Destruction Warlock Gearing Guide

Destruction Warlock Season 2 Tier Sets:

• (2) Set Bonus: Your damaging spells have a chance to hit a Jackpot! that fires a flurry of 12 Demonfire bolts at 200% effectiveness. Casting Summon Infernal always hits a Jackpot!.
• (4) Set Bonus: Hitting a Jackpot! increases your Mastery by 2% and your spells gain maximum benefit from Mastery: Chaotic Energies for 10 seconds.

The tier set that Destruction Warlock got in Patch 11.1 is quite strong, but fully passive. It does not affect your gameplay at all and there’s no need to track anything.

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, but these are the top-performing trinkets for Destruction in 11.1.5:

Mug’s Moxie Jug

A passive critical strike chance proc that increases in strength over 15 seconds.

Eye of Kezan

A passive trinket that grants a stacking intellect buff during combat (up to 20 stacks). At max stacks, it instead deals fire damage rather than continuing to stack.

• Stacks fully over ~4 minutes, so it’s significantly stronger on longer encounters.
• When simming your own character, always make sure to sim the fight length of the boss you are currently progressing. Eye of Kezan isn’t always the best option.

Entropic Skardyn Core

A passive trinket that spawns purple void orbs around you and when they reach you they give a large intellect buff for 15 seconds. This trinket was recently significantly buffed when they changed the orbs to now chase you without you having to pick them up yourself. A very minor optimization you can do is if you already have the buff active, you can delay additional orbs by kiting them during instant-cast globals to maximize uptime of the buff.

Signet of the Priory

An on-use trinket with a 2 minute cooldown that increases your highest secondary stat for 20 seconds. It also gives other Signet users in your party a small buff of the same stat when you use it. Make sure to pair this with your Summon Infernal.

House of Cards

An on-use trinket with a 1.5 minute cooldown that increases your mastery for 15 seconds. As Destruction you would hold this for your next Summon Infernal as long as you’re not missing out on a use. Even though you would hold this trinket for 30 seconds it’s most of the time better than Signet of the Priory so make sure to sim it for your own character.

The best embellishments for Destruction Warlocks in 11.1.5 are Ascension on a weapon or off-hand and Writhing Armor Banding on a random cloth piece.

It’s advised to craft a weapon with Ascension first, either a staff or an off-hand if you believe you will get a mythic main hand soon.

After that you would craft a cloth piece with Writhing Armor Banding in a slot you haven’t looted yet. Bracers or Cloak 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.

Dinars

For Destruction Warlock, the best items to spend your Puzzling Cartel Chips (Dinars) on are as follows:

1. The Jastor Diamond
2. Mug’s Moxie Jug
3. Eye of Kezan

These are the 3 big items for Destruction. For your 4th option you can choose between either House of Cards, if you want more power during your cooldowns, or Entropic Skardyn Core, a strong passive option that outperforms Eye of Kezan on shorter fights (under 5 minutes) and multiple targets. Keep in mind that very strong raid trinkets like Eye of Kezan and House of Cards are often at risk of getting nerfed right before a new tier, so it’s a smart idea to hold on to a Dinar in case you need to pivot to the next best option.

Corruption

With the return of the (old) Corruption system in patch 11.1.5, the standout choice for Destruction is currently Void Ritual. Void Ritual gives your spells and abilities a chance to trigger a buff that increases all secondary stats, ramping in strength over 20 seconds.

While some other Corruption effects might sim well in pure single-target scenarios, Destruction generally favors consistent stat increases over raw damage procs - especially when more targets come into play.

Cyrce’s Circlet

The Cyrce’s Circlet from Siren Isle is still very good in 11.1.5. The only thing you’re replacing it with is a 678 ring with good stats or possibly a heroic The Jastor Diamond. But as always, make sure to sim this for your own character before making any decisions. The Citrines we use in every scenario are as follows:

• Stormbringer’s Runed Citrine
• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine
• Windsinger’s Runed Citrine