Credit is owed to mEOnGG, for his help in patching up several of the links in the guide, and to Rifokelt and Sky, for their extensive contributions, proofreading assistance, and expertise in the realm of colours and aesthetics, without the aid of which the formatting of this guide would have been an exercise in artistic futility.
You're encouraged to use the Table of Contents to navigate the guide with the aid of the Ctrl + F function. It's helpful to open the guide in another tab, with the Table of Contents easily viewable in the previous one.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Foreword
- Overview of the Affliction Spec
- What Affliction brings to Raids
- Stat Priorities
- Stats Overview
- Stat Weights
- Gemming, Enchanting, and Consumables
- Gemming
- Enchants
- Consumables
- BiS Lists
- With 3/3 Suppression
- With 0/3 Suppression
- Professions and Races
- Professions
- Races
- Talents
- Beginner-friendly spec
- Optional talents
- Max DPS spec
- Glyphs
- Gameplay
- Spells and Procs Involved
- Rotation
- Your Opener
- Corruption Rolling
- Making the most of Drain Soul
- Maximizing your DPS
- - Haunt vs Shadow Bolt
- - Procs and Debuffs you need to track
- - Multi-Dotting and AoE
- - Dot Refreshing
- - Life Tapping
- - Shadow Bolt usage during Drain Soul phase (New!)
- - DPSing Val'kyrs on 25hc LK
- - Handling Movement
- - Your Utility Belt
- - Managing your Demon
- - Threat Management (Updated!)
- Mastering the Spec
- How to Practice
- Correcting low DPS
- Fight familiarity
- Technical Expertise
- FAQ
- - TL;DR on how to play Affliction
- - What buffs do I need to make sure are up before a fight?
- - Demon Minions
- - How long does a target need to be up for putting Corruption on it to be worth it?
- - Incorporation of UA and CoA when multi-dotting.
- - Do I need to refresh Corruption after applying the Haunt and Shadow Embrace debuffs?
- - Is dotting irrelevant targets to fish for procs worthwhile?
- - Rain of Fire vs Seed of Corruption
- - Life Tap vs Dark Pact
- - Curse of Agony vs Curse of Doom
- - Spellstone vs Firestone
- - Dislodged Foreign Object vs Phylactery of the Nameless Lich
- - How good is Nevermelting Ice Crystal? How do the other available trinkets measure up?
- Raid Buffs
- Your Personal Buffs
- Raid Buffs and Debuffs
- Miscellaneous Buffs and Cooldowns
- Add-ons
- Power Auras
- Macros
- A Warlock's Perspective - Raid Encounters Breakdown
- Lord Marrowgar
- Lady Deathwhisper
- Deathbringer Saurfang
- Professor Putricide
- Blood Prince Council
- Blood Queen Lana'thel
- Sindragosa
- The Lich King
- Halion
The Table of Contents reflects the most recent updates or additions to the guide.
Date of last update: 02/01/2019
1. Introduction
Foreword
This guide will serve as an adequate resource if you're interested in mastering the Affliction spec. It will equip you with a much keener sense of how the spec is meant to be played.
A lot of crucial information on how to squeeze the most DPS possible out of the spec in various situations will be imparted, and you will also come to possess a better understanding of the utility you possess, and how you might incorporate it into your gameplay so as to better be a Warlock your raid is grateful to have around.
If you're still wrapping your head around the basics of the spec, the guide has a very condensed TL;DR in the FAQ section.
Overview of the Affliction Spec
In patch 3.3.5, Affliction enjoys the position of being the highest Warlock DPS spec, in terms of strict single target DPS.
Comparing against the single target performance of other RDPS classes, Affliction ranks well above average. Unlike for instance, Mages, Affliction Warlocks are not conventional chart-toppers, unless the fight features elements that specifically play to their strengths; most notably things like Multi-Dotting - an area Affliction Warlocks excel in (to which several segments in this guide are dedicated).
Affliction Warlock DPS is characterized by its iconic use of a variety of Damage over Time abilities on enemy targets (primarily your Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Curse of Agony abilities), as well as the application of other debuffs that enhance those DoT abilities such as Shadow Embrace and the Haunt debuff. Outside of maintaining these effects, Affliction employs the use of Shadow Bolt as a filler ability, and then later substitutes Shadow Bolt for Drain Soul once the target is below 25% HP. Drain Soul counts as a DoT and therefore benefits from the aforementioned Shadow Embrace and Haunt debuffs. It also benefits from some of your other talents like Soul Siphon, which is why Affliction Warlocks possess a unique affinity for this ability that the other Warlock specs don't share.
While Affliction Warlock DPS has the longest ramp-up time (something that's exacerbated by the spec's complete lack of any kind of burst damage), it also has the highest execute phase DPS in the game. On the average tank-and-spank fight, its DPS output plotted along a timeline will resemble the following:
One of the biggest selling points of the spec is its stellar execute phase damage. Once the enemy is at 35% HP, its damage increases significantly because the effect of the Death's Embrace talent kicks in. At 25%, there is yet another spike in its DPS output because of the use of the Drain Soul ability, which is tremendously powerful in the hands of an Affliction Warlock.
Having said that, the Affliction spec is not without its share of shortcomings. As mentioned above, due to the fact that it has to apply 3 DoTs as well as Haunt and 3x stacks of the Shadow Embrace debuff before it's at its maximum damage potential, Affliction suffers from having a very high damage ramp-up time. As a consequence, the spec is not very good at things like target-switching, especially if immediate damage on the new target is of utmost importance.
Apart from its lack of on-demand burst and high ramp-up time, another notable inconvenience of the Affliction spec is often its distinct lack of quality of life boons. Unlike most other DPS classes that can usually spec into threat reduction, pushback immunity, and increased range all at the same time with little cost, Affliction doesn't enjoy that luxury. You often have to make substantial trade-offs in your other talents to spec into these things. This tends to be a common source of grievance among players that pick up Affliction Warlocks after having had prior experience with other ranged DPS specs that didn't suffer this issue. Some of the most commonly used specs in high-end raiding involve sacrificing these quality of life improvements so as to have a build that delivers greater DPS.
What Affliction brings to Raids
Affliction Warlocks do not particularly bestow the raid with any kind of unique raid buff. While they do offer valuable buffs and utility, a lot of it tends to be covered by other classes. They bring:
- Curse of the Elements, which is a debuff also provided by Moonkins (Earth and Moon) and Unholy Death Knights (Ebon Plague). It's worth noting that Curse of the Elements' 5 minute duration is significantly higher than its counterparts; this could be useful some of the time.
- Shadow Mastery, which is a debuff shared with other Warlocks and Mages (Improved Scorch).
- The Fel Intelligence buff from their Felhunter, although both the Intellect and Spirit portions of this buff are inferior to a Mage's Arcane Intellect and to a Priest's Divine Spirit respectively, even when the Warlock is specced into Improved Felhunter.
- An array of Warlock utility, including things like Fel Healthstones from Ritual of Souls, and Soulstone, which can serve as valuable insurance against the death of a raid member.
Going over the above list, one can quickly surmise that the raid buffs they bring really aren't the main selling points of Affliction Warlocks. Instead, raids will come to value them for their above average single target damage, outstanding Multi Target damage, and unrivaled execute phase damage. The high execute phase damage can be of exceptional value on encounters where the final phase happens to be the most difficult or stressful, such as Sindragosa, Anub'arak, or Yogg-Saron, the last of which very strongly favours Affliction Warlocks due to their ability to continue a Drain Soul channel without facing an enemy, thereby avoiding the boss' Lunatic Gaze ability. Their multi-target damage is likewise particularly helpful on fights like Mimiron. Warlocks are also outstanding on The Lich King encounter for their Demonic Circle ability in Phase 2. When a Warlock is grabbed by a Val'kyr during the encounter, they can return to the platform unharmed through the use of their teleport. This allows the raid to completely ignore their Val'kyr, which significantly increases raid DPS on the boss. This is an advantage no other class brings a comparable equivalent to.
All of the above are examples of fights where Affliction Warlocks shine. Notice the common theme among all these encounters? They're all extremely challenging fights that usually present major obstacles during progression raiding. An Affliction Warlock is therefore a colossal (and often indispensable) asset on some of the most difficult raid encounters in Wrath of the Lich King!
2. Stat Priorities
Stats Overview
In general, the priority you maintain is:
Hit Rating (to cap) > Spell power > Haste >>>> Crit > Spirit
Hit Rating:
The following table shows the amount of Hit chance you need to reach your hit-cap against targets ranging from level 77-83.
As a level 80 caster, you need 17% hit against level 83 raid bosses. Having a Moonkin (Improved Faerie Fire) or Spriest (Misery) in the raid reduces this to 14%.
Target Level 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 Hit Chance Needed 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 17%
Most of the time, you should only build your gear and talents around reaching this 14%, as you are certain to have a Balance Druid or Shadow Priest in all but the least optimal raid compositions. The talent Suppression also increases your hit by 1% per talent point.
1% Hit = 26.23 Hit Rating
With 3/3 Suppression specced, you need 11% x 26.23 = 289 Hit Rating to cap.
With 0/3 Suppression specced, you need 14% x 26.23 = 367 Hit Rating to cap.
