AFFLI WARLOCK FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

AFFLICTION WARLOCK PLAYSTYLE

Hello and welcome to Skillcapped's damage course for Affliction Warlocks in the War Within. Throughout this guide we're going to be teaching you exactly how to play Affliction Warlock by arming you with rotations, in-depth analysis of your spells, openers that the pros use, and even ways to go about your win conditions.

Now in this first video though we're going to be diving into the general playstyle of Affliction Warlocks so you can begin to understand your role and see if Affliction is really something you want to sink your time into.

So to kick things off, Affliction Warlocks are all about that rot damage, applying their instant dots on every member of the enemy team and then crushing them all with Malefic Raptures at the same time when given the chance to cast.

This has been the playstyle since Malefic Rapture was introduced and well it still rings true today, especially now that Sol Rot gives us three shards when used while also buffing our Malefic Rapture, further edging us towards this playstyle where we burst every one minute with Raptures when our Sol Rot and Phantasm are off cooldown and then just try to survive and pad in between.

Now unfortunately this does mean that our actual damage over time effects themselves do take a backseat to this Malefic Rapture damage though, making them merely act as kind of a buffer to Rapture and our Dark Glare rather than dealing huge damage in their own right.

And with the nerf to Rampant Afflictions making it far less rewarding to multi-dot with Unstable Affliction, we're going to be relying on these windows far more than in Dragonflight, where our dots were off and we were able to get a lot of damage.

This isn't necessarily all bad though, as in the War Within we have actually gained a ton of burst damage which allows us to carry harder and end our games on our own.

Now the reason for this is Nightfall, which has been in our kit for a very long time and is now making our Shadow Bolts hit ridiculously hard due to various hero talents and Blizzard's appetite for buffing Shadow Bolts every single patch.

And when you combine this with our Haunt, which has also been buffed to be a ridiculously fast cast, while also hitting like a 10 ton truck, we can easily take the game into our own hands and deal absurd single target pressure every 15 seconds.

Now this single target approach comes with a few changes to the class's approach to crowd control as well, as it means we can now afford to fear a bit more since it won't really break from our dots as they just aren't hitting that hard.

Instead, we can use it to set up our one shot without the healer being able to dispel our dots, and we can easily get a lot of damage from them. And that's why we're using the skill shots on our kill target, allowing us to create kills similar to the playstyle of a Destruction Warlock.

So moving on, we need to talk about the Affliction Warlock's defensives, as this has also altered the way they're played from Dragonflight. Remember that big drain life we used to have with Inevitable Demise?

Well, it's gone. And although we can still get some decent healing by combining Soul Burn and Drain Life if in a pinch, it's just nowhere near as strong, leaving us at the mercy of the Drain Life.

And that's why we're using this skill shot to kill our healers, Dark Pact, Unending Resolve, new 1-minute healthstone, Gateway, and Teleport. Sadly, this means that we're a bit more squishy than before, and are now going to need to position and kite better than before to survive.

However, with the improved single target damage as we mentioned, kiting properly can also increase our damage output immensely, allowing us to free cast and drag enemy melees into poor positions.

So, if you're looking for a class with strong rot pressure, the ability to punish players with absurd burst, and you want a spammable crowd control that makes a difference, well look no further than the Affliction Warlock.

Coming up next, we're going to be going over the goal of Affliction Warlocks in Arena, so you can get a firm grasp of what to look out for each and every match.

AFFLICTION WARLOCK GOALS

Welcome back! In this video, we're going to be going over some quick general goals for Affliction Warlock that the pros look to follow every game to have as much success as possible.

Coming in at number one, our first and most important goal as Affliction is to maintain our Agony and Corruption on all three members of the enemy team at all times. Now, this is vital, as Agony is not just one of our biggest damaging abilities, it's also our most consistent way of generating shards outside of Solroth.

So having no Agonies up means we're going to have far less shards, resulting in a significant awkwardness to our rotation. Now, this awkwardness stems to the fact that 95% of the time, we want to be applying Agony and Corruption through the Jinx talent.

