Dragonflight Affliction Warlock DPS Guide

Affliction Warlock Overview

Affliction Warlock is a DPS caster who wears cloth armor and focuses on eliminating opponents with a wide variety of damage-over-time abilities (or DoTs) and nukes that substantially benefit from those DoTs. In addition to having some of the strongest consistent damage for spread targets of any class in the game, Affliction has access to one of the best defensive toolkits in the game as a Warlock.

Affliction Warlock Talent Builds

For a more raid oriented talent build, you can use the following talent loadout.

You can import the Raid talent build with the following loadout code: BkQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgQSSSiEINFCSLJJRaBAAAAakAAAAAAAJyBKIikkEJtECAA

For a more Mythic+ oriented talent build, you can use the following talent loadout.  

You can import the Mythic+ talent build with the following loadout code: BkQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgISSSiEINFCSLJJRaBAAAAkGAAAAAAAJakkIRSSUSSCAA

Affliction Warlock Stats

As a Warlock you'll be looking for Cloth gear with Intellect as your primary stat. Intellect increases your spell power and damage done on abilities.

For secondary stats, the Affliction Warlock has the following:

• Intellect > Haste >= Mastery > Critical Strike > Versatility
• Critical Strike: Chance for extra effectiveness on attacks and heals.
• Haste: Increases attack speed and spell casting speed. Haste also decreases the duration of a dot, but increases how fast a dot will tick on the target.
• Mastery: Increases the damage done by your dots.
• Versatility: Increases damage and reduces damage taken by half.

Best Affliction Warlock Consumables

Best Affliction Warlock Enchants

Below is a list of the recommended enchants to use on your Affliction Warlock gear in Dragonflight.

Slot	Best Enchant	Cheaper Version
Weapon	Sophic Devotion/ Wafting Devotion	Sophic Writ/ Wafting Writ
Cloak	Graceful Avoidance	Homebound Speed
Chest	Waking Stats	N/A
Bracers	Devotion of Avoidance	Devotion of Speed
Legs	Frozen Spellthread	Vibrant Spellthread
Boots	Plainsrunner's Breeze	Watcher's Loam
Ring	Devotion of Haste	Writ of Haste

 

Affliction Warlock Phials

Overall the best phial for Affliction Warlocks is  Phial of Elemental Chaos. There are a couple alternative options in both  Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage and  Phial of Static Empowerment. Static Empowerment is an exceptionally strong effect but requires stationary gameplay, which is not optimal. Corrupting Rage is another solid option, but brings with it a negative effect as well.

Affliction Warlock Combat Potions

There are a couple different potions that have different useful scenarios for Affliction Warlocks:

• All Content:  Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power

Affliction Warlock Weapon Buff

For their weapons, Affliction Warlocks will always use  Howling Rune.

Best Affliction Warlock Food

• Feast:  Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak,  Hoard of Draconic Delicacies or  Yusa's Hearty Stew
• Personal Food:  Fated Fortune Cookie or  Timely Demise/ Sizzling Seafood Medley as an alternative

Best Affliction Warlock Gems

You'll want to use a mix of either  Quick Ysemerald,  Keen Neltharite or  Keen Ysemerald in your gem slots. If you are using a Primalist Gem, it will likely be  Fierce Illimited Diamond.

 

Affliction Warlock Rotation and Priority

Affliction Warlock Opener

1. Precast  Haunt
2. Precast  Unstable Affliction
3. Cast Agony
4. Cast Corruption
5. Cast Siphon Life
6. Cast Drain Soul to 3 stacks of  Shadow Embrace
7. Cast Phantom Singularity
8. Cast Summon Darkglare
9. Cast Malefic Rapture to spend all  Soul Shards. Save 1 if playing  Dread Touch.
10. Cast Drain Soul to fill
11. Cast Malefic Rapture to maintain  Dread Touch

Affliction Warlock Single Target Rotation and Priority

1. Precast and maintain  Haunt
2. Precast and maintain  Unstable Affliction
3. Cast and maintain  Agony
4. Cast and maintain  Corruption
5. Cast and maintain  Siphon Life
6. Maintain  Shadow Embrace at 3 stacks via  Drain Soul
7. Cast Phantom Singularity 
8. Cast Summon Darkglare
9. Cast Malefic Rapture to spend all  Soul Shards but 1.
10. Cast Drain Soul as your filler spell
11. Cast Malefic Rapture to maintain  Dread Touch

Affliction Warlock Multi Target Rotation and Priority

1. Cast  Vile Taint to apply  Agony.
2. Cast  Seed of Corruption to apply  Corruption.
3. Apply  Agony (if not already applied via  Vile Taint to all available targets and maintain at least 5 of them for shard generation.
4. Cast Unstable Affliction on your priority target.
5. Cast  Soul Rot.
6. Cast  Summon Darkglare.
7. Cast  Seed of Corruption as much as you can.
8. Cast  Drain Soul on targets that are dying to generate Soul Shards.