Alliance Warlocks might want to gear their toons around the presence of the Heroic Presence buff that party members get when there's a Draenei in the party. This is only advisable to do if you raid with a more or less fixed roster, or if your raid leader knows to take your hit rating into account when distributing the Draenei in the raid throughout the various groups.
Spoiler:Show
Spellpower:
As is invariably the case for caster DPS specs, Spellpower will generally be your favoured stat of choice once your Hit cap is satisfied.
Spellpower influences every dimension of your DPS - from the damage of every single one of your spells, to the damage of your pet, and even to the amount of mana returned when you use Life Tap. All your offensive spells work off of spellpower coefficients. A higher spellpower quantity therefore increases the damage of your spells on the most fundamental level.
57% of your Spellpower value is inherited by your Pet as Attack Power (this adds on top of your pet's own base AP value), and 15% of your Spellpower is inherited by your Pet as Spell Power. Note that your primary pet of choice, the Felhunter, uses both Attack Power and Spellpower in determining its total damage output - its auto attacks work off its Attack Power value, and its Spellpower determines the damage of its Shadow Bite ability.
Spirit also essentially serves as a diluted form of spellpower. More on Spirit is below.
Haste Rating:
1% Haste = 32.79 Haste Rating.
Spell Cast time = Base Cast Time/(1.0 + % Haste)
Your % Haste increases the number of spells you can cast in any given period of time by that amount.
Let's say I have a 2 second cast and 0% Haste. In 100 seconds, I would manage only 100/(2/1.0) = 50 casts, as per the above formula. If I had 20% Haste, I would now manage 100/(2/1.2) = 60 casts instead. The 20% Haste increased the number of casts I could execute in the same 100 seconds window by 20%, by reducing the cast-time of the spell to 2/1.2 = 1.6667 seconds.
Haste buffs from multiple sources interact multiplicatively.
If you had 656 Haste Rating on your gear (corresponding to ~20.0% Spell Haste), had the Bloodlust buff from a Shaman, as well as an Eradication proc, the cast time of an ability with a base cast time of 2.0 seconds would thus be:
2.0/[(1.0+0.2)*1.3*1.2] = ~1.068 seconds.
Haste reduces the duration of the spell GCD (by the same formula by which it reduces the duration of casts).
The base spell GCD is 1.5 seconds. The lowest your spell GCD can be reduced to, however, is 1.0 second. The GCD cap, assuming the presence of the 5% Spell Haste and 3% minor Haste raid buffs is therefore around 1269 Haste Rating (which translates to 38.7% Spell Haste).
This demonstrate why that is the case, using the above formula:
1.5/[(1.0+0.387)*1.05*1.03] = ~1.00
It should be noted though that Haste continues to retain an immensely high value even after this soft-haste cap where your instant casts, Unstable Affliction, and Haunt are reduced to a 1 second cast time.
Apart from making your hard-casts quicker, Haste also reduces the tick interval between Corruption ticks via the Glyph of Quick Decay. As a direct consequence of that, Haste also increases the uptime of the Eradication buff.
Haste is not inherited by your Pet.
Spirit and Crit Rating:
Crit and Spirit have a markedly lower value than the other stats. Part of the reason Crit's value is so low is because Drain Soul, Curse of Doom, and Curse of Agony do not crit. When talented correctly and using the appropriate choice of Meta-Gem (Chaotic Skyflare Diamond), most of your spells do 2.09x their regular damage when they crit. Seed of Corruption crits do only x1.545 regular damage. Your Pet does not inherit your Crit. Spirit's value is low because the only relevant benefit you get from it is the paltry spellpower conversion via Fel Armor and Life Tap.
1% Crit = 45.91 Crit Rating.
1 Spirit = 0.55 Spellpower (Glyph of Life Tap + Fel Armor = 0.5, this is then increased by a further 10% because of Blessing of Kings).
Human Warlocks get their spirit multiplied by another 3% because of The Human Spirit racial.
Downtime on the buff from Glyph of Life Tap reduces the benefit you get from spirit.
Intellect:
1 Intellect = 0.3333 Crit Rating (Before the effect of Blessing of Kings)
1 Intellect = 15 Mana (Before the effect of Blessing of Kings)
The Blessing of Kings buff multiplies both the above effects from Intellect by 10%. Before BoK, 1/3rd of your Intellect is treated as spell crit rating. Intellect also increases your maximum mana, which consequently increases your mana gained from effects that scale off maximum mana, like Replenishment. Both these effects provide a fairly meagre DPS gain, and as such Intellect is considered an exceedingly weak DPS stat.
Approximate Stat Weights
At BiS (~279 ilevel, ~1.5k Haste):
Keep in mind that your own character's unique Stat Weights will be slightly different. What these Stat Weights (or Scaling Factors) represent is the DPS gained per point of each Stat. It's necessary to know the scaling factors of your toon when appraising a potential upgrade. These Stat Weights are used as a guide when trying to determine if something is an upgrade, or when figuring out the best combination of gems and enchants to use, etc.
3. Gemming, Enchanting, and Consumables
The aforementioned stat priorities will inform most of your toon's gemming and enchanting choices.
Gemming
Socket Gem Meta-gem* Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (21 Crit rating, +3% increased Critical Damage) Red Sockets Runed Cardinal Ruby (23sp) Yellow Sockets Reckless Ametrine (12sp 10haste) or Veiled Ametrine (12sp 10hit) Blue Sockets* with a bonus of +7sp or better Purified Deadstone (12sp 10spirit) Blue sockets* with a bonus of +5sp or worse Runed Cardinal Ruby (23sp)
*With regard to blue gems, one should bear in mind that a minimum of 2 are needed to activate the meta-gem. Since as a caster DPS you have very little interest in Nightmare tears (+10 all stats), you'll always want at least 2 Purified Deadstones in the best blue sockets possible.
Joint Blue + Yellow sockets
The above gemming rules are altered slightly if the item you want to gem has a Blue and a Yellow socket coupled together.
Spoiler:Show
Enchants
ConsumablesThere are a number of consumable resources you can use to improve your performance in raids.
Type Consumable Flask Flask of the Frost Wyrm Potion Potion of Wild Magic and Potion of Speed Feast Fish Feast, Tender Shoveltusk Steak or Firecracker Salmon. If you're in need of Hit Rating, Snapper Extreme is also a choice to keep in mind. Pet Food Spiced Mammoth Treats can be used to buff your pet slightly. The increased AP to your pet only improves its auto-attack damage, and not its Shadow Bite's damage, since the latter works off a spellpower coefficient. Warlock-Specific - Soulshards are another consumable resource you will find yourself going through a lot of in a raid. You need these to cast Summon Felhunter and Soulshatter, among other spells. It's highly recommended to pick up the Glyph of Drain Soul minor glyph so you never find yourself at a shortage of Soulshards.
- Infernal Stones are also needed to summon the Infernal. It's a good idea to keep several of these in your bags. They're available for purchase from most Reagent Vendors.
- Demonic Figure is used to summon the Doomguard. Keep some of these in your bags too. Once again, they're available from most Reagent Vendors.Engineer-Specific Engineers can also utilize Saronite Bombs and Global Thermal Sapper Charges to eke out a little extra DPS. Leatherworker-specific Drums of Speed is a particularly nifty consumable to use as a Leatherworker. These are great for reducing DPS downtime on not just yourself, but all your other party members. Raid Buff Substitutes You can cover the absence of certain buffs in case your raid composition happens to be non-ideal. These consumables confer similar but weaker effects than their ideal class-buff counterparts.
- The Drums of the Wild consumable can be used to provide an inferior version of its Druid buff counterpart.
- Drums of Forgotten Kings consumable can be used as a substitute for Greater Blessing of the Kings
- Runescroll of Fortitude can be used in place of a Priest's stamina buff.
4. BiS Lists
The difference between the 2 sets is the choice of second ring.
*There's a note on trinkets later in the guide, in the FAQ section.
5. Professions and Races
Professions
As with any caster DPS, Tailoring is one of your best profession choices. Lightweave Embroidery provides one of the highest average SP bonuses.
The 2nd profession should be one of the following:
1) Engineering.
Engineering is also a rather good profession choice, both for the on-use haste enchant, as well as situationally extremely useful Nitro Boosts, even as a Warlock. Note that Engineering very slightly reduces the value of tailoring, because if you're already an Engineer, getting Tailoring would make it so that instead of replacing a +23 Haste enchant on the cape, you're now replacing a +27 sp enchant. The Hyperspeed Accelerators also evokes a 10 sec CD on any on-use trinkets.
2) Any static SP profession.
As for the static SP profession choices, JC is your best option because of how it provides just more plain SP than anything else. You get to use 3x Runed Dragon's Eye instead of 3x Runed Cardinal Ruby, gaining a net of 16 sp with each gem, thus coming out to a total of 16 x 3 = 48 spellpower.
Alchemy gives you an average of 47 spellpower, since the Flask of the Frost Wyrm will give you 172sp instead of only 125sp as a result of the Mixology bonus.
In contrast, Blacksmithing, Inscription, Leatherworking, and Enchanting all offer only a maximum of 46 spellpower.
JC > Alchemy > Inscription = BS = Leatherworking = Enchanting
Races
Race choices are pretty clear-cut if you intend on min-maxing your toon's race for DPS purposes. Apart from the racial differences listed here, there are also minor differences in base stats, although those are ultimately not significant.
