WotLK Classic Affliction Warlock Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

The Affliction Warlock rotation is one of the most fun and engaging rotations in the game, having to keep up all your damage-over-time abilities on top of Haunt to buff them all up while filling with Shadow Bolt in the meantime. This page will go over the single-0target rotation, as well as the AoE and execute rotations

The biggest part of dealing damage as an Affliction Warlock is how you deal with your Corruption and if you let it roll over. Simply put, thanks to the talent Everlasting Affliction, this spell causes your Corruption and Unstable Affliction to do more damage, but most importantly, allows your Drain Life, Drain Soul, Shadow Bolt, and Haunt to refresh your Corruption. This means that once you manually apply that first Corruption, as long as you are casting Drain Life, Drain Soul, Shadow Bolt, or Haunt, that Corruption will remain on the target without you needing to manually apply it.

Another amazing thing about Corruption is that it snapshots your current crit percentage along with any damage modifiers you have, and it will also remain on that Corruption until you manually refresh it or it naturally falls off. This means that you can and should be putting as many crit and damage modifiers as you can on that first Corruption so that it is buffed for the entirety of the encounter, or until you naturally refresh it. These modifiers include things like Potion of Wild Magic, Earth and Moon, Ebon Plaguebringer, Curse of the Elements, and Improved Shadow Bolt to name a few.

The only time you will manually refresh your Corruption is once the boss reaches 35%, thanks to the Death's Embrace talent. For this reason, it is very important that you make sure the proper buffs are on you before applying that first Corruption.

Your opener as Affliction matters a lot in terms of both damage. It is very important

1. Life Tap for your Glyph — This needs to be up the entire fight. Remember, if you have the 4-piece Tier 7 set bonus, do not worry about life tapping to keep that 4pc buff. Just Life Tap throughout the fight as you normally would.
2. Pre-Pot a potion — Potion of Wild Magic. The crit rating on this will snapshot into your Corruption
3. Precast your Shadow Bolt so that it hits the boss right as the pull timer hits 0.

After your opener, your rotation/priority is listed below.

1. After the opening Shadow Bolt, cast Haunt and keep this on the target at all times, while trying not to clip it. Clipping means to reapply before the previous DoT ran out.
2. Cast Unstable Affliction and keep this on the target at all times.
3. Cast Corruption. This is cast after Haunt and Unstable Affliction to ensure that you have Improved Shadow Bolt and Tricks of the Trade.
4. Cast Curse of Agony and keep this on the target at all times.
5. Fill with Shadow Bolt while keeping Haunt, Unstable Affliction and Curse of Agony on the target for the entire duration of the encounter without clipping them.

For AoE, you simply spam Seed of Corruption while watching your threat. Use Soulshatter as needed.

If you are an Engineer, make sure to utilize your Global Thermal Sapper Charge and Saronite Bombs as much as you possibly can.

Once the target hits 35%, you have entered Death's Embrace range, which means you manually apply Corruption.

Before hitting 25%, I like to make sure I have the Mana to Drain Soul, so I will Life Tap a time or two to ensure I have Mana. At this point you will be using Drain Soul to take advantage of the 4 times damage it receives on top of talents like Soul Siphon that buffs the drain damage.

1. Keep Unstable Affliction, Haunt, and Curse of Agony on the boss if they will last.
2. Use Drain Soul as often as you can while those DoTs are on the boss.

It is important to keep your DoTs up full time while draining as much as you can. If you need to refresh any of the DoTs, then do it in pairs. Meaning, if Unstable Affliction fell off the target, do not stop casting Drain Soul until the Haunt or the Curse of Agony fell off and then reapply BOTH of them. This allows for maximum drain uptime.

A very important thing about Execute is that Drain Soul does not snapshot like normal DoTs do since it is a channel. This means that whenever you get a Spell Power Proc, Haste Proc, or Damage Proc you should resnap your Drain Soul in order for it to take into effect the buffs.