Affliction PvE guide
Updated for 4.3
Contents
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1. Introduction
This guide is intended to cover the basics of the PvE oriented affliction warlock. It's mostly targeted at fresh level 85 warlocks seeking advice, but it can also be of help for the more experienced warlock. This guide is not a replacement for the more in-debth and up-to-date guide on ElitistJerks by JMickey, it's rather a supplement for those that might find EJ daunting with their theorycrafting.
2. Character Preparations
2.1 Talents
Shadow Bolt Filler: (32/3/6).
Drain Life Filler: (31/7/3).
All points are pretty much mandatory, but if you need the utility you can sacrifice one point out of Jinx for Curse of Exhaustion.
If you're having problems with pet dying a lot on bosses, move one point from Pandemic to Fel Synergy, although this shouldn't be a problem.
Dran Life filler is no longer viable as a dps spec as it is too far behind Shadow Bolt filler, however it can still be useful if you get into a situation where you need extra survival.
2.2 Glyphs
Prime Glyphs
Corruption
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Major Glyphs
We have a lot of glyphs to pick from, you'll have to make choices on which to pick and which to leave out depending on your own situation.
Mandatory on fights with multiple targets:
Glyph of Soul Swap - Lets you copy your DoTs instead of transfering them.
Slight DPS increase:
Glyph of Life Tap - Less time spent life tapping.
Glyph of Shadow Bolt - reduced mana cost, resulting in less life taps needed.
Utility:
Glyph of Fear - Makes Fear a viable CC-option.
Glyph of Soulstone - Allows your target to resurrect with 70% health, instead of 30%.
Glyph of Soul Link - Reduces the amount of damage you take by an additional 5%.
Minor Glyphs
Minors are entirely optional.
2.3 Minion
Felhunter is currently the highest DPS minion.
2.4 Stats and Gear
2.4.1 Stat Priorities
As affliction your stat priorities are generally:
Intellect >> Hit (to cap) > Haste > Crit > Mastery
These priorities can change depending on your gear setup, but it should hold true most of the time. Spirit is a wasted stat for warlocks and you should pass any items with spirit to your healers. If you want more specific stat weights, I recommend downloading SimulationCraft and follow Andromalia's guide to SimulationCraft.
2.4.2 Stat Caps
Hit caps at level 85 are 6% (615 rating) for heroic 5-man bosses and 17% (1742 rating) for raid bosses.
Haste has a soft cap at 50% where your global cooldown reaches 1 second. With Dark Intent and raid haste buff this requires 4956 haste rating which is unreachable at this point.
There are also several non-important haste thresholds where your DoTs gain extra ticks, they do not have any significant impact on your dps and you can safely ignore them. Here's a Google Doc showing at what rating you get new ticks on your DoTs.
2.4.3 Gems
Meta gem - Burning Shadowspirit Diamond
Red gem - Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Yellow gem – Reckless Ember Topaz
Blue gem - Veiled Demonseye
Most of the time it's better to place red gems in all sockets, however if the socket bonus is 20 intellect or 30 of another secondary stat you can use orange/purple gems to meet the requirement. (See also how to use stat weights.)
2.4.4 Enchants
Cheaper alternatives for the poor or greedy are in brackets.
Head - Arcanum of Hyjal
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone
Back - Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect
Chest - Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats (Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats)
Wrists - Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect (Enchant Bracer – Speed or Enchant Bracer – Precision)
Gloves - Enchant Gloves – Haste
Legs - Powerful Enchanted Spellthread
Boots - Enchant Boots – Lavawalker (Enchant Boots – Haste or Enchant Boots – Precision)
Belt - Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Weapon - Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent (Enchant Weapon – Hurricane)
Offhand - Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect
2.4.5 Reforging
As a general rule you should reforge your less worth stats to your better worth stats. With the above mentioned stat priorities (Intellect >> Hit (to cap) > Haste > Crit > Mastery) you get the following list. Start at the bottom of the list and reforge the highest numbered stat on the list that is present on your gear to the lowered numbered stat on the list that is not present on your gear. It's recommended to use tools such as WoWReforge to optmize your reforging.
1. Hit rating (below hit cap)
2. Haste rating
3. Critical strike rating
4. Mastery rating
5. Hit rating (above hit cap)
6. Spirit
2.5 Professions
Alchemy – Mixology grants you an additional 80 intellect when using Flask of Draconic Mind.
