Welcome to Skill Capped’s Overview of the Best Talents for Destruction Warlock in PvP in Dragonflight
In this article, we will go over the biggest change that came with Dragonflight – talent system. We will cover the best talents for Destruction Warlock in PvP, including the Class tree, the Spec tree, as well as PvP talents themselves.
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Table of Contents
Destruction Warlock Talents Overview
Since the talent system received a huge revamp going into Dragonflight, we will cover both the class and the spec tree. They both have some mandatory and some optional talents. Those will depend on the situation and the comp you are playing. The Core talents will be the ones you pick almost all the time either because they are that good on their own, or simply better than all other options.
Warlock Class Talents
The class tree doesn’t have that much flexibility to it. You have to go down to all three capstone talents, so this doesn’t leave you with a lot of wiggle room.
With that in mind, we start off by taking Demon Skin and Fel Armor as those are some great passive damage reduction tools.
We then go down to get Curses of Enfeeblement to gain access to some very strong curses that are an important part of our kit.
When choosing between Howl of Terror and Mortal Coil, Coil is the more common pick for helping you to build space to kite or even score kills.
Amplify Curse is a great addition to the kit as it strongly empowers our curses that can be used in a lot of different ways depending on the situation you find yourself in. We also pick up Teachings of the Satyr as it feels better to have a higher uptime on your large curses.
In the middle, we have a choice between Strength of Will that increases the effectiveness of Unending Resolve and Dark Accord, with Strength of Will being chosen as it’s very good in shorter games, and in high burst environments. The only time you could ever swap this to Dark Accord is when you are not the kill target.
Then we get a choice between Ichor of Devils and Frequent Donor. Both are good choices, but we would recommend playing with Ichor of Devils. Even though having a lower cooldown on Dark Pact might seem appealing, there are very few offensive cooldowns that line up with its 45 second CD when specced Frequent Donor, which can make this have less real value. Ichor is likely more consistent in a wide range of situations, but again the choice here is fairly obscure.
Soulburn is an amazing ability that heavily empowers one of a number of important abilities in our kit. This has a lot of potential uses, and you should never play without it.
Destruction Spec Talents
Moving on to the spec tree, our best build is to play around instant cast damage of Shadowburn and Conflagrate.
We start it off by getting Conflagrate itself and the Haste proc of Reverse Entropy.
Next up, we can choose from Roaring Blaze for some bigger Conflagrates or Improved Conflagrate for an additional charge. Both talents are viable with the choice being entirely down to personal preference.
Afterwards, we are going for Pandemonium to further buff our Havocs.
On the next row, we have one of our main damage sources in Shadowburn.
A bit further to the right, we will take Backlash to give us a chance at instant Incinerate when we are hit by melee attacks.
Flashpoint is a great Haste buff to complement our toolkit that comes from Immolate, while Scalding Flames increase the consistent damage of this ability.
Lastly, we have Dimensional Rift for some great on-demand instant burst.
Destruction Warlock PvP Talents
Soul Rip is a new PvP talent added to Warlocks in 10.1 and has become a default pick. This talent is both an offensive and defensive talent. Offensively, it reduces the healing down by all enemy players by 25% and defensively, it also reduces the damage they deal by 25%. The enemy either has to run 20 yds to pick up their soul, alleviating pressure, or wait 8 seconds.
Bonds of Fel has seen a resurgence and is a great pick as a second talent. This is useful into double casters or teams that may try to kite extensively. This not only slows the target but when the target moves outside of the targeted circle they take damage.
From here you have some situational options, include Nether Ward, which is really strong into double caster. Gateway Mastery is great into melee cleaves and gets more value on larger maps. In very niche situations, you can also play Shadow Rift. This talent is most effective if your partner has a reliable way to keep enemy players in place. Alternatively, you can play Fel Fissure if your team needs a Mortal Strike effect such when playing with a Shadow Priest. Finally, we have Impish Instincts. This is another great talent that was added in 10.1. This can also be played into melee cleaves as it reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Circle by 2 seconds when you are struck by a physical attack. Call Observer is great into double caster comps as well.
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