General information
An affliction warlock's damage is based on several spells with very high damage per cast time which can't be "spammed" because they are dots.
He will use the formerly "normal" warlock main nuke spell shadow bolt only as a filler spell in between those spells and has a very high amount of self healing as part of his normal spell repertoire. He's completely lacking burst abilities, but damage goes up significantly when the target goes below 35% and 25%.


[top]Key Stats


Your interest is damage, and lots of it. While surviving is important in raids, it is usually based on what you do rather than what your equip is like as long as you are not the tank. The stats that influence your damage output are:

Hit Rating
Spell Power
Haste Rating
Spirit (via fel armor & Glyph of Life Tap)
Crit Rating
Intellect (via crit rating)

I ignore MP5 as it has nearly no effect for warlocks.

For a Naxxramas starter gear / Ulduar Starter Gear / Colliseum Starter Gear / Icecrown Starter Gear, the stat-to-dps ratios of these are:

Stat early T7 early T8 / high end T7 early T9 / high end T8 early T10 / high end T9hit rating 1.097 1.737 1.977 2.40spell power 1.295 1.649 1.692 1.77haste rating 0.626 1.396 1.663 1.95crit rating 0.522 0.868 0.949 1.16spirit 0.661 0.841 0.863 0.90int 0.158 0.315 0.342 0.42

[top]Destruction


Tier Talent Notes 1BaneMakes your filler spell significantly faster. 1Improved Shadow BoltAn important raid boss debuff as well as a boost to our main nuke.3RuinMakes Shadow Bolt hit significantly harder. 4Destructive ReachOnly affects Shadow Bolt, so use it only in conjunction with Grim Reach.
*It is rather unclear whether Black Magic is better than Mighty Spellpower. According to some tests, the uptime of the buff is in the 25% range, giving an average 62.5 haste rating. This would in fact be slightly better than the spellpower for T10 gear.


[top]Professions


Alchemy:
Mixology will increase the spell power gained from your Flask of the Frost Wyrm by 47. Additionally, you are able to use Crazy Alchemist's Potion which can have any potion effect (from +500 haste to +1200 armor ...) and your flasks/elixiers will be active twice as long.

Blacksmithing:
Blacksmiths can socket Bracers and Gloves with an extra gem slot, giving 2x23 spell power (as this is the gem of choice).

Enchanting:
Enchanters can improve both of their rings with Greater Spellpower, giving 2x23 spell power.

Engineering:
Engineers can improve their Gloves with Hyperspeed Accelerators.
Unfortunately, this will overwrite an existing enchant, so the average 320/5 = 64 haste rating have to be compared to the 28 spell power enchant, which is dps increase.
They also get Springy Arachnoweave, a spell power enchant for their cloaks, which is slightly better than the normal haste enchant. Summed up, the profession is fine now.

Herbalism:
Herbalism offers Lifeblood, which will not help you when raiding in 99.999% (period, of course) of the situations.

Inscription:
Inscribers/Inscriptors/Inscription-Users get an own Shoulder Enchant that is definitely better (46 more spell power) than the epic one from the Sons of Hodir.

Jewelcrafting:
Jewelcrafter can socket [Runed Dragon's Eye] three times, which is 3x16=48 spell power more than the rare quality gems would give.

Leatherworking:
Leatherworkers have no drums anymore at level 80, but gain Fur Lining instead. This is 47 more spell power than the best possible enchant.

Mining:
Miners are pretty tough, but this does not really help when raiding as a warlock.

Skinning:
Skinners become Masters of Anatomy. 40 crit rating is of course weaker than the "usual" 47/48 spell power from other professions.

Tailoring:
Tailors can enchant their cloaks with Lightweave Embroidery.

Summary:
Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting and Engineering are fine. As haste became very powerful with 3.3, Engineering has a slight edge over the other professions. Skinning is okay, but definitely worse than the above, Mining and Herbalism are simply useless.


[top]Gear Optimization



[top]What is the optimal T7 equip for me?


