Destruction Warlock DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.2

Mythic+ has become a large part of the World of Warcraft endgame, but the sheer amount of different variables has left many players feeling overwhelmed. The group composition, weekly affixes, the item level of the group, the keystone level, and the experience and comfort level of the group are just several of the factors that will influence how you approach each dungeon. The purpose of this page is to prepare you for the key differences that set Mythic+, apart from the typical World of Warcraft endgame experience, including talents and rotational anomalies that may not be obvious at first glance.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 3 page below.

Destruction Warlocks offer some of the highest on-demand bursts and 2 target cleave potential across all DPS, while having strong and short enough cooldowns that can be used frequently on each pull. The spec still retains all the class baseline toolkits comprised Healthstones, Soulstones, skip-enabling Demonic Gateway, AoE crowd control abilities such as Shadowfury and Howl of Terror, and uncapped AoE spells.

While both single- and multi-target rotations do not differ substantially from the standard priority outlined in Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page there are few points worth noting:

• While Rain of Fire is generally strong in terms of numbers, targets moving out of the radius due to kiting or repositioning can affect the overall efficacy of the spell. In situations where it would be hard to leverage heavy Rain of Fire usage, consider cleaving with Havoc Chaos Bolts instead.
• Destruction's toolkit is exceptional at bursting targets and funneling priority damage due to the insane shard generation multiple Immolates can provide, so keep that in mind during weeks when it is more important to focus on key targets over even AoE.

Inferno talent is not tied to cooldowns, so the opener is not set in stone and does not differ from the multi-target priority section in the Rotation page.

That said the playstyle of Inferno is somewhat different as it requires to aggressively spend shards on Rain of Fire, maintaining Immolate on targets to ensure a continuous shard income, while using liberally Havoc and Conflagrate to generate 1 shard per cast.

In this build, Rain of Fire is the centerpiece and should be used when there are at least 3 targets, utilizing Havoc to duplicate shard generating spells such as Immolate, Conflagrate and Incinerate.

Being the theme of this season tier set bonuses, Dimensional Rift sees play in the vast majority of situations; however, its usage differs depending on the target count.

In dungeons, for the most part, it is optimal to avoid capping Dimensional Rift charges at all, making particular attention to start Havoc phases with no charges. Otherwise, it can be considered a slightly better Incinerate, which can also be cast on the move.

While damage is the bigger reason to bring a Destruction Warlock, the class itself offers a noticeable amount of crowd control and various supporting abilities:

• Recently reintroduced, the Curses can offer some advantage against specific dangerous enemies: Curse of Tongues can reduce the amount of interrupts required by the group, while Curse of Weakness alleviates the incoming damage on the tank from auto attacks. Last but not least, Curse of Exhaustion can be used to slow targets in situations where kiting is required. While these effects can be noticeable, it is better to use curses on a few key targets, as the time spent to apply these effects is time not spent doing damage.
• Healthstones have a 1-minute cooldown and heal for 25% of max health, allowing for an emergency heal for each player.
• Soulstones offer a combat resurrection that can be used both reactively and preemptively in the case of a death run.
• Demonic Gateway offers the unique ability to skip certain parts of the map, depending on the dungeon in question, avoiding specific pulls.
• Shadowfury helps alleviating pressure on the tank during big pulls as it is a 3-second AoE stun.
• Fear and Banish are both spammable crowd control abilities that can be used to interrupt a cast in a pinch or to temporarily remove a target from combat.

Below are the recommended talents for Mythic+. There is a certain degree of flexibility when progressing down the path, to accommodate for preferences or to meet specific requirements, as discussed further.

Generally, all output nodes are hard to give up, but fortunately, there are enough point to offer the choice of whichever utility options to pick instead.

• Demonic Inspiration;
• Wrathful Minion;
• Socrethar's Guile;
• Sargerei Technique;
• Soul Conduit;
• Grimoire of Synergy;
• Summon Soulkeeper.

Some other utility nodes are also too good to pass up, especially in the context of dungeons:

• Fel Domination;
• Mortal Coil;
• Dark Pact especially on 45s cooldown;
• Demonic Gateway to skip areas of the dungeon;
• Shadowfury as one of the few AoE stuns.

Due to a lot of AoE pulls throughout a dungeon run, leaning towards cleave and AoE is generally the safer choice, even in the case of a Tyrannical Week.

• Havoc is extremely valuable whenever there are multiple targets, as it can be used to generate shards faster or to duplicate your spenders, which is further encouraged with Pandemonium;
• In higher keys, Inferno is the better choice for sustained damage output during pulls with more than 3 targets;
• Avatar of Destruction offers very frequent mini cooldown windows just by playing the spec.
• Summon Infernal should be used freely as the main appeal is the shard generation over a 30-second period.

• For low keys Cataclysm offers strong AoE burst and multiple Immolate applications, ensuring a steady flow of Soul Shards;
• The points in Master Ritualist can be reallocated on Burn to Ashes and Diabolic Embers for stronger single target;
• Similarly Havoc can be swapped out for Mayhem while also, reallocating the point from Backlash into Rolling Havoc to yield higher uptime on the latter.
• For even more AoE damage at the expense of single target, swap from Roaring Blaze to Improved Conflagrate.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste to 30%;
3. Mastery ≅ Critical Strike;
4. Versatility.

The Felhunter is typically the best choice, as it grants you an interrupt, which is a huge advantage in Mythic+; consider swapping to Imp if you need additional dispel.

When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots using the Patchwerk option for raids and single-target, and Patchwerk with 4-5 targets or Hectic Add Cleave for an educated guess on multi-target performance in Dungeons. Usually, trinkets that proc stats are more versatile and better performers than single-target spell damage procs unless they are overtuned.

You can also get a quick overview of good Mythic+ Trinkets on our Gearing page, specifically the Simulation chart for multi-target scenarios.