Cataclysm Classic Destruction Warlock Leveling
On this page, you will find our level-by-level Destruction Warlock leveling guide for WoW Cataclysm Classic.
Destruction Warlock Level-by-Level Rotation, Talents, and Trainer Skills
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Destruction Warlock Leveling Talents in Cataclysm
You don't start getting talent points until you're LV 10.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target. Bane reduces the cast time of two of your other main spells Immolate and Chaos Bolt.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target. Bane reduces the cast time of two of your other main spells Immolate and Chaos Bolt. Improved Immolate is a nice talent, as this will boost your main DoT's damage by 20%.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target. Bane reduces the cast time of two of your other main spells Immolate and Chaos Bolt. Improved Immolate is a nice talent, as this will boost your main DoT's damage by 20%. Emberstorm will reduce the cast time of your Soul Fire and Incinerate by one second.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target. Bane reduces the cast time of two of your other main spells Immolate and Chaos Bolt. Improved Immolate is a nice talent, as this will boost your main DoT's damage by 20%. Emberstorm will reduce the cast time of your Soul Fire and Incinerate by one second. Improved Soul Fire is an important mechanic for Destruction. Whenever you Soul Fire you gain an 8% damage buff for 20 seconds. You will want this buff up as much as you can.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target. Bane reduces the cast time of two of your other main spells Immolate and Chaos Bolt. Improved Immolate is a nice talent, as this will boost your main DoT's damage by 20%. Emberstorm will reduce the cast time of your Soul Fire and Incinerate by one second. Improved Soul Fire is an important mechanic for Destruction. Whenever you Soul Fire you gain an 8% damage buff for 20 seconds. You will want this buff up as much as you can. Backdraft is crucial as this reduces the cast time of your next three Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by a whopping 30%.
Starting with 3 points into Shadow and Flame will significantly boost your main spell Incinerates damage, as well as put up the 5% crit debuff on the target. Bane reduces the cast time of two of your other main spells Immolate and Chaos Bolt. Improved Immolate is a nice talent, as this will boost your main DoT's damage by 20%. Emberstorm will reduce the cast time of your Soul Fire and Incinerate by one second. Improved Soul Fire is an important mechanic for Destruction. Whenever you Soul Fire you gain an 8% damage buff for 20 seconds. You will want this buff up as much as you can. Backdraft is crucial as this reduces the cast time of your next three Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by a whopping 30%. Shadowburn was significantly buffed in Cataclysm and should be used on cooldown once the target reaches 20% Health.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds. Soul Leech will simply give you some self healing while you're leveling, as well as some mana from Replenishment.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds. Soul Leech will simply give you some self healing while you're leveling, as well as some mana from Replenishment. Backlash will allow you to have a chance at an instant cast Incinerate whenever you get hit by melee attacks, which will be frequent while leveling.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds. Soul Leech will simply give you some self healing while you're leveling, as well as some mana from Replenishment. Backlash will allow you to have a chance at an instant cast Incinerate whenever you get hit by melee attacks, which will be frequent while leveling. Nether Ward will help give you an absorb to ALL magic damage, instead of just shadow damage.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds. Soul Leech will simply give you some self healing while you're leveling, as well as some mana from Replenishment. Backlash will allow you to have a chance at an instant cast Incinerate whenever you get hit by melee attacks, which will be frequent while leveling. Nether Ward will help give you an absorb to ALL magic damage, instead of just shadow damage. Fire and Brimstone increases the damage done by your Chaos Bolt and Incinerate by 15% if the target has an Immolate on it, as well as increases the chance that your Conflagrate will crit by 15%.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds. Soul Leech will simply give you some self healing while you're leveling, as well as some mana from Replenishment. Backlash will allow you to have a chance at an instant cast Incinerate whenever you get hit by melee attacks, which will be frequent while leveling. Nether Ward will help give you an absorb to ALL magic damage, instead of just shadow damage. Fire and Brimstone increases the damage done by your Chaos Bolt and Incinerate by 15% if the target has an Immolate on it, as well as increases the chance that your Conflagrate will crit by 15%. Shadowfury is a great spell that is instant cast, deals strong damage and stuns all enemies hit with it.
Burning Embers will cause your Soul Fire and your Imps Firebolt to leave a DoT on the target that does 50% of the damage you just did over 7 seconds. Soul Leech will simply give you some self healing while you're leveling, as well as some mana from Replenishment. Backlash will allow you to have a chance at an instant cast Incinerate whenever you get hit by melee attacks, which will be frequent while leveling. Nether Ward will help give you an absorb to ALL magic damage, instead of just shadow damage. Fire and Brimstone increases the damage done by your Chaos Bolt and Incinerate by 15% if the target has an Immolate on it, as well as increases the chance that your Conflagrate will crit by 15%. Shadowfury is a great spell that is instant cast, deals strong damage and stuns all enemies hit with it. Empowered Imp gives your Imps Firebolt a 4% chance to cause your next Soul Fire to be instant cast.
Bane of Havoc is great to cleave and put on another target, while continuing to blast your main target, since this will transfer 15% of all damage you deal to it, giving you some strong cleave damage when fighting more than one enemy.
Bane of Havoc is great to cleave and put on another target, while continuing to blast your main target, since this will transfer 15% of all damage you deal to it, giving you some strong cleave damage when fighting more than one enemy. Chaos Bolt is a main spell for Destruction and will be used frequently.
Bane of Havoc is great to cleave and put on another target, while continuing to blast your main target, since this will transfer 15% of all damage you deal to it, giving you some strong cleave damage when fighting more than one enemy. Chaos Bolt is a main spell for Destruction and will be used frequently Dark Arts, as this will reduce the cast time of your Imp by .75 seconds, making him cast faster.
