The Destruction Warlock tier set bonuses in season 1 of The War Within are very simple buffs to our damage that both revolve around
. These bonuses interact with each other but also raise a potential issue with a change in our stat priority, as well as adding a layer of and rng. In this short first impressions article I will explain why that is. Destruction has historically used
to generate soul shards on the move, but more importantly this is where we got
which reduced the cast time of
and
. This is an ability that has been a staple of the Destruction rotation, and now we're getting a set bonus that buffs this ability, as well as adding another damage buff to this.
Our two-set bonus is a flat 20% critical strike chance buff and a critical strike damage increase of 25%. At first glance this is just a flat passive damage increase, and that is very true. However, when our four-set bonus reads "When
critically strikes, your Fire damage is increased by 5% for 6 seconds." the two-set becomes more relevant. Our two-set ensures more frequent crits, which leads to a higher uptime of our 4-piece bonus. This 4-set bonus introduces a dynamic where timing
crits with fire damage abilities means maximizing burst windows. This also adds a slight layer of skill and planning to the Destruction Warlock rotation, rewarding players who optimize their
usage. We have quite a few abilities that would benefit from this bonus, notably we have our fillers
.
and
, but also our soul shard spender
is a fire damage ability.
is a chaos damage ability, meaning it should count as all types of damage, including fire damage. Wether or not
ends up being affected by the 4-set bonus by the time we make it to live is unknown. But if it does, as it should, we're looking at a much stronger set bonus.
Despite having increased critical strike chances, this 4-set bonus relies heavily on rng for crits. It's very likely people are going to experience moments of very clear bad rng for important burst windows if the crits don't land as desired. The difference in damage output is likely not going to be very large, as we're talking about a small 5% damage increase for 6 seconds, and not a larger damage bonus. Another potential issue could be the 6 second duration. 6 seconds might feel too short, especially in situations where movement or mechanics might disrupt your rotation. This leads back to the aforementioned point about skill, where players will need to be precise and quick to capitalize on this buff. This can be challenging during high mobility encounters.
This set bonus might need further tuning to ensure proper balance in both PvE and PvP content. But all in all, I think it's more interesting to have a set bonus that revolves around
casts, rather than the very very passive lazy set bonus from season 1 of Dragonflight.