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Comment by MrHoon

Ruin is the backbone talent of an SM/Ruin warlock, DS/Ruin Warlock, and most of all, a Destro Warlock.

Many people ask "Wtf does this do? iz it awesome?"

What Ruin grants to the play is a higher DPS and most of a a greater burst damage.

A lot of newbies (not noob, there is a difference) believe ruin will grant them a 250% crit damage. Wrong. Infact it grants a 50% increase. "But why does it say 100%? Are you sure?" you ask?

Spell crits work on a 50% modifier, while physical crits work on 100% modifier. When talents say "Increases critical strike damage bonus", it means it will increase your CRIT modifier by 100% not the whole base damage.

So... like

Shadowbolt hits for 500
This will be your base.

Shadowbolt crits for 750 (without ruin)
This is without ruin, so you get 50% extra damage from untalented ruin. 50% of 500 is 250 so you get a +250 damage.

Shadowbolt crits for 1000 (with ruin)
Now with ruin, your original untalented Shadowbolt will crit for 750; 250 more than a hit. Now if you add 100% more damage to the bonus, you get 500! TADA!

This applies to all spell talents. Have fun!

EDIT: DAMMNNN I wrote this 3 years ago?
I've played this game longer than I thought :P

Comment by Zyxak

The key to having ruin work best (and destruction warlocks in general), is to have as much +crit% as possible in gear.

Comment by 8888_

Little factoid.

Originally called Holocaust during the first Beta testing of WoW.

Comment by 17832

To explain what was posted above in a different way:

You normally have a 50% increase to damage when you crit. This talent increases the critical bonus damage by 100%. a 100% increase to 50% is another 50% which means that total you will have a 100% critical strike bonus damage.

Example:

500 shadowbolt

== 750 damage crit without ruin

== 1,000 damage with ruin

Comment by 43285

Two things you should be aware of:

1) For raiding, UA almost always beats out Ruin for DPS. So those warlocks choosing between 40/0/21 and 41/0/20, choose the latter.

2) If you have Ruin, each %crit you have will result in about half of that as a percent increase in DPS. So if you have 20% crit and Ruin, your DPS will increase by slightly over 10% if you just spammed a direct damage spell like Shadowbolt or Incinerate. Naturally though the DPS increase is going to be slightly lower because you are also casting DoTs, which cannot crit.

Comment by 40975

Ruin is one of those talents that tend to be very fun in PvP and PvE, but not actually very good in either. Take it if you want occasionally very big numbers from your nukes, bearing in mind that stacking spell crit is always lower dps than stacking spell damage, regardless of build.

If you want zomg raid boss dps, get UA or DS instead.

If you want to PvP and crit, roll a mage.

Comment by 34354

Isn't this talent extremly unfair compared to the mage talent Ice Shards, they have to spend 5 talent points for the same effect.

(Nerf Warlocks)

Comment by 83809

my ruin doesnt work.. does it suppose to be in spellbook ? cuz mine isnt "/ plz help i just pressed on the talent and nothing in spell book and nothing at trainer "/

Comment by 92946

Blizz hates mages....
Mages have to spend 5 talent points to get 100% frost crit damage and in deep arcane 50% for 2 talent points too...

/reroll warlock

Comment by Thottbot

I have ruin and im a level 45 warlock. Im not sure if my crits are any higher than they were when I was affliction spec'd. Obviously now im destruction spec'd, but i really dont see a difference. Is it mainly a level-based increase?

Comment by Thottbot

this is really wired :S

it says 0 sec cooldown :P if thats true i think i'm going for destruction :D
soo is it true?

Comment by Thottbot

When it is refering to the crit bonus, does that also include the bonuses from items? Or only the talent bonuses?

Comment by Thottbot

It doubles the bonus damage you get from a crit. If you regularly hit for 500, crit for 750, 250 is bonus damage, which is doubled. Therefore a crit would now be 1000. There seems to be some debate about the amount of bonus damage done on a crit. I've seen where most people say it's 150% of a normal hit. I've noticed mine to be a bit higher, closer to 175- 200%, which means Ruin would make it 250-300%. Anyone who can enlighten me would be appreciated.

Comment by Thottbot

i hit shadowbolts for around 1000-1100 now and crit are for 2300-2400 something.. with improved shadowbolt i crit 2900 on the second crit.. killer in 5 man instance xD

Comment by Thottbot

Its passive, and if you have a lot of spell damage gear and a high crit chance, it's awesome. I've gotten shadowbolt crits over 3k at level 62. Granted, that was with CoS, the trinket that increases spell damage by 120, and with an Imporved Shadowbolt proc, but still. 3k! Woo!

