Covenants
Raiding
- Night Fae - Good - Best Soulbind: Dreamweaver
- Kyrian - Decent - Best Soulbind: Mikanikos
- Necrolord - Decent - Best Soulbind: Marileth
- Venthyr - Bad - Best Soulbind: Theotar
Night Fae is currently far ahead of any other covenants in terms of soulbinds, covenant ability damage wise and utility ability. Kyrian is close in terms of damage but way worse to utilize it, has a worse utility ability. Venthyr and Necrolord are both significantly worse in terms of damage but after recent changes in 9.0.5 Necrolord has at least good survivability with the new Fleshcraft and probably decent build for ST with your Drain Soul ability, but since this build requires you to not move almost at all, that makes it somewhat unplayable.
Mythic+
- Night Fae - Good - Best Soulbind: Dreamweaver
- Kyrian - Bad - Best Soulbind: Mikanikos
- Necrolord - Bad - Best Soulbind: Marileth
- Venthyr - Bad - Best Soulbind: Theotar
Night Fae with recent changes, new covenant legendary, Korayn soulbind tree and Sow the Seeds build outperform any other covenant by a mile which makes it the only good choice for m+.
Soulbinds and Conduits
Potency Conduits
Priority 1: Soul Eater is a great conduit that is almost best for ST and best once there is more than 1 target that you can affect it with.
Priority 2(ST): Withering Bolt is a good ST damage increase conduit.
Priority 2(Multitarget/M+): Rolling Agony is a good choice for M+.
Priority 3(ST): Focused Malignancy is a decent choice for ST.
Endurance Conduits
Diabolic Bloodstone looks good on paper but is very useless in reality. Healing is just too little.
Accrued Vitality is a bit better since you can control it and get slightly more healing at times when you really need it.
Resolute Barrier might come in handy at times when you need your defensive CDs a bit more often than every 3 minutes. Looks good for PvP.
Condensed Anima Sphere is a new endurance conduit that does good sustain healing.
Condensed Anima Sphere > Accrued Vitality > Resolute Barrier > Diabolic Bloodstone
Finesse Conduits
Demonic Momentum Good movement speed bonus for when you use your circle.
Shade of Terror Your Fear can withstand 100% more damage before breaking. Good for PvP but useless for PVE.
Fel Celerity The cooldown of Fel Domination is reduced by ‘x’ sec. Might come in handy for PvP, but it has no use for pve just yet.
Kilrogg’s Cunning Your Eye of Kilrogg is no longer stealthed and can now place your Demonic Circle. Currently useless.
Demonic Momentum > Fel Celerity > Shade of Terror > Kilrogg’s Cunning
Conduits for raid should look like this, only change for m+ would be switching Focused Malignancy for Rolling Agony.
Legendaries
Affliction warlocks currently using multiple legendaries in raid which are: Relic of Demonic Synergy (Best ST if includes any kind of movement), Malefic Wrath (Best ST if almost no movement), Decaying Soul Satchel (Best multiple targets if can affect few targets with Soul Rot) and Wrath of Consumption which can be currently used only on KT but seems to perform pretty good on a fight of this type.
Craft order would be Relic of Demonic Synergy > Decaying Soul Satchel > Malefic Wrath > Wrath of Consumption
For M+ only choice is Decaying Soul Satchel.
Second Legendary
In 9.2, we will get our covenant legendary as 2nd default legendary. A good addition would be Relic of Demonic Synergy for any covenant and any kind of content since it’s bis for ST/aoe/cleave/etc.
Gear
Tier Set
2-Set - Deliberate Malice - Malefic Rapture's damage is increased by 15%, and each cast extends the duration of Corruption, Agony, and Unstable Affliction by 2 sec.
4-Set - Calamitous Crescendo - While Corruption, Agony, and Unstable Affliction are active, your Drain Soul has a 10% chance / Shadow Bolt has a 20% chance to make your next Malefic Rapture cost no Soul Shards and cast instantly.
The affliction tier set is pretty good in theory, but it’s undertuned and has some flaws in reality. In theory, it should increase ST and cleave damage while also helping to maintain dots on multiple targets fights which is a strong niche of affliction warlock, which is good. But in reality, we don’t have any spread multiple targets fights, which makes affliction and it’s tier set pretty useless. Strictly for ST damage tier set is very-very weak and pointless for AoE, m+. So, in the end, we have a tier set that supports fight styles that aren’t in existence in the game and doesn’t synergize with other kinds of fights which makes it pretty useless in general.
On use trinkets:
Best - Soulletting Ruby
Decent - Inscrutable Quantum Device
Passive trinkets:
Best - Unbound Changeling, Elegy of the Eternals
Good - So’leah’s Secret, Insignia