Affliction Warlock Glyphs

Affliction Warlock Spec

Yesterday I presented the Affliction spec that I use for my fresh level 80 warlock. Today I'm going to go in more detail regarding the glyphs that I've chosen.

Major Glyphs

Haunt - Since this glyph provides a flat increase to Haunt's damage, I consider it essential for an Affliction build, seeing as Haunt is currently at the top of the tree.

Life Tap - Since I use Life Tap in almost every rotation (and you should too), it's a no-brainer because it increases your Spell Power based on your Spirit.

Corruption - This one replicates Nightfall's effect, which I find quite nifty and that's why I prefer this glyphs. In increases your chance of a instant Shadow Bolt but if both effects proc at the same time, you only get one instant Shadow Bolt.


Minor Glyphs

Unending Breath - The most important minor glyph, it gets rid of the reagent requirements for your Unending Breath spell that I use quite a lot.

Drain Soul - Marginally useful when solo-ing, more so when in raids: it gives you an extra Soul Shard when Life Draining.

Kilrogg - Since I couldn't find a 3rd useful glyph, I decided to go with this one, though I my whole warlock career I've used Eye of Kilrogg perhaps once.

If you have suggestions for better Major glyphs, let me know. I'm very happy with my current selection but I'd be interested if there are cool synergies that I have overlooked.

Affliction Warlock Spec

Affliction Warlock Spec

I finally hit 80 on my warlock a couple of days ago. I could have probably done it a lot sooner but I reached a point where I'm tired of leveling yet another character through Northrend. Still, thanks to two heirloom items, flying and fully rested XP, it wasn't a hard journey.

Apart from a short stint with Demonology, I have leveled my warlock 1-80 almost exclusively with Affliction. I have always loved Affliction because it makes the warlock class unique. I felt Destruction played too much like a mage and Demonology too much like a hunter. One big benefit to leveling as Affliction is that, if your rotation is right, you should always be topped off in terms of mana and health. Zero downtime is an Affliction warlocks' trademark. A leveling and/or solo-ing Affliction warlock is versed in the art of drain tanking as I will explain further on for those who aren't familiar with the concept.

What follows is an explanation of my spec at level 80. Once again, since I'm the archetypal solo player, I've picked talents which seemed solid from a single-player perspective. This spec, therefore, might not be ideal for raiding but I wouldn't be ashamed to use it in a 5-man instance. I've also included the glyphs that I prefer but in the case of the Major ones, there are several other appealing ones that you might consider.

58/13/0

What follows is an explanation for each talent that I've picked.

Affliction

Tier 1
Improved Curse of Agony 2/2 - CoA is your main curse so you need this.
Suppression 3/3 - Extra chance to hit and reduces the cost of all your affliction spells. Vital talent.
Improved Corruption 5/5 - Corruption is one of your main DoTs and this talent improves it nicely.

Tier 2
Improved Drain Soul 2/2 -You will be draining plenty of souls in order to get Soul Shards so this talent is very nice in helping you recover a fair amount of your mana. Some people skip this but I have always found it useful. As an added bonus it also lowers your threat, which comes in handy in a group.
Improved Life Tap 2/2 -Life Tap is part of your rotation as a warlock and this talent makes it more efficient by giving you more mana in return for the same amount of life.
Soul Siphon 2/2 - This talent has been beefed up nicely in recent patches and it improves your survivability as well as your ability to recuperate mana and health.

Tier 3
Fel Concentration 3/3 - Even as an Affliction warlock, some of your spells are not instant. This talent ensures that you will still be able to cast while you're getting pummeled. This talent is vital for a drain-tanking warlock.

Tier 4
Grim Reach 2/2 - This one only improves the range of your Affliction spells but these are your main spells anyway and I consider it a fairly useful talent because it allows me to run through my entire rotation before a mob reaches me.
Nightfall 1/2 - Now here's a more interesting talent. This one gives you a small chance for an instant Shadow Bolt each time your Corruption and Drain Life tick. It is customary to pick only 1 rank here because the second rank isn't as useful as the first. Besides, the same result can be augmented by the Glyph of Corruption.
Empowered Corruption 3/3 - Another increase in power to your Corruption except this one looks at your total spell power.

Tier 5
Shadow Embrace 5/5 - I only use Shadow Bolt when the instant cast from Nightfall procs but I usually open with Haunt so this spell basically increases all DoT damage by 5% which is nifty.
Siphon Life 1/1 - I would consider this talent a vital one, as it heals you when your Corruption deals damage. It's a small amount but if you throw corruption on several enemies at once, it makes a big difference. This comes especially useful in PvP.

