Best Warlock Builds – Affliction Warlock Spec
Posted on January 15th, 2010 by Lawbringer under Alliance, Blood Elf, Build, General Tips, Gnome, Heroics, Horde, Human, Instances, Orc, PVE, Patch, Raiding, Spec, Undead, Warlock, World of Warcraft, WotLKAffliction Warlock Spec For Patch 3.3
Although all three trees for Warlocks have good DPS builds (over 10k DPS) the following Affliction build is between 250-500 higher than the rest in patch 3.3. As with all of these builds, remember that they come from the Wowikki Simulationcraft engine, so any anger can be taken out on the engine itself – we are just the messenger. With that being said, you might find that this build definately helps your DPS.
Gear
Best In Slot Affliction Warlock
Remember, at this point in patch 3.3 we have yet to see all of ICC and there are no heroic modes open yet. So best-in-slot is still a mix of ToC, T9 and T10 gear. Once ICC opens completely and heroic modes are available, you can expect plenty of changes to the gear you see above.
Talent Build
Tier 9 Tier 10 Affliction Lock
Glyphs
Major
Minor
- Whatever floats your boat
Priorities
- Flask = Frost Wyrm
- Food = Fish Feast
- Spell Stone
- Fel Armor
- Pet = Felhunter
- Life Tap
- Potion = Wild Magic
- Haunt
- Corruption
- Curse of Agony
- Unstable Affliction
- Drain Soul (when target health less than 25%)
- Shadow Bolt
- Life Tap (When Mana is under 20%)
Remember, the list above is NOT a rotation, it is a priority list, which means that you will use whatever is the highest on the list whenever it is available (not on cool-down) with certain conditionals, of course. Master affliction locks will help you out in the thread below for more insight into rotations.
Damage Sources
You may also have noticed that the best-in-slot gear is min/maxxed with Tailoring and Enchanting. That combo of professions is almost impossible to beat for caster DPS toons. You will also note that while you may never see most of the gear from 25 heroic ToC (until it is not best-in-slot any longer) you can get a good idea about which pieces of Tier set pieces to use and what should be off set. In the case of this lock, you can feel comfortable using all five set pieces.
Is there a reason why you’re passing up the Glyph of Quick Decay in favor of Glyph of Curse of Agony?
what rotation do you use ?
brillriffics – You can’t think in rotations for affliction. It’s all about priorities (check the list given above).
I can’t believe you’d pass up on Quick Decay over Agony. Also you might want to mention that Curse of Agony should never, ever be used if you don’t have someone in the raid/instance applying the Curse of Elements debuff (properly specced boomkin/unholy DK). Curse of Elements is in all ways superior to Agony.
Hmm, tier 10.5 is available currently and it’s better than heroic t9. The set bonuses are also much better for affli than t9 set bonuses are. 10% pet crit is great for destro, and pretty good for demo, but rubbish for affliction. Also, given the current mechanics with crit and corruption, Nevermelting Ice Crystal is BiS trinket for affliction locks. While this build no doubt presumes a great tank, I would put that 1 point from Cataclysm into Improved Drain Soul for your run of the mill lock, since not all tanks are brilliant. Fine for the sort of lock that can get this sort of gear though, just saying for the rest of us.
I also find it strange that you chose to put the heroic t9 chest on this toon, since there are better chest spots in even pre-ICC gear. Either, way, you should’ve had the t10.5 gear and the Ashen Band of Endless Destruction ring. As has been pointed out the Glyph of Quickened Decay > Glyph of CoA. I also found it strange that for this “BiS” gear list you put in heroic Barb of Tarasque rather than Mortalis.
With the change of heroic t9 to t10.5, h BoT to Mortalis, Flare of Heavens to Nevermelting Ice Crystal, Conductive Seal to Ashen Band of Endless Destruction you lose roughly 70 SP (after averaging procs) and gain 62 crit, 181 haste and a fairly massive +20% crit to corruption ticks as well as much much better set bonuses.
You are definitely right about Glyph of Quick Decay added in 3.3. It is the best glyph for Afflic and kind of a game changer in the value of haste for the spec as well. Haste is almost as good as spell power after addition of this glyph.
As far as the gear choice criticisms, it looks like no ICC gear was chosen as this is a start of 3.3 guide. The T9 Heroic chest is a bit more balanced than the Skyweaver chest, which is really the only chest with hit that is even arguably better outside of ICC or Frost badges. I also rate Tarasque over Mortalis if you need the hit. If you don’t need the hit then Mortalis is better. However, Law apparently chose this slot to pick up some hit, which isn’t a bad choice. Tarasque is off the first TOC boss (bosses?) and is pretty easy to come by if you’re in a 25man raiding guild. (Mortalis is out of the Tribute chest after killing Heroic Anub25…btw you may be competing with some healers for this bad boy too if it drops because of the lack of hit like Holy Paladins.)
NMIC in ICC is great for some fights and average for others. There are relatively few fights so far that don’t require target switches, which can make it difficult to role the crit throughout. If I had the two trinkets in his set, which unfortunately I didn’t when ICC dropped, I would have used that pair instead of NMIC for most fights, like LDW, the boat, and Saurfang. Festergut being an exception, where NMIC is great because you can roll the crit to 35% then refresh to get the Death’s Embrace bonus then roll crit again.
The spec is exactly what I had when ICC dropped. If you know your tank can handle it, fine. If you don’t, then give the tank a little extra time to get aggro then go to work. Always spec for highest DPS on new content when the enrage timers may get tight. As you move into ICC gear, Spirit will drop significantly and moving the point from Cataclysm to Dark Pact will be important due to mana issues with Life Tap. The gear in ICC, especially the tier, has a lot less Spirit, and I’m already starting to feel it on my gear set.
Lastly, the best set bonus in the game for Afflic is probably the T9 4pc. It is unknown how the T10 4pc bonus is going to play with Affic as DoTs do not always scale unless recast with %damage buffs. The T9 2pc is a joke; ignore it for Afflic. The T10 2pc is mediocre. In my calcs I got that the T9.5 (nonheroic) Head/Shoulder for T10.0 Head/Shoulder change was basically neutral with the better stats on the T10 but downgrade in set boni.
Anyways, there’s my 2 cents. Sorry, didn’t mean to write an impromptu article. Good luck dominating in ICC!
ok what about those that cannot get the gear close as i can get is heroics and toc norm.
any luck on frost mages builds?
hi, which addons should i use for affliction locks to inform me about the dot count down? necrosis?