1. Affliction Warlock Compendium - 3.3.5 Warlock PVE

    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
    1. Introduction
      1. Foreword
      2. Overview of the Affliction Spec
      3. What Affliction brings to Raids
    2. Stat Priorities
      1. Stats Overview
      2. Stat Weights
    3. Gemming, Enchanting, and Consumables
      1. Gemming
      2. Enchants
      3. Consumables
    4. BiS Lists
      1. With 3/3 Suppression
      2. With 0/3 Suppression
    5. Professions and Races
      1. Professions
      2. Races
    6. Talents
      1. Beginner-friendly spec
      2. Optional talents
      3. Max DPS spec
    7. Glyphs
    8. Gameplay
      1. Spells and Procs Involved
      2. Rotation
        1. Your Opener
        2. Corruption Rolling
        3. Making the most of Drain Soul
      3. Maximizing your DPS
        1. - Haunt vs Shadow Bolt
        2. - Procs and Debuffs you need to track
        3. - Multi-Dotting and AoE
        4. - Dot Refreshing
        5. - Life Tapping
        6. - Shadow Bolt usage during Drain Soul phase (New!)
        7. - DPSing Val'kyrs on 25hc LK
        8. - Handling Movement
        9. - Your Utility Belt
        10. - Managing your Demon
        11. - Threat Management (Updated!)
    9. Mastering the Spec
      1. How to Practice
      2. Correcting low DPS
      3. Fight familiarity
      4. Technical Expertise
    10. FAQ
      1. - TL;DR on how to play Affliction
      2. - What buffs do I need to make sure are up before a fight?
      3. - Demon Minions
      4. - How long does a target need to be up for putting Corruption on it to be worth it?
      5. - Incorporation of UA and CoA when multi-dotting.
      6. - Do I need to refresh Corruption after applying the Haunt and Shadow Embrace debuffs?
      7. - Is dotting irrelevant targets to fish for procs worthwhile?
      8. - Rain of Fire vs Seed of Corruption
      9. - Life Tap vs Dark Pact
      10. - Curse of Agony vs Curse of Doom
      11. - Spellstone vs Firestone
      12. - Dislodged Foreign Object vs Phylactery of the Nameless Lich
      13. - How good is Nevermelting Ice Crystal? How do the other available trinkets measure up?
    11. Raid Buffs
      1. Your Personal Buffs
      2. Raid Buffs and Debuffs
      3. Miscellaneous Buffs and Cooldowns
    12. Add-ons
    13. Power Auras
    14. Macros
    15. A Warlock's Perspective - Raid Encounters Breakdown
      1. Lord Marrowgar
      2. Lady Deathwhisper
      3. Deathbringer Saurfang
      4. Professor Putricide
      5. Blood Prince Council
      6. Blood Queen Lana'thel
      7. Sindragosa
      8. The Lich King
      9. 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:

    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.
    Target Level 77 78 79 80 81 82 83
    Hit Chance Needed 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 17%
    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%.

    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
    With 3/3 Suppression specced and Heroic Presence, you need 10% x 26.23 = 263 Hit Rating to cap.
    With 0/3 Suppression specced and Heroic Presence, you need 13% x 26.23 = 341 Hit Rating to cap.

    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
    Example 1) Icecrown Spire Sandals
    The Socket bonus is +7 spell power, but it incurs the opportunity cost of 2 Spellpower gems (i.e. 23 spellpower, which is pure red) to achieve that socket bonus. Essentially, you're getting only 3.5 spellpower per potential red gem sacrificed when it comes to this item.

    Gemming this piece of gear with 2x Runed Cardinal Ruby, you'd have 46 spellpower.

    Gemming it with 1x Purified Deadstone and 1x Reckless Ametrine, you'd get 12*2 + 7 = 31 Spellpower, 10 haste, and 10 spirit. Converting the 10 spirit to 5.5 spellpower, that comes out to a net total of about 36.5 Spellpower and 10 haste.

    The Stat Weights chart above should be consulted as a guide for a comparison like this:
    Spoiler: Show

    The comparison boils down to 46sp vs 36.5sp and 10 Haste. Cancelling out the spellpower on both sides leaves you with 9.5 spellpower vs 10 haste. As per the stat weights above, we see the 9.5 spellpower is the favorable choice, even when it's rounded down to just 9 spellpower. When it comes to Icecrown Spire Sandals, we're therefore best off just gemming 2x Runed Cardinal Ruby.


    Example 2) Leggings of the Refracted Mind
    Unlike the Boots above, this contains a Red, Blue, and Yellow socket all bundled together, and provides you with a +9 spellpower Socket Bonus. Since you would already be gemming +23 spellpower into the Red socket regardless, the question is just of what you should gem into the Blue and Yellow sockets. After putting 1x Runed Cardinal Ruby into the Red Socket, you realize that fulfilling the Blue and Yellow socket bonus would then effectively net you 4.5 spellpower per Red Gem you sacrifice.

    Let's see what happens when you gem it with and without satisfying the socket bonuses:

    1) Option 1: 3x 23 Sp Gems. This option nets you 69 Spellpower total from gemming.

    2) Option 2: 1x 23 Sp, 1x 12sp 10 Haste, 1x 12 sp 10 Spirit, as well as an additional 9 spellpower bonus from the socket. This option nets you a total of 23 + 12 + 12 + 9 + 5.5 = 59.5 spellpower, as well as 10 Haste.

    The comparison comes down to 69 sp vs 61.5 sp + 10 Haste. This simplifies further to 7.5 sp vs 10 Haste. Consulting the stat weights chart again, we see that 10 Haste is favorable to 7.5 Spellpower, so the slightly better thing to do when it comes to Leggings of the Refracted Mind is to satisfy the socket bonus.



    Enchants

    Gear Enchant Profession-specific enchant(s)
    Head Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, Kirin Tor Rep enchant -
    Shoulders Greater Inscription of the Storm, Sons of Hodir Rep enchant Master's Inscription of the Storm for Inscribers
    Back Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed Springy Arachnoweave for Engineers, Lightweave Embroidery for Tailors
    Chest Scroll of Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats or
    Scroll of Enchant Chest - Major Spirit
    -
    Wrist Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Superior Spellpower Fur Lining - Spell Power for Leatherworkers
    Main-hand Weapon Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower 63sp to 1-hand weapon, or Scroll of Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower if it's a Staff. -
    Hands Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower Hyperspeed Accelerators for Engineers
    Belt Eternal Belt Buckle, which should be socketed with Runed Cardinal Ruby -
    Legs Brilliant Spellthread -
    Feet Tuskarr's Vitality (strongly recommended for raiding), or Icewalker Nitro Boosts, for Engineers
    Ring - Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower x2, for Enchanters


    Consumables
    There 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.


    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.


    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:

    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.
    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.

    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.

    1. 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
      Pre-potting:
      You want to pre-pot with either the Potion of Speed (500 Haste) or the Potion of Wild Magic (200 Crit 200 Spellpower). In terms of stat value, the 500 haste is strictly better. The reason you might sometimes opt for the Wild Magic, however, is the fact that the crit buff (it's just over ~4% crit chance) is kept by Corruption so long as you keep it refreshed through Shadow Bolts/Drain Soul/Drain Life. The most ideal possible scenario you could have happen for you is getting a t10 2p proc early on while your Wild Magic pot is still up. You should be able to comfortably get 4 ticks of UA in the ~14 seconds of your Wild Magic pre-pot. Since each tick of UA has a 15% chance of proccing Devious Minds, this puts your odds of getting a Devious Minds proc at [1 - (0.85^4)] = 47.8%. Almost half the time, you should therefore be able to apply a Corruption that snapshots both Devious Minds and the Wild Magic Pot.

      In the event that you don't get a Devious Minds proc in the first 15 seconds, you should refresh Corruption anyway whenever you do get it, even if it over-writes the crit buff. This is because 10% more flat damage on Corruption is a lot better than ~4% more crit chance on it.

      Openers:
      The following Openers will assume no one else in the raid is opening with the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff (5% spell crit - the debuff is called Shadow Mastery). Corruption's crit chance is determined at the moment of its cast, and is maintained for as long as it gets refreshed (more on corruption-rolling is below in the guide). This factors in both crit buffs on you and crit debuffs on the target. The openers also omit the Life Tap cast you should be doing before the pull. To reduce the burden on your healers marginally, it can be a good idea to use Life Tap(rank 1)(rank1) if you don't need the mana and only want the glyph buff.

      Opener, with Potion of Wild Magic pre-pot:
      UA -> Shadow Bolt > Haunt -> Corruption -> Curse of Agony -> Shadow Bolt -> Shadow Bolt.

      The UA is applied early to give you a chance to comfortably get 4 ticks of UA in and have some breathing space to use a GCD on refreshing Corruption in case you successfully get a Devious Minds proc early on during the Wild Magic pre-pot duration.

      Opener, with Potion of Speed pre-pot:
      Shadow Bolt -> UA-> Corruption -> Haunt -> Curse of Agony -> Shadow Bolt -> Shadow Bolt

      The only difference when you pre-pot with the Potion of Speed is that you no longer have to care about maximizing your odds of getting a Devious Minds proc in the first 15 seconds. As such, you open with Shadow Bolt to apply the Shadow Mastery debuff, then your UA dot, and right after that you apply Corruption. The reason for the UA before the Corruption is that the cast-time of the UA gives some time for your Shadow Bolt to land on the enemy and apply its Shadow Mastery debuff. It also gives your Rets another GCD to apply Heart of the Crusader on the boss. Note that you could swap Haunt and UA in this sequence and the difference would be pretty negligible anyway.

      Putting Corruption up right off the bat:
      If you have the t10 4p, and will therefore likely re-apply Corruption manually on your first Devious Minds proc, it can be fine to put your Corruption up immediately on the target, just to have the debuff up and running ASAP, regardless of the fact that it won't benefit from the 5% spell crit debuff on the enemy.

      The same applies any time else you know you're going to be manually refreshing the spell soon anyway (such as when you use the on-use effect of the Nevermelting Ice Crystal trinket).

      Pre-casting:
      Occasionally you are able to pre-cast spells on an enemy target, before the enemy is even engaged. This can only be done when your raid strictly follows pull timers. In this event, it's advantageous to pre-cast with a Shadowbolt (for the Shadow Mastery debuff) or Haunt, since these spells would basically be free damage under such a circumstance.

    2. 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
      What Corruption "rolls" with:
      Rolls: Doesn't roll:
      • Percentage damage modifiers (including the Death's Embrace talent)
      • Critical Strike buffs and debuffs. Tthe crit chance of a DoT is calculated at the moment it is cast, and it's preserved so long as the DoT keeps getting refreshed!
      • Spellpower buffs
      • Haste buffs. The tick interval of your Corruption is automatically recalculated when the spell is renewed through Everlasting Affliction.
      • Damage increasing debuffs on the enemy. This includes Haunt, Shadow Embrace, Curse of the Elements, etc. Your Corruption's damage increases or decreases dynamically based on the presence or absence of these debuffs on the enemy. The only exception to this are debuffs that increase the critical strike chance against an enemy (since the crit chance of a spell is calculated at the moment it's cast).

      Corruption snapshots any damage increasing modifiers and Crit buffs you had on you at the time you cast it (as well as Crit debuffs present on the enemy target), and it keeps these for as long as you keep it refreshed from casting Shadow Bolt, Haunt, Drain Life, or Drain Soul, via the Everlasting Affliction talent. This includes damage buffs like the t10 4p proc Devious Minds (+10% damage increase), and Tricks of the Trade (+15% damage increase), as well as Crit buffs like the Potion of Wild Magic (200 Crit rating), as well as any weapons with a high amount of Crit rating on it (if you take it off later). This excludes spellpower and Haste procs, as the spellpower and Haste on the Corruption are dynamically re-calculated each time it's refreshed based on what your current spellpower value and haste are. Only the damage increasing modifiers and crit chance are kept at the values they were when you initially applied Corruption.

      This adds another dimension of nuance into your Affliction gameplay, because Corruption can comprise anywhere from 30-35% of your total damage, so it's very much in your interests to maximize its "rolling" effects as much as possible.

      Refreshing Corruption under procs:
      In ICC gear, the main buff you'll want to be concerned with for which to refresh Corruption under is your t10 4p proc (called Devious Minds). This is a proc you definitely want to be tracking.

