Affliction Warlock

Aloha! Champe will be discussing how the Affliction Warlock works, abilities, and talents in Patch 8.0.1. It is a guide focused on PvE, both mythical + and the current raid.

Welcome to the Battle for Azeroth Affliction Warlock guide. I am Champe, GM and raider on the Servant Tyrande's Marque de Marche. You can see me daily on my channel Twitch, and see the video guides and events that we organize in my Youtube.

Likewise, I invite you to join my server Discord and follow me on Twitter. Feel free to contact me to resolve any questions you may have.

The Affliction Warlock is the king of the warlock specializations, he was in Legion and in BFA he is giving very good results. This guide will offer you the basic knowledge to begin to master the class. Like all classes in World of Warcraft, it is easy to handle, difficult to master.

Strengths and weaknesses

Class strengths

Class with the best Unitarget damage currently
Soaring Burst Damage
Very powerful damage CDs
Very good mobility

Class weaknesses

Fairly weak area damage if targets are short-lived. Seed Seed is a pretty weak AOE base talent. For low health adds (less than 10 seconds) you will do very little damage.
Taking advantage of burst damage requires significant preparation
Damage increasing over time. It goes from less to more. It requires long battles to unleash its full potential.
The rotation required for the burst is a bit tedious. If it catches us in a moment of the meeting when we have to move, it can go wrong and notice it in the damage.

Talents and Builds

We'll start by going over each talent tier and then show you some situational builds. We will focus on three aspects:

World content: ideal talents for doing world missions and open world content
Raid: Recommended Talents for Raids
Mythics: Talents to consider to make content in Mythics and Mythics +

Level One

Another Sunset: Corruption damage can grant you an instant Shadow Bolt and 25% more damage.
Drain Soul: Replaces Shadow Bolt as your fill spell (when you no longer have anything to cast… cast your fill spell).
Death Bolt: A 30-second damage DC that deals 30% of the total remaining damage from damage effects applied to your target.

Little discussion in this tier: Death Bolt is too versatile and powerful a talent to ignore. Drain Soul can be useful in some very specific situations.

Recommended talent by situation

World Content: Death Shock
Raid: Death Bolt.
Mythic: Death Bolt by default. Drain Soul can be useful in weeks where the affix in M + is "Explosive"

Level One

Squirm in Agony: Allows you to accumulate 5 more charges of Agony on the target. Making a maximum of 15 stacks.
Absolute Corruption: Corruption is permanent and does 15% more damage.
Suck life: Adds an additional DOT to the rotation. Deals damage and heals you for 30% of the damage dealt.

This tier will be dependent on the Azerite powers that we have. Siphon Life is ideal for fights with 1 or 2 targets, and we use Absolute Corruption for fights with more than 2 targets.

If you have the power of Azerite "Sudden Agony", Squirming in Agony is the best talent to use and it will be the one we will use when we have 2 or more objectives in combat.

The recommended talent for Unitarget is Suck Life. However, if you have 3 "Sudden Agony" On your team, you should use Squirm in Agony in any situation, even Unitarget.

Recommended talent by situation

World Content: Absolute Corruption gives you more freedom and you can spread Corruption by Sowing Seeds in situations with many mobs.
Raid: Basically Suck Life is the talent for combat with 1 or 2 targets, and Squirm from Agony in combats with more than 2 targets. However, if we have Sudden Agony (power of Azerite) in 1 or more Azerite pieces we will use Twist of Agony in any situation.
Mythic: Absolute Corruption is the best talent for Mythic + until you have 1 or more Sudden Agony available in your Azerite pieces.

Level One

Demon Skin: Causes your Soul Parasite to passively recharge and can absorb up to 15% of maximum health.
Burning Momentum: Our mobility talent par excellence. Takes 4% of your life per second in exchange for increasing your movement speed by 50%
Dark pact: A very useful defensive CD in situations with a lot of periodic damage.

This is a totally situational tier. We have to choose between what will give us much more survival or a lot of movement.

For this expansion I would recommend Demon Skin over the other two. Affliction is less movement dependent now that Maleficent Yoke is non-existent (past expansion) and that most of our casts can be done while moving.