It's not enough to take all the "best in slot" items and be done because of the hit cap and the set bonuses from T7.
So first decide whether or not those set bonuses are worth it to you. From my calculation, the 2p bonus is worth ~35 dps and the 4p bonus ~100 dps. Probably, the 4p is weaker in reality as you lifetap less than I computed and do not always benefit from its buff. So I just estimate the 4p as ~65 dps, meaning every T7 piece is actually 25 dps higher except for the fifth - If this does NOT lead to 4 T7 pieces, change the bonus to 18 dps per piece for the first two of them. If that does not lead to two pieces equipped, ignore the set bonuses and just take "best in slot" everywhere.
The above made me equip all the best in slot pieces plus T7 head, shoulders, chest and hands.
Now you're over the hit cap.
To solve this, search for a piece giving less hit while losing as few dps as possible. Replace it. Repeat this until you reach your preferred hit rating.
See this post for some similar results with a different approach.

Example:
My first replacement was [Cincture of Polarity]->[Leash of Heedless Magic]. 43 hit rating less, 21 dps less.
Second was [Signet of the Malevolent] -> [Band of Channeled Magic]. 49 less hit, 31 less dps.
Third was [Boots of Impetuous Ideals] -> [Arcanic Tramplers]. 37 hit less, 28 less dps.

All of these replacements are quite logical as they replace a hit item with a non-hit item of a higher item level.

This brought me down to 334 hit rating (12.78%). As I am Alliance and was aiming for 13%, this should be my dream gear.

Of course, if you think different about the T7 bonuses, are horde, for some reason want to spec the hit talents or just can't get an elemental shaman or balance druid for your raid, your perfect equip will look different, but the way to find it is the same.


[top]What is the optimal T8 equip for me?


When trying to find the best T7 equip, I suggested taking all the best in slot items, taking the T7 set bonuses into account and smoothing out the hit rating afterwards. With the new loot tables, there are too many hit items and most of them give very high amounts of hit rating (ranging from 50 to 100), so it seems reasonable to do it the other way around: Choose the best nonhit items, then replace some of them by hit items. Next to that, the T8 set bonuses are considered as 160 dps for 2p and 80 dps for 4p. As the T8 items are among the best items even without the set bonuses, this makes 4pT8 a clear choice.

[Conqueror's Deathbringer Leggings] best in slot, clear choice.
[Conqueror's Deathbringer Hood] 44 dps below the best in slot helm [Crown of Luminescence].
[Conqueror's Deathbringer Shoulderpads] 44 dps below [Amice of Inconceivable Horror].
[Conqueror's Deathbringer Robe] 43 dps below [Raiments of the Iron Council], but giving 73 additional hit.
[Conqueror's Deathbringer Gloves] 123 dps below [Pharos Gloves], but giving 65 hit.

So when ignoring hit and aiming for 4pT8, we'll leave out the gloves first. If they prove to be a very good hit item (they won't), they'll have their comeback.

Choosing best in slot nonhit plus 4pT8 leads to

Head: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Hood]
Neck: [Sapphire Amulet of Renewal]
Shoulder: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Shoulderpads] (+4 hit socket bonus)
Back: [Sunglimmer Cloak]
Chest: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Robe] (+73 hit)
Wrist: [Grasps of Reason]
Hands: [Pharos Gloves]
Waist: [Cord of the White Dawn]
Legs: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Leggings]
Feet: [Boots of Fiery Resolution]
Finger: [Conductive Seal]t & [Nebula Band]
Trinket: [Flare of the Heavens] & [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
Weapon: [Starshard Edge] (+39 hit) + [Ironmender]
Wand: [Petrified Ivy Sprig] (+29 hit)

Next, I choose the hit rating I want to reach with my equip. As I plan to take the hit talents, this would be 288.55 (giving 11% hit).
From the above items I already get 141 hit and a 4-hit socket bonus, leaving 143.55 points.
To find out which items give a lot of hit without losing too many other stats, I increase the value of hit dynamically until the best hit items pop up among the best nonhit items.
1 hit = 0.1 dps changes nothing, neither does 1 hit = 0.2 dps or 1 hit = 0.3 dps. When I reach 1 hit = 0.4 dps the [Leggings of the Enslaved Idol] become the best in slot legs but I don't want to ruin the 4pT8 bonus and the gloves are still too weak. I increase the value of hit to 1 hit = 0.5 dps, nothing changes. At 1 hit = 0.6 dps, the [Sash of Ancient Power] becomes the best waist item. +43 hit, 100.55 to go.
1 hit = 0.7 dps makes [Pendant of Fiery Havoc] appear among the best in slot items. I substitute the old amulet and get another 46 hit. Still 54.55 hit missing, but [Cosmos] becomes the best offhand. There are still 3.55 hit rating missing, but that does not call for another item change (you could exchange a gem if you really want to reach 100%), so I'm done now.

