on an enemy with  20% or less life.  If that enemy then dies within 5 seconds, you regain all of your soul shards back.  This should be used in long fights with adds.  The idea being that if you use this on trash adds and recharge your shards, you can instant-cast soul fire a few more times.  This will aid you in dealing damage overall.  Even after taking a break from a boss to do some extra damage to trash.

Kulwych: RULKIN!!!!!!

!?!? Uhhhhh this does it for key abilities associated with generally hurting stuff.  I’ll be back to give you more insight on  situational abilities soon.  Namely, those associated with solo destruction and pvp.

Kulwych: WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING THE GUILDS STUFF!!!!!?!?!? Keep your GRUBBY LITTLE CLAWS off of our record tomes!!  I have no more patience for you right now… Get back to the Nether IMMEDIATELY. 

Rulkin: This was NOT IN MY CONTRACT!!!!! See if I help you next time.

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