Warlock Destruction Rotation & Opener

First ~12 casts of actual top-ranked kills. Trinkets and racials vary by setup; the skill order is what to copy.

1 Conflagrate 2 Big Red RaysOff-GCD 3 Summon Infernal 4 Malevolence 5 Light's PotentialOff-GCD 6 Freightrunner's FlaskOff-GCD 7 Chaos Bolt 8 Chaos Bolt 9 Conflagrate 10 Chaos Bolt 11 Incinerate 12 Conflagrate 13 Chaos Bolt 14 Incinerate 15 Chaos Bolt

1 Incinerate 2 Wither 3 Wither 4 Summon Infernal 5 Freightrunner's FlaskOff-GCD 6 Malevolence 7 Havoc 8 Light's PotentialOff-GCD 9 Conflagrate 10 Chaos Bolt 11 Chaos Bolt 12 Conflagrate 13 Chaos Bolt 14 Soul Fire 15 Shadowburn

1 Soul Fire 2 Summon Infernal 3 Empowering VenomOff-GCD 4 Light's PotentialOff-GCD 5 Malevolence 6 Chaos Bolt 7 Conflagrate 8 Chaos Bolt 9 Conflagrate 10 Chaos Bolt 11 Incinerate 12 Chaos Bolt 13 Conflagrate 14 Chaos Bolt 15 Shadowburn

#showtooltip Conflagrate
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Big Red Rays
/cast Conflagrate

Ability	Top-player CPM
Chaos Bolt	11.1
Incinerate	10.8
Shadowburn	10.1
Conflagrate	8.4
Wither	4.1
Havoc	1.8
Soul Fire	1.2
Malevolence	1.0
Dark PactOff-GCD	0.7
Summon Infernal	0.7
Freightrunner's FlaskOff-GCD	0.7
Burning Rush	0.6

CPM = median casts per minute across the sampled top kills. If you're far below on a core ability, that's usually the first thing to fix.

First ~12 casts after the pull starts, taken from actual top key runs: the AoE opener is the first pack of the run, the single-target opener is the first boss. Trinkets and racials vary by setup; the skill order is what to copy.

1 Conflagrate 2 Demonic Gateway 3 Immolate 4 Curse of Tongues 5 Dark PactOff-GCD 6 Unending ResolveOff-GCD 7 Conflagrate 8 Blight of Tongues 9 Summon Infernal 10 Cataclysm 11 Lake of FireOff-GCD 12 Lake of FireOff-GCD 13 Lake of FireOff-GCD 14 Conflagrate 15 Lake of FireOff-GCD

1 Immolate 2 Conflagrate 3 Burning Rush 4 Dark PactOff-GCD 5 Immolate 6 Conflagrate 7 Incinerate 8 Light's PotentialOff-GCD 9 Rain of Fire 10 Summon Infernal 11 Empowering VenomOff-GCD 12 Cataclysm 13 Lake of FireOff-GCD 14 Lake of FireOff-GCD 15 Lake of FireOff-GCD

1 Conflagrate 2 Conflagrate 3 Immolate 4 Summon Infernal 5 Light's PotentialOff-GCD 6 Freightrunner's FlaskOff-GCD 7 Rain of Fire 8 Spell LockOff-GCD 9 Cataclysm 10 Lake of FireOff-GCD 11 Lake of FireOff-GCD 12 Lake of FireOff-GCD 13 Lake of FireOff-GCD 14 Lake of FireOff-GCD 15 Lake of FireOff-GCD

#showtooltip Conflagrate
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Spell Lock
/cast Conflagrate

Collected from public Patch 12.1 guides and checked for this patch. Spell names follow the language you selected on this site and must match your game client. If a macro does not work on your client, report it with the button on the card.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm] Havoc; [harm] Havoc

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Rain of Fire

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Cataclysm

#showtooltip
/cast [known:Shadowburn,@mouseover,harm] Shadowburn; [known:Shadowburn,harm] Shadowburn

#showtooltip Corruption
/use [@mouseover,harm,nodead][harm] Corruption

#showtooltip Banish
/use [mod:shift,@focus][] Banish

#showtooltip Soulstone
/target [@mouseover] Soulstone
/use Soulstone
/targetlasttarget

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/use [mod:shift] Demonic Circle(Summon); [nomod] Demonic Circle: Teleport(Teleport)

#showtooltip
/use [known:Shadowfury,@cursor] Shadowfury; [known:Howl of Terror] Howl of Terror

/petattack

Keybinds are personal — this is not a layout to copy wholesale. What it does say is which abilities you press most, measured from the same top parses above: the more often an ability is cast, the less effort its key should take. Interrupts, defensives and movement are deliberately left out; they barely register in cast data yet must always be within reach, so choose those yourself.

Rows marked Passive are not pressed at all — they fire on their own (auto-attacks, procs) and get no key, even though they top the casts-per-minute table.

Key	Ability	Top-player CPM
1	Chaos Bolt	11.1
2	Incinerate	10.8
3	Shadowburn	10.1
4	Lake of FireOff-GCD	8.6
5	Conflagrate	8.4
Z	Rain of Fire	4.3
X	Wither	4.1
C	Immolate	2.1
V	Havoc	1.8
R	Cataclysm	1.4
F	Soul Fire	1.2
T	Ruination	1.2
G	Malevolence	1.0
Shift+1	Dark PactOff-GCD	0.7
Shift+2	Summon Infernal	0.7
Shift+3	Freightrunner's FlaskOff-GCD	0.7
Shift+4	Burning Rush	0.6
Shift+5	Curse of Tongues	0.6