5.3 Affliction Warlock Basic DPS Guide

Let's take a look at the classic dot spec, reworked and changed for MoP, and proving to be the top source of dps
www.preachgaming.com

[@killjoy2011]

Preach thank you for making these guides. They have improved my game play so much

[@VileVamp]

To all aspiring affliction locks waiting on his warlock guides for 5.4, one VERY important change, is soul swap. It no longer eats the dot on your main target, rather it COPIES all dots on the target (This includes seed of corruption AND soulsharded seed of corruption- that's right, they stack.), so if you have a supercharged via procs set of dots and seeds on the target, you can keep it up on several people for awhile if you keep swapping it around.

[@iSeahorseFur]

Easily, my favorite vids to watch. Keep it up, sir Preach!

[@Nr4747]

Btw: Kiljaeden's Cunning is now pretty awesome for movement fights like Garalon and Stoneguards. Glyph of Soulswap is pretty horrible in a lot of situations (basically in every situation where you don't have 2 or more permanent targets), the reason is you want to use "normal" (non Soulburn-) Soulswaps every time an add is close to dying and apply it to another add - insanely important on Garalon's legs for example and really useful on Elegon's sparks aswell.

[@SOBERGODFOREVER]

Re-rolling A Lock & Naming Him Preachwarlcok

[@thagaard22]

Fortexorcist is a very good addon for tracking locks dots, so is affdos since it shows when it is ideal to redot, when trinkets/enchants procs

[@Cabbagesvensen]

Guys, Archimonde's vengeance has been changed to Archimonde's darkness. This allows you two charges of dark souls spells. On my destro warlock I use this, as the Dark soul: instability gives me +30% crit chance. I recommend picking this, as Kil'Jaeden's cunning/Mannoroth's fury are absolute shite.

[@Effingslackin]

Preach !!! been waiting forever for your warlock class guide ! :D

[@frost953]

If I may, I often find dark regeneration to be greater than soul leech in fights such as windlord where massive aoes that your team must heal through can be a bit pressuring. Not only will you be actively healing yourself, but allowing healers to help you back up on your feet a lot more easily than if you had a simple passive spell damage HP return.

[@Kiru_TV]

As much as I enjoy you guides I do want to point out few things as a fan. Hit cap is not that important to warlocks right now. The stat priority for max damage should be hit (around 11% is fine) -> haste 4717 for extra DoT ticks, -> mastery as much as you can! -> haste -> crit. Keep up the good work tho!

[@Nr4747]

Dark Bargain is insanely strong, though. Not only can you survive lethal attacks, you ignore 50% of all damage done to you during Dark Bargains uptime. This is absolutely invaluable in some bossfights like Grand Vizier Zor'lok (Force and Verve phase), Windlord Ta'yak (last phase during running) and Garalon (kiting with pheromones or reducing crash damage/high pheromone stacks damage). I really think you should try it out if you're raiding.

[@axellibeck634]

Hey!! Huge fan Preach!! What's the name of the addons, showing the small images over the targets health-bar? Awesome video! keep up the good work!!:D Peach!!

[@Naomi_Boyd]

4717 is the break point for UA. 2488 is the break point for an extra Corruption tick which is all you need otherwise you are just wasting over 2k that could be used for more mastery. Hit cap is not usually that important to dot classes but it's a must for affliction because if you miss the refresh on Agony you are losing a ton of dps.

[@MyMomsFavoriteAccident]

Finally I been waiting on this foreverrrrrr

[@pbrunnberg]

An example: Let's say you do 1 000 000 dmg over 1 min when you have reforged everything into crit. But if you had haste instead of crit, you might do MORE dmg from faster dots and it also gives you a faster "hit rate" from your normal hits and faster cast time on your spellspells etc. You might therefore do more dmg from having haste than having crit during that time. It depends on how the boss fight if structured, but mostly you gain from having the stats you do most dmg for in the long run.

[@GeneralFallout15]

This has been extremely helpful to me just want to thank you and need to ask one question for the glyph's I have drain life instead of the soul stone extra one well because now mop gives you 4 soul stones. Do you think that drain life is a good one or should I change it and also with soul swap you can put all dots on one person in a second I used instead of that Soul of consumption do you think these are better to use for player vs player?

[@r1charddav1s]

no preach, you do not need to reach hit cap! once your dots are applied they cannot miss, Get the haste breakpoint but then slam everything into mastery, when you reach a higher gear level then you can look at reaching the hit cap, but you will definately see a huge dps increase by going hard into mastery and getting hit where you can

[@Taurussagacity]

So you can instead of agony, use Curse of elements, and keep agony on with soul swap, aslong as you got soul stones. Since curse of elements won't fall off when you apply agony with soul swap.

[@Napster_IO]

Preacher, I play a PvP based Affli Lock and Im loving it. As you mentioned in this video Mastery is 2nd after you reach a cap of haste. Well, ive reached that cap of haste (around 4k) and stacked mastery. and now im at 80% mastery. When should i break of mastery and go Crit or another secondary stat?

