Season of Discovery Affliction Warlock DPS Leveling

Affliction Warlocks are widely known as one of the best levelers in Classic. With insane self healing from talents like Siphon Life and Improved Drain Life, mixed with the Runes Master Channeler and Haunt not only healing you, but also buffing all of your DoT's, plus a plethroa of demons to choose from, you will have a comfortable time leveling. You have really comfortable playstyle of just putting up your Corruption, Unstable Affliction Drain Life, Curse of Agony and Siphon Life when needed.

Leveliumg as an Affliction Warlock consists of pulling 3-4 mobs at a time and simply keeping your DoT's on them with Curse of Agony, Corruption, Shadowflame and Drain Life, then keeping Haunt on the target at all times while watching all your enemies rapidly rot away.

Affliction is really straight forward; the talents taken focus on increasing the damage your DoTs deal. Your first five points go into Improved Corruption to make your Corruption instant cast instead of having to deal with the long cast time.

Your next points can go into Suppression to help get some Hit on your Affliction spells. This isn't as important as it is in raid, since you don't need as much hit, but it's still worth putting a few points into this in order to progress further down the Affliction tree.

Your next five points go into Improved Drain Life to help you get more healing from your Drain Life. This talent synergizes well with one of your runes that you'll be taking called Master Channeler, which makes your Drain Life a DoT, rather than you having to channel it.

Your next few points go into Improved Curse of Agony, which buffs your main Curse, while Amplify Curse makes then next Curse of Agony you do deal 50% more damage. After that you can pickup Grim Reach for some extra range on your Affliction spells and then two into Nightfall to make it so all casts of Corruption and Drain Life have a chance to proc and give you an instant cast Shadow Bolt. This talent is nice because you will almost always have Corruption and Drain Life up due to Master Channeler.

After that, get Siphon Life, which is a DoT that heals you for the damage done. The point in Curse of Exhaustion is a filler talent, but can be helpful when trying to kite or escape mobs and helpful if you're leveling in the open world on a PvP server.

After that, put five points into Shadow Mastery as this will buff all your Shadow damage by 10%. After that your remaining points will go into the Demonology and Destruction tree. Demonic Embrace gives you more Stamina, Improved Imp will make your Imp not only do more damage, but also give you more Stamina from Blood Pact.

After that the rest of your points will go into the Destruction tree, taking Improved Shadow Bolt will be applied by Shadowflame, which was reworked to be able to apply the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff if it crits whenever you apply it, making you deal 20% Shadow damage. Next put five points into Bane as this will make both your Shadow Bolt and Immolate cast faster. The two points into Improved Firebolt will reduce the cast time of your Imps Firebolt, making it deal more damage and lastly Shadowburn is used as a finisher or while roaming around.

• Bracers — Unstable Affliction
• Head — Pandemic
• Gloves — Haunt
• Pants — Demonic Pact
• Chest — Master Channeler
• Belt — Shadow and Flame
• Boot — Shadowflame
• Cloak — Soul Siphon
• Ring 1 — Shadow Specialization
• Ring 2 — Fire Specialization

Haunt is mandatory when leveling as Affliction. This Rune buffs all your Shadow damage by 20%, meaning your DoT's will do 20% more damage. Not only that, but when it expires or when the target dies, it heals you. This is just a nice Rune to use and should be used on cooldown.

Master Channeler is another mandatory Rune for leveling as Affliction. As mentioned above, this Rune will make your Drain Life a DoT, rather than a channel. This is nice because you can put this up with your other DoT's and be able to wand, Shadow Bolt or do whatever else you want to.

Shadow and Flame is great Rune for Affliction as this buffs your damage by 10% whenever you crit, which thanks to the Pandemic rune, your DoT's can crit, making you have high uptime on this buff. Invocation is a great rune for leveling as well, since this allows you to refresh your DoT to do instant damage.

You've got a few options for leg Runes, and to be honest none of them are great. Demonic Pact can be used, since whenever your pet crits, it will buff you for 10% of whatever your spell damage is. This is a nice passive buff that you'll get and make you do more damage. The other Runes on this slot are far less impactful.

You've got a few options for boot runes in Phase 4, which all of them being pretty good to use. Shadowflame stands out more than the rest since this was reworked and is now a very powerful DoT that is buffed by a multitude of your talents. This can also put up the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff to give you 20% more shadow damage. Demonic Knowledge was nerfed and now only givs 3% instead of 10%. Mark of Chaos is a new rune implemented in Phase 4 and allows you to apply Curse of Recklessness, Curse of Shadow, Curse of Exhaustion and Curse of the Elements to the target whenever you Curse of Doom or Curse of Agony. This sounds great, but loses value leveling since mobs typically die too fast to gain solid value out of your curses, but still can be very helpful when leveling.

Unstable Affliction is mandatory as this is a powerful damage over time ability that is buffed by all of your Shadow Talents, while also having a short cast.

Pandemic is a phenomenal Rune that allows all of your DoT's to crit. This is also mandatory for Affliction if you can get it while leveling. Vengeance is a tanking Rune and Backdraft is for Destruction Warlocks.

Soul Siphon was drastically reworked and is now a good rune. This causes your Drain Soul to to deal damage 3 times faster and increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul spells by an additional 6% for each of your Warlock Shadow effects afflicting the target, up to a maximum of 18% additional effect. When Drain Soul is cast on a target below 20% health, it instead gains 50% per effect, up to a maximum of 150%. In addition, your Drain Soul can now trigger your Nightfall talent. This is great since you will have Drain Life on the target for a large portion of your leveling thanks to Master Channeler, making this rune a great one to use in the Cloak slot.

Ring runes were added in Phase 4 and the only two you need to worry about once you find them are Shadow Specialization and Fire Specialization, although as Affliction you won't be casting too many Fire Spells. These ring runes give you 6% hit to each school of magic.

If you're looking for more information on all of the Warlock Runes and where to find them, click the link below.

Leveling as Affliction is pretty straight-forward. Keep Haunt, Corruption, Curse of Agony and Drain Life up on the target at all times and wand until the mob is dead. If the mob lasts long enough and you're using the Invocation rune, you can time your refresh for when the DoT has 6 seconds left to get the extra damage. Make sure to send your pet on the mob, so it can deal damage as well. If you took Improved Drain Soul as a talent, make sure to finish the mob with Drain Soul to benefit from the Mana Regen.