Affliction Warlock Raid Guide

Welcome to the Affliction Warlock Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.1! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!

Affliction WarlockRaid

Single-Target

Average

AoE

Strong

Utility

Strong

Survivability

Excellent

Mobility

Weak

• Soul Harvester performs better on smaller amount of targets while Hellcaller excels at bigger amount of targets.

← Scroll for more Talent Builds →

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Your spells and abilities have a chance to hit a Jackpot! that increases your Haste by 12% for 12 seconds. Casting Summon Darkglare always hits a Jackpot!
• 4-Set: Hitting a Jackpot! also increases damage of Unstable Affliction by 50% and causes Unstable Affliction to spread to up to 3 targets within 40 yards for 17 seconds.

Single-Target

Multi-Target

AoE

Burn Windows

As an Affliction Warlock, you want to cast as many Malefic Raptures as possible during your Burn Windows.

• Burn Window is whenever you have Soul Rot with Phantom Singularity or Vile Taint up. Thus, your main goal is to save as many Soul Shards as you can for those windows without overcapping them.
• Keep in mind that you can use Vile Taint as a Mini-Burn Window all alone and spend some Shards here as well. Still, your main goal is to save as many Soul Shards as you can for your Main Burn with Soul Rot. Any extra Soul Shards that would have been used to not overcap could all be spent in Mini-Burn instead. The amount of Soul Shards spent in Mini-Burn depends on the number of targets you fight. For example, if you fight 8 targets or more then you can spend every Shard you get during Vile Taint but if it is single or low number of targets then it would only be few casts of Malefic Rapture. It all depends on how many Soul Shards you can generate in a 30 second window in between your Mini and Main Burn.

With experience, you get a better understanding of how many Soul Shards you want to spend outside of your burns, which varies on the number of targets you fight.

Managing Soul Shards as Hellcaller vs Soul Harvester

Main difference is that as a Hellcaller you want to save Soul Shards for your Burn Windows but as a Soul Harvester it is the opposite. You shouldn't save any Soul Shards and spend them whenever you can. Your main goal is to cast as few unbuffed Drain Souls as possible, almost never. That way it will be much easier to manage and not overcap on your procs and Soul Shards.

Once you are more used to the Soul Harvester playstyle you can try saving *1* Soul Shard for your Burn Windows to make them slightly more efficient. It is not recommended to save any more than 1 as it is very likely or guaranteed to overcap with 2 or more.

Nightfall and Tormented Crescendo

With the addition of hero talents, the amount of procs you get over the fight is significantly increased. To the point that managing them and not overcapping is as important as keeping up your DoTs and not failing you Burn Windows.

Hellcaller increases your Tormented Crescendo proc rate with Seeds of Their Demise and Soul Harvester increases amount of Nightfalls you get with Sataiel's Volition.

Difference between Hellcaller and Soul Harvester is quite big to the point that you need to manage your Soul Shards differently depending on the spec. That is due to Nightfall also interacting with how you get Tormented Crescendo. You have a very high chance of getting Tormented Crescendo proc during your Drain Soul channel buffed by Nightfall. Thus, as a Soul Harvester, you end up with an increased amount of both Tormented Crescendo and Nightfall procs.

Drain Soul clipping

Clipping means manually interrupting your cast. It is not necessary to finish your Drain Soul channel cast unless it is buffed by Nightfall. So any time you cast Drain Soul without it, you should clip it whenever any other spell higher in priority comes in.

For example, if you are casting normal unbuffed Drain Soul and you get a Nightfall or Tormented Crescendo proc then you should clip your cast and spend the proc.

Malefic Rapture vs Seed of Corruption

With The War Within coming, there is no more confusion on what spender to cast anymore. Your next cast should always be:

• Seed of Corruption if you need to apply Corruption on the pack of mobs.
• Malefic Rapture in any other situation, it is your main and only spender.

Vile Taint, Phantom Singularity and Soul Rot

Although usage of these spells is pretty straightforward, there are a couple of things you need to keep in mind:

• Soul Rot is a 1 minute cooldown spell and should always be paired with Vile Taint or Phantom Singularity.
• Phantom Singularity should always be held for Soul Rot unless the fight is ending and you are not getting another cast of Soul Rot lined up.
• Vile Taint being a 30 second cooldown spell allows it one additional use before Soul Rot comes off CD.

Minmaxing Volatile Agony

Another small thing to manage in The War Within is a new passive effect of refreshing Agony with less than 10 seconds remaining as it does decent AoE damage if executed properly. Aside from manually refreshing Agony, it is more important to remember that Vile Taint also triggers Volatile Agony. So in AoE scenarios, if trash lives long enough for a second Vile Taint, it's often beneficial to hold it for a few seconds to trigger more Volatile Agonys for more AoE output.

