Affliction Warlock DPS Mythic+ Tips — Season 4

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 Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 4 page below.

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, coupled with the primary spender that works both in single-target and multi-target, make it a versatile choice with a unique toolkit comprised of Healthstones, Soulstones, skip-enabling Demonic Gateway, AoE crowd control abilities such as Shadowfury and Howl of Terror, and uncapped AoE spells.

Affliction Warlock might not have the best single target or burst. However, the aoe potential and the ability to funnel priority damage are still present.

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.
• Maximise 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.
• Unstable Affliction is also worth casting in any situation. With few targets, the damage is relevant and is generally buffed by Haunt. With increasing targets, it still retains value by generating shards on dying targets, making it useful in any practical situation.
• 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. You should not prioritize Shadow Embrace stacks past 1-2 targets. The 3rd and 4th targets are optional and should be considered a low-priority optimization whenever you can spend free globals with filler (ideally Drain Soul for easier upkeep).

1. Pre-cast Seed of Corruption.
2. Cast Vile Taint to apply multiple Agony.
3. Apply Unstable Affliction on the primary target.
4. Cast Siphon Life up to 5 targets.
5. Cast Haunt on the primary target if talented.
6. Cast Soul Rot.
7. Cast Summon Darkglare.
8. Cast 3 Malefic Raptures.
9. Cast as many Seed of Corruption as possible.
10. Cast Malefic Rapture on Tormented Crescendo procs.
11. Proceed to refresh DoTs as they fall off.

1. Pre-cast Seed of Corruption.
2. Cast Vile Taint to apply multiple Agony.
3. Apply Unstable Affliction on the primary target.
4. Cast Siphon Life only on the primary target.
5. Cast Haunt on the primary target if talented.
6. Cast Soul Rot if talented.
7. Cast Summon Darkglare.
8. Cast as many Seed of Corruption as possible.
9. Proceed to refresh DoTs as they fall off.

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.
• Fear and Banish are both spammable crowd control abilities that can interrupt a cast in a pinch or temporarily remove a target from combat.

Below are the recommended talents for Mythic+. There is a certain degree of flexibility when progressing down the path to accommodate preferences or to meet specific requirements, as discussed further.

Generally, all output nodes are hard to give up. Still, fortunately, there are enough points to offer the choice of whichever utility options to pick instead.

• Demonic Inspiration;
• Wrathful Minion;
• Socrethar's Guile;
• Sargerei Technique;
• Soul Conduit;
• Grimoire of Synergy;
• Summon Soulkeeper or Inquisitor's Gaze.

Some other utility nodes are also too good to pass up, especially in the context of dungeons:

• Fel Domination;
• Mortal Coil;
• Dark Pact especially on 45s cooldown;
• Demonic Gateway to skip areas of the dungeon;
• Shadowfury as one of the few AoE stuns.

Due to a lot of AoE pulls throughout a dungeon run, leaning towards cleave and AoE is generally the safer choice, even in the case of a Tyrannical Week.

• Talents supporting Seed of Corruption such as Sow the Seeds and become very desirable;
• Similarly, Vile Taint allows for multiple Agonies applications in a single gcd;
• Drain Soul allows to gain easy shards off dying targets;
• Siphon Life offers yet another damage multiplier for Summon Darkglare, and helps scaling damage multi-target when talenting Grim Reach;
• Grim Reach offers incredible damage as it currently is a flat 50% damage increase on Summon Darkglare based on the number of damage over time on the main target, while also affecting the main target;
• Wrath of Consumption offers a passive damage increase with high uptime across a dungeon run.
• Soul Rot is always taken since it is pivotal to the tier-set bonuses.

• Soul Flame points can be swapped for Pandemic Invocation in the need of more single target damage or on Sacrolash's Dark Strike for a bit more AoE;
• Doom Blossom should be swapped to Dread Touch during Tyrannical weeks.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste to 30%;
3. Critical Strike/Mastery;
4. Versatility.

Worth mentioning that dropping Mastery too low will hamper the single target output in comparison, so generally seeking a balance between the stats offers a more well rounded approach.

Simming item upgrades remains the preferable approach instead of relying on stats blindly.

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.