Affliction Warlock Raid Tips

By Xyronic Updated: 2018/06/29

Twitch.tv streamTwitterRaid InstancesAntorus, the Burning ThroneTalents:General tips:

Full single target fight. Focus on keeping your Drain Soul uptime as high as possible, while doing mechanics as a proper raider should. :)

Place your Demonic Gateway from directly in front of the boss to the back of the room, where your raid is stacking for cooldowns during Luring Destruction. This gives melee an easy out for the explosion, or an easy in afterwards to get back to DPSing. Win win for the raid.

Place your Demonic Circle: Teleport in the center of the ranged area for easy dodging of Decimation circles. In the last phase, after you've empowered Annihilation, you can solo soak one of the circles by placing your Demonic Circle: Teleport inside a circle, and porting back after taking the first hit. Your Drain Soul should be plenty to heal you back to full for the second hit.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain along with Soul of the Netherlord, due to the nature of lusting during the last phase, and the last phase being the most difficult part of the fight. If your guild has this fight on clean farm, both Power Cord of Lethtendris and Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus are solid options.

Talents:General tips:

This is a pretty straightforward fight to DPS as affliction. Keep all three dots on both dogs without letting any of them fall, and weave in Unstable Affliction, keeping your Item - Warlock T21 Affliction 4P Bonus uptime high, while also optimizing your chances of casinoing your unstable affliction uptime through your Item - Warlock T21 Affliction 2P Bonus.

Place your Demonic Circle: Teleport somewhere away from the general stack of your group if you're in the shadow group. You can portal away with the flame debuff to not grief your raid and suck people around.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sacrolash's Dark Strike. Another option which has proven to do somewhat decent damage is Streten's Sleepless Shackles in place of Sacrolash's Dark Strike, while talenting into Contagion. This involves keeping maximum Unstable Affliction uptime on both targets, and is honestly a lot more involved to play than the first build mentioned.

Talents:General tips:

This is the first fight in Antorus where good warlocks heavily outshine mediocre warlocks. There are tons of extra Soul Shards to gain on this fight, through Drain Soul sniping the adds, and efficient multidotting.

In order to make maximum use of Absolute Corruption, precast Seed of Corruption before the demon adds spawn. Instantly cast Agony on all three adds, and drain snipe them as they die. The second benefit to running Absolute Corruption on this fight is significantly reduced casts of Corruption, allowing for more GCD's dedicated to drain sniping, which means more shards.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sacrolash's Dark Strike.

Talents:General tips:

If Antoran High Command was the baby warlock skill fight, this is probably the best skill fight for a warlock in Antorus. Being able to efficiently kill adds, keep high uptime on 5 stack Wrath of Consumption, and proccing Sephuz's Secret on every single add wave will catapult a great warlock far ahead of any other class on this fight.

This is only time you'll EVER see Phantom Singularity recommended. Its cooldown lines up almost perfectly with Transport Portal, making the most deadly part of the fight - imp casts - that much easier. NOTE: Phantom Singularity does NOT count towards proccing Wrath of Consumption - you'll want to proc this as much as possible by drain sniping the various adds, as well as casting Agony on the larger adds, and letting Soul Flame carry a bit.

Proccing Sephuz's Secret on every single add wave is incredibly important - you'll want to do it somewhere near the end of the add wave, when you already have a 5 stack Wrath of Consumption, and 4+ soul shards. Howl of Terror is a great way to proc sephuz, with pet interrupt and a last resort hardcast Fear being backups in case you're nowhere near melee range.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sephuz's Secret.

Talents:General tips:

This is a pure meme fight. Talents are optimized for complete AoE spam. The single target dps check is completely nonexistant, with the Paraxis add dying in no time at all.

Pay attention to boss timers - Fel Hounds and Fel Bats are the major AoE add spawns. Spam Seed of Corruption to your heart's content.

