Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "I suppose you may stay as my guest for the time being. But you must be on some pressing business--perhaps you're here seeking lost power? Maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe corruption isn't too far away from you after all." ~ Tabetha

You may have noticed a certain theme of class articles cropping up on WoW.com recently -- various pieces giving a brief introduction to one spec or the other. While they are fairly basic guides, don't be mislead by the titles, they are not "lol" articles, they're one-on-one (except maybe the mage one). This week on Blood Pact I felt it was time to take a look at affliction. We've spoken about it many times and with great fondness but never really focused on it. As with the other lol articles this is not intended to be an in-depth guide but a taster or intro to the build. A "starting point" if you like. So, open your notebooks and turn to page 101, let's get started.

What is affliction?

The affliction talent spec is considered by many to be the consummate warlock build. We are known as a DoT class and no one embodies that more than an affliction lock. Through a combination of attacks that each slowly eat away at the target's health, many passing that vitality back to the warlock, we can wrack a single target with many attacks or spread our abilities across many.

Affliction benefits

Affliction is very strong on DoT damage and as a lot of these spells are instant it affords greater mobility in combat. Casting many DoTs also means that affliction locks can be flexible between single or multiple target damage even without the constraints of AoE abilities. The relatively slow ramp-up time of affliction allows us to start on building maximum damage straight away, with little fear of causing the tank threat issues.

Affliction locks are absolute masters of resource management. With plenty of ways to get health back they can keep their health and mana bars full most of the time. This makes for very efficient farming and questing as well as being useful in group fights.

Affliction drawbacks

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