Affliction Warlock Gearing Guide

Season 2 Affliction Warlock Tier Set:

• (2) Set Bonus: Your spells and abilities have a chance to hit a Jackpot! That increases your haste by 12% for 12 sec. Casting Darkglare always hits a Jackpot!
• (4) Set Bonus: Hitting a Jackpot! Also increases the damage of Unstable Affliction by 50% and causes Unstable Affliction to spread to up to 3 targets within 40yds for 12 sec

Both set bonuses increase our burst potential every 2 minutes by virtue of guaranteed Jackpot’s! With Darkglare but also a buff to Unstable Affliction aswell as a haste amp. Where this really has potential to go crazy is in mythic plus or spread cleave (within 40yds of primary target). Picture the scene: You pop all cooldowns - UA spreads to 3 nearby targets (4 total) due to guaranteed from Darkglare then while following rotation you proc another Jackpot! This time from 2pc thus spreading again to more targets. This damage would absolutely crank and not to mention you still get soul shard refunds from these “spreaded” UA’s if the target(s) died.

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Affliction Warlock, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

The following is a list and discussion of trinkets that are recommended. This can also be used as a guide for what to purchase with your Puzzling Cartel Chip (Dinars), which can be spent on raid trinkets and ‘very rare’ raid loot.

Passive:

• Eye of Kezan - This trinket is our BiS in longer single target raid encounters due to the mastery and its ramping damage effect,
• Mug’s Moxie Jug - This trinket is our other best passive and is preferred in shorter raid encounters as well as cleave / aoe scenarios due to how effective crit is for the spec
• Carved Blazikon Wax - A repeatedly farmable trinket from m+ that is a solid alternative to the above two which come from deep in the raid.

On Use:

• House of Cards - Our other BIS trinket, HoC gives us mastery on use but also grants us more stacks the longer a boss fight, making it essential for longer progression fights.
• Signet of the Priory - This on use trinket grants us our second highest secondary stat for slightly longer than HoC, while also giving other party members who have this trinket a small amount of their highest secondary stat when it is popped, stacking for each party member.

Crafting Priority

1. Main-Hand Weapon such as Everforged Dagger, 2 handed weapon like Vagabond’s Bounding Baton or Off-Hand such as Vagabond’s Torch with Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment
2. Any low armor piece with Writhing Armor Banding embellishment to pair with Darkmoon: Ascension
3. Any low armor piece with Elemental Focusing Lens or Dawnthread Lining embellishments

Use sparks with caution

A weapon generally provides the best raw DPS followed by any Consecrated armor piece. While it may seem a no-brainer to craft a staff with Darkmoon: Ascension for maximum DPS - 2 handed weapons cost 2 sparks while main / off-hand’s only cost 1. By virtue of max level crafting gear being lower than that of maximum myth track gear it is only used for their Embellishment effects but can be used as temporary gear until better loot drops. Due to their lower item level we want to craft our second embellishment in slots that have the lowest number of total stats, these slots being Wrists, Feet and Waists since fully upgraded myth gear will overtake it in ilvl.

I personally wouldn’t craft anything until at least the second week of the season, while a weapon may be the biggest DPS in week 1, your vault could contain a high level staff and would result in your very limited craft being wasted. Thus, you’ll want to hold off crafting for as long as possible in order for you to maximise the value you will get from the craft, you can spam mythic+ indefinitely for a piece of loot, the same can’t be said for crafting. If such a situation did arise wherein a myth track staff was in your vault (buy a lottery ticket) then you would be looking to go down a different route of embellishments since Darkmoon: Ascension can only be put on crafted weapons. Then you would likely go for double Elemental Focusing Lens or Dawnthread Lining, Elemental Focusing Lens is a raw damage proc similiar to shadowflame in Dragonflame where as Dawnthread Lining is a permanent Crit Strike increase when health is above 80%.

Despite it looking like a big DPS upgrade it is not wise to craft an embellishment in a tier slot, due to higher item level pieces being available from the Great Vault and Mythic raid.

Elemental Focusing Lens is a flexible embellishment and can go on any crafting piece while both Writhing Armor Banding and Dawnthread Lining can go on any armor piece.

The best way to see which items are the most beneficial to spend your spark craft on would be to sim your character.

Corruption

Returning in patch 11.1.5 are BFA’s ‘corruption’ effects. While all the effects that gave a specific secondary stat have been removed, some of the corruptions that are making a return have been changed. Corruption’s are proc based effects that you can enchant on your helm.

For Affliction warlocks in TWW S2 the best corruptions are

1. Void Ritual - increase to all secondary stats for 20 secs
2. Gushing Wound - Applies a short bleed to target
3. Infinite Stars - Damage proc that ramps then resets
4. Twilight Devastation - Long ranged frontal split between enemies

By virtue of stats being so important for Affliction warlock even in single target our go-to corruption is Void Ritual in all scenarios: Single Target, Cleave and AoE.

A close second, in single target at least is Gushing Wound, by virtue of Affliction’s many damage modifiers that scale the damage not only of our spells but also corruptions

A glimmer of its former self ‘Infinite’ Stars isn’t a bad option in ST as the damage can be buffed via Affliction’s many modifiers (i.e haunt, shadow’s embrace) but with it now resetting after 6 stacks it has lost what made it fun and viable in BFA.

The last potential option is Twilight Devastation, like Infinite Stars it too has been changed from its BFA variant. It now splits the damage it deals while said damage is not tied to your max health. Twilight dev may find some success in stacked 2 or 3 target cleave but Void Ritual is just far superior

Puzzling Cartel Chip Priority

• House of Cards
• Mug’s Moxie Jug
• The Jastor Diamond
• Eye of Kezan

With affliction’s damage being centered around it’s cooldowns especially in 2+ target scenarios getting a strong on use trinket to pair with said cooldowns is the first order of business. Then we are looking at which other trinket is going to give us the most value. On longer single target progression bosses Eye of Kezan is the better choice compared to Mug’s Jug but these are few and far between, the proc effect of the Jug is more useful in every other scenario (cleave, aoe) other than lengthy patchwork encounters therefore the Jug should be your second pick up.

Cyrce’s Circlet

While coming out in the between patch (11.0.7) Cyrce’s Circlet is still very usable early into S2 due to the sheer power of the item. Generally Heroic raid level rings will perform better than this unique ring but ultimately the best way to find out when to swap it would be to sim.

Nevertheless Cyrce’s Circlet will be the ring most players will have going into TWW’s second season so what gems I would recommend using goes as follows:

In raid you’ll want to use:

• Thunderlord’s Crackling Citrine
• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine
• Windsinger’s Runed Citrine

For Mythic+ I recommend:

• Stormbringer’s Runed Citrine
• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine
• Windsinger’s Runed Citrine

In both raid and Mythic+, mastery is a strong stat for affliction warlocks increasing our DoT damage, which is a large percent of our overall output, hence why we want Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine. The story is pretty similar for Windsinger’s Runed Citrine, granting us a baseline secondary stat.

The difference comes in what gem to place in the Singing Thunder Socket.

For a raid environment with primarily a single boss where the damage to said boss is more important, you’ll want to play Thunderlord’s Crackling Citrine. This is our best option due to Aff having many damage modifiers such as haunt / shadow’s embrace, which increase the damage of the proc effect.

When it comes to Mythic+ and AoE scenarios, where the number of mobs increases, a raw damage proc doesn’t scale as favourably as raw stats do therefore we opt to take Stormbringer’s Runed Citrine.