[@Peshyy]

and if you meant nameplates : TidyPlates and configured to show debuffs and hp like that

[@Vilelated]

Actually it isn't, if you focus on mastery stacking with crit then you can out dps a haste model that is only going for 1 extra tick. The only break points I look at are 33.3% & 66.6% the 33 will give your ticks a 2 sec tick rate while the 66 is a 1 sec tick rate achieved by holding a minimum of 6.66% then use your dark soul normally to achieve the 2 sec rate and used with hero or lust for a 1 sec rate. If properly stack mastery crit will out dps any amount of haste.

[@danielnbrown512]

Yay finally!!!!!!! Thanks preach

[@TheDancerMacabre]

This is why I find the warlock community fun, and why I love to be part of it, there's such amount of theroycrafting and numbers thrown around. Though I disagree with your Mastery/Crit model, I find it amusing (Not condscending) that you're tweaking it to see what would work best in short: NERD!!!!

[@God8010]

If swap is on cd and you gain a new shard, you cant soulburn again until it comes off cd. next patch its changing but right now, the swap glyph is pointless. Moreso until swap saves the buffs from the inhale on what those dots were, which again changes next patch.

[@thagaard22]

the healthbars looks like pitbull and i think the dottimers is fortexorcist, if not fortexorcist is very good

[@ItsTheBibby]

With Pandemic you aren't forced to wait until the very last second to refresh. If you plan ahead and refresh whilst there are still a few tics left, you won't lose any dps. Even if it does hit the Dot will just have its duration extended instead of you wasting tics. I am yet to fail refreshing Agony before it expires in any single target boss fight, and I started with warlock dps roughly when 5.1 came out so I am certainly not good at it. Which leads me to assume you have to suck to fail at it.

[@Vilelated]

Lol, its a play style choice. @85 in cata my normal ticks from cor and ua would.be between 12k to 20k and crit for about 30k for a single tick. Now that so much has changed and fits more into that style it only seems more viable. I swapped to main a ele sham for our raid team, but i work my lock when I can and mastery crit is still very powerful.

[@davidgrove4262]

god damit preach. ..making me make a lock now lol nice job as always brofist to you

[@Hullahuppimswingercl]

Dude why do you have 320 Expertise in the red gem slot of your head? :D 16:29 ... Gonna play melee Warlock? :P Nice guide dude, I did not want to be rude; - Keep it up!

[@Peshyy]

hp bar (unitframes) - PitBull DoT tracking - ClassTimer

[@paislychainsaw]

Not sure if you're serious but there's an annotation in the video (bottom right corner) directing you to the UI download.

[@choasfrost]

YOU. ARE. AWESOME!

[@chrisl270]

Soul link has changed. Now it's a shield for you and your pet.

[@VOX_Games]

You're not giving Archimonde's Vengeance enough credit as a DPS boost, it's the best thing to spec into for almost everything, Mannoroth's fury you'll use on new raid bosses like Elegon for the orbs and Garalon for the legs

[@ItsTheBibby]

But I want to know the specifics. Is it just that you hit with your dots often enough above 11% that prior to 11% a dot miss would cause a dps loss more significant than the increases damage those points put in mastery would give you?

[@DveevD]

I think you are awesome preach:)

[@noelnemeth6263]

Either an affli warlock or shadow priest killed me in like 5 seconds with like 10 dots and a channel

[@Dolphinsz]

It's not his chair it's someone eles account, so they tend to noob it up a bit

[@emanl84]

Hey Preacher!!! I am looking for that addOn that displays the dots on all the targets heads. I went through the UI addon but I would simply have that one. TY

[@Reddharp]

where did 720p go? 1080p should not be next to 480p, its making it cry

[@ImStaringAtUrightNow]

mastery is a bigger dps increase than haste on locks right now

[@Novandara-xo]

I use Ellipsis from Curse. Not sure it's the same, but it does the same thing :)

[@B0BBYL33J0RD4N]

Idk if its posted or not , but with nightfall wouldn't ungodly haste be a bigger benefit? Or is the mastery bonus damage better for compensating?

[@haydenhollenbaugh3958]

so does anyone notice how it was changed from demon soul to dark soul and how that relates to the games of the same name???

[@Copimi]

wath are those addons tell me NOWWWRRR!!!! but seriously, i is like your addons! could you please list them or post a link if you have already listed them somewhere else or something? thanks in advance and good guide. cheers.

[@cheezypeezy2]

warlcok ftw, love it preacher :D

[@someidiotinnj]

I love me some Warlcok!

[@Naomi_Boyd]

If mastery is more important than intellect and crit is our worst stat, shouldn't we be using Fleet primal diamonds instead of Burning? 432 mastery vs. 216 int

[@Cyberianshout]

which are the nexy haste breakpoints after 4717 ? 5.....? 6.....? People are saying that you dont need to get hit capped because when your dots have been applied they dont miss, which is understable. But what if you miss applying them? miss a Haunt ? or your malefic grasp misses?