So not maintaining these dots won't allow us to have shards and therefore won't let us Jinx. Forcing us to have to waste two Globals on applying our instant dots without utilizing Jinx.

Other than generating shards from Agony, Corruption is also equally, if not more important to maintain than Agony. As it'll be the bulk of our instant damage while also generating our most important proc, Nightfall.

Allowing us to get those massive shadow bolts at random, and the more corruptions we have ticking, the more burst we can deal. Moving on.

Our second goal as Affliction Warlock... is to fake cast a lot and utilize dual schools. Now, this isn't as bad this expansion as we don't have to cast as often.

However, getting kicked on shadows still... well, 100% sucks. We won't be dealing damage and most importantly, we become just a sitting duck as it's where all our defensives are.

So to avoid this, it's very good practice to try to constantly fake cast with high value spells that the enemy are going to kick. No one's going to be looking to kick you.

They're going to kick a shadow bolt. But a quick shadow fury or unstable affliction... that brings all the boys kicks to the yard.

If... you know what I'm saying. I'm sorry... for that.

Thought you had to hear that. Moving on.

Now back to the topic of dual casting. Affliction has received a massive buff in the form of Malefic Rapture now being Shadow Flame.

So if you're casting, and you know the enemy may interrupt you on that shadow spell... you should already be pressing Malefic Rapture to instantly begin casting it... when you're locked. Resulting in more damage and zero downtime.

Next up, we should be looking to not overcap on shards. After all, they are our most important resource.

If you ever find yourself sitting on five shards for an extended amount of time... it probably means there's a target that you haven't used Jinx on... or you're neglecting to use Malefic Rapture enough. Let your shards dictate your next move.

Remember that. Coming in at number four... our next goal should be to kite a lot.

Affliction Warlocks are squishy... and if we take too much damage... we're going to put too much pressure on our healer... resulting in them doing nothing but spam healing.

Instead, you should utilize your gateway and your Demonic Circle to prevent damage... while also enabling yourself and your healer to cast more offensive abilities... as you're out of range of interrupts and crowd controls. Finally, for our fifth goal... you should look to not neglect your crowd controls.

While we're all about dealing damage... landing a kick on the healer... a stun on the DPS... or a fear on either one of these... can lead you to generate more pressure... than if you were to just sit back and do your rotation. Well, this is PvP after all.

AFFLICTION WARLOCK DAMAGE PRIORITY

Now that we have our playstyle and our goals out of the way, let's jump straight into our sustained damage priority system. Do bear in mind that this isn't a set rotation however, as that's just not really realistic in a PvP environment.

Instead, what we've created is a power ranking of abilities, allowing you to know which spells to value over others while you deal your sustain. So to begin with, we're going to be placing Unstable Affliction right at the top.

While this ability isn't doing that much damage on its own, it's still serving as our Dispel protection, silencing any player that dispels it for 4 seconds and dealing a large chunk of damage to them at the same time.

Without having Unstable Affliction on our target, the enemy healer can easily dispel all of our dots which can be incredibly detrimental when we're looking to go on our burst window. Coming in at number 2, we then have Agony, which we'll often be applying through Jinx.

Agony is our only way to generate a lot of damage to our target, and it's a great way to get rid of the enemy healer. Agony is our only way to generate a lot of damage to our target, and it's a great way to get rid of Agony is our only way to get rid of the enemy healer.

Agony is our only way to get rid of the enemy healer. As Agony can't regenerate Soul Shards outside our Soul Rot, we must have it up at all times on as many targets as possible to allow us to use Soulburn, Malefic Raptures, and keep re-applying dots with Jinx.

When re-applying Agony, you should try to keep refreshing it before it falls off to allow its stacking component to remain high. We don't want to have our Agony stacks falling off as this'll make us lose out on a lot of pressure.

