Cataclysm Classic Affliction Warlock Talent Builds

Affliction Warlock has 32 of their talent points in the Affliction tree, then you split the remaining points into Demonology to buff your demon and Destruction to buff your main filler spell.Below you'll find our recommended talent build for all PvE content as a Affliction Warlock.

In this section we'll go over the best build for Affliction Warlock. There is no optional talents, as we choose all the talents that will help you do the most damage as possible as Affliction.

• Improved Corruption — Increases the damage of your main DoT Corruption by 12%.

• Doom and Gloom — Increases the critical strike chance of your Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom by 8%.

• Improved Life Tap — increases the amount of mana gained whenever you Life Tap making it so you won't have to Life Tap as often.

• Jinx — This makes it so whenever you Curse of the Elements it will affect up to 15 other targets that are within 40 yards of your cursed targets. This can be really helpful for when you need to Curse of the Elements.

• Soul Siphon — This will increase the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul by 6% for each of your Affliction effects on the target, up to a maximum of 18%. This is very big for your execute phases.

• Siphon Life — This makes it so whenever you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 50% chance to be healed for 2% of your health, giving you some passive healing.

• Eradication — Makes it so whenever you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 6% chance to increase your spell casting speed by 20% for 10 seconds. This is one of the best talents in the tree and will be very important to track when you get this buff.

• Soul Swap — This is one of the main talents in the Affliction tree. Soul Swap copies your DoT's from one target and moves them to another. Whenever you move them, it will remove the DoT's from the old target unless you're using Glyph of Soul Swap.

• Shadow Embrace — This will cause your Shadow Bolt and Haunt to apply Shadow Embrace to the target, increasing all shadow DoT damage you deal to the target by 5% and stacks up to 3 times. This is a major debuff that goes on the boss and crucial to keep this maxed at 3 stacks.

• Death's Embrace — This talent increases the damage done by your Shadow spells by 12% whenever the target is below 25% Health, not only making you deal more damage, but also significantly buffing your execute damage.

• Soulburn: Seed of Corruption — This makes it so whenever you press Soulburn and then Seed of Corruption, once the Seed of Corruption detonates, it will apply Corruption to all enemies hit. This helps drastically with your AoE.

• Everlasting Affliction — Not only does this increase the crit chance of your Corruption, Seed of Corruption and Unstable Affliction, but this will also make your Drain Life, Drain Soul and Haunt reset the duration of your Corruption.

• Pandemic — Reduces the global cooldown of your Banes and Curses by a half a second, but also makes your Drain Soul refresh your Unstable Affliction whenever you deal damage to the target with that Drain Soul.

• Haunt — The powerhouse talent for Affliction. This does minor damage and heals you for the damage dealt, but most importantly puts a debuff on the boss that buffs all of your shadow DoT damage by 20%. This is upped to 23% if you're using Glyph of Haunt.

• Dark Arts — This is a very strong talent in the Demonology tree that will increase the damage done by your Felhunters Shadow Bite by 15%. Shadow Bite is an one of your main damage sources, so it's important to buff this.

• Shadow and Flame — This is a very important talent that not only increases the damage of your Shadow Bolt by 12%, but also whenever your Shadow Bolt hits the target it will put a debuff on it that will increase the spell critical strike chance done to the target by 5%.

• Bane — This reduces the cast time of your Shadow Bolt by a half of second, making you able to cast more Shadow Bolts.

Prime glyphs are new to Cataclysm and they're the strongest glyph options that you can have. Prime glyphs are pretty limited and won't provide many flex options.

• Glyph of Corruption — This gives your Corruption a 4% chance to cause you to enter a Shadow Trance. This, much like Nightfall, will make your next Shadow Bolt instant cast.
• Glyph of Haunt — This adds 3% more to your Haunt spell, making Haunt now buff your Shadow DoTs by 23$, instead of 20%.
• Glyph of Unstable Affliction — This will decrease the casting time of your Unstable Affliction by 0.2 seconds, making one of your main DoTs have a quicker cast.

• Glyph of Life Tap — This will reduce the global cooldown of your Life Tap by half a second and imporant since you will be Life Taping frequently.
• Glyph of Shadow Bolt — This reduces the mana cost of your main filler spell Shadow Bolt.
• Glyph of Soul Swap — This leaves your DoTs on the Soul Swap target when the spell is used. Without this your DoTs are removed from the Soul Swap target. This also gives Soul Swap a 30 seconds cooldown.

Minor glyphs typically provide very minor benefits and none of them are impactful. You can pick whichever ones you want, however these ones are the main ones that can atleast be helpful.

• Glyph of Drain Soul — Whenever you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor you gain 10% of your mana back.
• Glyph of Unending Breath — This increases the swim speed of targets affected by your Unending Breath by 20%. Helpful for any quests in the water.
• Glyph of Curse of Exhaustion — This increases the range of your Curse of Exhaustion by 5 yards. Can be helpful if you ever want to slow down your enemy or in PvP situations.