      When the enemy is below 35%, the Death's Embrace talent comes into play, for which you have to refresh your Corruption before it gains the +12% damage. However, you also shouldn't refresh a Corruption that was previously buffed by Devious Minds because going from +10% corruption damage to +12% corruption damage is hardly a damage increase that's worth the GCD. It's for this reason that, assuming your pre-35% Corruption was buffed by Devious Minds, you should wait for a fresh Devious Minds to proc past 35% before refreshing your Corruption. A lot of the time, when the fight is short enough, refreshing Corruption under 35% isn't worth the GCD unless you can use the duration of the GCD to get some necessary movement done. The boss needs to be alive for at least 25-30+ seconds for the GCD spent on manually refreshing a Corruption under Death's Embrace + Devious Minds to net a gain.

      In addition to maximizing your Corruption's damage, you also want to do your utmost to never let that Corruption fall off. This is something that might present an issue on fights with a lot of target swapping or movement.

      Encounter-specific buffs that roll:
      One encounter specific damage modifier you should look out for is the Essence of the Blood Queen buff on BQL. If you get bitten, you need to manually refresh the Corruption after you get the bite so that the damage increase from it is applied.

      The Light Essence and Dark Essence buffs from TOGC on Twin Valks also roll, but not the Empowered Darkness or Empowered Light buffs.

      The Rune of Power from the Iron Council in Ulduar is also another example of a buff that rolls, evidenced here, or more visibly here.

      There's also a number of other encounter-specific buffs apart from these few I listed.

    3. 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.

      Spoiler: Show
      Affliction Warlock single-target DPS is defined by your execute phase. While the target is below 25%, Drain Soul's damage is increased 4x its usual amount (you have to cast Drain Soul only after the target is already at 25%, and not pre-emptively at 26% because none of its ticks will be buffed even if the target is pushed below 25% afterwards). As a result, below 25% Drain Soul does around 40% more DPS than Shadow Bolt does as a filler. Below 35%, the Death's Embrace talent also kicks in, which increases your DoT damage by 12%, and boosts Drain Soul slightly too (the 12% is additive with Drain Soul's x4 damage below 25%). Additionally, due to the presence of the Drain Soul debuff on the enemy, your Felhunter's Shadow Bite also does a bit more damage.

      Due to how so much of your damage is concentrated into the last 25% of a fight, it goes without saying that the optimal time to use your 2nd Potion of Speed (if that's the 2nd potion you choose to use) is usually during your Drain Soul phase. Affliction Warlocks have the most powerful execute phase DPS in the game, and the rest of your DPS is balanced around doing your execute phase right.

      How Drain Soul fits into your rotation:
      Using Drain Soul isn't as simple as casting it and then waiting for the channel to finish before you cast anything else. Rather, you will constantly be interrupting your Drain Soul channels to refresh 3 key debuffs:

      1) Haunt. Again, do not use this on CD, just use this as much as is necessary to keep its debuff up.
      2) Unstable Affliction. Even during your Execute phase, this retains a higher DPCT than Drain Soul. As such, it's worth interrupting Drain Soul to refresh this.
      3) Curse of Agony. Much the same reason applies as Unstable Affliction. Do not re-apply it if the target won't be alive for most of its 24 seconds duration.

      Note that you shouldn't need to manually refresh Corruption ever (except once under the Devious Minds proc) because re-applying Drain Soul automatically does that. The other reason the DoTs are necessary to have up, apart from their superior DPCT and their procs, is the fact that they buff your Felhunter's Shadow Bite rather substantially.

      The other debuff worth interrupting your Drain Soul to refresh is the Shadow Mastery debuff that's applied by Shadow Bolt. If no one else in your raid is providing that debuff once the boss is below 25%, you should be putting it up once every 28 seconds or so for the increased raid DPS. It's ideal to re-apply this debuff well in advance whenever you can via an instant-cast Shadow Bolt from the Nightfall proc, because the DPCT of an instant Shadow Bolt is on par with that of Drain Soul.

      How to interrupt Drain Soul:
      So now you know that Drain Soul is something you should be proactively interrupting to refresh certain debuffs. The other thing you need to know about interrupting it is that there is a very specific way of doing it that demands some finesse on your part that you'll need to acquire with some experience. When you interrupt a Drain Soul cast, it should only be IMMEDIATELY after a tick has already occurred, and not any time else. It's for this reason that you absolutely need to have an addon of some sort that tracks the tick-intervals of your Drain Soul. Quartz does this extremely nice, as seen here:



      Every Drain Soul channel has 5 ticks, and if you have an addon like Quartz, you can clearly see the intervals between these ticks and where you are in the channel. In the above picture, I just had my 2nd tick of Drain Soul. Being that it was almost immediately after the 2nd tick, that would have been a good time to interrupt my Drain Soul channel if I had needed to refresh one of my DoTs or Haunt.

      Practice this thoroughly on dummies until you're reasonably good at it - how well you Drain Soul has a massive impact on your end DPS.

      One other thing to keep in mind is that regardless of how well you do it, interrupting Drain Soul typically always comes with a small penalty of lost cast-time, because naturally you aren't going to have the precision of a machine. A way of minimizing this is to pair your refreshes in a way that uses them back-to-back with each other once Drain Soul is interrupted. For instance, let's say your Haunt is falling off in 5 seconds, and Unstable Affliction is falling off in 3 seconds. After the next Drain Soul tick, you should refresh Unstable Affliction and then immediately follow that Unstable Affliction cast with a Haunt. Only then do you resume Drain Soul usage. Since you just refreshed 2 key debuffs, this will likely set you up for a long Drain Soul channel without any interrupting required. This is better than first refreshing UA, then using Drain Soul to get another tick of Drain Soul's hit in, and then interrupting the channel again right after its first tick to refresh Haunt. By minimizing how often you have to interrupt Drain Soul, you also minimize the DPS loss that's associated with cancelling it.

      Drain Soul's channel and Haste Snap-shotting:
      Another point that bears noting is the fact that Drain Soul snapshots its cast-time based off what your Haste was when you cast it. It can be a really good idea to slightly clip or delay the application of your DoTs to tweak your rotation such that you're able to start a Drain Soul cast at the last second of any massive Haste buff. An example of such a Haste buff would be Bloodlust, a Discipline Priest's Power Infusion, your Potion of Speed, or your Eradication proc (20% spell haste). It's therefore a good idea to be specifically tracking these buffs too. If you start a Drain Soul cast with only 0.5 seconds left on your Eradication buff, the Drain Soul continues to channel its ticks with that 20% Haste buff until the cast is over. And it's not just that - remember that casting Drain Soul also refreshes Corruption, and that refreshing Corruption causes its Haste buff to be recalculated based on the Haste you had at the time of the refresh. That last second haste-buffed Drain Soul ends up buffing the crap out of your Corruption too!! This makes a significant difference as Drain Soul and Corruption comprise more than 80% of your damage in your execute phase.

      Drain Soul's channel and Spellpower/Damage Modifier Snap-shotting:
      Just as with Haste, Drain Soul's channel also snapshots Spellpower and Damage Modifiers (like Devious Minds of course). All ticks of the Drain Soul spell retain the spellpower value and any damage modifiers you had when you began casting it. A last second spellpower-buffed Drain Soul is a smart way of gaming the spell. The Corruption gets enhanced by your new spellpower value when you start that Drain Soul channel too.

      The converse also holds true - when you get powerful procs in the middle of a Drain Soul channel, their effects aren't applied to your Drain Soul until you re-cast it.



    Maximizing your DPS

    1. - Haunt vs Shadow Bolt

      Spoiler: Show
      Both these spells are rotational nukes that apply debuffs that make the enemy take more damage from your DoTs. The key thing about Haunt is that it provides an additional unique debuff, aside from Shadow Embrace (which is applied by Shadow Bolt too). Losing the Haunt debuff is a substantial loss of DPS.

      Haunt and Shadow Bolt
      Having said that, Haunt itself, in terms of raw DPCT (damage per cast-time), is inferior to Shadow Bolt. Now, the curious thing about Haunt is that while it only has an 8 second cooldown, the debuff it applies lasts 12 seconds. Rather than prioritizing Haunt and using it on CD as though it were a superior nuke (like most players new to the spec often do), your focus should simply be on keeping the Haunt debuff up. One facet of maximizing Affliction DPS therefore lies in prioritizing Shadow Bolt and Drain Soul over Haunt, except where the Haunt debuff would otherwise fall off. It is necessary to be mindful of the travel time of your Haunt spell when doing this. What I find to be an excellent rule of thumb is this: after Haunt has already come off CD, cast another Shadow Bolt (or a UA/CoA refresh, if that's needed), and only then use that Haunt. Under high Haste increasing effects like Eradication or Bloodlust, you can usually get away with casting another 2 Shadow Bolts after Haunt has already come off CD, which is just as well because Shadow Bolt tends to continue benefiting from Haste effects well after the cast-time of Haunt becomes limited by the 1.0 second GCD cap.

      Optimal Affliction gameplay requires that one use Haunt just the bare minimum amount necessary to always keep the debuff up, as opposed to using Haunt on CD. It is for this reason that you should set up your addons to track the Haunt debuff.

      The same applies even more so to your Drain Soul phase; you do not interrupt Drain Soul to Haunt on CD - you try to delay Haunt so as to spend more time on channeling Drain Soul, while still making sure the Haunt debuff is refreshed just in time.

      When to use Haunt on CD
      On some occasions, you might opt to use Haunt on CD. This can be when shifting your Haunt debuff to a higher kill priority target. You might also use it on CD again later to shift it back to the other target once the primary target is dead.

      Another occasion it might be helpful is when your health is low, and there's a lot of raid damage going out. Using a new Haunt causes the old Haunt debuff to return to you and heal you. When you're at low health, it might be a good idea to use an earlier than normal Haunt to force that heal.

      You should also note that Haunt cannot simultaneously exist on more than 1 target. If you cast it on a new target, the previous one loses its debuff, so you shouldn't use it on CD even when multi-dotting.


    2. - Procs and Debuffs you need to track

      Spoiler: Show


      On Yourself On the enemy(s)

      Non-condensed version, including some elaboration on the effects:
      - Devious Minds proc on you. Your t10 4p buff. 15% chance to proc off UA ticks, increases your pet's and your damage by 10% for 10 seconds. The uptime of this buff is ~39.95% when you have about 98% uptime on 1 UA debuff. Simplistically speaking, the damage gain from the t10 4p is therefore worth at least 3.995% more damage. In reality, it's actually even higher than that due to the use of Corruption-rolling (explained later) with the Devious Minds buff.
      - Eradication proc on you. 6% chance to proc on Corruption tick. Increases spell haste by 20% for 10 seconds. If you always have 1 Corruption up, this has a 20-25% uptime (depending on your Haste).
      - Life Tap, which is the buff from Glyph of Life Tap.
      - Shadow Trance, which is the buff from the Nightfall talent that gives you an instant Shadow Bolt proc.
      - Shadow Embrace on the target(s).
      - Haunt debuff on the target.
      - The enemy's health. Below 35%, Death's Embrace kicks in so some of the time you might want to manually refresh your Corruption on your next Devious Minds proc. Below 25%, you also need to use Drain Soul asap. Do not be one of those Warlocks who don't begin to Drain Soul until the boss is at 18-19% HP. When the boss is at 26-27%, you should already have your finger eagerly over that Drain Soul key. Do not, however, pre-emptively cast Drain Soul before the boss is at 25% HP.

    3. - Multi-Dotting and AoE

      Spoiler: Show
      Multi-dotting is one of your most noteworthy fortes as Affliction.

      Your DoTs, in terms of how they rank DPCT-wise, are like so: Corruption >>> Unstable Affliction > Curse of Agony. This is necessary to keep in mind when multi-dotting. When multiple targets first show up to be multi-dotted, your first action should typically be to spread Corruption on everything.

      Using Focus Target macros to your advantage:
      Most typically, when multi-dotting 2 targets, it's highly advantageous to set one of them on focus, and to have macros that can automate casts on your focus without you needing to change your current target. All of your DoTs can be cast without you needing to face the target. This is another thing that makes multi-dotting easier for you. The use of mouseover macros are also recommended.

      Macros that can perform Shadow Bolt and Haunt on your focus target are also essential. These nukes refresh Corruption, as well as ensure that your Shadow Embrace stacks are kept up. You should keep in mind that when Corruption is refreshed via Everlasting Affliction, it recalculates your current Haste and Spellpower values. If you suddenly get a Haste proc or a large spellpower proc, it's usually worthwhile to trigger a refresh on both your Corruptions so they gain the benefit of the buffs. It's also worth triggering a refresh at the last few seconds of those buffs, so they're maintained as long as possible.

