Affliction Warlock Guide: DoTs in Cataclysm

Affliction Warlock Guide

Hello and welcome to Rotciv’s Affliction Warlock Guide. My name is Rotciv and in this guide, I’ll cover everything you need to know about affliction warlock talents, gearing choices, gemming and basic spell usage and rotations.

This guide is up to date as of patch 4.0.3a, and some information may become irrelevant or even false in the future.

Warlocks are masters of the dark arts using shadow and fire based magic. They can summon demons to aid their master in combat as well as use powerful damage-over-time spells.

Affliction warlocks specialize in increasing their damage-over-time spells such as Corruption and Bane of Agony. Most of affliction warlocks spells are instant cast which does not impair us in movement fights. As the fight progress, our damage increases. However, affliction warlocks must be capable to jungle a lot of spells with a complex rotation. It gets more complicated as the fights get too mobile which can have a devastating effect on the damage done by affliction locks.

Talent

The basic raid spec for affliction is this. Now, we’ll take a closer look at these talents.

• Doom and Gloom – Increases our bread and butter spell. Must have.
• Improved Life Tap – Increase the mana we get back from Life Tap. With the mana changes in Cataclysm, we will spend a lot more mana. With this talent, you will regain all those mana back in a few globals. But, do not spam it!
• Improved Corruption – Increases the damage of the Corruption spell. Must have.
• Jinx – Optional/Filler Talent. This talent spreads Curse of the Elements to the enemies nearby.
• Soul Siphon – Increases the amount drained from Drain Life and Drain Soul. With the way Drain Soul works, this will increase the damage in those tight 25% health boss encounters. Must have.
• Siphon Life – Optional/Filler Talent. When Corruption ticks, it will have a 50% chance to heal the caster for 2% from their health. This is useful due to the fact that in Cataclysm, the healer’s mana is very tight and you will not be healed as much.
• Curse of Exhaustion – Optional/Filler Talent. Slows target. Not really that useful in PvE encounters.
• Improved Fear – Optional/Filler Talent. Slows target after Fear ends. Not really that useful in PvE encounters, but it may be useful in add-heavy fights.
• Eradication – When Corruption deals damage, there’s a 6% change to increase spell casting speed. This talent will allow us to cast faster Soul Fire and Shadow Bolts. Must have.
• Improved Howl of Terror – Optional/Filler Talent. Instant AoE fear. Not really that useful in PvE encounters, but it may be useful in add-heavy fights.
• Soul Swap – Removes all DoTs from one target which then can be transferred to another. Particularly useful in fights where there’s two bosses which you will encounter a lot in the Cataclysm raids.