Warlock beginner guide

[Dastey]

1. Cataclysm abilities

* Fel Flame (Very good spell on the move)

* Dark Intent (Best used on Shadow priests, boomkins, fire mages or death knights)

* Demon Soul (Use it on cooldown)


Affliction only spells:

* NEW: Soul Swap: Deals a small amount of damage and removes all DoTs on the target. The next target you cast Soul Swap on will receive all the DoTs consumed. Note: Glyphing it won’t remove the DoTs from your primary target

* NEW: Soul burn: Seed of Corruption: Using Soul Burn followed by Seed of Corruption will afflict all targets with Corruption


Demonology only spells:

* Demonic empowerment: No longer benefits demon in standard raid situations

* NEW: Hand of Gul’dan: Summons a falling meteor dealing a high amount of damage and increasing all demons critical strike chance by 10% if talented further will renew the duration of Immolate and root/stun people.

* Demonic Pact: Now increases spell power by 10%. No longer spell power by 10% of the warlocks spell power


Destruction only spells:

* Shadowburn: Deals a decent amount of damage and if target dies within 5 seconds the warlock will get 3 Soul Shards

* NEW: Bane of Havoc: If damaging another target than the baned target the baned target will receive 15% of that damage.


2. Mastery

* Affliction mastery: Increases all periodic shadow damage you deal by 13.04%. Each point grants an additionally 1.63%.

* Demonology mastery: Increase the damage done by your demon servants and damage you deal while transformed into a demon by 12%. Each points grants an additionally 1.5%.

* Destruction mastery: Increase all fire damage you deal by 10%. Each point grants an additionally 1.25%


3. Primary abilities

* Affliction primary abilities: Unstable Affliction and 25 % increased shadow damage

* Demonology primary abilities: Felguard and 15% increased fire and shadow damage

* Destruction: Conflagrate and 25% increased fire damage.


4. Pets

* Affliction: Succubus

* Demonology: Succubus (Single target), Felguard (Aoe)

* Destruction: Imp

* Guardian: Infernal


5. DPS Rotations and priorities:
Affliction:

* Haunt.

* Soul Fire (To keep improved Soul Fire buff up)

* Soul Swap on adds

* Bane of Agony

* Corruption (Refreshed by Shadow Bolt and Haunt hits)

* Unstable Affliction (Refreshed under 25% by Drain Soul ticks)

* Shadowflame (if in melee)

* Drain Soul if under 25%

* Shadow Bolt spam


Demonology:

* Metamorphosis

* Soul Fire (To keep improved Soul Fire buff up)

* Immolation (If in melee, during metamorphosis)

* Bane of Doom

* Hand of Gul’dan

* Immolate (If not refreshed by Hand of Gul’dan)

* Corruption

* Shadowflame (If in melee)

* Incinerate (if Molten Core proc)

* Soul Fire if under 25 %

* Shadow Bolt spam


Destruction:

* Bane of Havoc (if any secondary targets)

* Soul Fire (To keep improved Soul fire up)

* Instant Soul Fire from imp procc

* Bane of Doom

* Immolate

* Conflagrate

* Corruption

* Shadowflame (if in melee)

* Chaos Bolt

* Incinerate


6. Talents and Glyphs

* Affliction: http://wowtal.com/#k=18637LVt.a6d.warlock.RaGfnK

* Demonology: http://wowtal.com/#k=-ALTdiS-i.a6d.warlock.RtONfs

* Destruction: http://wowtal.com/#k=OWcl_rDL.a6d.warlock.qaXna5


7. Stats

* Hit (Until 17%) > Intellect > Spellpower > Haste (Until 2639 rating) > Mastery > Crit


8. Reforging, gemming and consumables

* Gemming: Go for every socket bonus. Blue gems are now good and should be socketed with Hit + Intellect

* Reforging: Reforge you mastery to either hit or haste. Hit if you have under 17%. Haste otherwise

* Consumeables: Flask of the Draconic Mind (300int), Fortune Cookie (90 intellect), Volcanic potion before combat and during bloodlust (1200 spell power)


9. Tips and tricks

* Using Soul Burn followed by Soul Harvest before entering an encounter will result in an extra Soul Shard

* Using Shadowburn on adds before they die will grant you 3 extra Soul Shards as Destruction (Same goes for Demonology and Affliction with Drain Soul)

* Wait with using Haunt until there is 3-3,5 (depending on haste, go test it) seconds left of it in order to do max damage


10. Rolling DoTs
After 4.0.1 rolling DoTs is now possible and the DoTs should be refreshed after the 2nd last tick. Said on another way: Between the last 2 ticks.
This will increase the up time of your DoTs and therefore also your overall dps.
DoTs now also scale with haste and crit. The following table is the haste requirements to obtain an extra tick from a DoT (Note that I removed the +1 tick since that is obtained from Imp soulfire, Dark Intent and 5% haste aura, if it says 0 the requirement is already obtained):

Ticks   GoBoA       BoA      Corr     UA     Immo

 +2         0         0        65     581    581
 +3         0         0      1781    2639   2639
 +4        65       494      3497    
 +5       801      1352        
 +6      1536      2210
 +7      2271      3068
 +8      3007

11. Macros
The following line should be inserted into all your destruction macros: /cast [@pettarget]Firebolt
The macro removes the reaction time between the server and when the imp has finished casting