      Non-stacked targets:
      Scenario Short-lived enemies (< 11 secs or so) Enemies that last a good while (13-14 seconds or more)
      Numerous Targets (5-6+) Multi-DoT only Corruption on all of them Incorporate some Unstable Affliction into the multi-dotting, but only once everything has Corruption on it already. As much as possible keep Corruptions refreshed via Shadow Bolts/Haunts. Use CoA only if Corruption/UA are already up on everything and the target is going to stay alive for 18-20+ seconds.
      Few targets (<4) Corruption each one and return to your single target rotation on any primary target you might have. Incorporate Unstable Affliction, and use the help of focus target macros. This scenario is one of the more common ones that comes up (Acidmaw and Dreadscale, Professor Putricide and his oozes, etc). Basically, you juggle Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Shadow Embrace on each of your enemies. Maintain Haunt uptime, and do your best to have your Corruptions refreshed via Shadow Bolt or Haunt. Use Curse of Agony when every target already has both of your main DoTs (Corruption and Unstable Affliction) on it.


      Stacked Targets:
      Scenario Short-lived enemies (< 11 secs or so) Enemies that last a good while (13-14 seconds or more)
      Numerous Targets (5-6+) Spam Seed of Corruption on them. Seed of Corruption spam. You can throw in a couple of Corruptions if you have to move, since that helps you fish for Eradication procs too. Generally, if it's a pack of only 5-6 mobs, a couple of Corruptions into the mix are always beneficial if the targets are going to be alive its full duration because Eradication significantly buffs the SoC spam too. It's a good idea to have those Corruptions you put up refreshed via Haunt once it's close to expiring, since that not only buffs Corruption's dmg, but also increases the damage that target takes from your SoC.
      Few targets (<4) You either: 1) Corruption each one and then return to your single target rotation, or 2) You Corruption all of them except 1-2, and you use the mob(s) you didn't apply Corruption on to spam Seed of Corruption off of. See explanation on how to DPS Val'kyrs on LK 25hc, since that's the perfect example of a scenario like this.

      Elaboration on Tables above:
      Against numerous short-lived enemies:
      When facing numerous enemies that are split up and don't last too long, the DoT you want to be spreading first and foremost is your Corruption. An example is the Blood Beasts on DBS. They stay up long enough that multi-dotting Corruption on everything is usually very effective, but not long enough for you to want to include Unstable Affliction into the mix. Bear in mind that not only does UA generally hit for a lot less than Corruption per tick, but it also doesn't derive any benefit from Haste whatsoever. The relatively rapid Corruption ticks are another aspect of the spell that make it vastly preferable in such a situation.

      Against fewer enemies that last a good while (10+ seconds):
      When facing ~2-3 enemies that are going to be alive for a medium to moderately long period (oozes on PP, Dreadscale and Acidmaw in ToC, etc), you definitely want to incorporate the use of UA (and CoA) on both enemy targets. Something I find great to do is keeping the "main" target on focus, such as PP himself, and then shifting my target to the Ooze. As much as possible, you should try to avoid having Corruption fall off on the main target. The optimal thing to do is to refresh the Corruption with a Shadowbolt (Nightfall procs help a lot for this purpose). This lowers your DPS very slightly on the ooze, but increases it substantially on PP. This is also partly because the Shadow Bolt on PP refreshes your Shadow Embrace stacks, so that ensures your DoTs stay ticking hard. In case your raid is direly lacking on ooze damage, you might opt to lay off the multi-dotting. You want to shift your Haunt to whatever target is the kill priority. If raid DPS is high enough, you can continue to leave Haunt on the primary target. In high-end guilds, it's not uncommon for an Affliction Warlock to continue to keep Haunt on the primary target while he's DPSing the oozes. Keeping Haunt on the original target conveniently causes a refresh of Corruption via Everlasting Affliction, as well as Shadow Embrace.

      Procs and Debuffs:
      Both Corruption and Unstable Affliction have procs associated with them that substantially increase your DPS (Eradication and Devious Minds). This is another reason Multi-dotting is so powerful. Nightfall in particular procs substantially more, and the instant Shadowbolts you get from it are very good while moving, or to refresh a Corruption (as well as Shadow Embrace) on another target with. Having numerous Corruption casts up on enemies also restores a lot of your HP via the Siphon Life talent that heals you for 40% of the damage dealt by each Corruption tick. This is another aspect of your Corruption that can be useful on occasion, either to alleviate stress on your healers when a lot of raid damage happens to be going out, or to increase your odds of staying alive in situations when more damage is suddenly directed towards you specifically.

      Note that while you're able to juggle Shadow Embrace on more than 1 target, you can't do the same with the Haunt debuff. If you attempt to cast Haunt on something with a previously casted Haunt up on another target, the first target loses its Haunt debuff. This is why you shouldn't use Haunt on CD even when multi-dotting. Another implication of this is the fact that 1 target will always have your dots ticking harder on it than any other target. This is the target with your Haunt on it. You should apply this on whichever enemy has the highest kill priority.


    4. - Dot Refreshing

      Spoiler: Show
      The ideal time to refresh a DoT is immediately after it falls off. Refreshing it just before it falls off causes a loss in DPS because then you wouldn't have made use of its final tick (this is called DoT clipping). The main time that DoT clipping is acceptable is when there is about to be a significant period of DPS downtime on the enemy target (again, situations such as just before LK transition phases, or right before you get sucked into Frostmourne Chamber, or just as Sindy flies up).

      In the case of Unstable Affliction, you can often pre-cast a UA while your previous one has < 0.8 seconds on it, such that the new UA gets applied very shortly after the old one expires. This increases the uptime of your UA. Take care not to clip your UA. Be wary of high haste effects because they might cause you to clip your UA by mistake.


    5. - Life Tapping

      Spoiler: Show
      When best to Life Tap
      Odds are that due to mana constraints, you're going to be life-tapping much more frequently than simply once every 40 seconds to keep your Glyph of Life Tap buff up. As such, you should take care to Life-tap only in certain situations. The main situations in which you should avoid Life Tapping as much as possible are the following:

      - Minimize Life Tap usage during Eradication
      - Minimize Life Tap usage during your Drain Soul phase, as much as you can help it
      - Minimize Life Tap usage under the effect of your Devious Minds proc
      - Do not Life Tap if you know you are going to have to move shortly.
      - Try to avoid Life Tapping when you have trinket procs up.

      Realistically, a lot of your Life Taps are going to inevitably occur during 1 or more of the above situations, so don't fret if you don't get to Life Tap perfectly. As much as possible, just try and get your Life Taps in while those procs aren't up. You'll find yourself refreshing the Glyph of Life Tap buff under the effect of those procs on several occasions anyway, which is normal.

      Keep in mind that even if your Glyph of Life Tap buff is about to fall off, it's still worth holding off on using Life Tap if you know you're going to have to move soon. In this situation, it's a gain to use Life Tap only while moving.

      Remember that you should be trying to get as much movement done as possible while you use a GCD on Life Tap! Anytime there is DPS downtime where you can't attack anything, you should also be attempting to Life Tap your entire mana bar back, provided the lost health doesn't endanger you.

      The most exorbitant use of your mana by far is Seed of Corruption spam, so in situations where you know you're going to spam SoC a lot (LK phase 2, physical realm in RS 25hc, etc), you want to Life Tap a lot pre-emptively so you don't have to hold back on using SoC during AoE due to mana issues.

      Leaving out Life Tap
      The bizarrely unintuitive about Life Tap and the Glyph of Life Tap buff one should keep in mind is that the buff is not in itself necessarily mandatory per se for you to keep up 100%. Rather, the point of the glyph is more to act as an incidental spellpower bonus since you're going to be Life Tapping more frequently than once every 40 seconds anyway. Essentially, the spellpower from the glyph is just a free bonus at no cost.

      However, once you throw out the mana concerns and begin to consider whether Life Tap is worth using a GCD for on the merits of its spellpower buff alone, the matter gets a bit stickier. Obviously your gear plays heavily into this - if you happen to be running more spirit pieces than normal, that shifts the scale in favour of spirit and Life Tap therefore becomes more valuable.

      I'll use some of my own toon's personal Simcraft numbers to demonstrate this point:

      A BiS Affliction Warlock in his ilevel 277 gear will sit at somewhere around ~400 spirit, raid-buffed. Life Tap therefore would give him 80 spellpower for 40 seconds, and would cost 1 GCD (1.0 second). The question is whether the DPS gain from 80 spellpower for 40 seconds outweighs the value of using that GCD on a filler spell. 80 spellpower for 40 seconds grants somewhere in the realm of 7700 damage, so you'd need a nuke that did more than 7700 DPS for leaving Life Tap out to be worth it. Shadow Bolt doesn't quite make the cut, which means Life Tapping is worth it for the spellpower buff above 25% boss health. Below 25%, Drain Soul nets more DPS than a GCD spent on Life Tap, even after factoring in the fact that the value of your spellpower improves once you commence your Drain Soul phase.

      As a consequence of this, it can be more than worth it to leave out Life Tap in the last 20-30 seconds of a fight, so as to have another GCD to use on Drain Soul. This is made even more feasible by the fact that Drain Soul is a lot more mana-efficient than Shadow Bolt, meaning your mana expenditure is significantly reduced whenever the enemy is pushed below 25% health. Having said all that, this really makes only the tiniest of differences, so all of this about leaving Life Tap out is just obnoxious hair-splitting.


    6. - Shadow Bolt usage during Drain Soul phase

      Spoiler: Show
      There are some occasions when you might want to launch a Shadow Bolt at the target even when it's under 25% HP.

      In case Shadow Mastery is falling off:
      This is fairly self-evident. In the event the Shadow Mastery debuff is about to fall off, you'll want to refresh it to keep it up for the sake of the raid DPS increase.

      To make use of a Shadow Trance proc:
      At mid-to-high gear levels, the DPCT of an instant Shadow Bolt very easily matches, and even exceeds, that of your Drain Soul. This is because of Shadow Bolt's superior scaling with high crit chances, since Drain Soul can't crit. The exception is under extremely high Haste effects (think both Bloodlust + Eradication), because Shadow Bolt's benefit from Haste ceases once it hits the GCD cap, whereas Drain Soul's extremely long 15 second base cast-time means that, for all intents and purposes, it continues benefiting from Haste almost indefinitely.

      Having said that, you shouldn't actually be actively interrupting your Drain Soul channels just to cast instant Shadow Bolts by themselves. Recall that cancelling Drain Soul always comes with a small amount of lost cast-time due to human lag time - this is something that will diminish the DPS gained from using that instant Shadow Bolt. Instead, you should use it immediately before or after the next debuff you have to refresh, thus minimizing the number of times Drain Soul has to be cancelled.

      If you're anticipating having to move soon, it's also acceptable to hold on to that Instant Shadow Bolt to use while moving instead.


    7. - DPSing Val'kyrs on 25HC LK as Affliction

      Spoiler: Show
      Affliction Warlocks can be tricky to do good Val'kyr damage with. You want to incorporate some Multi-Dotting, buffing said dots with your Haunt, situationally using Shadow Bolt to refresh Corruption, and then making use of Seed of Corruption as a filler outside of all of that.

      For 3x perfectly stacked Valks
      You know how each of the 3 Val'kyrs flies down 1 by 1, approximately 1 second apart? You take advantage of this to get some DoTs rolling on them as each one becomes attackable. Basically, you Corruption Valk A, then Corruption Valk B, then Corruption Valk C. You then put Unstable Affliction on Valk A (this is the very first Valkyr you hit, it doesn't necessarily have to be this one though), and then you cast a Haunt on it. This Haunt refreshes the corruption you had put up on it initially, as well as buffs your Corruption and Unstable Affliction on it substantially. The point of the single UA on Valk A is for its damage (its DPCT becomes pretty good on a target with the Haunt debuff and 1x stack of Shadow Embrace), as well as to fish for Devious Minds procs. If your raid DPS is high enough that Valks die very quickly, you can leave out the UA.

      Now that you have 4 dots smoothly rolling, you want to just spam Seed of Corruption off the Lich King. Don't cast it on the Val'kyrs or it's going to over-write your Corruptions on them. Spam it off him while your dots on the Val'kyrs do their thing. Odds are you're definitely going to have several Eradication and Devious Minds procs buffing your Seed of Corruption, which is just what you want.