The only real mechanic on this fight is the particular debuff you get from the Paraxis. Warlocks are ideal for getting the red debuff, which knocks the carrier up every 30 seconds. Coincidentally, our Demonic Circle: Teleport cooldown also happens to be 30 seconds. Have at it. If you're silly and forget to drop a portal (or just flat out don't want to), the small pillars in the center of the room count as a small overhang, stopping you from getting knocked up as well.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Sacrolash's Dark Strike and Sephuz's Secret.

Talents:General tips:

At current gear levels, this fight is pure survival. It's not hard to play an optimal single target build as an affliction lock while maximizing defensive play. If the raid looks unhealthy, delay a UA cycle for a bit to help your healer friends out.

Placing a smart Demonic Gateway is incredibly useful to tanks for this fight - it allows them to clear a large swath of the bridge in one fell swoop. Talk to your raid leader, and ask them where they want you to place it. If they tell you not to, find a smarter guild to raid with.

There are two scenarios in this fight - Either you get Empowered Pulse Grenade, or you don't. If you get it, try not to scream. Trust your healers to keep you alive, and patiently wait behind the group to go, while making sure you're maintaining a close enough distance to the group and other carriers of Empowered Pulse Grenade. If one person stops, the whole bridge stops, and slows the process. It's your job to make sure you're not knocking other people around, but also not holding up people behind you. In some situations, moving sideways to allow Empowered Pulse Grenade carriers behind you space to move up.

In the second scenario, when you don't get Empowered Pulse Grenade, your job is way more important. After the first initial clear by your tanks, follow across the bridge without any delays, and try to soak a Pulse Grenade. Just one soak makes the bridge much easier to do.

Dropping a Demonic Circle: Teleport on the starting platform will allow you to skip the last quarter or so of the bridge, if you choose to do so.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus.

Talents:General tips:

Don't be a burden. Hitting purple rolly bois is BANNED.

Strategic Demonic Gateways in this fight are incredibly important for having groups of dps swap to different adds during the Apocalypse Protocol phase. Ideally you'll have three warlocks to form a sort of triangle formation, connecting all three bots. If you only have two, the two most important lines to place should connect the first two adds you're killing to the third, so the entire raid can converge on one spot at the end of the phase.

Placing a Demonic Circle: Teleport in melee range near the general stack point of the raid is incredibly important for two reasons - one, it's a nice way to avoid running for the entire duration of a Ruiner - second, in the end of the fight where your raid has completely committed to doing nothing but dodging purple rolly bois, having that portal in melee is a nice way of avoiding a deadly game of frogger.

As a warlock, you'll likely be placed on the "solo" bot, generally the purple add. Play safe, make sure you arent eating too much unnecessary damage, but generally speaking once you've started doing damage to the bot, you're pretty much immortal during the Apocalypse Protocol phase due to the nature of Drain Soul healing in addition to increased damage, outside of eating three green circles at the same time. Save Soul Harvest for the add phase - it would be silly not to stack a damage increase with cooldowns.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus.

Talents:General tips:

This is affliction's single target wet dream. Pure single target, with free adds to give Reap Souls stacks, Soul Shards, and Wrath of Consumption stacks.

While you will almost always top boss damage, the main mechanic of the fight is to make sure the Shadow of Varimathras adds die before they get an Echoes of Doom cast off. Unfortunately, affliction is absolutely awful at this. Your best bet for doing any damage to them at all is to have a /target Shadow of Varimathras macro, which you should spam at either the end of a Marked Prey cast, or when your Necrotic Embrace embrace tank plans to proc his Alone in the Darkness. After you have the add targeted, simply cast Drain Soul. Casting dots on the adds is completely ineffective, since by the time they would have had a chance to tick, the add should already be dead. Drain Souling is your maximum damage, and is already the best thing to do damage-wise considering the shard you gain from draining a dying add.

A small tip during the frost phase is to make sure you always have Burning Rush activated - it counteracts the slow debuff, allowing you to make sure you get Necrotic Embrace to the correct marker in time. You should be able to heal yourself plenty to make up for the extra damage taken. Also, make sure you don't panic during the Fel phase. I know the damage value keeps going up, but I promise you'll be fine.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Soul of the Netherlord.