Orcs and Humans are the best race choices of their respective factions. Undead, Blood Elf, and Gnome racials are mostly situational.
Horde Racial(s) Alliance Racial(s) Orc Blood Fury, Command and Hardiness Human The Human Spirit and Every Man for Himself Undead Will of the Forsaken, Cannibalize, and Shadow Resistance Gnome Expansive Mind, Escape Artist and Arcane Resistance Blood Elf Arcane Torrent and Magic Resistance
6. Talents
All-rounded beginner-friendly spec:
The talents highlighted in the green boxes are the only ones that aren't mandatory, or are interchangeable based on your gear, fight needs, or personal preference. Everything else is unequivocally mandatory.
Quickly touching on the interchangeable talents:
Suppression: This provides 3% Spell hit and reduces the mana cost of your Affliction spells by 6%. If your gear has excess hit-rating, it will be worth dropping points from this to put in Improved Drain Soul, Improved Life Tap, or Improved Curse of Weakness. Being specced 3/3 Suppression frees up about ~78 Hit Rating worth of stats on your gear to convert to Crit or Haste Rating, which is why the max DPS build features 3/3 Suppression. The reduced mana cost aspect of this talent is deceptively tantalizing, because your biggest mana consumer, Shadow Bolt, is not affected by this talent since it's a spell from the Destruction school.
Improved Curse of Weakness: This improves the AP reduction of Curse of Weakness by 20%, which could sometimes be beneficial, but probably won't be required of you often. If your raid is missing a source of the fully talented AP-debuff, you should know that you're able to fill that role.
The 2/2 talented version of Curse of Weakness provides as much AP reduction as a Paladin's Vindication, a Warrior's Demoralizing Shout with 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout, or a Feral Druid's Demoralizing Roar with 5/5 Feral Aggression.
Improved Drain Soul: This reduces the threat of your Affliction Spells (which means all your abilities except Shadow Bolt, which is a Destruction spell) by 10%/20%. One can reasonably posit that threat reduction is for the most part not of huge value to a Warlock as you have Soulshatter, which reduces all your threat by 50% on a 3 min cd, but in a situation where there are constantly adds spawning, and where threat is extremely tight and Soulshatter is already on CD, this talent goes a long way towards helping you not pull aggro. The perfect example of where this is hugely useful is on Raging Spirit spawns during LK transition phases.
Grim Reach: Improves the Range on your Affliction spells by 6 yards. Once again, very annoyingly, Shadow Bolt is not affected by this. Even so, the extra 6 yards on all your other abilities could prove invaluable in reducing DPS-downtime and improving your ease of positioning depending on the fight.
Nightfall: Gives Corruption a 2%/4% chance to proc an instant Shadowbolt cast. The buff from this talent is called Shadow Trance. This talent is what competes with Grim Reach. While max DPS builds are going to feature this, this is really only a token gain to have, and you could just as easily opt for the extra 6 yards range on your dots and Drain Soul. This talent gets more valuable when multi-dotting comes into play, and the instant shadow-bolt can be useful for positioning yourself with no DPS downtime while moving, or to quickly refresh a Corruption (and Shadow Embrace) with if it's about to fall off on one of your targets. Warlocks should keep in mind that the DPS gain from this talent is very meager for the most part, and if points elsewhere are needed, this should be one of the first talents you should drop.
Improved Felhunter: At least 1 point in this is mandatory. Whether you put the 2nd point in this depends on whether or not you max out the Intensity talent from the Destruction tree. If you're looking to maximize your DPS in a raid encounter where there is not much spell pushback, this is the talent you first max out. The 2nd point in this is a substantial DPS increase - much moreso, in fact, than the first talent point was! Reducing Shadow Bite's cooldown from 4 seconds to 2 seconds doubles the amount of Shadow Bite your Felhunter uses. This increases your damage output by anywhere from 2.5%-3.5%, which is enormous for a single talent point. Because of this talent's potency, it can be worth taking even at the cost of suffering occasional spell pushback on Shadow Bolt.
Intensity: Having 2 points in this provides your Shadow Bolts with complete pushback immunity when coupled with the Concentration Aura buff from a Paladin. Really useful on fights where there is a significant amount of pushback. While pushback is annoying, you should keep in mind that this talent only impacts Shadow Bolt, and that your other casts like Haunt, Unstable Affliction, and most importantly Drain Soul should already be pushback immune from the Fel Concentration talent. Intensity therefore only impacts about 1/3rd of your DPS, and so even when there's spell pushback going on during a fight, it can be worth giving some consideration to the above Improved Felhunter talent instead.
Max single-target DPS spec:
This is the spec that will produce you your highest* theoretical DPS. 2/2 Improved Felhunter is specced, because lowering the CD of Shadow Bite from 4 seconds to 2 seconds basically doubles the amount of Shadow Bites your pet uses. 3/3 Suppression is specced so you can seek out Haste or Crit from your gear instead of Hit Rating.
This spec sacrifices range (all your spells only have a 30 yard range), pushback immunity on Shadowbolt, and threat reduction in favour of strict DPS talents. The only possible optimization that can be made beyond this is moving 1 point from Intensity to Dark Pact, since Dark Pact returns somewhat more mana than Life Tap in high-end gear, whilst also providing you the Glyph of Life Tap buff, which means it technically reduces the numbers of times you have to hit a non-damaging spell to restore some of your mana. I left this talent out because it's more realistic that you'd want something like the max damage spec linked above, than an alternative spec that had 1/1 Dark Pact and 0/2 Intensity. More on Dark Pact vs Life Tap is touched on later in the guide.
*At very low gear levels, Amplify Curse offers a minute DPS gain, comparable to that of Nightfall. However, the gain from Amplify Curse rapidly fizzles out as you gear up, to the point that it eventually ends up being worthless at BiS (since you sit at well above 1269 Haste at that point).
7. Glyphs
There really isn't much to say here that isn't already adequately summarized by the EJ guide:
You will virtually always run with Glyph of Quick Decay, Glyph of Life Tap, and Glyph of Haunt. In the event that you must replace one of these, the Glyph of Haunt should be the first to go, since it contributes the least to your DPS.Glyph comparison
Glyph of Quick Decay 471.24 / 648.38 dps
Adding haste rating to Corruption - the best glyph by far at the moment.
Glyph of Life Tap 248.97 / 324.74 dps
As you would lifetap 1.5 times a minute anyway, this glyph gives a huge spellpower increase at no costs. Even when you don't need the mana the GCD is worth it (think of general vezax here. Downgrading the spell to rank 1 is a smart action for situations like that). As a side effect, the impact of this glyph makes spirit an even better damage stat.
Glyph of Haunt 88.36 / 89.87 dps
Increasing the Haunt effect by 3% is an 2.5% increase to all your dots and results in about 1.2%-1.5% overall damage increase, which is quite good for a single glyph.
All other glyphs are inferior to these:
Glyph of Curse of Agony 30.51 -> 37.04 -> 62.86 dps
There are two more heavy ticks when you use this glyph. The damage amount coming from spell power does NOT change per tick (but of course the DPCT changes). The damage plus from the additional ticks is constant and can be computed like this: base dps unglyphed = 1740/24s = 72.5 dps. base dps glyphed = (1740 + 2x389)/(24+4)s = 89.93 dps. So the glyph gives a constant 17.43 dps increase here. Furthermore, you gain (60/24 - 60/28)s = 0.358s per minute because you have to recast CoA less often. In this time, you can cast your filler spell, giving you another 784.6 / 1176.3 dpm or 13.08 / 19.61 dps.
Glyph of Corruption 12.49 dps -> 19.47 -> 36.01 dps
This glyph increases the proc chance of Nightfall by 4% (or by 3.96% if it really is multiplicative and you have talent points in Nightfall - it does not make a measurable difference and none will ever know). The effect is not very good dps-wise. As a side note, this means that the talent Nightfall is not very good dps-wise, either.
Glyph of Shadow Bolt 10.94 dps -> 14.14 -> 20.24 dps
This one is quite weak - mana costs are just not really important to a warlock.
Glyph of Unstable Affliction 0 dps -> 0 dps
Decrease Base Casting time of UA by 0.2s (before haste. This works like the talent bane for sb/immo.) Unfortunately, it does not lower the GCD for Unstable Affliction. Your cast will be followed by a 0.2s GCD and so, the Glyph will not give any DPS increase.
Of all the other glyph choices, the most situationally useful is the Glyph of Corruption. The higher chance for the instant Shadow Bolt procs might serve you well on fights where multi-dotting and movement are heavily featured. This stacks with the benefit from the Nightfall talent. Note that Glyph of Corruption should NOT be confused with the absolutely mandatory Glyph of Quick Decay.
Utility Glyphs:
Glyph of Demonic Circle: Reduces the CD of Demonic Circle by 4 seconds. Very situational.
Glyph of Fear: Increases the damage threshold a target can take before Fear breaks. Very situational. Might be useful on encounters where you have to fear adds (Faction Champions comes to mind).
Glyph of Howl of Terror: Another glyph usually thought of as a PVP glyph.
Glyph of Siphon Life: Increases health gained from the Siphon Life talent by 25%. Corruption goes from healing you for 40% of the damage it does, to 50%. A possible choice on encounters where raid damage is overwhelming to your healers. If you're suddenly the target of some kind of hard-hitting ability or debuff, this glyph in conjunction with the Demon Armor ability and a healthy amount of Corruption multi-dotting will make it significantly easier for your healers to keep you up.
