Destruction Warlock PvP Rotation and Playstyle (Shadowlands / Patch 9.2)

The Destruction Warlock has two roles when in an Arena: set up kills with large Chaos Bolts and survive. Destruction Warlocks are powerful because they have strong single target damage and the ability to crowd control enemy teams. Most of your damage and kills will come from your Chaos Bolts and Conflagrates. You will survive by using Fears and Mortal Coils on enemies. You can also use your Demonic Gateway to create distance.

Have a plan for who you will be mainly using your crowd control on. Destruction Warlocks are able to use their main crowd control, Fear, along with Mortal Coil. You also have Shadowfury. This has a somewhat short cast time and will AoE stun anyone that is in range for a small period of time.

You should also use Create Soulwell to generate Healthstones for you and your teammates.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns, especially their Cosmic Gladiator's Medallion.

If any of the enemies use their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. In the opener, Destruction Warlocks should focus on maintaining Immolate, using Conflagrate charges to generate Soul Shards while dealing damage, and fishing for Chaos Bolt opportunities by casting Fear to bait interrupts and find Chaos Bolt windows.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Cast Demonic Gateway from your pillar to another part of the map.
2. Use Demonic Circle and place it behind a pillar.
3. Cast Conflagrate once to generate charges of Backdraft, generate Soul Shards, and to get the cooldown rolling.
4. Apply and maintain Immolate on all enemies to generate Soul Shards. If the enemy team starts behind a pillar, you can use Cataclysm to put your Immolate on all of them.
5. Cast Fear to bait interrupts and create Chaos Bolt windows.
   • If you are interrupted on Fear, you can still cast Chaos Bolts.
6. Use Conflagrate to deal instant damage and generate Soul Shards.
   • With the passive Backdraft, Conflagrate will also reduce the cast time of your Chaos Bolts or Incinerate.
7. Once you have at least 4-5 Soul Shards and the enemy do not have interrupts, you will be able to use your burst rotation.

1. Ideally, you will have 4+ Soul Shards before using your burst rotation.
2. Cast Conflagrate to generate Backdraft stacks.
3. Use Summon Infernal on your kill target.
4. Use Havoc on the enemy you are not targeting.
5. Use Dark Soul: Instability.
6. Use Mortal Coil on the enemy you are focusing.
7. Cast Chaos Bolt.
8. Cast Chaos Bolt.
9. Cast Conflagrate once, or twice if you do not have enough Soul Shards.
10. Cast Chaos Bolt.
11. Cast Cataclysm on the enemy.
12. Use Conflagrate to generate Soul Shards.
13. Cast Chaos Bolt whenever you have 2 Soul Shards and a stack of Backdraft.
14. Cast Immolate if you need to refresh the DoT.
15. Cast Incinerate as a filler.

Alternatively, if you are Necrolord you can do this burst rotation which requires no Soul Shards.

1. Cast Decimating Bolt to generate 3 stacks of Shard of Annihilation.
3. Cast Conflagrate twice to generate Backdraft stacks.
5. Cast Incinerate to consume your Shard of Annihilation stacks.
7. Spend remaining Soul Shards on Chaos Bolt.
9. Cast Conflagrate to regenerate Backdraft stacks before Chaos Bolt.

If you get interrupted when casting Incinerate or Fear, you should immediately start casting Chaos Bolt or Cataclysm or Decimating Bolt.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Maintain Immolate on all enemies.
2. Cast Chaos Bolt when you have 4-5 Soul Shards, and only if you have Backdraft charges.
3. Apply Havoc and follow it up with a Mortal Coil to prevent enemy players from interrupting your damage and to heal yourself.
4. Cast Cataclysm if multiple targets are stacked.
5. Use Soul Rot if you are Night Fae to deal spread damage.
6. Use Decimating Bolt to build 3 stacks of Shard of Annihilation, preferably on low health targets.
8. Use Conflagrate to generate Soul Shards and generate stacks of Backdraft.
9. Cast Incinerate to generate Soul Shards.

Unending Resolve is your primary defensive ability and should be used if your healer has no defensive cooldowns and you are at high health. You will not be interrupted while this is active so you can use this time to cast Fear to stay alive or Chaos Bolt for damage.

Dark Pact is an extremely powerful defensive PvP talent on a short cooldown. This should be used whenever the enemy team lands crowd control on your healer and you are caught in a stun and can not get away. This can be used while in any form of CC, and while interrupted.

Demon Armor is an absolutely mandatory PvP talent. This talent is what makes Destruction Warlocks so tanky and should be used against every single team.

Healthstone should be used when you are at very low health and your healer does not have defensive cooldowns to keep you alive.

Demonic Circle, should be placed away from the enemy team, but close to your healer. Make sure you coordinate when you will be using this so your team can position themselves accordingly. You will want to use this when the enemy team is using their offensive cooldowns and you need to create distance between you and them. Use the same concept when you need to take Demonic Gateway.

Summon Infernal should be used to stun enemies that are trying to chase you. This will typically best used when enemies are using their burst cooldowns and you are close to dying.

Curses allow you to weaken a target based on which curse you use on them. Effectively using a curse on an enemy could prevent a lot of damage that the target will deal. Below are the curses that you have and the best time to use them.

• Curse of Weakness increases the time between the enemy's attacks. This should be used on a melee DPS to prevent incoming Physical damage.
• Curse of Tongues increases the cast time of all spells the enemy casts. This should be used on a caster DPS to prevent or slow down incoming spell damage.
• Curse of Exhaustion reduces the target's movement speed. This is a very flexible Curse and can be used to slow down melee DPS or slow down enemy healers to make them easier to crowd control.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.