Bane of Havoc is great to cleave and put on another target, while continuing to blast your main target, since this will transfer 15% of all damage you deal to it, giving you some strong cleave damage when fighting more than one enemy. Chaos Bolt is a main spell for Destruction and will be used frequently Dark Arts, as this will reduce the cast time of your Imp by .75 seconds, making him cast faster. Improved Corruption, giving you 12% more damage on your Corruption.
Bane of Havoc is great to cleave and put on another target, while continuing to blast your main target, since this will transfer 15% of all damage you deal to it, giving you some strong cleave damage when fighting more than one enemy. Chaos Bolt is a main spell for Destruction and will be used frequently Dark Arts, as this will reduce the cast time of your Imp by .75 seconds, making him cast faster. Improved Corruption, giving you 12% more damage on your Corruption. Improved Life Tap will give you more mana back whenever you Life Tap.
Bane of Havoc is great to cleave and put on another target, while continuing to blast your main target, since this will transfer 15% of all damage you deal to it, giving you some strong cleave damage when fighting more than one enemy. Chaos Bolt is a main spell for Destruction and will be used frequently Dark Arts, as this will reduce the cast time of your Imp by .75 seconds, making him cast faster. Improved Corruption, giving you 12% more damage on your Corruption. Improved Life Tap will give you more mana back whenever you Life Tap. The last point into Fel Synergy will help heal your demon, so you don't have to Health Funnel as often.
Destruction Warlock Leveling Glyphs in Cataclysm
Prime Glyphs
- Glyph of Imp — This will make your Imp do 20% more damage.
- Glyph of Immolate — This increases the DoT portion of your Immolate by an additional 10%, making your hardest hitting DoT do even more damage.
- Glyph of Incinerate — This makes your Incinerate do 5% more damage.
Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Life Tap — This will reduce the global cooldown of your Life Tap by half a second and imporant since you will be Life Taping frequently.
- Glyph of Soul Link — This increases how much damage is shared from you to your demon from Soul Link by 5%, making you take less damage.
- Glyph of Soulstone — This allows you to resurrect with an additional 40% Health whenever you die and your Soulstone resurrects you.
Minor Glyphs
- Glyph of Drain Soul — Whenever you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor you gain 10% of your mana back.
- Glyph of Unending Breath — — This increases the swim speed of targets affected by your Unending Breath by 20%. Helpful for any quests in the water.
- Glyph of Curse of Exhaustion — This increases the range of your Curse of Exhaustion by 5 yards. Can be helpful if you ever want to slow down your enemy or in PvP situations.
Leveling Rotation
Destruction focuses on hard hitting single target damage and is one of the best levelers in the game. Until LV 82, most enemies died before they even got the chance to reach you. With a relatively easy rotation of keeping up your Immolate and Improved Soul Fire buff for your 8% damage buff. Keep Conflagrate on cooldown as much as you can so you gain your 30% haste buff and use Incinerate as your filler while making sure you you pay attention and use your instant cast Soul Fire procs that you're gaining from Improved Soul Fire.Make sure to use Shadowburn when the target is less than 20% health as this does very good damage. Always make sure your Imp is attacking and that you have you're personal buffs up as well.
- Have Demon Armor on you all the time. This increases your armor and the amount of health generated from your spells. Once you hit level 62 you unlock Fel Armor, then use that instead as this supplies a ton of spell damage and causes you to heal for 3% of all single target damage done.
- Make sure your Imp is out and attacking. It can be helpful to have a Weakaura to track if your Demon is attacking.
- >Make sure to have a Create Healthstone made for emergency reasons if you need some health.
- If you want, you can make sure to have a Soulstone on you, so you're able to resurrect if you die.
- Make sure to use whatever cooldowns you have, like Trinkets and racials such as Blood Fury.
- Cast Soul Fire or use your Soulburn with Soul Fire to gain an instant cast Soul Fire. This is to get your 8% damage buff from Improved Soul Fire
- Cast Immolate and keep it up on the boss at all times.
- Cast Conflagrate and keep it on cooldown as much as you can
- Cast Corruption if the target will live for the duration.
- Cast Incinerate until target is below 20%
- Use Shadowburn to finish the target off.
- Use Death Coil to get some healing back from it.
- Use Life Tap whenever you need mana.
- Pay attention to your Glyph of Corruption procs to use your instant cast Shadow Bolts
- You can use Drain Soul right when a target is about to die and if it dies while you're draining, you will recieve some mana back.
- Use Soulburn with Soul Fire to gain an instant cast Soul Fire
List of Trainer Skills to Skip While Leveling
Warlocks have a ton of spells and demon Grimoires to buy. It can become daunting to think about which ones are worth getting. To keep it simple, you want to buy all ranks of spells that you find yourself using out in the open world. You can skip a bunch of spells if you want to save gold and make it less confusing. Some spells that you can skip training until level 85 are listed below in order of which they become available on your trainer.
- Curse of Weakness
- Curse of the Elements
- Eye of Kilrogg
- Subjugate Demon
- Soulshatter
Warlock Addons and Macros
Addons and Macros can greatly improve your quality of life while playing. Listed below are some of our recommendations on Addons and Macros to help get the most out of your time playing the game.
How to Continue to Improve Your Destruction Warlock at Level 85
Once you achieve Level 85, we suggest checking out our Destruction Warlock Guide which goes more in detail of how to play Destruction at max level.
Changelog
- 17 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for Phase 3.
- 06 May 2024: Page added.
More Cataclysm Warlock Guides
More Cataclysm Spec Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Abide, TBC veteran for nearly a decade. Abide is a Warrior tank and multi-class expert currently playing on Faerlina as Horde. You can find him in the the Icy Veins Discord. You can also see him live on Twitch.
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