Affliction Warlock Gearing Guide

(2) Set Bonus: Malefic Rapture damage increased by 5% and its critical strike chance is increased by 10%

(4) Set Bonus: Malefic Rapture has a chance to increase damage dealt by your Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction by 15% for 8 sec

Our 2pc bonus is a nice flat increase to our main spender and hardest hitting ability. The season 1 4pc bonus is similar to our previous talent (in Dragonflight) Dread Touch. Giving us an 8 second buff, Umbral Lattice, that increases the damage of our major DoTs albeit not guaranteed like Dread Touch was. Trying to maintain uptime on Umbral Lattice is difficult as we want to be pooling our shards for our burst windows every minute. By virtue of Soul Harvester generating and spending more shards that hero talent set finds it easier to keep uptime on our 4pc bonus.

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Affliction Warlock, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

Passive

• Ara-Kara Sacbrood - this trinket is a nice stat stick with haste and an intellect proc
• Unbound Changeling - Base intellect trinket with proc of secondary stat
• Empowering Crystal of Anub’ikkaj - Similar to changeling: Base main stat with secondary stat proc

On use

• Spymaster’s Web - This bis trinket is a stat stick but with a flexible on use effect. Ideally you want to pop it every 4 minutes to benefit the maximum intellect stacks but this depends on fight duration / increased damage phases.
• Mad Queen’s Mandate - Our other bis trinket: Synergises well with affs damage modifiers from haunt and shadow’s embrace which result in these dealing increased damage.

Crafting Priority

1. Main-Hand Weapon such as Everforged Dagger, 2 handed weapon like Vagabond’s Bounding Baton or Off-Hand such as Vagabond’s Torch with Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment
2. Any low armor piece with Writhing Armor Banding embellishment to pair with Darkmoon: Ascension
3. Any low armor piece with Elemental Focusing Lens or Dawnthread Lining embellishments

Use sparks with caution

A weapon generally provides the best raw DPS followed by any Consecrated armor piece. While it may seem a no-brainer to craft a staff with Darkmoon: Ascension for maximum DPS - 2 handed weapons cost 2 sparks while main / off-hand’s only cost 1. By virtue of max level crafting gear being lower than that of maximum myth track gear it is only used for their Embellishment effects but can be used as temporary gear until better loot drops. Due to their lower item level we want to craft our second embellishment in slots that have the lowest number of total stats, these slots being Wrists, Feet and Waists since fully upgraded myth gear will overtake it in ilvl.

I personally wouldn’t craft anything until at least the second week of the season, while a weapon may be the biggest DPS in week 1, your vault could contain a high level staff and would result in your very limited craft being wasted. Thus, you’ll want to hold off crafting for as long as possible in order for you to maximise the value you will get from the craft, you can spam mythic+ indefinitely for a piece of loot, the same can’t be said for crafting. If such a situation did arise wherein a myth track staff was in your vault (buy a lottery ticket) then you would be looking to go down a different route of embellishments since Darkmoon: Ascension can only be put on crafted weapons. Then you would likely go for double Elemental Focusing Lens or Dawnthread Lining, Elemental Focusing Lens is a raw damage proc similiar to shadowflame in Dragonflame where as Dawnthread Lining is a permanent Crit Strike increase when health is above 80%.

Despite it looking like a big DPS upgrade it is not wise to craft an embellishment in a tier slot, due to higher item level pieces being available from the Great Vault and Mythic raid.

Elemental Focusing Lens is a flexible embellishment and can go on any crafting piece while both Writhing Armor Banding and Dawnthread Lining can go on any armor piece.

The best way to see which items are the most beneficial to spend your spark craft on would be to sim your character.