      If the Val'kyrs last very long (20+ seconds), then after 3 or 4 Seed of Corruption casts off LK, you want to refresh your Corruption on each Valkyr using a total of 1x Shadow Bolt each on 2 of the Val'kyrs and 1x Haunt on the third one. Remember to prioritize Shadow Bolt on either the Valk whose dot has the lowest duration on it, or the Valk which has the highest HP. If you know the Val'kyrs are going to last this long, you should be anticipating having to refresh them via Shadow Bolt well in advance. Naturally, Nightfall procs can help here. Your Shadow Bolts also put the 5% spell crit debuff on the Valks for your other caster DPS so that's neat too. After the refreshes, go back to spamming Seed of Corruption off LK. The presence of Shadow Embrace stacks on the Val'kyrs or on LK also increases the damage they take from the detonation of your Seed of Corruption, so always err on the side of using Shadow Bolt earlier rather than later to refresh your Corruptions with.

      If Val'kyrs aren't perfectly stacked or there is a Warlock grab:
      If there is one Warlock grab, or people aren't stacked properly and the Val'kyrs fly far apart, leave out the Seed of Corruption spamming. In this case, you'd just want to put both Unstable Affliction and Corruption on the Val'kyrs, shift Haunt to one of them, and alternately cast Shadow Bolt on each of them to stack up Shadow Embrace and provide your raid with the +5% spell crit debuff even sooner than you would otherwise. In this scenario where you're not casting Seed of Corruption off LK, you can and should also occasionally cast Shadowbolt on the Lich King so that he gets his Corruption refreshed too and maintains his Shadow Embrace stacks.

      Other notes on Valks:
      It's not worth casting Curse of Agony on the Valks unless you're moving and everything already has Corruption on it. Even then, you might be better off just using a Life Tap/Dark Pact instead since Seed of Corruption spamming will burn through your mana bar very quickly in Phase 2.

      Remember to put your Felhunter on the Valks!! Using the Infernal's Immolation aura to boost your AoE dps on the Valks might also be a decent strategy for maximizing raid damage on the Valks assuming you take into measure the fact that you'd be stuck summoning your Felhunter during the 2nd transition phase once your Infernal expires. Since the Infernal lasts 60 seconds, it can stay up for 2 Valk waves. Use it shortly after the 2nd last Valk wave has spawned and remember to set it on the Valks. This way it'll be up for most of the last wave too, since Val'kyr waves are 45 seconds apart. Remember that you will probably want to avoid summoning your Infernal directly on top of the Val'kyrs so you don't cause unnecessary stun DRs.

      Pushing your Val'kyr DPS even further beyond (at the cost of DPS on the Lich King):
      In case your raid's AoE is low and you need every edge you can get when it comes to cleaving the Val'kyrs, there's some things you can do to push your DPS up even further.

      Just before the Val'kyrs land, if the Lich King's UA has 6 seconds or less on it, refresh the debuff. It's also a good idea to apply a UA or a Corruption on one of the Val'kyrs in the air a few seconds before the grabs occur, because this increases the Eradication and Devious Minds procs you get while AoEing.

      Losing some Val'kyr DPS to maintain higher overall DPS:
      If your raid has enough AoE and Cleave DPS, you might opt to avoid sacrificing too much damage on the Lich King.

      In this case, what you'd do is Corruption Val'kyr A, Corruption Val'kyr B, Unstable Affliction Val'kyr A (the first one), then spam Seed of Corruption off Val'kyr C. The reason you don't put Corruption on Val'kyr C is because you're going to be using it as your Seed of Corruption fodder (applying the Seed of Corruption debuff would remove Corruption).

      You do this while refreshing Haunt on the Lich King every 10 seconds. This makes it so the Lich King doesn't lose your Corruption and Shadow Embrace debuffs. After a few Seed of Corruption casts off Val'kyr C, you can also use Shadow Bolt on Val'kyrs A and B to refresh their Corruptions.

      The idea with this strategy is you don't shift Haunt to the Val'kyrs anymore, and you instead focus on keeping your DoTs and Shadow Embrace stacks on LK constantly running so you don't have to go through the slow ramp-up process after every Val'kyr wave. This tactic produces less damage on the Val'kyrs, but increases your overall DPS. Make your own call about what the raid needs more.


    8. - Handling Movement

      Spoiler: Show
      Affliction Warlocks are not particularly mobile casters. Fortunately, a lot of your DPS is not tied to hard-casts, since your DoTs and your Pet will continue to do their full damage while you're moving.

      Knowing how to minimize movement is a universally important skill as any caster DPS in the game. A lot of this skill comes as a result of repeated practice and getting used to the mechanics of a fight. There are some Warlock-specific tips I'll touch on.

      Your instant casts:
      As an Affliction Warlock, you don't have a terribly large amount of instant casts as part of your regular rotation. There is your Curse of Agony, which you refresh once every 25 seconds, and your Life Tap which you refresh about every 35-40 seconds or so. Apart from these, there is also your instant Shadow Bolt proc via Nightfall and your manual Corruption refreshes under the effect of Devious Minds. These are all your rotational instant casts.

      When moving, it is acceptable to Life Tap more than you otherwise would so as to recover more of your mana back. It can be worth clipping Curse of Agony early just to re-apply it while you're having to move. In general, it's also a really smart idea to avoid refreshing Life Tap or Curse of Agony if you know you might have to move very soon. If there's some kind of stray mob in your range, you can also put a Corruption up on it to fish for Eradication procs.

      Death Coil can be used if you have to self-heal while moving, and Shadowflame can also situationally be used if you happen to be in melee range of multiple targets and need to move to readjust.

      Demonic Circle:
      Because you don't have a lot of spells to cast while moving, it's absolutely imperative that you make good use of your Demonic Circle: Summon and Demonic Circle: Teleport to help you minimize movement. The best way to use this ability will vary from fight to fight. Tactical usage of your Demonic Circle is a skill you have to practice.

      Execute Phase and Movement:
      During your Drain Soul phase, if you know it's guaranteed that you're going to be moving at some point, it's generally a gain to put off using Curse of Agony or Life Tap/Dark Pact entirely until that movement happens.


    9. - Your Utility Belt

      Spoiler: Show
      Death Coil
      The heal from this is a decent amount. But keep in mind the heal only comes after the travel time of the spell. It's great to use when at low health, and while moving. An example is when the Green Ooze on PP just knocked you back, and you're now mid-air unable to cast, and you're at somewhat low health. Occasionally this can also be used to pick off a Kinetic Bomb or a Wicked Spirit in FMC, if you need that instant nuke. One other prominent use of this spell in ICC is to help heal yourself back up after a bad Infest. The CC aspect of this spell can also prove useful on Lady Deathwhisper or on the Faction Champions in TOGC.

      Shadow Ward
      Absorbs damage equal to (spellpower*0.806 + 3300), on a 30 second cooldown. This benefits from the ICC aura. This is a very useful tool to have particularly against LK. Infest, Vile Spirit explosions, and Wicked Spirits are all shadow damage, which makes this an invaluable survival tool on LK.

      Demon Armor
      Increases all healing you take by 20%. This should only be used when you can't DPS, but need as much survivability as possible. The best example of such a situation is during Frostmourne Chamber. In FMC, the +20% healing taken of Demon Armour would serve you a lot better than the meagre HoT of Fel Armour. Remember to swap back to Fel Armour as you go out though.

      Soulstone
      Invaluable on fights where tank deaths occur frequently (heroic LK). A great asset to your raid in general. Don't be one of those Warlocks who neglect this.

      Demonic Circle
      A Demonic Circle placed strategically can occasionally be used to minimize your movement time in a fight. This is also particularly amazing for increasing the Green Ooze travel time on PP. It's simply outstanding on Phase 2 of LK, where being grabbed as a Warlock means that the raid can entirely ignore your Val'kyr and instead focus on the other ones.

      Drain Life
      Decent spell to use when you need to urgently get yourself healed back up. Another nice use of the spell is to immediately refresh your Corruption with, if it's close to falling off, since the spell has no travel time. It can also be good for other situations where spells with no travel time are helpful, like for picking off Wicked Spirits in FMC.

      Curse of the Elements
      In a well-optimized raid, you should not really need to apply this. Occasionally, your Unholy DK or Moonkin providing the buff might switch their targets and attack something else. In this event, it's a good idea to be tracking the debuff so you can apply it on the original target in case the debuff from the Moonkin or Unholy DK falls off on it. It's usually also a really good idea to cast this spell on both Shambling Horrors in the Lich King encounter, so they take 13% more damage from the Necrotic Plague. This is great to do because the Moonkin and Unholy DK debuffs will likely not be on the Shambling Horrors.

      Curse of the Elements' 5 minute duration is significantly higher than that of its counterparts, and that can be something that might make it more useful in certain scenarios.

      Curse of Weakness
      Reduces boss damage by ~12%. Improving this via the talent Improved Curse of Weakness bumps the damage reduction up to ~15%-ish. This is a tremendous asset to have, especially on very hard-hitting bosses. It's not optimal to have an Affliction Lock provide this debuff, because you're going to miss out on using your Curse of Agony, but you should nevertheless keep in mind that you have the capability to provide this debuff if it's ever necessary. Unlike most other providers of the AP debuff, you're able to apply yours from range, and it lasts 2 minutes instead of only 30 seconds (the duration Demoralizing Shout and Demoralizing Roar last).

      Curse of Tongues
      Can be useful in some situations. This increases the cast-times of various caster adds. This is notably also useful on Mimiron's Shock Blast, and Sindragosa's Blistering Cold, to increase the cast-times of those spells. It's also particularly great on the Faction Champions in TOGC. Increasing the cast-times of their healers goes a long way towards reducing the number of total heals they cast, and it also makes it so your dedicated interrupters manage to interrupt more heals.

      Ritual of Souls
      Healthstones for your raid and you. Experienced raiders should have these Healthstones keybound and ready to use at a moment's notice. Again, don't be one of those Warlocks that neglect this.

      Fear
      One of the most iconic CC abilities in the game, next to Polymorph. Again, this will prove useful on Lady Deathwhisper, or on Faction Champions. It makes a significant difference to the success of raids on heroic LDW whether their Warlocks are constantly fearing Mind-Controlled targets or not. Only one target can be feared at a time.

      Howl of Terror
      This hits up to 5 targets, but they have to be within 10 yards of you. Howl of Terror does not break any existing Fears you might have on any target.

      Banish
      Renders a Demon or Elemental target incapable of action and invulnerable to damage or healing for 30 seconds. This doesn't share DRs with Fear. Between this ability and Fear, you can very easily keep the enemy Resto Druid permanently locked down in the TOGC encounter. This can also be used on Lady Deathwhisper if the boss mind controls one of your raid's Resto Druids, though you might opt not to.

      Spell Lock
      Your Felhunter's silence and interrupt. The ability for it to apply this at range can be useful.

      Devour Magic
      Your Felhunter's dispel. This removes effects flagged as magic effects (but not curses). Can be used offensively or defensively. Useful for dispelling debuffs off yourself and saving healers the trouble.

      This ability is criminally under-used. Actively making an effort to dispel things like Soul Shriek, Frostbolt Volley slows, and the fear on BQL will get you noticed as an exceptional warlock. A macro for this ability is provided in the macros section.


    10. - Managing your Demon

      Spoiler: Show
      You will need to be competent in your handling of your pet. For the most part, this is fairly straightforward

      Abilities to put on Auto Cast:
      Most of the time, only Shadow Bite and Fel Intelligence should be put on auto-cast. You do this by right-clicking the spell from your pet's bars, or from its spellbook. Spell Lock and Devour Magic should not be on auto-cast, except in rare situations. Devour Magic being on auto-cast might cause a lot of problems for the raid on some encounters.

      Maximizing your Pet's DPS:
      You want to have your pet constantly attacking something, with the least downtime possible. Macros that have a /petattack line built into your Haunt spell tend to be very useful to make sure your pet is never sitting idly by your side, since you are likely to always cast Haunt on kill priority targets. It's recommended to have the /petattack and /petpassive commands assigned to individual keybinds of their own as well, to maximize your control over your pet. In a similar vein, the passive stance is the favored stance because this gives you the most control.


    11. - Threat Management

      Spoiler: Show
      The majority of the time, threat is not too significant a problem as a Warlock, except for where you either get too trigger-happy about spamming the Seed of Corruption key before your tank establishes AoE aggro, or where you nuke a fresh add spawn without holding back (such that once again, your tank doesn't have sufficient time to establish proper aggro) while your Soulshatter ability is on cooldown.

      Nonetheless, there are certain things when it comes to threat that are worth knowing.

      When out of melee range of an enemy, your aggro needs to be at least 130% of your tank's aggro before the mob decides to come and hit you instead. When in melee range, this threat-pulling threshold is only 110%, which means as RDPS you're naturally afforded more leeway when it comes to threat. However, there exist certain boss mechanics that exclude the tank as an eligible target if and only if he's top on threat. So even if you're at 115% of your tank's aggro and standing out of melee range, while you might not be at immediate risk of pulling the boss toward yourself, you might cause the main tank to be the target of a boss mechanic that he otherwise wouldn't be targeted by, because the boss doesn't consider him the main tank since he's not at the top of the boss' threat table.

