1000 Curses! (An affliction warlock guide)

[Lochart]

What? Lochart messing around in the warlock section!? As I may have mentioned, on another server I have a 70 warlock who's cleared Kara and Gruul's, so I thought I would share another chapter of my wisdom with those who care to know .

Talents, as always are both a good place to start, and a matter of a lot of opinion.

On thing to bear in mind about my views on WoW in general is that I am a "hardcore PvE'er": I spec my toons to boost group potential, deal with computer controlled mobs, and do things in a predictable way time and again. I neither know much about, nor have any real interest in PVP generally, so I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere for that.

This post will cover all things from the affliction tree in detail. Other specs will be covered in other posts to avoid confusion and ease the layout of information.

Affliction is all about making your dots better, giving you MORE dots, and reducing down time. For that reason, it is both an ideal grinding spec as well as hugely viable in end game. Here's an in depth look both at my spec of choice and every talent in the affliction tree.

Affliction (42 points)
Imp. Corruption 5/5
Imp. Drain Soul 2/2
Imp. Life Tap 2/2
Soul Siphon 2/2
Imp. Curse of Agony 2/2
Fel Concentration 5/5
Amplify Curse 1/1
Grim Reach 2/2
Nightfall 2/2
Empowered Corruption 3/3
Shadow Embrace 1/5
Siphon Life 1/1
Shadow Mastery 5/5
Contagion 5/5
Dark Pact 1/1
Imp. Howl of Terror 2/2
Unstable Affliction 1/1

Demonology (19 points)
Imp. Healthstone 2/2
Imp. Imp 3/3
Demonic Embrace 5/5
Fel Intellect 3/3
Fel Stamina 3/3
Demonic Aegis 3/3

AFFLICTION TREE

Suppression I don't think resisting spells happens often enough to worry about reducing the chances of it happening for 5 talent points. Furthermore, since most of your spells will be instant cast, if one gets resisted, you can recast almost instantly. True you lose mana in the recast, but as you will see, affliction warlocks are expert mana manipulators. I would skip this.

Imp. Corruption This talent makes your Corruption an instant cast spell. A must have for the affliction warlock. And it gets you to the tier 2 talents.

Imp. Curse of Weakness This is one for pvp. There are so many other more useful curses than Weakness that improving it with talent points strikes me as a waste. Save your points.

Imp. Drain Soul Great for soloing: you actually gain mana casting Drain Soul if you land the killing blow. Even in groups it's highly useful though, for the threat reduction.

Imp. Life Tap The warlock's greatest tool: turning life into mana. The more mana you can get, the more spells you can cast, the more damage you can do.

Soul Siphon Awesome for instancing: toss up all your dots, Life Tap to regen mana and lose some health, and blast away with soul siphon to get it all back. Rinse and repeat. If you're in a raid with another warlock or a shadow priest, this becomes even more powerful.

Imp. Curse of Agony An example of a far more useful curse than Weakness. Making THIS curse more effective is highly recommended as another instant cast dot for the warlock's arsenal.

Fel Concentration Another one extremely useful for soloing, and in case you pull aggro while casting.

Amplify Curse Useful in longer fights. Like trinkets, you have to remember to USE it, but since you'll be using Curse of Agony so often, probably worth picking up. A 50% damage increase for 1 point is the highest ratio of any talent tree of any class in the game. But if you're hurting for points, not essential.

Grim Reach More range is better, particularly in boss fights with aoe abilities.

Nightfall 4% may not seem like a lot, but when you're in a boss fight lasting several minutes, and each tic has a chance to set it off, it happens frequently. Furthermore, it actually gives you ANOTHER instance cast spell (Shadowbolt) which you should opt for immediately.

Empowered Corruption Another way to improve your already improved Corruption spell? No brainer!

Shadow Embrace An interesting talent. I put 1 point in it because I needed to get farther down the tree, and hey, everyone likes damage reduction. Not essential if you're hurting for talents though.

Siphon Life Absolute MUST. Another instant cast dot that restores health to you. Invaluable for soloing and instancing. Take this talent or reroll.

Curse of Exhaustion A pvp talent straight up. Skip it for PvE.

