Affliction Warlock

Demonic Servitude Rotation

This is the basic rotation for affliction. Use this at lower levels of gear, and without tier 17 4-set.

1) Keep Agony, Unstable Affliction, and Corruption applied to the main target at all times. Your uptime should should be no less than 95%.

2) Save Soul Shards to cast Haunt under the following conditions:

-You have a damage buff, such as Dark Soul:Misery, Bloodlust, or a trinket proc.

-You have 4 shards. In this case, cast one immediately so as to not waste Nightfall procs.

3) Channel Drain Soul.

On 2 or more targets:
• After applying your initial dots to the first target, Soul Swap your dots to the secondary target, and any further available targets.

• Refresh all dots manually. Your dot priority is Agony, then Unstable Affliction, then, Corruption.

• Haunt the target that you are channeling Drain Soul on.

Opener
1. Draenic Intellect Potion.
2. Pre-cast Unstable Affliction.
3. Corruption.
4. Agony.
5. Haunt.
6. Dark Soul:Misery.
7. Drain Soul.
8. Follow Priority.

Soulburn:Haunt Rotation

This is the advanced rotation for affliction. Use this at higher levels of gear, and after you’ve obtained the Tier 17 4-set. This is also the ideal talent for 2+ target cleave.

1) Keep Agony, Unstable Affliction, and Corruption applied to the main target at all times. Your uptime should should be no less than 95%.

2) Save Soul Shards to cast Soulburn:Haunt when your buff has less than 9 seconds left.

3) Cast Haunt ONLY under the following conditions:

-You have 3 shards, and a damage buff, such as Dark Soul:Misery, Bloodlust, or a trinket proc.

-You have 4 shards. In this case, cast one immediately so as to not waste Nightfall procs.

4) Channel Drain Soul.

On 2 or more targets:

• After applying your initial dots to the first target, Soul Swap your dots to the secondary target.

• Refresh all dots manually.

• Haunt the target that you are channeling Drain Soul on.

Opener
1. Pre-cast Soulburn at -22 seconds. Soul shards passively recharge every 20 seconds, but the buff lasts for 30 seconds. This will allow you to start the fight with an extra soul shard.
2. Draenic Intellect Potion.
3. Pre-cast Haunt (with your Soulburn still active) at -2 seconds. At the same time, use your petattack macro to attack the boss.
4. Soulburn: Soul swap, instantly applying all three of your dots.
5. Cast Summon Terrorguard.
6. Dark Soul:Misery.
7. Drain Soul.
8. Follow Priority.

Dark Soul Usage

How you use Dark Soul:Misery depends mostly on where your raid is planning on using Bloodlust in the fight, and whether or not there are certain add phases in the fight where you’ll want to have a charge of Dark Soul available for. If your raid is using Bloodlust on the pull, and there are no add phases at any point in the first two minutes of the fight (roughly one minute thirty seconds if you have the T17 4-piece, give or take), you’ll want to use both of your Dark Soul charges with Bloodlust. The reason for this is percentage haste buffs stack with each other. The 30% haste from Bloodlust and the 30% haste from Dark Soul:Misery multiply off of each other to give you a total bonus of 69% haste. So, in order to take advantage of this multiplicative bonus, you want to use both of your Dark Soul charges, which conveniently last for the exact duration of Bloodlust. For the rest of the fight, your decision making regarding Dark Soul should be as follows;

• Do not cap on Dark Soul charges. If you reach one charge with 20 seconds left on the second charge, use Dark Soul so as not to cap on charges if you get a double Nightfall proc.
• Use Dark Soul during add phases. Getting Dark Soul usage with your dots on multiple targets is a far greater damage increase than using Dark Soul during a trinket proc.
• On single target, use Dark Soul during a trinket proc. Preferably a Haste trinket, since the haste rating is multiplied by the Dark Soul haste percentage, but another trinket proc is just as good.

Multi-target Soul Shard Usage

An often asked question in the Affliction warlock world is how to use Soul Swap and Soulburn: Haunt in multi-target situations. The question is how many targets (assuming an infinite amount of targets) at which it’s worth using Soulburn:Haunt instead of swapping dots to a new target. Efficiency-wise, whenever you cast Soul Swap, you are at worst saving 2 GCDs (5 GCDs if you swap a full duration set of dots,which you should be aiming to do) to cast a set of dots on a new target. Because of this, the damage scaling of Soulburn: Haunt, and the fact that Soulburn: Haunt costs two shards to Soul Swap’s one, it is never worth casting Soulburn: Haunt if there are 4 or more targets available, unless you already have dots ticking on every available target. It is ALWAYS better to use your shards to Soul Swap dots to a new target.

