Destruction Warlock Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Rotation

In general your goal is to maintain wither / immolate on as many targets as possible without overcapping shards.

Chaos bolt / shadowburn are your single target spenders and rain of fire is your AoE spender.

Always prioritize shadowburn over chaos bolt if you have charges available.

Rain of fire becomes better overall damage when 5 or more targets will remain in the rain of fire for the entire duration (4 with inferno talented). However, this will lead to a loss in priority damage, so if a particular mob has more health than the rest or needs to die faster than the others, then chaos bolt or shadowburn is recommended when around the 5-6 target count range.

Maintaining wither / immolate is quite easy in both ST and AOE settings with cataclysm, channel demonfire and soulfire.

• In AOE the gameplay loop to maintain wither/immolate on all targets is Cataclysm > channel demonfire and when channel demonfire becomes available again you use it immediately. This will maintain wither/immolate long enough that your cataclysm becomes available again.
• In Single target, it is even easier with the use of soulfire and soulfire resets from Decimation.

Opener

1. Precast Soulfire
2. Conflagration
3. Chaos Bolt / Shadowburn (always prioritize shadowburn over chaos bolt provided you have charges of shadowburn available)
4. Channel demonfire (if talented)
5. Malevolence (if hellcaller)
6. Infernal

After infernal has been used, the gameplay changes to a priority system based on soul conduit procs/shard generation:

1. Chaos bolt/shadowburn if shards allow
2. Maintain Roaring blaze with conflag charges
3. Spend soulfire resets
4. Channel demonfire on cooldown (if talented)
5. Incinerate to generate shards

Not capping shards is the highest priority, meaning if you get a soulfire reset but during the cast of soulfire you are going to go above the 5 shard limit, then chaos bolt / shadowburn takes priority over soulfire.

Multi Target

1. Cataclysm
2. Conflag
3. Channel Demonfire (if talented)
4. Malevolence (if talented)
5. Infernal

After infernal has been used, the priority system is the same as for single target, but with the use of rain of fire instead of chaos bolt depending on how many targets are active.

1. Chaos bolt/shadowburn or rain of fire depending on target count
2. Maintain Roaring blaze with conflag charges
3. Spend soulfire resets
4. Channel demonfire on cooldown
5. Incinerate to generate shards

Not capping shards is the highest priority, meaning if you get a soulfire reset but during the cast of soulfire you are going to go above the 5 shard limit, then chaos bolt / shadowburn or rain of fire takes priority over soulfire.

Havoc can be used in 2 different ways. Either havoc is used to do damage to a second priority target, or havoc can be used to generate more shards with conflags/incinerates if the target count is large or there are 0-1 priority targets.

Playstyle

Overall Destruction Warlock is a quite simple spec to play at a high level. The punishment for doing an incorrect global is quite low and therefore easy to pick up and do well with as a new player.

General Playstyle

Overcapping shards is the biggest thing that can go wrong for new players. There aren't many tips I can give to new players who are overcapping on shards other than to not do it. Spending shards is your highest priority when it comes to Destro Warlock.

Maintaining wither/immolate on as many targets as possible is much easier than it was in previous expansions thanks to all the tools available to apply and extend DoTs in AoE such as cataclysm and channel demonfire.

Cooldown Usage

Generally using infernal and malevolence (if hellcaller) on cooldown is going to be the best for damage output. These cooldowns are 2 minutes and 1 minute respectively, leading to a natural sync for every infernal and every other malevolence.

There are times where holding an infernal or a malevolence is better, depending on fight duration or fight phasing where damage is more relevant, or in M+ when you are finishing an easy pull and about to go into a hard pull where you need cooldowns.

Defensives

Warlock is one of the most passively tanky classes in the game currently with soul leech/fel armour, as well as bonus health from the class tree.

Despite having a lot of passive tankiness, warlock also has very powerful defensive cooldowns of Dark Pact and Unending Resolve, with a 1 minute and 3 minute cooldown respectively. These abilities give warlock the ability to tank a lot of mechanics other classes simply cannot. Both of these cooldowns are extremely powerful for both living 1 shot mechanics and high damage intake moments in both raid and mythic+.

Mortal coil is another defensive cooldown that can be used as a pseudo health pot, as it restores 15% of your health, and is on a 45 second cooldown.