Dark Pact would use it for combats in which we are going to have moments of a lot of periodic damage (we have a 60 second CD), and Burning Moment for situations in which we will need a lot of movement yes or yes.

Recommended talent by situation

World content: Demon Skin. If you want to move very fast between packs use Burning Momentum. But be careful, it takes life away.
Raid: Demon Skin. For combats in which we will receive a lot of damage periodically or we have to sock areas, Dark Pact.
Mythics: Here we can choose Burning Momentum in low Mythics, since it is important to move between groups of mobs quickly. For tall stones it is always better to choose a defensive talent (Demon Hide)

Level One

Sowing Seeds: Affect an additional item with Sow Seeds on each cast.
Phantom Singularity: A very powerful damage CD with only 45 seconds of CD. Deals damage to the target and nearby targets, healing you for 25% of the damage dealt.
Vile Macula: AOE (AoE Damage) Talent deals shadow damage in area and reduces target movement by 30%.

Talent by situation

World content: Phantom Singularity or Fel Taint if you want to take advantage of doing area damage and reducing the movement of mobs.
Raid: Phantom Singularity in all situations. The other talents contribute practically nothing in raid matches.
Mythic: Phantom Singularity or Vile Macula. Since the potential for Affliction in Mythic is more damage in Boss, I would recommend you go with Phantom Singularity, since you would gain some damage with mobs but sacrificing a lot of damage with fighting the Boss.

Level One

Dark Fury: Reduces the CD of Shadow Fury
Deadly Spiral: Scare a target and heal for 20% maximum health
Demon Circle: Allows you to teleport to another point in the room. Great mobility.

Recommended talent by situation

World Content: I would recommend Death Coil because it disables an attacking target for 3 seconds and heals us for 20% of our maximum health. It cannot save life in extremis.
Raid: Demonic Circle is our ideal mobility talent for raid environments. Mortal Spiral can be used situationally in combat with a lot of damage and that we will not need the movement that the Demonic Circle gives us.
Dungeons: Dark Fury or Mortal Spiral are two very powerful talents in mythic, where we are not going to basically need Demonic Circle. It all depends on the dungeon we are in and the active weekly affixes.

Level One

Shadow Embrace: Causes Shadow Bolt to apply a stacking debuff to the target. Each stack increases damage on the target by 3%.
Own: A greatly reduced DC damage talent that increases damage on the target by 10%. If the target dies when the debuff is active, we will restore the availability of the talent.
Grimoire of Sacrifice: Causes all spells to have a chance to deal bonus shadow damage.

Another tier where the discussion will be short: Possess is too powerful to ignore.

Talent by situation

World Content: Own
Raid: Possess. The other two talents are very weak in band situations.
Mythic: Possess. Although it may seem that Grimoire of Sacrifice may be ideal for Mythics, the damage it does is really nothing significant.

Level One

Soul Conduit: Each Soul Shard you consume gives you a 15% chance to restore
Stalking Death: Reduces the duration time of your DOTs, they deal all damage 15% faster.
Dark Soul: Increases your Haste by 30% for 20 seconds. 2 minute cd.

Depending on the situation, we are going to stay between Death Stalking and Dark Soul.

Talent by situation

World Content: For the durability of the mobs and for convenience, we will use Death Stalking.
Raid: Dark Soul will normally be used in almost all battles. Stalking Death is great at increasing damage on low health adds, so it can be the talent to use in high-added battles.
Mythic: Normally we will choose Death Stalking. The ability to raise Agony stacks and reduce the amount of time Unstable Affliction consumes its damage make it a very valuable talent. However, in Mythic + highs, Dark Soul will surely work better for us.

Builds

After thoroughly reviewing the talents, we've included some base builds for each situation as a quick guide. Remember that, like everything in this game, the best conclusions can be drawn yourself by trying and trying.

Missions and World Content

Notes: if you want to have a little more mobility you can choose Burning Momentum.
Death Coil is good for extra healing and incapacitating a target.

Normal, Heroic, Normal Mythic Dungeons and Low Stones

Note: Burning Momentum gives you the mobility you need to move between groups of mobs and follow the tank ... which in Simple Dungeons will run like crazy.