About Soulburn: Soul Swap

Because Soul Swap costs a shard to use in Warlords of Draenor, it is only worth casting Soulburn: Soul Swap on the opener, when using Soulburn: Haunt. Essentially, Casting Soulburn: Soulswap saves you two GCDs worth of casting dots at the cost of two Soul Shards. However, because you pre-cast Unstable Affliction in the Demonic Servitude opener, you actually only end up saving one GCD, making it not worth the two shard cost.

Bonus Trinket procs in the Opener

While this is relatively well known to many people, it’s still a rather obscure way of playing the game. Let me preface this tip with this; have you ever noticed how easily your trinket procs on the opener? Very, very rarely do both trinkets (assuming both trinkers are rppm) not proc immediately upon doing any damage whatsoever to the boss. As a warlock, you can game the system somewhat by having your pet proc your trinkets pre-combat (which doesn’t count as your first trinket procs), and then immediately following those trinkets get an extra set of trinkets which the game recognizes are your first trinkets. Using a fel imp (or a doomguard, if using Demonic Servitude), use a /petattack macro right before your first pre-cast. This will usually proc one or both of your trinkets, leading to a nice double trinket proc opener.

Default Talents

Level 15: Soul Leech

Level 30: Shadowfury

Level 45: Soul Link

Level 60: Burning Rush

Level 75: Grimoire of Supremacy

Level 90: Archimonde’s Darkness

Level 100: Soulburn: Haunt

Advanced Talents

Level 15: Dark Regeneration, Soul Leech, Harvest Life

Dark Regeneration
Usually not taken because of how strong Soul Leech is. Has its own uses when burst healing is needed, such as during the magical soaking phase on Ko’ragh.

Soul Leech
The strongest option for the majority of encounters.

Harvest Life
Do not take under any circumstances.

Level 30: Howl of Terror, Mortal Coil, Shadowfury

Howl of Terror
Breaks on damage limiting its usefulness on raid encounters.

Mortal Coil
Doesn’t provide the healing return to mobs that are immune to the horrify effect.

Shadowfury
Most adds are stunnable making this the go-to talent in general.

Level 45: Soul Link, Sacrificial Pact, Dark Bargain

Soul Link
The best option for most raid encounters. With Grimoire of Sacrifice, you receive 20% extra health, instead of 20% damage reduction and 3% leech.

Sacrificial Pact
A decent 1 minute survivability cooldown. Best used for predictable damage on a relatively low timer.

Dark Bargain
Only used in scenarios where an immunity allows you to game a specific mechanic. It’s worth noting that Dark Bargain is considered an absorb, so it can be used even for mechanics that ‘pierce immunities’ (the orbs and magical shield on Ko’ragh, for example).

Level 60: Blood Horror, Burning Rush, Unbound Will

Blood Horror
Never used in PVE.

Burning Rush
Your go-to talent in most situations, due to our lack of a baseline movement speed cooldown.

Unbound Will
Has its uses on encounters with important mechanics that need to be dispelled immediately, such as the disorient on Beastlord, or any stunning mechanic.

Level 75: Grimoire of Supremacy, Grimoire of Service,Grimoire of Sacrifice

Grimoire of Supremacy
The default option for Affliction warlocks.

Grimoire of Service
Can be used for 25 second burst windows, but generally a dps loss. Only consider using with Demonic Servitude.

Grimoire of Sacrifice
Generally better at higher gear levels. Unfortunately, our current gear doesn’t quite give enough stats for this to be better than supremacy.

Level 90: Archimonde’s Darkness, Kil’jaeden’s Cunning,Mannoroth’s Fury

Archimonde’s Darkness
You will use this on every encounter. Being able to bank a Dark Soul charge to use in ideal situations is far more valuable than a slight aoe burst, or a small movement cooldown.

Kil’jaeden’s Cunning
Not worth taking in any situation. Affliction’s gameplay revolves around having both charges of Dark Soul to work with.

Mannoroth’s Fury
Only used for burst AoE phases. In 99% of situations, you will want to take Archimonde’s Darkness over Mannoroth’s Fury in AoE situations, just because of the flexibility of having two Dark Soul charges.

Level 100: Soulburn:Haunt, Cataclysm, Demonic Servitude

Soulburn:Haunt
The best two or more target talent for Affliction, as well as the best single target talent at higher haste levels.

Cataclysm
Rarely, rarely used. The only fight I would even consider taking this talent on this tier is Kromog, and only if your raid is having immense issues with hand damage.

