General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for
Destruction Warlocks in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents and
glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Destruction Warlock guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are
now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance
(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).
You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between
encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.
Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and
how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents give you the choice between self-healing talents.
Dark Regeneration restores some of your life and increases healing received for 12 seconds. It also restores some of your pet's life. It
has a 2-minute cooldown.
Soul Leech is a passive ability that causes your important offensive
abilities to grant you a shield for 15 seconds. The shield's strength depends
on the damage you deal with your abilities, but it cannot exceed 15% of your
maximum health.
Harvest Life is a passive ability that improves 
Drain Life, by increasing
its damage done by 50% and its healing done by 150%.
You can consider Soul Leech to be the default talent of this tier, because
it is entirely passive. If an encounter
requires you to heal yourself at specific times, then you will want to choose
Dark Regeneration or Harvest Life, depending on how often you need
to heal yourself. Harvest Life makes Drain Life very powerful, as a self-healing
spell, but it comes at a DPS cost (this is especially true for Affliction Warlock who can
combine it with 
Soulburn).
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents give you the choice between several crowd control abilities.
Demonic Breath reduces the speed of all enemies in front of you,
within 10 yards, or 6 seconds. It has a 20-second cooldown.
Mortal Coil is both a crowd control and a survival ability. It
causes the target to run in fear for 3 seconds and restores 15% of your
maximum health. It has a 45-second cooldown.
Shadowfury stuns all enemies within 8 yards for 3 seconds.
Mortal Coil will be the default choice as it also grants a bit of
healing. If you need AoE crowd control, then you will go for
Demonic Breath or Shadowfury depending on what your
raid will require.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents offer damage reduction mechanics. You have the choice between
the following talents.
Soul Link causes 20% of the damage you take to be transfered to your demon
and causes 3% of the damage you do to be healed back to you and your demon. This ability
is only active when you have a demon active. Fall damage is not transfered to your demon.
If you choose 
Grimoire of Sacrifice
as your Tier 5 talent, then Soul Link passively increases your maximum
health by 20%.
Sacrificial Pact causes your demon to sacrifice 25% of its current
health to give you a 10-second shield that absorbs up to 400% of the
sacrificed health. If you do not have a demon out, 25% of your health is sacrificed
instead. Sacrificial Pact is on a 1-minute cooldown.
Dark Bargain prevents all damage (except fall damage) for 8 seconds. After the 8 seconds are
up, 50% of the damage prevented is dealt over 8 seconds. It has a 3-minute cooldown.
Soul Link is usually the best option if you use a demon Tier 5 talent
(
Grimoire of Service / 
Grimoire of Supremacy). With
Grimoire of Sacrifice however, the 20% health increase is not very useful, compared to
the massive shield with short cooldown provided by Sacrificial Pact.
Note that when using a demon, the choice between Soul Link and Sacrificial Pact
can be affected by damage pattern. For example, in the encounter against
the Kor'kron Dark Shaman, there
is a mechanic that does 100% of your life roughly every minute. In this case,
Sacrificial Pact is a must have. On fights like
Thok, where the damage is
periodic, Soul Link is definitely the best option.
Dark Bargain is also a strong talent. On a 3-minute
cooldown, it enables you to bypass encounter mechanics or to
significantly reduce the damage you take during periods of high raid damage.
That said, it is mostly interesting on encounters with high damage-spikes or
when you want to soften the damage that you take at critical times, so that
your healers can focus on other raid members.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 talents offer crowd control and utility abilities that cost health to use.
Blood Horror causes enemies to run in horror for up to 4 seconds, if they
melee you while Blood Horror is active. Activating Blood Horror costs 5% of your
maximum health. Once activated, Blood Horror lasts 1 minute.
Burning Rush is an ability that you can toggle on and off without restriction.
While it is active, your movement speed is increased by 50% but you lose 4% of your
maximum health every second. During Burning Rush, movement-impairing effects cannot
reduce your movement speed below 100% (your regular running speed).
Unbound Will removes all magic and movement-impairing effects, as well
as effects that cause loss of control of your character. It has a 1-minute cooldown
and costs 20% of your maximum health.
Burning Rush is extremely useful on fights where you need to
move quickly (especially if there is no damage while you have to move).
Unbound Will can be useful to remove harmful debuffs,
movement-impairing effects, and all effects that cause you to lose control
of your character. Note that if you are a Human Warlock, then you already have
Every Man for Himself, which does almost the same thing, just that it does
not remove harmful debuffs.
Blood Horror is not normally advised for raiding, although it may be
useful on fights where adds may attack you. It is very strong for solo content.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents provide various modifications to your demons.
- Grimoire of Supremacy replaces your minions with more powerful demons that deal 20% more damage.
See the Demons section of our rotation page for more information.
- Grimoire of Service grants you new abilities that share a 2-minute cooldown and allow you
to instantly summon a second demon for 20 seconds. The abilities are
Grimoire: Felguard
(Demonology-only),
Grimoire: Felhunter, 
Grimoire: Imp, 
Grimoire: Succubus, and 
Grimoire: Voidwalker.
The temporary demon cannot be controlled and will attack your current target. It is possible that the
temporary demon you summon be the same as your currently summoned demon. In this case,
you will temporarily have two instances of the same demon fighting for you.
- Grimoire of Sacrifice sacrifices your demon to increase single-target spell damage
by 15% to 25% (depending on the specialisation) and to regenerate 2% of maximum
health every 5 seconds. Resummoning a demon cancels the effect. If you have chosen
Soul Link as your Tier 3 talent, you will be passively granted +20% maximum
health when you sacrifice your demon.
As a Destruction Warlock, Grimoire of Sacrifice also causes your
Chaos Bolt
to deal 15% additional damage over 3 seconds.
Finally, you gain
one of your demon's abilities, which you should choose based on the boss you are fighting:
- Imp:
Singe Magic (useful for removing 1 stack of most debuffs);
- Felhunter:
Spell Lock (useful on fights where interrupts are required);
- Voidwalker:
Shadow Bulwark (default choice);
- Succubus:
Whiplash (can be helpful on fights with adds).
Currently, all talents are very close in terms of performance, so
whichever you choose will have little effect on your DPS. That said,
Grimoire of Sacrifice is still better when you need to deal damage
to other targets, in addition to your main target.
A typical example of a fight where Grimoire of Sacrifice is better
is a fight with many adds that do not need to be killed, but that you can use
to provide yourself with a near-unlimited supply of Burning Embers. That
said, you need to remember that Grimoire of Sacrifice only boosts single-target
spells but not spells you cast with 
Fire and Brimstone. So, on AoE fights
where you rely a lot on Fire and Brimstone, Grimoire of Sacrifice does not
outrank the other two talents.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents provide situational DPS increases.
Archimonde's Darkness is the default choice on any low movement encounter.
For heavy movement encounters, use 
Kil'jaeden's Cunning (even though Patch 5.4
made it possible to use 
Fel Flame to handle periods of movement, Kil'jaeden's
Cunning still has its uses). 
Mannoroth's Fury does not buff the damage
of Fire and Brimstone, so Archimonde's Darkness is the better talent
for AoE damage, although Mannoroth's Fury can be used on low movement encounters
with adds or multiple targets (such as
The Fallen Protectors).
8. Major Glyphs↑top
The potentially useful major glyphs are listed below.
9. Minor Glyphs↑top
Minor Glyphs are cosmetic and none of them will improve your performance while raiding.
Two of them will be useful while leveling or questing and might have very occasional
uses in dungeons or raids.
