Talent overview

Affliction talents:

• Improved Curse of Agony - Staple spell, more damage, more agony, lovely.
• Suppression - 3% hit from talents means 79 hit rating points you don't have to find on gear.
• Improved Corruption - Again, corruption is a staple spell so more damage to it is great.
• Improved Curse of Weakness - This can be handy at times but it's not going to increase your DPS and the same effect can be provided by other classes.
• Improved Drain Soul - This can be very nice for leveling where you do the killing. For raid bosses though it's no good. The threat reduction should not be needed, have a word with your tank if you feel the urge to put points here.
• Improved Life Tap - Better Life Tap means less Life Tap = more time for hurting stuff.
• Soul Siphon - This is a significant boost to your DPS in the execution phase (under 25% health on target).
• Improved Fear - No damage gain here and almost no utility.
• Fel Concentration - There are times when it seems this would be great but not enough to make the talent a must have.
• Amplify Curse - Eking out more efficiency from Curse of Agony
• Grim Reach - It's nice to be able to cast from further away but as we use both affliction and destruction spells we would need to also have Destructive reach to make this work.
• Nightfall - Nothing makes an affliction lock glee more than chain-gunning a couple Shadow Bolts.
• Empowered Corruption - This is so nice. Omnomnom Corruption power.
• Shadow Embrace - Another ability that simply raises damage of other spells. Gotta love that.
• Siphon Life - While the health return is really nice (especially when out on your own) it's that damage increase we want here.
• Curse of Exhaustion - I used this once on the Moroes fight. True story.
• Improved Felhunter - Now that the puppy is our best friend again it's good to buff the good goggie.
• Shadow Mastery - Pure bonus damage. Awesomesauce.
• Eradication - Not bonus damage but bonus haste... which means we can do more damage.
• Contagion - Again, more damage to our core spells so grab it all.
• Dark Pact - Life Tap is still better for damage throughput and the health loss is negligible in a raid, all makes this talent kinda weak.
• Improved Howl of Terror - Can be very handy to have an instant AoE fear when out on your own but no good for raiding.
• Malediction - This used to be all about utility (increasing everyone's damage) but now the power is all for us.
• Death's Embrace - This is the first step of the execution phase, starting at 35%.
• Unstable Affliction - very efficient spell that will make up a large amout of your damage done.
• Pandemic - Big crits -oooh yeah!
• Everlasting Affliction - A damage bonus and not having to cast corruption again. How could you say no?
• Haunt - It does damage, it refreshes corruption, it buffs DoTs and it heals you. What's not to like?

Destruction talents:

• Improved Shadow Bolt - Shadow Bolt is your filler spell so it's good to buff it. Others might provide the debuff as well but with you about they don't have to.

• Bane - Faster Shadow Bolts is very nice.
• Cataclysm - A decent filler point here, but not essential, all it does is remove the need for a Life tap or two, handy but you might want something else more.
• Ruin - Again, good to buff that filer spell.

Gems

Since spell power and haste are your key stats (after hit cap) with crit and spirit following up not far behind, you have a broad selection of gem colors to chose from. This means you can pretty much match any socket color if the bonus is worth it. If the bonus stat is not one of these four then gem for spell power, if it is and you want to gain the bonus then match as follows:

• Blue - Spell power and spirit
• Red - Pure spell power
• Yellow - Spell power and haste

Glyphs

A lot of warlock glyph information can be found in a previous Blood Pact: Warlock glyphs to use, ignore or to dream for. Typical setup for endgame affliction would be:

• Haunt
• Life Tap
• Quick Decay

Enchants for the endgame

• Head - Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
• Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Storm (or Master's Inscription of the Storm for scribes)
• Back - Greater Speed (or Lightweave Embroidery for tailors)
• Chest - Powerful Stats
• Wrist - Superior Spellpower (or Fur Lining - Spell Power for leatherworkers)
• Hands - Exceptional Spellpower (or Precision if under hit cap, or Hyperspeed Accelerators for engineers)
• Legs - Brilliant Spellthread
• Feet - Icewalker
• Rings - Greater Spellpower
• Weapon - Mighty Spellpower or Greater Spellpower for a staff

Don't forget to add extra gem sockets where you can (waist for all, wrist and hands for blacksmiths).

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Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DoTs, demons, and all the dastardly deeds done by Warlocks. If you're curious about what's new with Locks since the last patch, check out WoW.com's guide to patch 3.3 or find out what's upcoming in Cataclysm from the BlizzCon 2009: Class Discussion Panel.

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