Hey, what’s going on, guys? Librarian Husky here. Back with another guide. Today’s episode, we’re taking a look at Destruction Warlock for patch 9.1.5.

Understanding Destruction Warlock for Patch 9.1.5

You’re going to kind of follow along with us as we kind of, you know, just go through the guide.

We have also zoomed in a little bit from some of our previous guides. A lot of people are saying that they can’t really see very well on mobile.

So, if you’re on mobile, please drop a comment. Let me know if this format looks a little bit better. Basically, we’ve zoomed in by 75%. So, it should be quite a bit easier to see some of this stuff on mobile. So, let’s go and jump into it.

So, taking a look at the pros and cons, let’s first talk about the tier that they’re in. We’re a tier currently. Then, taking a look at high keys for DPS destruction. You can see we’re kind of at the end the low end of A tier, but if we go down to 7 to 21, uh well, we’re still at the low end of A tier.

So, currently this is the best performing overall spec for Warlock. And to me, destruction Warlock is the most fluent of the three specs. However, one thing to note is that if you are pushing lower keys, it will be a little bit more difficult. Uh you know, destruction warlock just takes ramp time, but it’s not even ramp time really.

It’s mainly the size of the packs that are being pulled. And you don’t really start to see good numbers until you start pushing higher keys where the tank is pulling like three packs at a time. So, just kind of keep that in mind. If your goal is to just push to like tens or 11s and maybe something like demo lock might be a little bit better. Uh, but if you’re trying to push as high as you possibly can, destruction is right now. Come in here and we just sort by DPS. We take a look at destro.

Pros and Cons of Destruction Warlock

When considering the tier placement of Destruction Warlock, it currently resides in the A tier. In high keys for DPS destruction, it holds its position at the lower end of A tier. As the best performing overall spec for Warlock, destruction Warlock stands out. It is described as the most fluent among the three specs. However, destruction warlock presents challenges in lower keys due to its ramp time and pack size considerations. To achieve optimal performance, higher keys with multiple packs pulled simultaneously are recommended. For more moderate key levels, demo lock might be a preferable choice. Destruction shines in pushing to higher levels, as evidenced by its DPS rankings.

Overview of Destruction Warlock in Mythic+

Uh, their highest key is A20 and they’re looking pretty good in terms of just like their relative DPS. I think they’re just shy of being within the top 10. Looks like they’re sitting like 12 or 13 down here. So, yeah, relative to the rest of the DPS specs, Destruction Warlock is in a pretty good spot. Let’s go and take a look at some of the pros.

So, we are one of the tankiest casters due to Soul Leech. As we are doing damage, we’re going to be building up this absorb shield on us, which is going to make us pretty tanky because we also have other talents in our tree that increases our stamina. So, between that and soul leech, we’re actually probably one of the tankiest casters in the game.

We also have various cooldowns. We have a 1-minute cooldown, Dark Pact, and we actually reduce this even further through other talents. I think you can get this down to like 45 seconds or something like that. We also have Unending Resolve, which we can also get some CDR on through various talents.

And Unending Resolve is just going to be like a flat damage reduction and it’s by 25%. So it’s quite a bit. And one thing that a lot of people don’t know about Unending Resolve is this makes you immune to any interrupts, silence, and pushback effects. So just for example, Priory of the Sacred Flame, there’s a pack at the start at the very start in the lust pool that will interrupt you if you’re casting during their shout that goes off and you can actually pop Unending Resolve and not get silenced.

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Another good example, Theater of Pain, the boss, where it takes two DPS off the platform to duel. He has an AoE silence as well. You can pop Unending Resolve and completely ignore that. We have insanely good utility. Demonic Gateway is awesome. It’s a little bit harder to use on a spec like Demonology, but on Destro, it’s fairly straightforward. You don’t have a pet to worry about. So, this is typically used in Workshop.

There’s also various places that you can use it in Priory and Motherlode as well. But every season we see a couple dungeons where you know gateways very key or core to a route. It’s also in Theater of Pain you can skip some packs with. So a lot of the times this is enough to get you invited into a key. We also have our health stone and our soul stone. One thing to note about soul stone is if you are in a group without Battle Res, always soul stone yourself. So Warlock is one of the few specs can actually Battle Res themselves.

Shaman in Mythic Plus

I think Shaman can do it as well, but Shaman doesn’t have a Battle Res for other players. So really, Warlock is one of the only DPS specs that can kind of carry the Battle Res role completely by themselves because they can just Battle Res themselves. In most Mythic Plus comps, you’re going to have at least two Battle Reses. However, if you’re running a Warlock, you can just bring one.

Some of the cons include not having any sort of immunity like an ice block, pally bubble, or Hunter turtle shell. Additionally, Warlocks lack DPS at low keys due to ramp. Moreover, they do not have any class buff like mark of the wild, fortitude, or arcane intellect.

