WoW 10.2 Affliction Warlock Guide
Last modified 4 months ago
Tier Sets
2-Piece
(2) Soul Rot deals 15 percent increased damage and lasts an additional 4 seconds.
4-Piece
Talent Builds
Trinkets
Belor'relos, the Suncaller
Best in Slot Trinket. Does a large amount of damage when used and is worthwhile on both Single Target and AOE.
Nymue's Unraveling Spindle
Other Best in Slot Trinket. Hybrid Stat and Damage based effect which should be paired with your cooldown, whenever possible.
Balefire Branch
A strong, stat based on-use trinket that drops from Waycrest Manor. While not as good as Nymue's, it is a decent alternative.
Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows
Another strong, stat based on-use trinket that drops from Dawn of the Infinite. While not as good as Nymue's, it is a decent alternative.
Stat Weights
Intellect>Haste>Mastery>Critical Strike>Versatility
It is VERY important to note that this is a rough outline of desired secondary stats. Your stat weights will be different than others due to varying gear sets and other external factors. The best way to tell what your own stat weights are is a raidbots.com Top Gear sim with Gems and Enchants taken into account. If you don't want to do that then you can just follow this.
Gear, Consumables & Enchants
Consumables
Personal - Timely Demise
Raid - Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak
While Feasts are better in every sense they are also very expensive to craft and typically not used outside of raiding.
Weapon - Howling Rune
Howling Runes grant you Haste when consumed, similar to Weapons Oils from Shadowlands.
Enchants and Gems
Weapon - Sophic Devotion
Cloak - Graceful Avoidance
Chest - Waking Stats
Bracers - Devotion of Avoidance
Legs - Frozen Spellthread
Boots - Plainsrunner's Breeze
Rings - Devotion of Haste
Quick Ysemerald - Pure Haste
Keen Ysemerald - Major Haste/Minor Mastery
Fierce Illimited Diamond - Primary Stat and Haste (1)
Rotation
The openers and rotations listed below are what you want to follow in a normal opener and setting. At times these may change due to fight mechanics or needing to hold CDs.
Dread Touch Single Target
1. Precast Haunt
2. Precast Unstable Affliction
3. Agony
4. Corruption
5. Siphon Life
6. Drain Soul to 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace
7. Vile Taint
8. Soul Rot (Trinkets, Potions and Racials)
9. Summon Darkglare
10. Malefic Rapture Spam
You will want to cast Malefic Rapture to maintain the Dread Touch effect as often as possible while also pooling shards for Malefic Rapture dump windows, if possible.
AOE/Mythic +
1. Seed of Corruption
2. Vile Taint
3. Unstable Affliction
4. Haunt (if talented)
5. Soul Rot (Trinkets, Potions and Racials)
6. Summon Darkglare
7. Spam Seed of Corruption
It is very important for Soul Rot to be the last spell you cast before Darkglare and then Seed spam due to the Haste and Crit bonus that Dark Harvest brings with it.
Filler Rotation
Afflictions rotation is relatively simple outside of your Malefic Rapture windows. You will want to maintain your DOT effects and Haunt/Shadow's Embrace while refreshing in their Pandemic window. Pandemic is essentially the fact that you want to refresh your DOT's when they reach 30% or less of their remaining duration. This will add that remaining duration onto the new DOT application without and damage being "lost".
While it is not a massive DPS loss to refresh before your Pandemic window, it is still something to min/max. Refreshing DOT on the move however is a DPS gain (over casting nothing) and is one of the main perks of Affliction, it's incredibly mobile.
DOT Pandemic Rage
Agony - 4.5 Seconds
Corruption - 4.2 Seconds
Siphon Life - 4.5 Seconds
Unstable Affliction - 6.3 Seconds
Outside of DOT maintenance you will have your Malefic Rapture windows every minute and the task of maintaining Dread Touch. You will want to pool 5 Soul Shards and hold your Phantom Singularity/Soul Rot then cast all of your Malefic Raptures while they are both active. Malefic Raptures damage is based off Mastery and the number of active DOTs.