Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents for Affliction Warlocks in Cataclysm
All sections for Affliction Warlock PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal race, talents, glyphs, gear, professions and macros. This will help you have a good understanding on Affliction Warlock in PvP for Cataclysm, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will show you what are the best PvP Affliction Warlock talents in Cataclysm Season 9 and why you should choose them.
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Table of Contents
Best Affliction Warlock PvP Talents
Affliction Warlock offers the selection of multiple builds, both of which have their own unique strengths when used in arena combat. Depending on your preference and composition selection, here are the talent builds you should choose from as an Affliction Warlock in Cataclysm Season 9.
Damage Build
If you plan on playing a build that primarily focused on damage output as opposed to defensiveness, we recommend that you play these talents here:
These will be your default talents for the damage build as Affliction Warlock in Cataclysm Season 9. As you may be confused by the selection of these talents, let’s look further into why these talents are chosen.
Make sure to place 31 talent points in the Affliction Talent tree before placing talent points in other trees.
In order for you to learn more about the effectiveness of this build, here are some key talents that require some understanding.
- Eradication incentivizes players to use Corruption on multiple targets. This will give your character a chance to gain increased Spell Haste whenever Corruption deals damage to a target.
- Soul Swap allows you to apply your periodic DoT effects from a target and place them on another target. Use this spell on targets that are less susceptible to receiving DoTs, and make sure to use Glyph of Soul Swap as DoTs taken from the target you used Soul Swap on will stay.
- Shadow Embrace increases periodic DoT damage when you use Shadow Bolt with Nightfall procs and Haunt.
When applying DoTs, Unstable Affliction first on the target is generally preferred, as this will be one of your most powerful spells and protects all other spells from being dispelled.
Let’s look into the Demonology and Destruction talent trees and see why these talents are chosen for this specific build.
- Shadow and Flame is chosen to increase Critical Strike of your spells.
- Dark Arts for higher damage throughput from Felhunter.
- Demonic Rebirth allows you to immediately summon another pet if your pet ends up dying during an arena match. Having this talent makes your pet resummon free instead of costing one shard after using Soulburn, allowing you to use your shards more optimally.
- Demonic Aegis provides 10% additional healing from Siphon Life and Drain Life when using Demon Armor, and doubles healing gained by Fel Armor.
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Defense Build
If you want to give your character increased survivalibility and a stronger defensive toolkit, we recommend that you choose these talents listed here:
In the defense build, we decided to change a couple of selected talent points to provide higher survivalibility for your character. Instead of choosing Dark Arts and Shadow and Flame for higher damage output, we have decided to place our talent points in Demonic Embrace and an additional point in Death’s Embrace. Using Demonic Embrace will grant your character increased Stamina, making you passively tankier throughout a game. Also, choosing Death’s Embrace has both a defensive and offensive benefit when picked, but the damage effect is not as strong as Shadow and Flame. This gives you extra healing from your Drain Life when low HP, giving you a minor upgrade to your overall survivalibility.
Affliction Warlock 2v2 Build
This build is a considered alternative when playing in the 2v2 bracket and need additional healing. These are respective talents that you will choose for this arena bracket:
For this 2v2 build, we prioritze using higher damage output as opposed to defensive utility suggested in the previous talent builds. Instead of using Demonic Embrace and Demonic Rebirth, we will use our talent points on Dark Arts and Shadow and Flame. This will deliver the highest amount of damage possible, but is only recommended for 2v2 arena matches.