Talents:General tips:

Another fantastic fight for warlocks, this time focusing on our incredible multidot strength. How much damage you do on this fight will be determined by how efficient you are at multidotting the different add types, while spending as many Soul Shards as possible without capping due to the increased generation.

Dark Pact is an incredibly useful small personal cooldown for things such as the last tick of Fulminating Pulse, or if you're completely out of position for a Storm of Darkness.

For the Fire adds, you can run around the room BEHIND the fire adds and dot as many of them as you'd like. Dotting 5 of them is generally enough, since this will give you max stacks of Wrath of Consumption. This leaves 7 Agony DoTs to keep up efficiently, leaving very little time to spam your soul shards. In addition to this, be smart about your Wrath of Consumption stacks. If the adds you initially dotted die quickly, run over and toss a DoT or drain one of the remaining adds in order to extend that uptime. Free damage is free damage.

For Spectral Army of Norgannon adds, make sure you tag at least 12 adds with agony. This will give you 12 stacks of Reap Souls, essentially putting you ahead for the entire fight. In addition to that, this will also give 5 stacks of Wrath of Consumption, allowing for even more damage increases. Combine all of that with a max duration Soul Harvest, and well, you've got a party cookin. Go ham. As a final tip, banish one of the army adds you've dotted at some point during the army march. Once the banish fades, the army add will then die, extending your Wrath of Consumption 5 stack even longer. This can be incredibly cheesed with things like monk Paralysis, but it's incredibly annoying to make sure it sticks around.

For storm and healer adds, make sure you're focusing priority targets, while also having passive dots on the other adds for increased shard generation and Wrath of Consumption stacks. For storm adds, focus the adds away from the bosses (generally melee will kill these), and for healer adds, focus priority targets.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sacrolash's Dark Strike.

Talents:General tips:

This is honestly just another fight where you just stay alive the entire time. One warlock in your raid will have the job of being a permaslow boy with Sacrolash's Dark Strike. If you're not that warlock, run a single target talent build such as Kin'garoth's or Imonar's, except talent into Death's Embrace instead of siphon. The last phase is easily the most difficult part of the fight, and any extra damage there works wonders.

If you're the slowboy in your raid, make sure you DoT every add in the intermission with Corruption as quickly as possible. Once this is done, swap to the main large adds and finish off the phase. Your only job for the rest of the fight is Re-DoT any adds that die with Corruption, as the adds lose the Sacrolash's Dark Strike slow debuff when they reform. In the final phase, help your group out and pre-DoT the new adds that spawn from Empowered Flare - they'll be slowed the second they're dispelled and be much easier to funnel into the main pack.

Placing your Demonic Circle: Teleport in the center of the room can be a last resort out for terrible Ravenous Blaze positioning, saving you from a potential oneshot.

Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sacrolash's Dark Strike. If you're not the slowboy, run Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus for increased survivability, as well as just being an all around good legendary.

Talents:General tips:

I wish there were more to this fight in terms of tips and tricks, but honestly it's a min-maxfest of making sure you're moving only when absolutely necessary and maximizing Malefic Grasp uptime.

One of the most important tips to guaranteeing max uptime on Sky buffs in phase 1 is to make sure you're waiting as long as possible to get buffs without putting yourself at risk of getting hit by any Death Fog inducing mechanics, or getting barreled over by a meathead melee trying to refresh their buff at the last second because they have Sargeras' Rage. As a general rule of thumb - Stack 1, get when boss is around 75 energy. Stack 2, move through while boss is casting Cone of Death. Stack 3, refresh the second the Death Fog and Sargeras' Fear, right before you spread. For stack 4, refresh at the last possible second before losing your debuff or the orb, whichever comes first.