Mythical + high

Note: Fel Macula will allow you to have an area damage and reduce the movement speed of the mobs. However, consider using Phantom Singularity if you think you can handle mob groups well and want to prioritize damage on Boss.

Raid (encounters with 1 or 2 objectives)

Note: Suck Life for Unitarget situations. However, if you have the Azerite power "Sudden Agony" in more than 1 piece, I recommend you always go with Squirming Agony

Raid (in encounters with waves of adds or more than 2 targets)

About talents

As you can see, we don't have as much talent variation as we did in the last expansion. This is due, in large part, to why we have various talents like Haunt, Phantom Singularity, and Death Bolt that are so powerful that the alternatives are not viable in almost any encounter. This will change as the expansion progresses and the classes play out.

Rotation and Mechanics of Specialization

In this section we are going to talk more deeply about the use of Affliction. There are many things to take into account and to be able to master it we will need a lot of practice and a little common sense to adapt to each situation.

Unlike Legion, the rotation is much more basic. However, the opening rotation and the way to use our quintessential burst spell, Summon Darklook, has its complexity.

Unitarget rotation

Opening rotation (Opener)

Prepoti
Precast Own if we have it as a talent
- If we don't have Haunt as a talent, precast Shadow Bolt
Apply Agony to the target
Apply Corruption
Apply Suck life (if we have it as a talent)
Dark Soul (if we have it as a talent)
Any ability that our race gives us or Trinkets that enhance damage
Apply Unstable Affliction 5 times or until soul shards are gone
Cast Phantom Singularity or Fel Macula (if we have it as a talent)
If you have gained Soul Shards during the process and have less than 5 Unstable Affliction on the target, apply Unstable Affliction until you have 5 active.
Summon Darklook
Death Bolt
Continue with normal rotation

Normal Rotation

Racial or Bead Skills to DC (when available)
Own CD
Hold Shadow Embrace (if we have it as a talent)
Maintain Agony
Keep Sucking life (if we have it as a talent)
Maintain Corruption
Launch Phantama Singularity to CD (if we have it as a talent)
Macula Vil a CD (if we have it as a talent)
Dark Soul to CD (if we have it as a talent)
Spend Soul Shards with Unstable Affliction if you are about to weather 5 (never reach 5 Soul Shards without spending them)
Death Download to CD
- Always cast at least 1 Unstable Affliction before using Death Bolt. Skip this step if we are going to have Summon Darklook available shortly (we'll explain it in more detail later)
Shadow Bolt or Drain Soul (if we have it as a talent) if we don't have another spell to cast. IT IS IMPORTANT, TO ALWAYS BE CASTING.

Multi-objective rotation

The rotation is exactly the same as Unitarget with these small differences:

Always keep Agony on up to 8 targets at once
Maintains Corruption on all targets. You can use Seed Seed when you have more than 3 targets.
Maintains Suck Life on up to 4 targets
Hold Unstable Affliction

Clarifications and use of the most important spells and talents

Using Summon Darklook

The rotation changes slightly when our Summon Darklook spell is about to regenerate. This spell maximizes the damage done by all spells applied to targets. Therefore:

When we see that it is less than 40 seconds away until it is available again, we will stop casting Unstable Affliction and any spells that consume Soul Shards.
Still, never weather 5 Soul Fragments, we will spend them applying Unstable Affliction.
When there are between 15 and 10 seconds left (depending on how much haste and, therefore, casting time) we will apply the 5 Unstable Affliction on the target and refresh other dots that are close to expiring.
Once we Summon Darklook, we will launch Death Bolt (if available)

To achieve this optimally, we will need practice. It is important that Summon Darklook is not available for too long without use. Maximum 1 or 2 seconds.

For this reason, it is important to carefully calculate the time it will take to regenerate Soul Fragments and apply all the dots before Dark Look is available.

Use of Death Bolt

Unload Death boosts the damage of all your Dots. We can think that the more dots the target has, the more damage it will generate Death Bolt, but this is not the case. The difference in damage between casting it with 1 Unstable Affliction versus 5 is minimal. Therefore, we can use Death Shock to CD. We always have to have at least 1 Unstable Affliction on the target.

