PvE TBC Destruction Warlock Rotation, Abilities, & Cooldowns

Destruction Warlock DPS Guide

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Gear & Best In Slot (BiS)

Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

Single-Target/Boss Rotation – Shadow Build

For both single-target encounters and AoE pulls, it’s best to remember to sacrifice your Succubus minion for the extra 15% shadow damage increase from Demonic Sacrifice.

1. Curse of Recklessness or Curse of the Elements (It’s best to coordinate with any other Warlocks in your raid/group to ensure no overlapping curses happen)
2. Immolate or Corruption (If your Shadow-only damage is rather high)
3. Shadow Bolt
4. Maintain your chosen Curse and DoT spell, and continue casting Shadow Bolt
5. You can throw in Shadowburn as an increase to your DPS, but just remember, it does consume a Soul Shard on every use

Note: You can use Life Tap throughout the rotation if you find it necessary. However, it is recommended to communicate your intentions to your healers, so they know that your health is going to drop. Also, it may be good practice to let your tanks know as well, so that they are not scrambling to try and find the mob that is attacking you, potentially causing them to reorient the pull.

Single-Target/Boss Rotation – Destruction Fire Build

1. We’ll be sacrificing our Imp through Demonic Sacrifice so that we receive a 15% increase to our fire damage
2. Maintain your assigned curse (Curse of Recklessness, Curse of the Elements or Curse of Doom)
3. Cast Immolate
4. Cast Incinerate
5. Cast Conflagrate while moving, ideally just before Immolate is set to expire
6. You can also cast Shadowburn while moving, but note that it does consume a Soul Shard, although if the target dies within 5 seconds of being hit by Shadowburn, you gain a Soul Shard

Note: You can use Life Tap throughout the rotation if you find it necessary. However, it is recommended to communicate your intentions to your healers, so they know that your health is going to drop. Also, it may be good practice to let your tanks know as well, so that they are not scrambling to try and find the mob that is attacking you, potentially causing them to reorient the pull.

AoE Rotation

There is no exclusive AoE rotation for Warlocks. However, there are some notable spells to use throughout the pulls.

1. Seed of Corruption (Best to apply this to more than one mob, to increase the damage output as it becomes an AoE spell once the target takes the full damage effect)
2. Hellfire (Due to how threat works in TBC Classic, it’s not recommended to use this spell without waiting a number of seconds for your tank(s) to build sufficient threat and allow your healer(s) to have the mana to keep you alive)
3. Rain of Fire (Being able to use this outside of melee range will provide great damage while providing the lowest chance of you pulling aggro)