Destruction Warlock Gearing Guide

The tier sets in patch 11.2 take a different approach than usual. This time, each hero talent gets its own unique tier set, meaning Destruction has access to two distinct sets. Both are powerful and play to the strengths of their respective hero talents.

Diabolist Destruction Warlock Season 2 Tier Set Bonus:

• (2) Set Bonus: Casting Chaos Bolt, Rain Of Fire, or Shadowburn summons a Demonic Oculus, up to 3. Consuming Demonic Art flings your Demonic Oculi at your current target, exploding for fire damage to your target and all enemies within 10 yards.
• (4) Set Bonus: Demonic Oculi analyze the battle while active and deliver information to you as they explode, increasing your Intellect by 2% for 10 seconds.

Hellcaller Destruction Warlock Season 2 Tier Set Bonus:

• (2) Set Bonus: Mark Of Xavius increases Blackened Soul damage by an additional 3% per stack. Malevolence increases the stack count of Wither by an additional 2 stacks.
• (4) Set Bonus: Casting Malevolence grants 2 stacks of Backdraft and prevents Blackened Soul from consuming stacks while dealing damage 15% faster for 8 seconds.

Diabolist gains a single-target and stacked AoE bonus, while Hellcaller gains a spread cleave bonus. These sets are almost entirely passive and don’t significantly change your gameplay - aside from Diabolist’s Demonic Arts hitting much harder, making them worth holding a bit longer for add spawns or burst windows than you might have done in the past.

You should still prioritize the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Destruction Warlock, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

• Raiding
• Mythic+

You should always sim your own character rather than following a tier list blindly. There are quite a few good trinkets in 11.2 and Destruction generally prefers to run two passive trinkets, with the option of using an on-use for more bursty encounters (Nexus-King for example).

Our two best trinkets are the following:

Astral Antenna

This trinket passively spawns purple orbs that chase you, granting you Crit. Every orb you pick up has an individual duration so there’s no need to try and “extend it”. These orbs move very slowly and only exist for 20 seconds so on a high movement encounter you might very well outrun 10-40% of them. Luckily there’s an option on Raidbots to sim this situation specifically if you’re not sure.

Azhiccaran Parapodia

Just a passive damage proc that grants you a 30 seconds Intellect buff.

Viable options:

• Diamantine Voidcore
• Ara-Kara Sacbrood
• Signet of the Priory
• Araz’s Ritual Forge

The best embellishments for Destruction Warlocks in 11.2 are Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension on off-hand and Writhing Armor Banding on Wrists.

It’s advised to craft a weapon with Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension first, either a staff or an off-hand if you believe you will get a mythic main hand or either of the special weapons from the Manaforge Omega raid soon.

After that you would craft a cloth piece with Writhing Armor Banding in a slot you haven’t looted yet. Bracers are recommended for the long term, but early on it’s completely fine to craft it anywhere as long as it doesn’t interfere with your 4-set.

Reshii Wraps

The Reshii Wraps is a new cloak that we unlock at the end of chapter 3 of the main storyline in Patch 11.2. This cloak will be upgraded throughout the patch and is required for some of the bosses in the raid.

The cloak has a passive damage proc and a socket slot that can be filled with a fiber. There’s one fiber for each secondary stat so make sure to sim your own character to find out which one you should use.

Puzzling Cartel Chips

As a Destruction Warlock I recommend that you spend your Puzzling Cartel Chips on any of these items you might not already have:

Astral Antenna

Our BiS trinket this tier. Keep in mind that you might miss some orbs on the more movement intensive fights which reduces the value of this trinket. If you end up missing too many you might be better off using an Azhiccaran Parapodia instead.

Diamantine Voidcore

Our second best passive trinket from the raid. Enhances the proc from the special raid weapons.

Interloper’s Silken Striders

These boots enhance the effects of our Reshii Wraps cloak, making it a lot better. It’s worth noting that the effect on the boots does not scale with iLevel when you upgrade them, only when you get them in a new track (normal/heroic/mythic etc), which makes getting them on mythic a big increase.

Voidglass Kriss

Paired with a crafted Off-hand this is our BiS weapon with a special weapon proc that gets enhanced by Diamantine Voidcore.

Araz’s Ritual Forge

Even though we don’t really use an on-use trinket outside of Nexus-King as a Destruction Warlock currently, it’s still good to have if you have any extra chips left over.