PvE Destruction Warlock DPS Guide

Destruction Warlock DPS Guide

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Gear & Best In Slot (BiS)

Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

Welcome to the Destruction Warlock DPS guide for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic. In this guide, you will learn how to play a Destruction Warlock and how to maximize your efficiency in dungeons, heroics and raids. Destruction is the optimal specialization for Warlocks after Phase 2 is released. This guide includes BiS Gear, gems, enchantments, and gameplay and spell rotation tips. 

Best Races

For both Horde and Alliance, players have the choice between a few different races to play a Warlock. Some of these races have notable perks. 

Horde

• Orc: The benefit to playing an Orc Warlock is Command, which increases pet damage by 5%. As a Destruction Warlock, we are going to be sacrificing our pets, so this is not beneficial to our raid DPS. Blood Fury, on the other hand, increases our spell damage while reducing healing done to us for a brief time. 
• Undead: In PvP, Will of the Forsaken is a strong ability that breaks charm, fear and sleep crowd control abilities which can quickly give you an advantage in arenas. This is useful for Warlocks in general, but does not help in endgame DPS roles. 
• Blood Elf: Arcane Torrent offers players the ability to silence all mobs within 8 yards for 2 seconds on a 2-minute cooldown. This also restores a certain amount of mana based on how many charges of Mana Tap you currently have.

Alliance

• Gnome: Because intellect is one of the top priority stats for Warlocks, Gnomes are a popular choice due to Expansive Mind, which grants an overall 5% increase to intelligence. Escape Artist is a valuable tool especially for a cloth wearing class which breaks immobilization and movement speed reduction effects. 
• Human: One major benefit to choosing a Human for any class is Diplomacy, which increases reputation gains by 10%. Grinding reputation is going to be a big part of The Burning Crusade to complete attunements by obtaining the keys to unlock heroic dungeons, get recipes for your professions, and get other special items like mounts. Some BiS gear comes from reputation, as well.

Best Professions

Tailoring: Tailoring is a great choice for Warlocks in TBC Classic because of a handful of strong Bind-on-Pickup (BoP) items that become available throughout the different phases of the game. Because Warlocks can only wear cloth armor, anything you make is usable. In early phases of TBC Classic, you will save a decent amount of gold being able to craft your own armor as well. 

A new level 70 Warlock will want to craft the Spellstrike or Shadow’s Embrace sets to boost fire and shadow damage. Tailors are able to craft bags specifically designed to carry your Soul Shards like Felcloth Bag, which is a unique bag only Warlocks can equip. Tailoring is usually paired with enchanting. 

Enchanting: Enchanting can be an expensive profession to level, but it can be just as rewarding in the long run.  Many enchanting recipes in early TBC endgame will be highly sought after (especially to those first to come by them) and therefore quite profitable, especially because a lot of our early gear will be purchased or crafted, this is nothing to quaff at. 

We now have enchants that are exclusive to high-level enchanters. These enchants are placed on your own rings. Note: Unlike in the original TBC expansion, Enchanters can no longer enchant their rings, unlearn the profession, and continue to benefit from those two enchants unless they level up enchanting again.

Alchemy/Herbalism: As Warlocks, we are going to use a fair amount of consumables. Notably, we want to be using Flask of Pure Death as much as possible to stay competitive on the meters. It is of great benefit to be making your own potions and flasks to be able to save on purchasing them from the Auction House, and to profit off the rest of the population’s needs, especially towards the beginnings of each phase as new content is released. 

As a Herbalist, Warlocks do not have as much advantage as Druids and Rogues for accessing nodes, but we do have some tactics. It is great to have the option to fear nearby monsters (or players) to pick a herb, or use our pet to keep a mob busy on the side while we pick it. Alone, Herbalism can still be reasonably profitable. 

Jewelcrafting: The greatest benefit to being a Jewelcrafter is going to be access to unique and powerful gems. An important note would be that each gem is unique, so you cannot have two of the same gems equipped at the same time. An example of these gems is Falling Star.

As a Jewelcrafter, we also have access to crafted trinkets, particularly Figurine – Living Ruby Serpent. This is a great option for Warlocks in Phase One, especially if you don’t need the trinket slot to achieve hit cap. 

Engineering: Back on Azeroth, Engineering ruled in PvE content thanks to sappers and grenades to use in between other abilities or in specialized situations. Engineering can be used to craft certain high-level items that are unique to that profession. Beginning in Phase 2, we’re able to craft Destruction Holo-Gogs.You can also craft items like Dense Dynamite, Adamantine Grenade and if you’re feeling rather festive, you can craft different variations of Blue Firework.

Leatherworking: Leatherworking provides players the opportunity to craft items like Drums of Battle, which increases each party member’s haste rating significantly. However, unlike in the original TBC, we’re unable to constantly activate these to ensure maximum uptime, thanks to a 2-minute debuff placed on all players affected. For anything beyond damage bonuses, being a leatherworker does not benefit Warlocks. 

Blacksmithing: There is no benefit for Warlocks to become a Blacksmith. 

Mining: Mining is reasonably profitable for any class, especially to sell ore for Jewelcrafters to Prospect. 

Skinning: Skinning can be profitable, but is not suggested unless paired with leatherworking.