Affliction Warlock DPS Guide — 12.0.7

Patch 12.0.7 release brings new content to players in the form of a new Raid, new activities with Darkspear Dash and Showdown Areas, and last but not least a new power system. For more information on what is coming in Patch 12.0.7 visit our dedicated Patch Hub.

New Patch Content

Patch 12.0.7 Overview

Check out our 12.0.7 Patch Hub for all the information you may need on new content, new gameplay systems, and more!

Midnight Patch 12.0.7 Guide

Patch 12.0.7 focus on new player content and features no direct changes to Affliction Warlock. However the introduction of Sporefused Gear from the new Raid, along with the Omnium Folio affect BiS recommendations, both of which you can find in the links below.

Combat Information

Omnium Folio and Sporefused Gear

Check out how the Omnium Folio system and Sporefused Gear from the Rotmire raid affect Affliction choices in Patch 12.0.7 across our Builds and Gear pages.

Builds and TalentsGear

Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes

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2.3.

Patch 12.0.5 Changes

Beside bug-fixes, Affliction Warlocks did not receive any class tuning since the beginning of the Season 1.

However, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!

• The Voidforge Unlocks!
  The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our Gear page.
• Void Assaults are Unleashed
  Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
• Disrupt Ritual Sites
  Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.

Midnight Class Tuning

When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available; these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on March 24.

Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas available the week of March 31.For these two passes we err on the side of caution with the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.

The most prominent feature of the expansion are the Apex talents which will be gradually available during leveling. These points exist separate from the tree and have to be invested sequentially in order to unlock the later points.

1. Shadow of Nathreza
2. Shadow of Nathreza
3. Shadow of Nathreza

These talents mostly provide background power and do not affect the rotation itself. However, they are largely responsible for Affliction's ability to hard swap targets in a short timeframe, and thus help round up the spec's toolkit.

• Hero Talents received minor baseline changes and an addition of a fourth column.
  
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  2.6.1.

  Hellcaller

  • Seeds of Their Demise was changed to support Shard Instability talent
  • New Talent: Through the Felvine increase the damage of baseline shard spenders, doubled during Malevolence
  • New Talent: Devil Fruit Wither has a chance to grant Malevolence
  • New Talent: Alzzin's Iniquity Malevolence grants additional Haste and casting the ability adds more Wither stacks

  
  

  2.6.2.

  Soul Harvester

  • Shadow of Death now triggers from Dark Harvest since Soul Rot has been deprecated
  • New Talent: Manifested Avarice each Succulent Soul consumed has a chance to trigger Soul Swipe for additional damage on all targets within 10 yards
  • New Talent: Shared Vessel increase Mastery by a percentage which is doubled when Demonic Soul triggers
  • New Talent: Eternal Hunger increases duration and damage of Manifested Avarice
• Substantial changes happened to core/rotational Affliction Warlock spells.
  
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  • Unstable Affliction is the baseline single target shard spender
  • Malefic Rapture has been removed
  • Soul Rot, Vile Taint and Phantom Singularity have been removed as a consequence
  • Dark Harvest is a new 1 minute cooldown that deals damage on every target affected by at least 1 baseline DoT effect
  • Agony now has a maximum of 6 stacks and with Sudden Onset the ramp time has been substantially lowered
  • To apply more than 1 Agony per cast, Shared Agony has been introduced
  • Summon Darkglare is a single target spell baseline that function as a damage amplification, and now has supporting talents such as Malefic Grasp and Nether Plating
  • Seed of Corruption is the main AoE shard spender and has received supporting talents to increase its output in the likes of Sow the Seeds, Patient Zero and Nocturnal Yield
  • Death's Embrace damage bonus has been quadrupled
• Few noteworthy changes also happened to Warlockutility spells.
  
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  • Curse of Tongues and Curse of Exhaustion are now separate talents
  • Foul Mouth has been added, allowing every curse to also affect enemies around 10 yards of the main target
  • Blights were introduced, offering a more powerful version of Curses, with a shorter duration and cooldown associated
  • Howl of Terror is now a choice node with Shadowfury and has a new supporting talent in Oppressive Darkness, reducing its cooldown and affecting up to 10 targets
  • Health Funnel has been removed and its healing has been added to Drain Life with Infernal Beneficiary