Keep in mind you can now get this AND Dark Pact (at 62) AND Improved Howl of Terror(at 67). Big crits, instant fears, and unending mana ftw. Specced like that you can basically keep on killing mobs forever without stopping. I did all the HFP and most of Zangramarsh quests so far with no down time or any problems at all.

Comment by Allakhazam

yeah you think like me But

when i shot shadowbolt in duel my opponent have Shadow Deflector (?) and i atack myself for about 2500 dmg ;) 2/3 of my life ;)

Comment by Allakhazam

if you are desctructin basing your lock, don't think twice about getting this talent. If you don't notice the crit increase yet, you will start to. I can vrey nearly keep up with a same lvl fire mage I run with thanks to this baby. Conflagrate always crits around 630 for me, and I crited Shadow Burn 726 the other day, and I'm a lvl 42. Just push the button. You won't regret it. And no, it doesn't multiply your dmg by 2, as I thought. It basically doubles what your crit dmg would be. For instance, if your SB normally does 100 dmg, and you crit for 150, if you had Ruin it would crit for 200, because you critted for an extra 50 dmg, and 50x2 = 100, and 100+100=200. Easy enough to figure out, but i'm sure the formula is much more complicated than that. All i know is it's worth it.

Comment by Allakhazam

This is the most important and powerful talent in the Destruction Tree...
600 points of damage with a rank 5 Shadow Bolt...I can barely imagine a Soulfire's critic-strike

Comment by Allakhazam

Crit with soulfire at 1750 at level 51 ^^ and my SB crits at 950 and I dont even have SM yet :P

Comment by Allakhazam

Done 950 crit with Immolate, all talents in destruction, so far no crits with Soulfire, but waiting eagerly for it....

Muhahahahaha

Comment by Allakhazam

I was eagerly awaiting to get this talent. When I got it, I didn't notice a single thing differnet about my crits. I had teh impressions, that...wihtout Ruin, and I crit for 1000 dmg, that with Ruin, i would crit for 2000. Apparnetly it only reflects the bonus of it. Meaning if my standard SB hits for 600, and I crit for 900, I get an extra 300 dmg added, since thats a 100% increase of teh crit bonus. I guess, since my armor is still in transition from Affliction based, to Destruction based, I haven't seen anything.

My SB rank 8 would hit for 640-700 dmg regular. and crit for 1400 max. since I completely redid my talents, I am missing the +20% shadow dmg and increase crit chance on them also. Seeing as how, at end game, everything is more group based than solo based...I reworked my tree to be more teamwork-y. Improved Imp/Healthstones/ RainOfFire, Hellfire Stun. (which by the way, isn't worth it...the 26% chance to stun, never happens.)

Comment by Allakhazam

Ruin and Shadowburn are the two big things to shoot for in the destruction tree. Everything else I put in Affliction (beside 2 points for the improved healthstone and 5 points for Demonic Embrace for the 15% stam boost). I get soulfire crits for about 1600hp each. VERY nice opening hit on a target

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Ruin

Ruin

Talent

Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Destruction spells by 100%.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect

Apply Aura: Modifies Critical Strike Damage (15)
Value: 100%
PVP Multiplier: 1
Affected Spells:

	Immolate	Shadow Bolt	Shadow Bolt
	Shadow Bolt	Immolate	Shadow Bolt
	Immolate	Shadow Bolt	Hellfire
	Immolate	Searing Pain	Soul Fire
	Shadow Bolt	Shadow Bolt	Shadow Bolt
	Shadow Bolt	Immolate	Immolate
Show 37 More
	Immolate	Hellfire	Hellfire
	Searing Pain	Searing Pain	Searing Pain
	Searing Pain	Searing Pain	Soul Fire
	Shadow Bolt	Immolate	Shadow Bolt
	Searing Pain	Soul Fire	Hellfire
	Immolate	Incinerate	Searing Pain
	Soul Fire	Incinerate	Shadowburn
	Conflagrate	Shadowburn	Shadowburn
	Shadowburn	Shadowburn	Shadowburn
	Conflagrate	Conflagrate	Conflagrate
	Shadowburn	Conflagrate	Shadowfury
	Shadowfury	Shadowfury	Shadowburn
	Conflagrate

Flags

Is Ability
Passive spell
Aura is hidden
Cast time is hidden

Ruin

Buff

Spell Details

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