This results in the following gear:

Head: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Hood]
Neck: [Pendant of Fiery Havoc]
Shoulder: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Shoulderpads] (+4)
Back: [Sunglimmer Cloak]
Chest: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Robe] (+73)
Wrist: [Grasps of Reason]
Hands: [Pharos Gloves]
Waist: [Sash of Ancient Power] (+43)
Legs: [Conqueror's Deathbringer Leggings]
Feet: [Boots of Fiery Resolution]
Finger: [Conductive Seal]t & [Nebula Band]
Trinket: [Flare of the Heavens] & [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
Weapon: [Starshard Edge] + [Cosmos] (+90)
Wand: [Petrified Ivy Sprig] (+29 hit)

If you cannot obtain any of the items above and/or aim for more hit rating or don't like the 4pT8 or whatever, just adapt this method to your gear style. E.g. leaving out Algalon loot would change:
Weapon: [Staff of Endless Winter] (-90 hit)
Back: [Drape of Mortal Downfall] (+43 hit)
Hands: [Handwraps of the Vigilant] (no change)
and one of the rings becomes [Shimmering Seal] (+42 hit).



[top]What's the best T9 gear compilation?


With exactly the same method as for T8, I found this gear set. Of course, almost every piece of it is hardmode gear as the amount of hardmode items is a lot bigger than in T8. This time, I chose 289 hit rating (11%) as a goal.
Most players won't be able to get even half of the stuff, so I suggest sticking to the Lootrank-Lists and just get anything that increases your dps. Almost all items in ToC are itemized good enough to be worn.


[top]What's the best T10 gear compilation?


First of all I ignore nonheroic items, so this is kind of a confront-LK-HM equip. I also ignore LK-HM drops for roughly the same reason.
Slot: Item: 2nd Best Hit/nonhit alternative:</B>Head [Sanctified Dark Coven Hood] [Corp'rethar Ceremonial Crown] noneNeck [Amulet of the Silent Eulogy] none [Blood Queen's Crimson Choker]Shoulders [Sanctified Dark Coven Shoulderpads] [Shoulders of Mercy Killing] [Shoulders of Ruinous Senility]Back [Frostbinder's Shredded Cape] [Jaina's Radiance] noneChest [Sanctified Dark Coven Robe] [Sanguine Silk Robes] [Robe of the Waking Nightmare]Wrists [Death Surgeon's Sleeves] [Armbands of the Ashen Saint] [The Lady's Brittle Bracers]Hands [San'layn Ritualist Gloves] [Gloves of False Gestures] [Gunship Captain's Mittens]Waist [Crushing Coldwraith Belt] [Lingering Illness] noneLegs [Sanctified Dark Coven Leggings] [Plaguebringer's Stained Pants] [Kilt of Untreated Wounds] Feet [Plague Scientist's Boots] [Boots of the Mourning Widow] noneRing1 [Ashen Band of Endless Destruction] none noneRing2 [Ring of Rapid Ascent] [Memory of Malygos] [Valanar's Other Signet Ring]Trinket [Dislodged Foreign Object] [Muradin's Spyglass] noneTrinket2 [Muradin's Spyglass] [Phylactery of the Nameless Lich] noneWeapon [Rigormortis] [Tel'thas, Dagger of the Blood King] (nh) [Frozen Bonespike]Offhand [Shadow Silk Spindle] [Sundial of Eternal Dusk] [Scourgelord's Baton]Ranged [Corpse-Impaling Spike] [Nightmare Ender] [Wand of Ruby Claret]Hit rating is the most effective rating available until reaching the cap and completely worthless afterwards.