[@SahajSoldier]

Yeah when he showed the old Soul Leech tooltip I knew it wasn't 5.3

[@wowxleahyrain]

the yellow bar is "needtoknow"

[@smidge69]

Hey dude nice tutorial. My apologies if I missed something but if I'm not mistaken you used ss on 4 of the target dummies. when I try this I get the 30s cooldown incurred by the ss glyph as recommended. Thanks in advance

[@kirillshakhnovskiy6140]

How could you possibly call Kil'jaeden's Cunning crap?! True, the other two are pretty boring for lvl 90 talents, but as far as I'm concerned, Kil'jaeden's Cunning is by far the best lock talent. And certainly the biggest game-changer.

[@TheCoonBrothers]

I'V BEEN LOOKING FOR THE ADDONS YOUR USING FOR HOURS, WHERE CAN I GET THEM

[@Benevolene]

Expertise = Hit as a caster since MOP

[@Vilelated]

imho haste isnt really needed. with soul burn soul swap placing all your dots and fel flame used to refresh haste is meh.. esp with dark soul granting 30% haste. mastery with crit plus the way malefic grasp works would benefit you much more in huge numbers.

[@MrCorthez]

I have Affliction as my main spec but what should i get second? Demonology or Destruction?

[@Camps2630]

I forgot all about this series :P

[@God8010]

"cant soulburn a swap for dots until swap comes off cd." is what I meant to say.

[@nicolasjohnson3811]

I NEED MOAR DOTS MOAR DOTS!

[@MrWarlordHD]

Which addons do you use for you hp bar and the dot tracking?

[@ragingraven8993]

hey what is your add ons you got on.. for seeing the ticks nd stuff ??

[@smidge69]

My apologies if this question has been explained in the tutorial, but in the video you soulswapped to four targets. I've tried the same process on the target dummies but ss goes into a 30s cooldown after ss two. thanks in advance.

[@Kiru_TV]

The extra tick for UA is still better than just for Corr. Sure you could have 2k more mastery but math has been done. Hit cap ain't important at all for affl warlock, cause you won't miss agony when you refresh it. Why you may ask? 1 word: PANDEMIC. An amazing passive skill that every self respecting warlock knows how to abuse the hell out of.*cough* trinket procs + dark soul. If you don't believe me world of logs is all the proof I can offer you. And possibly EJ and other theorycrafting sites.

[@metalmilitia89]

Shadow priests need some buffs like the Afllic warlock has.

[@joshuathegrate2000]

why do you want hit as number one stat when once you apply your dots the ticks dont miss

[@Copimi]

yes i was serious and thank you. i usualy turn off annotations right at the beginning of every video so... cheers lad.

[@SightLierSphinX]

so if i cast my dots when my trinkets proc and keep casting fel flame are they still the strong dots which i casted on my trinket proc or do they turn back into weaker dots?

[@Zanzibawrr]

what addon is he using for the UI to look like that?

[@Jharling12]

no intellect? that can't possible be right. where would it be on that list?

[@TeddyBear1212121]

What is the addon you use to show your stats?

[@stealthstyle1]

One of my favorit classes although I hate affli I love demo and destro though :)

[@liammacphersonfox]

6637 is the breakpoint you should go for around 495 ilvl

[@axellibeck634]

The one showing the DoTs

[@RandomG4m3rZ]

wow i got 2483 haste, should i over cap it or do the small number count?

[@woostar88]

Crit is very good for DoT warlock in 5.3 also mastery is second IMO

[@Little-Hercules]

Looks like Tidy plates and Class timer.

[@JordanIsAlive]

question since soulswap has a CD now what should i do just use my shards and use it then?

[@Johhnyp10]

should curse of elements be in the rotation?

[@TheRomanoLV]

Can you tell me please what addons you using here? Thanks

[@JordanIsAlive]

so should i go for 2488 haste and then throw everything onto mastery?

[@vL4gs]

what addons do you use exept tidyplates and skada?

[@diegokoolaid69]

I wonder what im doing wrong, I do like 34k dps in lfr with ilvl of 468...mayne because I have two 450 trinks?

[@OptikRise3]

I agree, 'locks got screwed on their Level 90 talents

[@MonkeyJazz75]

The Destro Lock link is broken btw.

[@BruceWillis57]

Anyone know what the name of the addon that shows the time limit left on his dots is called??

[@kingdomheartsguy44]

Anyone know what the addon that shows dots on every target without targeting them? I keep seeing it like in this video. What is it called?

[@mattflub]

WHAT is the addon that shows the time till the dot is up

[@JordanIsAlive]

because im seeing on noxxic its saying go for 9778

[@TheGodofcookiez]

he has a video on that

[@Baykerz265]

is this guide still valid for newest patches?

[@VaioArts]

Does anyone know if you're able to change your char's class? like from a mage to a druid etc

[@philbblack]

What addons are you using?

[@Naomi_Boyd]

Does Dark Soul stack with Blood Lust?

[@metalmilitia89]

I'll lvl a Warlcok after I level the damn fire mage.

[@etaksdgk]

it's approximate, so, around 11%

[@shahabhamidi4625]

did you get the addons ?

[@mleet3125]

Search his channel for keyword: addon

[@ItsTheBibby]

Why specifically 11%?

[@Jakeak013]

what is the dot addon?