Affliction Warlock Dragonflight 10.1 guide

Welcome to the Affliction Warlock DPS guide written by Sjele, one of Method’s main raiders.

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

10.0.7 Changes

• New Talent: Sargerei Technique  Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul is increased by 8/15%.
• New talent: Socrethar’s Guile - Agony damage increased by 8/15%.
• New Talent: Dark virtuosity - Increases Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul damage by 15/30%.
• New Talent: Kindled Malice - Increases Malefic Rapture and Seed of Corruption damage by 8/15%.
• Dread Touch now lasts 8 seconds.
• Darkglare has been redesigned - Summons a darkglare from the twisting nether that extends the duration of your damage over time effects by 8 seconds. The Darkglare will serve you for 20 seconds, blasting its target for shadow damage, increased by 25% for every damage over time effect you have active on their current target.
• Xavian teachings has been removed from the talent tree and is now baseline.
• Harvester of Souls has been removed.
• Writhe in agony has been moved to row 3 and is a 1 rank talent.

With all these changes the biggest takeaway is that single target damage, especially through drain soul amplifiers is going up and sustained AoE through agony damage increases and seed of corruption/malefic rupture amplifications is going up as well.

Overall, really solid changes for affliction, seeing both numbers go up as well as a more comfortable playstyle.

10.0.5 Changes

• Soulkeeper has been redesigned – Summons a Soulkeeper that consumes all Tormented Souls you’ve collected, blasting nearby enemies for Chaos damage per soul consumed over 8 seconds.
• Inquisitor’s Gaze is now passive and has been redesigned – Your spells and abilities have a chance to summon an Inquisitor’s Eye that deals Chaos damage over time.
• New Talent: Focused Malignancy – Malefic Rapture deals 15/30% increased damage to targets suffering from Unstable Affliction.
• Soul Swap has been redesigned – Copies your damage over time effects from the target, preserving their duration. Your next use of Soul Swap within 10 seconds will exhale a copy of the effects onto a new target.
• Soul Tap has been removed.
• Pandemic Invocation has been moved to row 6 and is now a 1 rank talent.
• Harvester of Souls damage increased by 25%.

All the changes are really good except for Soul Swap rework. It was pretty bad before, and now it got even worse because it basically does the same thing, but you need to spend 2 globals now for it instead of 1. In some rare cases, it can be handy, though. Other than that, our ST damage became actually viable now and one of the best, mostly due to new talent Focused Malignancy. Gameplay wise nothing changed.

First impressions

With all the changes affliction is currently in a pretty good spot both for raid and m+. Our single target is one of the best but we can also spec and do one of the best spread cleave damage and aoe if needed.