Blacksmithing – Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves adds an additional socket to your bracer and gloves, granting an additional 80 intellect by using 2x Brilliant Inferno Rubies.
Enchanting – Enchant Ring – Intellect allows you to enchant your rings for an additional 80 intellect.
Engineering – Synapse Springs, an active ability that increases your intellect by 480 for 10 seconds on a 60 second cooldown, giving an average of an additional 80 intellect.
Herbalism – Lifeblood, an active ability that increases your haste rating by 480 for 20 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown, giving the average of an additional 80 haste rating.
Inscription – Felfire Inscription replaces your normal shoulder enchant and gives you an additional 80 intellect in comparison.
Jewelcrafting – Brilliant Chimera's Eye replaces 3x Brilliant Inferno Rubies granting an additional 81 intellect.
Leatherworking – Draconic Embossment – Intellect replaces your normal bracer enchant and gives you an additional 80 intellect in comparison.
Mining – Toughness grants you an additional 120 stamina.
Skinning – Master of Anatomy grants you an additional 80 crit rating.
Tailoring – Lightweave Embroidery replaces your normal cloak enchant, the embroidery averages out to an additional 85 intellect over the normal enchant.
2.6 Consumables
Flask - Flask of the Draconic Mind or (Big) Cauldron of Battle
Food - Severed Sagefish Head or Seafood Magnifique Feast
Potion - Volcanic Potion (best used by pre-potting and using another one during Bloodlust/Heroism)
3. In Combat: When DoTs are Flying
3.1 Spell Priorities
Your priorities goes from top to bottom on the following list. The effect from Curse of the Elements can also be applied by balance druids, assassination rogues and unholy death knights, however your curse lasts longer and spread easier as long as you picked up Jinx.
Opening Rotation
Shadow Bolt * > Haunt > Unstable Affliction > Corruption > Bane of Doom > Shadow Bolt
Then proceed with following the priority above.
*Because of the way the Shadow and Flame debuffs work, it is best to start the sequence with a SB to make sure you DoTs benefits from the debuff. Also add in Haunt right after to allow for travel time.
DoT Refreshing
You want to keep as close to 100% uptime on your DoTs as possible. Corruption is refreshed by Haunt, while BoD and Unstable Affliction should be cast so that it hits between the second to last and last tick. You can read more about clipping of DoTs in this thread by Gherkin.
Execution Phase
When your target reaches 25% health switch your Shadow Bolt spam with Drain Soul channeling. Your Drain Soul ticks will automatically refresh the duration of Unstable Affliction and Corruption, but you still have to manually refresh Bane of Doom and Haunt, the best time to stop channeling is right after a Drain Soul tick. Using an addon that shows when each individual tick of Drain Soul occurs is recommended. You also want to cast Shadow Bolt every 30 seconds to keep up the Shadow and Flame debuff.
Cooldown Spells
Use Haunt whenever possible.
Use Demon Soul on cooldown. For best effect, use it together with other cooldowns like trinkets, racials or other proc effects.
Shadowflame should only be used if you can stay close to the boss. If mechanics or your group require you to stay at range, it's a dps loss to go out of your way to cast Shadowflame.
On single target focused fights use Summon Doomguard. On fights where massive AoE is needed, Summon Infernal will be a better choice. The summon 'snapshot' your character stats which means you should, if possible, summon them at a moment when you have as many spell power or intellect procs as possible.
Movement
As a general rule, not just for movement, you always want to do something. Any time spent doing nothing is time spent doing no damage. Our spells are limited when we're on the move, but there's always something that we can do. Here's a small priority list of what to do while moving:
- Haunt - if you can stop moving long enough to get off a Haunt cast, it's worth doing so.
- DoTs - keep your dots ticking, refresh your bane as you normally would, if you cannot stop to cast Haunt you should recast Corruption between the second to last and last tick, keep UA up by casting Fel Flame.
- Life Tap - if you need the mana, Life Tapping while moving saves you a Life Tap later when you stand still and could cast Shadow Bolts.
- Soulburn: Soul Fire - unless you need to save the shard or the Soulburn cooldown this is yet another instant spell to cast.
- Fel Flame - spam this if you've done all of the above and are still moving.
AoE
On 2-3 targets, dot up all targets and single target nuke them down, however you'll have to judge by how long they will live for how many dots are worth using. Remember that you can spread dots with Soul Swap (if glyphed) every 30 seconds.
