Due to the immense amount of requests for a Destruction PvP Guide, i decided to give my insight on Destruction so some people might learn a thing or two.
Important: I wrote this guide within 1 hour, dont be angry if there is something lacking. Might add more later. If you got questions, ask them. Trying to keep this updated.
Content:
IntroductionSituation of Warlock and DestructionTalentsAzeriteStatsCompsGameplayPositioning Tips and TricksIntroduction
Hello all,
My name is Aritros, I play Warlock since WotLk, I achieved multiple Rank one Titles and Gladiators on Warlock while playing several tournaments with my highlights being EU Regionals 2017 and competing on Blizzcon 2017 right after that.
Situation of Warlock and Destruction
First of all I need to say: Right now the state of Warlock is not that great. Warlocks lack defensives and some even some damage, so you HEAVILY rely on your mates.
Destruction is known for high burst spikes while having decent sustained, paired with good amounts of control. Yet due to having to hardcast almost everything, certain matchups like Melee Cleaves or Rshaman/Ele/X can be a true nightmare to play against.
Another issue is the limited amount of Mana, Fear costs alot of Mana so you are not allowed to spam Fear.
Talents
Level 15 - Flashover
The first row is an easy choice, you always take Flashover. The damage support from Eradication and the damage from Soul Fire are simply too low. (Although you can split Soul Fire with Havoc)
Level 30 - Reverse Entropy:
The second row is clear aswell, due to low amounts of haste on your gear right now, Reverse Entropy is your to-go choice here. The buff grants you 15% and got a really high uptime.
Level 45 - Defensives
This Tier is more of a preference, yet Burning Rush it not an option. Whether you decice to play Demon Skin or Dark Pact is a preference, I personally prefer having a sustained flow of absorb shields with Demon Skin.
Level 60 - Cleave
Inferno does not procc often enough, Fire and Brimstone does not enough damage, so Cataclysm is the choice. Cataclysm provides decent amounts of burst by critting up to 20k and applying Immolate. It can also be used to cleave people behind pillars, reapply Immolate or soak Interrupts (since it does not lock the Chaos school).
Level 75 - Darkfury, Coil, Port
The choice here is either Mortal Coil or Demonic Circle, both are equally good, depending on the matchup. If you are up against a Melee Team or a Warrior, you usually take Port, otherwise Coil.
Level 90 - Supremacy vs. Roaring Blaze
Grimoire of Sacrifice is not an option due to losing your pet (which greatly limits your utility since you cannot Interrupt targets behind pillars or when stunned).
Roaring Blaze can be decent when you know EXACTLY that you wont get a SINGLE bolt off, but that is barely the case. I personally played it only 2 or 3 times this season.
Grimoire of Supremacy is the best choice here, it is also your main burst cooldown. When you are left alone with Infernal up, you can stack your Chaos Bolt to 60-80k damage. (I will explain more about this playstyle later)
Level 100 - Dark Soul vs. Channel Demonfire
Channel Demonfire provides a decent amount of both single target and cleave pressure, yet Dark Soul is better since it provides a guaranteed damage Increase to Chaos Bolts. Attention: Channel Demonfire can break CC really easy since it cleaves all the time.
PVP TALENTS:
Focused Chaos is a must, in Non-mage comps the Root Talent aswell. The last is kinda open, i prefer either Cremation or Spell Reflect.
Azerite - Which items do i take?
The best Trait to stack right now is Flashpoint. Flashpoint increases your haste by a significant amount when your Immolate damages a target above 80% health, which is basically always the case.
If you have a certain amount of haste on your gear and with other Proccs as from Overwhelming Power (should also pick that if available) and your Reverse Entropy Talent, you can push your cast times by an insane amount. In my case Fear takes only 1 second to cast, Incinerate is 0.8 or 0.9 depending on the proccs.
Stats
The stats for Destruction Warlock right now are:
Int > Haste > Mastery > Crit > Versatility.
Haste speeds up your entire gameplay, making casts faster and globals shorter. Mastery boosts both your damage (extra % on damage per spell) and defensives, since Destruction's Mastery is a flat damage reduction. Crit improves your Shard generation and Chaos Bolt damage, Versa is not a good stat at all for Destro.
Comps
Right now Warlock is in a bad state, you need to play either with a Frost Mage or a good hybrid like Feral Druid. The best comp so far is Holy Paladin/Feral/Destro (FLP) and Frost Mage/ Rshaman/Destro (MLS). You can also easily play Mage Lock with a Paladin or a Druid. Feral Lock with a non-Paladin is a bit more difficult, the second best healer choice is a Resto Shaman (FLS). Comps right now for Warlocks are really limited. I give a short insight on the best two onces below.
