Welcome to Skill Capped’s Overview of the Best Talents for Affliction Warlock in PvP in Dragonflight 10.2.6
In this article, we will go over the biggest change that came with Dragonflight – talent system. We will cover the best talents for Affliction Warlock in PvP, including the Class tree, the Spec tree, as well as PvP talents themselves.
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Table of Contents
Affliction Warlock Talents Overview
Since the talent system received a huge revamp going into Dragonflight, we will cover both the class and the spec tree. They both have some mandatory and some optional talents. Those will depend on the situation and the comp you are playing.
Warlock Class Talents
The class tree doesn’t have that much flexibility to it. You have to go down to all three capstone talents, so this doesn’t leave you with a lot of wiggle room.
When choosing between Howl of Terror and Mortal Coil, Coil is the more common pick for helping you to build space to kite or even score kills. Howl can be good into setup comps like Rogue Mage to peel goes.
Amplify Curse is a great addition to the kit as it strongly empowers our curses that can be used in a lot of different ways depending on the situation you find yourself in. We also pick up Teachings of the Satyr as it feels better to have a higher uptime on your large curses. If there are multiple Decurses on the enemy team then you can drop Teachings of the Satyr for Sweet Souls.
In the middle, we have a choice between Strength of Will that increases the effectiveness of Unending Resolve and Dark Accord, with Strength of Will being chosen as it’s very good in shorter games, and in high burst environments. The only time you could ever swap this to Dark Accord is when you are not the kill target.
Then we get a choice between Ichor of Devils and Frequent Donor. Frequent Donor is the default pick due to the fast paced meta and having access to a shorter cooldown is important as many goes in the meta are based around 45 second to 1 minute cooldowns. Ichor of Devils is a good into comps that will be putting high, consistent rot pressure on you throughout the match such as Shadow Priest Balance Druid.
Soul Link provides some additional Stamina when playing Grimoire of Sacrifice, which is a nice bonus to our tankiness. We then put 2 points into Soul Conduit. Even though it isn’t as good for Affliction, we want to gain access to both capstone talents below it.
Soulburn is an amazing ability that heavily empowers one of a number of important abilities in our kit. This has a lot of potential uses, and you should never play without it.
The only truly flexible point is Abyss Walker, which can be dropped to take Fel Domination to get an extra kick every 3 minutes. This can win you the game at times because people don’t normally expect you to kick twice. Alternatively, you can put this point in Banish if you play against a Demo Warlock for Tyrant.
Affliction Spec Talents
Absolute Corruption is going to be the pick in the choice node down the middle. The reason for that is we simply don’t have enough globals for Siphon Life.
Phantom Singularity can easily be paired with Darkglare, making it a very good choice. The tier set for Affliction in season 2 reduces the cooldown of this ability and the 4 set increases the damage they take when it is applied.
Inevitable Demise is a fantastic pick as it increases the healing of our Drain Life, further complementing the talents we take in the class tree.
We also have to go for Grimoire of Sacrifice as it does a huge portion of our damage.
Another talent buffing our Drain Soul is Withering Bolt. As you can see, there are quite a few talents that work well with each other, increasing the value of the individual picks.
Then we take Creeping Death for a flat damage increase and Summon Darkglare for those 2-minute windows.
Soul Rot gives us access to 1-minute windows, allowing us to deal a lot of damage and Drain Life multiple targets.
Malefic Affliction is then recommended for the damage increase to all of your Unstable Afflictions. It is a buff on yourself, which is great, and the damage increase also applies to the dispel component of the ability. If possible, you should be maintaining three stacks of this buff to maximize your damage.
We then take Soul-Eater’s Gluttony and Dark Harvest on the right side to have Soul Rot up more frequently, giving you access to big Drain Lifes.
Affliction Warlock PvP Talents
As for PvP talents, they will pretty much never change. You always want to play Rampant Afflictions as having Unstable Affliction on multiple targets is incredibly strong.
Jinx is a new addition to 10.2. This now makes any Curse apply both Agony and Corruption. This can be good into teams where it will be difficult to cast and will be a default pick into most matchups.
From here you have some situational options, include Nether Ward, which is really strong into double caster. Gateway Mastery is great into melee cleaves and gets more value on larger maps. In very niche situations, you can also play Shadow Rift. This talent is most effective if your partner has a reliable way to keep enemy players in place. Alternatively, you can play Fel Fissure if your team needs a Mortal Strike effect such when playing with a Shadow Priest. Finally, we have Impish Instincts. This is another great talent that was added in 10.1. This can also be played into melee cleaves as it reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Circle by 2 seconds when you are struck by a physical attack.
Soul Rip is a new PvP talent added to Warlocks in 10.1 and has become a solid pick. This talent is both an offensive and defensive talent. Offensively, it reduces the healing down by all enemy players by 25% and defensively, it also reduces the damage they deal by 25%. The enemy either has to run 20 yds to pick up their soul, alleviating pressure, or wait 8 seconds.
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