Tier 6
Improved Felhunter 2/2 - Some people prefer to use an Imp but I prefer the Felhunter because this guy is not as fragile as the Imp and deals pretty good damage. If you also prefer a Felhunter, then this talent is a must because it allows your pet to quickly recover mana that you will then drain with Dark Pact.
Shadow Mastery 5/5 - Flat increase to shadow damage and also life drain. Essential talent.

Tier 7
Contagion 5/5 - Essentially, in a PvE setting, this talent provides a 5% increase to your CoA and Corruption. Solid DPS talent.
Dark Pact 1/1 -Another Affliction warlock signature spell. This drains your pet's mana and gives it to you.

Tier 8
Malediction 3/3 - Big increase to your spell damage and also increases the damage from your most important DoTs. Very important talent.

Tier 9
Death's Embrace 3/3 - What this talent does is subtle but important in my opinion. When you are very low on health it helps you by increasing your life drain. Also, when your target is low on health it ups the damage caused by your DoTs. This one is even more important in a raid setting where bosses have lots of HP but I like it for solo-ing because mobs die even faster once they get below 35%.
Unstable Affliction 1/1 - One of your main DoTs. Get it.
Pandemic 1/1 - Makes your Corruption and Unstable Affliction ticks crit. Very important talent. This was introduced in a recent patch and it added crit to a warlock's DoTs for the first time in history.

Tier 10
Everlasting Affliction 5/5 - Good all-around talent. The description should be self-explanatory so I won't say more.

Tier 11
Haunt 1/1 - The pinnacle of your Affliction training. I really love this spell because not only does it do initial damage but it also ticks as a DoT and at the end (either of the spell or of the mob) it heals you for 100% of the damage it has caused! Awesome spell for an Affliction warlock. Never leave home without it!

Luckily, the above Affliction spec can be completed as early as level 67 which means you are left with a whole lot of talents that you can spend at your discretion. I have always chosen Demonology because it has some nice utility talents. I'm not interested in Destruction at all since I don't want to spam Shadow Bolts or whatnot. So here's what I chose from Demo.

Demonology

Tier 1
Improved Healthstone 2/2 - I tend to use my Healthstone often whenever I'm in a tight spot and this talent improves the health received from it nicely.
Demonic Embrace 3/3 - This one increases your stamina and warlocks like stamina because they can trade it for mana.
Fel Synergy 2/2 - Some may find it not as useful but I'm ok with this talent because it trickle-heals my pet as I do damage, although normally my Felhound doesn't really get damaged a lot.

Tier 2
Fel Vitality 3/3 - More health increase but also ups your mana, as well as those of your pet. Good all-around talent.

Tier 3
Demonic Aegis 3/3 - This is the talent I wanted to get at so the previous ones could be viewed as fillers even though they are useful too. What this talent does is improve your Armor spell of choice, in my case Fel Armor. That means better health regeneration and more spellpower, which are both staples of a warlock's arsenal.

And that's it for talents. In a future post I will detail and explain my choice of glyphs. Once again, I'm not playing at a competitive level so I may not have the "best" spec but I enjoy it and all the talents that I've picked work together nicely.

Affliction Warlock Glyphs

Demonology Warlock Solos Last Rites

These days it's becoming harder and harder to find even one person to group up for Last Rites, the conclusion to that nice quest chain in Borean Tundra that rewards the player with a choice of nice blue weapons which will last until level 78 in many cases.

So I found myself with my level 71 Warlock at the end of the quest chain and since I had just respecced to Demonology, I felt cocky enough to attempt to solo this quest. This is still a 3-man quest so I wasn't 100% sure I could do it but at the same time I didn't want to wait who knows how long until I could find someone else.

The last time I finished this quest was on my level 71 Rogue with help from a level 80 Rogue that was nice enough to give me a hand. Unfortunately, even though I survived to finish the quest, the 80 Rogue died. He had forgotten how this fight works and had basically killed himself. More on this in a moment.

The Spec

Up until a couple of days ago, I had played my Warlock from 1 to 71 as Affliction, and I loved it. On a whim, I decided to get Dual Spec and make my other spec Demonology. Here's my Demo spec, the one I had when I attempted Last Rites, along with the glyphs I'm using at this level:

0/57/5

The Fight

Before I started the fight, I buffed up with some Shoveltusk Steak for Stamina and Spell Power, a Scroll of Stamina V and I also used another scroll on my Felguard. We both had over 10K HP. Now, I am aware that right from the start I made a bunch of mistakes during this fight with Prince Valanar.

