Affliction Warlock DPS Mythic+ Tips — 12.0.5

Mythic+ has become a large part of the World of Warcraft endgame. Still, the sheer number of different variables has overwhelmed many players. The group composition, weekly affixes, the item level of the group, the keystone level, and the group's experience and comfort level are just several factors that will influence how you approach each dungeon. The purpose of this page is to prepare you for the key differences that set Mythic+ apart from the typical World of Warcraft endgame experience, including talents and rotational anomalies that may not be obvious at first glance.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Midnight Mythic+ page below, or check out our Mythic+ Tier List if you're curious about the current Mythic+ Meta!

Affliction Warlocks are a solid ranged DPS spec, offering sustained damage with frequent burn cycles. While the spec lacks immunity, the sound mitigation and self-heal make it a versatile choice with a unique toolkit comprised of Healthstones, Soulstones, Curses, skip-enabling Demonic Gateway, AoE crowd control abilities such as Shadowfury and Howl of Terror.

While both single and multi-target rotations do not differ substantially from the standard priority outlined in Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page there are a few points worth noting:

• Due to the nature of pulls, with constantly dying targets, Affliction can use Soul Shard sniping using both Unstable Affliction and Drain Soul when talented at collecting additional Soul Shards and squeezing extra damage throughout a full run.
• Maximize cooldown efficiency, aiming for the highest number of casts while not wasting activation on pulls about to die. In that situation, getting to 5 shards and starting the next pull with max resources is better.
• Haunt when talented, is always worth casting in any situation and is better cast on targets affected by Unstable Affliction.
• Agony's shard generation has diminishing return past 4 targets, which means it is crucial to have it on up to 4 targets. Past that value, the damage gain is still worth the global cooldown. However, you should not prioritize it above spending shards or preparing/using cooldowns.

While damage is the more significant reason to bring an Affliction Warlock, the class itself offers a noticeable amount of crowd control and various supporting abilities:

• Recently reintroduced, the Curses can offer some advantages against specific dangerous enemies: Curse of Tongues can reduce the group's interrupt requirements. At the same time, Curse of Weakness alleviates the incoming damage on the tank from auto attacks. Last but not least, Curse of Exhaustion can slow targets when kiting is required.
• Healthstones have a 1-minute cooldown and heal for 25% of max health, allowing for an emergency heal for each player.
• Soulstones offer a combat resurrection that you can use reactively and preemptively in the case of a death run.
• Demonic Gateway offers the unique ability to skip certain parts of the map, depending on the dungeon in question, avoiding specific pulls.
• Shadowfury helps alleviate pressure on the tank during big pulls as it is a 3-second AoE stun.
• Howl of Terror in its current iteration is especially strong as a short cooldown aoe interrupt when talenting into Oppressive Darkness.
• Fear and Banish are both spammable crowd control abilities that can interrupt a cast in a pinch or temporarily remove a target from combat.

TipsDo Not Underestimate Curses!

With the introduction of Foul Mouth Curses are now easier than ever to utilise in most pulls and situations, and knowing which one to use in what scenario can alleviate pressure on the group.

• Curse of Tongues reduces cast speed and work on any ability that can be interrupted
• Curse of Weakness delays the time between melee attacks and should be used when pulls are mostly comprised of melee mobs
• Curse of the Satyr is unique to Hellcaller and combines the above two curses
• Curse of Exhaustion is a movement speed slow, helpful for kiting but otherwise more situational

FAQHow to Best Use Blights?

Blights are much stronger version of Curses, at the expense of being tied to a 2 minutes cooldown and lasting only 12 seconds. As such they should be treated as a defensive cooldown for the party, in order to alleviate any incoming damage, if applicable. Each Blight follows the same rules as their correspective Curse:

• Blight of Weakness works on any attacks, reducing the frequency and critical strike chance
• Blight of Tongues works on any cast that can be interrupted

The Felhunter offers comparable single-target damage and an interrupt or purge, but consider swapping to Imp if you need a dispel.

If you are using Grimoire of Sacrifice, we recommend sacrificing the Felhunter to provide your group with an extra interrupt. Suppose you need an extra cooldown to survive. In that case, you can also sacrifice a Voidwalker before a difficult boss to access the Shadow Bulwark cooldown.

When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots using the Patchwerk option for raids and single-target. Patchwerk with 4-5 targets or Hectic Add Cleave for an educated guess on multi-target performance in Dungeons. Usually, trinkets that proc stats are more versatile and better performers than single-target spell damage procs unless overtuned.

You can also get a quick overview of suitable Mythic+ Trinkets on our Gearing page. Specifically the Simulation chart for multi-target scenarios.