      By default, 100% of the damage dealt by you is converted into an equal amount of threat. This of course excludes the damage contribution from your Felhunter (since that has its own threat table). This 100% damage-to-threat conversion is altered by certain talents and abilities, as well as a handful of other external buffs that might be applied to you from a player of another class.

      Personal threat reduction abilities
      Warlock Ability Effect
      Improved Drain Soul Reduces the threat dealt by your Affliction abilities by 20% (10% per talent point). As a result, spells like Haunt, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Seed of Corruption, etc, end up converting to threat at only a 0.8x rate. The thing to keep in mind is that this does not reduce the threat dealt by Shadow Bolt.
      Destructive Reach Reduces the threat of all your Destruction abilities by 20% (10% per talent point). This is the only talent that reduces the threat of Shadow Bolt. The overwhelming majority of the time, this is not a talent deemed worth picking up.
      Soulshatter Reduces your aggro by 50% on the threat tables of all mobs within 50 yards. This is a very potent threat reduction ability that makes it so you typically never have threat issues on the average single-target fight, regardless of any threat reduction talents you might have dropped.

      External threat reduction/increases
      Ability Effect
      Hand of Salvation Paladin ability that reduces your total threat by 2% every second, for 10 seconds. A Holy Paladin might be specced into Blessed Hands, a talent that effectively doubles its potency.
      Pain Suppression A Discipline Priest ability that reduces your threat by 5% and reduces the damage you taken by 40% for 8 seconds. This is not an ability that should be cast on a Warlock for threat reduction purposes (except in exceedingly rare circumstances). The damage reduction component of this ability makes it handy in situations where you have aggro on a number of adds.
      Intervene Warrior ability that reduces your total threat by 10%. Any warrior is capable of providing this threat reduction to you, although a DPS-specced Warrior will lose some damage by switching to Defensive Stance, using Intervene on you, then moving back to where he was. The short 30 second CD of this ability makes it pretty powerful for threat reduction over time if used multiple times.
      Vigilance Protection Warrior talent that transfers 10% of all threat you generate to the Protection Warrior. If you're not specced into any threat reduction talents, this will be transferring a lot of threat to the casting Warrior. A Prot Warrior might be interested in casting this on you simply because it maximizes his own threat generation, rather than because you actually need the threat reduction from the ability.
      Tricks of the Trade Occasionally, a Rogue might cast Tricks of the Trade on you to increase your DPS (more on TotT is below in the guide, under Raid Buffs. Casting this ability on you puts a buff on him, after he attacks something, that transfers all threat he generates to you for that period. In this event, it might be well-advised for said Rogue to use a "/cancelaura Tricks of the Trade" macro that cancels the buff on him responsible for the threat transfer. This doesn't remove the damage buff he provides you, but it negates the threat transfer.
      Misdirection For the most part, a hunter should never cast this on you. The only time this might be used is when you intend to use some strategy that also involves usage of your Demonic Circle ability to make it effortless to kite adds without ever being hit (think Deathbringer Saurfang heroic).



    9. Mastering the Spec

    1. 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.


    2. 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.


    3. 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.


    4. 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


    1. TL;DR on how to play Affliction

      Spoiler: Show
      I don't care about the in-depth stuff because I just picked up the spec. Give me a TL;DR on Affliction that captures most things I need to do.

      Keep all your DoTs up (Corruption, UA, CoA), cast Haunt once every ~10-11 seconds so its debuff is always up. Keep Glyph of Life Tap's buff up. Manually refresh Corruption on your first Devious Minds proc. When the boss goes below 35% HP, manually refresh Corruption again on your next Devious Minds proc so the Corruption benefits from both Devious Minds and Death's Embrace (this is only worth it if the boss is going to stay alive for at least 25-30+ seconds). Use Shadow Bolt as your filler while the boss is above 25%. Below 25%, use Drain Soul as your filler, while still prioritizing your other DoTs, unless the boss would die before they could finish ticking. You will be interrupting your Drain Soul channels to refresh the Haunt debuff and your DoTs as needed (the ideal time to interrupt it is immediately after one of its ticks just occurs).

      Corruption snap-shotting is its own elaborate mini-game wherein it's ideal to maximize Crit and Damage Modifier snap-shotting effects of your Corruption DoT. Your Drain Soul phase is yet another mini-game wherein you want to maximize the Damage Modifier, Spellpower, and Haste snapshotting of your Drain Soul channels as much as possible.

      Go nuts with Corruption spreading any time you're required to multi-dot. Spreading Corruption over everything that needs to be multi-dotted should be your first action. Don't use UA for multi-dotting unless the targets are going be alive for at least 9 seconds, and everything else you need to multi-dot already has Corruption on it.

      Spam Seed of Corruption for AoE (4+ closely-packed mobs).


    2. What buffs do I need to make sure are up before a fight?

      Spoiler: Show
      All these weird buttons and obscure buffs... What are the things I should make sure are up on me before a fight starts?

      Your Fel Armor, your Grand Spellstone weapon enchantment buff, and you also need to make sure your pet is actually out.

      Before a fight starts, you also want to use Life Tap for the Glyph of Life Tap buff. I've linked Power Auras below in the guide which you can use to track all these things.


    3. Demon Minions

      Spoiler: Show
      So what's the scoop on pets?

      It's a simple enough choice as Affliction.

      Infernal > Felhunter with 2/2 Improved Felhunter > Doomguard > Felhunter with 1/2 Improved Felhunter.

      Affliction Warlocks enjoy the ability to use the Infernal or Doomguard without being set back too much. A Destruction Warlock is stuck always using the Imp because of the powerful Empowered Imp talent, and Demonology Warlocks favour regular pets because the Doomguard and Infernal don't provide them the Demonic Knowledge buff. As Affliction, you have more freedom in being able to give other minions more consideration.

      The catch with the Infernal is that while it does insane damage, it only lasts 60 seconds. As such, the optimal time to use this is during the last 60 seconds of an encounter, or when you know that you'd be able to resummon your Felhunter freely during DPS downtime later (keep in mind that your Felhunter will come back without any buffs on it).

      You might also opt to occasionally use your Infernal for either it's Immolation Aura to maximize AoE damage, or for the stun effect when you summon it in a clutch situation via Inferno.

      The Doomguard does impressive damage, lasts 15 minutes, and has a variety of utility spells at its disposal, including things like an AoE stun on a short 20-second CD (War Stomp), and a Dispel without a Cooldown (Dispel Magic).

      The Imp and Succubus are both situational pets that do less damage than your Felhunter.


    4. How long does a target need to be up for putting Corruption on it to be worth it?

      Spoiler: Show
      How long does a target need to be alive for it to be worth it for me to throw my Corruption up on it?

      Corruption needs to tick only twice on an enemy that doesn't have Haunt or Shadow Embrace on it for the DPCT value of its GCD to over-take the DPCT of a Shadow Bolt that you'd otherwise be using. Realistically you might have to factor in things like the absence of debuffs like Curse of the Elements on the target you're putting the Corruption on. In general though, so long as you're highly likely to get 3 Corruption ticks in, it's definitely going to be more than worth it.

      If it lasts for 6 seconds or more, stick a Corruption up on it.


    5. Incorporation of UA and CoA when multi-dotting

      Spoiler: Show
      When do I use UA or CoA when multi-dotting?

      Unstable Affliction: When all other mobs that need to be multi-dotted already have Corruption on them, and the target is going to last at least 9 seconds (so UA ticks at least 3 times). That's because UA's DPCT at 3 ticks or more overtakes Shadow Bolt's DPCT decisively. If you're using a filler with a higher DPCT than Shadow Bolt (like Drain Soul, or Seed of Corruption in an AoE situation), then you'd most likely need the UA to be able to tick 4+ times for its use to be justified. If Seed of Corruption is hitting 4 or more targets, it's definitely going to outperform UA DPCT-wise. There is breathing space that allows some leniency in favour of UA here because UA also procs your Devious Minds, so it provides damage value beyond just its DoT damage.

      Curse of Agony: When all other mobs that need to be multi-dotted already have both Corruption and UA on them, and the target is going to live for at least 18-20+ seconds. The thing about CoA is that its DPCT is about 20% lower than UA, while needing a much higher duration to reach its full damage potential, and not providing you with any buffs in the process. It's very common to opt to avoid applying CoA entirely when it comes to Multi-Dotting scenarios.

      More on this in the Multi-Dotting section above. It's highly recommended to get the DrDmg addon. This calculates the damage for each of your spells based on your spellpower, crit, and several other factors and assigns the corresponding damage value to the spell's tooltip. This makes it easier to see the damage/DPCT of all your spells more clearly, which makes it much easier for you to more intuitively grasp why you multi-dot the way you do.


    6. Do I need to refresh Corruption after applying the Haunt and Shadow Embrace debuffs?

      Spoiler: Show
      Do I need to refresh my Corruption after putting up the Haunt debuff and 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace?

      No, Corruption benefits dynamically from the presence or absence of these debuffs (likewise for the Curse of the Elements debuff). If you cast Corruption, and only after that apply your Haunt and then proc some Shadow Embrace stacks via Shadow Bolts, the existing Corruption will still have its damage increased correspondingly.

      Corruption only rolls Crit-increasing effects on you, Crit debuffs on the enemy, damage modifying buffs or debuffs on you, as well as the Death's Embrace talent on enemies below 35% HP. More on Corruption-rolling is above in the guide.


    7. Is dotting irrelevant targets to fish for procs worthwhile?

      Spoiler: Show
      My raid members get upset when I put Corruption and Unstable Affliction on all the Drudge Ghouls and Shambling Horrors. How can I convince them to leave me alone and that I'm really doing it for the benefit of the raid DPS increase? I've been forced to bolt from numerous guilds because all these silly raid leaders just don't understand that these DoTs give me such amazing buffs!

      While Devious Minds and Eradication are terrific buffs, casting these on irrelevant targets is almost always a DPS loss.

      Devious Minds:
      Assuming 100% uptime on 1 Unstable Affliction debuff (take note that this is unrealistic - optimal gameplay should in fact only lead to about 93-97% uptime):
      Devious Minds has a {1 - [0.85^(10/3)} = 41.8% uptime.

      A second UA debuff with 100% uptime increases this uptime to {1 - [0.85^(10/1.5)} = 66.1% uptime.

      The 2nd UA being up therefore increases your uptime by 24.3% on the Devious Minds buff. At face value this seems to correspond to an increase in DPS of 2.43%. However, your Corruption will likely already have been rolling with a previous Devious Minds proc buffing it - ergo it wouldn't receive any additional increase from the extra DM procs. Since Corruption comprises about ~30% of your total damage (actually even more than that before your Drain Soul phase), that knocks the benefit down to more like 1.7% damage.

      The opportunity cost for this 1.7% damage is 0.6 Shadow Bolts (or more, if you happened to have a Haste proc running, or had a Haste value significantly above 1269) every 15 seconds. Going off the values Simcraft returns me for my Warlock, we gather that the 0.6+ Shadow Bolts is the favorable option, because 0.6 Shadow Bolts (which is worth somewhere around 7550-7650 damage every 15 seconds, or ~503 DPS) evidently causes more DPS than a 1.7% damage boost (this is worth 1.7% x 13526 = ~230 DPS).

      It therefore doesn't come close to being worth it as you would lose 273 DPS on the primary target. Any extra UAs after the 2nd one would contribute even less to increasing Devious Minds uptime.

      Eradication:
      As for Corruption and Eradication, it's much the same story.

      Assuming you have about 1270 Haste rating such that your Corruption ticks every 2 seconds with raid buffs, the uptime on Eradication from 1 single Corruption being up is around {1 - [0.94^(10/2)} = 26.6% uptime. On average, this works out to about a 5.32% Haste buff.

      A 2nd Corruption DoT always being up increases the uptime to {1 - [0.94^(10/1)} = 46.1% uptime. The presence of the 2nd Corruption causes an increase in the uptime of 19.5%, translating to an average Haste buff of 3.9%, at the cost of at least 0.6 Shadow Bolts every 12 seconds.

      A 3.9% spell haste buff for a BiS Aff lock provides similiar benefit that about ~133 Haste Rating would (due to the fact that it multiplicatively interacts with other Haste effects, we can't simply take 32.79 x 3.9). The 133 Haste Rating is not derived from the 3.9% spell haste buff in any mathematical precise fashion - it's just a different way of looking at the 3.9% haste buff that makes it easier to appraise its value, since the DPS gain provided from both is very similiar.

