How to Affliction

[Zerfallen]

This is just a simple guide helping out the fresh 80's (and rerolls) with getting prepared for raiding as affliction in WotLK. I hope it answers many questions and helps improve some players. Questions are encouraged and if you see something that might be a little off, please let me know.

General Information
Warlocks these days give off the vibe of "Omg we're a broken class, fix our dps now" etc.. That's a misconception. Warlocks are a very complicated class and requires precise timing when it comes to throwing up DoTs. The margin of DPS between a good warlock and a decent warlock these days is quite high. An experienced affliction raider can easily toss up 2k dps in a raid whereas someone who's just starting to raid as affliction is going to have trouble keeping up 15-1600 dps.

The generic Affliction spec is 56/0/15 with the key talents being Siphon Life, Haunt, ISB, and Ruin.
Found here: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IfxMbzMAoqA0IstZE00V

A few notes on this spec

- No points in Dark Pact - This is because of the scaling with spirit on Life Tap (300%), and the abundance of spirit on our gear, we really don't need Dark Pact, or the full 2 points in Improved Felhunter. The 1 point in Imp Felhunter is a filler point and can be tossed into anything as you please. Personally I put it into Improved Healthstone.

- Soul Siphon - Filler for our dps once our target reaches 25% is Drain Life, works hand in hand with Death's Embrace. Extra 20% damage (if you're the only affliction lock in the group) can not be passed.

- Ruin - Filler spell until 25% is shadow bolt, so you definately want the extra crit damage.

- ISB - Also great with helping out our shadow bolts damage, also works with the initial hit from Haunt.

Also to note, the new hit cap is 367 with supression, 446 without. Blizzard removed the 99% hit cap in 3.0 so now once you're capped, your spells will always hit. Also to note that 1% hit =26.23199272 hit rating.

Spell Rotation Etc
We'll start with the basic DoT rotation for lock.

Shadow Bolt -> Haunt -> Immolate -> Unstable Affliction -> Corruption -> Curse of Agony -> Siphon Life

Immolate before UA due to Haunt having a missile effect so you wanna give it time for it to hit and get the extra stack of Shadow Embrace.

A few simple rules to follow when raiding affliction.

1 - Always start off with Shadow Bolt, then haunt. This allows Shadow Embrace to stack twice for maximum DPS from the get go. If you're on CoE duty, cast CoE then Shadow Bolt and continue.

2 - Immolate and UA are always cast together due to their cast times being identicle unless you have the glyph for improved UA.

3 - NEVER EVER STOP A CAST. Even if you're gonna refresh a dot that doesn't need to be refreshed, you're wasting time and dps by stopping something midcast.

4 - Try your best not to clip a DoT. This means timing it as close to 0 as possible to get the full effect from your dot. This goes double for Curse of Agony since it's damage goes up each tick.

5 - At the moment, Curse of Doom does not benefit from Shadow Mastery, Haunt, or Shadow Embrace, so never replace Curse of Agony with Doom.

Glyphs
Here's a short list of every warlock glyph available. Glyphs I recommend are in blue. Yes, all the glyphs are ****ing lame for our class.

Major Glyphs

75 - Glyph of Corruption - You Corruption spell has a 4% chance to cause you to enter a Shadow Trance state after damaging the opponent. The Shadow Trance state reduces the casting time of your next Shadow Bolt spell by -100%. (Stacks with Nightfall)
75 - Glyph of Healthstone - You receive 30% more healing from using a healthstone.
100 - Glyph of Health Funnel - Increases the chance you'll resist spell interruption when channeling your Health Funnel spell by 100%.
125 - Glyph of Fear - Increases the damage your Fear target can take before the Fear effect is removed by 20%.
150 - Glyph of Imp - Increases the damage done by your Imp's Firebolt spell by 10%.
175 - Glyph of Shadow Bolt - Reduces the mana cost of your Shadow Bolt by -10%.
200 - Glyph of Voidwalker - Increases your Voidwalker's total Stamina by 20%.
225 - Glyph of Searing Pain - Increases the critical strike bonus of your Searing Pain by 20%.
250 - Glyph of Soulstone - Increases the amount of health a player gains from resurrecting via your Soulstone by 100%.
275 - Glyph of Shadowburn - Increases the critical strike chance of Shadowburn by 20% when the target is below 35% health.
300 - Glyph of Succubus - Increases the duration of your Succubus's Seduction by 3 sec.
325 - Glyph of Banish - Increases the duration of your Banish by 5 sec.
350 - Glyph of Felhunter - Increases the critical strike chance of your Felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 6%.
375 - Glyph of Conflagrate - Reduces the mana cost of your Conflagrate by -20%.
375 - Glyph of Siphon Life - Increases the effect of your Siphon Life spell by 20%.
375 - Glyph of Howl of Terror - Reduces the cooldown on your Howl of Terror spell by 8 sec.
400 - Glyph of Death Coil - Increases the duration of your Death Coil by 0.5 sec.
400 - Glyph of Immolate - Increases the periodic damage of your Immolate by 20% but decreases its initial damage by -10%.
400 - Glyph of Curse of Agony - Increases the duration of your Curse of Agony by 4 sec.
400 - Glyph of Unstable Affliction - Decreases the casting time of your Unstable Affliction by 0.2 sec.
400 - Glyph of Felguard - Increases the Felguard's total attack power by 10%.

