We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Affliction Warlock in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Affliction Warlock!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Blood DK
Feral Druid
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Mistweaver Monk
Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Protection Warrior
Dragonflight Season 2 Warlock Tier Set
Why You Should Play Affliction Warlock in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)
The life of an Affliction Warlock has been a chaotic one over the past few months. From being undertuned in 10.0, to being the strongest spec in game upon 10.0.7 launch, Affliction Warlocks have seen it all. Not much has changed with Affliction’s toolkit from Dragonflights launch, we are still casting Malefic Rapture as our main Shard consuming spell, while also juggling a handful of DoT/Maintenance buff effects. Thankfully, Patch 10.0.7 brought with it a handful of changes that made Affliction Warlock competitive and a bit more forgiving to play.
One of the largest changes was made to Dread Touch. Its previous duration was 6 seconds in Patch 10.0.5, which led to a playstyle that was very unforgiving and hinged too much on optimal Malefic Rapture timing and Shard generation. If your Malefic Affliction were to fall, it was nearly impossible to stack it back to 3 quickly, as you were typically sitting on 1 Shard in reserve, to maintain Dread Touch. Thankfully, its duration was increased to 8 seconds in 10.0.7, making the playstyle much more forgiving, which also freeing up a few more GCDs for a spec that suffers from button bloat.
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play Affliction Warlock in Dragonflight Season 2
Affliction Warlock Utility for Dragonflight
Warlock in general has a plethora of utility that is applicable in nearly every aspect of the game, including:
- Amplify Curse: Can be used to further amplify our curses such as Curse of Tongues, which can make certain mobs much easier to handle.
- Banish: Exceptionally strong form of CC (when applicable) in various settings, such as Incorporeal weeks in Season 2.
- Demonic Gateway: Can be used to skip certain packs or parts of an instance the group would prefer to avoid. Also can be used to “cheese” certain mechanics.
- Shadowfury: AOE Stun which CD can be further reduced via Darkfury.
- Create Soulwell: Healthstone are incredibly helpful when available in every aspect of the game.
- Soulstone: Can be used as a battle res or preemptively, in certain situations.
- Summon Imp, Summon Sayaad, Summon Felhunter, Summon Voidwalker – Your pet is one of your main default abilities as a warlock, without talenting into anything. Because all of your pets do roughly the same damage (outside of Summon Voidwalker), your choice boils down to utility here. Need an interrupt? Use Summon Felhunter. Need a magic dispel or want a consistent ranged dps pet that doesn’t run from target to target? Use Summon Imp.
Affliction Warlocks Role in Group Content
As mentioned, Warlock in general brings a plethora of utility to both Raid and Mythic + content. One issue however, is diminishing returns. You typically only need one Soulstone, usually one Demonic Gateway will do, a single Create Soulwell provides an unlimited amount of Healthstone, and one Ritual of Summoning is all you require. While all of the mentioned utility certainly justifies having at least 1 Warlock in your raid/party, 2 or more is (usually) not required. A great example of this was Vault of the Incarnates, where you saw 1 Warlock being played in most early progression. If you brought multiples, it was simply due to their damage profile being strong in that setting, like on Kurog Grimtotem.
Thankfully, that was mostly due to tuning and many Vault fights simply being “poor” Warlock encounters. Affliction Warlock is very customizable, allowing you to tailor your build to a wide variety of settings whether they are single target, spread cleave or heavy AOE, Affliction can do it all. The main issue however, is damage output. In the end, you can be the most flexible class in the game but if your damage is undertuned, it does not mean much.
Affliction Warlock Season 2 Tier Bonus
Affliction Warlock’s Season 2 tier bonus is one that both increases the damage of our DoTs (Phantom Singularity and Vile Taint) while also changing our rotation slightly.
- 2-Set: Vile Taint cooldown reduced by 5 seconds and Phantom Singularity cooldown reduced by 12 seconds. Vile Taint and Phantom Singularity damage increased by 60%.
- 4-Set: Enemies damaged by Phantom Singularity gain Infirmity for its duration and enemies damaged by Vile Taint gain Infirmity for 10 seconds, increasing damage taken by 10%.
The bonus essentially allows us to cast either Phantom Singularity or Vile Taint more often, which leads to a higher uptime. When they are active, the target also takes 10% increased damage from us, giving the Warlock small “burst” windows every 30 or so seconds. While the bonus does sound relatively exciting, it sadly makes our cooldown timing a bit awkward. With Summon Darkglare being a 2 minute cooldown, it means that we will have to hold the CD for 10-15 seconds if we are casting Phantom Singularity or Vile Taint on cooldown, which is what the set encourages. The 60% damage increase that is provided by the 2-set is a small bump to our DoT damage, but not as much as it may seem and while the 10% “Infirmity” window does bring more frequent burst potential when casting multiple Malefic Rapture, Affliction does not have any CD’s that deal relevant damage after the recent Summon Darkglare nerfs.
It does feel more engaging to cast either Phantom Singularity or Vile Taint a bit more often, but with it essentially having us push our Summon Darkglare cast back, leaves something to be desired. If the 2-set was altered, making Phantom Singularity a 30 second CD and Vile Taint a 22 seconds, it would solve that problem and not increase the power level of the set to anything excessive.