      The Simcraft values shown above suggest that 133 Haste Rating would result in about a 256 DPS increase for my Warlock, and the loss of 0.6 Shadow Bolts every 12 seconds results in 7600/12 = 633.33 less DPS.

      You therefore lose 377 DPS on the primary target by maintaining Corruption on a 2nd target. Therefore, putting Corruption on an irrelevant mob for the extra Eradication procs isn't worth it either. Speccing into Nightfall improves the benefit you get from Corruption ticking on other targets, but not significantly enough for it to be worth it (you only get an instant Shadow Bolt every 5 Corruption casts or so).

      Conclusions and caveats:
      For the most part, you should have no business putting DoTs up on irrelevant mobs. Not only is it categorically a strict DPS loss on the main target, but the more DoTs you put up, the higher the odds that your buffs are just going to constantly over-write each other, thus making the multi-dotting even less worthwhile with every extra DoT you cast. This is simply meter-padding, and raids will be right to be annoyed at you if you go out of your way to do that. You are not impressing anyone by gratuitously inflating your damage meters like that, and anyone worth a damn is just sighing and shaking their head in exasperation. If you're the type of player to get a kick out of falsely exaggerated numbers, you likely won't last very long in any guild worth their salt!

      Having said all that, it can be worth it to stick a Corruption up on a Shambling Horror if and only if you have to move. It might be okay to forego using a Life Tap (assuming the glyph buff doesn't fall off) and instead use that GCD on Corruption to fish for procs, because when the transition phase begins, there's a short amount of down-time where you're able to Life Tap most of your mana back anyway.

      Apart from moving, the only times it can be worthwhile to DoT an irrelevant target are:
      • When there is downtime on the main target (i.e. you're unable to attack it entirely for the time being)
      • When a damage-increase phase is about to occur, and the extra procs will be beneficial for when that arrives (such as when you're going to AoE soon, since DPS is significantly increased while AoEing, or when you're about to receive a tremendously powerful damage buff).
      • You need the extra healing on you from the Soul Siphon talent
      • You're about to DPS a target that needs to be killed with the utmost urgency. In this event, putting up the DoTs to fish for procs beforehand might be worth it. Ideally, however, you would not be Affliction on a fight where something like this was consistently necessary.


    8. Rain of Fire vs Seed of Corruption

      Spoiler: Show
      Do I use Rain of Fire or Seed of Corruption for AoE?

      Seed of Corruption by a landslide. Rain of Fire just doesn't scale anywhere near as well with spellpower. SoC is better by a huge margin even though it only crits for 1.545x regular damage whereas RoF crits for 2.09x damage (due to the Ruin talent).

      Keep in mind Seed of Corruption also over-writes your Corruption DoT on the target you cast it on, but this is not enough of a downside to make Rain of Fire preferable. You only RoF if everything already has SoC on it, or if targets die too quick for SoC casts to go off (e.g. Rot Worm spawns after the Abomination dies on the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter).

      The detonation damage of your Seed of Corruption is also increased by Shadow Embrace and Haunt, but only on targets with those debuffs up on them.



    9. Life Tap vs Dark Pact

      Spoiler: Show
      How does Dark Pact weigh up against Life Tap? What is Dark Pact even for?

      Dark Pact is functionally very similiar to Life Tap. Instead of converting your health to mana, it takes mana from your pet and gives it to you. Dark Pact even procs the buff from Glyph of Life Tap.

      Dark Pact scales better with spellpower, but has a smaller base mana return amount. In high-end gear, this returns more mana than Life Tap. However, the DPS gain from this is not significant at all, and on top of that it's also not uncommon for there to be downtime during a fight when you can Life Tap without losing DPS anyway.

      Dark Pact is usually shunned because you have to sacrifice a precious talent point to pick up a talent that amounts to not even 10 DPS. You also can't Dark Pact while your Infernal or Doomguard is up.


    10. Curse of Agony vs Curse of Doom?

      Spoiler: Show
      Do I use Curse of Agony or Curse of Doom?

      As an Affliction Warlock, Curse of Agony is going to be your main curse of choice, because it benefits from the Haunt debuff, as well as Shadow Embrace. Curse of Doom receives no benefit from these.

      It's also not true that Curse of Doom provides more DPS because it allows you to get more hardcasts in since you only cast it once a minute, as opposed to Curse of Agony, which you refresh every ~25 seconds.

      The only situations where putting up Curse of Doom might be preferable is when there's going to be boss downtime for a significant period (like before Sindy flies up for her air phase, or when you have to run out for transition phases on LK).


    11. Spellstone vs Firestone

      Spoiler: Show
      Do I use the Spellstone or the Firestone?

      Grand Spellstone is overwhelmingly your go-to weapon enchant.

      Grand Firestone is much more of a niche enchant. You might use it for the extra Crit Rating on a side-weapon that's dedicated to maximizing your crit value for the purposes of Corruption-rolling (recall that Corruption determines its crit chance at the moment of its execution). Alternatively, you can simply disregard the existence of the Grand Firestone altogether.


    12. Dislodged Foreign Object vs Phylactery of the Nameless Lich

      Spoiler: Show
      So what's the verdict on DFO vs PNL?

      The subject of Dislodged Foreign Object vs Phylactery of the Nameless Lich poses an interesting discussion.

      For the most part, on a long enough fight, DFO would come out superior, due to the fact that it's better itemized towards your needs as an Aff lock since it has Haste in place of Crit. The interval between DFO procs is ~60 seconds (45 sec ICD, ~15 sec average time to proc), and the interval between Phylactery procs is ~103 seconds (100 sec ICD, 3 sec average time to proc), so both trinkets provide somewhat comparable spell-power.

      There are, however, a number of reasons PNL could work out to a higher DPS gain in practice.

      1) Bloodlust/CD's.

      PNL's massive 1207 spellpower proc for 20 seconds is amplified tremendously by cooldowns like bloodlust - much more so than DFO's proc, which only stacks up to 1210 spellpower in its final 2 seconds, and gives you an average of only 665 spellpower with each proc. Warlocks running with PNL will be having their initial burst boosted by more than 500 spellpower over DFO Warlocks.

      2) Fight durations.

      Due to the fact that DFO only gives you an average of 665 spellpower each time it procs, you always end up having to wait for a 2nd DFO proc (i.e. an even number of DFO procs) before it catches up to PNL in value. If a particular fight ends at a duration where you had gotten an odd number of DFO procs, DFO would be behind PNL in terms of the spellpower benefit provided to you.

      For instance, let's say you have a fight that lasts a duration of 2:35 mins. (155 seconds total).

      You get 2 PNL procs - the first proc at roughly 0:05 seconds (due to time taken to apply DoTs), and then a 2nd proc at the 1:48 mark.

      Had you been using DFO, you would only have gotten 3 DFO procs. The first at 0:15, the second proc at 1:15, and the 3rd at 2:15.

      In this scenario, the 2 PNL procs will have yielded you a total of 1207 sp for 40 seconds, which completely decimates the value of DFO's ~665 sp for 60 seconds. Phylactery of the Nameless Lich would be vastly preferable in this scenario due to the way the fight duration happened to wrap neatly around your Phylactery procs.

      A lot of the earlier encounters in ICC last somewhere close to this auspicious duration of 2:00-2:30. This is why you so often see superior results with the Phylactery in the earlier fights. The way the Phylactery procs occur can also very often play to your strengths. You are likely to get the first PNL proc during the opening Bloodlust, as well as your pre-pot. The 2nd PNL proc you should get around the time of your Drain Soul + Death's Embrace phase, so the timing could not be more perfect for you. PNL's massive 1207 spellpower proc in these extremely high damage output situations works outstandingly to your favour.

      DFO needs the fight to be much longer than that for it to overtake Phylactery in value. You should also note that anytime Seed of Corruption spam is involved, PNL's value dips a bit because SoC crits only hit for 1.545x the regular amount. On fights as long as LK 25hc or Halion 25hc, you'd likely be better served with DFO, because these fights fights are not only really long, but also involve a lot of Seed of Corruption use. It's somewhat possible PNL might be better in phase 3 of LK since DFO has a much higher chance to proc when attacking Wicked Spirits inside FMC, whereas it's usually more within your power to ensure that the only PNL procs you get in p3 are the ones when you're outside FMC (since only DoTs trigger the proc).


    13. How good is Nevermelting Ice Crystal? How do the other available trinkets measure up?

      Spoiler: Show
      How good exactly is Nevermelting Ice Crystal (NMIC)? How do the rest of the trinkets measure up?

      Nevermelting Ice Crystal is a frighteningly powerful trinket for its ilevel. This is because of how you can abuse the synergy of its very large on-use Crit effect with the Crit-rolling nature of your Corruption. Assuming the most optimal possible scenario of you never letting your NMIC-buffed Corruption drop, this is legitimately your 6th or 7th most powerful trinket possible. In that scenario, the only 6 trinkets that either beat it or are competitive with it are CTS nm/hc, DFO nm/hc, and PNL nm/hc. Despite its low ilevel, NMIC is right up there in the ranks of the giants - if you can ensure your buffed Corruption doesn't fall off. As such, you will likely hold on to this trinket for a very long time.

      One should bear in mind that depending on the fight, it's possible that Corruption falling off might be a very real risk, for instance in the event of a Mind Control on Lady Deathwhisper, or any other circumstance like that.



    11. Raid Buffs

    1. 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.



    2. 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

    3. 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.

    Spoiler: Show
    • Plate Buffs


      This allows you to much more effectively track DoTs across several targets. Targets with your debuffs on it will have those debuffs appear above their nameplates.

    • Tidy Plates


      Really similiar functionality to Plate Buffs. It's essential to have at least one of the above 2 addons.

    • Drain Soul Timer
      Reminds you that a target has reached Drain Soul range with an audio cue. Also helps track Drain Soul ticks with audio assistance.

    • NeedToKnow


      Lets you track a variety of buffs, debuffs, ICDs, on your target, your focus, etc. In the picture, the bottom set of bars are tracking DoTs on the main target, while the smaller set of bars above are tracking DoTs on the focus target.

    • ClassTimer


      Alternative tracking add-on.

    • Power Auras Classic version 3.0.0S


      Yet another tracking add-on. Some helpful strings for this are listed in the guide. Extremely configurable compared to most other tracking addons, although somewhat more complicated.

    • Quartz


      Enhanced cast bar that factors in your latency, and also clearly shows you your Drain Soul's tick period.

    • DrDmg




      Assigns a numerical damage value to each of your spell tool-tips. This does the math of your spells for you. Invaluable in helping you understand why you play the way you do, and also very helpful for off the cuff napkin math. Players inclined towards curiosity about the details of their spells (spellpower coefficients, damage modifiers, DPS, average damage after factoring in crit/miss chance, etc) will come to hold this add-on very dear.

    • Necrosis




      A nifty Warlock-specific tool offering some quality of life functionalities, ranging from easy access to several utility spells, to convenient monitoring of your self-buffs and things like your Soulstone CD. This also offers some Multi-DoT tracking that isn't tied to enemy nameplates.

    • Fortexorcist
      Similiar to Necrosis, but with broader applications, including things like an ICD tracker. A less Warlock-specific addon that's somewhat more daunting to set up.



