The Mage Equivalent: The Destruction Warlock
 

(Updated at 19/1 2010 for patch 3.3)

Ed. note: This thread is still a WIP.

 

Contents

1Introduction 2Spells 3Talents and builds 3.1Builds 3.2Talents 3.2.1Destruction 3.2.2Demonology 3.2.3Affliction 4Itemization 4.1Hit rating 4.2Spirit 4.3Spell power 4.4Crit rating 4.5Haste rating 4.6Other stats 4.7Tier set boni 4.8Gems 4.9Glyphs 5Rotations 6Change Log

[top]Introduction

Destruction warlock is a more "direct damage"-based build as opposed to the Affliction one which supports more heaving hitting nukes rather than "damage over time"-effects. It has many similarities with Elemental Shamans and Mages and has a wide array of both instants and AoE-spells. In patch 3.0 Destruction received a serious overhaul considering how powerful it was before in TBC but couldn't keep up with Affliction after the launch of WOTLK. In 3.1 however this is is a different story; Destruction is now highly competable against other specs as the theoretical highest DPS available and is now also able to provide raids buff via Replenishment. In short: Destruction has many tricks up it's sleeve such as more instants and more AOE options and might therefor be the choice for the warlock who wanted to play a Mage, but with a twist.

[top]Spells

Spell		Base Co-efficient	Notes
Immolate	Immo	20% DoT tick // 20% DD	The spell that destruction is pretty much built around. It's a DoT with a DD-effect on hit.
Conflagrate	Conflag	None	Has been around for ages but received several buffs in WOTLK and is now part of the standard rotation. It's total damage is the same as your Immolate with 60% of the damage being DD and 40% being a small DoT.
Chaos Bolt	CB	71.39%	The new 51-talent in WOTLK. While many may look at this as a PvP-talent, it has higher damage, shorter cast time and lesser mana cost than Incinerate.
Incinerate	Incin	71.39%	Your basic “filler”, used to fill in spaces between the more damaging spells. Receives many buffs from various talents and gets a higher base damage if it hits a target with Immolate on it.
Curse of Doom	CoD	200%	The warlock spell with the highest DPCT and therefor involved in the rotation as well.
Curse of Agony	CoA	120%	Not as powerful as CoD but still used somewhat (se below at rotations for more on this).
Corruption	Corr	120%	This one isn't really used in your standard rotation but can (and should) be used when your moving and have no need to Life Tap or Death Coil is on CD.

[top]Talents and builds

[top]Builds

Build	Notes
0/13/53	Standard build, involves all necessary talents to do your job as Destruction with 5 free points. There are various choices you can with these based on your gear and the encounters you do. If you're low on hit, Suppression is a choice. If there's heavy raid damage on encounters, take Soul Link. If an encounter face many adds then Shadowfury is a good choice, or if neither of these are present Imp. Soul Leech is a good take for extra mana (more mana = less LT = more DPS time). Regardless of your choice, if you ever need more talent points, Backlash is the one to pick from since it gives the least DPS for it's point.
0/13/58	Highest theoretical DPS with BiS T10-gear.

