Season of Discovery Destruction Warlock DPS Talents and Runes

While there are many options for talents if you plan to DPS as a Destruction Warlock, this build pulled ahead of the other options. For this build most of your points will be in the Destruction tree besides nine points that will go into the Demonology tree

Take Improved Imp to buff his damage by 30%, as well as give your party 30% more Stamina from Blood Pact. The Imp does a ridiculous amount of damage and is further buffed by Incinerate, so adding points to make him stronger will be worth it. Put 2 points into either Demonic Embrace for some extra Stamina or Improved Healthstone for bigger Healthstones, that's up to you. The last four points go into Fel Intellect just to give your Imp some more mana.

As for the Destruction tree, start by putting five points into either Cataclysm or Improved Shadow Bolt. Cataclysm will give you some Mana back, while Improved Shadow Bolt is only helpful on AoE when you Shadow Bolt Volley, which you will be doing in AoE scenarios. Which one you choose is once again up to you, however Improved Shadow Bolt is recommended as Shadow Bolt Volley actually does great damage in AoE. Your next five points will go into Bane as this will reduce the cast time of your main DoT Immolate. Aftermath is only a chance at dazing and not worth it. After that put two points into Improved Firebolt to reduce the cast time of your Imps Firebolt. Then put five points into Devastation to increase your chance to crit by 5%.

The next point unlocks Shadowburn, which is used largely as either a finisher or for whenever you need to move during the encounter. The next two points go into Destructive Reach to simply increase the range of all your Destruction spells by 20%. After that get Ruin which is a staple talent for Destruction Warlocks. This increases the damage of critical strikes by 100%. Place five points into Improved Immolate to buff the initial damage of your Immolate by 25%, then put five points into Emberstorm, which will buff all your Fire damage by 10% and works well with this build, as all of your spells are Fire damage.

After that put your last point into Conflagrate as we need this in order to benefit from our Backdraft rune. The rest of your points will go into the Affliction tree to pick up Improved Corruption. While you don't use Corruption in combat, this opens up Improved Life Tap.

• Head — Backdraft
• Bracers — Incinerate
• Gloves — Chaos Bolt
• Pants — Demonic Grace or Demonic Pact
• Chest — Demonic Tactics
• Belt — Shadow and Flame
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge or Mark of Chaos
• Cloak — Decimation
• Ring 1 — Fire Specialization
• Ring 2 — Shadow Specialization

While there are many options of Runes this phase, the ones above do the most damage and sim by far the highest if you plan to DPS as a Destruction Warlock. For the Bracer rune, Incinerate is your bread and butter filler for Destruction and 100% mandatory. You'll be using this more than any other spell in your arsenal. This does great damage while also buffing your Fire damage by 25%.

For your chest Rune Demonic Tactics is the go to pick. This simply gives you 10% crit. With the recent Lake of Fire change, this is really nice to use on AoE, but no play on single target. Soul Siphon was also reworked and is pretty good, but just like Master Channeler, it's for Affliction Warlocks.

Chaos Bolt is the only option for Rune choice here. This is the hardest hitting spell in the game and should be kept on cooldown as much as possible, as long as you have your Fire buffs up.

With the recent Demonic Knowledge nerf, it's not as good as it used to be, but it's still extra damage. Mark of Chaos is a nice option if you're the only Lock in there and want to support more.

Grimoire of Synergy was also recently nerfed and now Shadow and Flame is the best option for the consistant 10% damage.

Backdraft is another new Rune introduced in Phase 3. This gives you 30% Spellcasting Haste after you Conflagrate for 10 seconds. Conflagrate is on a 10 second cooldown, which results in 30% Spellcasting Haste at 100% uptime.

Decimation is a brand new rune introduced in Phase 4 that finally givs us an execute.

Fire Specialization and Shadow Specialization are the new ring runes and both of these should be used at all times.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Warlock.