PvE Affliction Warlock Rotations & Cooldowns

PvE Affliction Warlock Rotations & Cooldowns

In Mists of Pandaria Classic, an Affliction Warlock has multiple DoTs and cooldowns to juggle, and you’ll need to know exactly how to do that to maximize your DPS. While your gear and build are important, the most vital thing for any World of Warcraft character is knowing which buttons to push and when!

Spell Priority

Here is your optimal rotation as an Affliction Warlock. In the sections below, we’ll cover some of the build’s mechanics in greater detail, including Soul Shards, snapshotting, your demon pets, and important cooldowns.

  1. Always have your observer icon Observer pet active and attacking (Summon Observer).
  2. Cast Curse of the Elements to apply and maintain it if you are responsible for this debuff.
  3. Cast Agony, Corruption and Unstable Affliction to apply and maintain their DoTs, prioritizing in that order.
    • Snapshotting is an important part of optimizing your DPS as an Affliction Warlock. It involves lining up your DoT applications with your buffs to maximize their damage. See the Snapshotting section below for more about how this works.
    • You can use Soulburn and Soul Swap twice on the same target to reapply your DoTs all at once if you have the Soul Shards to spare. You should always do this when your target is below 20% health. It can also be useful for snapshotting.
  4. Cast Haunt to apply and maintain the DoT under any of the following circumstances:
    • You have four Soul Shards available and don’t need to spend one on Soulburn.
    • You have Dark Soul: Misery or another strong buff/proc up for snapshotting.
    • You won’t need to refresh your DoTs, use Life Tap, perform crowd control, or do anything else that will delay your DPS while the debuff is active.
  5. Cast Soulburn and Soul Swap to spread your DoTs to additional targets.
  6. Cast Fel Flame if you need to move.
  7. Cast Seed of Corruption on a target with your DoTs if fighting 6 or more enemies.
  8. Cast Drain Soul if your target is below 20% health.
  9. Cast Malefic Grasp otherwise.
affliction warlock core abilities window

Snapshotting

The damage that each tick of your DoTs deals is based on your character’s stats at the time the DoT was applied. Thanks to your Pandemic passive effect, you can refresh your DoTs as early as halfway through their duration without wasting any of their existing duration. This gives you a lot of freedom to refresh your DoTs while under the effects of temporary buffs, a method that is known as snapshotting. Effective snapshotting will result in higher DPS than if you just refresh your DoTs right before their expiration every time.

Soulburn and Soul Swap can be used twice on the same target to reapply all of your DoTs, which can be useful for snapshotting. This will allow you to quickly capture a powerful buff or proc one last time before it expires. WeakAuras or other addons can help you keep track of both your DoTs and your buffs so you know the best time to refresh. You don’t want to let your DoTs fall off, but you do want to find the best moment to refresh them.

Soul Shards

Soul Shards are a secondary resource that is unique to Warlocks, similar to Combo Points for Rogues or Holy Power for Paladins. You can store up to 4 Soul Shards at a time. Soul Shards are generated by Corruption (via Nightfall) and Drain Soul (which gives extra shards if the target dies). They are spent on Haunt and Soulburn. You never want to leave your Soul Shards capped at 4 as you will wind up wasting any that would otherwise proc via Nightfall.

Demon Pets

For Affliction Warlocks, Summon Observer will provide the optimal DPS. This is the upgraded version of Summon Felhunter that you gain from the Grimoire of Supremacy talent. You’ll also use Summon Abyssal or Summon Terrorguard as DPS cooldowns. We cover those in the cooldowns section above.

Other demon pets are available and can offer some niche utility when needed, but otherwise you should stick with the Observer pet for dealing damage.

Standard Demons

Grimoire of Supremacy Demons

Important Cooldowns

In addition to your core rotation spells, you have a number of abilities with longer cooldowns that you’ll want to utilize in opportune moments.

Damage Cooldowns

  • Dark Soul: Misery
    This is your main DPS buff as an Affliction Warlock, granting 30% haste for 20 seconds on a 2-minute cooldown. Use it as often as possible, making sure to snapshot your DoTs while it’s up and before it expires.
  • Summon Doomguard/Summon Terrorguard (Talent)
    Your other big DPS cooldown, which shares its long 10-minute CD with your other big summon below. This one hits very hard and should be used for single-target damage. He does more damage when the target is below 20% health. You’ll want to cast this right before Bloodlust so it can benefit from the buff.
  • Summon Infernal/Summon Abyssal (Talent)
    This demon summon shares its long 10-minute CD with your other big summon above. Use this guy when you are fighting more than 7 targets; otherwise the Doomguard/Terrorguard will do more damage. Cast it right before Bloodlust so it can get the buff when it goes out.
  • Mannoroth’s Fury (Talent)
    This talent lets you dish out some big AoE damage once every minute. Use it with Seed of Corruption and cackle as your enemies explode.

Defensive Cooldowns

  • Dark Bargain (Talent)
    Your version of a Pally bubble, but with a big downside. If you use this to absorb massive damage, be prepared with some other defensives or heals, because you’re going to take half of that damage as a DoT once it expires.
  • Dark Regeneration (Talent)
    A self-heal for you and your demon pet on a 2-minute cooldown that offers a bonus of increasing the healing you received for the next 12 seconds.
  • Mortal Coil (Talent)
    You have other Fear abilities, so if you use this talent, you’ll usually be using it for the 15% health it restores to you on a 45 second cooldown.
  • Sacrificial Pact (Talent)
    Your demon gives up 25% of its health and you gain a nice big absorption shield equal to 100% of its health. Line this up ahead of a big damage spike and you’ll be good to go. With a 20 second duration and 1-minute cooldown you can have pretty good uptime on this one.
  • Twilight Ward
    If there’s Shadow or Holy damage on a fight, you can mitigate some of it with this buff. Its cooldown and duration are both 30 seconds, so you can maintain very good uptime on this if needed.
  • Unending Resolve
    Your basic damage reduction cooldown, which can be made even stronger with glyphs. Glyph of Unending Resolve will let you use it more often, but at a reduced effect, so if a fight has regular damage spikes that happen more than every 3 minutes you can choose to use that. Glyph of Eternal Resolve further reduces the effect but makes the ability passive, allowing you to better handle fights with constant ticking damage. If you’re not using the passive glyph, remember to use this ability often to get the most out of it.

Mana Cooldowns

  • Life Tap
    When your mana gets low, you can tap into your health to fill it back up. Be careful when and how you use this. Avoid using it if it will make your health dangerously low or if a big damage spike is about to go out. You should also plan it around your DPS rotation so you don’t miss out on damage during crucial snapshotting windows.

Utility Spells

Affliction Warlocks have access to a variety of useful spells that are also worth mentioning.

Heals

Crowd Control

Movement

Buffs

Debuffs

Dispels

Revive

 

About the Author

Luxrah

I've been playing World of Warcraft on and off since vanilla, usually as a healer or caster and often as a guild leader. I play both retail and classic. I also love RPGs, sandboxes, and sims.
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