Season of Discovery Affliction Warlock DPS Talents and Runes

Start by going into Affliction and pick up Improved Corruption to get your instant cast Corruption, then Suppression to get some Hit Rating. This will help you get down to Nightfall for the chance at instant Shadow Bolts and there's not really another solid option to choose from. On the way down pick up Improved Drain Life to make you gain more health when Drain Life, which you will be a lot since you'll be using the Master Channeler Rune. The two points in Improved Life Tap will help you gain more Mana whenever you Life Tap.

After that put 3 points into Improved Curse of Agony to buff your Curse of Agony and then one point into Amplify Curse in order to make that first Curse of Agony do 50% more damage. then put 2 points into both Grim Reach for the extra range, then 2 points into Nightfall to gain your chance at instant cast Shadow Bolts. Lastly put one point into Siphon Life and then five points into Shadow Mastery for the 10% increased Shadow damage.

The rest of your points will be placed into Destruction in order to get Improved Shadow Bolt to make you do more Shadow damage after your Shadow Bolt crits. Place five points into Bane to reduce the cast time of both your Shadow Bolt and Immolate, then put a point into Shadowburn so you can use it as a finisher or when you need to move during the encounter.

From here, put two points into Improved Firebolt to make your Imp do more damage, and two points into Destructive Reach to give you some more range on your Shadow Bolts. Finish off your last point into Ruin, increasing the crit damage of your Shadow Bolt by 100%.

• Head — Pandemic
• Bracers — Unstable Affliction
• Gloves — Haunt
• Pants — Everlasting Affliction or Demonic Pact
• Chest — Master Channeler
• Belt — Shadow and Flame
• Boot — Shadowflame
• Cloak — Soul Siphon
• Ring 1 — Fire Specialization
• Ring 2 — Shadow Specialization

There are a handful of different options for which Runes you can use as Affliction and none of them are terrible, however these are the best options for doing the most damage. Haunt is mandatory as this will not only significantly increase the damage done by all of your other DoT's besides Immolate, but will also heal you at the end.

Master Channeler is another mandatory Rune, as this will convert Drain Life into a DoT and remove the channel effect. Drain Life does insanely high damage and will often be your top two damage abilities, making this Rune a must-take.

With the recent Demonic Knowledge nerf, it's no longer the best option for your boot rune. Instead, you can use new reworked Shadowflame. Mark of Chaos is a nice option if you're the only Lock in there and want to support more, but if you're Affliction you're missing out on a ton of damage by not using Shadowflame

The leg Rune you want to use is Everlasting Affliction or Demonic Pact. One is a slight dps increase to you, the other is a spell power buff for your raid. If you're the only Warlock in the raid, it's suggested to use Demonic Pact.

Grimoire of Synergy was also recently nerfed and now Shadow and Flame is the best option for the consistant 10% damage.

The only Bracer choice is Unstable Affliction. This does a ton of damage and you should be keeping this up on boss as much as you can during the boss encounter.

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.

Soul Siphon got severely reworked and is now pretty good for Affliction. This causes your Drain Soul to to deal damage 3 times faster and increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul spells by an additional 6% for each of your Warlock Shadow effects afflicting the target, up to a maximum of 18% additional effect. When Drain Soul is cast on a target below 20% health, it instead gains 50% per effect, up to a maximum of 150%. In addition, your Drain Soul can now trigger your Nightfall talent.

Fire Specialization and Shadow Specialization are the new ring runes and both of these should be used at all times.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Warlock.