• Destruction Warlocks are currently (as of 3.2) ‘top of the damage meters’ (in the theoretical simulations known as ‘simcrafting’). The popularity of the build is testament to the fact that it does very well in a raid environment.

• Destruction Warlocks are very good at ‘burst’ damage. That is, we have they have the ability to deal large amounts of damage quickly (though not as quick as some other classes). In contrast, Affliction reaches it’s damage dealing peak much more slowly and Demonology builds typically aren’t able to reach the same damage dealing heights.

• As you gear up and become more powerful, you’ll find that Destruction scales nicely. You’ll do just as well in heroic instances and older raid content as you will in ToGC, since you’ll deal significant damage even when instance bosses are dying before they can get off a ‘how dare you challenge me, puny Warlock’ emote.

• Hit Rating (Hit): This is the #1 stat you need to be concerned about when you start raiding. Hit, basically, is your chance not to miss. If you are low on hit, your "would-have-been-if-only" 15k Chaos Bolt will sail harmlessly over the bosses level 83 head (or heads depending on who you’re fighting). In order to avoid the shame of this happening, you need to reach the ‘Hit Cap’.

The ‘Hit Cap’ is the amount of Hit you need to achieve a 0% miss chance. This will change depending on certain factors (ask your buddy the Draenei Shadow Priest why he gets invited to all the raids), but when it comes to the basics, there are really only two numbers you need to be concerned with: 368 and 446.

If you are running with the 3/13/55 build above, then you need to bring your Hit Rating to 368 in order not to miss. If you have chosen to run with 0/13/58, then you’re going to need 446. That’s why 3/13/55 is more popular for beginning Destruction Warlocks. Getting that extra 78 Hit rating is the reason many young Warlocks die a little inside when they think of the number of times they had to kill Cyanigosa before Mark of the War Prisoner finally dropped.

There are different things you can take (your Draenei buddy is one…) to bring the required hit rating down, but those are beyond the scope of our modest little guide. The Den or WoWWiki will help you on your way.

Once you reach the Hit Cap, stop… a -1% chance to miss hits as often as a 0% chance to miss.

• Spell Power (SP): is the next stat you need to be concerned about. Once you reach the Hit Cap, Spell Power is the thing you want most of. In fact, the more of it the better. Now here’s the irony: although Spell Power is the king of stats… you don’t need to worry too much about it. Spell Power is sooooo cool, and Blizzard was sooooo generous that they put it on all the cloth pieces you’re likely to pick up.

In other words, increase in Spell Power is a natural consequence of building up your gear. Higher level gear is more likely to have more Spell Power, so for the most part you’re not going to have to think too much about it. Of course, things get more complicated by the time we get to...

• Haste and Critical Strike (Crit): After reaching hit cap, the choice between Haste or Crit is likely to lead to more head scratching than the time the Society for the Advancement of Brain Teasers got head lice. Actually, the choice is fairly simple: point for point, Haste is a better stat than Crit. If you have to choose between a cloak with 50 Haste or a cloak with 50 Crit, you’re more often than not better off choosing the Haste cloak. The difficulty comes when the first cloak also has 50 Spell Power and the second has 75…

There is no simple, straightforward answer that’s true 100% of the time, but as a rule of thumb, unless the combination of Spell Power and Critical Strike on any one piece of gear is significantly more than the combination of Spell Power and Haste on a piece you’re thinking of replacing, keep the Haste gear. If you’re really determined to get into the math of it, search the Den for discussions on Haste vs Crit, or pop over to the Elitist Jerks Warlock page and lose yourself in the complex calculus of theorycrafting.

• Spirit: There used to be a time when Spirit was for sissy priests, but no longer. Thanks to the magic of Fel Armor, your wimpy Spirit gets converted into mighty boss-burning Spell Power. Not only that, but good old Life Tap and by extension the Glyph of Life Tap also benefit. Unfortunately the translation of Spirit into Spell Power isn’t as straightforward as the beguiling tooltip would lead you to believe, but when gearing up and running your first raids, you could do worse than assume that about 50% of your Spirit will convert to Spell Power. Although in almost every specific instance wrong, if you stick to this rule when you first start gearing up, you’ll be close to the truth more often than not.

• MP5 & Intellect: You’re not a Priest or a Shammy. You’re far more kick-ass than any of these hybrid wanna-be’s, leave them with their MP5 & Intellect. The only time you should be rolling on gear with MP5 (pretty much all caster cloth comes with Intellect, but who cares?) is when the other stats on the piece are a upgrade over what you’re wearing. Or you could roll on it just so you can disenchant it into a lovely little Abyss Crystal, while your healers look on in horror (hey… we’re supposed to be evil…)