Moving on to the talents, Warlocks are running Hellcaller along with Destro talents. At the top of the tree, Conflagrate is used to generate soul shard fragments. Destro Lock, uniquely, has soul shard fragments compared to other Warlock specs. Conflagrate procs something called backdraft, reducing the cast time of spells like Chaos Bolt by 30%. Rain of Fire is another essential talent that costs three soul shards to cast and deals damage in a specific area over time without a target cap. Cataclysm is also used to inflict enemies with Immolate by placing a meteor at a target location.

Hellcaller Tree Overview

Now, over here in the Hellcaller tree, we are running Wither. Wither is like a beefed-up form of Immolate, allowing us to apply it to all targets in a specific location with Cataclysm, forming part of the opener strategy.

Another essential ability is Mayhem. Single target spells have a 35% chance to apply Havoc to a nearby enemy for 5 seconds. Tracking Mayhem activations is crucial, as it can trigger frequently without clear indicators.

Havoc is an alternative to Mayhem, requiring a more precise setup but offering less flexibility in spell casting timing. Mayhem enhances flexibility by allowing spells to be cast more freely. Mayhem marks a target with Havoc, causing single target spells to strike the Havoc victim for additional damage. For example, a Chaos Bolt hitting one target will now hit both the main target and the Havoc-marked target. Notably, this mechanic also amplifies spells like Shadow Burn. Shadow Burn deals significant damage to a target, with a 100% critical chance if the target’s health is 20% or less.

Blistering Atrophy increases this threshold to 30%, offering cooldown reduction through Fish Cruelty if the target survives above 30% health. This gameplay loop allows for continuous Shadow Burn casts, especially effective with its charge-based system granting two charges by default.

Shadow Burn and Eradication Talents

Now, since we’re on the topic of Shadow Burn, let’s go ahead and delve into something called Eradication. Eradication is a buff crucial to maintain on your targets.

When you use Chaos Bolt or Shadow Burn, it increases the damage dealt to the target by 5% for 7 seconds. While primarily a single-target talent, it significantly contributes to our damage output. Keeping this buff up is relatively manageable, especially during boss encounters where you frequently cast Chaos Bolt and Shadow Burn.

If Eradication expires, swiftly reapply it, particularly on bosses with multiple phases as it’s prone to dropping off. A key cooldown in our arsenal is Summon Infernal, with a 2-minute cooldown. It’s best paired with Malevolence. Considering Malevolence’s 1-minute cooldown, alternate their usage.

Besides its damage output, Summon Infernal generates a plethora of soul fragments. This influx of soul fragments allows for extensive Rain of Fire spam during AoE scenarios. However, exercise caution as it’s easy to overcap on soul shards while Infernal is active.

The talents associated with soul shard expenditure align with Destruction Warlock’s core concept of maximizing shard utilization for increased minion and damage output. These talents synergize with our primary objective of spending as many soul shards as possible. The more shards we expend, the greater the number of procs, minions summoned, and overall damage inflicted.

Moving to the right, we encounter Channel Demonfire, a 25-second cooldown channeled ability that deals substantial damage to all enemies affected by Immolate.

Advanced Warlock Rotation Strategy

So that turns us into basically an AoE spell. And again, we talked about, I think we talked about this already, how Wither will replace our Immolate. So that just means all targets that have Wither are going to be getting hit by this Channel Demonfire.

That’s why it’s very important to open with a Cataclysm. And it’s very important to get Wither up on as many targets as you can because not only is Wither doing a ton of damage. It’s also generating soul shards and then a lot of our other core abilities work around Wither.

We got a couple talents down here that are just buffing up our Demonfire. We can actually make our Channel Demonfire a little bit stronger too through Roaring Blaze up here in the top left. So our Conflagrate will increase the damage of our next Channel Demonfire by 25% for 8 seconds.

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So you want to Conflag before you Channel Demonfire in any case that you can. Now this lasts for 8 seconds. So you do have a buffer window. You don’t have to always like Conflag straight into a Channel Demonfire. But just know that before you cast in a Demonfire, you want Roaring Blaze to be up.

We’re also running Fire and Brimstone. This is going to turn our Incinerate into an AoE spell. So Incinerate hits all enemies near your target for 25% damage. And yeah, I think that’s really everything that I want to cover. At least over here. Let’s go into Hellcaller.

So, we talked about Wither and how this replaces our Immolate. I want to go down to Black and Soul. So, Black and Soul is probably going to be your I don’t want to say it’s going to be your highest damage dealer, but it’s going to be up there. It’s going to be top two, I would say. So, let’s just read this out. Spending soul shards and damaging spells will further corrupt enemies with your Wither.

