DESTRO WARLOCK ADVANCED TIPS

SOULFIRE TIPS

In this video we are going to be talking about an old friend who despite having been with us for a while now wasn't really that relevant for over a decade. Well with War Within that has all changed as Soul Fire is once again a pretty great tool in our kit.

Now coming in with a ridiculously long cast time when unbuffed, Soul Fire doesn't really look like the most appealing ability in the world especially since it generally hits a bit less than a Chaos Bolt. Despite taking twice the time to cast.

However thanks to several new talents and modifiers Soul Fire is now a pretty strong talent which provides us with a great source of burst at random while also giving us a shard in the process.

The biggest modifier we have for Soul Fire is Decimation which will drop Soul Fire's cast time drastically while also resetting its cooldown occasionally when we crit, transforming this brutally long cast into one that's almost instant.

This proc doesn't last long though so make sure you're spinning it as soon as you get it or you may just end up losing out when it fades away after that short window. Decimation's proc also doesn't seem to have much of an internal cooldown as you see here with it basically proc'ing back to back for Murse.

So get your hands on that skill capped Weak Aura pack so you can spot when it refreshes and not miss out on any lucky RNG. Now other than Decimation making it a bit easier to cast Soul Fire, Soul Fire's cast time is pretty decent as well.

But it's not really necessary as it's already so fast. Saying that though you should often be looking to Conflagrate before using Soul Fire if you can get the chance as due to the talent's Roaring Blaze and Indiscriminate Flames you'll be buffing its damage significantly.

Finally as mentioned earlier Soul Fire will give us a shard after landing so it's good practice to spend some shards if you're capped. You can see Murse do this here with Reina Fire, which although doesn't do much damage still allows him to cycle through his hero talents and get his Ritual of Ruin faster.

INFERNAL TIPS

So with the buffs to Infernals in The War Within, we now have gained a huge power spike to our burst, as we can now use Summon Infernals every 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes in Dragonflight.

This has huge ramifications in Solo Shuffle, as since the rounds are so fast and dampening racks up so dang quickly, classes with 2 minute burst cooldowns were often performing exceptionally well compared to others, as the damage simply becomes unhealable on the second set of CDs.

Well, now the shoe's on the other foot, and we can now join these classes in those 2 minute wins, and let's find out how. First things first, Summon Infernals is not just powerful for its damage, which, although is pretty strong, isn't really noticeable till late dampening on its own.

Infernals is actually more so for its shard regeneration and its stun effect, which is not on the diminishing return. Now because of this, we want to press Infernals very quickly in the opener.

As this is going to allow us to generate shards pretty fast, opening up windows for us to land Chaos Bolts without having to ramp up too much. Now as for the stun effect, we can use this in several different ways.

Either like Merce does here for appeal when his healer gets incapped, preventing any incoming damage from the Warrior and Wind Walker. Or we can also use it offensively like in this VOD here, Merce extends his partner's crowd control chain by throwing his Infernals out after the incapacitate to get that team wide A.

And then we can use it to get the team out of the way. Now the only thing that really matters with this first Infernal, is that it's being used early so that it can generate the most pressure possible, while also coming back later on in the game.

Now when you summon your Infernals, there's two ways you can go about doing your damage afterwards, which depends entirely on whether you've chosen to play Crashing Chaos or the Reign of Chaos talents.

If you've opted into Crashing Chaos, you're going to want to make sure that you're getting as many Chaos Bolts out as possible to benefit from the damage amp.

This buff lasts pretty long, so you're not particularly in a hurry, however do make sure that you're not pressing Reign of Fire, as this is going to consume a stack. Instead be patient and send out as many Bolts as you can within the huge 45 second window.

Alternatively, if you've opted into Reign of Chaos, you're going to want to be spending Shards as fast as possible to try and get as many Infernals to spawn as you can. A great way to do this is actually just mashing Reign of Fires and Shadowburns as you see Infernian do.

Increasing his Wither stacks a ton in the process.

Finally, when it comes to using your second set of Infernals, it's often best to just chuck them out as soon as you get them for the added pressure, as it's also going to allow yourself to live a little bit longer as the enemy is forced to be a little bit more defensive.

But if you know a game is really going to go the distance and the enemy is going to crumble to raw damage alone, holding on to them can be an absolutely great idea until dampening is really high and then you barely have to put in any work towards the win at all. So you want to take your damage to the next level?

Then join us in our next video all about our instance of Shadowburn and Conflagrate.

