Affliction Warlock DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (Season 1)
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Affliction Warlock in World of Warcraft — The War Within (Season 1). We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Affliction Warlock talents.
Talent Cheat Sheets for Affliction Warlock
With the introduction of the new talent system and the ability to freely change points and share/import builds free of consumables costs. At the same time, out of combat, it is highly advised to adapt the build based on the type of situation at hand.
Best Talents for Affliction Warlock
Single-Target Talents for Affliction Warlock
To import the build directly ingame, click on the export button at the bottom of the calculator
Best AoE/Mythic+ Soul Harvester Talents for Affliction Warlock
Setup oriented towards scenarios that include multitarget but also require a certain degree of priority/single target damage, such as dungeon runs.
To import the build directly ingame, click on the export button at the bottom of the calculator
Best AoE/Mythic+ Hellcaller Talents for Affliction Warlock
A variant centered around maximising AoE, playing as Hellcaller.
To import the build directly ingame, click on the export button at the bottom of the calculator
Best Delves Talents for Affliction Warlock
Hero talents do not make much of a difference, but Soul Harvester offers better single target and defensives overall. Demonic Circle and Shadowfury are flexible points that can be reallocated on Amplify Curse nodes if needed.
Raiding
Do note that the builds suggested above do not account for specific fights in the current raid tier; that said, we have a dedicated page that covers boss-by-boss talent recommendations, which you can find linked below.
Mythic+
For specific Mythic+ advice, which typically involves having a set-up that can perform both in single target *and* AoE, this set-up can also be influenced by affixes and other things like party composition and pull layout. Check out our dedicated M+ page below.
How To Use Affliction Warlock Talents
Since several talent choices affect your gameplay, we recommend reading our rotation page linked below to find out how to adapt your playstyle and priority based on your selected talents.
Picking Warlock Class Talents
Other than a handful of DPS increase nodes, the path progression is generally flexible and allows one to opt in or out of specific utilities that may not be relevant in a specific situation. The following sections will highlight the key talents while suggesting what to pick to progress down the tree.
For detailed information about each talent, follow the link to the spell Summary page:
PvP Talents (War Mode)
Under our Talents section, there is the option to enter "War Mode." Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world;
- 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level;
- 10% more experience gained while leveling;
- Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, you should enable the feature. In most situations, this will allow maximum returns despite the risks. You will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility to be "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
Affliction Warlock War Mode Talents
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Affliction Warlock-specific PvP talents.
Warlock generic PvP Talents
- Essence Drain stacks a damage reduction effect on enemies that are damaged by your Drain Life. You can reduce their damage by up to 25%, which greatly increases your ability to survive and sustain.
- Bonds of Fel allows to burst targets by dragging them away from the marked location.
- Gateway Mastery increases your gateway's range by 20 yards and reduces the duration of the debuff placed on players using it by 15 seconds, making it a good choice when increased mobility is needed.
- Nether Ward summons a shield lasting 3 seconds and reflecting all harmful spells targeted at you.
- Call Observer is only relevant when dealing with a lot of casting mobs.
Affliction Warlock PvP Talents
- Rampant Afflictions increase the target limit for Unstable Affliction to 3.
- Call Observer guards a location for 20 seconds; any enemies that cast spells in the radius will take up to 5% of maximum Health as damage. This has a lot more limited use but can have absurd value in specific situations.
- Rot and Decay can be handy in situations with high sustained damage intake. Combining this with Essence Drain dramatically increases your survivability and sustainability and opens many doors for soloing difficult content.
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated talents recommendation for Season 1.
- 26 Aug. 2024: Added a Delve talents reccomendation.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated recommendations to feature Hero Trees.
- 01 Aug. 2024: Added a Oblivion-less talent variants.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Talents updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated talents for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed talents for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated talents for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Updated talents for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Warlock Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Motoko, Warlock main since The Burning Crusade, co-admin in the Warlock Discord, and theorycrafter and contributor for LockOneStopShop.
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