Affliction Warlock

Is Affliction worth levelling?

Yes — it is one of the two best levelling specs in the game. "Affliction Warlocks have always been excellent levelers, and that strength shows up early in WoW Forever… Learning how to balance those tools lets you move through enemies with very little downtime."

Its weakness is short fights, and it is a real one: "Affliction performs best when enemies live long enough for your DoTs to ramp up. Fast dungeon pulls can end before that setup has time to pay off." Put more bluntly by another source: "On a target that dies in ten seconds, you paid full mana and cast time for half a spell's worth of damage."

So: excellent questing, merely good in fast dungeons. Learn to stop casting when your existing damage-over-time effects will finish the job.

Your talent points

Level 20 — 11/0/0. Three published builds, and they disagree.

Build A: Improved Corruption 5/5 → Improved Life Tap 2/2 → Suppression 3/5 → Soul Harvesting 1/2. Its own note: "The final point in Soul Harvesting is optional, so feel free to move it elsewhere."

Build B: Suppression 5/5 → Improved Corruption 5/5 → Amplify Curse 1/1.

Build C, a dungeon list: Suppression 3 / Improved Corruption 2 / Malediction 5 / Improved Bane of Agony 1. Note that this one does not buy instant Corruption, unlike every other published build — a real and deliberate difference.

Level 30 — 21/0/0. Two published builds share a core and split on five points. Both take Suppression 5, Improved Corruption 5, Nightfall 2 and Siphon Life 1. One then takes Malediction 4 + Amplify Curse + Pandemic 3; the other takes Malediction 5 + Improved Drains 3.

A caveat about Build B's own page: its prose says "With 4 points, you are hit-capped" while the build it pictures spends 5. Treat the fifth Suppression point as optional.

Rotation

1. Send the demon in first
2. Curse of the Elements or Curse of Recklessness
3. Immolate
4. Corruption — instant from level 14, see below
5. Bane of Agony "if the enemy will survive long enough"
6. Drain Life when you need health
7. Wand as filler. This is not a typo: "At Level 20 with Greater Magic Wand, Shadow Bolt currently deals less damage for the time spent casting while also costing Mana and generating additional threat"
8. Drain Soul to finish, for the shard
9. Stop spending mana when your existing effects will finish the enemy

From 30, Shadow Bolt becomes worth casting on Nightfall procs, with Life Tap "ideally while moving."

Multi-target: "For maximum damage on AoE and only if the pack lives long enough, spread your DoTs first and then use Rain of Fire." If the pack dies fast, skip the effects and go straight to Rain of Fire.

Stat priority

Spell Power, then Hit, Intellect, Spirit, critical strike, Stamina, Haste.

Two of those placements are Forever-specific. Spirit is high because "Life Tap has changed and now scales off of your Spirit." Critical strike matters "much more than it was in original Classic" because damage-over-time effects can now crit. And Haste is last for a specific reason: it "did not make DoTs or Drain channels tick faster."

Your demon

All four come from class quests. Imp at 2, Voidwalker at 10, Succubus at 20, Felhunter at 30.

Voidwalker is the levelling pet — "your tanky option and the best option to use once you unlock it", and it "can literally face tank multiple enemies, while you DoT them all up." Succubus "deals insanely high damage compared to the other available demons."

Forever trains the Felhunter at 30. In Classic it came from a quest that opened at 30 and withheld Spell Lock until 36.

What defines Affliction

What Forever changed for Affliction

• Damage-over-time effects can critically strike. Called "one of the largest overall Warlock mechanical changes", and both Malevolence and Pandemic are new talents built on it.
• Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom are no longer Curses — "no longer competes with your Curse, which means you can keep your big damage rolling while still bringing the debuff your group needs." A Bane and a Curse now coexist on one target.
• Six new talents — Malediction, Soul Harvesting, Improved Drains, Pandemic, Malevolence, Wrack. Six removed — Improved Curse of Weakness, Grim Reach, Dark Pact, Improved Curse of Exhaustion, Improved Drain Soul, Improved Drain Mana.
• Life Tap converts 40 health to 40 mana and Spirit increases the amount (Classic: a flat 20 to 20). Improved Life Tap moved to tier 1.
• Nightfall now procs off Corruption, Drain Soul, Drain Life and Wrack. Soul Siphon was rewritten to 4% per other Affliction effect, up to 36%. Drain Soul now has a shard chance on damage, not only on a kill.

At level 60

Unknown, and one guide states the reason precisely: "Critical striking DoTs, Pandemic, Wrack, Improved Drains, and the new Drain Soul execute bonuses all scale together in ways that cannot easily be evaluated from a Level 38 build."