Place your Demonic Circle: Teleport in the center of the room, along with a Demonic Gateway to the opposite side of the room from the boss for easy Soulbomb movement in phase 2. (You can place these quickly after a wipe before the boss respawns, saving GCDs during the actual fight. Move quickly.)

In the final phase, make sure to re-DoT the Apocalypsis Modules with at the very least an Agony right before they're about to die. Apocalypsis Modules don't actually die, and DoTs will continue ticking on them for their full duration after they collapse. This is free shard generation at the cost of one GCD, which is always a damage increase.
Bis Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Soul of the Netherlord.

Tomb of SargerasTalents:General tips:

Full single target fight. Focus on keeping your Drain Soul uptime as high as possible.

Placing both your personal Demonic Circle: Teleport as well as a Demonic Gateway for easier raid movement will improve quality of life for your raid as a whole. Use these to soak Rain of Brimstone, or to better position for Infernal Burning.

Your best legendaries for this fight are going to be Power Cord of Lethtendris, along with either Soul of the Netherlord If you're opting to use t19 2pc + t20 4pc, or Hood of Eternal Disdain If you're only using t20 4pc. As always with Soul of the Netherlord, if you're only going to get one more use of Soul Harvest for the remainder of the fight, save it for when the boss is lower on HP to take full advantage of Death's Embrace.

Talents:General tips:

This is a simple 2 target multidot fight, with various small adds placed throughout the fight.

Place your personal Demonic Circle: Teleport on an edge of the room to have an easy way out of the Suffocating Dark zones, keeping your Torment as low as possible.

Your best legendaries for this fight are going to be Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sacrolash's Dark Strike.

Your goal on this fight is to keep full dots running on both Belac and Atrigan, as well as keeping as many of the Tormented Fragment adds slowed through Sacrolash's Dark Strike's passive. These adds give stacks of Wrath of Consumption, as well as giving you a Soul Shard when you're channeling Drain Soul on an add that dies.

For any secondary Soul Harvest cast for the remainder of the fight, try to maximize uptime by using this ability when there are multiple Tormented Fragment. Delaying use of Soul Harvest by 10-15 seconds to nearly double its uptime is worth it in any situation.

Talents:General tips:

Make sure you're making full use out of Soul Harvest, by only casting it when you have Agony on as many targets as possible. It's easy to consistenly only have 36 second Soul Harvest buffs with every cast. This includes delaying your initial Soul Harvest cast on the pull, waiting for Harjatan to cast his initial Commanding Roar, which summons 4 Murloc adds to DoT.

Harjatan is a good example of Affliction Warlocks being able to turn adds into extremely high single target damage. Your only goal on this fight is to offdot as many adds as possible to fuel your Soul Shard generation, and keep Wrath of Consumption stacks rolling. All of your single target spells and abilities should be pumped into the boss. (~In most situations. If your raid is having particular trouble with adds, or killing eggs, it's obviously in your best interest to make sure you're helping with problem targets.)

Place your Demonic Circle off to the side so you can teleport out when the boss starts to draw in the pools.

Your absolute best Legendary on this fight is Soul of the Netherlord, along with either Hood of Eternal Disdain or The Master Harvester for pure damage, or Sacrolash's Dark Strike for extra add damage and slows, should your raid need those. Power Cord of Lethtendris is also a strong contender, but in a fight with ample opportunies for Soul Shard gains, through pure multidotting or through Drain Souling dying adds, the extra bonus shards aren't very substantial.

Talents:General tips:

Mainly a single target fight, with one or two large adds depending on your raids' damage.

Place your personal Demonic Circle: Teleport on either the farthest left, or farthest right side of the room in order to instantly swap sides to remove Moon Burn.

Your best legendaries for this fight are going to be Power Cord of Lethtendris and Soul of the Netherlord. The last phase of this fight is by far the most important part, and any extra damage here helps your raid more than anything.

Talents:General tips:

Similar to Harjatan, this is a fight where Affliction Warlock gets to show off extremely high boss damage through multidotting adds.

