Destruction Warlock Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Rotation:

The general goal with the Destruction rotation is to maintain Immolate (or Wither) on as many targets as possible without overcapping on Soul Shards.

In single target you will spend your Soul Shards on Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn, and in AoE scenarios you will replace those with Rain of Fire.

There’s more to this but as a general rule you can think:

1-2 targets - Chaos Bolt/Shadowburn

1-3 targets during Havoc - Chaos Bolt/Shadowburn

3+ targets - Rain of Fire

Since Withers stack up based on how many times you spend Soul Shards, you still want to use Shadowburn on high target counts during Malevolence. It’s currently advised to keep pressing Shadowburn on up to 10 targets during Malevolence as long as they will live for the duration of Blackened Soul.

Remember that what spender you use heavily relies on what situation you’re in and not just how many targets are present. If you have a big priority mob or a boss, Chaos Bolt becomes better, if the mobs are constantly moving around Rain of Fire loses value etc.

Maintaining Immolate (or Wither)

In single target, Immolate (or Wither) is mostly kept up by just pressing Soulfire when Decimation procs. If you don’t get a Soulfire reset in time you would refresh it with Cataclysm or a manual Immolate (or Wither) cast. It’s currently DPS neutral to cast Cataclysm on CD so if a group of mobs will ever appear during the encounter, you want to make sure Cataclysm is ready for that.

Single-Target

Opener

1. Precast Soulfire 4 seconds before the pull
2. Summon Infernal
3. Shadowburn
4. Conflagrate
5. Malevolence, on-use trinket, racial and potion
6. Shadowburn
7. Conflagrate
8. Chaos Bolt

After this, the rotation changes to a simple priority system:

1. Maintain Immolate (or Wither)
2. Cast Shadowburn if you are capping on Soul Shards or if you have 2 charges
3. Cast Chaos Bolt if you are capping on Soul Shards
4. Cast Conflagrate to keep up Roaring Blaze or if you have 2 charges
5. Cast Soulfire if you have a Decimation proc and Roaring Blaze is present on the target
6. Cast Shadowburn to maintain Eradication
7. Cast Chaos Bolt to maintain Eradication
8. Cast Soulfire with a Backdraft
9. Cast Conflagrate to generate Soul Shards
10. Cast Incinerate to generate Soul Shards

Some additional notes

Try to space out your Conflagrations to maximize Roaring Blaze uptime and try to spend Backdrafts on long casts such as Chaos Bolt where possible.

Try to maintain as close to 100% uptime on Eradication you can by spacing out Chaos Bolts and Shadowburns without risking capping on Soul Shards.

Try to consume Demonic Art procs with Chaos Bolt.

Cleave (2-3 targets)

Opener

1. Precast Cataclysm 1 second before the pull
2. Apply Immolate (or Wither) to any other targets present
3. Summon Infernal
4. Shadowburn
5. Conflagrate
6. Malevolence, on-use trinket, racial and potion
7. Havoc on a secondary target
8. Shadowburn
9. Conflagrate
10. Chaos Bolt

After this, just like in single-target, the priority changes to a simple priority system:

1. Maintain Immolate (or Wither) on all targets
2. Cast Havoc on a secondary target
3. Cast Shadowburn if you are capping on Soul Shards or if you have 2 charges
4. Cast Chaos Bolt if you are capping on Soul Shards
5. Cast Conflagrate to keep up Roaring Blaze or if you have 2 charges
6. Cast Soulfire if you have a Decimation proc and Roaring Blaze is present on the target
7. Cast Shadowburn to maintain Eradication
8. Cast Chaos Bolt to maintain Eradication
9. Cast Soulfire with a Backdraft
10. Cast Conflagrate to generate Soul Shards
11. Cast Incinerate to generate Soul Shards

Havoc can be used in two different ways. Either to do bonus damage or to generate extra Soul Shards for more priority damage. This would affect what spells you prioritize inside of Havoc. If you want to do damage to both targets you would want to enter Havoc on high Soul Shards and prioritize Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn. If you want to use Havoc to funnel more damage into your main target, you would want to enter Havoc on low Soul Shards and prioritize builders like Incinerate, as long as you’re not capping on Soul Shards of course.

AoE (3+ targets)

Opener

1. Precast Cataclysm 1 second before the pull
2. Apply Immolate (or Wither) to any targets you didn’t hit with Cataclysm
3. Summon Infernal
4. Channel Demonfire (if specced into it)
5. Malevolence, on-use trinket, racial and potion
6. Rain of Fire
7. Havoc
8. Rain of Fire

At any point during your AoE opener if you were to reach 5 Soul Shards you should cast a Rain of Fire. Havoc should be applied to any target that will live for its full duration that is not your main target, just to increase your Soul Shard generation from Incinerate and Conflagrate. After this the rotation becomes a simple priority system:

1. Maintain Immolate (or Wither) on all targets that will live for more than ~10 seconds
2. Cast Rain of Fire if you’re capping on Soul Shards
3. Cast Channel Demonfire (if talented)
4. Cast Cataclysm if you don’t need to hold for a new pack
5. Cast Shadowburn if you can snipe something that will die within 5 seconds
6. Cast Soulfire with Decimation to generate Soul Shards
7. Cast Conflagrate to generate Soul Shards
8. Cast Incinerate to generate Soul Shards

Cooldown Usage

Destruction Warlock cooldown usage is very straight forward. Summon Infernal has a 2 minute cooldown and Malevolence a 1 minute, which makes them naturally line-up every other Malevolence. Generally you want to send your cooldowns on CD unless you’re holding for something specific in a raid encounter or if the pack in Mythic+ is about to die.

I suggest looking up when and how other Destruction Warlocks are using their cooldowns on Warcraftlogs.com and make a personal plan for yourself depending on how your guild plays a specific encounter.

Defensives

Warlock is one of the most tanky classes in the game. We have a large amount of passive mitigation through Soul Leech, Fel Armor, and Soul Link coupled with increased max health from Demonic Embrace and Demonic Fortitude. Other than those we have four active spells that will help us survive:

Unending Resolve

Unending Resolve, also known as our “wall”, provides 25% damage reduction and immunity to interrupt, silence and pushback effects for 8 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown. This can be further enhanced to either 40% DR with Strength of Will or reduced cooldown with Dark Accord and Resolute Barrier.

Dark Pact

Dark Pact sacrifices 20% of our current health to shield for 200% of that amount on a 60 second cooldown. You can further enhance this by either talenting into Ichor of Devils which makes Dark Pact only sacrifice 5% of your current health for the same shield value or by talenting into Frequent Donor which reduces the cooldown by 15 seconds. Since Dark Pact scales off of current health it should ideally always be used at high health before you take damage.

Mortal Coil

Heals you for 20% of your maximum health on a 45 second cooldown, should be viewed as a mini Healthstone. Remember that you might have to move in closer to the target in order to use it since it has shorter range than the rest of your abilities.

Demonic Healthstone

Even though every class has the ability to use a Healthstone, you as a Warlock should view them a bit differently. They heal you personally a lot more thanks to Pact of Gluttony and Sweet Souls, and with Pact of Gluttony they have a 60 second cooldown during combat, which allows you to use several of them during an encounter. A big part of increasing your survivability as a Warlock is learning to use these frequently whenever you are in danger. Whenever you use your last one during an encounter you should cast Create Healthstone to refill.