[top]Talents

[top]Destruction

Tier	Talent	Recommendation	Notes
1	Improved Shadow Bolt	Ignored	Shadow Bolt isn't featured at all in the rotation. This is mostly for Affliction- and deep Demonology-warlocks.
1	Bane	Required	Reduces casting time of your 2nd most strongest nuke and DoT. Essential.
2	Aftermath	Required	Not only increases the damage of Immolate but also Conflagrate indirectly.
2	Molten Skin	Optional	Can reduce stress on healers if there's much raid damage but mostly a PvP-talent.
2	Cataclysm	Recommended	Together with Imp. Soul Leech this can really hold your mana up and reduce the amount of Life Taps, resulting in higher DPS.
3	Demonic Power	Required	Your Imp does good DPS on it's own and this one helps it.
3	Shadowburn	Ignored	PvP-talent and thus not taken.
3	Ruin	Required	Multiplies with CSD to give 109% damage bonus critical strikes.
4	Intensity	Recommended	Reduces pushback on all your spells, very useful for raiding.
4	Destructive Reach	Recommended	Longer range and lesser threat on pretty much all your spells. Note however that this does not apply to any of your Affliction-spells.
4	Improved Searing Pain	Ignored	Not really useful unless you're tanking many encounters and/or PvP:ing a lot.
5	Backlash	Recommended	Gives higher crit % on all your spells and can give instant Incins when struck. The second effect is mostly for PvP but the higher crit % is useful.
5	Improved Immolate	Required	Higher damage on Immo and therefor on Conflag as well. Very important. Also a pre-requisite for Conflag.
5	Devastation	Required	Extremely valuable because of the low point investment.
6	Nether Protection	Not recommended	Just like Molten Skin, can reduce stress on healers but there are better talents available. Mostly for PvP.
6	Emberstorm	Required	Increases the damage on all of your fire spells and reduces the cast time on Incin equivalent to 10% haste.
7	Conflagrate	Required	Your hardest hitting nuke and what the rotation is (pretty much) built around. It's damage is based upon Immo and procs Backdraft and (if it crits) Pyroclasm on use, further boosting DPS.
7	Soul Leech	Optional	Not so useful on it's own, what you really want if going here is Imp. Soul Leech (see that one for more info).
7	Pyroclasm	Required	Thanks to the buff to Fire and Brimstone this one has an uptime of 50-60% (depending on your crit %), boosting all your damage by 6%.
8	Shadow and Flame	Required	Increases the co-efficient of CB and Incin from 71.39% to 85.67%.
8	Improved Soul Leech	Optional	Gives Replenishment to the raid and can restore 2% of you and your Imps max mana back on spell hit. Thanks to this lesser Life Taps are needed and more time on DPS can be focused on.
9	Backdraft	Required	Has an optimal uptime of 60% giving a serious boost to damage. Backlash and Nightfall procs does not trigger a charge as of 3.2.2.
9	Shadowfury	Optional	Very useful tool in raiding since many encounters has adds that needs to be taken care of. Not essential though.
9	Empowered Imp	Required	Gives a good boost to the Imps DPS and the Empowered Imp buff has an uptime of ~15%. Overall, it gives you a higher crit %.
10	Fire and Brimstone	Required	Good boost to CB and Incin and gives a higher uptime on Pyroclasm. Note that the first bonus only applies if the target has your Immo on.
11	Chaos Bolt	Required	AKA “Imp. Incinerate”. For one point you get a better nuke. See above for more info on CB.

[top]Demonology

Most excess points are spend in Demonology to reach Demonic Aegis so that is your main objective in this tree.

Tier	Talent	Recommendation	Notes
1	Improved Healthstone	Optional	Better healthstones which are useful in raids, but if another warlock has it, you don't need it.
1	Improved Imp	Required	Further boosts your Imps damage.
1	Demonic Embrace	Optional	Gives better survivability, not only for PvP.
1	Fel Synergy	Recommended	Your Imp does a good solid damage and gives you various buffs so it's important to keep him alive. This one helps towards that goal.
2	Improved Health Funnel	Ignored	Not very useful, Health Funnel works good the way it is.
2	Demonic Brutality	Ignored	More for the Felguard-using warlocks.
2	Fel Vitality	Recommended	Gives a higher mana pool to both you and your Imp increasing the effect of Imp. Soul Leech.
3	Improved Succubus	Ignored	Succubus is not featured in this build, so therefor not needed.
3	Soul Link	Optional	Does give better survivability to you, but not your pet. Also there are better talents around. Very useful though for encounters that require ranged tanking or are heavy on raid damage.
3	Fel Domination	Not recommended	Your Imp should preferably not die, but if does: This one can seriously reduce that DPS loss of resummoning him.
3	Demonic Aegis	Recommended	Gives a flat 54 extra spell power and 9% extra more from your spirit. On higher gear levels gives a good boost to all of your spells.