Optimizing Summon Darkglare

The main feature of Summon Darkglare lies in extending your DoTs, rather than just gaining pure damage from it, thus increasing the duration of your Burn Windows. Make sure to only cast it when Vile Taint and Soul Rot are up alongside your other DoTs.

Another important thing to know is that Summon Darkglare is a guardian and how it updates its stats. It happens differently the moment Darkglare is summoned and when it is already up.

Once you cast Summon Darkglare it snapshots your characters stats instantly but when it is already active it may take up to few seconds to update. That is why you should press potion, racial and any on use stat trinket right before Summon Darkglare and not after.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as an Affliction Warlock. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

For early gearing your main goal is to avoid Vers, every other stat is good for Affliction Warlocks.

• All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing. The damage of your pets does not heal you thus Leech is a great tertiary for you since most of your damage is coming from your own spells.
• Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Signet of the Priory
  • Very good on use alternative.
• Soulletting Ruby
  • Good active trinket, can be "cheesed" sometimes by sniping low health mobs to get maximum value of the trinket.
• Geargrinder's Spare Keys
  • Decent on use damage trinket for single target but loses value during AoE.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Mug's Moxie Jug
  • Second best passive trinket, just a high uptime Crit stat stick.
• Synergistic Brewterializer
  • Strong option for single target but loses value the more targets you add to the encounter. Also can be quite annoying and hard at times to trigger during AoE.
• Carved Blazikon Wax
  • Good passive trinket that increases your Versatility.
• Suspicious Energy Drink
  • One of the best passive trinkets in its item level range. Drops from delves which caps its ilvl at 665, still a very good passive option though.
• Reverb Radio
  • Decent passive stat stick.

Embellishments

• 1x Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension
  • Only crafted on your main hand or off-hand weapon. Craft it on your main hand for more power early on or on your off-hand for long-term BiS.
• 1x Writhing Armor Banding
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Boots or Waist depending on your available gear.

or

• 1-2x Elemental Focusing Lens
  • Deals a decent amount of damage in Single-Target.
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Boots or Waist depending on your available gear.

or

• 1-2x Dawnthread Lining
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Boots or Waist depending on your available gear.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Phials
  • Flask of Alchemical Chaos -- maximum DPS.
  • Flask of Tempered Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.
• Food
  • Feast of the Midnight Masquerade -- default
• Combat Potion
  • Tempered Potion
• Health Potion
  • Algari Healing Potion -- a big burst of healing
• Weapon Oil
  • Algari Mana Oil -- default
  • Oil of Deep Toxins
• Augment Rune
  • Crystallized Augment Rune
• Sockets
  • Masterful Ruby
  • Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem color to enhance your Culminating Blasphemite.
    • Masterful Sapphire
    • Masterful Emerald
    • Deadly Onyx

Enchantments

For min-maxing an Affliction Warlock in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your character. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.

• Stoneform -- Dwarf
  • Dispels Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
• Rocket Jump -- Goblin
  • Do a small jump in the direction your character is facing.
  • While you're in the Rocket Jump animation you are placed on a global cooldown until your character lands.
• Berserking -- Troll
  • Strong DPS racial but lines up poorly with Summon Darkglare.
  • Reduce the duration of movement-impairing effects by 20%. This was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but is still worth noting.
• Blood Fury -- Orc
  • Strong racial for damage because of both Command and Blood Fury which lines up with Summon Darkglare.
  • 20% reduced stun duration on you which can be useful in some situations.
• Ancestral Call -- Mag'har Orc
  • Strong DPS racial which lines up with Summon Darkglare.
• Spatial Rift -- Void Elf
  • Spawn a shadow traveling into your facing direction, and activate it again to teleport to it.
  • Maximum range of 100 yards.

Recommendation

In general, it's safe to say that if you care about min-maxing your DPS, you should go with the highest DPS racial. That being said, the story is a bit different if it's about progression raiding. Some help out massively to speed up the progression on certain bosses. Notably, Dwarf with their Stoneform helped out on Tindral Sageswift and Fyrakk the Blazing in the latest Race to World First by having easy access to dispelling yourself at crucial points of the fights mentioned.

Discover recommended macros for Affliction Warlocks during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Cursor Macros

Phantom Singularity and Vile Taint -- Casts Phantom Singularity on your target or Vile Taint on your cursor without confirmation, depending on what spell is picked in your talent tree.

#showtooltip
/cast [known:Phantom Singularity,harm,nodead]Phantom Singularity; [known:Vile Taint,@cursor] Vile Taint

Shadowfury -- Casts Shadowfury on your cursor without confirmation.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Shadowfury

Mouseover Macros

Pet Macros

Utility Macros

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Affliction Warlock, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

Addons

WeakAuras

Patch 11.1

Q: Why my Malefic Rapture does so little damage?

Q: What pet should I use?

Credits

Written By: Wexi

Reviewed By: Wolfdisco