Reflections on Destruction Warlock in Dragonflight & War Within - An Editorial

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Destruction Warlock Writer, Loozy, offers a retrospective highlighting Destruction's journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec's next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

Destruction Retrospective & War Within Wishlist

Now that we are in the late stages of Dragonflight, we can sum up how the Destruction Warlock spec has performed during the various stages and seasons of the expansion. It's safe to say that Destruction has steadily been at the overall lower end when it comes to damage output performance. In this article, I will dive a little into why that is, and also give my input on how I think Destruction could be a stronger competitor for a spot in your group, whether it be for raids or dungeons.

Tier Sets

The season 1 set bonus was a flat damage increase to our current kit. It didn't require any change in talents, and the only special interaction was with the permanent extra damage to Chaos Bolt through its crit scaling:

• 2-Set: Consuming Soul Shards has a chance to grant you Chaos Maelstrom, increasing your critical strike chance by 10% for 10 sec.
• 4-Set: Your critical strikes deal 208% damage instead of the usual 200%.

This set bonus was a good pickup for any Destruction Warlock, and performed relatively well in both raids and Mythic+ content. We did not have to change talents or playstyle, but got a decent damage boost.

The season 2-set bonus introduced a new talent option to our kit, Channel Demonfire:

• 2-Set: Channel Demonfire bolts, Immolate, and Incinerate have a chance to fire an additional Demonfire bolt. These bolts deal 50% increased damage to their main target.
• 4-Set: Demonfire bolts increase your Fire damage by 1% for 13 sec, stacking up to 8 times. Gaining a stack does not refresh the duration. Casting Channel Demonfire resets this effect.

This set bonus changed our playstyle and actually made Destruction probably the strongest it's been in Dragonflight. We were strong on single-target in raids and had both good AoE and single-target damage in dungeons.

The season 3-set bonus yet again changed up our talent build; we now had to pick up Dimensional Rift:

• 2-Set: Bolts from Dimensional Rift now deal 25% of damage dealt to nearby enemies. Immolate periodic damage has a chance to grant a charge of Dimensional Rift.
• 4-Set: Dimensional Rift can now summon a powerful Flame Rift which blasts 20 Searing Bolts.

This set bonus has sparked a bit more controversy; Dimensional Rift shares a talent node with Chaos Incarnate which was one of our stronger talents. The bonus had to go through a lot of tuning and minor changes because, for a while, it looked like we might not even play Dimensional Rift in AoE situations.

These set bonuses have all been able to add a different type of damage or power to our kit, but in very different ways. When we have talents that force us to change our talent build to accommodate a talent that is significantly weaker than its counterparts, it's not always well received; especially when we're forced to opt out of one of the strongest talents we have. Compared to Season 2 and 3, Season 1 is the easier more approachable set bonus, albeit less exciting, when setting up our Destruction Warlock. This is also because of the Destruction talent tree, which actually offers a wide array of options, allowing us to specialize in various types of damage.

Talent Tree

The Destruction talent tree in Dragonflight has been quite flexible, allowing us to spread around talent points, buffing up various types of damage for whatever content we're aiming to do. There is a small issue when looking at a fully single-target setup, where we essentially have to "waste" talent points on talents that effectively do nothing on single-target, but these points can be put into nodes that work out well when any secondary target like an add is introduced. Destruction has historically been a super strong cleave damage dealer, and while this is still the case, it's definitely not to the same degree as it used to be. We can pick up talents that buff our Havoc, but with Havoc still dealing a reduced amount of damage to the secondary target, it's hard to see how we're going to dominate as strongly on two targets as we have done in the past.

The result of tier bonuses requiring specific talents means we're less free to choose how to path through our talent tree; we have to pick up talents like Channel Demonfire on the way, or we have to opt into Dimensional Rift over Chaos Incarnate. While it can be refreshing to get to play different setups throughout an expansion, I don't know if I agree that this is the best way to allow players to do that.

War Within Wishlist

We are now looking forward to the next expansion, and can already begin to think and wonder about how Destruction is going to develop. We have been at a healthy point for a very long time in WoW, but would always welcome some changes to the spec which would make our spec identity and damage profile more interesting. Destruction has only gotten minor tweaks and changes over a very long period of time, so it would be great to see some reworks to our kit, and maybe how our cooldowns or resources work.

I think some of the interesting changes for Destruction in The War Within could be:

1. Re-think interaction with demons for the spec. Destruction used to have special interactions for when we sacrificed a demon, making our own abilities stronger, and adding additional effects to core spells like Chaos Bolt. Destruction is a Warlock spec that by design deals its own damage, rather than controlling demons, like Demonology and Affliction.
2. Consider interactions with Summon Infernal. Summon Infernal has been a very strong cooldown for a long time, but we often end up dealing a very large portion of our damage during the period while it is up, and then deal very little damage outside of this. When this has been changed, it's ended up going in the opposite direction, making Summon Infernal feel more like a Soul Shard generator than an actual damage cooldown with an interaction with our rotation.
3. Any changes to the core setup of Destruction, while still keeping the idea of generating and spending a resource in large damage portions.

I hope to see some exciting news coming for Destruction in The War Within, it would definitely be welcome!

About the Author

This guide is written and maintained by Loozy who plays a Warlock in the guild FatSharkYes on Kazzak EU. They began playing Warlock during Siege of Orgrimmar and have been raiding actively ever since. They became involved in guide writing during Legion where they took part in starting the website Lock One Stop Shop, a website by Warlocks for Warlocks (currently outdated). You can catch them on their Twitter @LoozyWoW or on their Twitch stream.

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