Well, in Part 1, we talked a little about the ‘machinery’ of an Affliction Warlock covering spec, gear, and glyphs. Here in Part 2, we’ll talk about how to drive your newly specced toon to the nearest mob then watch them die horribly as you BWHAHAHA (doing your best Vincent Price imitation).

Affliction Locks do a large portion of their damage using Damage Over Time (DOT) spells. As a result, we’ll talk first about how DOTs work. Then we’ll cover a particular group of spells called Curses. Finally, we’ll cover a typical ‘rotation’ for Affliction and try to talk about when to cast what.

The Care and Feeding of DOTs

So how do DOTs work? When a DOT is applied, a time counter starts. The spell deals damage in time increments, called “ticks”. The duration of the time between ticks depends on the spell, but it is usually 1, 2, or 3 seconds. The duration between the ticks is also affected by the Haste on your gear. The more haste you have, the faster your DOTs tick and the more Damage per Second (DPS) you do.

There is a limit to how fast you can cast even with Haste and instant cast DOTs however. There is a Global cooldown (GCD) that nothing can take you below. For Locks it is generally 1.5 seconds, but the curse GCD can be lowered to 1 second with Amplify Curse. Haste can lower your Global cooldown as well to a minimum of 1 cast per second. In other words, I can, generally speaking, only cast once per second (and usually not that fast) regardless of how much Haste I stack.

Because of the way DOTs work, recasting a DOT before it completely runs out is rarely a good idea. For example, Corruption ticks every 3 seconds (ignoring Haste). That means that 3 seconds after I cast, the DOT ticks dealing its first damage. In total it will tick 6 times if not cast again (or the mob dying).

Now, if I let it tick 5 times then recast immediately after the 5th tick, I don’t really lose anything, right? Well, actually you do. If you had cast something else and left it alone you would have gotten the damage from that extra spell; in addition, you lose a ~1 second global cooldown casting something you didn’t really need to cast yet. Even worse, if you recast Corruption one second after the 5th tick, you will cause there to be 5 seconds between ticks, you will miss casting something else, and you initiate the global cooldown before your next cast. You get the idea. Its better to have the DOT fall off while your getting in an extra Shadow Bolt than to “clip the DOT” by re-casting before it runs out.

To some extent, channeled spells like Drain Life (DL) and Drain Soul (DS) work similar to a DOT, only unlike a DOT you have to interrupt the channeled spell to cast anything else, losing its damage until you begin to channel again. However, DL and DS still “tick” while being cast, causing damage every 1 or 3 seconds respectively before considering Haste.

Cursing for Fun and Profit

The disadvantage of Affliction is that it takes some time to get into the rotation and get all the DOTs working on the mob. Our DPS tends to start slowly, increasing until we get into the second rotation. It often then levels out. Simulations (Zakalwe at ElitistJerks.com) place the different builds for Warlocks at not terribly different DPS numbers.

Using best-in-slot Ulduar gear for example, Warlock DPS ranged from 7089-7931 for simulations on eight different builds. The magnitude, 842 DPS, is nothing to sneeze at. On the other hand, with ideal gear under ideal conditions it varies over a 10% range for the different common builds…not a ton.

The 10% difference isn’t enough that, in my opinion, you should fret about it if you’re a casual player or even semi-serious. You should play the spec you enjoy. However, if you’re interested, Deep Affliction (53/0/18) was the second highest DPS spec in the simulations behind Deep Destro (0/13/58) by 8 DPS, about 0.1% of the estimated damage. Deep Demonology brings up the rear in personal DPS but can buff the raid a great deal, e.g. Demonic Pact.

An advantage to Affliction is that the DOTs continue to do damage after we quit casting. I find that when I play a different class now I have to remind myself to keep attacking until the mob (or other player in PvP) is dead. In Affliction, I often put up my DOTs and move on to the next mob if their health bar is low. (They’re dead already; they just don’t know it yet!) This is an advantage in fights where the boss disappears or becomes difficult to hit for a while during the fight then returns, and there are a surprisingly large number of those like Noth, Heigan, Gothik, Razorscale, and others.

