Affliction Warlock PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Season 1

The opener refers to your team's opening sequence of abilities as soon as you get out of the gates and enter combat. The main goal in the opener as an Affliction Warlock is to maintain max distance while applying your DoT effects.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Cast Demonic Gateway from your pillar to another part of the map.
2. Use Demonic Circle and place it behind a pillar close to your Demonic Gateway.
3. Apply Curse of Tongues to casters and healers if you have Soul Shards.
4. Apply Curse of Exhaustion to melee if you have Soul Shards.
5. Apply and maintain Corruption and Agony on all enemies.
   • Agony is an important source of damage and spread pressure.
   • It is very important to keep it active on all enemies, including pets, at all times because it generates Soul Shards.
6. Cast Haunt on your primary target.

The best way to generate pressure and create win conditions is to maximize your spread damage output. It is important to note that you should be focusing on single target as this build while trying to maintain Corruption and Agony on other targets. With that said, the following is how you will play out your burst window.

1. Apply Curse of Tongues to casters and healers if you have Soul Shards.
2. Apply Curse of Exhaustion to melee if you have Soul Shards.
3. Apply Corruption to all targets.
4. Apply Agony to all targets.
5. Cast Haunt on kill target.
6. Cast Unstable Affliction to kill target until out of Soul Shards
7. Use Summon Darkglare.
8. Cast Dark Harvest.
9. Cast Shadow Bolt if you have a Nightfall proc.
10. Cast Shadow Bolt as a filler.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Apply Curse of Tongues to casters and healers if you have Soul Shards.
2. Apply Curse of Exhaustion to melee if you have Soul Shards.
3. Maintain Agony on all enemies.
   • Never let this fall off any enemies at any point of the Arena match.
   • Additionally, Agony stacks up to 18 and deals less damage at low stacks if it is reapplied. Maintaining it will keep it at 18 stacks!
4. Maintain Corruption on all enemies.
5. Cast Haunt on kill target.
6. Cast Unstable Affliction to kill target until out of Soul Shards
7. Cast Dark Harvest.
8. Cast Shadow Bolt if you have a Nightfall proc.
9. Cast Shadow Bolt as a filler.

Dark Pact is a relatively short cooldown at 45 seconds if you are talented into Frequent Donor. As a result, since it also has a duration of 20 seconds, this can be used whenever you are attacked by enemies.

In general, however, it is good practice to use this when you are not able to use Demonic Circle or are in a stun.

Unending Resolve is your biggest defensive cooldown, providing 40% damage reduction as well as immunity to interrupts. This should be used when you are unable to create distance from enemies attacking you and your healer is in a CC chain.

Healthstone in combination with Soulburn is an excellent defensive cooldown that will heal you as well as increase your maximum health for a short period. This is excellent to use when you are low and your healer is in a CC chain.

Demonic Circle: Teleport is the primary mobility spell available to Affliction Warlocks. This should be used on cooldown when attacked to activate the Abyss Walker talent.

In addition, if used with Soulburn, this will give you a short free window where you cannot be slowed.

Soul Rip is a situational PvP talent, which is especially good against set up comps or double melee. This should be used any time offensive cooldowns are used by the enemy.

Curse of Exhaustion is useful against enemies as it acts as a 50% snare in PvP. This is helpful to kite, create space, or slow down enemies from chasing you or your teammates.

Curse of Tongues is one of the best spells in PvP. This spell will reduce the enemy's casting speed, but also reduces their haste (global cooldown). As such, this should always be used against any caster. While useful against healers, sometimes there is not enough globals to maintain.

Curse of Weakness is relatively weak against melee classes, and should not be used. However, against Marksmanship Hunters, this curse reduces their attack speed and therefore makes their spells such as Aimed Shot slower. This is a niche use case, but is very helpful in reducing damage output.