[top]Casting Sequence


As many classes, we do not have a rotation anymore but rather a priority system. There is no fixed sequence (or rather: the fixed sequence would be very long) because of different timers, some of them having random elements (like haste procs, Nightfall etc.). The general rule of thumb is: Highest DPCT first. Almost no matter what your equip looks like, your DPCT list will always look like this:
  1. Haunt
  2. Corruption
  3. Unstable Affliction
  4. Curse of Agony
  5. Drain Soul @ <25% HP
  6. Shadow Bolt
From this list, you can derive the best way to dps: Cast Haunt when it's off CD, otherwise cast Corruption when it is not applied, then UA when it is not applied, then CoA, then the filler spells (Drain Soul/Shadow Bolt). Repeat this everytime you can cast a spell.
Haunt has the lowest DPCT, but casting haunt reapplies Corruption. So consider Haunt as "I'm reapplying Corruption and do some direct damage and apply / refresh two very important debuffs", making it the best DPCT spell.

When you begin a fight or completely change the target, you might want to cast a Shadow Bolt after the first Haunt to apply two stacks of Shadow Embrace immediately. In my opinion, casting Haunt is way more important (+25% damage in 1.5s) than this sole Shadow Bolt (+5% damage in 2.5s), so I personally stick to the list above.



As the buff from the [Glyph of Life Tap] is mandatory, it may be a good idea to use a (Rank-1-)Life Tap before entering combat. However, this may proc some trinkets, so wait until the last possible moment.

This list is the beginning of solid DPS, not the end. There are many tricks and traps to it.


[top]I reach 100% uptime just by clipping my dots, right?


"Clipping" a dot means reapplying it before its last tick. Although this increases your uptime (no more dot gaps), this is VERY bad for your dps. Why? Imagine a dot ticking every 3s. If you reapply it in the moment of its last tick, it is like resetting its tick counter, meaning there will be a gap of ~6s between two ticks instead of 3s. That is as bad as not reapplying it for 3s. Actually, it's even worse: You shortened its duration by one tick, meaning you have to reapply it more often, losing even more dps. So don't clip dots.
There are exceptions: If you know your target will be unreachable within a few seconds (e.g. Noth in Naxxramas porting to the other group), reapplying all dots is actually a good idea. If you are running around unable to cast anything but instants, clipping dots will save you time when you stand still again, and so on.


[top]I could cast a Shadow Bolt, but CoA has only 1s left, what to do?


Situations like that will happen all the time during fights. The general rule is: You should always be casting. Always. If you are able to fill gaps like that with a clever Life Tap, fine. But there is nothing wrong about dots ticking for the last time while you are casting a shadow bolt. Remember that while the dots have very high DPCT, they don't have high dps. Applying them a second later won't hurt. Not casting anything for one second will reduce your damage by the dps of Shadow Bolt.


[top]What about temporary buffs/debuffs and dots?


When a dot is applied, it will check all of your buffs and stats and all of the bosses' buffs and debuffs. They will not be checked again while your dot ticks, so applying dots before getting important selfbuffs or boss debuffs is a slight dps loss.
When Haunt refreshes your Corruption, the same thing happens, but there is one exception: Your own debuffs will not be checked again. Normally, debuffs won't improve your dps, so this is nothing to worry about, but there are special cases: For example, the damage increase in the Thaddius fight in Naxxramas is a debuff. This will only be taken into account when you cast a spell, not when a dot ticks. So waiting for this debuff before applying new dots makes a huge difference in dps. However, this is a very special mechanic (a personal debuff giving a huge damage buff), but knowing it might be useful in some situations.


[top]What is the optimal start?


The opening sequence found most often ist Shadow Bolt->Haunt->Corruption->Unstable Affliction->Curse of Agony.
There is nothing wrong with it. Starting with Corruption makes no sense when you want to cast Haunt right afterwards, and casting Haunt later applies the debuffs too late, meaning you more or less have to cast Haunt before the dots. Casting a Shadow Bolt first will add another Shadow Embrace stack before you apply the dots as well as the crit debuff Haunt will benefit from, and casting Haunt before the Shadow Bolt would apply the same debuffs but cost you some crit chance on Haunt itself as well as force you to reapply Haunt earlier. So the above sequence just has to be optimal as all alternatives are worse. However, the starting sequence is not nearly as important as keeping up the dots and haunt afterwards.


[top]Can I have too much haste?