Likewise, this talent gives us an additional advantage. If we need to focus the damage on an ADD, we can use it on that target to momentarily increase the damage. We do not lose damage practically if we do not apply it to the main objective.

Sowing Seeds

Spend 1 Soul Shard and deal area damage when it explodes, applying corruption to surrounding targets.

This is our quintessential area damage spell. It is not nearly as powerful as it was in Legion, but it can still be very useful in situations of 5 or more targets, to extend to all Corruption targets and generate some damage in area.

Therefore, for situations with 3 objectives it is advisable to apply Unstable Affliction than to spend time applying Sowing Seeds.

Shadow Embrace

If we opt for this talent, it is important to keep it active in 2 goals. Likewise, it is highly recommended to use Absolute Corruption with this talent. Since without permanent Corruption on the targets, maintaining Shadow Embrace becomes a very difficult task.

Clarification on Agony

Each time this DOT generates damage it gains a stack, and the damage increases for each stack gained. It is also our most important Soul Shard generator.

However, there is a belief that we will double the generation of Soul Fragments for each affected target. And this is not so.
Actually, the second DOT of agony will increase the generation of fragments by 26%, the third by 14%, the fourth by 10%… and so on.

Clarification on Unstable Grief

It's our primary damage DOT. We will spend 1 Soul Shard for each application, but it does a lot of damage to the target. It is important to keep these things in mind:

He does not gain bonus damage from haste like other DOTs.
It is 8 seconds long. Since haste will actually shorten our casting time and the generation of Soul Fragments it gives us, it does not scale in any other way.
If a target dies with one or more Unstable Affliction applications, they will return 1 Soul Shard. That is, even if a target dies with 2 or more Unstable Affliction, it will only return 1 Soul Shard.

Clarification on Parasitizing Soul

All damage that you and your pet passively generate generates a shield that absorbs 8% of the damage dealt for 15 seconds, up to a maximum of 10% of your maximum health.

This is basic. If we select the Demon Skin talent, Parasite Soul recharges at a rate of 0.5% of your health every 1 second up to a cap of 15% of your maximum health.

Therefore, in world content and dungeons, where the mobility of Burning Momentum is not as crucial, it is highly recommended to use Demon Hide.

Pandemic

It is one of the liabilities that we most have to take into account when using our Warlock.

All DOTS can have their duration extended up to 30% of their base duration. So making the most of refreshing when 30% or less of the time remains to expire, so we will have a DOT with a duration of 130%.
When we apply a DOT, we have 100% of its debuff. If we refresh that DOT when 30% or less of its base duration is missing, the DOT will increase its duration by 130%.
For example: Agony's base duration is 18 seconds. But its maximum duration can be 23.4 seconds (130%).
- If we refresh to 30% or less (5.4 seconds), you will never go beyond the maximum duration of 23.4 seconds (130%)
- If we refresh when more than 30% is missing, we exceed the maximum duration time, and everything that happens from there is lost damage:
  - Example: If we refresh when 10 seconds of DOT are missing | 10 + 18 = 28 | 28.5-23.4 = 5.1 seconds of damage lost

In short, and not to complicate things. The ideal time to refresh each of our DOTs is the following:

Agony: When 5.4 seconds or less to go
Corruption: When 4.2 seconds or less are left
Suck Life: When 4.5 seconds or less to go

The Weakauras that we include in this guide mark you with a small animation when you have to refresh DOTs.

Clarification on Pets

One of the great novelties regarding Legion is the normalization of pets. Now there is no noticeable difference in DPS between them, and we will choose the pet that suits us for each situation. By default, we will use the imp, since it has a spell that increases our life by 5%, very useful. The Felhunter gives us a cutting ability (essential for dungeons), the Succubus can control enemies and the Void is ideal for making world content, since it tanks enemies and receives attacks while we hit everything that moves.

Statistics

First of all, what does each statistic give us:

Intellect
- Increase the damage of all our spells
Operational
- Reduces the casting time of our spells. More casts = more DPS
Master's degree
- Increased damage to all of our DOTs
Critical hit
- Increases the chance of Critical Strike, which doubles damage
Versatility
- It multiplies the damage (very little) and the damage reduction.

