Affliction Warlock DPS Overview
The addition of Pandemic makes DoT refresh timing more forgiving, while the revamped Soul Shard system transforms shards into a core rotational currency. Most importantly, Affliction now thrives on snapshotting mechanics, rewarding players who align trinkets, procs, and cooldowns for empowered DoT applications. Whether you’re pushing high single-target damage or rapidly spreading corruption across the battlefield, MoP Affliction demands more precision but offers far greater payoff.
General Changes
New Defensive Abilities: Unending Resolve: 40% damage reduction, immune to interrupts/silences for 8s.
New Utility: Demonic Gateway: Two-way teleport portal for the Warlock and allies. Max 5 charges, recharging one charge every 10 seconds. 10s cooldown to place.
New Curse: Curse of Enfeeblement: Replaces Curse of Tongues and Weakness. Reduces physical damage by 10% and casting speed by 50% (diminished in PvP).
Dark Intent: Now a passive raid buff. Grants +10% Spell Power and +10% Stamina to raid/party.
Spell Changes
- New Resource: Soul Shards (max 4). Regenerated via Corruption procs and kills. Used for Haunt and utility spells like Soulburn.
- Malefic Grasp: New filler that increases the tick rate of your DoTs while dealing moderate direct damage.
- Haunt: Redesigned to cost 1 Soul Shard, increase DoT damage by 35% for 8s. No longer heals upon expiration. No cooldown.
- Drain Soul: Restores a Soul Shard every two ticks. Grants three Shards if the enemy dies during the cast. Ticks amplify DoTs by 60% at <20% HP.
- Soul Swap: No longer removes DoTs. Now, it copies and applies them, improving cleave control in multi-target fights.
- Agony: Replaces Bane of Agony. Ramps up to 10 stacks and maintains stack count on refresh, improving uptime and ramp efficiency.
Talent Changes
Tier 1 Talents
- Dark Regeneration – Heals you and your pet instantly for 30% of your maximum health and increases all healing received by 25% for 12 seconds. This ability has a 2-minute cooldown.
- Soul Leech is a passive effect that grants you an absorption shield when you deal damage with key offensive abilities. The protection lasts for 15 seconds, and its strength scales with the damage dealt, up to a maximum of 20% of the damage dealt.
- Harvest Life enhances Drain Life, increasing its damage by 50% and its healing by 150%, making it a much stronger sustain option.
Tier 2 Talents
- Demonic Breath slows all enemies in a 10-yard cone in front of you by 50% for 6 seconds. It has a 20-second cooldown.
- Mortal Coil serves as crowd control and a self-heal. It causes the target to flee in fear for 3 seconds and restores 15% of our maximum health. Cooldown: 45 seconds.
- Shadowfury stuns all enemies within 8 yards for 3 seconds, providing reliable AoE crowd control.
Tier 3 Talents
- Soul Link redirects 20% of the damage you take to your demon and heals you and your demon for 3% of the damage you deal. This effect is only active when you have a demon summoned. If you select Grimoire of Sacrifice as your Tier 5 talent, Soul Link instead passively increases your maximum health by 20%.
- Sacrificial Pact commands your demon to sacrifice 25% of its current health, granting you a shield for 10 seconds that absorbs damage equal to 400% of the health sacrificed. If no demon is present, 25% of your health is used instead. Cooldown: 1 minute.
- Dark Bargain makes you immune to all damage (except fall damage) for 8 seconds. After the effect ends, 50% of the damage prevented is dealt to you over the next 8 seconds. Cooldown: 3 minutes.
Tier 4 Talents
- Blood Horror causes any enemy that strikes you with a melee attack while it’s active to flee in horror for up to 4 seconds. Activating it costs 5% of your maximum health, and it remains active for 1 minute or until triggered.
- Burning Rush is a toggleable ability that increases your movement speed by 50% while active at the cost of 4% of your maximum health per second. While it’s active, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce your speed below your normal running speed.
- Unbound Will instantly removes all magic effects, movement-impairing effects, and any crowd control that causes loss of character control. It has a 1-minute cooldown and costs 20% of your maximum health. Note that this also removes an enemy’s Unstable Affliction, causing it to deal critical damage and silence you.
Tier 5 Talents
The summoned demon is uncontrollable and attacks your current target automatically. If you summon the same type of demon as your active minion, you’ll briefly have two of the same demon fighting alongside you.
Grimoire of Sacrifice allows you to sacrifice your demon, increasing your single-target Spell Power by 20% and regenerating 2% of your maximum health every 5 seconds. Summoning a new demon cancels the effect. If you have selected Soul Link (Tier 3), you’ll also gain a passive +20% boost to your maximum health while your demon is sacrificed.