On 4+ targets, open with Soulburn: Seed of Corruption and continue spamming Seed of Corruption or tab target to spread Unstable Affliction. If possible, use Shadowflame on cooldown.
3.2 Shadow Bolt vs. Drain Life
Drain Life damage was nerfed in a hotfix in patch 4.1, the spec is no longer viable for anything other than a heavy survival spec.
Drawbacks:
- Latency. Channeled spells cannot be queued up as easily as cast time spells and bad timing of clipping the channeling can hurt your dps.
- Shadow Embrace. You are relying a lot on Nightfall procs and Haunt to keep up 3 stacks of SE. Bad RNG with Nightfall procs can make it hard to keep up SE on multiple targets.
- Mobility. As with the above point, without Nightfall procs you rely on Haunt to keep up SE stacks which makes you immobile whenever Haunt has to be recast.
Benefits:
- Healing. You will have a lot of self healing using Drain Life as a filler. Healers will thank you.
- You can move in the middle of a cast and still get a few ticks of damage.
- You're shooting a green beam of awesomeness.
3.3 Notes on different spells
Dark Intent is an important buff for you and a raid member of your choice. As a general rule of thumb you want to give this buff to a non-warlock DoT/HoT heavy class. To make sure you get the most benefit out of the spell see this thread by Gherkin.
Fel Flame shouldn't be used to refresh Unstable Affliction unless moving or your t11 4-piece bonus procs.
Bane of Agony vs. Bane of Doom
BoD is currently the best bane of the two of them, though this may change at higher haste levels since BoD doesn't scale with haste, which means that with major haste buffs you may consider switching to BoA. If, however, you're on a fight where you constantly use glyphed Soul Swap, switch to BoA since BoD can only be applied to one target at a time.
Soulburn
With T12 4-set bonus you want to use Soulburn on cooldown with Soulburn: Soulfire, unless you shortly will need AoE burst in which case you'd save it for Soulburn: Seed of Corruption. Without the T12 4-set it is a situational spell and it's use depends on each specific situation. Here are just a few examples of how to use Soulburn:
Pet died? → Soulburn: Summon Felhunter
Moving and nothing else to do? → Soulburn: Soulfire
Need to move far and got teleport in the middle? → Soulburn: Demonic Teleport
Need health quickly? → Soulburn: Drain Life
Lots of adds that need to be AoE'd? → Soulburn: Seed of Corruption
Need a tanking cooldown? → Soulburn: Healthstone
Need threat? → Soulburn: Searing Pain
4. Miscellaneous
4.1 Stat Weights
So you've simmed your character but don't know what to do with the stat weights you're given? In the following examples of how to use stat weights I will use these weights. They're not stat weights you should follow as I just made up some rounded numbers for the convenience of easy calculations and do not reflect your character's own stat weights.
Code:
Intellect=3.0
SpellDamage=2.4
HitRating=1.8
HasteRating=1.4
CritRating=1.2
MasteryRating=0.9
Gear choices
Let us say you are stuck with Corla's Baton and Finkle's Mixer Upper drops for you and there are no priests that need it. The new wand has spirit, but the item level is much higher and you're considering if the wand is worth your dkp. Figuring out which is better is easy; simply multiply the stats on the wands with your stat weights, the wand with higher score is better.
Corla's:
95 intellect * 3 = 285
68 mastery * 0.9 = 61.2
56 hit * 1.8 = 100.8
285 + 56.7 + 75.6 = 447
Finkle's:
121 intellect * 3 = 363
81 mastery * 0.9 = 72.9
81 spirit * 0 = 0
363 + 72.9 = 435.9
In this case it looks like Corla's Baton is better, but we haven't factored in reforging.
Reforging
The rule of reforging is that you always reforge away the stat that is worth least to the stat that is worth most and not already present on the item. However you can only reforge away 40% of one stat, so you're still stuck with 60% of the old stat as well. Let us look at the last example with reforging taken to consideration.
Corla's:
95 intellect * 3 = 285
60% * 68 mastery * 0.9 = 36.72
40% * 68 haste * 1.4 = 38.08
56 hit * 1.8 = 100.8
285 + 56.7 + 75.6 = 460.6
Finkle's:
121 intellect * 3 = 363
81 mastery * 0.9 = 72.9
60% * 81 spirit * 0 = 0
40% * 81 hit * 1.8 = 58.32
363 + 72.9 = 494.22
With reforging, Finkle's Upper Mixing is better than Corla's Baton and you can upgrade to a spirit item without feeling bad.
