The dark shadow mages drain energy and life from their opponents and cast persistent damage spells on them.
As a master of curses, the Affliction Warlock dominates his enemies with maximum damage. Alternatively, you can play this class in the Demonology and Destruction specializations.
The most important changes
Curse of Speech, Curse of Weakness, and Curse of Exhaustion are back in your spell repertoire. You learn the new Ritual of Doom ability at level 37, which begins a ritual that sacrifices a random participant to summon a Doomguard.
The ritual requires four additional allies besides yourself. The Doomguard stays for 15 minutes and has a small chance to break free and attack the party. The Eye of Killrog can be attacked by players again and is usable in rated PvP.
The former talent Demonic Circle is now an ability. You can now only use your DoT Unstable Affliction on one target. It no longer increases damage against the target, has a duration of 21 seconds, and creates a Soul Shard. Corruption does instant damage in addition to periodic damage.
Agony’s base damage has been boosted. The new ability Baleful Euphoria is used to spend Soul Shards. It causes your periodic damage effects to burst out on all targets, dealing Shadow damage per effect.
The former talent Shadow Wrap is now a passive ability of yours, triggered by Soul Thief and Visitation, and increases your damage against the target by 3% for twelve seconds. The effect stacks three times.
How to play the Affliction Warlock
The priority list of your attributes looks like this for the Affliction Warlock:
- Intelligence
- Speed
- Mastery
- Critical hit chance
- Versatility
On individual targets, apply your Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction DoTs and keep them going. Maintain the effect of Life Drain. Cast Ominous Euphoria when you have the maximum amount of Soul Shards.
Use Visitation and Phantom Singularity whenever it is available. As a filler, use Soul Thief. Soul Shards are mined with Calamitous Euphoria, preferably when there are as many DoTs as possible on the target.
| Stage | Talent | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Drain Soul | Drains the target’s soul, dealing 1,482 Shadow damage over 4.7 seconds. Damage is increased by 100% against targets with less than 20% health. If the target dies during the effect duration, a soul shard is generated |
| 25 | Siphon Life | Drains the target’s life essence, dealing 1,163 Shadow damage over 15 seconds and healing you for 30% of the damage dealt. |
| 30 | Demon Skin | Your Soul Drain absorption now passively recharges at a rate of 0.5% of your maximum health per second and can absorb up to 15% of your maximum health |
| 35 | Phantom Singularity | Places a phantom singularity over the target that consumes the life of all enemies within 15 yards, dealing both 2,632 damage and healing you for 25% of the damage dealt over 15.1 seconds |
| 40 | Mortal Coil | Makes the target flee in horror, incapacitates them for three seconds and heals you for 20% of your maximum health |
| 45 | Haunt | A ghostly soul haunts the target, dealing 724 Shadow damage. Increases the damage you deal to the target by 10% for 18 seconds. When the target dies, the cooldown of Haunting is completed. |
| 50 | Dark Soul Misery | Fills your soul with the lament of fallen enemies and increases the speed by 30% for 20 seconds. |
For three or more targets, use Seed of Corruption to apply Corruption to your DoT. Cast Agony on as many enemies as possible to increase damage and, most importantly, generate Soul Shards.
You will also apply Unstable Affliction to the primary target. You can also use Phantom Singularity here whenever it’s available. You invest Soul Shards in Baleful Euphoria, which results in high damage numbers. Soul Thief also serves as a filler here. The offensive cooldowns are Sinister Soul: Summon Misery and Summon Darkvision.