Increasing its stack count by one. Each time Wither gains a stack has a chance to collapse, consuming a stack every one second to deal x amount of spell power damage to its host until one stack remains. So, this is why it’s so important to just be spending as many soul shards as we possibly can and generating them as quickly as we possibly can because each soul shard that we do spend is going to make this stack this stacking effect happen or I guess this collapsing effect happen. So to summarize this, your Wither is going to have a stacking effect on it.

Understanding Malevolence Talent

And as we consume, those stacks will have a collapsing effect that will happen all the way down to one. And then it’ll just kind of cycle back and forth. Not that much you really need to know really with this talent. It’s just that it does a ton of damage. And it’s good to know how it works since this is going to be a significant portion of your damage.

Um, I’m going to go down to Malevolence here. So we talked about this earlier about how we want to pair this up with our Summon Infernal. So let’s just read it out here. Dark magic erupts from you and corrupt your soul for 20 seconds, causing enemies suffering your Wither to take x amount of shadow flame damage and increase its stack count by six.

So, we just talked about this collapsing effect that happens with Wither and Black and Soul. And Malevolence is going to basically expedite that and get those stacks up to six automatically for us. Now, not only this, Malevolence is also going to get us 8% haste. And not only that, but spending soul shards and damaging spells grants one additional stack of Wither. So, we get more stacks faster.

We get haste and we also get to kind of cheese the stack count by getting up to six. So, this paired with your Summon Infernal, you’re going to be generating so many soul shards between these two. It’s actually nuts. So, you have to be very careful because you can accidentally overcap on soul shards between these two and all the haste that you’re getting. We also get a bunch of haste through Reverse Entropy here. So, your spells have a chance to get you 15% haste for 8 seconds.

So, if all three of these are procking at the same time, there’s just a ton of soul shards that are being generated and you want to spend those as quickly as you can. So, very important that you’re tracking your soul shards somewhere on your UI. I’d recommend coming out to colomazi.gg going to Destruction here. Oh, we got an ad. And then coming down to the weak auras and profiles and he has some profiles here that you can download. And I’d recommend getting this Warlock central weak aura.

You just copy it like a normal weak aura and this will basically give you a good soul shard management bar right in the center of your screen. Okay, that’s all I’m going to cover in terms of the talents. I think that’s really all we need to know. Um, let’s go ahead and go into the opener really quick.

Opener Strategy

And as we consume, those stacks will have a collapsing effect that will happen all the way down to one. And then it’ll just kind of cycle back and forth. Not that much you really need to know really with this talent. It’s just that it does a ton of damage. And it’s good to know how it works since this is going to be a significant portion of your damage. Um, I’m going to go down to Malevolence here.

So we talked about this earlier about how we want to pair this up with our Summon Infernal. So let’s just read it out here. Dark magic erupts from you and corrupt your soul for 20 seconds, causing enemies suffering your Wither to take x amount of shadow flame damage and increase its stack count by six.

So, we just talked about this collapsing effect that happens with Wither and Black and Soul. And Malevolence is going to basically expedite that and get those stacks up to six automatically for us. Now, not only this, Malevolence is also going to get us 8% haste. And not only that, but spending soul shards and damaging spells grants one additional stack of Wither. So, we get more stacks faster. We get haste and we also get to kind of cheese the stack count by getting up to six.

So, this paired with your Summon Infernal, you’re going to be generating so many soul shards between these two. It’s actually nuts. So, you have to be very careful because you can accidentally overcap on soul shards between these two and all the haste that you’re getting. We also get a bunch of haste through Reverse Entropy here. So, your spells have a chance to get you 15% haste for 8 seconds.

So, if all three of these are procking at the same time, there’s just a ton of soul shards that are being generated and you want to spend those as quickly as you can. So, very important that you’re tracking your soul shards somewhere on your UI. I’d recommend coming out to colomazi.gg going to Destruction here. Oh, we got an ad. And then coming down to the weak auras and profiles and he has some profiles here that you can download. And I’d recommend getting this Warlock central weak aura. You just copy it like a normal weak aura and this will basically give you a good soul shard management bar right in the center of your screen. Okay, that’s all I’m going to cover in terms of the talents. I think that’s really all we need to know. Um, let’s go ahead and go into the opener really quick.

Single-Target Opener

So, this is the opener for single target. We’re not running Soulfire in this build, so you can just skip that if you want. You don’t even have to worry about that. You’re going to be starting in single target with your Summon Infernal into a Shadow Burn. This is going to apply that Eradication for us. From here, we’re just trying to get as many soul shards as we possibly can as quickly as possible. We have Conflagrate that is on a two-charge system.

Efficient Soul Shard Generation

The single-target opener focuses on maximizing soul shard generation. By starting with Summon Infernal followed by Shadow Burn, the rotation sets up Eradication. This allows for quicker accumulation of soul shards. Conflagrate plays a crucial role in this process by utilizing its two-charge system efficiently. The goal is to build up resources swiftly to enable sustained damage output during the encounter.

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