To get our Agony stacks, we need Corruption, or Wither, which we're going to be applying through Jinx. We'll be maintaining Corruption to allow us to generate Nightfall procs as well, as it just being one of our hardest hitting dots.

Now, while it's already important to refresh this before it ticks off for obvious uptime reasons, this fact doubles down when you play Hellcaller, as losing your Wither stacks is hugely detrimental to your DPS since you're basically throwing shards in the trash when you do this.

Following Corruption, we'll be placing Haunt. Now, although Haunt is also a burst button, due to its short 15 second cooldown, we're going to be looking to use it on our Sustain rotation as well.

We'll be doing this as it simply hits like an absolute truck, giving a 10% damage modifier and procs our Shadow's Embrace, making our target take even more damage. Finally, Haunt actually becomes even stronger when we play Soul Harvester, as it'll guarantee us a Nightfall proc which makes it even stronger than before.

Moving on, we'll be throwing Nightfall Shadow Bolts into the mix, but only when we have 3 dots on our target. This is because although Nightfall Shadow Bolts do a ton of damage on their own, it'll deal even more damage when hitting into 3 dots, due to Withering Bolts.

Other than dealing increased damage when hitting into 3 dots, it'll also allow us to proc Tormented Crescendo when hitting a target with Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction on them, so we don't want to waste these opportunities for more burst damage by Shadow Bolts.

After this, Malefic Rapture will make an appearance, regardless of if it's instant, from Tormented Crescendo or not. Malefic Rapture will deal damage to every target in line-up side of us that has dots on it, with increasing damage depending on how many dots you have up on each target.

We'll be using Malefic Rapture in our Sustain to avoid overcapping on shards, consume Tormented Crescendo procs, and if you're a Soul Harvester, to make use of our Succulent Soul buff. More on that later on.

Finally, we'll be placing a regular Shadow Bolt, which we'll be mainly using to fish for Tormented Crescendo procs.

We'll only be hardcasting this if we have all of our dots out on other targets, we have no shards for Malefic Rapture, and our Haunt is on cooldown, because without Nightfall, it will do significantly less damage. Alright, with our Sustain damage priority under our belt, we're next going to be covering Hero Talents.

Don't go anywhere.

AFFLICTION HERO TALENTS: SOUL HARVESTER

Now it's time to cover our more favored hero talent tree of Soul Harvester, which allows us to increase our burst damage and finish off games on our own. To start things off, like Hellcaller, Soul Harvester comes with a few passive damage increases.

However, unlike Hellcaller, you can actually feel these buffs, such as Necrolite's Teachings, increasing our Shadowbolt and Nightfall's damage, allowing us to burst far harder, and Sateo's Volition, making our Corruption deal damage faster, allowing us to generate more Nightfall procs, while also making our Haunt guarantee a Nightfall when used, transforming our RNG burst window into something far more reliable.

And if all that wasn't enough here, using Nightfall is also going to deal an extra chunk of damage. This will increase our damage through our ability, Wicked Reaping, while also giving us an extra portion of damage from our Soul Harvester.Soul Anathema.

Other than these damage increases, Soul Harvester is going to give us access to a defensive boost to our Dark Pact through Friends in Dark Places. Now for the big ability from Soul Harvester.

We're going to be gaining Demonic Soul, which will have a chance to give us a buff whenever we generate a shard through Agony. This buff will then increase our Malefic Rapture damage by 1%.

We're going to be gaining 3 Succulent Soul shards every time we use Soul Rot, which is exactly when we want to be using Malefic Rapture anyway. And even if we don't manage to use these, chances are you are going to be able to refresh them every time you use them. back to full duration as this buff stacks up to 5 times.

Because of all of these factors, it's easy to see how this is currently the go-to hero talent for Affliction as it increases our burst damage immensely while also offering excellent quality of life aspects with charge generation and guaranteed nightfalls.

Coming up, we're going to be putting these hero talents into use and go over our burst windows as Affliction, so don't go anywhere.