[top]Affliction

The only talent worth taking here is Suppression and only if you need the hit. However it's not hard to reach the hit cap and there are better talents to boost your DPS.

Tier	Talent	Recommendation	Notes
1	Curse of Agony	Ignore	Even with this, CoD is still better.
1	Suppression	Optional	Equates to less needed hit on gear.
1	Improved Corruption	Not recommended	Corruption has a lesser DPCT than Incinerate and is therefor not used in your rotation. Can though be used if you're on the move a lot, but for this talent it gives a very low boost per point.

[top]Itemization

Since previous content, itemization has changed pretty drastically for Destruction. Spirit is no longer equal to crit, but somewhere below because of how Imp. Soul Leech works. As gear gets better, the amount of spirit on your gear will go down, Glyph of Life Tap will be replaced (ISL gives better mana regen, together with Cataclysm, and reduces the amount of needed LTs) and crit will become overall better.

0/13/58 (using this preliminary T10 BiS)

Stat	Scaling
Spirit	0.96
Spell power	1.91
Crit rating	1.30
Haste rating	1.35

It's important that you take these values with a grain of salt! Haste is by far the 2nd best stat for Warlocks, regardless of spec. But as you accumulate higher numbers of haste, it's value will diminish making crit more and more appealing.

[top]Hit rating

TTT Entry for Spell Hit

Faction	Hit cap with talents/debuff	Hit cap with talents and debuff
Alliance	342	263
Horde	368	289

Overall effectiveness: Above very high if below the cap and worthless if over the cap
Other notes: If you can't hit, you can't do damage. That's why hit rating is the most powerful stat out there as long as you're below the cap. With Suppression you need 11% as Horde and 10% as Alliance (because of the Draenei racial aura) and 14% and 13% respectively without it. Missing a huge damage spell such as Conflag will greatly reduce your DPS. Simply put: cap your hit when raiding.

[top]Spirit

Overall effectiveness: Average
Other notes: This is a stat that can shift it's value in the blink of an eye. If you have the Glyph of Life Tap it becomes better and when you get higher amounts of it, it gets better. But once the gear starts shifting more towards haste and crit, it becomes less effective, making dropping the glyph inevitable and reducing it's value even further. In short: it's not bad, but it's not great either. Crit and haste will always be better than this as a 2nd stat.

[top]Spell power

Overall effectiveness: Very high
Other notes: Primary stat as for any DPS caster. All your spells benefits from this stat making it more valuable than any other than hit (if you're below the cap).

[top]Crit rating

Overall effectiveness: Average
Other notes: Crit rating has no other real benefits than improving your damage. While it can help to proc Pyroclasm through Conflagrate, Conflag recieves a 25% crit if your Immo is up on the target reducing the need for crit rating even further.

Crit rating value increases linear with spell power and leads to uptime increase 1:1 with no diminishing returns, i.e. +1% crit -> +1% Pyroclasm uptime -> +0.1% damage increase on top of direct crit gains.

[top]Haste rating

Overall effectiveness: Above average to high
Other notes: The value of haste is relative. It's somewhat easy to reach the GCD cap through high haste rating with Backdraft and Bloodlust/Heroism making excess amounts of haste worthless and making the rotations harder to keep up. Haste is however a better stat than crit because you don't need as much rating per percent compared to crit and crit % can be very high in a raid situation with various raid buffs and talents.

[top]Other stats

• Intellect
  166 Int = 1% crit. Intellect is not a real stat to gear for because it gives less DPS compared to the others. Intellect is however better for builds with Imp. Soul Leech since it returns mana based on how much mana you have. It's nothing you should gear for though.
• MP5
  Bad for warlocks with any builds. While technically MP5 can be used somewhat, it's nowhere near as good compared to the other DPS stats. We use Life Tap to gain mana back, not MP5. It's just how the class is designed.

