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Welcome to Wowhead's Destruction Warlock guide, updated for Shadowlands Launch! This guide will teach you to master playing Destruction Warlock in all aspects of the game, helping you to deal optimal DPS in Raids and Mythic+ dungeons.
Throughout this guide, we will cover many different aspects to increase your Destruction Warlock expertise, including concepts like Destruction Warlock talents and talents builds, Destruction Warlock BiS gear choices, Destruction Warlock stat priorities, among many other aspects of your class and specialization. Make sure to navigate to additional pages of the Destruction Warlock guide to find more in-depth information on topics such as Covenants, Legendaries, Soulbinds, Conduits, Mythic+, and Raids.
Destruction has always been known as a spec that excels at dealing large hits through Chaos Bolt and very strong cleave damage due to Havoc. In Shadowlands, Destruction is receiving multiple changes to our current spells, our talents, and more.
Our primary resource is Soul Shards which we both generate and spend with a number of abilities in our kit. We can choose to either spend them on Chaos Bolt which is a single target ability or Rain of Fire with is an AoE ability that deals damage over time. We are a very cooldown oriented spec, this means a large portion of our damage is dealt during our Summon Infernal cooldown.
If you are a returning player or feel that you would benefit from a more in-depth take on the spec, the rest of this guide and both the Beginner's Guide and rotation guide may be worth giving a look.
Choosing a covenant is the most important decision your character will make in Shadowlands, as the covenant abilities and soulbinds will significantly impact your spec's gameplay and performance. Through this choice, your rotation changes, certain bonuses appear in dungeons for your entire group, and you are able to follow the story in different paths.
The Castle Nathria raid has many different types of encounters and currently there are multiple viable options when it comes to choosing your covenant.
Very strong covenant ability. The soulbinds within the Night Fae covenant are also the strongest options. You can get an early potency conduit slot through Dreamweaver and later swap to Niya who is the strongest Soulbind out of everyone. It is currently my suggestion to pick Night Fae.
Very strong covenant ability on single target and two targets. Starts lacking when introducing more targets. All 3 soulbinds are both viable and strong.
The Kyrian Covenant has a lot of potential if you're able to proc the 5 shard generation from Scouring Tithe. Weaker soulbinds than the above options.
Both Kyrian and Night Fae are very strong options for Mythic+. The Kyrian ability Scouring Tithe works on both boss fights and trash packs. It's a strong dot with good uptime on bosses and offers a nice burst of Soul Shards on trash packs.
A decent option for Mythic+ is also the Night Fae Covenant, which offers the Soul Rot ability. This ability is on a relatively short cooldown (1 min) and adds a nice bit of burst to your AoE on-demand burst.
Shadowlands Legendary powers grant impactful gameplay effects for your Destruction Warlock through the new Runecarving system. As your crafted Shadowlands legendary will be the most important piece of gear in the expansion, providing large performance benefits, it is crucial to pick the right legendary to craft and effectively spend your Soul Ash.
For raiding, if you craft Relic of Demonic Synergy you're ready for every single encounter, as this is the strongest bonus on more or less every fight.
Secondly you should craft Wilfred's Sigil of Superior Summoning which can also be very strong on fights where you're able to get more Summon Infernal due to a high amount of Soul Shards spent. This can be ideal for a fight such as the Stone Legion Generals in Castle Nathria where you constantly have more adds spawn, allowing you to generate and spend more shards.
Cinders of the Azj'Aqir is also a very strong legendary for raiding as of now. This is due to the increased amount of Conflagrate casts. If combined with Roaring Blaze this can be strong both on single and 2 targets. The raid consists both of single-target and cleave, perfect for this bonus.
If you're looking to do big damage in Mythic+, you will want Wilfred's Sigil of Superior Summoning as your #1 priority! Overall this bonus is strong, but it shines in dungeons where you're able to generate and spend a lot of Soul Shards, thus making your Summon Infernal cooldown much shorter.
As a second choice, Relic of Demonic Synergy is definitely worth crafting, since it's a strong option for when you're fighting fewer targets.
This is all-round the strongest legendary for raiding as of now. The increased % damage proc it grants you is very strong in every single scenario. A small bonus is, this legendary can also be used in the other two Warlock specs.
This effect can actually also be very strong on fights where you're able to get more Summon Infernal due to a high amount of Soul Shards spent. This can be ideal for a fight such as the Stone Legion Generals in Castle Nathria where you constantly have more adds spawn, allowing you to generate and spend more shards.
A very strong option for Destruction. This is due to the increased amount of Conflagrate casts. If combined with Roaring Blaze this can be strong both on single and 2 targets. The raid consists both of single-target and cleave, perfect for this bonus.
With the changes made to the Destruction Warlock talent tree in Shadowlands, we now have multiple strong talents we can combine to make a very powerful setup for Mythic+. This is furthermore empowered by the Wilfred's Sigil of Superior Summoning bonus. A lot of the power of Destruction lies in our Summon Infernal cooldown. The combination of these new talents allowing you to generate and spend even more shards than before, combined with the reduced cooldown of Infernal. This makes for an extremely strong burst spec.
The increased % damage proc it grants you is very strong in every single scenario. A small bonus is, this legendary can also be used in the other two Warlock specs.
This setup offers you solid Single Target damage while still being able to cleave. Especially with Roaring Blaze also being applied through Havoc.
This setup is even stronger with the Cinders of the Azj'Aqir Legendary bonus. More Conflagrate casts means more Backdraft stacks through Flashover and more uptime on Roaring Blaze.
If there are enough targets, you can swap out Fire and Brimstone for Inferno.
This setup revolves around your Summon Infernal cooldown and proccing as many extra infernals through Rain of Chaos as you can.
This setup is even stronger when paired with the Wilfred's Sigil of Superior Summoning Legendary bonus. This allows you to reduce the cooldown of your Summon Infernal significantly.
Alternatively, if you need more on-demand burst, you can swap out Soul Conduit for Dark Soul: Instability.
