In World of Warcraft, classes often favor complex rotations with dozens of abilities. Not only does this make for an engaging playstyle, but it helps to provide an intensity to every fight. However, there are a handful of classes that choose a slower, methodical fighting style, and few do it better than Affliction Warlock.
Making damage-over-time effects part of their core rotation, Affliction Warlocks tend to keep their distance and keep a watchful eye on the battlefield. Instead of spamming several abilities, they choose to carefully manage their targets to maximize their damage and score among the highest numbers in raids and endgame dungeons. If this sounds like your style, here’s everything you need to know.
Class Overview
Unlike other classes that use specific rotations to build and spend their class resources as quickly as possible, Affliction Warlock is a patient specialization. Observing from afar, you’ll be able to manage several damage over time effects, or DoTs, resulting in massive damage the longer you are in the fight.
Because many of Affliction’s abilities result in periodic damage that only needs to be refreshed, this Warlock specialization is surprisingly mobile. They’re able to dodge the countless mechanics that are found in high-end raiding and dungeons without losing DPS, making them one of the most viable endgame classes.
Race
| Race | Racial Abilities |
|---|---|
| Void Elf | Uninterrupted spellcasting and DoTs can deal bonus Shadowfrost damage. |
| Human | Higher secondary stats and the ability to break out of stuns or charms. |
| Nightborne | Increased magical damage along with a snaring ability. |
| Undead | Another health drain and resistance to charm, fear, or sleep effects. |
Warlock already has limited options for race pairings, and Affliction narrows down your ideal choices even further. However, there are still a handful of races to pick from that will help you perform at your maximum potential.
- If you want to roll Alliance, choose either Void Elf or Human. Void Elf is a fantastic choice due to their uninterrupted spellcasting when taking damage, allowing your drains to be more effective, and the extra damage is a nice touch. Human is a great pick for any class, and Affliction directly benefits from more Haste and Mastery.
- On the Horde, choose Nightborne or Undead. The former gives more magical damage, boosting the efficiency of your DoTs, while Undead gives far more survivability options than any other race in the game.
Stat Priority
Along with your fellow cloth-wearing spellcasters, Affliction’s primary stat will be Intellect. Without this, you’ll lose the vast majority of your damage, so be sure to stick to cloth armor and Intellect staves or wands.
As far as your secondary stats go, prioritize Mastery. Affliction’s amazing passive, known as Potent Afflictions, boosts your periodic damage with the more Mastery you have, ensuring the very top of the damage charts.
After this, you can choose either Versatility or Haste as your third priority. While Versatility provides a flat bonus to damage done and healing received, Haste allows you to get out your rotation faster and have your DoTs start doing their work sooner.
Affliction Warlock Rotation
Affliction’s rotation is both surprisingly simple to understand and provides great damage numbers, even if you have to reposition. While other classes try to spam through their abilities, your duty will be to refresh the duration on your DoTs and spread them to other enemies.
- Before you get into a fight, absorb your Voidwalker or Felhunter pet with Grimoire of Sacrifice. Your damage and maximum health will be buffed, and you’ll gain their main ability, either temporary health or an interrupt, respectively.
- Target an enemy and place all of your available DoTs on it, including Agony, Haunt, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction, the last two of which provide the most DPS.
Since most of your damage will come from these four abilities, you should strive to never let them expire. If they’re ticking down, recast them to refresh their duration without losing damage.
- While your DoTs do damage, they should occasionally provide Soul Shards. Use these to cast Malefic Rapture, which will deal a huge amount of damage and boost your Unstable Affliction.
- Use Drain Soul if you’re low on Soul Shards and can’t cast Malefic Rapture for some passive damage output. If you’re hurt, switch to Drain Life to heal yourself.
For particularly hard encounters or boss fights, make sure to use Summon Darkglare, who is a long-lasting minion that deals increased damage with every DoT you have applied to its main target.
Affliction Warlock Leveling
Talents aren’t very important when it comes to leveling, as you can succeed in world content with any build. However, if you want to make things efficient, try buffing your periodic damage while focusing on self-preservation and survivability.
For your Affliction tree, try to take talents that correspond with your DoTs, such as Absolute Corruption and Sacrolash’s Dark Strike, while taking talents that encourage the use of Drain Life to keep yourself alive.
For your Warlock tree, focus on more health with Demonic Fortitude and Profane Bargain, more damage through the Grimoire of Sacrifice talents, and plenty of healing with your Drain Life and Healthstone abilities.
Gearing Up
Once you’ve raised yourself to max level, you’ll need to increase your Item Level, or ilvl, before you can experience any endgame content. Luckily, this second grind isn’t nearly as long as leveling was, due to the numerous options you’re presented with.
The easiest way to raise ilvl is arguably the World Quests on the Dragon Isles. These are quick, efficient, and always provide an upgrade because of how they scale to your current power level.
The overhauled crafting professions in Dragonflight provide a good source of new gear as well. You could pick up a profession and craft powerful equipment for yourself, or you could order new pieces through the new Crafting Order system.
Once these two options gear you up to ilvl 370 or higher, you’ll want to turn your eye to the Great Vault. If you participate in raids, Mythic+ dungeons, or rated battlegrounds and arenas, the Great Vault will unlock one piece of extremely potent gear each week to skyrocket your stats.
Gems And Enchants
As you begin to assemble your PvE set and you find pieces that you won’t be able to replace for a while, try buffing your Intellect, Mastery, and Versatility further with specific gems and enchants.
| Gems |
|---|
| Zen Malygite |
| Zen Neltharite |
| Skillful Illimited Diamond |
| Enchants |
| Enchant Ring – Devotion of Versatility |
| Enchant Ring – Devotion of Mastery |
| Enchant Chest – Reserve of Intellect |
| Enchant Weapon – Sophic Devotion |
Affliction Warlock Endgame
Your talents become infinitely more important once you’ve begun to raid and dungeon at a high level. You should switch out your self-heals for AoE and abilities that can easily spread your DoTs to other targets.
For your Affliction tree, make certain to take talents like Seed of Corruption, Soul Swap, and Vile Taint, which all provide a way to affect other targets with DoTs. However, you’ll have to remember to refresh these as well to keep your damage numbers high.
For your Warlock tree, take talents that will provide plenty of utility to your team, like Sweet Souls, Gorefiend’s Resolve, and Shadowfury. The more party-oriented you are, the more likely your group will be to succeed.
To see just how well you’re performing in endgame content and obtain helpful hints and reminders on some mechanics, try out addons like Details! Damage Meter and DeadlyBossMods.
Utility Tips
Although Affliction Warlock is often touted as one of the best classes for damage, there’s more you can do in your downtime by making good use of your utility tools between refreshing your DoTs.
- Shadowfury is a fantastic AoE stun, interrupting spell casts or providing you and your group more reaction time.
- Dark Pact will be your main absorb shield, especially when paired with the Ichor of Devils talent.
- Mortal Coil should be used whenever you’re in danger and generating threat, as it will restore a huge chunk of your missing health and fear your target.
- Unending Resolve should be popped for great damage mitigation when eating big damaging mechanics.
