Mists of Pandaria Classic Affliction Warlock Stat Priority

The stat priority for Affliction Warlock is as follows:

1. Hit Rating (15% - 5100 rating is Hit Cap.)
2. Intellect
3. Haste Rating soft cap (15.61% Haste - 6637 Haste Rating)
4. Mastery Rating
5. Haste Rating
6. Critical Strike Rating

Intellect is the primary stat for all Warlock specializations. This not only makes your spells do more damage, but Intellect also increases your critical strike chance. This stat should be on all of your gear.

Every point of Intellect gives one spell Power, which increases your and your demon’s damage. After you obtain your 15% Hit cap, prioritize stacking Intellect and it should be on all of your gear. You'll get more of it on higher item level gear, making that the main factor to consider while gearing.

Hit rating is the next most important stat and is vital to doing damage because you must hit the boss in order to deal damage. Hit is very easy to obtain since it not only comes from many pieces of gear, but you can also reforge and gem hit in your gear.

15% is the hit cap, which is 5100 hit rating and is crucial to obtain. Once you hit the cap, you can never miss. However, once you hit the cap, hit is useless, so try not to go much higher than the cap, with the aim to be right at the sweet spot of 5100 Hit rating.

Note that both Gnomes and Humans have a Racial that gives them 1% Expertise/Hit.

• Gnomes: Shortblade Specialization
• Humans: Sword Specialization

Haste not only makes you cast your spells faster, but also makes your DoT spells tick faster. With enough haste, you can reach certain breakpoints that will give you an extra ticks of damage. For example, if you have 15.61% Haste - 6637 Haste Rating - your Unstable Affliction will tick two extra times. At 32.32% Haste - 13,737 Haste Rating - your Corruption will tick four extra times.

For Phase One of MoP Classic, we suggest getting 15.61% Haste - 6637 Haste Rating, then going Mastery. This will give you two extra ticks of Unstable Affliction and Corruption, while giving you three ticks of Agony. It's not worth going all in on Haste this early to get the extra ticks due to massive stat loss you'd get.

Later on in the phases as you get gear, you'll start to head the next caps. Refer to the table below for more information on how much haste you'll need for extra ticks.

The following table is assuming you have raid wide 5% Spell Haste buff from Shadow Priests, Balance Druids and Elemental Shamans. This is also WITHOUT Bloodlust.

Mastery greatly increases the damage all of your main DoT Agony, Corruption and Unstable Affliction. This is a great stat that you'll be stacking after you reach the Haste soft cap.

Critical strike makes you crit more, meaning you deal more damage. As long as you have your meta gem in that increases your crit damage, crits deal roughly twice the damage of normal hits. Your DoTs can crit as well.

For gearing recommendations before stepping into the new raids, check out our Pre Raid Gear Guide.