Minor glyphs:
Your choice of minor glyphs is purely convenience-oriented.
The one most commonly used is Glyph of Drain Soul, this ensures an Affliction Warlock always has the maximum number of Soul Shards possible. As for the other two, I personally use Glyph of Souls and Unending Breath.
8. Gameplay
Spells and Procs involved
This section will go over a quick list of some of your most commonly used spells, as well as some procs of interest.
- Corruption
Your bread and butter DoT. While this ability is available to all other Warlock specs, none of them get anywhere near as much benefit out of it as Affliction. Corruption does a significant amount of single target damage. Of note is the fact that this does not need to be refreshed because the Everlasting Affliction talent largely takes care of that. This ability is also going to be extensively used any time multi-dotting is involved, due to the fact that it ticks fairly rapidly (assuming you are glyphed correctly with Glyph of Quick Decay, which you absolutely should be), and also because it does significantly more damage than any of your other DoTs.
All corruption ticks have a 6% chance of proccing Eradication.
All Corruption ticks have a 4% chance of proccing Shadow Trance from both the Nightfall talent and the Glyph of Corruption effect. Having both the aforementioned glyph and talent increases the chance of a Shadow Trance proc to 8% per Corruption tick. (Note that Glyph of Corruption, an optional and usually inoptimal glyph, should NOT be confused with the absolutely mandatory Glyph of Quick Decay).
The Everlasting Affliction talent also evokes into existence a phenomenon known as Corruption-rolling. Briefly put, a Corruption manually applied under the effect of damage-modifying or crit buffs preserves those effects for as long as it's refreshed through Everlasting Affliction, even after those buffs have fallen off you. Corruption-rolling is explained at great length in a few other sections of this guide.
- Unstable Affliction
Your second most powerful DoT. Unlike Corruption, Unstable Affliction does not benefit from Haste. This ability procs Devious Minds. The dispel protection aspect of this spell sees minimal use in PVE. Because this DoT needs to be manually reapplied, you are to strive to maintain as much uptime on it as possible.
- Curse of Agony
Your weakest DoT, though still powerful enough that it's worth using over your filler abilities. This takes 24 seconds to reach its full damage potential, and doesn't benefit from Crit or Haste. Since only 1 Curse can exist on any one target, as Affliction, this is your primary Curse of choice for DPS, unless the Curse of the Elements debuff is needed for the +13% increased spell damage. You should strive to maintain as much uptime on this ability as possible, except where your target would die before most of its ticks could go through.
- Haunt
An affliction-defining ability that applies a debuff to your target that you have to keep up. While this ability doesn't do much direct damage itself, it increases the DoT damage taken by its target considerably. The Haunt debuff can only be maintained on 1 target (casting it on a different target ends the Haunt effect on the first one).
In addition to the above effects, it also applies a stack of Shadow Embrace, and refreshes your Corruption via Everlasting Affliction.
- Shadow Bolt
Your primary filler nuke, which means you're casting this so long as no other DoT or debuff needs refreshing. This applies a stack of Shadow Embrace, applies the Shadow Mastery debuff (which increases the critical strike chance of spells against that target by 5%), and refreshes your Corruption via Everlasting Affliction.
- Drain Soul
Below 25% enemy HP, this replaces Shadow Bolt as a filler. The immense damage of this spell is responsible for Affliction's stellar execution phase DPS. There's a specific way to Drain Soul properly that might not be intuitive to most players new to the spec.
Drain Soul counts as a DoT and therefore benefits from Shadow Embrace and Haunt. It also benefits from the Soul Siphon talent. Keep in mind that Soul Siphon doesn't actually require that DoTs be up on the target to be at its maximum potential. It only requires 3 Affliction effects, so stuff like the Haunt or Shadow Embrace debuffs, in addition to the extra damage from their own effects, also count towards the Soul Siphon talent. The application of a fresh Drain Soul channel, but not individual Drain Soul ticks, triggers a refresh of your Corruption DoT through Everlasting Affliction.
Mastering Drain Soul usage is essential. How to Drain Soul properly is explored at length in a later section in this guide.
- Life Tap/Dark Pact
These abilities are your primary sources of mana regeneration. The Glyph of Life Tap also causes these abilities to increase your spellpower by an amount. Spamming these abilities for mana is also common for Warlocks to do during periods of extended movement.
- Eradication
20% spell haste buff that procs off Corruption ticks. Multi-Dotting Corruption substantially increases the up-time this has. It's helpful to track this buff, particularly during your Drain Soul phase.
The Haste from this stacks with every other Haste effect.
- Devious Minds
The proc from your 4p t10 bonus. This is of particular interest to an Affliction Warlock because of Corruption rolling, a phenomenon explained at length later in the guide. Basically, a Corruption used under the effect of this buff indefinitely maintains its effect even after the Devious Minds buff has already fallen off you, so long as you keep the Corruption refreshed with the Everlasting Affliction talent.
- Seed of Corruption
Seed of Corruption is your primary AoE ability.
While it's your most potent AoE spell, it behaves much differently from most other AoE spells in the game. You cast this spell on a target, and after its travel time, a DoT is applied to the target. After the target takes a certain amount of damage (which doesn't have to be from you), the DoT ends and a detonation happens, affecting that target and all other targets within 15 yards of it. In raid situations, where lots of damage is constantly going out to numerous targets, detonation of Seed of Corruption happens near instantly after the DoT is applied, making it possible to spam the ability off a single mob. In 5 mans, the detonation might take a while to happen, so you might want to rotate it on numerous mobs instead, to give it a little more time to detonate.
The Seed of Corruption ability and your Corruption DoT can't simultaneously co-exist on a target. You should keep in mind that casting SoC will remove any Corruption from the enemy target. SoC can be cast without facing the target.
Note that the AoE detonation of this ability is improved on targets that have the Haunt and Shadow Embrace debuffs on them.
Rotation
When boiled down to its barest essence, this is mostly what the Affliction spell priority order looks like:
0) Life Tap (This should be used before the boss is engaged!)
1) Corruption
2) Unstable Affliction
3) Haunt (Mainly for its debuff)
4) Curse of Agony
5) Drain Soul below 25% HP
6) Shadow Bolt
In a nutshell, keep your DoTs up, keep Haunt's debuff up, and spam Shadow Bolt above 25%, and Drain Soul instead of Shadow Bolt if the boss is below 25%.
There are SEVERAL nuances that greatly alter this, which I will elaborate on.
- Your Opener
While it's usually not something that makes a substantial difference by the end of a fight, there usually tends to be a slightly more optimal way to open on an enemy target. There are also some details pertaining to pre-potting and debuffs on the enemy (specifically debuffs that increase crit chance taken) you should take note of.
Spoiler:Show - Corruption Rolling
The Corruption DoT keeps the effects of certain buffs even after they've expired. These effects persist for as long as that Corruption is continuously refreshed via the Everlasting Affliction talent.
Corruption rolling therefore adds another dimension into maximizing your DPS.
Spoiler:Show - Making the most of Drain Soul
Drain Soul, somewhat like Corruption, also snapshots the effects of certain buffs. The entirety of a Drain Soul channel is increased by the Haste, Spellpower, and damage modifying buffs you had on you at the time you started the channel. Your Drain Soul phase is therefore its own mini-game wherein you're trying your best to maximize its benefits from these buffs, while not compromising your Haunt and DoT uptimes.
There's also a certain finesse involved in interrupting your Drain Soul channels the right away.
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Maximizing your DPS
- - Haunt vs Shadow Bolt
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- - Procs and Debuffs you need to track
Spoiler:Show - - Multi-Dotting and AoE
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- - Dot Refreshing
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- - Life Tapping
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- - Shadow Bolt usage during Drain Soul phase
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- - DPSing Val'kyrs on 25HC LK as Affliction
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- - Handling Movement
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- - Your Utility Belt
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- - Managing your Demon
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- - Threat Management
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9. Mastering the Spec
- How to Practice
Before rushing into a raid and pitting yourself against actual bosses, you want to make sure you at least have your tank-and-spank rotation right.
- Dummies:
Practice your rotation on the dummies until you've built a keen sense of muscle memory and familiarity over your keybinds. You also want to actually practice your Drain Soul rotation on the dummy too, because it's critical to know how to Drain Soul well. Experiment with getting Drain Soul casts off in the last few seconds of an Eradication proc, or a large spellpower proc, and get used to how you might have to tweak your DoT/Haunt applications to accommodate that last-second buffed Drain Soul.
Take the time to also practice some multi-dotting. Put Corruptions up on multiple dummies as secondary targets and practice refreshing them with Shadow Bolt, while keeping your rotation going on a primary target.
Incorporate the use of focus target macros and mouseover macros (some are linked in the Macros section below) to allow you to DoT more efficiently and practice that thoroughly too. Set your addons up to track DoTs on your main target, and your focus target, and build familiarity with this dual-target DoT monitoring. Practice a dual-target dotting scenario where you're just keeping DoTs and Shadow Embrace up on 2 targets for 2-3 minutes straight, while keeping Haunt and most of your nukes going on 1 of those targets. Get your fingers used to your focus-casts for Unstable Affliction and Curse of Agony. You also want to enlist the help of focus cast Shadow Bolt macros, since you'll want to use Shadow Bolt to refresh Corruption and Shadow Embrace on the focus target.
