How to Affliction

[jitsuk]

This is just a simple guide helping out the fresh 80's (and rerolls) with getting prepared for raiding as affliction in WotLK. I hope it answers many questions and helps improve some players. Questions are encouraged and if you see something that might be a little off, please let me know.

General Information
Warlocks these days give off the vibe of "Omg we're a broken class, fix our dps now" etc.. That's a misconception. Warlocks are a very complicated class and requires precise timing when it comes to throwing up DoTs. The margin of DPS between a good warlock and a decent warlock these days is quite high. An experienced affliction raider can easily toss up 2k dps in a raid whereas someone who's just starting to raid as affliction is going to have trouble keeping up 15-1600 dps.

The generic Affliction spec is 56/0/15 with the key talents being Siphon Life, Haunt, ISB, and Ruin.
Found here:

A few notes on this spec

- No points in Dark Pact - This is because of the scaling with spirit on Life Tap (300%), and the abundance of spirit on our gear, we really don't need Dark Pact, or the full 2 points in Improved Felhunter. The 1 point in Imp Felhunter is a filler point and can be tossed into anything as you please. Personally I put it into Improved Healthstone.

- Soul Siphon - Filler for our dps once our target reaches 25% is Drain Life, works hand in hand with Death's Embrace. Extra 20% damage (if you're the only affliction lock in the group) can not be passed.

- Ruin - Filler spell until 25% is shadow bolt, so you definately want the extra crit damage.

- ISB - Also great with helping out our shadow bolts damage, also works with the initial hit from Haunt.

Also to note, the new hit cap is 367 with supression, 446 without. Blizzard removed the 99% hit cap in 3.0 so now once you're capped, your spells will always hit. Also to note that 1% hit =26.23199272 hit rating.

Spell Rotation Etc
We'll start with the basic DoT rotation for lock.

Shadow Bolt -> Haunt -> Immolate -> Unstable Affliction -> Corruption -> Curse of Agony -> Siphon Life

Immolate before UA due to Haunt having a missile effect so you wanna give it time for it to hit and get the extra stack of Shadow Embrace.

A few simple rules to follow when raiding affliction.

1 - Always start off with Shadow Bolt, then haunt. This allows Shadow Embrace to stack twice for maximum DPS from the get go. If you're on CoE duty, cast CoE then Shadow Bolt and continue.

2 - Immolate and UA are always cast together due to their cast times being identicle unless you have the glyph for improved UA.

3 - NEVER EVER STOP A CAST. Even if you're gonna refresh a dot that doesn't need to be refreshed, you're wasting time and dps by stopping something midcast.

4 - Try your best not to clip a DoT. This means timing it as close to 0 as possible to get the full effect from your dot. This goes double for Curse of Agony since it's damage goes up each tick.

5 - At the moment, Curse of Doom does not benefit from Shadow Mastery, Haunt, or Shadow Embrace, so never replace Curse of Agony with Doom.

Glyphs
Here's a short list of every warlock glyph available. Glyphs I recommend are in blue. Yes, all the glyphs are ****ing lame for our class.

Major Glyphs

75 - Glyph of Corruption - You Corruption spell has a 4% chance to cause you to enter a Shadow Trance state after damaging the opponent. The Shadow Trance state reduces the casting time of your next Shadow Bolt spell by -100%. (Stacks with Nightfall)
75 - Glyph of Healthstone - You receive 30% more healing from using a healthstone.
100 - Glyph of Health Funnel - Increases the chance you'll resist spell interruption when channeling your Health Funnel spell by 100%.
125 - Glyph of Fear - Increases the damage your Fear target can take before the Fear effect is removed by 20%.
150 - Glyph of Imp - Increases the damage done by your Imp's Firebolt spell by 10%.
175 - Glyph of Shadow Bolt - Reduces the mana cost of your Shadow Bolt by -10%.
200 - Glyph of Voidwalker - Increases your Voidwalker's total Stamina by 20%.
225 - Glyph of Searing Pain - Increases the critical strike bonus of your Searing Pain by 20%.
250 - Glyph of Soulstone - Increases the amount of health a player gains from resurrecting via your Soulstone by 100%.
275 - Glyph of Shadowburn - Increases the critical strike chance of Shadowburn by 20% when the target is below 35% health.
300 - Glyph of Succubus - Increases the duration of your Succubus's Seduction by 3 sec.
325 - Glyph of Banish - Increases the duration of your Banish by 5 sec.
350 - Glyph of Felhunter - Increases the critical strike chance of your Felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 6%.
375 - Glyph of Conflagrate - Reduces the mana cost of your Conflagrate by -20%.
375 - Glyph of Siphon Life - Increases the effect of your Siphon Life spell by 20%.
375 - Glyph of Howl of Terror - Reduces the cooldown on your Howl of Terror spell by 8 sec.
400 - Glyph of Death Coil - Increases the duration of your Death Coil by 0.5 sec.
400 - Glyph of Immolate - Increases the periodic damage of your Immolate by 20% but decreases its initial damage by -10%.
400 - Glyph of Curse of Agony - Increases the duration of your Curse of Agony by 4 sec.
400 - Glyph of Unstable Affliction - Decreases the casting time of your Unstable Affliction by 0.2 sec.
400 - Glyph of Felguard - Increases the Felguard's total attack power by 10%.