General Priority

Mastery> = Intellect> Haste> Critical Strike> Versatility

For Unitarget, ideally it is good to maintain Mastery and Intellect with close values. We can even consider increasing Haste if we have two Azerite Atrocious Brilliance powers.

However, Mastery will do us a lot of damage for multi-target and AOE situations. That is why it is our most important statistic.

Intellect is much more important now than in the last expansion.

Team

In this expansion we have to be a little more careful when selecting pieces of equipment. However, here is a list of BiS (Best in Slot). The best pieces in each slot and where we can get them:

Groove	Part name	Boss who lets go
Weapons	Staff of the Lightning Serpent	Aspix and Adderis (Temple of Sethraliss)
Helmet	Creepy Amalgam Hood	Fetid Devourer
Shoulder pads	Brood Cleaner's Amice	Avatar of Sethraliss (Temple of Sethraliss)
Cover	Ruffled Dinosaur Rider Cape	Ji'arak
Front	Traitor's Vestments of the Loa	Yazma (Atal'Dazar)
Bracers	Iron Seaweed Wrist Covers	Viq'Goth (Siege of Boralus)
Gloves	Handwraps of the Windcaller	azurethos
Belt	Sash with uroboros	Merektha (Temple of Sethraliss)
Trousers	Bloodstained Chef's Assistant Pants	Raal the Gluttonous (Waycrest Manor)
Boots	Deranged Alchemist Slippers	Rixxa Flowflame (MOTHERLODE)
Ring 1	Band of Certain Annihilation	Payment distributors (VETA MADRE)
Ring 2	Band of Certain Annihilation	Mythrax

Beads

We also show you the best beads according to the latest simulations.

Azerite Power

Blizzard is constantly modifying Azerite's powers, so we recommend using the tool bloodmallet to be aware of the news.

However, in general we can talk about 3 main Azerite Powers that we can consider the best and easy to get.

Swift Brilliance: Every two Soul Shards you generate increases your Intellect by 314 points for 6 seconds
Sudden Agony: Agony deals up to 432 bonus damage and starts with 4 stacks. This will recommend us to use the talent Twist of Agony in almost all situations.
Inevitable Death: An enemy with Corruption increases the next Drain Life by 47 points. Stacks up to 100 times.

In the AddOns section, we'll show you how you can better control the selection of Azerite Powers.

Head

shoulders

Chest

Gems, Enchantments, and Consumables

A piece of advice that may seem silly: Always go to your meetings with well-engemed companions, enchanted and with food and jars and potis that they touch. You will thank yourself and your colleagues.

Enchantments

If you are going to enchant rings that you think you will change in a short time and you don't want to spend a lot on an expensive enchantment, you can use Enchant Ring - Seal of Mastery

Gems

Master Marine Amethyst or your economical option Master Kubilina
Try to have 1 piece together with Kraken's Eye of Intellect

Flasks

Flasks of Infinite Depths

Potion

Battle Potion of Intellect

Meal

Captain's Bountiful Feast (feast for group)
Your individual meal will be Sailor cake

Addons and Resources

This is a series of addons that I recommend to get the most out of your character

Weakuras 2

When you have this addon I recommend you install the following weakauras for your Affliction Warlock -> https://wago.io/Nkgbld8YW

And here is a weakaura to control Soul Fragments more optimally: https://wago.io/IpseShards

You can find thousands of weakauras for any class, dungeon, raid, etc. https://wago.io/collections

KUI nameplates

Gives you the most name bar customization. Ideal for DOT classes such as Affliction. https://wow.curseforge.com/projects/kuinameplates

Details

For me, better than Skada or Recount. It's a mini WarcraftLogs in the making. You will have all the information about all your matches presented in a simple and clean way.

Bloodmallet

A website that is constantly being updated. There you will see the best pieces and powers of Azerite, beads and more information.

Accompany it with the AzeriteForge addon: https://wow.curseforge.com/projects/azeriteforge

Warcraftlogs and WowAnalyzer

Does your group upload the logs of the battles to Warcraftlogs? Do you do it yourself? If you don't, I recommend it from now on: www.warcraftlogs.com

It also uses the WowAnalyzer tool. It analyzes all your movements and tells you how to improve with your class. wowanalyzer.com