For one thing, I totally forgot to use Immolate. An extra DoT would have been great. Instead, I used Curse of Agony and Corruption as well as Shadow Bolt.

Another mistake (I think, but not sure on this) is that I used my Felguard instead of my Voidwalker. I believe the VW would have been a better tank for this fight. Or not. At least I didn't forget to use Demonic Empowerment whenever it was up.

My third big mistake was that in the heat of the battle I totally forgot that I had Metamorphosis. To say it would have helped me would be an understatement.

The Strategy

My strategy here was to keep the Felguard alive and keep the DoTs up on Valanar. To this end, I punched Health Funnel when my pet was getting low on health. The big thing to watch out here for is the Prince's special attack called Soul Deflection. Whenever he starts channeling this spell, which looks like a tendril that connects to your character, you need to stop DPS or else you will be reflecting all the damage you do back at yourself. That, in fact, was the reason why the 80 Rogue died.

I'm not exactly sure how Soul Deflection works with DoTs but I believe each tick also damages you because my health went down alarmingly several times. Each time he started channeling that spell, I would recall my Felguard. During the fight I had to use some healing unfortunately: a Healthstone, a health pot and my Herbalism ability Lifeblood.

Finally, the Prince dropped. At the end, I was left with about 20% life and the same in mana. I have to say I'm pretty happy with how I handled this fight. Although there were a few mistakes that made the fight harder, in the end I prevailed. Still, this doesn't mean I am very good at Demonology, in fact it's the opposite.

From the rewards I chose the Staff of the Purposeful Mendicant.

Updated: Affliction Warlock Improvements in Patch 3.1

As a solo player of WoW I tend to favor certain classes and certain builds over others. Case in point: the affliction warlock. I like the affliction tree very much because it's different than any other classes' playstyles. Well, it does have a few things in common with shadow priests but the affliction lock remains the king of DOTs. I won't play a demonology warlock because to my mind it resembles hunters too much and destruction locks resemble fire mages.

Well, affliction has been really good to me as a casual player and I will extol it's virtues in length in a future post but for now I will talk about some of the exciting changes that patch 3.1 will bring to my spec.

For warlocks in general we have these intriguing new things:

- "Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory." Wow... although this sentence is a bit ambiguous, I'm assuming this means warlocks finally get what they wanted for a long time: stackable soul shards. If I am right, then we can free a bag slot and at the same time have plenty of space for a crapload of shards. Neat.

- "Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard." Neato. I always use Drain Soul to get mana back, being talented with Improved Drain Soul. Although not a big deal for a solo player, this does mean that I can use my Soul Shards at a higher rate and I can get more of them back when draining.

Now on to the actual talents for the affliction tree. I will only highlight what I see as buffs, instead of talking about all the changes.

- "Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec." OK this looks pretty good. While the present implementation of Eradication doesn't exactly excite me, the new effect looks to be much better and it now gives even more reason to use Shadow Bolt in my rotation. Of course, I only use the ol' bolt when Nightfall procs but an instant-cast SB with a high crit chance is very awesome.

- "Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit." Wow, this sounds really good. The actual Pandemic is kinda luke-warm but the new one will become a must-have talent for every affliction warlock. It does look powerful for only 1 invested talent. The way I envision crits on DOTs is simple: each damage tick should have a chance equal to the caster's spell crit chance of critting. Simple. I hope this is how it will be implemented.

- "Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done." Hmm... this change is both good and bad. It's good because instead of casting two spells we just cast one. It's bad because we lose the damage that was done by draining life from the target. I would've been nice if they could have rolled over at least some of the damage done by Siphon Life. So in the end this is both a buff AND a nerf.

- "Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells." Well, this is so-so for affliction but it does include Shadow Bolt so it's a good thing overall.

These are the main improvements to affliction warlocks that have been revealed to this point for patch 3.1. So far it's been great, no nerfs, which puts us in a better position than other classes. Here's hoping that things will only get better.

UPDATE: It looks like I got it all wrong regarding the stacking of soul shards. This post on the official forums clarifies it. So basically they've capped the total number of shards that you can keep in your bags. Which seems like a WTF change to me since there are already addons which do the same thing, i.e. delete extra shards and furthermore are configurable. In any case, this is just an intermediary change. They WILL change the shard system at some point, which is a given.