DS/Ruin plays a warlock without a demon. You summon your Imp, sacrifice it with Demonic Sacrifice for 15 % more Shadow damage, and spend the fight casting Shadow Bolt under Curse of the Elements, a bane, Corruption and Immolate. Ruin raises the crit bonus of your Destruction spells, so at five points a Shadow Bolt crit hits for twice its damage. Life Tap trades health for mana whenever the bar runs low. That puts the build at 724.1 DPS on a one-minute single-boss fight, 18th of 25 damage specs.

DS/Ruin against Destruction

DS/Ruin isn't one of the game's specs. The name is Classic's, for a warlock who paired Demonology's Demonic Sacrifice with Destruction's Ruin rather than finishing either tree. In Forever both talents sit on the third row of their trees, so the build takes 11 points in Demonology and splits the rest between Destruction and Affliction (21/11/19 here), and no tree reaches its 31-point talent. Forever also turned the sacrifice around. In Classic the Imp left 15 % Fire damage behind. Its Burning Shadow now gives 15 % Shadow damage for two hours.

The Destruction guide's build makes the same sacrifice, then carries on to Conflagrate and Shadow and Flame on long single-boss fights. DS/Ruin stops at Agonizing Flames and puts its other points into Affliction: Suppression's 5 % spell hit, Malevolence's Shadow crit and Pandemic's doubled DoT crits. In the benchmark of 12 October the two finished within 2 DPS of each other as Humans on one boss for one and three minutes and on three bosses for three minutes. On the one-minute fight Destruction's own search picked this exact tree. DS/Ruin ranks lower because of its Horde sets (see Races).

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• One point carries the build. Demonic Sacrifice is worth 11.5 % of your damage, more than any other talent you take, and you set it up once before the pull.
• Steady over fight length. No long cooldown sets the pace, so one boss scores 724.1 DPS over a minute and 692.7 DPS over three.
• Three bosses. The banes, Corruption and Immolate go on every boss, and the score climbs to 879.3 DPS on a three-minute fight against three bosses.

Weaknesses

• Low on the table. On a one-minute single-boss fight it does 66.4 % of the best spec's damage, and in the benchmark of 12 October it was the lowest of the four warlock builds on every fight.
• Fire gets nothing. Burning Shadow raises Shadow damage only, so Immolate and Searing Pain miss it. On one boss Immolate's line is worth just 2.0 % over three minutes.
• Mana costs health. On three minutes Life Tap's line is worth 27.9 %, and each of its 13 casts costs as much health as it gives mana, which your healers pay back.

On every fight

DS/Ruin sits between 18th and 20th everywhere. On one boss it does best over one minute, where the mana bar lasts and Life Tap's line is worth 0.0 %. On longer fights a share of your casts are Life Taps that deal no damage. Against three bosses Shadow Bolt falls to 12.8 % of the damage and the DoTs on every boss carry the score.

Races

Alliance warlocks should be Human: it tops every fight. In Forever its Sword Specialization adds 2 % spell crit as long as a sword is equipped, and Sageblade is a sword. Its 5 % extra Spirit also feeds each Life Tap. Gnomes, the other Alliance warlocks, finish second on every fight.

Troll is the strongest Horde warlock on a one-minute single-boss fight. Undead take the two- and three-minute fights with Touch of the Grave: 10 % of your landed spells, at most one a second, drain 5 % of your maximum health from the boss as Shadow damage. Trolls win both one-minute fights: Berserking speeds up your casting by 10 % for ten of those sixty seconds.

What a Warlock brings to the raid

The DS/Ruin warlock's raid debuff is Curse of the Elements: the boss takes 10 % more magic damage from every caster. The table prices it for each spec it helps. Blood Pact is the Imp's aura, so with the Imp sacrificed your party gets it only from another warlock.

Changes

The chart below plots DS/Ruin's result on the selected fight across our simulator and game-data updates. The Updates page describes every update.