Demonic Servitude
The best talent if you are unable to keep close to 100% uptime on Soulburn: Haunt.

Glyphs

Major

Glyph of Eternal Resolve
Removes the warlock shield wall Unending Resolve, and in place gives the warlock 10% passive damage reduction. Paired together with Soul Link, gives a warlock 28% passive damage reduction.

Glyph of Siphon Life
Provides a decent amount of self-healing throughout the fight. Especially good for fights where you are not always at 100% hp.

Glyph of Unstable Affliction
A dps increase of minimal proportions while you have no haste procs active. Replace with any needed major glyph as you see fit per fight.

Situational

Glyph of Soul Swap

Useful for holding a full set of dots for a long period prior to a multidotting situation. Allows you to “bank” a shard’s worth of soul swapping for 30 seconds. Swap this for Glyph of Unstable Affliction for fights with intermittent soul swapping such as Oregorger’s roll phase.

Glyph of Dark Soul

Halves duration and cooldown of Dark Soul. Never taken as Affliction. Always a DPS loss.

Glyph of Demonic Circle
Lowers the cooldown of Demonic circle by 4 seconds. Only useful if you absolutely need Demonic Circle for a particular mechanic.

Glyph of Soulstone
Makes it so when you soulstone someone they resurrect with 100% hp, instead of 30%. Should only be taken if you are the only person able to Battle-res in your raid. You should not be battle-ressing if you have a druid or dk in your raid, as their res is instant. Could possibly be taken if you are soulstoning someone for a particular mechanic pre-fight.

Glyph of Unending Resolve
Reduces the damage reduction to 20%, and lowers the cooldown to 2 minutes. Generally only taken when you need the casting interrupt prevention. Could also be used if a fight has a high damaging ability on a 2 minute cooldown.

Glyph of Strengthened Resolve
Increases the damage reduction to 60%, and increases the cooldown to 4 minutes. Only used if you are planning to take a massive hit at very spaced out points in a fight. Together with Soul Link, your damage reduction is 68% while active.

Glyph of Demon Training
As most warlocks are capped by their energy, and this glyph makes your pet use energy less efficiently, this is a DPS loss. Do not take.

Stats

Intellect > Haste >= Mastery > Multistrike > Critical Strike > Versatility

While Haste is the best single target stat for affliction warlocks, mastery is far more valuable for two or more targets, as well as playing the other specs. Haste also has large diminishing returns once you start getting enough soul shards to where you’re casting Haunt with no procs active. 

Intellect is our primary stat. All of our spells scale with spell power, which is given from Intellect.

1 Intellect = 1 Spell Power

Mastery Mastery: Potent Afflictions increases the damage of our three major dots – Agony, Unstable Affliction, and Corruption.

1% = 35 Mastery Rating

Critical Strike increases the chance to critically hit with abilities. This doesn’t have any special interaction with any Affliction spells.

1% = 110 Critical Strike Rating

Haste increases cast speed, DoT tick rate, and our GCD. For affliction, this means more nightfall procs, which means more haunts, which means more damage. Because affliction’s main filler is a 4 second channeled spell, the GCD cap of 1 second does not really matter. Affliction also gains 5% more haste from all sources through Eradication.

1% = 90 Haste Rating

Versatility increases all damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken. While not a very good dps stat, it is a decent stat for progression, due to lowered damage intake.

1% Damage/Healing/Absorbs = 130 Versatility Rating
1% Damage Reduction = 260 Versatility Rating

Multistrike causes abilities to have a chance to hit a second and a third time, each dealing 30% of the initial damage.

1% = 66 Multistrike rating

Enchants

Rings: Enchant Ring – Gift of Haste
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Gift of Haste
Neck: Enchant Neck – Gift of Haste
Weapon: Mark of Bleeding Hollow
Gems: Greater Haste Taladite

Once again – while haste is technically the best stat for Affliction, if you are planning on playing the other two specs for any fights in the instance, Mastery will overall be better. Unless gold is no object, use Mastery enchants.

Consumables

Food: Buttered Sturgeon
Potion: Draenic Intellect Potion
Flask: Greater Draenic Intellect Flask

Gear

AddOns

AffDots

This is a staple addon for Affliction Warlocks (as well as the other two specs). While not used for its original purpose anymore, it is still a very good dot tracking addon. The reason I choose to use this addon is for the lines which signify where you can reapply your dots to maximize Pandemic usage.

WeakAuras

WeakAuras can be used to track everything. Boss abilities, Spell Cooldowns – the possibilities are endless, as long as you know a tiny bit of Lua. If you could only download one addon in World of Warcraft – this is the one you should get.