• Introduction
• Gear and enchants
• Talents
• Glyphs
• Stats and Reforging
• Gems
• Professions and Consumables
• Abilities
• Rotation
• Races
• Macros
• Video Guide
Welcome to the Warlock guide for the Affliction spec in Mists of Pandaria
This guide is a pre-raid list of what you need to know coming into the expansion and how to handle the first tier of raiding with gearing, gemming and reforging. Be aware that things can very well change on a day to day basis, and i will try to keep it as updated as possible. Mistakes do happen, so take everything with a grant of salt, and as a guideline for yourself.
Right now affliction will be our strongest raiding spec with a gap of nearly 8k~ DPS down to the second best, that means we want to focus on Affliction in the start of the expansion. All specs are viable and fun to play so dont worry, Blizzard will tune them sooner or later...
Gear and enchants
5 Man dungeon gear list
Better alternative trinket option: Relic of Yu'lon from Darkmoon Faire
BIS T14 HC gear list
*NOTE* The Loshan, Terror Incarnate becomes BIS weapon once you obtain both the 550 intellect gem and the extra socket for a 320 mastery gem. Until then the HC elite regail dagger is BIS.
Picture with calculations of the weapons:
http://i.imgur.com/aujnR.png
Dark Regeneration – Instant 30% of maximum health for you and your pet plus 25% increased healing taken over 12 seconds. A very good talent for a survival phase with damage taken over a short period of time, but not superior on fights with steady damage taken.
Soul Leech – The passive healing talent for our main attacks and will most likely be the used talent for Affliction on the fights to help out healers.
Harvest Life – AOE Drain Life, good for short duration AOE fights, as seed of corruption takes time to really do damage. If you need to help AOE, and Seed of Corruption aren’t enough, pick this to help out (Rain
When-to-use guidelines:
Howl of Terror – AOE Fear, nothing much to say
Mortal Coil – Deathcoil with a 15% heal we can use in PVE
Shadowfury – AOE stun, just as we know it
When-to-use guidelines:
Soul Link – No longer reduces damage taken by 20% onto the pet. It now shares all damage and healing you and your pet takes, but also reduces your pet’s health by 50%. Risky to use in many situations because if your pet takes damage, so will you.
Sacrificial Pact – A very solid absorb shield, which sacrifices half of your pets health to give a 200% shield of the sacrificed health. This talent can even be used in certain situations without a pet as you will lose half your health for 200% of the lost health turning into a shield.
Dark Bargain – Absorbs all damage for 8 seconds and when the shield fades you take 50% of the damage over 8 seconds. Risky if you take a lot of damage and suddenly will get bursted down when the absorb fades.
When-to-use guidelines:
' With Grimoire of Sacrifice
| #1 Dark Bargain |
| Can be used in many situations if you plan ahead, as it still provide the 50% reduction of the damage you take. |
| #2 Sacrificial Pact |
| With no pet it’s not as good and I don’t like it as much, but its still useable on fights where you can plan ahead and take the 50% health loss to get a bigshield before some known damage taken will occour. |
| #3 Soul Link |
| Gives you 20% more health when used with Grimore of Sacrifice |
‘Without Grimiore of Sacrifice I would recommend to take Sacrificial Pact
Blood Fear – Instant fear for 10% of your health and adds a 10 seconds CD.
Burning Rush – 4% of maximum health per second for 50% movement speed.
Unbound Will – Removes all magic and impairing effects
When-to-use guidelines:
| #1 Burning Rush |
| Useful on some movement fights where you need to reach a position within a certain timeframe and for general movement fights. |
| #2 Unbound Will |
Dispels magic effects, which can occur on bosses in Mists of Pandaria, decent talent on some fights with magic
debuffs involved. |
| #3 Blood Fear |
| Avoiding hard casting fear, which can be good for 5 mans and any bosses with CC’ing adds. |
Grimoire of Supremacy – 20% more damage on our pets and they turn into different versions
Grimoire of Service – Summons another pet for 20 seconds
Grimoire of Sacrifice – Sacrifices our pet to increase our single target damaging spells
When-to-use guidelines:
| #1 Sacrifice |
| Single target fights: The top damage spell to use for Affliction as of right now on single target fights |
| #2 Supremacy: Observer |
Heavy Multidotting Fights: Second best to use on single target fights, but also the best for fights you won’t have time
to cast much Malefic Grasps on (often at around +3 targets) you would use this over Sacrifice. |
| #3 Service: Succubus |
Important Burst Fights: The worst for affliction, but useable on short burst duration fights (20~seconds) like we
know from Burning Tendons in Dragon Soul. |
Archimonde’s Vengeance – Passive reflect of damage and a 25% damage reflect for 8 seconds
Kil'jaeden's Cunning – You can move while casting, but cast time or channel period will increase with 50%. On use you can remove this effect and freely cast for 6 seconds.
