Affliction Warlock: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion preview for Affliction Warlock, a resource page where you can find changes, Hero talent trees, and aninitial assessment on the state of the spec.

The purpose of this page is to offer an up-to-date overview of how Affliction Warlock is changing in the forthcoming Midnight expansion. As such, it is not to be treated as a guide or a replacement, since the current state of tuning is not representative of what the final product will be.

Affliction Warlock received a complete talent restructuring for the class and the specialization trees alongside a fourth branch for each Hero Tree.

Below are the most notable changes:

• New Pact talents have been introduced, working essentially as stances that replace the baseline Curse of Weakness, with either Curse of Tongues and Curse of Exhaustion;
• A new talent Foul Mouth allows chosen curses to also affect any secondary target within 10 yards of the main target;
• Howl of Terror is on a choice node with Shadowfury;
• Demonic Gateway has been moved further down the tree and has a supporting talent that allows players to use it twice before incurring the cooldown;
• Blight of Weakness is a new AoE debuff effect that is mutually exclusive with any Curses, offering an empowered version on a cooldown.

Going into Midnight, the intention seems to offer the AoE Curses at the expense of less flexibility in what to choose from the start. That creates a situation where the default choice will most likely be Curse of Tongues , as the alternatives do not offer enough of an upside in a direct comparison, barred some very specific cases. Warlock's overall utility package seems to be still on the lower end of the spectrum, especially in Mythic+ scenarios. Howl of Terror has the potential to be used as a more reliable interrupt, but the target cap is still a bit of a problem.

Moving on to the Affliction side, the whole tree has been overhauled to account for the change of shard spenders to Unstable Affliction and Seed of Corruption. The layout is for the most part similar, progressing from a first gate almost devoid of choices towards the third gate which holds most of the options comparatively.

See below a list of the most transformative changes:

• Malefic Rapture has been removed in favour of Unstable Affliction for single target and Seed of Corruption for AoE;
• Sow the Seeds has been reintroduced as a result;
• Shadow Embrace has been removed;
• Vile Taint and Phantom Singularity have been removed;
• Agony stacks to 6 and has supporting talents such as Sudden Onset and Shared Agony to mitigate the ramp-up;
• a new 1 minute cooldown ability has been added Dark Harvest which supposedly is going to dictate a burst window every minute thanks to Cull the Weak;
• Tormented Crescendo has been removed;
• Oblivion has been removed;
• Malefic Grasp has been reintroduced as a capstone that procs from Nightfall;
• The new Apex Talents Shadow of Nathreza are centered around Haunt damage, both with damage coefficient increases and with additional damage procs.

The overall direction of Affliction is being consolidated as the DoT specialization, where the time spent casting and managing various DoTs will occupy most of the rotation.

Worth pointing out that "when to use the spender" has always been dictated by damage amplification windows, through either debuffs or DoT extension, and the shift away from Malefic Rapture does not inherently change spender logic on its own.

The several layers of damage amplification have been streamlined to a certain extent. (While Infirmity and Soul Rot have been removed, Dark Harvest presents the same condition)

As a result of this process, a higher emphasis has been put on Haunt and Nightfall. The former is now being consolidated as the priority target designator, whereas the latter carries more weight with its proc, thanks to supporting talents such as Malefic Grasp and Nocturnal Yield.

Hero Trees have not been updated yet, with only the description of the fourth column being available.

The Hellcaller Hero tree is themed around Shadowflame and a new Damage over Time effect replacing Corruption in the case of Affliction. As the centerpiece of the tree, Wither role is to provide a new way to interact with Tormented Crescendo procs and it is the base upon which setup burst window every minute through Malevolence. Its unique mechanic is its ability to become acute, providing additional damage.

In terms of playstyle, the tree has a passive foundation in dot management, which can be trivialized with its interaction with Absolute Corruption.

Regarding defensive options and utility, Warlock hero trees are somewhat light in that department, with the option to either consolidate the benefit of both Curse of Weakness and Curse of Tongues in the new Curse of the Satyr or the ability to automatically curse every enemy within 30 yards during Unending Resolve with a very sporadic uptime. The other node is vastly undertuned with both Zevrim's Resilience and Illhoof's Design providing basically intangible benefit, if not being even detrimental in the case of the latter.

The Soul Harvester Hero tree takes a different approach, with a theme-centered around shard cost reduction for spenders, direct damage increase, and additional damage over time in the form of Soul Anathema.

The strong synergy with Nightfall through Necrolyte Teachings, Mantle of the Harvester and Sataiel's Ambition creates a playstyle that is fast, guarantees consistent procs that offer high burst damage single target and still offers a major burst window every minute, tied in this case to Dark Harvest, after hitting 5 Unstable Afflictions on the target.

While in AoE it does not offer the same level of passive prowess Hellcaller provides, its synergy with Cunning Crueltyand generally stronger spenders help mitigate the disparity.

In terms of defensive and utility options, again few improvements in terms of Gorebound Fortitude offering Soulburn Healthstones at no additional shard cost, and Friends In Dark Places giving an additional 25% to the baseline absorb value of Dark Pact. Eternal Servitude on the other hand enables a more frequent pet swapping/resummoning as a quality-of-life change, with the alternative of an improved combat res in Gorefiend's Resolve similar to other classes.

Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses for Affliction Warlock in Midnight are the following:

• Warlock Affliction 12.0 Class Set 2pc — Unstable Affliction and Seed of Corruption damage increased by 10%.
• Warlock Affliction 12.0 Class Set 4pc — Agony starts at 2 additional stacks, and its damage is increased by 20%.

Both set bonuses offer a talent-agnostic passive damage increase, as intended in their design, with the 2 pieces bonus offering a larger damage increase, being tied to both spenders.

4 pieces bonus, coupled with Sudden Onset enable Agony application to start already at 5 out of the 6 new maximum stacks, and should provide a noticeable damage increase specifically in dungeons.

If tuned following the general goal of providing between 10 to 15% increase with the 2 and 4 pieces together, Affliction tier set has a wide practicality, and should perform well in any scenarios, especially multitarget where the damage increase of Agony will be more relevant.