The reason for this question being asked many times by affliction warlocks is the following: Most of your spells (all of them except shadow bolt and drain soul) have a 1.5s casting time or are instant casts, meaning they have a 1.5s global cooldown following the cast. Haste reduces both in the same way. But there is a hard cap, neither the casting time of a spell nor the GCD can be reduced below 1s (In fact, the casting time can be reduced below 1s, but this triggers a short GCD, extending it to 1s). This means that the majority of your spells won't benefit from haste anymore if you reach this cap.
The first question should be: Can I actually reach that cap with "normal" gear?

The formula for is:

Real Casting Time = Original Casting time /(1+Haste in percent).

As an example, 100% haste would change a two second cast to a one second cast ("100% faster").


To reduce a 1.5s cast to 1s, you would need 50% haste.

There are different sources of haste, one of them being your haste rating. Different sources of haste are multiplicative, not additive.
In a raid situation, there are probably an elemental totem (+5% haste) and a moonkin aura or a retribution aura (+3% haste) present. Those multiply up to 1.05*1.03=1.0815 -> 8.15%. To get 50% haste, you would need 1.50/1.0815 = 1.387 -> 38.7% haste from haste rating, which would be 1268.97 rating points. Simply unreachable, even when you did not forget to apply your spellstone.

However, there are effects like Bloodlust/Heroism and Eradication increasing your haste by a large amount.

When Eradication procs, you would only need 1.50/(1.0815*1.20) -> 15.6% haste or 511.5 haste rating. I would consider this to be the "very soft" cap.
When Bloodlust hits, it's only 1.50/(1.0815*1.30) -> 6.7% haste or 219.3 haste rating. Obviously, when both hit at the same time, you'll need nothing: 1.50/(1.0815*1.30*1.20) -> -11.1%, so you're already way over the cap.

Does this mean we're haste capped? Not really. Most of the damage haste brings comes from casting faster shadow bolts, not from casting faster dots. In my simulation, the dps per haste rating went down to 6.04 from 7.61 when I reached the point where 1.5s casts become 1.0s casts. That's a 20% decrease in the value of haste and does not devalue haste in general as you won't have eradication/bl/heroism up all the time and even if you had, haste would still be a lot better than crit rating.


[top]The proper use of Drain Soul


First of all, Drain Soul does not "recheck" the percentage of the target. This means that if you start casting it when the mob is at 26%, you won't get the 4x damage bonus for the whole casting time. If the mob heals itself after you applied drain soul, it WILL do 4x the damage for the whole casting time (have fun in the arena!). So start casting when the mob is definitely below 25%.

The main problem about Drain Soul is its channeling time: Within 15s (or whatever it is after your haste is applied), your dots will probably need a recast. Every dot has a higher dpct and does contribute to the damage of Drain Soul by the Talent "Soul Siphon".
The Shadow Embrace effect from Haunt and SB also improves Drain Soul's damage. This means that you have to reapply dots and haunt almost immediately when they fade off / don't have a CD left.
This forces you to clip your Drain Soul cast most of the time.

Now...
  • The wrong way is to not reapply the dots and haunt.
  • A bad way is to reapply all of them when they have all faded.
  • A good way is to just reapply dots and haunt as soon as there is one of them fading off.
  • A very professional way is to reapply dots and haunt immediately after the next Drain Soul tick after they faded off.
This is only possible with the help of addons showing you when the ticks will occur or if you have a very good feeling for the ticks. But even if you choose the moment of the clip randomly your results will be far better than without clipping.


[top]Rolling Corruption Crits and Modifiers


When Corruption is refreshed, the crit rating is not updated to the actual crit rating of your character or the actual crit debuffs on the mob. Instead, the crit rating you had when you applied the first Corruption keeps "rolling". The same is true for percentual damage increases, namely Tricks of the Trade and Death's Embrace. This has lead to a rather unintuitive way of maximizing corruption damage: Pre-Pot ([Potion of Wild Magic]), cast SB and Haunt, cast UA or CoA while Haunt is in the air, activate [Nevermelting Ice Crystal] and throw a pot in, then apply Corruption. When the boss hits 35%, reapply Corruption while using NMIC again. Ideally, get Tricks of the Trade on both occasions. The damage difference is significant: The Corruption damage will rise by roughly 30%.
This trick has been mentioned in a blue post, saying it is actually NOT an abuse, but clever use of game mechanics.
Even if you don't want to use it, it is good to know that applying Corruption before your first shadow bolt hits is actually a bad idea.