For a free 50-60 million boss damage, before your raid pulls the boss, Life Tap below half HP, and make sure you stay below it. Tell your healers not to heal you until after the pull if you have to. Cast Corruption on the main Boss in whichever zone you're NOT supposed to be in, then swap sides and DPS your side as you normally would. Because of Absolute Corruption, this is quite literally the most efficient use of damage possible throughout the fight, and on top of the damage it does, it can also proc Soul Shards through your t20 4 piece.

Ideally, you'll be downstairs as a warlock. This is ideal because the adds spawn downstairs exactly every two minutes, starting on the pull. This allows for maximum Soul Harvest uptime.

When Desolate Host himself spawns, stay on the main boss in your zone. This should be Soul Queen Dejahna. This maximizes your utilization of Death's Embrace, and by the time the two minibosses are dead, Desolate Host himself should be below 35%.

Your best Legendaries for this fight are Hood of Eternal Disdain and Sacrolash's Dark Strike.

Talents:General tips:

Similar to both Harjatan and Demonic Inquisition, this is a fight where Affliction Warlock gets to show off extremely high boss damage through multidotting adds. The only class/spec that should be able to complete with you are Subtlety Rogues.

Like Harjatan, make sure to only cast Soul Harvest when you have Agony on multiple targets, ideally all available Abyss Stalker and any Razorjaw Waverunner that are available.

This fight is very much a raid's check on how well they hold their Multidot or AOE damage. If your raid needs less multidot damage, it might be in your interest to run either Malefic Grasp or Haunt instead of Writhe in Agony. Malefic Grasp, when played perfectly, can actually end up being more boss damage than Writhe in Agony, and if you're uncomfortable maintaining your Drain Soul uptime efficiently, Haunt is a completely viable option.

As usual, place your Demonic Circle: Teleport on a side of the room in order to provide a safe out for Crashing Wave.

Your best Legendaries for this fight are going to be a combination of Soul of the Netherlord, with either Hood of Eternal Disdain, The Master Harvester, or a surprising Sephuz's Secret. Hood of Eternal Disdain can be a little bit risky when paired with Writhe in Agony, as it results in quite a lot of add damage. Sephuz's Secret is quite strong for this fight, purely because of the fact that you can proc it on cooldown quite easily, through interrupting Razorjaw Waverunner's Water Blast casts.

Talents:General tips:

Pure single target fight with large burst windows, perfect for two minute cooldowns.

Place a demonic gateway on one side of the room going from near the Maiden's spawn point, to near where she teleports for her shield phase. This allows a portion of your raid to get in melee range nearly instantly, allowing for easier healing, as well as more efficient movement to deal damage to the boss.

Your best legendaries for this fight are going to be Power Cord of Lethtendris and Soul of the Netherlord. Align your cooldowns and trinkets with the damage buff portions of this fight, Especially when the boss is within Death's Embrace.

Talents:General tips:

Two target fight with a focus on single target damage.

Place a Demonic Circle: Teleport at just inside max range from Fallen Avatar. This provides clean movement away from Rupture Realities in order to take minimal damage.

Your best legendaries for this fight are going to be Hood of Eternal Disdain and Soul of the Netherlord.

Talents:General tips:

Kil'jaeden is mainly a single target oriented fight, with small add burst windows. While affliction isnt necessarily the best spec at bursting down adds, you can take advantage of the adds through multidotting for single target damage as well as generating Wrath of Consumption stacks.

As a affliction warlock, Armageddon is essentially a non-factor. You should be able to completely heal yourself through a 2 stack, possibly even a 3 stack with little to no help. While it obviously isn't ideal for one person to get that many stacks, don't be afraid to make hero plays if you don't see other raid members looking to soak.

Through use of Demonic Circle: Teleport, as well as Demonic Gateway, you should have no problem with Rupturing Singularity.

Your best legendaries for this fight are going to be Power Cord of Lethtendris and Soul of the Netherlord.

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Tags: Raiding