Destruction Warlock: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion preview for Destruction Warlock, a resource page where you can find changes, Hero talent trees, and an initial assessment on the state of the spec.

The purpose of this page is to offer an up-to-date overview of how Destruction Warlock is changing in the forthcoming Midnight expansion. As such, it is not to be treated as a guide or a replacement, since the current state of tuning is not representative of what the final product will be.

Destruction Warlock received a complete talent restructuring for the class and the specialization trees alongside a fourth branch for each Hero Tree.

Below are the most notable changes:

• New Pact talents have been introduced, working essentially as stances that replace the baseline Curse of Weakness, with either Curse of Tongues and Curse of Exhaustion;
• A new talent Foul Mouth allows chosen curses to also affect any secondary target within 10 yards of the main target;
• Howl of Terror is on a choice node with Shadowfury;
• Demonic Gateway has been moved further down the tree and has a supporting talent that allows players to use it twice before incurring the cooldown;
• Blight of Weakness is a new AoE debuff effect that is mutually exclusive with any Curses, offering an empowered version on a cooldown.

Going into Midnight, the intention seems to be to offer AoE Curses at the expense of less flexibility in what to choose from the start. That creates a situation where the default choice will most likely be Curse of Tongues , as the alternatives do not offer enough of an upside in a direct comparison, barring some very specific cases. Warlock's overall utility package still seems to be on the lower end of the spectrum, especially in Mythic+ scenarios. Howl of Terror has the potential to be used as a more reliable interrupt, but the target cap is still a bit of a problem.

Moving on to the Destruction side, the whole tree has been overhauled, and talent positions shuffled around. The layout is similar, progressing from a first gate almost devoid of choices towards the third gate which holds most of the options comparatively.

See below a list of the most transformative changes:

• Roaring Blaze has been reworked to now spread Immolate to up to 3 targets on Conflagrate cast;
• Shadowburn has been reworked to be only usable on targets below 20% health without cooldown at 1 shard cost;
• Blistering Atrophy now guarantees Shadowburn to Critical Strike;
• Fiendish Cruelty has been reworked, Critical Hits have a chance to make Shadowburn castable without shard or health threshold requirements;
• Channel Demonfire choice node with Demonfire Infusion has been moved as a capstone, while retaining Demonfire Mastery supplementing node;
• Chaotic Inferno is a new talent that gives Chaos Bolt a chance to make Incinerate an instant cast;
• Soul Fire is a choice node with Dimensional Rift with a supporting node in Avatar of Destruction;
• Several Rain of Fire supporting nodes have been introduced, Destructive Rapidity provides more usability and Alythess's Ire works similarly to the deprecated Inferno;
• New Apex talents Embers of Nihilam are centered around a spell damage proc that triggers from Incinerate and Shard spenders;
• Eradication has been removed;
• Dimension Ripper has been removed;
• Decimation has been removed.

Overall the Destruction tree design is the more fragmented of the three, perhaps being in a earlier stage by comparison. Shadowburn is being shifted towards an execute tool but also resembles Decimation with the reworked Fiendish Cruelty.

Several passive nodes have been trimmed as a result and in particular the removal of Eradication and Power Overwhelming reduce the amount of planning and thoughts when choosing how to spend Shards.

Hero Trees have not been updated yet, with only the description of the fourth column being available.

The Diabolist Hero tree is themed around a sequence of Greater Demons that offer temporary effects such as damage amplification, shard generation or a high damage AoE ability before cycling toward the next one.

The playstyle as such, is influenced by this cadence while not being an interference in the rotation at the same time. What changes the most is the damage profile instead, with Gloom of Nathreza directly buffing shard spenders, and higher burst capabilities thanks to Ruination or particularly in Infernal windows thanks to Abyssal Dominion.

Regarding defensive options and utility, Soul-Etched Circles offers a niche use case while Annihilan's Bellow dynastically increases the frequency of use of Howl of Terror. Infernal Vitality and Infernal Bulwark also ties a sustain element to Unending Resolve which is definitely more enticing than what other Hero Tree currently seem to offer, albeit overall not great.

The Hellcaller Hero tree is themed around Shadowflame and a new Damage over Time effect replacing Immolate in the case of Destruction. As the center piece of the tree Wither offers instant cast with no facing requirements quality-of-life changes, higher Flashpoint uptime and it is the base upon which setup burst window every minute through Malevolence. Its unique mechanic is its ability to become acute, providing additional damage.

The playstyle itself is not very transformative, generally centered around maximizing Blackened Soul's stacks.

Regarding defensive options and utility, Warlock hero trees are somewhat light in that department, with the option to either consolidate the benefit of both Curse of Weakness and Curse of Tongues in the new Curse of the Satyr or the ability to automatically curse every enemy in 30 yards during Unending Resolve with a very sporadic uptime. The other node is vastly undertuned with both Zevrim's Resilience and Illhoof's Design providing basically intangible benefit, if not being even detrimental in the case of the latter.

Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses for Destruction Warlock in The War Within are the following:

• Warlock Destruction 12.0 Class Set 2pc — Chaos Bolt and Rain of Fire damage increased by 5%.
• Warlock Destruction 12.0 Class Set 4pc — Conflagrate generates 2 additional Soul Shard fragments and its damage is increased by 10%.

2 pieces set bonus offers a generic damage increase tied to spenders, which should perform in both single and multitarget situations. Omitting Shadowburn is worth of note as if the talent is tuned to be strong the set bonus could be less impactful in situations where sniping dying adds is advised.

4 pieces bonus is mostly relevant for the increased shard bits generation, as Conflagrate damage isnt that relevant, especially with additional targets.

How Good is the Destruction Warlock Tier Bonus in The War Within?

If tuned following the general goal of providing between 10 to 15% increase with the 2 and 4 pieces together, Destruction tier set has a wide practicality, and should perform well in any situation, no matter the difficulty.