Comp Strat: FLP
FLP got an insane amount of CC with Hoj, Rep, and Fear being on different Dr's. The usual strat is to CC the enemy healer while stopping CC on your own. In Addition to that the Feral got really good off-healing. Important is that you communicate with your Healer who uses a Cooldown, A CD overlap (e.g. Sac + Wall) usually loses you the game. If you are on voice, you can e.g. make clear who uses a CD by letting your healer manage your teams defensives (aka Dont use wall unless your healer tells you to). You can also Survive entire CC Chains by just kiting and letting your feral offheal.
Comp Strat: MLS
MLS is a solid comp, the ultimate strat especially vs Melee teams is to not let the enemies touch you. Frost Mage got the best slows in the game to support, you play Port in almost any match since Coil Dr's with Mage's Polymorph. This strat can sometimes result in 20 sec kiting the melees around pillars and then doing damage for 8-10 seconds and then run away once more, but thats how Warlock is right now. MLS got a really powerful amount of CC, probably one of the best ingame with Polymorph and Fear being really long and not Dr'ing each other. If you do it right you can put many matches into a 3v1 for a certain amount of time. Grimoire of Supremacy is really good in this comp due to slow moving enemies giving you alot of free room to cast.
A good play is also (when enemies just stay behind the pillar) to combine Mage's Frozen Orb, your Shadowfury and then Cataclysm for some heavy cleave pressure.
Overall Gameplay
Warlock gameplay right now is alot about kiting. Melee teams are usually the greatest struggle, Warlock can't live on its own. You either need someone with strong offheals when your Healer is CCd (Feral) or you need good support from e.g. a Frost Mage with Polymorphs and 65-85% slows.
Positioning
Positioning is really Important right now, the correct positioning of Gate and Portal decides about life and death. You need to put your port always close to your gate so you can do the Port+Gate combination in the worst case.
Basically just put your port down at the pillar where your healer is OR in line to your healer, but also at a Pillar. (great help i know hehe)
Blade's Edge is a special case. Besides the usual Portal upstairs you can now since BFA make your gateway from the lower level to the top of the bridge (not on the ramp, from the lower floor to the edge of the bridge). Majority of Melees can't follow that. Same goes for Mugambala.
Tips and Tricks:
You can Poly (MLS) and Fear (you) a BM Hunter's Pet to reduce damage by alot, especially on Bestial WrathInfernal -> Shadowfury provides some great control To kite a Warrior properly, just force him to use Charge, into port. Majority of Warriors will just Leap to you and now you Gate. If the Warrior is also slowed, you got a lot of time to deal damage on him now.If you want to go offensively with your Infernal, use it with 4 Shards so you have a global for Dark Soul. By doing that the first Shard wave of Infernal fills the 5th Shard.Can i watch you play somewhere?
-> twitch.tv/aritros1
Questions? Ask.
Have a nice day
2 Likes
Yeah Aritros! Thanks for the input! Thumbs up.
What are your justifications for passing up on crashing chaos? I feel like the damage is invaluable during the burst, especially since it gets even better with grim of supremacy and dark soul.
Crashing Chaos is nerfed in PvP, it does like 550 damage per Trait. A lot of teams shut you down during infernal by either lining, stunning or interrupting. That makes the trait kinda wasted since it got a limited amount of time to be used.
Might be good on lower ratings where people dont know what Infernal does, but as soon as you reach higher ratings the trait becomes worse and worse.
This is great, thank you for sharing this.
I have added you on twitch as well. :)
Nice guide destro brother! I have to try stacking flashpoint also as laser matrix got nerfed hard. Destro wwls works pretty well even after RSK nerf.
Crashing Chaos is nerfed in PvP, it does like 550 damage per Trait. A lot of teams shut you down during infernal by either lining, stunning or interrupting. That makes the trait kinda wasted since it got a limited amount of time to be used.
Might be good on lower ratings where people dont know what Infernal does, but as soon as you reach higher ratings the trait becomes worse and worse.
I was not aware that it was nerfed by that big of an amount.
Is that the case with chaotic inferno as well then?
I was not aware that it was nerfed by that big of an amount.
Is that the case with chaotic inferno as well then?
Think so, you can also see it when you inspect your Items in Arena.
Hey.
First of all its a great guide. I want to ask a couple of questions and am curious about your opinion on them;
1) Do you think Azerite traits such as Gutripper and Thunderous Blast are decent in PvP? Sometimes opponent composition will just make sure we do not cast a single Chaos Bolt and most of the time they succeed. But Gutripper and Thunderous Blast will just keep hitting them even when we are moving around, spamming Conflagrates.