So what does an Affliction Lock rotation look like in a raid. Well, that can change a bit from raid to raid depending on make-up. The main change that can happen to your rotation is which curse you’ll use. Blizzard gives us only one “Curse” on any target at anytime. Casting another Curse by the same Warlock removes any previous curses. This group of spells isn’t hard to figure out; they’re all named “Curse of” something, e.g., Curse of Agony, Curse of Elements, and Curse of Weakness. So when do you use which?

Curse of Elements is a boss debuff. It or a similar spell should always be up in a group. Yes, if you’re the one who casts it your personal DPS will be lower than it might be otherwise. However, the main thing is to get bosses down and have fun. Wiping on bosses, well, its not that much fun. If you need to cast it, do it! Afterwards, feel free to /slap anyone who says your DPS isn’t what it usually is, because you’re probably improving the DPS of the annoying person you just had to /slap. DPS meters are a nice tool but don’t always tell the whole story about the utility of a player even for a pure DPS class.

If you have a Balance Druid, they should be applying Earth and Moon, which is a “debuff” cast on the boss to increase spell damage by 13% on the boss. This debuff is similar and in some ways better than the Warlock’s Curse of Elements (CoE), and it will knock off CoE if both are cast. In the end, it doesn’t hurt the Druid’s DPS to cast it. In fact, they don’t really cast it; it just gets applied when they use either Wrath or Starfire. It does hurt your DPS to cast CoE, so its better for the group if you to use CoA if there is a Boomkin (Giant Battle Chicken) with you.

The other debuff that might be useful for the group is Curse of Weakness, which reduces the boss’ melee attack power and armor by 5%. This is one that might be useful for melee bosses when you have a lot of melee DPS or in cases where the boss hits like a Mack truck. It can be increased with talents but not very many Locks put talent points there -  due to its situational use.

It does not stack with a Druid Bear’s Demoralizing Roar or with a Warrior’s Demoralizing Shout, which are both better/equivalent unless the lock specs into the Curse. Again, CoW being cast decreases the Lock’s output. On the other hand, Demoralizing Roar/Shout doesn’t decrease the ability of the tank to do its job, which generally speaking is to hold agro, position the boss, and survive the beating. So, the raid has to decide if the Lock casting CoW is the best thing for the group. Keep in mind, this only reduces “melee attack power” so using it on caster bosses like Kel’Thuzad would be seriously noob-tastic. Okay, you reduce their armor by 5% but still…noob.

Curse of Agony is the highest personal DPS curse, which is what should be used unless the situation calls for CoE or, on the rare occasion, CoW.

Affliction “Rotation”

The terminology is down. What do you do? Well, let’s talk about what to cast and when.

So what is a “rotation”? Well, to start with, it’s a misnomer. You probably won’t cast this list of spells again in the same order during the fight, so “rotation” is kind of a dumb name for it. In any event, this is a reasonable way to start the encounter:

(Life Tap) – Shadow Bolt – Haunt – Corruption – Curse of Agony – Unstable Affliction

After this you keep up all the DOTs without clipping them. You need to keep cast times in mind when casting, which depends somewhat on your Haste. SB whenever you don’t need to reapply a DOT.

Life Tap is a good way to start because of how Spirit plays into a Lock’s abilities. Spirit increases spell power through things like Glyph of Life Tap. Glyph of Life Tap converts 20% of your spirit into Spell Power for 20 seconds after casting Life Tap. This can increase, depending on your gear, your Spell Bonus Damage by over 100. This can be cast on the run. I generally Life Tap as the tank is running in to pull or right after the pull to give the tank a few seconds to get agro.

Then the damaging spells begin, and the rotation shown does a few things, like get two stacks of Shadow Embrace on the target. So why is Shadow Bolt (SB) at the beginning? Well, it’s a long cast relative to the others so I usually start with it because it gives the tank that extra bit of time to get agro before I whack the target. In addition, it puts up the first stack of Shadow Embrace. Haunt and SB apply Shadow Embrace, which has to be specced into. It increases periodic damage by 5% and reduces healing done to the target by 15%. It can stack up to 2 times, and 10% extra damage = 100% goodness.

This rotation also puts the most important DOT you have on the mob early in the fight. OK, it isn’t exactly a DOT; its Haunt. Haunt, after its initial whack to the target, which isn’t that big relatively speaking, causes your real DOTs (Corruption, CoA, and UA) to tick for 20% more damage, 23% more with Glyph of Haunt. As a consequence, you never ever want a DOT to tick while Haunt isn’t on the target if you can avoid it. Its just too much to give up.

