Destruction Warlock DPS Guide — Dragonflight 10.2

Destruction Warlock is a very flexible specialization that can find ways to excel in a variety of environments. Destruction can deal a lot of bursts to a single target and also efficiently cleave and AoE several targets at once.

Destruction is almost always a viable candidate for progression fights, as it has the least ramp-up time of any Warlock specialization. It can pressure priority targets easily and also has strong cleave through Havoc. Like all Warlock specializations, Destruction brings Demonic Gateway, a powerful raid cooldown that can transport your entire group 40 yards instantly.

Strengths

• High single-target and two-target damage
• Low ramp-up time
• Good burst on-demand
• Efficient cleave
• Flexible gameplay
• Amazing AoE potential

Weaknesses

• Single 3 minutes cooldown
• Low AoE burst
• Low mobility can significantly penalise damage output

In this patch Destruction Warlock received two major talents changes:

• Grand Warlock's Design was changed from requiring an active participation to instead provide a flat cooldown reduction.
• Madness of the Azj'Aqir was removed in favor of a new talent Chaosbringer, which offers a similar damage increase to Destruction spender spells Chaos Bolt Rain of Fire and Soulburn but passively instead.

Alongside these changes, Chaos Bolt, Rain of Fire, Shadowburn and Summon Infernal damage were buffed accordingly.

For a full breakdown of all Class Changes in Patch 10.2, check out our dedicated page below.

Being a major patch with a new tier set focused around specific talents has also been introduced, requiring a whole revisit on both Talents Page and Rotation Page.

A new Season means new gear from new and returning Mythic+ Dungeons alongside a new raid Amirdrassil. As such, Gear Page has been updated with new BiS lists, weapon and trinkets recommendations, and different embellishments to craft.

We have a dedicated leveling guide to help you get your Destruction Warlock to max level, complete with many tips and suggestions.

While playing with the default UI for the leveling is entirely possible, transitioning to a max level rotation with a substantially different UI layout can feel overwhelming and ultimately disorient or frustrate the player. We recommend instead to implement Layout changes gradually in order to allow yourself to acclimate to a more effective and personal UI. The Addon page below offers some recommended options.

Destruction Warlock is a fairly straightforward spec, leaning towards hard-hitting direct damage spells, strong and long-lasting cooldowns, and a relative amount of pet management. At its core, the gameplay is about generating and spending the Warlock's iconic resource: Soul Shards.

The basics are simple: maintain Immolate on the target(s), spend your shards on Chaos Bolts or Rain of Fire; cast Conflagrate on cooldown and Incinerate in the downtime.

If you are a newcomer to the spec but would like to learn the basics, start browsing the Spell Summary and head over to the page linked below.

For those more familiar with Warlocks, we invite you to check out the Talents and Rotation pages to have access to more detailed and in-depth information.

Due to the increased number of variables and additional systems, picking gear has become a much less intuitive and immediate process. Nevertheless, you can find guidelines on how to best equip your Destruction Warlock on our dedicated gearing page, including the current Best in Slot equipment for the current tier.

Equipping gear is not enough, as you also need to choose the right consumables and gear augments to maximize your character potential. The pages below can guide you through those choices and help you better understand the implications each stat has on your Warlock.

Being geared and well-equipped is only half of the journey, as the end game activities require each a different approach to the spec. In order to find out more information regarding how to better tackle these challenges, check out the pages below.

Understanding your errors and refining your performance is a constant exercise, which can be frustrating or confounding at times. Below are listed some pages that offer tools and can point to and help correct those mistakes.

DISCLAIMER: As with every new tier, the first two weeks will see noticeable tuning changes, as such the information provided below is a snapshot of the balance at the time of writing and will get updated as more changes happen.

At the time of writing (Patch 10.2), the current situation is the following:

Destruction Warlock enters the tier in a slightly weaker state, mainly due set bonuses being on the weaker side numerically speaking, and not really providing much increase in AoE (although a spec with Inferno arguably did not need any help in that regard). The bright side is that the new set inherently provides a higher degree of mobility to a spec that is fairly immobile otherwise.

All being said Destruction Warlock remains a very solid spec which has been somewhat simplified (for better or worse) with the removal of Madness of the Azj'Aqir. It can still perform in any scenario but could definitely use a tier set buff to be in a great state instead.