    13. Power Auras

    These power aura strings are for Power Auras Classic version 3.0.0S

    Spoiler: Show
    "Fel Armor down", this makes sure you always have it up:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Shadow_FelArmour; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu366; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; buffname:stFel Armor; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:stFel Armor down!; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; sound:nu0; RoleHealer:nu0; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu13; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:bofalse; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:botrue; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu4; RoleTank:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu1.0499999523163; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:botrue; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1


    "Weapon Enchantment Down", this makes sure you always have your weapon enchant up:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\inv_sword_150; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu284; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu5; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:stWeapon Enchantment down!; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; buffname:stGrand Spellstone/Grand Firestone; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; sound:nu0; RoleHealer:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; randomcolor:bofalse; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu14; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:botrue; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu4; RoleTank:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu1.0499999523163; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:botrue; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1


    "No Pet Active", this warns you if your pet isn't up, or if it dies:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\icons\Spell_shadow_summonimp; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu325; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu20; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:stNo Pet active!; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; sound:nu0; RoleHealer:nu0; buffname:st???; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; randomcolor:bofalse; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu16; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:botrue; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu4; RoleTank:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu1.0499999523163; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:botrue; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1


    Life Tap, tracks the Glyph of Life Tap buff:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Shadow_BurningSpirit; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu-70; x:nu172; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; buffname:stLife Tap; sound:nu0; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; RoleHealer:nu0; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; RoleTank:nu0; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; owntex:botrue; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu9; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:bofalse; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu0.22999998927116; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.lastShownLarge:nu1; timer.b:nu1; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.g:nu1; timer.h:nu1.3999999761581; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.DurationInfo:nu436700.866; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.r:nu1; timer.cents:botrue; timer.Relative:stNONE; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.lastShownSmall:nu27; timer.y:nu-115; timer.x:nu161; timer.id:nu9; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu438021.238; timer.UseOwnColor:bofalse; timer.a:nu1; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse


    Eradication, tracks the Eradication buff:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Warlock_Eradication ; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu-218; x:nu226; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; sound:nu0; RoleHealer:nu0; buffname:stMetamorphosis/Eradication; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; owntex:botrue; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu7; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:bofalse; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; RoleTank:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu0.22999998927116; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.lastShownLarge:nu1; timer.b:nu1; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.g:nu1; timer.h:nu1.5900000333786; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.r:nu1; timer.cents:botrue; timer.Relative:stNONE; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.lastShownSmall:nu28; timer.y:nu-174; timer.x:nu214; timer.id:nu7; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu438096.697; timer.UseOwnColor:bofalse; timer.a:nu1; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse


    Devious Minds proc, this tracks your t10 4p Devious Minds proc and tells you it procs with an audio cue, which is useful because you typically want to re-apply Corruption on your first Devious Minds proc for the Corruption rolling benefit:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Shadow_SpectralSight; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu-116; x:nu-122; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; RoleTank:nu0; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; sound:nu23; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; RoleHealer:nu0; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; buffname:stDevious Minds; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:botrue; owntex:botrue; isResting:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu10; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:bofalse; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu0.22999998927116; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.lastShownLarge:nu41; timer.b:nu1; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.g:nu1; timer.h:nu1; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.DurationInfo:nu438158.623; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.r:nu1; timer.cents:botrue; timer.Relative:stNONE; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.lastShownSmall:nu98; timer.y:nu-79; timer.x:nu-132; timer.id:nu10; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu438207.781; timer.UseOwnColor:bofalse; timer.a:nu1; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse; stacks.a:nu1; stacks.b:nu1; stacks.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; stacks.g:nu1; stacks.h:nu1.66; stacks.UpdatePing:bofalse; stacks.Texture:stDefault; stacks.enabled:botrue; stacks.r:nu1; stacks.Showing:botrue; stacks.Relative:stNONE; stacks.y:nu-160; stacks.x:nu-126; stacks.Transparent:bofalse; stacks.UseOwnColor:bofalse; stacks.lastShownValue:nu12; stacks.id:nu10


    Shadow Trance, tracks the instant Shadowbolt proc and warns you of it with an audio cue:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Shadow_Twilight; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu-208; x:nu-122; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; RoleTank:nu0; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; sound:nu22; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; RoleHealer:nu0; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; buffname:stShadow Trance; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:botrue; owntex:botrue; isResting:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu12; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:bofalse; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:bofalse; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu0.22999998927116; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.b:nu1; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.g:nu1; timer.h:nu1; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.DurationInfo:nu438150.063; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Showing:bofalse; timer.r:nu1; timer.cents:botrue; timer.Relative:stNONE; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.y:nu-247; timer.x:nu-132; timer.id:nu12; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu438274.258; timer.UseOwnColor:bofalse; timer.a:nu1; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse


    Tracks the Haunt debuff:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:botrue; icon:stInterface\Icons\Ability_Warlock_Haunt; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu-10; x:nu-146; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu2; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; buffname:stHaunt; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; sound:nu0; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; RoleHealer:nu0; RoleTank:nu0; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:botrue; owntex:botrue; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:botrue; randomcolor:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu11; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:bofalse; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu0.22999998927116; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1; timer.InvertAuraBelow:nu0; timer.lastShownLarge:nu1; timer.b:nu1; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.g:nu1; timer.h:nu1.3999999761581; timer.ShowOnAuraHide:bofalse; timer.UpdatePing:bofalse; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Texture:stDefault; timer.enabled:botrue; timer.DurationInfo:nu436102.236; timer.Showing:botrue; timer.r:nu1; timer.cents:botrue; timer.Relative:stNONE; timer.CustomDuration:nu0; timer.lastShownSmall:nu15; timer.y:nu-50; timer.x:nu-159; timer.id:nu11; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.Start:nu438306.545; timer.UseOwnColor:bofalse; timer.a:nu1; timer.ShowActivation:bofalse


    Alert for your mana getting low, with an audio cue:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\icons\Spell_fire_meteorstorm; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu305; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu9; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; sound:nu21; RoleHealer:nu0; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:stMana Low!; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; buffname:st???; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:botrue; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; randomcolor:bofalse; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu17; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:botrue; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu25; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:botrue; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu4; RoleTank:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu1.0499999523163; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1


    Alert for your pet being on low health, with an audio cue:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0; anim1:nu4; g:nu0.64705882352941; optunitn:botrue; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\icons\Spell_fire_meteorstorm; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; Extra:bofalse; y:nu50; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:bofalse; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:stpet; bufftype:nu8; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu33; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; sound:nu49; RoleHealer:nu0; buffname:st???; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:botrue; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; randomcolor:bofalse; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu4; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st=; realaura:nu1; Active:bofalse; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:bofalse; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; wowtex:botrue; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; aurastextfont:nu1; RoleTank:nu0; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:nu0; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu0.19999998807907; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu2; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; finish:nu1


    Checks for whether the 13% spell damage debuff from a Moonkin or Unholy DK or another Warlock is up on your target. This is particularly useful to have on transition phases in PP 25hc, in case the Unholy DKs and Moonkins are attacking a different ooze than you are.:
    Spoiler: Show
    Version:st3.0.0S; gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.13333333333333; anim1:nu1; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; Instance25ManHeroic:nu0; stacksLower:nu0; target:botrue; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Shadow_ChillTouch; beginSpin:bofalse; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.96078431372549; Extra:bofalse; y:nu234; x:nu0; customsoundend:st; customname:st; RoleMeleDps:nu0; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu2; RoleTank:nu0; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; Instance10ManHeroic:nu0; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; alpha:nu1; aurastext:st13% Spell Debuff Missing; spec2:botrue; InstanceBg:nu0; symetrie:nu0; InactiveDueToState:botrue; buffname:stEarth and Moon/Ebon Plague/Curse of the Elements; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; Instance5ManHeroic:nu0; sound:nu0; multiids:st; RoleHealer:nu0; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; Instance5Man:nu0; anim2:nu0; id:nu19; HideRequest:bofalse; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; Active:bofalse; tooltipCheck:st; threshold:nu50; off:bofalse; PowerType:nu0; GTFO:nu0; textaura:botrue; stance:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; strata:stLOW; soundend:nu0; spec1:botrue; InstanceArena:nu0; inParty:nu0; RoleRangeDps:nu0; EndSoundPlayed:botrue; aurastextfont:nu3; Instance25Man:nu0; Instance10Man:nu0; customtex:bofalse; PvP:nu0; combat:botrue; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; inRaid:nu0; size:nu1.1699999570847; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; exact:bofalse; begin:nu0; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:botrue; ismounted:nu0; targetfriend:bofalse; customsound:st; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1



    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.

    Spoiler: Show
    Haunt:
    Code:
    #showtooltip Haunt
    /petattack
    /cast Haunt
    Since you mainly cast Haunt on main targets or kill priority targets, this macro helps ensure your pet conveniently goes to attack anything you cast your Haunt on. I have /petattack keybound to my Mousewheel Scroll Up, and /petfollow bound to my Mousewheel Scroll Down, so over-riding the commands my macros give to my pets is really easy to do, if I ever need to do that.

    It can be good to also use a macro that allows you to easily refresh Haunt (and consequently also your Shadow Embrace stacks) on a primary focus target while you're in the midst of dotting or attacking another target. I like to assign this one its own keybind.

    Code:
    #showtooltip Haunt
    /cast [target=focus] Haunt

    As for your DoTs:

    Corruption:
    Code:
    #showtooltip Corruption
    /cast [@focus,mod:alt][@mouseover,mod:ctrl][@target] Corruption
    Unstable Affliction:
    Code:
    #showtooltip Unstable Affliction
    /cast [@focus,mod:alt][@mouseover,mod:ctrl][@target] Unstable Affliction
    Curse of Agony:
    Code:
    #showtooltip Curse of Agony
    /cast [@focus,mod:alt][@mouseover,mod:ctrl][@target] Curse of Agony
    If no modifier is held down (so if neither the Ctrl or Shift keys are pressed), the DoTs are simply cast on your target. These macros make it so that if the Alt modifier is held down, the DoT is cast on your focus, and if the Ctrl modifier is held down, the DoT is cast on anything you're using your mouse-over on. For these macros to work, you have to make sure your Ctrl and Alt modifiers associated with the button of the respective DoTs is free. For instance, if your Corruption is bound to 3, the macro won't work to cast it on your focus target if you've already bound Alt + 3 to something else.

    Felhunter Mouseover Dispel:
    Code:
    #showtooltip Devour Magic
    /cast [@mouseover, exists, nodead] Devour Magic; [@Target, exists, nodead] Devour Magic
    Your Felhunter casts its dispel on whatever your mouseover is on. If you don't have a mouseover, it casts it on your target.

    Pet Ability usage:
    Code:
    #showtooltip
    /use [pet:Voidwalker] Sacrifice;  [pet:Succubus] Seduction; [pet:Doomguard] War Stomp;  [pet:Felhunter] Spell Lock
    Uses an ability associated with each pet that you'd most likely want used. This makes it so you don't have to make an individual macro for each unique ability to use it manually with a keybind.

    Utility:
    Code:
    #showtooltip
    /cast Ritual of Summoning
    /say Click for Summoning Stone
    Code:
    #showtooltip
    /cast Ritual of Souls
    /say Click for Healthstones
    Self-explanatory. These alert people that they need to help you click something. There are addons that render these unnecessary.



    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.

    1. 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.


    2. 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.


    3. 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.


    4. 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.


    5. 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.


    6. 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.


    7. 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.


    8. 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
      Affliction Warlocks can be tricky to do good Val'kyr damage with. You want to incorporate some Multi-Dotting, buffing said dots with your Haunt, situationally using Shadow Bolt to refresh Corruption, and then making use of Seed of Corruption as a filler outside of all of that.

      For 3x perfectly stacked Valks
      You know how each of the 3 Val'kyrs flies down 1 by 1, approximately 1 second apart? You take advantage of this to get some DoTs rolling on them as each one becomes attackable. Basically, you Corruption Valk A, then Corruption Valk B, then Corruption Valk C. You then put Unstable Affliction on Valk A (this is the very first Valkyr you hit, it doesn't necessarily have to be this one though), and then you cast a Haunt on it. This Haunt refreshes the corruption you had put up on it initially, as well as buffs your Corruption and Unstable Affliction on it substantially. The point of the single UA on Valk A is for its damage (its DPCT becomes pretty good on a target with the Haunt debuff and 1x stack of Shadow Embrace), as well as to fish for Devious Minds procs. If your raid DPS is high enough that Valks die very quickly, you can leave out the UA.

      Now that you have 4 dots smoothly rolling, you want to just spam Seed of Corruption off the Lich King. Don't cast it on the Val'kyrs or it's going to over-write your Corruptions on them. Spam it off him while your dots on the Val'kyrs do their thing. Odds are you're definitely going to have several Eradication and Devious Minds procs buffing your Seed of Corruption, which is just what you want.

      If the Val'kyrs last very long (20+ seconds), then after 3 or 4 Seed of Corruption casts off LK, you want to refresh your Corruption on each Valkyr using a total of 1x Shadow Bolt each on 2 of the Val'kyrs and 1x Haunt on the third one. Remember to prioritize Shadow Bolt on either the Valk whose dot has the lowest duration on it, or the Valk which has the highest HP. If you know the Val'kyrs are going to last this long, you should be anticipating having to refresh them via Shadow Bolt well in advance. Naturally, Nightfall procs can help here. Your Shadow Bolts also put the 5% spell crit debuff on the Valks for your other caster DPS so that's neat too. After the refreshes, go back to spamming Seed of Corruption off LK. The presence of Shadow Embrace stacks on the Val'kyrs or on LK also increases the damage they take from the detonation of your Seed of Corruption, so always err on the side of using Shadow Bolt earlier rather than later to refresh your Corruptions with.