Firestone or Spellstone on weapon?

Even though haste is a better DPS stat than crit, the 1% extra damage to DD-spells outweighs the benefits of Spellstone by far.

Look at this way: In a typical standard fight as Destruction, your DoTs will account for around 15% of your total damage while the rest is DD. The Firestone looks a lot better, doesn't it?

[top]Tier set boni

These are the values of the T10 set boni.

Spec	DPS	&	Deviation from max
00_13_58	11676	100%	0
00_13_58_no4	11242	96,3%	434
00_13_58_no2_no4	11079	94,9%	597 => 2pc = 163
00_13_58_no2	11509	98,6%	167

Thanks to Madlax @ http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t87413-3_3_compendium/ for the numbers.

What does it mean?
The 4p bonus is incredibly good and should be gotten as fast as you can. The 2p, not so good. But it's still better than the 4p of T9 so switching from 4pT9 to 2pT9 and 2pT10 is a very valid choice.

Ed. note: Add other tiers later.

[top]Gems

The only meta-gem that should be used is [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond]. When filling it's requirements the only gem you should use is the [Purified Dreadstone]. Always try to throw these in where your blue sockets are and put them in where you get the biggest bonuses. Always try to gem for spell power first and foremost and haste in yellow sockets if the bonus is worth it. Remember however that hit > everything else if not hit capped yet.

What makes a bonus worth it? In basic, if the socket is...

• ... red, gem [Runed Cardinal Ruby]. Always.
• ... yellow with a bonus of either at least 4 spell power, 6 haste, 7 crit or 9 spirit, gem [Reckless Ametrine]. If you're below the hit cap, gem [Veiled Ametrine] or [Rigid King's Amber] depending on how much below. Otherwise, go with a [Runed Cardinal Ruby].
• ... blue with a bonus of either at least 6 spell power, 9 haste, 10 crit or 13 spirit, gem [Purified Dreadstone]. If the socket bonus is lower than that, it's still OK, as long as you need a gem for your meta. Otherwise, go with a [Runed Cardinal Ruby].

[top]Glyphs

Regardless of what Destruction-build you're using, you should at least have Glyph of Conflagrate and Incinerate. In 3.2 Glyph of Life Tap received a substantial buff making it very strong. It might be better though to use Immolate with low level gear/until you reach a higher amount of spirit.
For more info on the subject, turn to http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t37422-glyph_choice/.

Major Glyph	Recommendation	Notes
[Glyph of Conflagrate]	Required	Saves a GCD from recasting Immolate. Immo needs to be up at all times since all your spells benefit from it and since Conflag is your hardest hitting nuke which you'll want to cast as many times as possible, this is one is a sure given.
[Glyph of Incinerate]	Required	Incinerate counts for over 50% of your damage making this very valuable.
[Glyph of Imp]	Optional	Increases the damage of your machine-gu... err, I mean Imp by 20%. Very good at high gear level and best for your 3rd slot with BiS T10.
[Glyph of Immolate]	Optional	Does not only increase the damage of Immo by 10% but also Conflag by 7%, double win! On par with Imp after 3.3.3.
[Glyph of Life Tap]	Optional	Everytime you Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit in spell power for 40 sec. With a raidbuffed warlock with for example 500 spirit total this equates to 100 spell power to all your spells.
[Glyph of Chaos Bolt]	Ignored	Provides you with one extra CB every minute instead of an Incinerate. Chaos Bolt is roughly 20% more damaging than Incin i.e. this glyph makes one Incin every minute 20% stronger. Not very useful in other words, seeing what other glyphs are available. Consider this a PvP-glyph.

Minor Glyph	Recommendation	Notes
[Glyph of Drain Soul]	Optional	There are not many useful minor glyphs as a warlock but this one makes shard farming a lot easier.

The rest of the minor are personal preferences.

