Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation:
The general goal with the Affliction rotation is to maintain Agony and Corruption on as many targets as possible without overcapping on Soul Shards.
In single target and low target cleave you will spend your Soul Shards on Unstable Affliction and in AoE you will spend them on Seed of Corruption.
Single Target
Opener
- Pre-cast Haunt 2 seconds before the pull
- Agony
- Corruption
- Dark Harvest (if talented)
- Summon Darkglare
- Malevolence
- Unstable Affliction as many times as you can
- Malefic Grasp
Keep refreshing your DoTs and spending any extra Soul Shards you generate on Unstable Affliction for the duration of your Darkglare.
After this, the rotation changes to a simple priority system:
- Maintain Agony, Corruption and Haunt
- Unstable Affliction with a Shard Instability proc
- Unstable Affliction if you have 5 Soul Shards
- Unstable Affliction to refresh Cascading Calamity as late as possible
- Shadow Bolt / Drain Soul
AoE
Opener
- Apply Agony to as many targets as possible while the tank is grouping the pack
- Haunt on a primary target
- Seed of Corruption to spread Corruption
- Summon Darkglare
- Dark Harvest
- Sow the Seeds as many times as you can
- Drain Soul
After this, the rotation changes to a simple priority system:
- Maintain Agony manually on as many targets as you can
- Seed of Corruption if you have 5 Soul Shards
- Maintain Haunt on a primary target
- Seed of Corruption
- Drain Soul (try to snipe dying enemies whenever you can for extra Soul Shards)
Playstyle
Cooldown Usage
Affliction Warlock cooldown usage boils down to applying all your maintenance DoTs (Agony, Corruption, Haunt), then pressing Summon Darkglare, spending as many Soul Shards as you can and finally casting as much Malefic Grasp as possible while Summon Darkglare is up.
I suggest looking up when and how other Affliction Warlocks are using their cooldowns on Warcraftlogs.com and make a personal plan for yourself depending on how your guild plays a specific encounter.
Defensives
Warlock is one of the most tanky classes in the game. We have a large amount of passive mitigation through Soul Leech, Fel Armor, and Soul Link coupled with increased max health from Demonic Embrace and Demonic Fortitude. Other than those we have four active spells that will help us survive:
Unending Resolve
Unending Resolve, also known as our “wall”, provides 25% damage reduction and immunity to interrupt, silence and pushback effects for 8 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown. This can be further enhanced to either 40% DR with Strength of Will or reduced cooldown with Dark Accord.
Dark Pact
Dark Pact sacrifices 20% of our current health to shield for 200% of that amount on a 60 second cooldown. You can further enhance this by either talenting into Ichor of Devils which makes Dark Pact only sacrifice 5% of your current health for the same shield value or by talenting into Frequent Donor which reduces the cooldown by 15 seconds. Since Dark Pact scales off of current health it should ideally always be used at high health before you take damage.
Mortal Coil
Heals you for 20% of your maximum health on a 45 second cooldown, should be viewed as a mini Healthstone. Remember that you might have to move in closer to the target in order to use it since it has shorter range than the rest of your abilities.
Demonic Healthstone
Even though every class has the ability to use a Healthstone, you as a Warlock should view them a bit differently. They heal you personally a lot more thanks to Pact of Gluttony and Sweet Souls, and with Pact of Gluttony they have a 60 second cooldown during combat, which allows you to use several of them during an encounter. A big part of increasing your survivability as a Warlock is learning to use these frequently whenever you are in danger. Whenever you use your last one during an encounter you should cast Create Healthstone to refill.