Minor Glyphs

80 - Glyph of Drain Soul - Your Drain Soul ability occasionally creates an additional soul shard. (~5% proc rate)
130 - Glyph of Kilrogg - Increases the movement speed of your Eye of Kilrogg by 50% and allows it to fly in areas where flying mounts are enabled.
105 - Glyph of Unending Breath - Increases the swim speed of targets affected by your Unending Breath spell by 20%.
155 - Glyph of Curse of Exhausion - Increases the range of your Curse of Exhaustion spell by 5 yards.
155 - Glyph of Enslave Demon - Reduces the cast time of your Enslave Demon spell by 50%.
355 - Glyph of Souls - Reduces the mana cost of your Ritual of Souls spell by 70%.

FAQ
Q: Isn't glyph of Unstable Affliction useless because the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds and the base cast time is also 1.5 seconds, so using it will just give you .2 seconds of nothing after an unstable affliction cast. Unless it also reduces the global cooldown?
A: This makes boss fights where standing still = death much easier to manage our dots. You can replace this with Glyph of Curse of Agony if you find you're doing fine without it.

[Liukus]

Great Thread Overall. Just a few things I noticed that would be benefitial to change.

Glyph of Curse of Agony is terrible for affliction, or for a warlock in general.

It adds 4 secs to the duration. It does NOT add any damage at all. It does give you more time for it to tick and gives you less mana usage overall, but we have Life Tap. It's better to get "400 - Glyph of Immolate - Increases the periodic damage of your Immolate by 20% but decreases its initial damage by -10%." (if someone has it). I'd do the math for you but it's rather simple.
Immolate gets a bonus from Haunt and Shadow Embrace (the DoT portion does), therefore this glyph increases that DoT portion by 20% in addition to the 30% of Haunt and Shadow Embrace.
Curse of Agony is 24 seconds long and costs 361 mana. Making it 28 seconds long and costing 361 mana for the same amount of damage would be good, if we needed to care about our mana. It may be easier for a warlock to use CoA glyph for the purpose of less casts, but you also are lowering the DPS of Curse of Agony.
That is why you should choose Immolate Glyph over Curse of Agony Glyph.

I just hit 80 on 12/04/08. With 1950 +dmg(1614 w/ fel armor solely), 129 haste, and 11.56% crit, raid buffed (not sure if crit is accurate), in a 25-man Naxx raid on Patchwerk (best place to test your DPS since you NEVER have to move), I did 2900 dps. This goes to show that knowledge is your friend. I knew what my rotation should be. I actually did what this guide suggests without reading it just from my own knowledge of Affliction, but with reading this I'm more secure in my views.

And actually you need 368 spell hit with supression, 446 without (367 gives 13.990% which sadly doesn't count as 14%).

The FAQ about UA is correct. It is useless. The main thing to note about an Affliction Warlock's DPS, is that it is all based on wise use of the GCD. If you aren't casting something or waiting on the GCD (life after you life tap or cast an instant) then your losing precious DPS. This glyph of UA basically makes .2 seconds where you can't do anything. There are better glpyhs. Glyph of Curse of Agony is better, and you see what i think of it.

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for posting this thread. It's very useful for someone respeccing or just getting into 80 raiding.

[pffboy]

good guide

[hausboot]

Actually, once your target hits 25% HP it's most effective to use Drain Soul rather than Drain Life. You probably won't need the heal effect on it anyway.

How come? Easy: Soul Siphon gives you an extra so-and-so % of damage. Adding to this comes the effect of your Death's Ebrace. Nothing new there. What has changed though: Drain Soul das 4 times its normal damage if the target is at or below 25% health! With that, I am currently working on the 10k-ticks. That way, Drain Soul easily out-damages my Instable Affliction (really really sad thing ...)

As a matter of fact, you should always keep all your DoTs up. Yes, even Instable Affliciton and Immolate. Calculate a bit, it's like 5-8k dmg for less than 1.5sec cast time.
For further reference, look at Elitist Jerks


One thing again:
Quote: "Glyph of Curse of Agony is terrible for affliction, or for a warlock in general.
It adds 4 secs to the duration. It does NOT add any damage at all"

This is not true. As of patch 3.0.8 each of those 2 ticks add another 33% of damage. There is a nice calculation on it at EJ, just a summary: For short fights, it simply doesn't help/matter. For longer fights, it's about the same. For boss fights, it's a dps increase. This is due to the fact, that
a) in short fights your DoTs don't tick all the way, and those stronger ticks are added to the end of your DoT
b) "normal" length fights (< 1min) just rearrange the dmg
c) boss fights profit, because you need less time to refresh you CoA and you have good chances to *always* have the full ticks of CoA