Season of Discovery Destruction Warlock DPS Leveling

Destruction Warlocks nuke enemies down faster than most, if not all classes in the game thanks to the hard hitting Chaos Bolt Rune and all the Fire damage and crit you gain from not only your talents, but other Runes as well. Killing your targets is simple as well. Put up an Immolate and cast Incinerate, then one Chaos Bolt after so it can benefit from the 25% Fire damage buff from Incinerate. You can use Shadowburn to finish off your mob, or let Immolate or your demon finish off the mob, while you start nuking the next enemy down.

For this build all of your points will be mostly in the Destruction tree besides nine points that will go into the Demonology tree for Improved Imp, Blood Pact, Demonic Embrace, and Fel Intellect. The Imp does a ridiculous amount of damage so the three points and extra Intellect will be worth it.

As for the Destruction tree, start by putting five points into either Cataclysm or Improved Shadow Bolt. Cataclysm will give you some Mana back, while Improved Shadow Bolt is only helpful on AoE when you Shadow Bolt Volley. Which one you choose is up to you, however it is suggested to take Improved Shadow Bolt as Shadow Bolt Volley actually does solid damage in AoE and will be used often, even though you're largely using Fire spells.

Your next five points will go into Bane as this will reduce the cast time of your main DoT Immolate. Aftermath is only a chance at dazing and not worth it. After that put two points into Improved Firebolt to reduce the cast time of your Imps Firebolt, then put five points into Devastation to increase your chance to crit by 5%. The next point unlocks Shadowburn, which is used largely as either a finisher or for whenever you need to move during the encounter. This point is optional and can be put into any talent of your choice, this was just the highest DPS option and is amazing to finish the mob off.

The next two points go into Destructive Reach to simply increase the range of all your Destruction spells by 20%. After that get Ruin as this increases the damage of critical strikes by 100%. Then put five points into Improved Immolate to buff the initial damage of your Immolate. Then put five points into Emberstorm, which will buff all your Fire damage by 10% and is nice since all of your spells outside of Shadow Bolt Volley are Fire damage. Finish by placing your last point into Conflagrate.

• Head — Backdraft
• Bracers — Immolation Aura
• Gloves — Chaos Bolt
• Pants — Incinerate
• Chest — Demonic Tactics
• Belt — Grimoire of Synergy
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge
• Cloak — Soul Siphon
• Ring 1 — Shadow Specialization
• Ring 2 — Fire Specialization

While there are many options of Runes this phase, the ones above do the most damage and sim by far the highest if you plan to DPS as a Demonology Warlock. Incinerate is your bread and butter filler for Destruction and 100% mandatory. You'll be using this more than any other spell in your arsenal. This does great damage while also buffing your Fire damage by 25%.

While there are many great options for Chest Runes, Demonic Tactics is preferred for the 10% critical strike chance. Master Channeler is a great option to take if you'd prefer the self healing from Drain Life. The argument against this is mobs die far too fast to gain a lot of value from the Drain Life. Lake of Fire was nerfed and is not pretty much unplayable.

Chaos Bolt is the only option for Rune choice here. This is the hardest hitting spell in the game and should be kept on cooldown as much as possible, as long as you have your Fire buffs up.

Demonic Knowledge is another mandatory Rune for Destruction as this simply increases your spell damage by 10% of your current demons total Stamina and Intellect. For example, if your pet has 50 Stamina and 50 Intellect, that equates to a total of 100, therefore you would gain 10 spell damage. This is also buffed by Blessing of Kings. The other options in this rune slot are really weak and won't really ever be used. Shadow Flame is an AoE ability and Dance of the Wicked is a tanking Rune.

Grimoire of Synergy is the best option for belt Runes. This will give both you and your demon a 5% chance to buff the other by 25%. Shadow and Flame is the other option and isn't far behind if you choose to use it. The difference is you can get unlucky with your Grimoire procs and not get a proc since it's only a 5% chance to proc, whereas Shadow and Flame has amazing uptime since you crit quite often.

Immolation Aura is a new Rune introduced in Phase 3. This emits fire around you and deals AoE damage to all enemies around you, lasting until cancelled. The other Runes in this slot do not make any sense to use since Unstable Affliction is for Affliction and you do not want to use Summon Felguard since you will be using your Imp.

Backdraft is another new Rune introduced in Phase 3 and is amazing. This gives you 30% Spellcasting Haste after you Conflagrate for 10 seconds. Conflagrate is on a 10 second cooldown, meaning that you should have 30% Spellcasting Haste at 100% uptime.

Soul Siphon was drastically reworked and is now a good rune. This causes your Drain Soul to to deal damage 3 times faster and increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul spells by an additional 6% for each of your Warlock Shadow effects afflicting the target, up to a maximum of 18% additional effect. When Drain Soul is cast on a target below 20% health, it instead gains 50% per effect, up to a maximum of 150%. In addition, your Drain Soul can now trigger your Nightfall talent. This is great since you will have Drain Life on the target for a large portion of your leveling thanks to Master Channeler, making this rune a great one to use in the Cloak slot.

Ring runes were added in Phase 4 and the only two you need to worry about once you find them are Shadow Specialization and Fire Specialization, although as Affliction you won't be casting too many Fire Spells. These ring runes give you 6% hit to each school of magic.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Warlock.