Introduction
Hello! My name is Omnithic, I’m the raid leader and GM for Dead On My Screen on Area-52 US. I started CE Raiding when the Legion expansion launched and mained Warlock since Battle for Azeroth and haven’t looked back.
Destruction has been my specialization of choice the entire time I’ve played Warlock, and figuring out ways to get the most out of Destruction in any form of content has been a passion of mine - Every time I’m playing something other than Destruction, I always think “I wish I was playing Destruction.”
This guide will cover everything related to Destruction in Midnight and provide an outline on how to get the most out of playing Destruction in patch 12.1.0. I really hope this guide brings you as much joy playing Destruction Warlock as I get out of it, and I will be keeping this guide up-to-date as tuning, hotfixes, and notable bugfixes get applied throughout the patch.
Destruction Warlock Overview
Destruction at its core is a builder-spender spec that is centered around Chaos Bolt, and combined with the various interactions within our two Hero talent trees, account for most of our damage.
Despite the long cast time of Chaos Bolt, Destruction is a fairly mobile class when leveraging our two instant casts, Conflagrate and Shadowburn.
Destruction’s signature ability, Havoc or Mayhem depending on which one you talent, enables the spec to be one of the best in 2-target cleave. This scenario is going to a common occurrence in the new raid, The Venomous Abyss.
What has changed
Patch 12.1 Destruction Warlock Changes
Destruction Warlock has received the following changes for 12.1:
- All damage has been increased by 5%.
- Chaos Bolt damage increased by 5%
- Soulfire damage increased by 45%
- Havoc now causes duplicated spells to deal 10% less damage (from 60% to 50%)
- Conflagration of Chaos has been redesigned, giving Conflagrate and Shadowburn a 100% chance to critically strike, and their damage is increased based on your critical strike chance.
- The Apex Talent, Embers of Nihilam (Rank 1 of 4), now has the tooltip updated to show the percent chance of Incinerate evoking an Echo Of Sargeras.
Hellcaller, one of Destruction’s hero talents, has received the following changes for 12.1:
- Blackened Soul has been redesigned, causing your Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn to increase the stack count of Wither by 1 only on your target. Wither no longer increases the stack count on all targets, Wither will not increase the stack count of your secondary target via Havoc, and Rain of Fire no longer generates Wither stacks.
- Mark of Peroth’arn has been redesigned, causing your critical strikes dealt by Wither to deal 215% damage instead of the usual 200%, and critical strikes dealt by Blackened Soul deal 225% damage instead of the usual 200%.
- Zevrim’s Resilience healing has been increased by 25%.
Additionally, Destruction has new tier set bonuses:
- The Destruction 12.1 2pc bonus increases the damage of Incinerate by 25% and increases the chance Incinerate has to evoke an Echo Of Sargeras by 10%.
- The Destruction 12.1 4pc bonus causes targets to be damaged by Echo Of Sargeras to take 6% increased damage from all of your spells and abilities for 6 seconds.
Lastly, there has been one class change for Warlock, and that is Drain Life’s health drain has been increased by 25%.
While the buffs for Destruction are welcomed, the changes to Hellcaller are significant and hurt the overall capability of Hellcaller, though the single target damage was increased to compensate.
Wither is still stronger than Immolate, and Malevolence still increases the stack count of all active Wither’s by 8 and triggers Blackened Soul via Seeds of Their Demise. However, increasing the stack count of all active Wither’s outside of Malevolence being cast is no longer possible, and gaining stacks of Wither via Rain Of Fire is no longer possible.