HAUNT BURST SEQUENCE

Welcome to our first burst sequence, where we're going to be going over our single target burst. This sequence is one that you're going to be doing a ton throughout your games, so be sure to watch closely.

First off, we're going to start by jinxing the target. This will, of course, apply both our Agony and Corruption with a single Global.

We're going to do this to soften up our kill target, give us a chance for extra Nightfall procs, and allow ourselves to get more damage from Withering Bolts. Following this, we'll then use our Unstable Affliction, further boosting our Withering Bolt damage, while also protecting all our other dots from being dispelled.

Up next, we'll use Soul Rot, giving us that crit and haste boost from Dark Harvest, while dealing fairly decent damage in its own right. Immediately after this Soul Rot, we'll then hit the target with a Phantom Singularity, increasing all damage they take by 10%.

Now that all our dots are on the target, we do have an optional step where we can Soul Swap to another target and burst them instead. However, for this particular burst, we're going to be looking for single target damage, so we won't be doing this.

Anyway, now that all our dots are on the target, we're going to hit our enemy with a Haunt, which will further increase all damage they take by another 10%, while also applying Shadow's Embrace and generating a guaranteed Nightfall proc.

At which point, we'll immediately follow up with an instant Nightfall Shadow Bolt that we've gained through using Haunt.

From here, we'll then hit the target with a Phantom Singularity, we'll then continue to use as many Nightfall procs as possible, and then follow through by dishing out as many Malefic Raptures as we can as well.

DARKGLARE BURST SEQUENCE

In this video we're going to be showing you your standard burst rotation with your Dark Glare allowing you to pump out as much damage as possible every two minutes. So to start this rotation we're going to make sure that we have Agony and Corruption on three targets.

We're usually going to be doing this through the Jinx talent. After making sure we have Agony and Corruption applied, we'll then send out an Unstable Affliction onto our kill target for Dispel Protection and increase damage.

Following this we'll look to Soul Rot them and then immediately use a Phantom Singularity for the 10% damage boost. With all our dots applied we can now unleash Dark Glare on our kill target.

This not only extends the duration of all of our dots in the arena but also ensures Dark Glare deals significant damage to our target in the process. Next to start pumping out some real burst damage we'll use Haunt and follow up with the instant Shadow Bolt that it provides us afterwards.

From here on out we'll then consume as many Nightfall procs as we can while also dumping all our shards on Malefic Rapture. Until we can finally combine our Haunt and Shadow Bolt once again.

WITHER BURST SEQUENCE

For our last burst rotation, we're going to be showing you hell-collar enjoyers how to properly stack up your Wither and make the most out of Malevolence. So to begin with, we'll once again Jinx our target to apply Wither and Agony to him, followed up by Unstable Affliction for that good ol' Dispel Protection.

Next up, we'll then Soul Rot for those Haste and Crit modifiers, as well as those big Malefic Raptures it gives us after. Moving on, we'll chuck a Phantom Singularity on the target for the extra damage increase, and then shoot out a Haunt for the massive burst and damage modifiers it gives.

At this point, we'll then Soul Swap to our secondary target and press Malevolence, allowing all our Withers to gain 8 stacks while also increasing our Haste. At this point, we'll then look to consume any Nightfall procs we have and weave in Malefic Raptures when possible.

AFFLICTION WARLOCK OPENER

Alright, enough theory, let's dive into a real match. Here's how your opener should look to set yourself up for the best possible game.

First, we'll summon our Fel Hunter to benefit from Soul Link's flat damage reduction, while also gaining access to Counterspell and Purge. At the same time, we'll ensure that Health Stones are prepared for both ourselves and our team, providing a crucial survival tool for the match.

With these pre-game preparations complete, the next step is to position our Demonic Circle. In this match, Gelu opts to place it at the mouth of the room, forcing enemy melee to overextend if they want to hit him, setting up an opportunity to punish them later on.

Next, it is crucial to set up a Demonic Gateway, leading to the nearest pillar from your teleport location, providing additional ways to escape once melee connect to you after porting. From this point, create distance from your portal to ensure you have a safe retreat when needed.