[top]Multiple targets


When facing a situation with more than one boss target where it is actually useful to dps more than one of them (e.g. the two Jormungars of Northrend Beasts in Colliseum or Mimiron P4), the best way to go is keeping the usual dps sequence on one boss target while putting Corruption, UA and CoA on the other(s) during filler time. Even without the Shadow Embrace and Haunt debuff, the dots' DPCT are high enough to outdamage Shadow Bolt and Drain Soul. Try to hit as many bosses as possible with Shadow bolts during filler time to apply crit debuffs and shadow embrace debuffs and refresh corruption. Of course, you won't be able to keep Haunt up on multiple targets. Theoretically, switching the Haunt target every CD would be the best choice as the debuff is longer than the CD. In practice, there might be debuffs missing which negates the effect.
This assumes that all the targets live longer than the dots tick, of course. A "/target lasttarget" macro or hotkey is very useful for situations like that.


[top]Short fights and adds


There are two very insightful posts in the simcraft thread, this one and this one. The essence of these posts is: When a target is supposed to live less than 10 seconds, just shadow bolt spam it. If it will live longer than 10 seconds, the normal rotation (meaning dotting it up completely, using haunt and shadow bolt as a filler, using drain soul in the end) is actually the best dps you can get out of the situation, regardless of dots not ticking for their full duration. By the way, this simulation shows very clearly that affliction loses a lot more dps than other specs for targets that live less than 15s, a fact that most of us knew from practice but that has not been shown that clearly before.


[top]Is movement speed worth it?


Post 3.1 there is no longer any raidwide movement speed buff available. This leads to the question whether or not enchanting movement speed on your boots or socketing the movement speed meta (these do NOT stack, don't do both) is helping you.
First of all, the crit meta gem effect gives just too much dps to ignore, so unless you simply cannot use it for some strange reason, we're talking about the boot enchant here, the meta is untouchable.
Obviously, if you stand still from start to finish, movement speed is useless. But most encounters force you to move, at least from time to time. To get a dps estimation of movement speed, I just calculated how much dps I would loose when casting half a second less shadow bolts within a whole minute (dots still ticking). The result is 29.95 dps. While this is not game breaking, it is actually pretty much for a boot enchant, and saving half a second per minute seems to be a reasonable, small value - on some encounters, the enchant will probably bring a lot more dps as you move "all the time" - and don't underestimate the added survival, either.


[top]Useful addons


Necrosis LdC
Although it is a little outdated, it has some nice features, like sound announcement of Shadowtrance, Mini-Popups for spells you don't want to hotkey (like Summoning spells) and a Dottimer.
It has some minor issues (e.g. you can't turn off some parts of it), but all in all it's a helpful addon and I just like the sound of "Shadowtrance!".

DoTimer
Configurable Timers.

ForteXorcist
Timers, Raid Announcements, Warning sounds. Many ways to configure each and every aspect.
Most of the provided information is not important enough to be on your screen in my opinion (like a ritual of summoning mod for example), but there are some nice ones.

TellMeWhen
Freely configurable buttons for fading debuffs, cooldowns, item cooldowns. Easily configurable.
I found this to be exactly what I was looking for for situations where you just don't want to stare at timers. The common alternative is PowerAuras, giving a lot more flexibility but taking a lot more customizing.

DrainSoulTimer
Offers a sound and raidwarning when the target reaches the 25% mark and a sound warning every time Drain Soul ticks, making the clipping a little easier. Every aspect can be turned off for itself. Definitely a helpful and light-weighted addon.



[top]Damage model


In this part, the stat weights used above are calculated by an easy to understand yet hopefully accurate damage model.


[top]Base stats



unbuffed:
Stat starting T7 starting T8 starting T9 starting T10spell power 1400 2267 2617 3344Hit Chance 10% 12.5% 13.45% 13.5%Haste Percent 10% 17.8% 13.03% 18.2%Crit Percent 10% 13.8% 21.5% 23.75%spirit 250 468 668 909

› See More: Affliction Dps Pve(3.3.3 Updated)