Talent Builds
As it stands, Hellcaller is the preferred Hero Talent choice in most raid scenarios.
Diabolist is equal in ST, and can be useful in fights with stacked burst AoE due to Ruination.
For M+ both hero talents are viable.
Hellcaller (Single Target)
Hellcaller (Cleave)
Hellcaller (Mythic+)
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Hellcaller’s damage profile has changed substantially in M+ as Rain Of Fire is no longer capable of increasing the stack count of Wither.
Regardless, you still prioritize using Rain Of Fire as your spender when 5+ targets are available.
Diabolist (Single Target)
Diabolist (Cleave)
Diabolist (AoE)
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Diabolist in M+ primarily focuses on using Chaos Bolt for priority damage, but can use Rain Of Fire when there’s 5+ targets to hit.
Class Talents
The Warlock talent tree is fairly linear, though has a few talents you can exchange depending on the content you’re doing. To name a few examples, Blight Of Tongues or Blight Of Weakness can be very strong in M+ with an organized group, but has rarely seen use in a raiding environment.
Additionally, it is crucial to take Shadowfury and the following talent Oppressive Darkness for M+ so you can assist with stopping/stunning mobs, but many raid encounters will not see a use for these two talents.
For other talents, your comfort level should be considered when picking up these specific talents in comparison to the recommended talent builds: If you do not find yourself using Burning Rush often, or if you are not summoning your demon via Fel Domination a lot, you can talent out of Fiendish Stride and Fel Pact to pick up these talents.
Below are a few key Class Talent choices you should consider picking up, or consider when making the decision between two:
Soulburn
Soulburn is a very powerful and versatile utility spell that consumes a Soul Shard to empower your next cast of four specific spells. Here’s how it enhances each ability:
Demonic Circle: Teleport - Casting Soulburn before teleporting gives you a 50% movement speed boost and makes you immune to roots and snares, which includes slows, for 6 seconds. Casting an empowered Teleport which is buffed by Soulburn will remove movement-slowing effects, which is classified as snares, but it will not remove root effects.
In order to be immune to root effects, you must consume Soulburn and cast Demonic Circle: Teleport before being affected by the root to pre-immune the root effect. If you cast Demonic Circle: Teleport empowered by Soulburn after you’re affected by a root, you will still teleport to the location of your Demonic Circle, but you will still be rooted in place.
Please note that if you are playing Diabolist and talented into Soul-Etched Circles, you do not need to cast Soulburn before casting Demonic Circle: Teleport as you will always gain the benefit passively without casting Soulburn.
Demonic Gateway - Soulburn makes the cast of Demonic Gateway instant, allowing you to place a gateway quickly during combat. The Soul Shard cost is always outweighed by the value of avoiding a hard-cast.
A quick Soulburn > Gateway > Gateway Control Shard combo is a great tool for just getting around quickly yourself as a Warlock, such as moving to a soak mechanic that requires someone standing in it, or moving out of the raid with a debuff that causes AoE damage on expiration.
Performing this combo is even stronger when talented into Frequent Traveler, which enables use of a Demonic Gateway twice before receiving the debuff.
Drain Life - Soulburning before pressing Drain Life gives you a small absorb in addition to the healing. Drain Life is your last resort defensively, but when talented into Gorefiend's Avarice and Empowered Drain Life it becomes a powerful on demand option to save you in a pinch.
Healthstone - You should always Soulburn before using a Healthstone. This increases its healing by 30% and boosts your maximum health by 20% for 12 seconds. Combined with Pact Of Gluttony, this becomes one of the strongest defensive tools we have as a Warlock. Also note that Dark Pact scales with current health, so using Soulburn + Healthstone before Dark Pact enhances the shield even more.
Mortal Coil
Mortal Coil has two primary functions - The first is acting as a self-heal. When paired with the talent Improved Mortal Coil, Mortal Coil will heal for 25% of your health on a 45 second cooldown. Mortal Coil should be leveraged during movement and moments of significant damage intake.
The second function is crowd control, acting as a stop for mobs that are capable of being crowd controlled. This secondary function can be leveraged in all forms of content, but it is often best to use Mortal Coil for self-healing.
Strength of Will vs. Dark Accord
Dark Accord is generally stronger than Strength Of Will.