Shadow Mastery Hmmm. Increases the effectiveness of Corruption, Curse of Agony, Drain Soul, Drain Life, Siphon Life, Shadowbolt, and Unstable Affliction by 10%? Yeah, I'll take it.

Contagion More damage for the essential affliction spells. And a pre-req for Unstable Affliction. Get this.

Dark Pact The other absolutely ESSENTIAL talent for affliction. Take it or affliction is a waste of your time.

Imp. Howl of Terror Another talent to make another spell instant cast. Also conveniently a warlock's panic button.

Malediction The curses this talent benefits are so rarely used as to be almost entirely worthless, especially given all the points you've now put into improving Curse of Agony.

Unstable Affliction A shadow damage dot, that unfortunately is not instant cast. Still well worth it to get.

If you want to remain pure affliction, too bad. You'll have more talent points than there are talents in the affliction tree. With that in mind, you might as well get far enough IN to another tree to make it worth your while. I chose Demonology because it has a lot of passive and group bonuses, but you could go Destruction as well. I'll cover what I consider the best "splash" of each tree. For an in depth look at each tree, see the corresponding build.

DEMONOLOGY

Imp. Healthstone Help the group, and yourself; it amounts to an extra health potion.

Imp. Imp The point is to get Imp. Blood Pact, which helps everyone, and gives you more health to use for Life Tap.

Demonic Embrace The warlock is unique among casters in the spirit doesn't matter because he can drain his own life to get mana back. As such, a 15% increase in stamina is invaluable.

Fel Intellect More mana for you, and for your pets, which you can then steal using Dark Pact. Minimizes down time and keeps you going strong.

Fel Stamina Hey! More stamina for you (and your pet on the off chance you need to OT something with the pet in a group)

Demonic Aegis Improving your Fel Amor to give you more +shadow damage is excellent, as that means more dot dps, and more life drained.

So that's the Demonology splash. If you don't like that, try this.

DESTRUCTION

Imp. Shadow Bolt When you crit with the bolt, your other shadow damage does 20% more, which is virtually every dot you have. More dps = good.

Cataclysm Less mana to cast destruction spells means less down time while fighting. It's all about sustainability.

SKIP Bane and Aftermath Dazing targets is of minimal use in PvE, particularly in groups, and due to Nightfall in the Affliction tree, most of your shadowbolt casts should be instant already. As for Soulfire, your spec is designed to increase shadow damage, and with a 6 second fire spell casting time, Soulfire should almost never be used.

Devastation Crit chances are good, especially in combination with your Imp. Shadow Bolt above. And it gets you farther down the tree.

Shadowburn Instant cast shadow spell! Good supplement to your growing arsenal.

Destructive Reach Now your destruction and affliction spells have max range, so you can truly just stand in one spot far from danger and dish out all sorts of punishment.

Intensity Rain of Fire, Hellfire, and Shadowbolt are the primary ones affected by this. But noninterrupt mechanics are always good to have, solo or in groups.

It is important to note that to do the full extent of the Destruction splash, you need to take a point out of Affliction (the obvious one being the single point you might have in Shadow Embrace). For the Demonology splash, you can fill all the listed talents in only 19 points, and leave the extra wherever you like.

[Lochart]

STATS, ENCHANTMENTS, AND GEMS

As is always the case in my posts the following color coding applies
The best option
Runner up until you can get the best
The basic improvement, better than nothing

The basic stats to strive for for an affliction spec are Stamina and Intellect. Spirit is less important because warlocks have so many tricks to manipulate their life and mana totals without manually regenerating (Life Tap, Drain Life, Drain Mana, Siphon Life, Dark Pact, etc.)
Beyond the basics, you also need spell hit rating, and +spell (specifically shadow) damage.
Perhaps surprisingly, and unique to the affliction spec warlock, neither spell critical rating nor spell haste rating are particularly important. This is because most of your spells will be dots, and dots (with a few exceptions like the initial damage from Immolate) cannot crit. Furthermore, since most of your spells are instant cast, piling spell haste to decrease your casting time won't help either.
The other normal caster stat which doesn't really matter is spell penetration. This reduces the target's resistance to your spells by 1 for each point of spell penetration. However, resistance cannot be reduced below 0, and the always important 3 level difference comes into play. Raid bosses, at lvl 73, have an automatic 15 minimum resistance to a lvl 70 caster's spells. Because you can't lower resistance below 0 (or 15 for lvl 73 bosses) there is no real reason to strive for this stat, particularly since again, most of your spells are instant cast, and if you get resisted, you just cast again immediately.
This all means that affliction locks have very few stats to concentrate on, and should be able to make the important ones all very high as a result.