Why You Shouldn’t Play Affliction Warlock in Dragonflight Season 2
While many of the recent changes that Affliction received in Patch 10.0.7 were helpful in addressing both toolkit and damage issues, Affliction received a handful of nerfs less than a week into Patch 10.0.7, making it the “worst” Warlock spec currently, tuning wise.
Button Bloat and Rotational Complexity
Affliction has suffered from a mild case of “Button Bloat” and “Rotational Complexity” for a while now, and a large portion of that stems from Siphon Life, and the sheer number of DoT that you must maintain. Currently as an Affliction Warlock, you have to maintain Agony, Corruption, Siphon Life, and Unstable Affliction all while casting either Phantom Singularity or Vile Taint on cooldown, and at times Soul Rot. This is not taking into account the maintenance buffs you are required to maintain, which are Haunt, Shadow Embrace, Malefic Affliction and Dread Touch. While Affliction is very mobile, having to juggle all these effects makes the rotation quite complex in various settings and quite daunting to players looking to pick up the spec for the first time.
The playstyle of Affliction is also, quite unforgiving. If your Malefic Affliction falls for whatever reason, there is not way to instantly stack it back to three, you must cast 3 Malefic Rapture‘s and then a 4th to trigger Dread Touch. This can be quite difficult to do when you are casting Malefic Rapture once every 8 seconds to maintain Dread Touch in the first place. Issues also arise when there are priority adds/mobs that spawn which need to be focused down quickly. Casting Unstable Affliction on a new target will not maintain your Malefic Affliction stacks, which is a tremendous DPS loss. You can, however, talent into Soul Swap which WILL maintain Malefic Affliction and move your DoTs, but once that target dies, you will drop your MA stacks again. This sadly makes Affliction Warlock one of, if not the worst, priority damage swapping spec in the game.
Affliction Warlocks Talent Tree and Tuning
Affliction Warlock suffered in early 10.0 due to simply being undertuned. There were a handful of talents (such as Xavian Teachings) that likely should have been either passive abilities, or not talents at all. Thankfully, a good portion of them were addressed in Patch 10.0.7. In their place, we received a handful of exciting new talents such as Socrethar’s Guile, Sargerei Technique, Dark Virtuosity, and Kindled Malice. These talents were introduced towards the middle of Patch 10.0.7 PTR and were a significant increase to Affliction’s damage output in both single target and AOE. Blizzard also increased the duration of Dread Touch from 6 seconds to 8, which was a massive Quality of Life increase and a minor DPS bump. There are still a few talents such as Grim Feast and Inevitable Demise which need to be tuned, but Affliction Warlock was looking to be in a much better state.
Sadly, less than a week later, Affliction Warlock received a handful of nerfs and bug fixes. Both Demonic Inspiration and Wrathful Minion were bugged, increasing the players Haste and damage dealt, not the pet. These were obvious bugs that certainly needed to be fixed, but also affected Affliction more than its Demonology counterpart (due to most of Demo’s damage being pet based). In addition to those early bug fixes, a 2% aura nerf was applied to Affliction, as well as a nerf to both Grimoire of Sacrifice and Summon Darkglare (which was buffed a week earlier). These nerfs coupled with the bug fixes essentially meant that Affliction went from being our best spec (for 5 days) back to being the worst in both Raiding and Mythic + alike. While the talents we received in the Patch were certainly helpful and exciting to play with, Affliction is sadly the lowest performing spec out of the three in 10.0.7 and is not receiving any changes heading into Patch 10.1.
Should You Play Affliction Warlock in Season 2
All of the mentioned nerfs coupled with the mechanical issues (Malefic Affliction) and button bloat that exist for Affliction heading into Season 2 certainly place it in a precarious spot. Affliction has the toolkit to be exceptionally strong in a wide array of scenarios, we saw it for 5 days in 10.0.7. The problem is, that when you have both Demonology and Destruction as other options, which both have better tier sets (numerically), and are just simply stronger in raw damage output, the choice becomes clear.
The version of Demonology that we will see in 10.1 is likely the strongest target for Power Infusion the game has ever seen. Most of the fights in Aberrus are single target based (with light add cleave at times) or spread cleave, both of which Demonology and Destruction are currently much better at. The case is similar for Mythic +, where Affliction can bring more to the table via Soul Flame and Grim Reach, but Destruction and Demonology simply do it better 99% of the time. I think it is certainly worth looking into learning Affliction if you are interested in playing a DoT based spec or want to prepare for potential buffs, but I do not think it is a great choice for Season 2 in a competitive setting, when Demonology and Destruction are alternative options.
About the Author
Hello! My name is Kalamazi, and I am a Warlock content creator focused mainly on PVE content. I recently joined Liquid and have previously cast multiple Race to World First events. If you have any questions feel free to stop by my Twitch and ask! You can also find me on Youtube, Twitter or in my Discord.
For more information on playing Affliction Warlock, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Affliction Warlock Guide