Unending Resolve is our primary damage reduction spell, as the other defensives still help with damage intake in the form of self-healing, increasing your max health, and absorption shields. These effects can be offset or consumed with other forms of damage in all content, whereas Unending Resolve’s is a true damage reduction for 8 seconds.
Dark Accord enables the use of Unending Resolve more often, which usually outweighs the extra 15% damage reduction gained from Strength Of Will.
This being said, always pay attention to how often Unending Resolve is being utilized, and if it is being cast more than 3 minutes apart, Strength of Will is the better option.
Swift Artifice
Swift Artifice is one of the most underrated class talent choices. With how much value Soulburn and Pact Of Gluttony give us with our own healthstones, it is not uncommon to use our Demonic Healthstone on cooldown every minute.
As a result, it is not uncommon to find yourself requiring more Demonic Healthstones mid-combat in raid or M+. I strongly suggest creating a keybind for Create Healthstone, as there are many opportunities to cast this spell in-combat to replenish on your own Demonic Healthstone.
Blight of Weakness + Blight of Tongues
Blight Of Weakness and Blight Of Tongues are empowered Curses on a long cooldown.
For the most part we use Blights in M+, where they serve as extremely powerful and pull-enabling tools. Blight Of Weakness is rather niche, greatly reducing attack speed of all mobs hit. It can serve as a simple tank defensive on big pulls or allow the tank to reset debuffs that are applied on-hit.
On the other hand Blight Of Tongues greatly increases cast time of all mobs hit, this allows dangerous pulls to be more easily controlled and serves as one of our strongest pieces of utility in M+.
Pact of Gluttony
Pact Of Gluttony is the one of the most valuable class talents and should always be talented. This turns our Healthstone into a Demonic Healthstone, which provides a significant healing increase and the ability to use our health stones multiple times in combat.
Paired with the previously mentioned talents Swift Artifice and Soulburn, you will often find that these three talents, when used together, can contribute to a majority of your survivability in moments of high damage intake in any encounter between M+ and raid.
Spec Talents
Much like the Warlock class tree, the Destruction specialization tree follows a fairly consistent path across all builds. This is generally a positive thing as it allows you to maintain a strong single target profile even when you’re specced into cleave or AoE-focused builds.
Havoc vs. Mayhem
One of these should be selected any time an additional target is present for a significant duration. If the encounter is single-target only, these talents should never be selected.
Mayhem is generally the preferred option due to it being passive and having a higher uptime, but Havoc can be taken instead when you cleave in a specific window, when the targets are too far apart for Mayhem to proc, or when there are two priority targets you specifically to hit instead of other mobs.
Shadowburn
Shadowburn is our most valuable spender in both single target and cleave scenarios, and as a general rule it should be used above Chaos Bolt in execute range or when it’s available through Fiendish Cruelty.
Soulfire
Soulfire should be pre-cast 4 seconds before the pull, and then used on cooldown as a mini CD. Keep in mind that it applies Immolate, but you will have to manually apply Immolate in between Soulfire casts.
Flashpoint
Flashpoint is a solid talent whenever enemies remain above 80% health for an extended period, or when frequent adds spawn that will live long enough to give you the buff.
With Flashpoint talented, you should prioritize applying Immolate (Or Wither if Hellcaller) to additional mobs as they spawn to have maximum uptime with Flashpoint, but keep in mind not every mob that spawns will stay above 80% to sometimes not even give you a stack of the buff.
Cataclysm + Channel Demonfire + Raging Demonfire
As mentioned in the talents section, this trio is excellent for maintaining Immolate (Or Wither if Hellcaller) in mass AoE.
After applying Immolate (Or Wither if Hellcaller) via Cataclysm, one or two casts of Channel Demonfire should be enough to extend them until the next Cataclysm comes off cooldown, removing the need to reapply them manually.
In cleave scenarios this trio is unnecessary, as we can maintain Immolate via Roaring Blaze and tab-targeting.
Apex Talents
The first rank of Embers Of Nihilam causes casts of Incinerate to have a chance to trigger an Echo of Sargeras, which does AoE damage to your target and enemies around your target.
The second and third rank grants both 8% Haste and 8% Crit, 4% per rank.