There's really only one "magic" number for affliction warlocks.

Spell Hit Rating You need 202 spell hit to minimize spell misses. This is roughly 16% increase to hit. To fight mobs 3 levels higher than you(i.e. raid bosses), you start with a chance to hit of 83%. There is a cap of 99% on spell hit, which means that regardless of how high your spell hit is beyond 202, you still have a 1% chance to miss. So at lvl 70, 202 is the best you can do.

All other stats have no cap on them, so the more the better. As a general rule though, here's a VERY rough table for +shadow damage as far as numbers to shoot for to run various things.

Heroics/Karazhan: +600-900 shadow damage
SSC/The Eye: +800-1000 shadow damage
Mount Hyjal/Black Temple: 1100+ shadow damage

These are only rough estimates though, based on other people's play experiences and recommendations.




GEMS

I still stand by the idea that gems themselves provide more of a bonus than the socket bonus of a given piece of gear. As such, unless you have a piece which provide a "vital stat" to warlocks (stam, int, spell hit, +spell damage) I would just load up on the corresponding gems and ignore the bonus.

RED
The only useful one is +spell damage, almost every version of which is called "Runed", and ranges from +5 to +9. This should probably be your "default" gem; if you're not working on spell hit rating, just cram as many in sockets as you have room for.

YELLOW
2 useful ones in yellow: +intellect and +spell hit rating. Use spell hit until you cap out at 202 at level 70, then switch to +intellect unless your spell damage is hurting.

BLUE
Most important is the +stam. Spell penetration might look appealing, but see the above reasoning as to why you shouldn't bother. +Stam helps you stay alive and gives you more health to turn into mana. The only real choice.

META
On the chance you end up with a Meta socket in a helm for a while, no sense in letting it go to waste. Though admittedly most meta sockets are in pvp equipment, if you're speccing for pve, here are the three to look for:
Imbued Unstable Diamond grants +14 spell damage and 5% stun resist. The stun thing isn't too useful, but this is the meta gem with the highest + spell damage component.
Insightful Earthstorm Diamond grants +12 intellect and a chance to restore mana on spellcast. Not bad all around.
Swift Skyfire Diamond grants +12 spell damage and a minor run speed increase. Again, the run speed is minimally useful, but if it's cheaper than the Imbued Unstable, the spell damage is nice.

The two metas that you should avoid are:
Mystical Skyfire Diamond grants 15% on spellcast, next spell has a 50% cast time. Why? Say it with me now, "Because most of your spells are instant cast"
Destructive Skyfire Diamond grants +14 spell crit and 1% spell reflect, which means bouncing it back at the caster. You know the answer to this one too: "Affliction warlocks use dots, and dots can't crit."

ORANGE, GREEN, PURPLE
All the multicolored gems are just combinations of their single color components, and are thus diluted in power. Example: basic yellow gem provides +6 spell hit, basic red provides +7 spell damage. Basic orange provides +3 spell hit and +4 spell damage. In most cases you're better off going for the single color gems, but if cost or availability is an issue, then pick a multicolored .



ENCHANTMENTS

Head
Thanks to the addition of Glyphs in BC, head armor now have powerful buffs available to them. The best for warlocks is the Glyph of Power, available from the Sha'tar upon reached Revered, which grants +22 spell damage and +14 spell hit. Until you reach the required rep level, you can put a Heavy Knothide Armor Kit on, which grants +10 stamina.

Shoulder
The Aldor and Scryer provide shoulder enchants beyond resistance, and are the most useful. In the case of affliction warlocks, The Aldor is the clear winner:
Aldor Honored: Inscription of Discipline grants 15 spell damage
Aldor Exalted: Greater Inscription of Discipline grants 18 spell damage and 10 spell crit
Scryer Honored: Inscription of the Orb grants 13 spell crit
Scryer Exalted: Greater Inscription of the Orb grants 15 spell crit and 12 spell damage
Because spell crit doesn't matter to affliction, the Aldor is the way to go unless you're after other Scryer rep rewards.

