Audience

A beginners guide for Warlocks interested in raiding as Affliction.

Guide

3.3 Spec

Current Basic Spec This spec has 1 point left over that can be placed in Improved Drain Soul (for threat reduction), Dark Pact (for a Life Tap alternative), or Cataclysm (for cheaper Shadow Bolts).

3.3 Glyphs

The best Glyphs for Affliction are: Glyph of Haunt, Glyph of Quick Decay, Glyph of Life Tap

Spells

Afflictions arsenal consist primarily of 5 spells: Corruption, Curse of Agony, Haunt, Shadow Bolt, Unstable Affliction

Your typical opening rotation for bosses should look like something like this:
(Life Tap before combat) > Shadow Bolt > Haunt > Curse of Agony >Corruption > Unstable Affliction

Why? I will go a little deeper into this lower down, but you want to build up your buffs/debuffs before piling on your DoTs to maximize their damage. The order of the last 3 DoTs is personal preference but it pretty much doesn’t matter. Since they all have different lengths you will be refreshing them in random orders throughout the rest of the fight.

After your opening rotation, spam Shadow Bolt while reapplying all of your DoTs on the target as they fall off. Try to keep your Life Tap buff going also. It is advisable to have Life Tap Rank 1, or Dark Pact, somewhere handy for times you do not need the mana or cannot afford to take extra damage.

For AoE use Seed of Corruption when there are 4 or more targets. If there are fewer that 4 mobs you can either place DoTs on each one or use Rain of Fire.

Refreshing DoT’s

Clipping

When refreshing your DoT’s, always attempt to avoid clipping. Clipping is where you reapply the DoT before it finishes. This will hurt your Damage/DPS output. Each DoT does a certain amount of damage spread over X seconds with ticks of damage every few seconds until it has run its course with the last tick coming at the very end as it falls off the target, so if you reapply the DoT before it finishes you skip the last tick of damage.

For instance: Unstable Affliction - Rank 5 - Shadow energy slowly destroys the target, causing 1150 damage over 15 sec.

So UA ticks 5 times every 3 seconds for 230 damage. (T = tick, C = cast)

C _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T

If you reapply UA before the last tick your damage would look like this.

C _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _C _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T

Your goal is to reapply the DoT a split second after it falls off.

C _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ TC _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T _ _ T

The same applies for all of the DoTs. For Curse of Agony, simply reapply it as soon as you see it fall off. Unstable Affliction should have between a 1 second and 1.5 second cast time depending on your haste so you should begin casting it as soon as you get about .1-.2 seconds past your cast time so it is reapplied just a split second after it has fallen off.

Since Haunt is not a DoT, clipping is not an issue with it, you simply want to cast in the window between when it comes off cooldown and when the debuff falls off the target.

With Everlasting Affliction, Corruption should not fall off of the target so unless you switched to a different target or were otherwise detained. If it does fall off reapply it just after in the same way as Curse of Agony.

Buffs/Debuffs

Buffs and Debuffs that affect your damage are calculated when you apply the DoT, not on each tick of damage. Corruptions damage is recalculated whenever Haunt, Shadow Bolt, Drain Life, or Drain Soul is applied and resets it.

Drain Soul

Drain Soul is our Execute ability, doing 4x damage under 25%. Drain Soul does not recheck the targets health, so if you begin channeling at 25.1%, the entire channel will not benefit from the 4x damage. Once the target is down to 24.9% you are good to start channeling. Try to keep your dot’s rolling as efficiently as possible. Whenever you break to recast Haunt, go ahead and recast Unstable Affliction, and if Curse of Agony has less than 10 second remaining refresh it also so you can spend as much time as possible channeling. An addon that displays when damage ticks occur can help you decide when to break a channel to recast DoTs. Also try to keep your Life Tap buff up, and if you are the only one applying the 5% crit debuff through Improved Shadow Bolt, try to keep it up also.

It takes a little practice but this is where Affliction ‘locks shine.

3.3 Pets

For Affliction, the pet of choice is again the Felhunter. Your Infernal is also a very good damage boost, but since it has a 1 minute duration you want to save it until the end of a fight when you think you will have about a minute left so not to end up without a pet for very long. If Bloodlust/Heroism is planned for near the end of the fight time your Infernal for then, however you don’t want to use the Infernal early in a fight, even for Bloodlust/Heroism since you will then be without a pet for the majority of the time.

3.3 Stats

At this point you should go about stacking stats in the following order: Hit Until Capped > Spell Power = Haste > Spirit = Crit

Hit from Gear, Talents, Buffs, and Debuffs needs to be at 17% (446). Suppression gives 3%, and Misery (Shadow Priest) and Improved Faerie Fire (Balance Druid) another 3%, so if you consistently raid with either class/spec then you can shoot for only 11% (289) from gear. Without one of these you will need to have 14% hit (368) from gear.

My personal opinion is you should always spec into Suppression when possible which will allow you to take more gear with haste/crit/spirit. Hit is an empty stat in the sense that it does not add to your damage in any way, it simply stops it from being lowered due to a miss, and any hit over the cap is a waste. However, we all work with the gear we can get, but ideally you will only need 289 hit from gear.

Spell Power is our heaviest damage boost and is what you should focus on stacking as high as possible. All of your enchants and gems should focus on Spell Power, with the exception of gems that unlock your meta and socket bonuses.

With the new Glyph of Quick Decay in 3.3, Haste is the next best stat for Affliction.

Crit and Spirit follow a little behind it. It is never beneficial to stack Crit, or Spirit gems, always pair them with Spell Power if you need a Blue or Yellow gem.

3.3 Changes

Some nice changes came to Affliction in 3.3. If you are just getting back into Affliction the big change is the Glyph of Quick decay which allows your Haste rating to reduce the time between Corruption ticks. Also, Everlasting Affliction has been changed to work off of Shadow Bolt and Drain Soul, as well as Haunt and Drain Life.

3.3.2 Changes

Shadow Embrace now stacks to 3, so to get your Shadow Embrace stacks all the way up you should open with Shadow Bolt > Shadow Bolt > Haunt > Etc.

Tips and Tricks

The way Blizzard has the Everlasting Affliction talent setup to work is it will recheck your Spellpower and Haste rating on each reset of Corruption (through Haunt, Shadow Bolt, Drain Soul, or Drain Life) but it does not check for +damage or +crit bonuses. Therefore it is beneficial to stack as much crit as possible when you first apply Corruption. The Nevermelting Ice Crystal from Heroic Pit of Saron is an excellent trinket for Affliction due to this mechanic. When you are about to pull, pop a Potion of Wild Magic (+200 Crit) then after applying your Shadow Bolts, Haunt, and either UA or CoA, pop your Nevermelting Ice Crystal (+920 Crit) and then apply Corruption. Your Corruption will carry the +1120 Crit for as long as it is on the boss.

On the down side of Corruption not rechecking any +damage modifiers, is Death's Embrace and the T10 4 Piece Bonus. Death's Embrace gives a +12% damage buff after 35%, so if your trinket is back up, cast a Seed of Corruption to clear your Corruption and then pop another Potion of Wild Magic, your trinket, and then reapply Corruption. If your trinket is not ready, don't worry about reapplying, as the +20% from the additional crit rating is better than the +12%. If you aren't running with the trinket it should always be better to reapply Corruption for the additional damage.

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