      If Val'kyrs aren't perfectly stacked or there is a Warlock grab:
      If there is one Warlock grab, or people aren't stacked properly and the Val'kyrs fly far apart, leave out the Seed of Corruption spamming. In this case, you'd just want to put both Unstable Affliction and Corruption on the Val'kyrs, shift Haunt to one of them, and alternately cast Shadow Bolt on each of them to stack up Shadow Embrace and provide your raid with the +5% spell crit debuff even sooner than you would otherwise. In this scenario where you're not casting Seed of Corruption off LK, you can and should also occasionally cast Shadowbolt on the Lich King so that he gets his Corruption refreshed too and maintains his Shadow Embrace stacks.

      Other notes on Valks:
      It's not worth casting Curse of Agony on the Valks unless you're moving and everything already has Corruption on it. Even then, you might be better off just using a Life Tap/Dark Pact instead since Seed of Corruption spamming will burn through your mana bar very quickly in Phase 2.

      Remember to put your Felhunter on the Valks!! Using the Infernal's Immolation aura to boost your AoE dps on the Valks might also be a decent strategy for maximizing raid damage on the Valks assuming you take into measure the fact that you'd be stuck summoning your Felhunter during the 2nd transition phase once your Infernal expires. Since the Infernal lasts 60 seconds, it can stay up for 2 Valk waves. Use it shortly after the 2nd last Valk wave has spawned and remember to set it on the Valks. This way it'll be up for most of the last wave too, since Val'kyr waves are 45 seconds apart. Remember that you will probably want to avoid summoning your Infernal directly on top of the Val'kyrs so you don't cause unnecessary stun DRs.

      Pushing your Val'kyr DPS even further beyond (at the cost of DPS on the Lich King):
      In case your raid's AoE is low and you need every edge you can get when it comes to cleaving the Val'kyrs, there's some things you can do to push your DPS up even further.

      Just before the Val'kyrs land, if the Lich King's UA has 6 seconds or less on it, refresh the debuff. It's also a good idea to apply a UA or a Corruption on one of the Val'kyrs in the air a few seconds before the grabs occur, because this increases the Eradication and Devious Minds procs you get while AoEing.

      Losing some Val'kyr DPS to maintain higher overall DPS:
      If your raid has enough AoE and Cleave DPS, you might opt to avoid sacrificing too much damage on the Lich King.

      In this case, what you'd do is Corruption Val'kyr A, Corruption Val'kyr B, Unstable Affliction Val'kyr A (the first one), then spam Seed of Corruption off Val'kyr C. The reason you don't put Corruption on Val'kyr C is because you're going to be using it as your Seed of Corruption fodder (applying the Seed of Corruption debuff would remove Corruption).

      You do this while refreshing Haunt on the Lich King every 10 seconds. This makes it so the Lich King doesn't lose your Corruption and Shadow Embrace debuffs. After a few Seed of Corruption casts off Val'kyr C, you can also use Shadow Bolt on Val'kyrs A and B to refresh their Corruptions.

      The idea with this strategy is you don't shift Haunt to the Val'kyrs anymore, and you instead focus on keeping your DoTs and Shadow Embrace stacks on LK constantly running so you don't have to go through the slow ramp-up process after every Val'kyr wave. This tactic produces less damage on the Val'kyrs, but increases your overall DPS. Make your own call about what the raid needs more.

      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.


    9. 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.
    Edited: July 13, 2019

  2. Il need a bigger pocket for this guide...

    Nice guide tho, has some info i was interested in, thanks. :D
    Edited: March 9, 2018

  3. The contents of the above guide are accurate to Blizzard's live release of the 3.3.5a patch. As of the last edit to this post, the mechanics of the Affliction spec on Warmane's WotLK realms approximate the official 3.3.5a patch close to perfect enough that resources from when WotLK was live, and their derivatives (i.e. this guide) are more than sufficient for the purposes of players.

    If there are any bugs pertaining to Affliction that crop up, I'll mention them here, although realistically things tend to only get better with time. The blizz-like fidelity of the guide will not be compromised.

    Suggestions, constructive criticism, and possible corrections are more than welcome.

    Quick References

    What are my stat priorities and how much Hit do I need?

    Hit Rating (to cap) > Spell power > Haste >>>> Crit > Spirit

    Target Level 77 78 79 80 81 82 83
    Hit Chance Needed 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 17%
    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%.

    With 3/3 Suppression specced, 289 Hit Rating needed (+11% Hit Chance).
    With 0/3 Suppression specced, 367 Hit Rating needed (+14% Hit chance).

    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
    With 3/3 Suppression specced and Heroic Presence, you need 10% x 26.23 = 263 Hit Rating to cap.
    With 0/3 Suppression specced and Heroic Presence, you need 13% x 26.23 = 341 Hit Rating to cap.


    How much Haste/SP/etc do I need to go Aff?

    You can go Affliction right away. The spec doesn't need high gear levels for it to work.


    How much Haste/SP/etc do I want to reach in general?

    Weird question. You get as much of both of those as your gear humanly allows. You don't have to worry about needing to reach certain Haste or Spellpower breakpoints.


    Is item X an upgrade over Item Y?

    Use these stat weights as a guide to determine if the stat tradeoff from changing any piece of gear will be worth it, although your own unique stat weights will be slightly different:



    How to Affliction tho?

    From the guide's FAQ:
    Before a fight, make sure your Fel Armor and your Grand Spellstone weapon enchantment are up on you. You also need to make sure your pet is actually out.

    Keep all your DoTs up (Corruption, UA, CoA), cast Haunt once every ~10-11 seconds so its debuff is always up. Keep Glyph of Life Tap's buff up. Manually refresh Corruption on your first Devious Minds proc. When the boss goes below 35% HP, manually refresh Corruption again on your next Devious Minds proc so the Corruption benefits from both Devious Minds and Death's Embrace (this is only worth it if the boss is going to stay alive for at least 25-30+ seconds). Use Shadow Bolt as your filler while the boss is above 25%. Below 25%, use Drain Soul as your filler, while still prioritizing your other DoTs, unless the boss would die before they could finish ticking. You will be interrupting your Drain Soul channels to refresh the Haunt debuff and your DoTs as needed (the ideal time to interrupt it is immediately after one of its ticks just occurs).

    Corruption snap-shotting is its own elaborate mini-game wherein it's ideal to maximize Crit and Damage Modifier snap-shotting effects of your Corruption DoT. Your Drain Soul phase is yet another mini-game wherein you want to maximize the Damage Modifier, Spellpower, and Haste snapshotting of your Drain Soul channels as much as possible.

    Go nuts with Corruption spreading any time you're required to multi-dot. Spreading Corruption over everything that needs to be multi-dotted should be your first action. Don't use UA for multi-dotting unless the targets are going be alive for at least 9 seconds, and everything else you need to multi-dot already has Corruption on it.

    Spam Seed of Corruption for AoE (4+ closely-packed mobs).

    Game-play related question! Is it worth doing A, B or C during a fight?

    Read the guide. If it's not something the guide covers, feel free to bring it up in a post.


    I'm cruising through dungeons. What's the best way to DPS these mobs?

    From the guide:
    Non-stacked targets:
    Scenario Short-lived enemies (< 11 secs or so) Enemies that last a good while (13-14 seconds or more)
    Numerous Targets (5-6+) Multi-DoT only Corruption on all of them Incorporate some Unstable Affliction into the multi-dotting, but only once everything has Corruption on it already. As much as possible keep Corruptions refreshed via Shadow Bolts/Haunts. Use CoA only if Corruption/UA are already up on everything and the target is going to stay alive for 18-20+ seconds.
    Few targets (<4) Corruption each one and return to your single target rotation on any primary target you might have. Incorporate Unstable Affliction, and use the help of focus target macros. This scenario is one of the more common ones that comes up (Acidmaw and Dreadscale, Professor Putricide and his oozes, etc). Basically, you juggle Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Shadow Embrace on each of your enemies. Maintain Haunt uptime, and do your best to have your Corruptions refreshed via Shadow Bolt or Haunt. Use Curse of Agony when every target already has both of your main DoTs (Corruption and Unstable Affliction) on it.


    Stacked Targets:
    Scenario Short-lived enemies (< 11 secs or so) Enemies that last a good while (13-14 seconds or more)
    Numerous Targets (5-6+) Spam Seed of Corruption on them. Seed of Corruption spam. You can throw in a couple of Corruptions if you have to move, since that helps you fish for Eradication procs too. Generally, if it's a pack of only 5-6 mobs, a couple of Corruptions into the mix are always beneficial if the targets are going to be alive its full duration because Eradication significantly buffs the SoC spam too. It's a good idea to have those Corruptions you put up refreshed via Haunt once it's close to expiring, since that not only buffs Corruption's dmg, but also increases the damage that target takes from your SoC.
    Few targets (<4) You either: 1) Corruption each one and then return to your single target rotation, or 2) You Corruption all of them except 1-2, and you use that mob(s) you didn't apply Corruption on to spam Seed of Corruption off of. See explanation on how to DPS Val'kyrs on LK 25hc, since that's the perfect example of a scenario like this.


    What talents to take tho?

    Guess what?


    What?

    Read the guide.


    My DPS sucks, what am I doing wrong?

    The guide has a section on correcting low DPS, which covers common mistakes and how to avoid them at length. If you're still mystified over your low DPS, upload logs of your raid encounters on http://www.worldoflogs.com/ and post it in the thread.


    List of known bugs:
    Spoiler: Show
    Drain Soul not taking benefit from the Death's Embrace talent:
    https://www.warmane.com/bugtracker/report/56675 Now Fixed

    The Doomguard being undertuned:
    https://www.warmane.com/bugtracker/report/62576 Now Partially Fixed



    Some sources you might be interested in reading:
    Edited: June 8, 2019

  4. oathbinder bis mainhand? monakS
    Spoiler: Show
    Edited: March 9, 2018

  5. I have sacrificed my DPS. What have you given?

  6. Thumbs up you cover pretty much everything good work mate;]/

  7. I was about to start searching for good affli wlock guide - and here it is! Thx alot.

  8. Added some information to the FAQ that I think will be helpful. Also brushed up some of the formatting and included a section on how to DPS Val'kyrs on heroic LK. The guide as it stands now should be fairly comprehensive. Let me know what else I could add.

  9. How good exactly is Nevermelting Ice Crystal (NMIC)? How do the rest of trinkets measure up?

    Nevermelting Ice Crystal is a frightening powerful trinket for its ilevel. This is because of how you can abuse the synergy of its very large on-use Crit effect with the Crit-rolling nature of your Corruption. Assuming the most optimal possible scenario of you never letting your NMIC-buffed Corruption drop, this is legitimately your 6th or 7th most powerful trinket possible. In that scenario, the only 6 trinkets that either beat it or are competitive with it are CTS nm/hc, DFO nm/hc, and PNL nm/hc. Despite its low ilevel, NMIC is right up there in the ranks of the giants - if you can ensure your buffed Corruption doesn't fall off. As such, you will likely hold on to this trinket for a very long time.

    One should bear in mind that depending on the fight, it's possible that Corruption falling off might be a very real risk, for instance in the event of a Mind Control on Lady Deathwhisper, or any other circumstance like that.
    IsnĀ“t NMIC not more like your 3. trinket to use and swap pre pull only for the buff? Using it like this Afli would never replace it and it is not realy fitting in a trinket ranking.

  10. That's a bug right now. You're meant to lose its proc when you take it off.

  11. Thank you! I'm about to ding 80 soon on my new affli warlock and thats the up to date info I need right now :)))

  12. Where did u take this stat weights numbers?
    Crit more than spirit? Soul drain and curse can't crit. Also so huge difference between haste and SP. Why?
    I even checked EJ
    https://web.archive.org/web/20150802...arlock-thread/
    As i remember this numbers looks like demo's stat priority.

  13. The stat weights in the guide were generated from Simcraft, based off the stats of a BiS Aff Lock. The ones in the link are largely in agreement with those in the guide. Haste being better than spellpower only occurs in situations of abnormally low base Haste rating.

    In general these look nothing like Demo's stat weights, given the massive gap between the worth of Haste and Crit, and with Crit being better than Spirit.

    Crit more than spirit? Soul drain and curse can't crit. Also so huge difference between haste and SP. Why?
    Well, in short, because of math. Simcraft extensively models several iterations of a DPS simulation and then it spits out an average value for each one of your stats based on how much it mathematically determined 1 point of that stat to increase your DPS. The numbers we see are the outcome of this process.

  14. Upload somwhere your rawr and simcraft, pls. Mine simcraft can't import rawr file.

  15. You can use these links: Rawr and Simcraft.

    It's easiest to make a Char profile via Rawr, and then to just import that into Simcraft.

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