World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Current as of Patch 5.1

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Role | Talents & Glyphs | Stat Priority | Reforging
Cooldowns | Single Target Rotation | AOE Rotation

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This guide aims to provide all of the most critical details about how to play an Affliction Warlock at level 90 in PVE content.  It covers talents, glyphs, stats, reforging, and rotations. 

It is assumed that since you are level 90 you will be able to take the basic information and run with it, simple topics like addons, macros, targeting, and more are not covered.

The Role of an Affliction Warlock

As an Affliction Warlock your role in a group is to provide some serious DPS.  As of patch 5.1 Affliction Warlocks are theoretically one of the top 3 DPS classes. In addition to top knotch DPS, Affliction Warlocks also provide the following abilities and benefits:

• Can provide some CC in the form of banish, fear, seduction, enslave, and mesmerize. 
• Can buff the groups spell power by 10% with Dark Intent and cause enemies to take 5% more damage from spells with the Curse of the Elements debuff.
• Can provide healthstones to players for a quick 20% heal, as well as resurrecting players with Soulstones.
• Can provide some group mobility with Demonic Gateway. 

Affliction Warlock Talents and Glyphs

A lot has changed with talents and Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria and the new Talent System 2.0, which means that for the most part you are free too chose talents and glyphs that you like rather than specific ones.  There are however a very specific talents and glyphs that are required for the best DPS performance in PVE content, for an Affliction Warlock they are:

Grimoire of Sacrifice (Tier 5 talent)- Sacrifice your demon to gain one of its abilities, and increase the power of many of your single target spells by up to 50%.  Also regenerate 2% of your maximum health every 5 seconds. Lasts for 1 hour. Summoning another demon cancels the effect.

This talent boosts many of your DOT effects by 50% and is a critical DPS talent as an Affliction Warlock.

Glyph of Soul Shards (Major Glyph) – Provides the ability to have an extra soul shard.

This talent boosts your DPS by allowing you to use your soul shard powered abilities more frequently.

Glyph of Siphon Life (Major Glyph) – Heals you for 20% of the damage that your Corruption DOT deals.

This talent provides both a survivability boost and an indirect DPS boost by providing health which you can turn into mana to keep casting in long fights.

Affliction Warlock Stat Priority

It is critical to understand your stat priority for any class as going after the wrong stats can really hurt your DPS output.
The stat priority for an Affliction Warlock is:

Intellect > Mastery > Haste > Hit (to 15%) > Crit

Important Notes:

• Hit - DPS players have been trained over time to highly value hit and reaching the hit cap.  Since Affliction Warlocks deal most of their damage through their DOT abilities which can not miss once applied, hit becomes far less important.  Sure, you can miss the initial application of the DOT and have to recast it, but once on a target a DOT can not miss again.
• Mastery – Mastery is your best stat after Intellect due to Potent Afflictions, which raises the damage caused by your three main DOTs (Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction) based on the amount of mastery that you have.

Reforging as an Affliction Warlock

When reforging simply follow the stat priority for Affliciton Warlocks and move the lowest stat to the highest stat that the piece does not have on it. You can also follow this simple table:

If your gear has these two stats…	Reforge this stat…	… to this stat
Mastery + Haste	Do not Reforge	Do not Reforge
Mastery + Hit	Hit	Haste
Mastery + Crit	Crit	Haste
Haste + Hit	Hit	Mastery
Haste + Crit	Crit	Mastery
Hit + Crit	Crit	Mastery

Affliction Warlock Cooldowns

There are only two main cooldowns to worry about as an Affliction Warlock.  They are Dark Soul: Misery and your two large demon summons (Infernal and Doomguard).

Dark Soul: Misery – Use this one on cooldown at all times.  The only real exception is when an trash mob is within a few percentage points of dying, then you may want to save it for the next enemy or boss.

Summon Infernal or Summon Doomguard – These two demons share a 10 minute cooldown.  They should be used for any boss fight when they are off cooldown as appropriate, meaning the Infernal for AOE and the Doomgaurd for single targets.

Affliction Warlock Single Target Rotation

As with most classes now there is no specific rotation for abilities, but rather a priority based list that should be followed for highest DPS output. 

The priority rotation for Affliction Warlocks against a single target is:

1 - Curse of the Elements – Put this debuff up at the start of the fight unless someone else can apply it.

2 - Agony – Keep this active at all times and make sure you refresh it before it expires so that it stays at 10 stacks.

3 - Corruption  - Keep this active.

4 - Unstable Affliction – Keep this active.

Important: Priority items 2 – 4 can all be applied at once using Soulburn and Soul Swap.  This will consume a soul shard, but apply all three DOTs instantly instead of having to cast them individually.

5 - Haunt – Cast this whenever Haunt is not already on the target and you have a soul shard and will not need to use it to reapply your DOT’s with a Souldburned Soul Swap within about the next 10 seconds.

6 - Drain Soul – Use this if the target is below 20% health or if you are in dire need of additional soul shards.

7 - Malefic Grasp – This is your default filler spell when everything else is active already and the enemy is still above 20% health.

Affliction Warlock AOE Target Rotation

There are two AOE style rotations for Affliction Warlocks, the first is for 2-3 targets, and the second is for 4 or more targets.

Against 2-3 targets, essentially use your single target rotation against all the enemies to keep DOTs ticking on all of them.

Against 4 or more targets as an Affliction Warlock use the following rotation:

1 - Soulburn + Curse of the Elements – Applies CotE to all targets at once.

2 - Soulburn + Seed of Corruption – Applies Corruption to all targets affected when the seed explodes.  Use this whenever corruption is going to fade from the enemies.

3 - Seed of Corruption – Cycle through the various targets applying a seed to each of them so that the AOE caused by each one chains to cause further AOE explosions.

Comments on Affliction Warlocks

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