After that apply the instant cast DOTs first followed by Unstable Affliction.

Life Tap could be cast every 20 seconds to regain the Spell Bonus Damage from the Glyph. However, Life Tapping this often is sometimes not a good idea. I generally will re-proc the Glyph whenever all of my DOTs are up, the Spell Power bonus from the previous Life Tap has fallen off, and I’m replacing nothing but part of a Shadow Bolt cast.

So that’s it while the boss has 100% to 25% of its life. Refresh DOTs when they fall off. Spam SB when you have nothing else to do with the occasional Life Tap.

Things change slightly, but for the better, when the boss reaches 25% of its life remaining. At 25% with the build given, SB is no longer the best filler spell. Instead, Drain Soul becomes much better. In fact, Aff Locks have their DPS jump at the end of a long fight because of Drain Soul. Drain Soul causes 4 times its normal damage when the target is below 25% health. I’ve seen, with my less than perfect gear, Drain Soul tick for about 15,000. That, plus the DOTs is a whole lot of damage.

Should you bother to keep up your DOTs during Drain Soul? Absolutely! Right after DS ticks refresh any DOTs including Haunt. Then restart DS. Never clip DS before it ticks…that’s a waste even if 2 DOTs fall off. Just refresh the DOTs after the next tick.

One really important note about how Drain Soul works: DS checks the boss’ health once and that’s at the beginning of the cast. You only get the 4x multiplier if the boss is below 25% when you cast. If the boss goes below 25% while channeling you don’t get the extra damage. In other words, you’ll get 4 times less damage off of DS if you cast while the boss is at 25.1% than you would if you did one more shadow bolt or whatever and cast DS while the boss is at 24.9%.

So you’re saying, “Dude, it sounds hard. How do I know when the boss is definitely below 25%? How do I know when DS ticks so I can refresh my DOTs? Affliction is the most harder-est thing ever.” I’m so glad you asked, and its not hard when using an Add-on called Drain Soul Timer. This little Add-on makes a really annoying “QUAD-DAMAGE” sound when something you have selected is below 25% health, and it make a big electronic “tick” whenever DS…well ticks. As a result you know when to start DS, and you know the best time to refresh your DOTs, right after a DS tick. No Aff Lock should run without this one.

You’ll also want an Add-on to help time your casts. Buttontimers and Timerbuttons are two popular ones. I actually use the spell timer that comes with ForteXorcist by Xus.

A Couple of Additional Tips

Tick times are important. If you’re killing something without a lot of health, use spells with faster tick times like Drain Life and Curse of Agony. For the lesser trash of Naxx, like the skeletons in KT’s chamber, those may be all you need. For bigger trash (stuff with more health) you can use your full rotation. Dying trash is the best place to refill your shard bag as well. (BTW, find you friendly neighborhood tailor with the Abyssal Bag recipe and get it if you’re a neat freak like me about your bags. With 32 shards on hand at the beginning of a raid, I’ve never run out.)

If there are a lot of mobs, you have two Area of Effect choices. One is Rain of Fire (RoF), which…well rains stuff that looks like fire on them. The second is Seed of Corruption. If the mobs aren’t moving, RoF is fine, and it tends to generate less agro. Seed of Corruption (SoC) is in the same school as Corruption, and many of the talent point choices we made buff this spell. Basically SoC injects, in a really disturbing looking graphic, a small red seed into the victim that does damage over time then explodes doing damage to all the mobs around. As a result, the “Seed” moves along with the mobs. So if your tank is still moving around picking up bad guys, it travels with them. It can do a ton of damage when it explodes, but it is much more of an agro hog than RoF.

Well, the above will get you started kicking Demon buttocks (provided that particular demon has a buttock) and taking names (well loot). Casting with movement, especially in Ulduar, is the name of the game. Any instant cast spell like Life Tap, Corruption, and Curse of Agony, you can cast while running, being thrown in the air, etc. Other things you’ll have to cast then move to keep up on the target. Like most things, you’ll get better with practice. So dust off that Lock and go Dominate. I mean, who do you think the Lich King is going to be more afraid of, that Pally in her bright shiny “say-no-evil” T8 armor or this crazy SOB Lock?