- Dungeons and Raids:
Go into 5-man dungeons and get some entry-level practice in. Get a feel for playing the spec while contending with mechanics and mobs that try to hit you back. Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection are a good place to practice the spec, because they pose a credible challenge and aren't completely trivialized even if you have semi-well-geared DPS players in the dungeon. A lot of various situations are simulated (mobs that stay alive a long time vs mobs that don't, as well as AoE, Multi-Dotting, and single target DPS situations, etc). Eventually, you want to do the same in raids. Happy pugging!
- PVP:
PVP in battlegrounds is also excellent for this purpose. PVP forces you to make the most of your utility spells and explore your spec's capabilities in ways that you otherwise wouldn't. It's demanded of you in PVP to extensively use abilities like your Demonic Circle, Death Coil, Fear, Shadow Ward, your Felhunter's Spell Lock, Devour Magic, etc. If you're going to PVP, it's recommended to take talents like Grim Reach or Improved Howl of Terror that you might not otherwise have picked up. PVP also teaches you to intelligently pick a focus target for your Haunt and to be ready to Drain Soul at a moment's notice (once you begin a Drain Soul channel on a target whose health has dipped below 25% HP, the Drain Soul continues to tick for 4x damage even if they heal up afterwards!) Some damage-dealing aspects of PVP don't perfectly mirror PVE situations (for instance, in PVP a lot of your multi-dotting places heavy emphasis on Unstable Affliction due to its dispel protection, whereas in PVE there are plenty of situations where you don't multi-dot with anything other than Corruption). Nonetheless, battlegrounds are a great setting to practice the spec in a way that's fun and oftentimes challenging. The capacity to deal high damage while focusing on your surroundings and keeping yourself alive and well is an aptitude that carries over heavily into PVE.
- Correcting low DPS
If you're under-performing, you need to pinpoint what it is you're doing wrong so you can address it. I'll go through some of the most common causes of low DPS.
If you need more personal help in figuring out what exactly is wrong, you're encouraged to take raid logs and post them in the thread for constructive criticism.
- Are you messing up Drain Soul?:
A lot of heavy emphasis has been placed into knowing how to Drain Soul well in this guide precisely because I find it's a skill that's lacking in most people new to the spec. You should be itching to Drain Soul as soon as the target is around 26-27% HP. Keep a trained finger over that Drain Soul key so you can use it as soon as humanly possible right after the enemy's health dips below 25%. Lots of new Affliction Warlocks don't start using it until the boss is at 17-18%. You also want to cancel its channel correctly. Cancelling it just before a tick is about to happen is one of the worst things you can do!
- DoT Uptime and Refreshing:
Fortunately, your Corruption gets automatically refreshed most of the time, so DoT mismanagement can really only happen with Unstable Affliction and Curse of Agony, and those 2 don't comprise a relatively large portion of your damage. Nonetheless, you should take care not to clip DoTs, or leave them off too long. The DoT most commonly clipped by mistake is Unstable Affliction. Oftentimes, someone might try to pre-cast a new Unstable Affliction to try and have it land just as the current Unstable Affliction on the boss ends. This is in general a great thing to do, but don't underestimate how low your Unstable Affliction cast-time can get under Haste effects (for instance, Hyperspeed Accelerators + Eradication). Curse of Agony shouldn't be refreshed until you see the debuff completely off the boss.
- Misusing DoTs when Multi-Dotting:
If it's going to die in 10 seconds or less, don't bother putting UA up on it. Remember, UA does not get involved in multi-dotting until everything else that needs to be multi-dotted already has Corruption up on it. This is even more true of Curse of Agony. A lot of the time, multi-dotting does not include Curse of Agony at all.
- What is your Felhunter doing?:
It's not uncommon that after killing a new target and reverting to a previous one, a Warlock often has his pet sitting idly by his side for a good while before he realizes it's afk. This is a very unnecessary loss of DPS. A great idea is to macro /petattack into your Haunt, since you will mostly be casting Haunt on whatever you're focusing on. You should also have your pet commands manually keybound in case you want to override what your macros tell your Felhunter to do.
- Letting Shadow Embrace and Haunt fall off:
When switching your focus to other targets, new Warlocks often let their Haunt and built-up Shadow Embrace stacks fall off their previous targets. If you're going to do that, make sure the damage you achieve on the new targets is worthwhile and relevant. Otherwise, you have to go through the slow ramp-up process of re-dotting and building 3x Shadow Embrace stacks all over again. Make sure you're also not putting Haunt on a stray add that dies in 3 seconds, because you won't be able to use Haunt for a while after that, which is going to lead to unnecessary Haunt downtime.
- Are you moving unnecessarily, or otherwise not continuously casting?:
This is by far one of the biggest mistakes made by players of any RDPS spec. Unnecessary movement and dead time in your rotation kills the DPS of any caster. Do your best to position in spots from which you don't have to move much, and make use of things like your Demonic Circle and Nitro Boosts to minimize movement time. Too much dead time spent not casting is one of the most punishing yet common mistakes there is.
- The necessity of fight familiarity
Playing the Affliction spec to perfection on something as straightforward as a dummy is fairly achievable for a large number of players. Usually, it's carrying that over into a raid setting that's the challenging part.
Regardless of how intimately any player understands his spec, fight familiarity will always be the prevailing factor that determines his performance. Knowing a fight allows you to pre-position in advance and therefore minimize movement. It also gives you a sense of how best to execute the encounter, because you're able to draw from a repository of past experiences and mistakes. No one's first attempt at a new fight is ever their best. Not being experienced with the particular details and mechanics of an encounter will be the most significant hurdle for you to overcome before you're able to play your class to its maximum potential there.
To that end, you want to make sure you have a thorough understanding of your fights. Know where to stand such that your DPS is least obstructed by mechanics. Learn to anticipate the burst damage or add phases. If there's target switching involved, figure out how best to switch between targets while keeping your DPS rotation going as seamlessly as possible, so as to prevent DPS downtime from not being in range of or not facing the target and such. Take logs to study your past attempts and learn from your past mistakes. Brainstorm with other competent players and engage in discussions on what you could be doing better. It is only through a deep understanding of the encounter that you can hope to play your class as close to GCD-perfect as possible there.
Don't just focus on the DPS side of things, consider also the Warlock-specific utility you have and how you might apply it towards the overall raid effort.
- Technical Expertise
It is imperative that you possess a degree of expertise in some of the technical aspects of the game if you want to play your class to its limits.
Keybinds:
Keybinds are the most efficient way to use your spells, assuming you assign keybinds to your spells intelligently. All of your rotational abilities should absolutely be keybound. Abilities like Corruption, UA, Shadow Bolt (buttons that you press a lot more than anything else) should be assigned particularly easy keybinds.
Things like Corruption which you often use on the move a lot should be assigned to a button like 3 since it's very easy to hit this while strafing left or right (assuming your strafe left is keybound to q or a, and your strafe right is bound to e or d). Soulshatter, Shadow Ward, Demonic Circle: Teleport, and other spells which you might have to hit at a moment's notice to stay alive should also be assigned a fitting choice of keybinds.
It's generally much harder to run out of keybinds than a lot of players believe. Buttons like `, r, f, t, g, v, c, x are all examples of easy-to-reach buttons that you should assign spells to. You should also use whatever buttons your mouse might have. It's helpful to keybind the middle mouse button click (I use it to set my current target as focus), as well as mousewheel scroll up, and mousewheel scroll down. Make extensive use of Shift + Ctril + Alt modifiers across all your keybinds.
Moving your Camera:
Holding down your right mouse button and turning the screen shifts your character's field of the view to match the screen. This is the best way to have your character change around it's field of vision. The alternative, called keyboard turning, is extremely inefficient. A lot of your spells can only be cast on targets that are in a 180 degree arc in front of your character. Some spells (such as your DoTs and Seed of Corruption) are exempt from this facing requirement. If a 2nd target to DPS suddenly appears and you can't fit it into your character's field of view with the main target, it can be helpful to first apply a DoT on the second target (since you don't need to be facing it to cast your DoTs), and then use the GCD incurred by that DoT to swivel your toon's field of vision around so you're then able cast your nukes on it.
Always be Casting:
Instantly queuing up a new spell before your current cast ends is critical to good performance. This can't be stressed enough. Experienced raiders know the importance of this. I would venture to say that constantly keeping casts coming is more important than perfect knowledge of your class' rotation. Even a player who presses his button in an order that's only 90% optimal is going to do extremely well so long as he maintains perfect DPS uptime and never stops casting. This is particularly true of hectic helter-skelter encounters where novice players frequently find themselves losing DPS to not casting because they're struggling to keep up with the array of raid mechanics being thrown at them.
Broadly speaking, there are at least 3 primary factors that govern how effectively you're able to keep your casts going.
