Mists of Pandaria Classic Destruction Warlock Stat Priority

The stat priority for Destruction Warlock is as follows:

1. Hit Rating (15% - 5100 rating is Hit Cap.)
2. Intellect
3. Haste Rating soft cap (23.81% Haste - 10,124 Haste Rating)
4. Mastery Rating
5. Critical Strike Rating
6. Haste Rating

Intellect is the primary stat for all Warlock specializations. This not only makes your spells do more damage, but Intellect also increases your critical strike chance. This stat should be on ALL of your gear.

Every point of Intellect gives one Spell Power, which increases your and your demon’s damage. After you obtain your 15% Hit cap, prioritize stacking Intellect and it should be on all of your gear. You'll get more of it on higher item level gear, making that the main factor to consider while gearing.

Hit rating is the next most important stat and is vital to doing damage because you must hit the boss in order to deal damage. Hit is very easy to obtain since it not only comes from many pieces of gear, but you can also reforge and gem hit in your gear.

15% is the hit cap, which is 5100 hit rating and is crucial to obtain. Once you hit the cap, you can never miss. However, once you hit the cap, hit is USELESS, so try not to go much higher than the cap, with the aim to be right at the sweet spot of 5100 Hit rating.

Note that both Gnomes and Humans have a Racial that gives them 1% Expertise/Hit.

• Gnomes: Shortblade Specialization
• Humans: Sword Specialization

Mastery increases the damage all of your main spells that consume your Burning Embers. That's Incinerate, Immolate, Conflagrate and Fel Flame.

Mastery also increases the effectiveness of your Burning Embers, making your hard hitting spells like Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn hit signficantly harder. After you obtain your Hit cap you'll be looking to to stack Mastery.

Haste not only makes you cast your spells faster, but also makes your DoT spells tick faster. With enough haste, you can reach certain breakpoints that will give you an extra ticks of damage. For example, if you have 23.81% Haste - 10,124 Haste Rating - your Immolate will tick two extra times.

The following table is assuming you have raid wide 5% Spell Haste buff from Shadow Priests, Balance Druids and Elemental Shamans. This is also WITHOUT Bloodlust. You shouldn't be stacking Haste to get the extra ticks, instead aim for the 2 extra ticks. After that slam Mastery until later phases when you can move up to the next Haste breakpoint.

Critical strike makes you crit more, meaning you deal more damage. As long as you have your meta gem in that increases your crit damage, crits deal roughly twice the damage of normal hits. Your DoTs can crit as well.

For single-target encounters, Haste and Crit are competitive, but Mastery shines in AoE situations. That’s why we recommend Intellect + Mastery gems for most content.

For gearing recommendations before stepping into the new raids, check out our Pre Raid Gear Guide.