Vanilla
Burning Crusade
Lich King
Cataclysm
Mists of Pandaria
Battle for Azeroth
Patch: 3.3.5
Author: Legacy-WoW
PVE WotLK Destruction Warlock DPS Guide (Short)
Wrath Warlock Guide
Welcome to our PVE Destruction Warlock guide for WoW WotLK. This guide will show you what you need to know to play the Warlock class as Destruction. If you follow this build you should be at the top of the DPS chart in no time!
Talents
Destruction Warlocks have two main specs. With this first build, you just stand still and cast your spells. Soul Leech and Improved Soul Leech will keep you at full health and mana the entire time. You won’t have to rely on Life Tap and will be constantly pumping out DPS.
The second build works better in fights with a lot of movement. This build doesn’t take Soul Leech or Improved Soul Leech because Unholy Power is better when you have to move a lot. You will be using Life Tap to get mana back while moving.
Glyphs
Major Glyphs
Minor Glyphs
Gems
Gems can change based on your build, equipment and caps. You may need to adjust your gems to account for your gear.
- Meta: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
- Red: Runed Cardinal Ruby
- Blue: Purified Dreadstone (2x)
- Yellow: Potent Ametrine
Enchants
You may need to adjust your enchants based on your gear but these are the standard enchants.
- Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
- Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Storm
- Back: Greater Speed
- Chest: Powerful Stats
- Bracers: Superior Spellpower
- Gloves: Exceptional Spellpower
- Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle
- Legs: Brilliant Spellthread
- Boots: Icewalker
- Two-Handed Weapon: Enchant Staff – Greater Spellpower
- One-Handed Weapon: Mighty Spellpower or Black Magic
Stat Priority
- Hit (17% cap)
- Spell Power
- Haste
- Critical Strike
Rotation
- Life Tap before the pull
- Curse of the Elements (or Curse of Doom)
- Immolate (Keep the debuff up at all times)
- Corruption (Keep the debuff up at all times)
- Conflagrate (This should be used every time it’s off CD)
- Chaos Bolt (This is your primary spell)
- Incinerate (Use this when everything else is applied or on CD)
Keep Curse of the Elements or Curse of Doom on the target at all times. You use Curse of Doom if you have an Unholy Death Knight or Moonkin in your group. Otherwise you use Curse of the Elements.
Imp is your best pet. He deals the most damage and the builds above both have Empowered Imp which gives us a 100% chance to crit after he crits.
Corruption so isn’t needed. Your wasting a GCD that you can do more damage with the Incinerate filler than the whole span of Corruption because of your fire buffs in the build. So, in essence it should be LT>Immolate>Conflag>Chaos Bolt>Incinerate as your rotation. Since you aren’t far enough into Demo to take the Molten Core talent. Although, you could go 0/40/31. Then you can argue corruption as you get decimate and molten core.
And the immolate glyph should be replaced with Glyph of Life Tap. Otherwise, why are you lifetapping before pull?