2)Isn't it better to pick Shadowburn instead of Reverse Entropy? Let alone in PvP, Reverse Entropy is hard to time even in PvE. We don't know when it will pop and it may just go to waste.
Meanwhile Shadowburn, although totally trash in PvE, does decent damage in PvP. It also saves us from casting Incinirate for Soul Shard accumulation. And Shadownburn too will trigger Gutripper and Thunderous Bolt.
3)With both Conflagrate and Shadowburn, do you think Grimoire of Sacrifice would put out a good amount of DPS? I feel like Supremacy is really useless because whenever i pop Infernal they just pop defensive CDs and either tank my Chaos Bolts or at worst they just CC me or sometimes, even kill the Infernal itself very quickly.
Thanks in advance.
Heya,
1) Do you think Azerite traits such as Gutripper and Thunderous Blast are decent in PvP? Sometimes opponent composition will just make sure we do not cast a single Chaos Bolt and most of the time they succeed. But Gutripper and Thunderous Blast will just keep hitting them even when we are moving around, spamming Conflagrates.
They are decent for speccs like SP, would still choose Flashpoint over it since it directly influences your gameplay.
2)Isn't it better to pick Shadowburn instead of Reverse Entropy? Let alone in PvP, Reverse Entropy is hard to time even in PvE. We don't know when it will pop and it may just go to waste.
Shadowburn does trash damage imo (3k is not insane).
We don't know when it will pop and it may just go to waste.
Uptime from Reversed Entropy is pretty good, id say like 70-80% of a match.
With both Conflagrate and Shadowburn, do you think Grimoire of Sacrifice would put out a good amount of DPS?
As Affliction its a decent choice, i would not play it as destro. Also it is a utility question, due to low amount of defensives you need to be able to stop a CC at any time, when you are CC'd you can't CS. Even with Shadowburn.
thank you for your effort put into this guide , was a nice read. i knew a lot of this but your comment about gateway on blades edge and how it now can be used onto the bridge without pathing was SUPER useful to learn !
Amazing guide! Never played destro in arena before, and wow it feels really good with frost mage.
Really wish to have mortal coild and TP ^(
After looking it up; it would seem that chaotic inferno is not nerfed in arenas and remains exactly the same as it does in every other scenario.
So overall I'd say that if you had to chose between that and crashing chaos, CI is prefered!
Although flashpoint seems to reign supreme in either case. Just wanted to add that in.
Is it worth giving up like 30 iLvL just to get the flashpoint trait, though? Is it that crazy valueable? And do you know if it has diminishing returns if you stack it?
Destruction
Conflagrate, Incinerate, and Immolate damage all increased by 10%.
Destruction
Accelerant duration increased to 12 seconds (was 8 seconds).
Crashing Chaos damage stays like it was in pvp.
Rolling Havoc duration increased to 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).
What are our best pvp traits now? : )
Hello once more,
So overall I'd say that if you had to chose between that and crashing chaos, CI is prefered!
The % chance from CI does not stack (just wanted to add that).
Is it worth giving up like 30 iLvL just to get the flashpoint trait, though? Is it that crazy valueable? And do you know if it has diminishing returns if you stack it?
Difficult Situation. What Traits you got on the other item? In general I'd say Traits > Itemlevel since traits massively influence your gameplay. (Except the Azerite Item is 325 or worse)
And do you know if it has diminishing returns if you stack it?
Some Traits diminish, I dont think that Flashpoint does. At least with 2 stacked.
25/09/2018 08:26Posted by
Zêra What are our best pvp traits now? : )
Still 2/3 Flashpoint. Third one can be filled with e.g. Chaotic Inferno.
25/09/2018 08:26Posted by
Zêra Rolling Havoc duration increased to 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).
This could become very interesting with 3/3 stacked and a Shadowburn build to push your intellect for maybe two big Bolts.
MLS is a solid comp, the ultimate strat especially vs Melee teams is to not let the enemies touch you.
This strat can sometimes result in 20 sec kiting the melees around pillars and then doing damage for 8-10 seconds and then run away once more
i didnt know warlock were playing only against brainless people... God i despise these "guide" and their so-called "strat"
Please ignore the unconstructive comment above. People do appreciate your info, myself included.
25/09/2018 16:43Posted by
Fahrin MLS is a solid comp, the ultimate strat especially vs Melee teams is to not let the enemies touch you.
This strat can sometimes result in 20 sec kiting the melees around pillars and then doing damage for 8-10 seconds and then run away once more
i didnt know warlock were playing only against brainless people... God i despise these "guide" and their so-called "strat"
I despise people who cant add something intelligent to a conversation and call other people brainless. You !@#$ i bet you walk like your %^-* is chewing a toffee.