- Not being interrupted by Fight Mechanics
Mechanics of a fight will occasionally impede your DPS output by forcing movement and things like that. As much as possible you need to reduce the DPS lost from this.- Button-Mashing when queuing spells
You need to instantly queue a new spell such that it goes off ASAP once your current cast ends. The best way to ensure this is to be constantly button mashing. You will also need some foresight in terms of knowing ahead of time the sequence of the next 2-3 spells you'll be casting. Kripparrian made a great video where he explains this at length:
- Reducing DPS downtime
This is general casting time loss from factors like being out of range, taking too long to swap to a new target, repositioning, etc. There are a plethora of miscellaneous factors like these that insert dead time into your rotation and reduce your DPS uptime. You should make a conscious effort to strive to practice until you've ironed out these kinks and you're keeping your casts going as seamlessly as possible.
Your UI:
Above all, your UI needs to be efficient in terms of presenting you with the information you need. A good UI is one that substantially improves the user's situational awareness and effectiveness.
Your DoTs, procs, cast bar, and raid alerts from addons like DBM or BigWigs should all be concentrated around the middle 2/5ths of your screen, so you don't miss them. Things like your Raid Frames and Omen are acceptable to have around the periphery of your screen, although you should train yourself to constantly keep an eye on those things too.
10. FAQ
- TL;DR on how to play Affliction
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- What buffs do I need to make sure are up before a fight?
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- Demon Minions
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- How long does a target need to be up for putting Corruption on it to be worth it?
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- Incorporation of UA and CoA when multi-dotting
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- Do I need to refresh Corruption after applying the Haunt and Shadow Embrace debuffs?
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- Is dotting irrelevant targets to fish for procs worthwhile?
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- Rain of Fire vs Seed of Corruption
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- Life Tap vs Dark Pact
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- Curse of Agony vs Curse of Doom?
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- Spellstone vs Firestone
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- Dislodged Foreign Object vs Phylactery of the Nameless Lich
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- How good is Nevermelting Ice Crystal? How do the other available trinkets measure up?
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11. Raid Buffs
- Your Personal Buffs
Apart from your passively applied Fel Intelligence and Shadow Mastery effects, as well as your periodically refreshed Glyph of Life Tap buff, there are a couple of other personal buffs you need to make are up on you.
- Raid Buffs and Debuffs
There are several raid buffs (the majority of which can only be applied to you by other classes) that are essential to your DPS. All the buffs listed here in separate categories stack with each other. This will only cover the buffs pertinent to you as a caster. Buffs and Debuffs that affect melee DPS do increase your DPS slightly too, because your Pet benefits from them, but these won't be covered.
Raid Buffs
Raid Buff Source Increased Spell Power Buff Brought by Demo Locks through Demonic Pact, Elemental Shamans (Totem of Wrath), or any regular Shaman (Flametongue Totem) 5% Spell Haste Shaman's Wrath of Air Totem 5% Spell Crit buff (stacks with 5% spell crit Debuff) Brought by Moonkins through Moonkin Form, or from an Elemental Shaman's Elemental Oath Temporary 30% Global Haste buff Only Shamans provide this through Bloodlust or Heroism. This is a powerful raid DPS increasing cooldown that stacks with every other Haste effect apart from a Discipline Priest's Power Infusion 3% Percentage Damage Increase Brought by Retribution Paladins (Sanctified Retribution), Arcane Mages (Arcane Empowerment), and Beast Mastery Hunters (Ferocious Inspiration) 3% Percentage Haste Increase (All Types) Brought by Retribution Paladins through Swift Retribution, and from Balance Druids through Improved Moonkin Form Stat Multiplier Buff This can only be brought by a Paladin through Greater Blessing of the Kings. The Drums of Forgotten Kings consumable can also be used to provide an inferior version of the buff (8% to all stats instead of 10%) Stat Add Buff Best brought by a Druid through Gift of the Wild or Mark of the Wild, and enhanced through their Improved Mark of the Wild talent. The Armor and Stats increase brought by this buff stacks with everything else. The resistance portion of the buff doesn't stack with other resistance raid buffs. The Drums of the Wild consumable can be used to provide an inferior version of the spell, since it lacks the improvement provided by the Druid talent. Spell Pushback Protection Some raid encounters include mechanics that cause pushback on your spells. Pushback protection can be vital to have on these fights. The best source of this is a Holy Paladin's Concentration Aura. The 35% Pushback Reduction from Concentration Aura is additive with the 70% spell pushback protection from your Fel Concentration and Intensity talents. Having 100% or more spell pushback protection in any school of spell makes you immune to spell pushback while casting a spell belonging to that school. It's worth noting that a Priest's Power Word: Shield also confers Spell Pushback immunity for as long as the Shield happens to be up. Spirit Buff Best covered by Priests (Divine Spirit). Your pet's Fel Intelligence provides a slightly inferior version of the buff, even when it's buffed through Improved Felhunter Intellect Buff Best covered by Mages (Arcane Intellect). Your pet's Fel Intelligence provides a slightly inferior version of the buff, even when it's buffed through Improved Felhunter Replenishment Passive mana regen effect that's procced by Retribution Paladins (Judgements of the Wise), Shadow Priests (from using Mind Blast on a target with Vampiric Touch on it), Destruction Warlocks (Improved Soul Leech), and Frost Mages (Enduring Winter). Very marginal DPS increase for an Affliction Warlock. Mp5 Increase Buff Provided by a Paladin's Greater Blessing of Wisdom, or a Shaman's Mana Spring Totem. Marginally increases your DPS through reducing the total number of Life Tap/Dark Pact casts required.
Raid Debuffs
Debuff Source 13% Increased Spell Damage Taken Debuff Provided by Moonkins (Earth and Moon), Unholy Death Knights (Ebon Plague), as well as Warlocks (Curse of the Elements) 5% Spell Crit Debuff Affliction and Demonology Warlocks provide this one themselves with Shadow Mastery. Fire Mages apply this with Improved Scorch, and Frost Mages bring it too with Winter's Chill 3% Spell Hit Debuff Provided by a Boomy (Improved Faerie Fire) or a Spriest (Misery) Critical Strike Chance Taken Debuff (All types) Most often provided by Rets (Heart of the Crusader), but also covered by Assassination Rogues with their Master Poisoner effect, and an Elemental Shaman's Totem of Wrath Judgement of Wisdom Debuff Judgement of Wisdom debuff, provided by any Paladin. This provides some mana returns and therefore causes an increase in DPS, albeit a fairly negligible one - Miscellaneous Buffs and Cooldowns
In addition to the above listed raid buffs, there are also a number of optional buffs that might be applied to you.
- Focus Magic
Affliction Warlocks are not by any means good candidates for this ability. You don't scale particularly well with crit, and the 3% crit buff that gets applied to the Mage when the target with Focus Magic crits will likely fall off once you begin your Drain Soul phase (at that point, the only nuke you use is Haunt, and the occasional Shadow Bolt to refresh the 5% crit debuff).
The best that can be said about putting Focus Magic on Affliction Warlocks is that your Corruption snapshots and rolls with the 3% crit buff. That said, it's generally not worthwhile for the mage to spend GCDs on changing Focus Magic targets mid-fight, so it's not a good idea to have a Mage start with his FM on you either.
- Tricks of the Trade
Due to Corruption-rolling, Affliction Warlocks are terrific recipients for the Tricks of the Trade buff. When attempting to roll Corruption with the Tricks of the Trade buff, one should make an effort to stack it with other rolling effects such as Devious Minds, Death's Embrace, etc.
If timed well, the first Tricks of the Trade buff you receive should therefore have a much more potent effect on your DPS than simply providing you with 15% more dmg for 6 seconds (10 seconds if the Rogue has Glyph of Tricks of the Trade), due to Corruption-rolling. However, subsequent TotT casts on you will benefit your DPS much less than this, because they wouldn't increase the DPS of your Corruption (since it would already be rolling with the benefit of the first TotT). As much as possible, your rogues should therefore be casting TotT on someone else when you don't need the TotT buff to roll a Corruption with.
Whether it's worth receiving a 2nd TotT after 35% HP to roll on a new Corruption depends on the duration of the fight.
Affliction Warlocks have an unmatched affinity for TotT that's entirely owed to Corruption-rolling. Where raid DPS happens to be a barrier to progression, guilds should explore TotT arrangements that maximize the Corruption-rolling effects of their Affliction Warlocks for the raid DPS increase.
Threat concerns that might arise from the Rogue's threat being transferred to the Warlock should be kept in mind. If receiving a TotT, it might be well-advised to ask your Rogue to use a "/cancelaura Tricks of the Trade" macro to remove the buff on him that causes the threat transfer. This makes it so he doesn't transfer any aggro to you, but the damage buff on you from TotT remains. Warlocks also have to be within 20 yards of their Rogue if they intend to be in range to receive the TotT buff.
- Power Infusion
Affliction Warlocks are solid candidates for this ability. Particularly when the Power Infusion buff happens to line up with a Multi-Dotting phase or your Drain Soul phase. Otherwise, the PI buff might be preferable on an equally-geared Fire Mage.
During its Drain Soul phase, Affliction is the best candidate to put this ability on, given not only its incredible execute phase DPS, but also its capacity to deftly weave its rotation around the buff and start a Drain Soul cast in the final seconds of PI so as to ultimately derive much more than simply 15 seconds worth of benefit from the Power Infusion buff.
Power Infusion stacks with your Eradication, as well as with every other Haste effect apart from Bloodlust (and Heroism).
- Revitalize and Rapture.
As with all other buffs associated with mana regeneration, the impact these have on your DPS is very minute.
