Raiding as a Warlock: 101

If you’re new to raiding as a Warlock or you’re just looking for a little extra edge on maximizing your DPS, here you go. Also, let me say this: If you’re confused about ANYTHING in this post, please ask. There’s a contact form over at WoW, I’m a Dork! and I’d be more than happy to respond to questions from anyone.

For the full post, go to WoW, I’m a Dork!

Remember there are no longer spell rotations. There is an opening sequence with a refresh priority. That will be discussed after the Spec list.

Affliction (53/0/17+1):
Glyphs: Haunt, Curse of Agony, Life Tap
Weapon Buff: Spellstone
Minion: Succubus

Spec Notes:

• 1 point left over to put where ever you want.
• There are no points in Grim Reach because being able to DPS from a distance doesn’t increase your DPS. I just allows you to be further away.
• There are no points in Fel Concentration because there aren’t enough situations in boss encounters where you need to worry about pushback while casting.
• No Dark Pact because we have Life Tap.
• 1 point needs to be in Suppression in the first tier to progress further down the tree. If your Hit Rating is 342 (13%), you don’t need to put any more points into Suppression. If your Hit Rating is 316 (12%) then you’ll want to put the left over point into Suppression. If you’re Hit Rating is 289 (11%), take one point from Improved Drain Soul and max Suppression.
• You can also choose to shift 1 point from Improved Drain Soul into Cataclysm for a slight decrease in Destruction’s mana cost.

Opening Sequences:

Affliction:

• Life Tap, Shadow Bolt, Haunt, Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony, Corruption and then refresh as needed. Also remember to cast Haunt with it’s off CD every 8 seconds. It’s not a DoT, so you’re not clipping anything. It’s a DD at first and increases damage while it’s up. So instead of waiting the 12 seconds for it to expire, you’ll get that initial direct damage in 4 seconds early. Think of it this way: Over a 180 second Boss fight do you want Haunt’s DD to hit 13-15 times or do you want it to hit 20-22 times.
• Why open with Life Tap? Well the glyph gives you 20% of your Spirit as Spellpower, so why wouldn’t you want that extra Spellpower to kick in immediately?
• Why Shadowbolt then Haunt? You want the 2 stacks of Shadow Embrace to be up ASAP. The first will be applied with Shadowbolt and the second is applied with the DD from Haunt. It’s the same sort of situation as Life Tap, why wouldn’t you want that extra increase in damage to be applied right off that bat?
• At 25% or below you will drop Shadowbolt, even if you get a Shadow Trance proc. You’ll want to get Haunt, Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony and Corruption as close to refreshed as possible before popping Drain Soul at 25%. Watch your Drain Soul ticks. You’ll need to weave in DoT and Haunt refreshes between Drain Soul ticks. It’s not difficult. It ticks every 3 seconds and if you’re using some sort of scrolling combat text mod, you should be able to see when it ticks.

Popularity: 13% [?]