Gemming
Intellect is worth far more than any of your other secondary stats and it's therefore almost always better to use pure intellect gems in all sockets, there are however exceptions to this rule and you can calculate yourself when it's acceptable to use other gems. I will use the same stat weights in these examples as above.
Power Generator Hood
1 yellow socket, socket bonus is 30 mastery.
Ignoring the socket bonus and using a pure intellect gem grants you 40 intellect.
Going for the socket bonus and using an intellect/haste gem grants you 20 intellect, 20 haste, 30 mastery.
40 intellect * 3 = 120
20 intellect * 3 + 20 haste * 1.4 + 30 mastery * 0.9 = 115
Pure intellect gem is better.
Flame Pillar Leggings
1 yellow socket, 1 blue socket, socket bonus is 20 intellect.
Ignoring socket bonus grants you 80 intellect.
Going for socket bonus grants you 60 intellect, 20 haste, 20 hit.
80 intellect * 3 = 240
60 intellect * 3 + 20 haste *1.4 + 20 hit * 1.8 = 244
Socket bonus is better.
4.2 Addons
A lot of people ask for which addons are better for tracking your DoTs and debuffs, I can't tell you which one is best, because that is a subjective opinion and everyone will have their own favourite addon. I can however give you a list of frequently used addons for tracking DoTs and debuffs.
These are just some of the most popular ones, there are more of them out there and if you really want to find the one you like, I suggest you go searching for them on WoWInterface or Curse.
ForteXorcist
Power Auras Classic
NeedToKnow
TellMeWhen
ButtonTimers
EventHorizon
4.3 Macros
Drain Life without clipping
Recent changes to channeled spells makes this macro obsolete. Channeled spells will no longer be clipped if you recast the spell between the last two ticks, similar to DoTs. Do not use macros like this one as it will add time equal to your latency to your cast time and will result in a DPS loss.
Code:
#Showtooltip
/cast [nochanneling: Drain Life] Drain Life
Target swap between two targets
Incredibly useful when multi dotting two targets, like the V&T fight.
Soul Swap on focus – uses Soul Swap on target when no modifiers are pressed, on focus if a modifier is pressed
To get this macro to work you have to remove the normal Soul Swap spell from all your bars and only have the macro on the bars, otherwise the macro will fail.
Code:
#showtooltip
/cast [mod, @focus] [] Soul Swap
4.4 How Spells Work With Buffs/debuffs
There are basically two categories of things that affect your spells' damage.
Buffs/debuffs on target - this includes
- Debuffs provided by you and fellow raiders, such as Curse of the Elements and Shadow Embrace.
- Target being in a "weakened" state.
- Target standing in puddles that increase/decrease damage taken.
Buffs/debuffs on you - this includes
- Buffs on you such as Bloodlust/Heroism and Improved Soul Fire.
- You standing in puddles that increase/decrease damage dealt.
- Target health percent.
This is how each type of spell's damage update on buffs/debuffs.
Normal, single hit, casted spells - such as Shadow Bolt and Immolate.
- Buffs/debuffs on you are taken to account at the end of the cast, when your mana is being withdrawn.
- Buffs/debuffs on target are taken to account at the end of the cast, when your mana is being withdrawn.
"Pulsing" spells - channeled spells that deals damage to targets in impact area, such as Hellfire and Rain of Fire.
- Buffs/debuffs on you are taken to account on each pulse.
- Buffs/debuffs on target are taken to account on each pulse.
DoTs - Debuffs left on target dealing damage over time and channeled spells giving the target a debuff. Spells such as Corruption and Drain Life.
- Buffs/debuffs on you are taken to account once, at the end of the cast when your mana is being withdrawn.
- Buffs/debuffs on target are taken to account on each tick of damage.
There is one known exception to these rules, that is the 5% crit debuff provided by Warlocks and Fire Mages, Shadow and Flame and Critical Mass. This is a debuff that should be in the "Debuffs on target"-category, however testing shows that it works like a buff on yourself.
5. End Note
I'm open for any criticism and suggestions to this guide. Most of this guide's content is taken from Jmickey's guide on EJ: Afflicion in Cataclysm | DoTs and You. I will try to keep this guide to date, but the guide on EJ is generally better updated.
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