Destruction Warlock PvP Talents and Builds — The War Within (Season 1)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as a Destruction Warlock and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Destruction Warlock PvP Guide.
Talent Choices for Destruction Warlocks
Talent Build for Destruction Warlocks in PvP
This is the standard build for Destruction Warlocks in PvP, which can be used as a general setup.
- This build takes talents which buff Chaos Bolt such as Improved Chaos Bolt, Ritual of Ruin and Master Ritualist.
- The build focuses on dealing damage primarily with your instants Conflagrate and Shadowburn to generate Burn to Ashes stacks, and then unloading with Incinerate and Chaos Bolt.
- Spending Soul Shards grants you Ritual of Ruin which helps you to cast near instant Chaos Bolt for on-demand burst damage.
- New talents such as Decimation allow you to burst with Soulfire procs.
- The hero talent Wither is instant and replaces Immolate, making it much easier to maintain the debuff as well as dealing a ton of damage.
PvP Talents for Destruction Warlocks
You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. These should be switched out depending on the matchup.
Situational PvP Talents
Soul Rip causes nearby enemies to deal 25% less damage and reduce their healing received by 25%. Enemies can pick up their 'Soul' to remove the effect, however, this talent helps to create some space for the Destruction Warlock.
Call Observer summons an Observer guardian, which deals up to 10% of the enemy's health when they cast a harmful magic spell. This talent is great for teams with a caster to use during their offensive cooldowns.
Impish Instincts reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Circle: Teleport by 3 seconds when you take Physical damage with an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. This, in synergy with Abyss Walker, makes this PvP talent a very good pick against melee teams who target you.
Nether Ward surrounds the caster with a shield that lasts 3 sec, reflecting all harmful spells cast on you. This is a crucial talent to take against all casters. You also want to use this talent versus teams with a Shaman or Death Knight. This is because their kicks are magical, and this will prevent you from being interrupted while it is active.
Shadow Rift allows you to cast an area-of-effect around the enemy, as long as you are in your Demonic Circle: Teleport range. After 2 seconds, you will teleport any enemies inside this circle to your Demonic Circle: Teleport. This ability has many creative uses and can be used to prevent enemy teams from hiding behind a pillar or to teleport melee away from you.
Bonds of Fel encircles enemies in a location. If they leave the circle, the bonds will explode and deal a significant amount of damage.
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
- 27 Jul. 2024: Reviewed for 11.0.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Prepatch 11.0.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.5.
- 09 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 16 Mar. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 30 Jul. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 02 Mar. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands 9.2.
- 17 Nov. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands Patch 9.1.5.
- 10 Aug. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands Patch 9.1.
- 08 Mar. 2021: No updates needed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 05 Dec. 2020: Updated Talent Table.
- Updated Tier 6 Regular Talent.
- 29 Nov. 2020: Removed outdated Traits and Essences.
- 20 Oct. 2020: Updated Talent Table.
- Updated Tiers 6 and 7 Regular talents.
- Updated PvP talents.
- 20 Jan. 2020: This page was checked for Patch 8.3 and no update was deemed necessary.
- 09 Dec. 2019: Page added.
Other PvP Guides
This guide is written and maintained by Chanimal, BlizzCon Champion Warlock with Rank 1 titles since 2011, competing in AWC. He streams Warlock PvP daily on Twitch, with highlights on YouTube.
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