12. Add-ons
You will want the assistance of various addons to help you play as optimally as possible.
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13. Power Auras
These power aura strings are for Power Auras Classic version 3.0.0S
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14. Macros
Here, some macros are listed that you should generally be able to apply to great results. Obviously not all of these are necessary, but they can help a lot.
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15. A Warlock's Perspective - Raid Encounters Breakdown
This section is meant to serve as a primer to acquaint you with the application of the Affliction spec in a raid setting. Here, I'll provide a detailed walk-through of some end-game encounters (on 25-man heroic difficulty). Depending on your guild's specific strategies and your own personal experiences, you might want to adapt some of the points stated here to suit your needs better. Things like Soulstone assignments are also not touched upon much, and left mostly to the discretion of you and your raid leaders. Encounter-specific tips and tricks are delved into at length.
- Lord Marrowgar
Strategy:
Lord Marrowgar isn't particularly special. Cast Seed of Corruption off spikes to help free raid members. Bone Storm can be rough so prepare your Death Coil for self-healing. Try and keep some distance from the boss during Bone Storm so you take less damage. Demonic Circle: Teleport is good to use if he happens to charge towards you. If someone happens to get spiked in a spot where people aren't going to be able to free him quickly, throw Corruption up on his spike.
Demonic Circle:
Putting it somewhere around the area where the raid stands prior to the pull will suffice. Just make sure that during the fight, you don't stand near where you placed it.
- Lady Deathwhisper
Strategy:
Depending on your guild's strategy, you're going to have to determine how best to go about handling p1, in terms of whether you multi-dot, use Seed of Corruption, etc. My guild stacks all the adds on the boss in p1, so what I do is put my Demonic Circle on the left side, and start on the right side. I DPS the boss until the adds spawn, then I put Corruption on all 3 of the ones on the right. After that, I teleport to the left side (this also saves me from dying to any aggro in case my Corruptions generated too much threat) and put Corruption on some of those adds there. Once all the adds are gathered under Lady Deathwhisper, I spam Seed of Corruption off her. I don't let Shadow Embrace or Haunt fall off the boss in Phase 1.
Try to avoid using Soulshatter in p1. In Phase 2, keep your distance from the boss, and keep a keen eye on the ghosts she spawns. Shadow Ward helps you stay alive against them. When adds spawn in p2, assuming your tank brings them under the boss, what you want to do is to put Corruption on 2 of them, and then spam Seed of Corruption off the 3rd. Don't let Haunt fall off LDW, and if the adds stay up long enough try to refresh Corruptions on the first 2 via Shadow Bolt casts. Be mindful of threat and try and Soulshatter as late as possible in p2.
Demonic Circle:
I like to position it near one of the sides a wave of adds spawn, while I myself stand on the opposite side. This allows quick movement to put myself in range of adds to multi-dot. So long as you're standing far away from it, it's also great to use as an escape from the ghosts and such.
Utility:
Use Fear and Howl of Terror on Mind-Controlled players. If you catch a mind-controlled caster in the middle of a cast, have your Felhunter silence him. In general, you want to have your Felhunter silence a caster on every Mind Control cast. Using Death Coil as a clutch CC on a player is also a good idea. Occasionally, your mind-controlled healers might HoT the boss, and apply buffs like Inspiration on her. When this happens, it's a good idea to have your Felhunter try and remove it via Devour Magic. Likewise, having it purge the Vampiric Might buff off Cult Fanatics when you see they've casted it is also a great thing to do, unless your mages would rather spellsteal it. The Doomguard is also worth consideration on this fight. Its instant 2 second AoE stun on any mind-controlled melee raid members helps buy a lot of time for the rest of your crowd-controllers to get their CC abilities off, which goes a long way toward helping people stay alive on this encounter.
- Deathbringer Saurfang
Strategy:
This fight is just a DPS race. Stand where you're able to easily and efficiently multi-dot each of the Blood Beasts that spawn. When they appear, cast Corruption on each of the 5 of them. Don't let debuffs fall off the boss - especially your Corruption. It's a good idea to set the boss on focus and then use a macro that casts Haunt on your focus whenever Haunt comes back up, since Haunt isn't something you should be applying on Blood Beasts. If one of the adds has significantly higher HP than the others, focus on that one with a few Shadow Bolts. If you need the extra DPS, use the Infernal in the last minute of the fight. It can be good to time the summon of the Infernal with a wave of Blood Beast spawns, for the AoE stun. At the start, I like to have my pet staying right where the boss is so it doesn't waste 2 seconds running into range of him when the pull happens.
Demonic Circle:
Place this somewhere a good distance from where you intend to stand. Make sure it's in a spot from which you're still in reach of the boss. This way, in case multiple Blood Beasts come for you all at once, you have a quick escape.
Utility:
Use Death Coil and Fear as clutch CCs on Blood Beasts as needed. If you get the Mark of the Fallen Champion cast on you, and your healers are struggling, you can help them out with self-heals, and even Demon Armour, at the cost of DPS. The Infernal's summon can be used as a clutch AoE stun on Blood Beasts. The Doomguard might also be a useful pet on this fight because its 2 second AoE-stun will be available for every wave of Blood Beasts.
- Professor Putricide
Strategy:
This fight really tests your dual-dotting capabilities. As an Affliction Warlock, you don't excel at providing solid Ooze damage, but you do a stellar job of providing decent damage on the oozes while continuously whittling away at the boss' health, thanks to your DoTs. You have to make extensive use of focus target macros to execute this fight well. Stand in a spot where you're always able to DPS the boss, and you're also able to instantly attack an Ooze as soon as it appears. This can be troublesome as an Affliction Warlock due to your relatively short DPS range, especially if you don't have the Grim Reach talent. Try to avoid having Shadow Embrace and your Corruption ever fall off Professor Putricide. You should only let those fall if you desperately need that extra GCD to attack the ooze. Try and stay apart from other RDPS to reduce the odds that Malleable Goo comes flying your way.
There's usually a lot of movement in this fight, so delaying Curse of Agony or Life Tap until you have to move is fine to do. Death Coil is great to use while knocked back by a Green. It's acceptable for you as a Warlock to avoid actively stacking for Green Oozes, but make sure you at least always set your Felhunter on it so it helps soak the damage from the explosion. You will usually want to shift Haunt to the oozes. If your raid DPS is high, it might be fine to keep Haunt on PP for most of the fight, but even then you will definitely want to shift Haunt to the oozes during his transition phases. Try and estimate how many Drain Soul casts you're going to be able to get off on oozes. Usually, you won't get more than 1 tick off, and very rarely will you get 2 or more, except on transition phase oozes. If you see the ooze dying quickly and you know you won't get the next tick in, don't bother trying for it.
Use the Infernal for the DPS boost as needed. If you choose to use it at the start of the 2nd transition phase, bear in mind that it'll probably expire before the fight ends.
This fight can be hectic and requires finesse and experience to execute well.
Demonic Circle:
By far the best use of your Demonic Circle (apart from dodging Malleable Oozes and such), is to increase the travel time of the Green Ooze when it targets you. You want to have your Demonic Circle in a spot that's somewhat far from you. When the Green Ooze targets you, wait till it gets close, and then teleport just before it reaches you. This reduces the total number of explosions caused by the Green Ooze, which not only makes things significantly easier for your healers, but also increases raid DPS because your melee players spend less time running back towards a target after being knocked back. The ideal spot to teleport to is a spot from which you're still able to target the boss, and are at least in range of your healers. Where that spot is going to be depends on your guild's strategy. The ability to dupe a Green Ooze the way you do as a Warlock is the main reason it's acceptable for you not to actively stack for Green Oozes (unless of course it's direly needed of you).
Utility:
In the transition phase of this fight, there's a chance you might be attacking a different ooze from your Unholy DK or Moonkin. In this event, you should make sure to use Curse of Elements on the ooze, assuming another Warlock isn't applying it. Power Auras to track the presence of the 13% spell damage debuff are provided in the guide.
- Blood Prince Council
Strategy:
This is another fight that's extraordinarily hectic. Stand where the knockback effect of Shockwave Vortex is minimized. It can be a good idea to use your Demonic Circle to recover from a knockback. Have your Felhunter dispel Glittering Sparks off you or a raid member. After Prince Valanar, it's random whether Prince Keleseth or Prince Taldaram gets the Invocation of Blood (the buff from the Darkfallen Orb that makes the prince active). A great thing to do is to put Corruption on both the inactive princes just before a switch happens. This way, your Corruption snapshots the effect of the Death's Embrace talent from having been cast on a target below 35% HP. After the switch, refreshing whichever Corruption is on the active target via Everlasting Affliction maintains the effect of the Death's Embrace.
Don't put Corruption on inactive princes unless moving. Grim Reach is usually terrifically handy on this fight for increasing your DPS uptime.
Demonic Circle:
You want to either put this in a spot where you can return to right after a knockback so as to stay in range of the active boss, or in a spot that's close to one of the inactive bosses so you can port there quickly (in case your tanks happen to be tanking the princes somewhat far apart) when a switch to that boss happens.
