Introduction
Welcome to the Affliction Warlock DPS guide written by Timo (Fraser), one of Honolulu’s main raiders.
Heading into The War Within. Affliction’s strengths lie in single target and sustained spread cleave scenarios while also having high mobility alongside high self-heals and survivability. Our AoE relies on targets living a sizable duration but when they do we can output some strong DPS.
What has changed
Patch 11.0.5
The only change for Affliction in the latest patch is the race availability that all warlock specs now have with the ability to be Dracthyr. While not the highest output race, with mechagnome still being on top, the utility that the Dracthyr have with Glide and Wing Buffet is important to take notice of.
The War Within 11.0
Setting aside both our spec talent tree, which has been overhauled for The War Within and the newly added “Hero Talents” which we will discuss later, the major change going into this newest expansion is in relation to how we spend our main resource “Soul Shards” in AoE.
Previously when talented into Seed of Corruption for AoE encounters. Seed, while also applying Corruption to targets hit by its explosion would deal high AoE damage and thus would be your main Soul Shard spender. The War Within has moved away from this playstyle and while Seed still costs 1 shard to cast, it is no longer our main spender in AoE and is solely used for a mass application of Corruption to a pack of mobs. Affliction’s main spender in AoE is now the same as it is in single target, being Malefic Rapture.