SHADOWBURN AND CONFLAGERATE

Ready to learn how to master your instant damage? Then let's jump in as we cover all there is to know about Shadowburn and Conflagrate.

Casting in PvP is hard, and it's no secret that the best casters over the past few expansions are the ones that can deal damage without being interrupted, either through instants or aura masteries. Unfortunately, Destruction Warlock is not quite on that level.

However, with the power of Conflagrate and Shadowburn, we can still deal some pretty decent damage without needing to fake the entire game. Now, as both these abilities have two charges, we're going to want to be keeping one of them rolling the entire game to not waste any damage.

It's pretty simple in concept, right? Well, not so fast there, as both of these abilities both come with some modifiers that we need to keep track of.

For Conflagrate, these are Backdraft, the Spellcast Time bonus on Incinerate, Chaos Bolt, and Soul Fire, as well as Roaring Blaze, which increases the fire damage our targets take.

Now, because of all these buffs, we're going to want to be making sure that we Conflagrate at least once every eight seconds on our kill target to maintain Roaring Blaze, as well as consuming our Backdraft effect with either a Soul Fire or Chaos Bolt afterwards for the increased haste.

Now, notice we intentionally didn't say Incinerate here, which, because of our new talent Indiscriminate Flames, makes consuming Backdraft on Incinerate an absolute waste, as it deals far less damage than both of our other spells.

And if you can't consume your Backdraft before your Roaring Blaze falls off, don't worry, as Backdraft stacks two times and has a ten second duration, meaning that if you do your rotation correctly, you won't drop your stacks.

But since Conflagrate's cooldown is pretty short anyway, dropping a Backdraft buff here and there really isn't the end of the world. Now, as for Shadowburn, we're going to be gaining Eradication after every single use, increasing the target's damage taken by us for eight seconds.

Because of this buff, we're also going to be wanting to make sure we Shadowburn at least once every seven seconds. And although this buff is also applied through Chaos Bolt, we want to first apply it with Shadowburn, so our Chaos Bolts are always benefiting from the damage amp.

Other than applying Eradication, Shadowburn also works as a soft execute on targets below 30% due to the Blistering Ability. Shadowburn is a good option for those who are using Atrophy talent, so make sure that you're trying to abuse these windows for sure.

Now, the only thing you need to watch out for with Shadowburn is that if you're a Diabolist, you don't accidentally consume your Touch of Rancor buff with it instead of Chaos Bolting, as you're going to be missing that increased damage speed on Bolt for a smidge more damage on an Instant Cast.

Now, as a final note here, you may have noticed we haven't touched on the talent Conflagration of Chaos, making these two spells crit in a certain window.

But if you're following the Use One Charge on Cooldown rule that we're giving you here, this shouldn't even really cross your mind, as it's going to be consumed by default.

MINESWEEPER

Thought your days of playing Microsoft Minesweeper were over? Well think again, as it's our job to be clear in the map of every hazard that comes our way.

This is because we're blessed with the two on-demand instant damage spells which we just mentioned earlier in the course, Shadowburn and Conflagrate.

Now because these abilities deal so much damage and we have them available all the time, it makes them perfect for sweeping the map of any enemy effects that would otherwise make our team fall flat on their face and die.

The only caveat to this is making sure that you're not overdoing it with your Conflagrations, as otherwise you may just be missing out on that Roaring Blaze damage amp. Now for this reason, Shadowburn is in fact much better to kill minions with, as it'll also allow us to regenerate a shard when it kills its target.

As Shadow Priest Psyfiend is also seemingly making a comeback with its massive mortal strike effect. Not killing this one is literally going to result in you dying to unhealable damage from a pet that can literally be one-shot.

So if you're not going to kill this one, then you're going to have to kill this one. So do yourself a favor and remove it as soon as possible.

Moving on, Elemental Shamans have had their age-old Sky Fury Totem baked into their Primordial Wave and renamed it Totem of Wrath, so we're definitely going to be on the lookout to snipe this to reduce their burst, as well as killing all those other nasty totems that's been so annoying to us since the dawn of time, like Tremor Totems, Healing Tides, and Healing Streams and Groundings.

MANAGING MOBILITY FOR OFFENSE

Thought Gateway and Demonic Circle were strictly for defense? Well, then think again, as we're going to guide you through how we use these abilities to force enemy cooldowns and win you games.

First of all, yes, using these abilities offensively is a bit of a Hail Mary play, as gating or porting into the enemy team for crowd control can leave you in no man's land, and if it doesn't work, well, you're going to feel the consequences pretty quickly.