The fourth and final rank allows casts of Chaos Bolt, Shadowburn, and Rain Of Fire to trigger an Echo Of Sargeras at 50%, 50%, and 60% effectiveness respectively.
As of Patch 12.1, our Tier Set 4 Piece Bonus also enables Embers of Nihilam to debuff the targets damaged by Echo Of Sargeras, increasing damage dealt to those targets by 6% for 6 seconds.
Hero Talents
Currently, Hellcaller is the superior spec for single-target encounters, with Diabolist not trailing behind too much. When cleave is introduced into the mix, Diabolist starts to pull ahead of Hellcaller and is performing better in AoE scenarios. This is subject to change based on tuning and fight design.
Hellcaller has been changed significantly in 12.1 - Rain Of Fire no longer increases stack count of Wither, and spending Soul Shards only increases the stack count of Wither on your primary target. Additionally, targets who are affected by Havoc do not have their stack counts increase either.
Despite this, Malevolence is still a strong cooldown for single target, spread cleave, and AoE scenarios, and Curse Of The Satyr is a strong curse, especially when paired with Foul Mouth. This also enables us to de-select Curse Of Tongues which frees up a talent point.
Diabolist is not as impactful when it comes to spread cleave scenarios, but is still very well rounded for every form of content it is put in. Diabolist focuses more on casting Chaos Bolt even in AoE situations, but can still provide a massive AoE with Ruination, and often shines where Hellcaller does not. Hellcaller requires targets to live for a while to get full value out of Wither and the associated stacks ticking down when Malvolence is activated, though Diabolist can easily handle mobs that don’t stay alive long with its associated burst.
Regarding utility, Soul-Etched Circles provides the full benefit of Demonic Circle: Teleport being empowered via Soulburn without requiring Soulburn being cast, and can help get out of situations that were originally unplanned.
Hellcaller
Hellcaller replaces Immolate with Wither, a powerful instant cast DoT that accounts for a large portion of Hellcaller Destruction’s overall damage. Additionally, Hellcaller grants us an additional cooldown called Malevolence.
Malevolence - Timing and Optimization
Malevolence is Hellcaller’s 1-minute cooldown, granting 8% haste and empowering all active Withers. Because of this interaction, it’s important to apply Wither to all relevant targets before activating Malevolence.
When using Cataclysm to apply Wither, there’s a slight delay before those Withers can be empowered. To counter this, make sure to always cast another spell in between Cataclysm and Malevolence, but preferably not a Soul Shard spending ability. You want to save your Soul Shards for when you are in your Malevolence window.
Blackened Soul - Maximizing Value
Blackened Soul has been redesigned in Patch 12.1. Spending Soul Shards still increases the stack count of Wither, but now only on the primary target. Additionally, Rain Of Fire no longer increases the stack count of Wither. A secondary mob debuffed by Havoc or Mayhem will not have their stack count increased either.
While Wither does not stack on every mob based on your Soul Shard spending abilities, maximum value of Blackened Soul can still be achieved by prioritizing Shadowburn procs via Fiendish Cruelty, casting Shadowburn when your target is in execute range, and spending as many Soul Shards as possible during Malevolence.
Diabolist
Diabolist grants access to Diabolic Ritual which makes it so when you cast Chaos Bolt, Rain Of Fire or Shadowburn a 20 second timer starts. If that timer was already present it’s duration is instead reduced by 2 seconds.
When a Diabolic Ritual ends you gain Demonic Art, which empowers your next cast of Chaos Bolt, Rain Of Fire or Shadowburn to summon a powerful demon in a fixed cycle:
- Overlord - Cleaves enemies and applies a 5% increased damage taken debuff to those hit for 15 seconds.
- Mother of Chaos - Cleaves and empowers your next Incinerate to become Infernal Bolt, which generates 2 full Soul Shards.
- Pit Lord - Cleaves and empowers your next Chaos Bolt to become Ruination, which is free to cast and deals massive AoE damage.
It is important to spend Demonic Art procs quickly to begin your next Diabolic Ritual.
Touch of Rancora - Optimizing Demonic Art
Touch of Rancora amplifies your Demonic Art casts by increasing their damage and reducing their cast time. Because of this, it’s highly recommended to spend Demonic Art procs on Chaos Bolt rather than Shadowburn.