Season of Discovery Affliction Warlock DPS Leveling

Affliction Warlocks are widely known as one of the best levelers in Classic. With insane self healing from talents like Siphon Life and Improved Drain Life, mixed with the Runes Master Channeler and Haunt not only healing you, but also buffing all of your DoT's, plus a plethroa of demons to choose from, you will have a comfortable time leveling. You have really comfortable playstyle of just putting up your Corruption, Unstable Affliction Drain Life, Curse of Agony and Siphon Life when needed.

Affliction is really straight forward; the talents taken focus on increasing the damage your DoTs deal. Your first five points go into Improved Corruption to make your Corruption instant cast instead of having to deal with the long cast time.

Your next points can go into Suppression to help get some Hit Rating on your Affliction spells. How many points you put into this is up to you. Only put two points into Improved Drain Soul to help get some Mana Regen, allowing you to keep pulling mobs with less downtime drinking. If you want more Hit, you can take the two out of Improved Drain Soul and put them into Suppression.

Your next five points go into Improved Drain Life to help you get more healing from your Drain Life. This talent synergizes well with one of your runes that you'll be taking called Master Channeler, which makes your Drain Life a DoT, rather than you having to channel it.

Your next few points go into Improved Curse of Agony, which buffs your main Curse, while Amplify Curse makes then next Curse of Agony you do deal 50% more damage. After that you can pickup Grim Reach for some extra range on your Affliction spells and then two into Nightfall to make it so all casts of Corruption and Drain Life have a chance to proc and give you an instant cast Shadow Bolt. This talent is nice because you will almost always have Corruption and Drain Life up due to Master Channeler.

After that, get Siphon Life, which is a DoT that heals you for the damage done. The point in Curse of Exhaustion is a filler talent, but can be helpful when trying to kite or escape mobs and helpful if you're leveling in the open world on a PvP server.

Finally, put five points into Shadow Mastery as this will buff all your Shadow damage by 10%. The last point will be placed into Dark Pact, which is similar to Life Tap, but rather it consumes your demon's Mana instead.

Your remaining points will go into the Demonology tree. Demonic Embrace gives you more Stamina, Improved Imp will make your Imp not only do more damage, but also give you more Stamina from Blood Pact.

• Bracers — Unstable Affliction
• Head — Pandemic
• Gloves — Haunt
• Pants — Demonic Pact
• Chest — Master Channeler
• Belt — Invocation
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge

Haunt is mandatory when leveling as Affliction. This Rune buffs all your Shadow damage by 20%, meaning your DoT's will do 20% more damage. Not only that, but when it expires or when the target dies, it heals you. This is just a nice Rune to use and should be used on cooldown.

Master Channeler is another mandatory Rune for leveling as Affliction. As mentioned above, this Rune will make your Drain Life a DoT, rather than a channel. This is nice because you can put this up with your other DoT's and be able to wand, Shadow Bolt or do whatever else you want to.

Demonic Knowledge is great Rune for Affliction as this simply increases your spell damage by 10% of your current demons' total Stamina and Intellect. For example, if your pet has 50 Stamina and 50 Intellect, that equates to a total of 100, therefore you would gain 10 spell damage. This is also buffed by Blessing of Kings. The other options in this Rune slot are quite weak and won't really ever be used. Shadow Flame is an AoE ability and Dance of the Wicked is used for tanking.

You've got a few options for leg Runes, and to be honest none of them are great. Demonic Pact can be used, since whenever your pet crits, it will buff you for 10% of whatever your spell damage is. This is a nice passive buff that you'll get and make you do more damage. The other Runes on this slot are far less impactful.

All three boot runes can be used while leveling and the choice is up to you on which you want to use. Invocation makes it so whenever you refresh Corruption, Immolate, Curse of Agony, and Siphon Life when there is at most 6 seconds left on the DoT, it will instantly deal whatever damage was remaining from the DoT. For example, Immolate is a 15 second DoT. Refreshing this at 9 seconds will give you the last two ticks that were remaining on the Immolate. This allows you to get the full damage of the 15 second DoT after 9 seconds, or in other words, you can simply refresh the DoT towards the end to deal some decent damage, then let the DoT finish the mob off while you run to the next one. Shadow and Flame is nice in other scenarios, however your DoT's don't crit, leaving you with hoping that Haunt crits to proc this. Grimoire of Synergy would work as well, as this gives you a 5% chance whenever you or your demon deal damage to buff the other by 25% for 15 seconds. This is a decent Rune if you do not care to minmax with Invocation timings.

Unstable Affliction is mandatory as this is a powerful damage over time ability that is buffed by all of your Shadow Talents, while also having a short cast.

Pandemic is a phenomenal Rune that allows all of your DoT's to crit. This is also mandatory for Affliction if you can get it while leveling. Vengeance is a tanking Rune and Backdraft is for Destruction Warlocks.

If you're looking for more information on all of the Warlock Runes and where to find them, click the link below.

Leveling as Affliction is pretty straight-forward. Keep Haunt, Corruption, Curse of Agony and Drain Life up on the target at all times and wand until the mob is dead. If the mob lasts long enough and you're using the Invocation rune, you can time your refresh for when the DoT has 6 seconds left to get the extra damage. Make sure to send your pet on the mob, so it can deal damage as well. If you took Improved Drain Soul as a talent, make sure to finish the mob with Drain Soul to benefit from the Mana Regen.