Affliction Warlock Dragonflight 10.1.7 Guide

Welcome to the Affliction Warlock DPS guide written by Timo (Fraser), one of Honolulu’s main raiders.

In Dragonflight, Affliction’s strengths lie in sustained spread cleave and AoE, high mobility on 1-3 Targets, and high self-heal survivability.

Affliction is currently in a pretty good spot both for raiding and Mythic+. Our single target is one of the best, but we can also do some of the best spread cleave damage and AoE if needed.

10.1.5 Affliction Warlock Changes

• Nightmare (Class Talent) changed from “when fear ends, the target is slowed by 30% for 4 seconds” to “Increase the amount of damage required to break your fear effects by 60%”.
• Seed of Corruption cast time reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds.
• Unstable Affliction damage increased by 10%.
• Malefic Affliction talent removed and replaced by Xavius’ Gambit: Unstable Affliction deals 15% / 30% increased damage.
• Doom Blossom talent changed FROM "If corruption damages a target affected by your Unstable Affliction, it has a 10% chance per stack of Malefic Affliction to deal (78.2% of Spell power) shadow damage to nearby enemies" TO "when Seed of Corruption deals damage to a target suffering from your Unstable Affliction they explode, dealing (68.034% of Spell power) shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yards".
• Dread Touch talent changed FROM "if malefic affliction exceeds 3 stacks, the target instead takes 30% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 8 seconds" TO "Malefic Rapture causes targets suffering from your Unstable Affliction to take 30% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 8 seconds".

The change to dread touch only requiring 1 Malefic Rapture instead of 4 to be applied is a much needed quality of life update and helps remedy afflictions’ slow ramp up time. This change is also more forgiving should unstable affliction fall off the target; allowing easier target priority add swapping with Soul Swap. Doom Blossom now provides stronger AoE but with the cost of losing its ability to proc in single target situations.