Forever Destruction Warlock Stat Priority

This page covers the stat priority for Destruction Warlock at Level 60, explaining how each stat works and which talents affect your gearing choices. These recommendations may change as Forever is updated.

Hit Chance comes first because a missed cast costs mana and casting time without dealing damage. After reaching the raid boss target, focus on Spell Power, Haste, and Critical Strike to improve the damage of your regular casts and instant spells.

Stat	Bonus
Hit Chance	Reduces the chance that your spells miss. Raid boss gearing target: 17% total Hit Chance against Level 63 bosses, including talents.
Spell Power	Increases the damage of your spells.
Haste	Shortens spell cast times, drain channels, and the spell global cooldown.
Critical Strike	Increases the chance that your spells critically strike, including your DoTs and drains.
Intellect	Increases your maximum mana and spell Critical Strike Chance.
Spell Piercing	Reduces the resistance your spells have to overcome and can increase your magic damage.
Spirit	Increases normal mana regeneration and the mana restored by Life Tap.
Stamina	Increases your maximum health.

Raid bosses count as Level 63 enemies, so aim for 17% total Hit Chance against them from talents, gear, and other bonuses. If your build takes five points in Suppression, its 5% Hit Chance applies to all your spells, including Incinerate and Shadow Bolt, leaving another 12% to get from gear and other sources.

If you use an active demon, it inherits your spell Hit Chance and 8/17 of that value as melee Hit Chance, so 17% total spell Hit Chance gives it 17% spell Hit Chance and 8% melee Hit Chance.

Spell Power increases the damage of direct spells such as Incinerate and Conflagrate and DoTs such as Immolate without increasing their mana cost.

Destruction uses both Fire and Shadow spells, with Incinerate, Immolate, and Conflagrate dealing Fire damage, while Shadowburn and Shadow Bolt deal Shadow damage. Each point of damage limited to one school works like 1 point of Spell Power for that school, while general Spell Power improves both.

With five points in Shadow and Flame, hitting with Conflagrate increases your Shadow damage by 10% for 20 seconds, while hitting with Shadowburn provides the same bonus to Fire damage.

Haste reduces the cast time of spells such as Incinerate and shortens the spell global cooldown to as little as 1 second, letting you apply DoTs and use Life Tap with less time between casts.

Haste also shortens the channel time of drains such as Drain Life, giving you the same number of ticks in less time. DoTs such as Immolate, Corruption, and Bane of Agony keep their normal tick speed and don't gain extra ticks. Haste is very rare and is unlikely to appear as a regular stat on gear.

Critical Strike increases how often both your direct spells and DoTs crit, including the initial hit and each individual tick of Immolate.

At three points, Fire and Brimstone adds 25% Critical Strike Chance to Conflagrate, while Agonizing Flames adds 10% Critical Strike Chance to Searing Pain and 10% damage to all your Destruction spells.

Ruin and Critical Damage

At five points, Ruin doubles the extra damage from critical strikes with your Destruction spells. For example, an Incinerate that normally hits for 100 damage crits for 150 without the talent or 200 with it, before other modifiers.

Ruin affects both Fire and Shadow Destruction spells, including Shadow Bolt and Shadowburn, but doesn't increase the critical damage of Affliction spells such as Corruption and Bane of Agony.

At Level 60, each additional point of Intellect gives 15 mana before modifiers, and about 60 Intellect gives 1% spell Critical Strike Chance. The larger mana pool lets you cast longer before using Life Tap, though it doesn't change the mana restored by each tap.

If your build takes three points in Fel Vitality, your maximum mana increases by 15%, amplifying the mana gained from Intellect, while your demon also gains 15% more maximum health and mana.

Spell Piercing reduces the resistance your spells have to overcome, with testing in Forever showing that it can push resistance below zero and increase damage even against enemies with no resistance. Its effect is separate from Hit Chance, which reduces the likelihood of your spells missing.

Spirit increases the mana restored by Life Tap, allowing you to recover mana with fewer casts, though each tap also costs more health. Spell Power doesn't improve Life Tap in Forever.

Spirit and Life Tap Scaling

Before talents, each additional point of Spirit adds 1 mana to Life Tap and 1 health to its cost. Two points in Improved Life Tap increase the mana gained by 20%, bringing the bonus from 100 additional Spirit to 120 mana per tap.

Spirit also improves normal mana regeneration, although that regeneration normally pauses for 5 seconds after you spend mana on a spell and provides less value while casting continuously.

Stamina provides 10 health per additional point before buffs, helping you survive incoming damage and giving you more health to spend on Life Tap. The extra health doesn't increase how much mana each tap restores.

With five points, Demonic Embrace increases your total Stamina by 15%.

These coefficients show how much of your Spell Power is added to each hit or tick before talents, crits, resistance, and other damage modifiers. For DoTs and channels, the total assumes that every tick deals damage.

Spell	Coefficient per Hit or Tick	Total Spell Coefficient
Incinerate	71.4% per hit
Immolate	20% initial hit 13% per tick	85% from the initial hit and 5 ticks
Conflagrate	42.9% per hit
Shadowburn	42.9% per hit
Shadow Bolt	85.7% per hit
Corruption	20% per tick	120% over 6 ticks
Bane of Agony	13.3% recorded periodic coefficient	159.6% calculated over 12 ticks
Bane of Doom	400%
Drain Life	10% per tick	50% over 5 ticks
Drain Soul	10% per tick	50% over 5 ticks
Searing Pain, if used	42.9% per hit
Hellfire	2.2% per tick, per enemy	33% over 15 ticks, per enemy
Rain of Fire	8.3% per tick, per enemy	33.2% over 4 ticks, per enemy

An additional 100 Spell Power adds about 71.4 damage to Incinerate before other modifiers. Against a target affected by Immolate, Incinerate's 25% damage bonus brings that contribution to about 89.3 damage.

Bane of Havoc makes its target take 15% of the damage you deal to other enemies, including the Spell Power contribution already in those hits and ticks, without adding a separate Spell Power coefficient.

The table uses the recorded coefficients for the spell ranks used at Level 60, as lower ranks can have different coefficients or fewer ticks.

Bane of Agony deals increasing damage over its duration, and the total shown here is calculated from its periodic coefficient and 12 total ticks rather than measured independently for each individual ramping tick.

More WoW Forever Warlock Guides

Affliction Warlock Ranged DPS Leveling Demonology Warlock Ranged DPS Stats Destruction Warlock Ranged DPS Leveling Affliction Warlock Ranged DPS Guide Demonology Warlock Ranged DPS Leveling Demonology Warlock Ranged DPS Guide

More WoW Forever Guides from Other Classes

Beast Mastery Hunter Ranged DPS Leveling Retribution Paladin Melee DPS Guide Frost Mage Ranged DPS Stats Combat Rogue Melee DPS Stats Discipline Priest Healer Guide Enhancement Shaman Melee DPS Leveling