Utility:
Use Searing Pain (it has a low cast time and no travel time) and Death Coil to help keep the Kinetic Bombs up. If you're somehow knocked into a corner where you're unable to move because of your stacks of Shadow Prison, switch to Demon Armour to make it easier for the healers to heal you up until you can move back in range to attack something. If needed, you have the option of using the Imp instead of a Felhunter to more reliably help out with keeping Kinetic Bombs up. Soulstone on the Keleseth tank can be helpful since they tend to have the highest odds of dying.
- Blood Queen Lana'thel
Strategy:
Be somewhat spread out to minimize the damage from her Bloodbolt Splash. If you get the Essence of the Blood Queen at any point, keep in mind that you have to manually refresh your Corruption to have the DoT benefit from its effect. This encounter is just a gear check. Use Shadow Ward to reduce the damage from the flames if you get them. When she fears the raid before her flight phase, have your Felhunter dispel either you, or the person who has the flames.
Demonic Circle:
Putting this near a wall is fine, so you can teleport there immediately if you get the flames. Don't put it right up against the wall or it's going to be likely that there will be flames on the portal.
- Sindragosa
Strategy:
Sindragosa is a challenging attrition fight.
In Phase 1 maintain high DPS while staying clear of people who might explode from stacks of Instability. If you get the Unchained Magic debuff on yourself, make a call of whether it's worth occasionally DPSing through it, or ceasing your casting entirely to relieve the healers of some pressure. In the event of the latter, you can still contribute some DPS via auto-attacking with your Wand. In the event of the former, the best thing to do is to cast 2 or 3 hard-casts as a bundled pair, wait and let your Instability stacks expire, and then repeat. It is very easy to maintain full up-time of Haunt, Shadow Embrace (the latter is conveniently refreshed from re-applying Haunt), and your DoTs even through Unchained Magic. This makes Affliction Warlocks an ideal target for Unchained Magic to land on, because they're able to continue more than 55-60% of their DPS through it comfortably (DoTs + Pet damage + occasional nukes). To add to that, they also get healed through their Corruption and Haunt. Drain Soul in phase 1 might also be useful because its entire channel gives you only 1 stack of Instability.
Before the Air Phase, it can be good to put Curse of Doom on the boss. During the Air Phases, assist with DPSing the Ice Tombs with your Seed of Corruption, and Multi-Dotting. It can be a good idea to try and proc Devious Minds off the tombs with Unstable Affliction(rank 1) (use the higher rank version of the ability if you want the extra damage) just before Sindragosa comes flying back down so you're able to re-apply a buffed Corruption onto her immediately. If you're going to multi-dot the Ice Tombs, make sure you know how to cancel the damage from your DoTs in case damage needs to be ceased. You do this by over-writing your DoTs with Corruption(rank 1) or Unstable Affliction(rank 1).
Phase 2 is mechanically similiar to Phase 1, although the introduction of the gradually increasing Mystic Buffet debuff makes it tremendously harder. It's not uncommon for raid damage to get so high that you might opt to lay off casting entirely if you get Unchained Magic. Whether or not to refresh Corruptions through your Haunt is a call you will need to make. The key to Phase 2 is for raid members to keep their health high, and their stacks of Mystic Buffet low by hiding behind Ice Tombs and resetting their Mystic Buffet stacks. Your pet has to do this too! If you want to DPS a little through Unchained Magic, remember that Drain Soul causes a lot of damage through its numerous ticks, while only giving you 1 stack of Instability. If you don't have Unchained Magic but are hiding behind a tomb to reset your Mystic Buffet stacks, remember that Mystic Buffet is only refreshed every 6 seconds, so you can spend the time before the refresh is applied to keep yourself in LoS of the boss to DPS her.
As is the theme with all battles for survival, keep yourself alive and remember to help healing with Death Coil or even Drain Life if needed.
Demonic Circle:
The best use for this ability is teleporting out immediately after getting pulled in by her Blistering Cold, in both phases. Make sure your Demonic Circle doesn't expire in Phase 2.
Utility:
Curse of Tongues can be useful to increase the cast-time of Blistering Cold. Warn your raid if you're about to this, or the increased cast-time might catch some people off-guard. Some raids will prefer that you not do this.
- The Lich King
Strategy:
In Phase 1, try to use the movement from Shadow Traps on refreshing Life Tap or Curse of Agony. Alternatively, you can also put a Corruption on a Shambling Horror or Drudge Ghoul. When p1.5 begins, put Curse of Doom on the boss (or Curse of Elements, in case your Mages intend to continue DPSing LK. Be careful of aggro on Raging Spirits, especially if you don't have Improved Drain Soul. When a Raging Spirit gets low, try and keep an estimate of how many Drain Soul casts you're able to get off. If you know you don't usually get more than 2 ticks in, don't both trying for a 3rd, and use that time to put up DoTs on a new Raging Spirit. Be ready to use Soulshatter if Raging Spirit aggro gets unmanageable.
In phase 2, you will stay apart from your raid, near your Demonic Circle. Don't put Defiles in the path of the Val'kyrs. As to DPSing the Val'kyrs, I'll repeat this segment from earlier in the guide:
Spoiler:Show
Phase 2.5 is mostly similiar to P1.5. There's 1 more Raging Spirit, so you need to take even greater care of your aggro. There's often enough overlap between Raging Spirit spawns that you're able to get off a healthy amount of multi-dotting. When the phase ends and you get sucked into Frostmourne Chamber, try and have Corruption and Unstable Affliction up on Arthas, as well as the 2 remaining Raging Spirits. You can put Curse of Doom on Arthas here too.
Inside FMC, help kill the Wicked Spirits with Seed of Corruption, your Corruption DoT, or Drain Life. Instant casts like Death Coil can also be helpful. Phase 3 outside of FMC is a matter of keeping yourself hidden behind the main tanks from Vile Spirits, while minimizing movement. You can also put Corruption on one of the Vile Spirits in the air while moving.
Demonic Circle:
In Phase 1, the ideal spot for this is on the outer-ledge where you know the raid will end up as you phase the boss. This allows you to stay casting on the boss for as long as possible, and you can escape from the Remorseless Winter at the last second with the teleport.
In Phase 2, the main thing you want to use your Demonic Circle for is to return from a Val'kyr grab (or for placing a clutch Defile). When a Warlock is grabbed in phase 2, his ability to return through his teleport spell allows the raid to ignore his Val'kyr, which means plenty of DPS is gained on the Lich King, and the raid has that much more time to position properly in time for the next wave of Val'kyrs.
In Phase 3, good usage of your Demonic Circle is crucial to minimize DPS loss from movement. Ideally, your tanks move back and forth between predetermined positions, allowing you to anticipate the best spot for your Demonic Circle ahead of time. When you come out of the first FMC, think of the spot near the edge where you're currently at as spot A. After the Vile Spirits spawn, the tank will then bring the Lich King across the platform to a far enough spot on the opposite side. Think of this as spot B. Assuming your tank consistently brings the boss back and forth between spot A and spot B, the area you want to put your Demonic Circle is spot B. Once the 2nd wave of Vile Spirits spawn at spot B, the tank should be moving the LK back to somewhere near spot A, just before you're pulled into FMC. When this FMC pull happens, LK automatically pulls you near him to spot A, which is why the Demonic Circle isn't needed here. Once again, you're going to come out of FMC finding yourself near spot A. After the wave of Vile Spirits descends and the boss is later moved to spot B, use your Demonic Circle to get there. This movement back and forth between spot A and spot B should repeat in a predictable fashion after every FMC phase.
Utility:
In Phase 1, you can either Curse of Elements the Shambling Horrors to increase their damage taken from the Necrotic Plague, or you can apply Curse of Weakness on them. Work out what debuff to apply with the other Warlocks. Shadow Ward is invaluable throughout the entire fight for Infests, bad bombs in FMC, Vile Spirits, Wicked Spirits, etc. Inside FMC, Demon Armour can be good for helping your healers out. Tanks often die a lot on 25hc LK, so Soulstones on them tend to be invaluable. Felhunter dispels on tanks who've suffered silences can also be helpful, especially since it doesn't cost you any DPS to do it.
- Halion
Strategy:
As an Affliction Warlock, you're more likely to be assigned to the Physical realm in p3.
DoT the Living Inferno asap when it appears. If you're assigned to AoE adds, spam Seed of Corruption off the boss. Mind your aggro. You are probably going to have to wait for your off-tank to establish some threat on the Living Embers. If you're not assigned to AoE, just keep DoTs up on the Living Inferno and on Halion. In the Shadow Realm, try and be somewhat closer towards the cutter on your left when Twilight Cutters are about to activate. This reduces the time you have to spend moving to run from the Twilight Cutters. Standard movement DPS principles apply. You shouldn't let Haunt drop.
On the second last meteor, you should be able to summon your Infernal for its AoE aura. It's also helpful to summon it in a way that stuns as many Living Embers as possible.
Demonic Circle:
In the Physical realm, this is best used to move quickly to your intended destination for a meteor. In the Shadow realm, this is great to use to return to the raid after dropping a Soul Consumption at the edge. When you get the debuff, cast your Demonic Circle, run out to the corner, have your pet dispel you, then teleport back quickly. Be careful not to teleport until after you see the debuff has been dispelled.
Utility:
Curse of Weakness might be useful on Halion, or his Living Infernos. You can dispel the debuff off yourself and others with your pet. If Living Embers are causing a lot of trouble and are aggroed onto various players in the raid, you can buy some reprieve with the Infernal's summon as a clutch AoE stun.