Affliction Warlock PvP Talents and Builds (The War Within Pre-Patch)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as an Affliction Warlock and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Affliction Warlock PvP Guide.
Talent Choices for Affliction Warlocks
This page will be updated for the pre-patch shortly after launch.
Talent Build for Affliction Warlocks in PvP
This is the standard build for Affliction Warlocks in PvP, which can be used as a general setup.
- This build takes several talents which increase the damage dealt by
Drain Soul while also taking talents that synergize and buff your
Drain Life.
- The Warlock talent tree has plenty of defensive talents, such as
Dark Pact, which helps make Warlocks tankier than they have been in the past.
- On the Affliction tree,
Tormented Crescendo allows for instant
Malefic Rapture casts to have great sustained damage from your DoT effects as well as good single-target damage.
- Additionally,
Dark Harvest allows you to cast
Soul Rot to utilise
Drain Life's healing for additional survivability.
PvP Talents for Affliction Warlocks
You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. The two mandatory choices are the most essential, with the third being switched out depending on the matchup.
Mandatory PvP Talents
Rot and Decay causes your
Shadow Bolt,
Drain Life and
Drain Soul abilities to extend the duration of your DoTs on the target.
This talent helps to reduce the globals required to maintain your DoT
effects.
Jinx causes your curse abilities to cost a Soul Shard, but also
applies
Corruption and
Agony. This talent is mandatory to
help lower the amount of globals you need to maintain your DoT effects.
Situational PvP Talents
Oblivion is a new talent in Patch 10.1.5, which deals a massive amount of damage
over 3 seconds, depending on how many DoTs you have up. This is a good single-target burst
talent that can be taken.
Rampant Afflictions is another mandatory PvP talent. This makes it
so
Unstable Affliction can be used on up to 3 targets. Because your
win condition will be to rot the enemy team with your AoE pressure, this is a
must-have talent to play. For 2v2, this can be skipped depending on the matchup.
Impish Instincts reduces the cooldown of your
Demonic Circle: Teleport by 3 seconds
when you take Physical damage with an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. This in synergy with
Abyss Walker
makes this PvP talent a very good pick against melee teams who target you.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Prepatch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Dragonflgiht Patch 10.1.5.
- 09 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 16 Mar. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 30 Jul. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 02 Mar. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands 9.2.
- 17 Nov. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands 9.1.5.
- 06 Jul. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands 9.1.
- 30 Mar. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands 9.0.5.
- 08 Jan. 2021: Updated for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
This guide is written and maintained by Chanimal, BlizzCon Champion Warlock with Rank 1 titles since 2011, competing in AWC. He streams Warlock PvP daily on Twitch, with highlights on YouTube.
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