Back
Nothing too awesome here. Could go for +armor for reduced damage while soloing (up to 120), but cloth armor sucks anyway, and warlocks have a lot of stamina by nature. I'd take Subtlety which grants -2% threat.

Chest
Many options here, not all of them great. The basic is of course +armor (up to 80). But I would opt for one of the following 3 depending on what you think needs work.
+Health, the top end of which is +150 (equivalent to 15 stam)
+Mana, the top end of which is +100
+all stats, tops out at 6 (6 stam and 6 int, most importantly)
Obviously, as with gems, the individual enchants enhance that stat more than the +6 combined. So if you need health, go for it. More mana, take that one. But if you want some of both, plus a little (for whatever reason) spirit strength and agility, go for the +all stats.

Wrist
Numerous options again.
Spellpower: 15 spell damage. Problem with this is it's unbelievably expensive. But, because it's technically the best as far as damage, it gets the yellow marking.
Superior Healing: 30 healing, 10 spell damage. Much cheaper than the above, at a lost of only 5 damage. For spell damage, probably the most economical, despite the healing nature of the enchant.
Fortitude: 12 stam. Health is always good, but if you're going to stack a stat towards infinity, spell damage is the one to opt for. Particularly since the slots you can enchant with spell damage are more limited than those for stamina. Still a good option.
Major Intellect: 12 intellect. You're a caster at heart, so mana is good. But the same reasoning with the stamina enchant applies.

Hands
Armor is again an option, but hardly worth mentioning. Can also opt for the +10 or +8 stam armor kits.
Major Spellpower: 20 spell damage. Hefty but expensive.
Spell Strike: 15 spell hit. Good way to get your spell hit up if you need to.
Major Healing: 35 healing, 12 spell damage. Like the bracer version, cheaper and mildly less effective than the straight up damage enchant. Good enough if you're tight on cash.
Healing Power: 30 healing, 10 spell damage. Next level down, see above.

Legs
Armor. Boo. +10 or +8 stam. Also boring.
Mystic Spellthread: 25 spell damage, 15 stamina. Cool.
Runic Spellthread: 35 spell damage, 20 stamina. Awesome.

Feet
Surprisingly little to work with.
Armor. Sigh.
+Stamina
+1 to +7 from enchanting (something with the word "Stamina")
+8 from leatherworking (Knothide Leather Armor Kit)
+9 and 8% run speed increase, enchanting (Boar's Speed)
+10 from leatherworking (Heavy Knothide Leather Armor Kit)
+12 from enchanting (Fortitude)

Finger
If you are an enchanter, you can enchant your rings.
Spellpower: 12 spell damage (24 on 2 rings). Pretty useful since the alternative is NOTHING.
Available from the Keepers of Time upon reaching Honored.

Weapon
All enchantments listed can be applied to both 1H and 2H weapons unless otherwise specified.
Major Spellpower: 40 spell damage. The standby, very solid enchant.
Soulfrost: +54 damage to frost and shadow. If you want to experiment and squeeze more dps out of your shadow only spells, you can test this one out. Rare enchant (out of Kara) and expensive, but hey, 14 extra shadow damage vs. Spellpower.
Spellsurge: 3% chance to restore 100 mana to all party members over 10 seconds. Another one you can experiment with if you are so inclined. Probably not worth it, but hey, if in raids you're put in the caster group all the time, they'll appreciate it.
Spell Power: 30 spell damage. Moving down the chain of effectiveness. But it's there if you need it.
Major Healing: 81 healing, 27 spell damage. Only if the other damage enchants are prohibitively expensive. But it IS an option.
Healing Power: 55 healing, 19 spell damage. See above.
Major Intellect: 30 Intellect. The alternative to spell damage.
Mighty Intellect: 22 Intellect. The lesser version of +Int.

All 2H only enchants are not particularly useless to affliction locks. The above list should suffice for any weapon you come across.