However, this isn't to say you shouldn't take risks, as gating into the enemy team and landing a full fear on the healer can work wonders. However, you do need to be certain you can land that crowd control, often by having a Coil, Shadow Fury, or another one of your teammates' crowd controls to CC off of.

This hyper-aggressive use of mobility isn't the only way to get value out of it offensively, though, as most often you're going to be using Portal to allow yourself to cast by porting away from interrupts, which allows you to freecast, before the melees can reconnect to you.

Or simply using it like Gelu does here, where he utilizes the Soulburn port Sprint buff to cross the map into the enemy healer, allowing him to easily fear them without them being able to escape.

DESTRO WARLOCK SURVIVAL GUIDE

Dealing with melees is one of the toughest challenges for a destruction warlock, so let's go over how you should be using your cooldowns to get the most bang for your buck.

To survive as destruction in arena, you're going to want to generally try and budget enemy goes by either using dark pact, health stone, or teleport and avoiding overlapping them as best as you can. By doing this you're going to effectively have a defensive for every enemy cooldown or CC chain that comes your way.

It's also important to always hold onto a soul shard if you're in dangerous situations to take advantage of soul burn as it can make our gateway instant cast, our health stone stronger, and improve our kiting by giving our teleport a sprint effect.

Don't get caught not having a soul shard ready when the time comes to pop a defensive or you're going to be missing out. Now that we've covered the basics, let's dive into the proper order for using our cooldowns starting with the star of the show, dark pact.

Now dark pact absorbs the most powerful damage from the enemy's cooldowns and is a good way to get the most out of the game. But if you're not a good player, you're going to have to be careful.

You're going to have to be careful. You're going to have to be careful.

You're going to have to be careful. Dark pact absorbs more damage when you're at high health making it most effective right at the start of the game.

This ensures you're getting the maximum benefit from it early on, giving you a solid foundation for surviving those initial bursts. Dark pact alone is often not enough to survive that first onslaught however, which is where gateway really comes in handy.

Overlapping these two abilities early in the game is generally going to be completely fine as you're going to need them to survive and get distance from your teleport while also being able to actually press your offensive globals without being hammered in the process.

Although if you're facing a warrior it's often going to be a good idea to save gateway for when they use champion's spear as by combining our soul burn with it we can place a gateway and immediately escape no matter where we are, reducing their damage an absolute ton.

So moving on, after you've burned through your dark pact and your gateway, your next line of defense should be demonic circle with your soul burn as it will once again generate some more distance and damage.

So if you're facing a warrior and you're facing a champion, you should be able to use your soul burn to get some more distance and allow you to actually get some chaos bolts or fears out without needing to juke. After you use teleport, make sure that you're fully utilizing the sprint effect you gain afterwards.

You should always look to move away from your teleport with this sprint to set yourself up for the next time your portal is off cooldown which also makes it longer for the enemy melee to reconnect. A common mistake lower rated destruction warlocks make is immediately trying to cast right after they teleport.

This often comes back to haunt them 20 seconds later than they should have. This is a common mistake lower rated destruction warlocks make.

This often comes back to haunt them 20 seconds later than they should have. Up next in our defensive arsenal we have our trusty health stone which should always be used with soul burn to increase its healing while giving us more stamina.

As for the order on this, even though it might seem odd to use health stone after dark pact and teleport, especially since it has a longer 1 minute cooldown, using your mobility first allows you to stay offensive, which is far more effective at helping us win the game. game rather than standing still and trying to Hellstone and Fatecast over and over and over again.

So as the game progresses you can overlap Hellstone a little bit however, like in dire situations where you need to Hellstone and then Dark Pact afterwards for a bigger absorb.

Finally at the end of the line we then have Unending Resolve as our last Bastion of Hope, ensuring you survive through the biggest cooldowns with its large damage reduction.

So we should generally look to use this when our other Defensives are on cooldown, meaning we have no other way to mitigate damage, just make sure you press it at high health or you're likely to die through.

It can also be a pretty solid idea to use it in combination with your Dark Pact if you know your healer isn't going to be able to heal through the pressure like when they're crowd controlled or you can't afford to trinket port at risk of being instantly re-crowd controlled on it.

So if the situation calls for it we can also pop Unending Resolve just for its aura's mastery component to get out of fear to peel, just no matter what you do make sure you use it early as a damage reduction cooldown when you're below 50% isn't going to achieve very much.