Mannoroth’s Fury – 500% AOE
When-to-use guidelines:
| #1 Archimonde’s Vengeance |
Little, but extra damage on fights you take damage on. Useable 25% reflect on big bursts from a boss, can give
noteable damage reflects and worth using on any fight with damage taken on. |
| #2 Kil'jaeden's Cunning |
As soon as you have a movement fight, you most likely want to grap this talent, it can be hard to calculate the
extra damage of the Archimondes Vengeance versus this talent in raw DPS, but if you have to move a few times
during a fight it will be worth it very fast |
| #3 Mannoroth’s Fury |
| 500% AOE sounds good, but there is barely any AOE fights and when you AOE adds are very often clumped up within the AOE range. |
The average single target fight talent picking as Affliction would look like this
Must Have:
[Glyph of Soul Shards]
Single target fight suggestion:
[Glyph of Soul Shards]
[Glyph of Siphon Life]
[Glyph of Soulstone]
Multi dotting fight suggestion:
[Glyph of Soul Shards]
[Glyph of Siphon Life]
[Glyph of Soul Swap]
*Guideline for stats - Updated 10-12-2012
Starter gear stat priority
*Simulate your own character to get the best results
Intellect > Haste 4717 raiting (extra Corruption tick) > Mastery > Haste > Crit
15% hit is recommended, so try aiming towards achieveing it. Going below the hit cap as affliction is not as bad as other specs though.
Once you have better gear, you should aim towards the BIS scale factors
Here is the T14H Scale Factors (BIS)
Final stats and the haste cap you will obtain with BIS gear should look like15% Hit (5100 raiting)
15.51% Haste (6590 raiting) - Obtaining an extra UA and Agony tick vs the 4717 one. The exact cap is 6637 Haste raiting...
8152 Mastery
‘ It’s always best to use Simulationcraft to simulate your own character with Scale Factor for stats, as it might differ for your gear what stats to aim for at first.
You want to use these values to then reforge your character accordingly, using tools like wowreforge.com or simple in game addons such as ReforgeLite
Gems changed a little in Mists of Pandaria, they now give you twice as much secondary stat (mastery, haste, crit, hit etc) against intellect.
Example: 320 Mastery vs. 160 Intellect
We have to be sure to check with scale factors + set bonuses before we figure out the best combinations of gemming.
This part is a bit more complicated, because simulating scale factors can be really hard as it depends on many factors, and to give an example of the BIS dungeon set, from the results i would get was
160 intellect x 3,43 scale factor = 548,8 value
320 mastery x 1,69 scale factor = 540,8 value
With the +/- interference of bad results, we can in no way say which is superior to the other, as sometimes you can simulate the values differently.
Though once you come closer to the BIS gear from the HC raiding, you will start to shift towards these values
Mastery / Hit > Intellect > Haste > Crit for gems
| STAT |
SCALE |
GEM |
VALUE |
|
| INT |
4.88 |
160 |
= 780,8 |
|
| MASTERY |
2,67 |
320 |
= 854,4 |
|
| HASTE |
2,23 |
320 |
= 713,6 |
|
| CRIT |
1,95 |
320 |
= 624 |
|
BIS T14 HC GEAR GEMMING
As you can see, you want to calculate with the set bonus of the gem slot what gem you should equip. Most times you want to go for 320 mastery gems above the 160 intellect gems. Hit gems are also good until you reach the hit cap.
OBS! If you want somewhat accurate results, always simulate your own character and do the math for the values, and if you do not care that much, use the BIS values as you are aiming towards that gear list anyway.
| Blacksmithing |
320 intellect or 640 secondary stats |
| Tailoring |
320 intellect on average~ |
| Leatherworking |
320 intellect |
| Engineering |
~320 intellect on average but can be synced with cooldowns |
| Jewelcrafting |
320 intellect or 320 secondary stats |
| Alchemy |
320 intellect |
| Inscription |
320 intellect |
| Enchanting |
320 intellect |
| Herbalism/Skinning |
320 haste/crit |
| Mining |
480 stamina |
Blacksmithing is at the moment the best profession for us as a warlock, as we want secondary stats in BIS HC gear...
‘ Renew dots before they expire because of (Pandemic)
‘ Under 20% use Soul Burn + Soul Swap to renew dots, instead of applying them one by one
‘ Life tap if mana is <35%
Best races for Affliction Warlocks with Grimoire of Sacrifice
' Troll is better then Orc by around 1k~ DPS, but be aware that orc and troll is around the same for Demonology.
Dark Soul with CD’s
Code:
/cast Dark Soul: Misery
/use Blood Fury
‘ Add any trinkets and other on-use items to this macro
Instant dots macro
Code:
/use Soulburn
/cast Soul Swap
‘ Puts all the dots on your target
Soulburn: SoC
Code:
/use Soulburn
/cast Seed of Corruption
‘ Spreads corruption to all your targets on explosion
MoP Warlock Guide
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Originally Posted by ronamic