[top]Rotations

"Rotation" is a very common term for damage dealers, but more and more classes now thinks of “priorities” instead since it's easier to keep track of what spells to use and at what time, since haste screws rotations up. This is something that has been used by Shadow Priests for a long time and has been further used by other classes.

Regardless of your build, the priorities stay the same:

1. Curse of Doom – Highest DPCT of all your spells, read below however for extra information.
2. Immolate – Gives an increase to your Incinerate and CB damage through Fire and Brimstone and enables Conflagrate.
3. Conflagrate – To proc both Backdraft and Pyroclasm.
4. CB – Stronger nuke than Incinerate.
5. Incinerate – when DoTs are up and CB and Conflag is on CD, this is your "filler".

Curse of Doom has the highest DPCT and should therefor have a uptime close to 100%. However, if you can manage to proc Pyroclasm before casting it you should wait until the next Conflagrate as it increases your overall DPS. If the target has an estimated time of going down in less than a minute, then you should cast Curse of Agony instead and keep it up until the target dies for max DPS. Corruption isn't used in the rotation when standing still and nuking a la Patchwerk but is more used "on the run" when needing to reposition or avoid damage.
Small note: If you're on Curse of the Elements-duty, it takes priority over CoD.

One common question is if your Immo has less than 1.5 sec left on it's duration and Conflag has come off CD, should you recast Immo first and Conflag second, or the reverse? Well, following the priority list, Immo technically still is on your target, therefor you should Conflag first, renew Immo second. You want to keep Conflag on CD as much as humanly possible since it's the most damaging spell you do (besides CoD).

Also, always make sure you're casting something. Destruction suffers a whole lot more from standing still doing nothing and moving around than the other Warlock-specs considering you don't have much DoTs to throw around.

[top]Change Log

-Mar 9th 2010
Updated the T10BiS and some notes on the Immolate glyph.

-Feb 5th 2010
Corrected how Conflagrate works with the changes to patch 3.3.2.

-Feb 4th 2010
Added the 'Updates'-section.

The question I keep asking myself when I see people post their Destruction builds is why not Demonic Sacrifice? Yeah you have to get talents that increase your pet's effectiveness and all but wouldn't the benefits from sacing the pet be more then using the pet to dps on boss fights? I'm terrible at this math thing but it would be great to see which yields more DPS, a DS'd Succ/Imp or using the pet with all the pet talents in the listed builds. It would also be nice to see what a MD/S and F build looks like and whether or not a fire build with your Imp out is more DPS then DS'ing the Imp.

Also at this early stage of the expansion I don't think an extra 9% damage from spirit warrants a build that has that as the ultimate objective. Its a great talent, if your going further down the tree.

I think its pretty obvious that all raiding locks will end up destruction again like we did in TBC, the question is which build is the best. Without math I think there are better then the 3 you listed. But I would like to be proven wrong.

No, because the imp itself does 10-15% of your total DPS. On patchwerk my imp did 126k compared to my 770k, and that ignores any sort of feedback via empowered imp, master demonologist, etc.

Having demonic sac for certain fights, though, is another story.

I thought the consensus was that keeping Corruption up to increase Molten Core uptime was a Good Thing? I haven't seen any math against casting Corruption, so why do you claim "since Corruption isn't involved in the rotation" Improved Corruption is bad?

I always use CoA unless I have to CoE in which case is when I would CoE / Corruption. I'm curious if keeping both Corr and CoA up is really worth it?

CoA ticks more often, therfore is better at keeping MC up than Corr.

The math I have seen before said that it does improve the uptime. But only by the smallest of amounts, so its better to use that GCD on an Incin or something else and just maintain CoA.

You also forgot to mention 0/13/58. It is a more often used than 2/13/56 imo.

Hello,at the moment i'm using 00/21/40 which i find really nice and easy to use :P.
I don't have very good gear,some valor and malygos items and im doing on bosses 3k->4kdps.
My rotation is simple Immo>Coa>Spam Inci until last tick of Imo>Conflag(So i get backdraft)>Immo(for 2x Incin Bonus)>CoA(if u dont got glyph)>Spam inci again !
I'm looking foward to see some WWS from FG/Ember spec and test it myself.