Additionally, you gain one of your demon’s key abilities, which you should choose based on the encounter:
Tier 6 Talents
- Archimonde’s Darkness grants you two charges of Dark Soul, allowing you to use it twice in a fight. Allowing you to choose more precisely when to use it and line up with procs.
- Kil’jaeden’s Cunning allows you to cast Malefic Grasp (Affliction) while moving, giving you extra mobility.
- Mannoroth’s Fury increases the area of effect of Seed of Corruption by 500% and boosts their damage by 100% for 10 seconds. The 500% increase in area is slightly misleading; consider it an increase of 125% in the radius.
Rotation Changes
Affliction remains a DoT-focused specialization from Cataclysm into Mists of Pandaria, but the gameplay has evolved significantly. While the core identity: maintaining Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction is intact, MoP introduces significant changes in resource management, snapshotting mechanics, and multitarget efficiency. The spec becomes more dynamic and rewarding for players who can track procs, spend Soul Shards wisely, and align their cooldowns for maximum effect.
Snapshotting vs. Dynamic Updates
In Cataclysm, DoTs already snapshot the caster’s stats; Spell Power, Haste, Crit, etc., at the time of application. However, this snapshotting behavior was less impactful in practice compared to MoP. MoP introduces the Pandemic mechanic, allowing you to refresh DoTs without losing efficiency. If a DoT is refreshed when it has less than 50% of its base duration remaining, the remaining time is added to the new application, up to 150% total duration. This means you can safely reapply DoTs early during primary procs without wasting uptime, enabling more intelligent and more forgiving snapshotting windows. This makes it crucial to align powerful buffs with your DoT refreshes.
The result: when you refresh matters just as much as how often. Effective Affliction gameplay in MoP revolves around timing empowered reapplications to maximize your damage uptime across the fight.
Soul Shard System Revamp
Soul Shards in Cataclysm had niche utility for all specializations (e.g., Soulburn into Seed of Corruption). In MoP, they are a core rotational resource for Affliction Warlocks. You spend them on Haunt to boost DoT damage or on Soulburn to empower spells like Soul Swap. Below 20% HP, Drain Soul becomes your filler and generates shards every two ticks, fueling even more Haunt casts during execute.
Malefic Grasp Replaces Shadow Bolt
The primary filler spell shifts from Shadow Bolt in Cataclysm to Malefic Grasp in MoP. It is a channeled drain spell with a slower pace, dealing increased damage based on the active DoTs, better reflecting Affliction’s damage-over-time theme. You still replace this with Drain Soul in the execute phase.
Soul Swap Gets a Makeover
Cataclysm’s Soul Swap removed DoTs from one target to apply them to another—useful but awkward. In MoP, it copies DoTs and allows you to reapply them to new targets without removal. When combined with Soulburn, it becomes an AoE or cleave monster, and the Soul Swap Exhale extension mechanic allows you to extend DoT durations with proper timing.
Cooldown Overhaul
Dark Soul in Cataclysm increased DoT damage directly. In MoP, it is replaced by Dark Soul: Misery, which gives +30% Haste for 20s. This not only speeds up tick rates but also increases Soul Shard generation and damage from Drain Soul. Haste overall also decreases the cooldown duration of spells.
Smarter AoE Tools
In Cataclysm, AoE was a juggling act between Seed of Corruption and multi-DoTing. In MoP, Soulburn + Soul Swap auto-applies all your key DoTs, making ramp-up near-instant. On top of that, Soul Swap now copies instead of swaps your DoTs, allowing you to spread them rapidly. AoE feels faster and more deliberate.
Implications for Playstyle
- Buff Tracking Becomes Vital: You must actively monitor trinkets, procs, and cooldowns to ensure your DoTs are applied during peak windows. This adds a buff snapshotting mini-game.
- Soul Shard Drives Rotation: Instead of a static filler-DoT loop, you now think about when to spend, conserve, or generate Soul Shards to maximize damage.
- Execute Phase is More Explosive: MoP makes Drain Soul not just a damage tool, but a resource engine. Allowing more liberal use of Haunt.
- Cleave is Stronger and Easier: You no longer need to awkwardly swap and reapply manually. Soul Swap + Soul Swap Exhale handles spreading or extending DoTs smoothly.
Conclusion
MoP’s Affliction Warlock takes the same DoT framework from Cataclysm and evolves it into a resource-driven, burst-timing, cleave-efficient machine. While you will still feel at home with Agony, Unstable Affliction, and Corruption, the rotation now rewards awareness, timing, and planning much more heavily.
If you were used to “set it and forget it” DoT upkeep in Cataclysm, you will now be rewarded for proactively reacting to buffs, spending shards, and executing tight opener windows. The spec plays deeper, sharper, and far more explosively—while still feeling like the same Affliction you loved.
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