If you stay on your port, you'll have to burn your gateway to escape immediately. Now it's time to go on the offensive.

Begin by applying your instant dots to three players using Jinx, as Gelu demonstrates by targeting the Holy Paladin and Feral Druid. This sets the stage for sustained pressure right from the start.

When applying Jinx, always prioritize hitting the healer first if they're in line of sight. Healers tend to play around pillars in the backline, which makes them the trickiest to reach later, so tagging them early ensures consistent pressure.

In this particular video, Gelu isn't able to land all three Jinxes instantly due to a stun from the Feral Druid. As a result, he quickly transitions to the next step, using Dark Pact while at high HP to maximize its effectiveness and get the most value out of it.

While using Dark Pact, Gelu also trinkets and mortal coils the Feral Druid, gaining crucial tempo. This allows him to smoothly transition into his second offensive step, applying Unstable Affliction to the kill target to increase pressure and secure momentum.

With Unstable Affliction on the Shaman for Dispel Protection, Gelu follows up by Soul Rotting them and then casts Phantom Singularity to amplify the damage. This sets up his Dark Glare to get maximum value following the burst sequence that we outlined earlier.

Continuing the burst sequence here, Gelu launches a Nightfall Shadow Bolt, then immediately haunts the kill target. As he does this, he pulls back into range of his teleport, making sure he can escape when the Feral reconnects.

Next, Gelu dumps his Malefic Raptures, using an instant cast followed by a hard cast, ensuring maximum damage before the Feral Druid jumps onto him. Finally, Gelu teleports to safety, knowing that if the Feral Druid chases, he can easily punish them with yet another haunt, landing an early kill.

From this, very standing out, Standard Opener Gelu's team was able to force the enemy healer's trinket and cooldowns, as well as Astral Shift from the Shaman, all while taking minimal risks and maintaining a solid position.

AFFLICTION WARLOCK WIN CONDITION

Okay, we've seen the opener. Now let's learn how we can tie it all together and take home that win.

So to start this win condition, Gelu has already been steadily chipping away at the enemy team's health bars through maintaining his Agony and Corruptions on the entire team.

But now, since he has a Succulent Shard proc and Dots on every player, he uses a Malefic Rapture for that huge AoE damage and to apply his Soul Anathema Dot to everybody. And then when the Demon Hunter connects to him, he begins casting Haunt.

He does this because he knows the Demon Hunter will kick him, so casting Haunt here allows him to dual school and cast Malefic Rapture when locked immediately after.

At this point, Gelu's taken a bit more damage than he would like from the Demon Hunter, so with no defensives available just yet, he fears him to alleviate pressure. And then, after receiving a stun from the Demon Hunter, Gelu fears them again, forcing the enemy healer to...

Dispel the Demon Hunter and generate a ton of pressure through the Unstable Affliction's Silence effect. Gelu then makes sure to Jinx the healer to apply his Instance and slow their cast speed, to which the Paladin bubbles to try and stabilize their team.

However, instead of retreating, Gelu knows that he can still force pressure here since his Haunt is off cooldown, so he swaps with it onto the Shadow Priest before teleporting away to safety, allowing his Warrior to almost finish the job. At this point, the Demon Hunter is now ready to go into the game.

At this point, the Demon Hunter is now ready to go into the game. At this point, the Demon Hunter is now ready to go into the game.

The Demon Hunter then chases Gelu, so he answers with a coil, allowing him to fully cast his dots on him without being interrupted, forcing the Demon Hunter's Netherwalk.

The damage doesn't stop here, though, as Gelu then soul swaps all these dots and continues to burst by hitting the Holy Paladin with him, who has no defensives left. All it takes from here is a simple Haunt into Malefic Rapture and Nightfall proc, and the Paladin quickly falls.

Now, this is a classic Affliction win condition. Now, this is a classic Affliction win condition.

Now, this is a classic Affliction win condition.