Minor Glyphs

80 - Glyph of Drain Soul - Your Drain Soul ability occasionally creates an additional soul shard. (~5% proc rate)
130 - Glyph of Kilrogg - Increases the movement speed of your Eye of Kilrogg by 50% and allows it to fly in areas where flying mounts are enabled.
105 - Glyph of Unending Breath - Increases the swim speed of targets affected by your Unending Breath spell by 20%.
155 - Glyph of Curse of Exhausion - Increases the range of your Curse of Exhaustion spell by 5 yards.
155 - Glyph of Enslave Demon - Reduces the cast time of your Enslave Demon spell by 50%.
355 - Glyph of Souls - Reduces the mana cost of your Ritual of Souls spell by 70%.

FAQ
Q: Isn't glyph of Unstable Affliction useless because the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds and the base cast time is also 1.5 seconds, so using it will just give you .2 seconds of nothing after an unstable affliction cast. Unless it also reduces the global cooldown?
A: This makes boss fights where standing still = death much easier to manage our dots. You can replace this with Glyph of Curse of Agony if you find you're doing fine without it.



Still a work in progress. I'll do my best to answer questions and fix any errors if you find any.

[Gorrak94]

good job +rep, also you may want to add a enchants part if you get the time.

[magnajohn622]

Isn't glyph of Unstable Affliction useless because the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds and the base cast time is also 1.5 seconds, so using it will just give you .2 seconds of nothing after an unstable affliction cast. Unless it also reduces the global cooldown?

[Zerfallen]

Isn't glyph of Unstable Affliction useless because the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds and the base cast time is also 1.5 seconds, so using it will just give you .2 seconds of nothing after an unstable affliction cast. Unless it also reduces the global cooldown?

Yes the GCD is 1.5 so while having the glyph is useless for mindless tank and spank fights, it helps on fights where you're constantly moving. I've been waiting for the Curse of Agony one to pop up on the AH .

Edit: Changed highlighted glyphs to those I prefer rather than the ones I have.

[Mask]

here is my best strategy----

BUTTTOONN MMMASSSHHH and bang head on keyboard +rep m8

[Faight]

- Soul Siphon - Filler for our dps once our target reaches 35% is Drain Life, works hand in hand with Death's Embrace. Extra 20% damage (if you're the only affliction lock in the group) can not be passed.

I guess you mean Drainsoul.

And at 25% not 35%


And the math told me that molten core right now gives a little bit more dps than isb because most warlocks dont have that much crit since they hit 80.Also the hit should be quite low so u can pick up the 3% destrohit.

Can't post links so instead of putting 5 points in isb you should put 2 in mc and 3 in catalysm.




Sorry for my bad english

[[Soul Eater]]

The build looks decent for me but if I can ask why no TP in Grim Reach, or is 30 Yards just enough? It might be my own taste, but I would go for Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The reason that I do not have talents in malediction is because I prefer the distance + bonus of fel intelligence rather than a 3% more spell damage and effect of COTE . I might be wrong but then again, if I am the warlock that needs to have COTE every time up, then the talent build you made is good, but there must be a possible way of having grim reach because the range is also important from my view.

[JinX9001]

yeah nice plz post good profession bonus's too

[Faight]

The build looks decent for me but if I can ask why no TP in Grim Reach, or is 30 Yards just enough? It might be my own taste, but I would go for

Range isnt important because u still have to get close to get in range for your destruction spells.So for PvE it doesnt matter if you spec the range.

[Zerfallen]

I guess you mean Drainsoul.

And at 25% not 35%


And the math told me that molten core right now gives a little bit more dps than isb because most warlocks dont have that much crit since they hit 80.Also the hit should be quite low so u can pick up the 3% destrohit.

Can't post links so instead of putting 5 points in isb you should put 2 in mc and 3 in catalysm.

Noted .

The reason for ISB is you have 2 things that proc for a free shadow bolt. Glyph of Corruption, and Nightfall both stack for an 8% chance to get an instant shadow bolt. Also you get the same amount of bonuses from Affliction that you would for a molten core proc. Shadow Mastery giving 15%, Death's Embrace giving another 12% when the target is below 35%, and ISB giving 10%. An extra 37% can not be passed up . Although I'd like to see your math on molten core.

[carzyprof]

Really nice guide. It would be great if you can add some informaiton about enchants, and maybe heroic drops further more. So noobs (like me) has the chance what to do next step by step