Btw,long time reader,first time poster :p,sorry for typo' and for my english :).

Thanks for the inputs. I don't claim to be the god of Destruction but I decided to start the thread when I saw there wasn't any around and I've always ended up with the spec, since every other warlock in my guild wants to play other things :)

I'll try to keep this updated daily but it will most likely be every 2-3 days. Keep the posts coming. And I love to be proven wrong.

Considering for example, that a lot of Heroic dungeon mobs are taken down fairly quickly, would it be safe to say that destro can output the most quick damage for one of these fights?

I've been a destro lock for a while now, and I really like that I'm able to burn things down quicker. If I was affliction for example, would I be able to output the same amount of damage as a destro lock?

I'm running with this spec atm, having Shadowfury since it's nice in some situations on Naxx trash and heroics etc. Where the sacrifice is only 1 point from Unholy Power.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

About bane, I wouldn't use Soulfire during backdrafts, 3 incinerates, then reapply immolate?
I prefer 19 in Demo, but yea, some fights are just NOT Imp friendly. I do use corruption though, to trigger Molten Core, and since I have the Corruption Glyph ^^

From my recount data, I do get quite much mana from Imp Soul Leech, equal to Replennishment in 1 fight.

About Cataclysm, I'dd still cap myself thought, since I have Corruption and CoA in my cycle.

My point of view ^^


PS: Giev Fel Synergy in T2 Demo ;/

I think you have too many small variations in specs. For readability, I'd condense 3 of the specs to 0/13/58 + 2.

In any case, there are a couple more specs I would categorize as destro:

0/30/40 + 1: Master Demo and SNF, bypasses conflag talents.
0/40/30 + 1: Uses an imp, takes 10% crit and demonic knowledge for higher spellpower, but loses SNF.
0/41/30: Felguard/Emberstorm

I've picked up the felguard/emberstorm build in the demo thread. I definately see 0/30/40+1 as belonging to destruction. Would it be better to do a base chaos bolt build, a base conflag build and then look at the destro hybrids?

Is there any point in picking up imp CoA and imp Corr and have 7/3/51+ 10 as a chaos bolt destro? Glyphs would most likely be imp, CoA and Immo.

I am a bit confused, most of the destro specs I see linked on this page include Conflagrate and Backdraft, but my understanding was that the haste gain from Backdraft was more than offset by the clipped Immolate and mana cost of Conflagrate. Most specs also seem to throw a few filler points in Soul Leech, but it seems absolutely clear to me that the 2 points in Improved Soul Leech are the valuable ones, with the 3 base points being simply expensive filler. I could understand taking either of these sets of talents as filler, but not both.

In other words rather than put points into Conflag and Backdraft that you will not use, and filling with a few in Soul Leech, why not drop Conflag entirely, take all 5 in Soul Leech since the last 2 are where the utility is found, or even ditch all or most of these points and go for Imp Life Tap. Something like

Build 1

or

Build 2

Am I misunderstanding the deal with Conflag? Is it in fact worthwhile?

It is possible to do the same dps with affliction but then you have to DoT multiple targets. I pick a primary target which gets the four strongest DoTs (all expect SL) and Haunt and then I apply just the 4 DoTs to all other targets. There probably won't be much SB-spamming but you'll dish out just as much dps. I was able to keep a steady 2000 dps in Violet Hold Heroic just last night doing this. It does require some AE-tanking though.
I've been testing a lot of this and during an Instructor Razuvious in 10-man and did Soul Fire x3 at 2 times during Bloodlust/Heroism and those 6 Soul Fires actually accounted for 15% of my total damage. Sure they did crit half of them but still...
In any case, if you're not going for the Soul Fire route you should ALWAYS apply Immolate before doing Incinerates, even during Backdraft.
This spec is not possible.