Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Affliction Warlocks in The War Within 11.1

All sections for Affliction Warlock PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Affliction Warlocks in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Affliction Warlock PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Soul Harvester
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Soul Harvester and Hellcaller. Since Hellcaller is quite lackluster in the current meta, we will only discuss how to best allocate our Hero talents for Soul Harvester.

Hero Talents: Soul Harvester

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Here we have our suggest default build for Affliction Warlock, Soul Harvester. A majority of these talents contribute to your single target and spread pressure burst, giving us more instant cast damage to execute our preferred target. Now, there are some core talents in this tree that require a bit more explanation in order to conquer the arena.

As briefly touched on in our overview, our centerpiece node is Demonic Soul, giving you the chance to occasionally generate a Soul Shard with a Succulent Soul. This empowers your Malefic Rapture for more damage, while also applying some direct damage to all affected targets.

Quietus, which synergizes with our node above, Shared Fate, providing us with some direct and AoE cleave damage every time we use Nightfall. This also buffs our Soul Anathema talent above Shared Fate for a stronger dot to all targets affected by our enhanced Malefic Rapture.
Sataiel’s Volition not only increases our Corruption damage, but allows us to receive Nightfall through Haunt, increasing ways we can guarantee grab a Succulent Soul.
Shadow of Death grants us 3 Soul Shards, with all containing a Succulent Soul, when we use Soul Rot, making Soul Rot one of our strongest cooldowns.

Warlock Class Talents

In the Warlock Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy mandatory talents are:

Demon Skin, giving us a 0.2% absorb every second, which can stack up to 10%, and some added bonus to our armor. This makes us passively tankier all the time.
Dark Pact, acting as our most frequently used defensive cooldown, aside from Demonic Circle: Teleport, providing us with a massive absorb on ourselves, and is the most valuable when dampening is at its lowest.
Frequent Donor increases our survivability from the cooldown reduction on Dark Pact, providing us with more uptime on it. This talent is also great against setup compositions, especially into Subtlety Rogues, allowing us to save ourselves quite often.

Another potential flex change involves choosing Mortal Coil or Howl of Terror.

Mortal Coil is our preferred default pick, granting us an additional Crowd Control effect on the incapacitate Diminishing Returns category that does not break on damage. Although this spell becomes quite versatile in how you choose to use it, it’s more preferred to use on your kill target, typically out of a stun, to keep the pressure rolling.
Howl of Terror becomes more niche than in Dragonflight, as you can’t fear Windwalker Monk‘s images from Storm, Earth, and Fire, and should be picked as compositions where you want to peel with a Fear effect easier or to instantly Crowd Control healers.

There will then be a few points which can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

For your flexible class talents, Demonic Resilience can be more swapped around with other talents offered to us. This is dependent on your matchup and current composition played.

Amplify Curse can be picked into melee cleaves to further reduce their uptime, or caster cleaves that have to cast in order to win the game.
Nightmare to make sure our Fear does not break as easily from our dots.
Darkfury if you need more uptime on Shadowfury to disrupt your opponents, and for it to possibly hit more targets as this increases its radius.

Affliction Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance to each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Haunt, which is core to your single target burst as our Soul Harvester Hero build. This additional dot deals some hefty damage, while amplifying damage taken on the affected target by 10%. In combination with Improved Haunt, this is what makes its cast way faster and deal more damage. This talent gives us another way of applying Shadow Embrace to increase damage dealt onto our primary targets.
Nightfall, which has been constantly mentioned, occasionally procs off Corruption to increase the damage coming out of Shadow Bolt or Drain Soul, depending on what you select. As it currently stands, you’ll be using this to empower your Shadow Bolt damage.
Phantom Singularity is great when paired with Soul Rot, and if you choose Soul Swap as one of our PvP talents, you can apply this on two targets at the same time for some absurd cleave damage.

As for our flexible talents, we have the option between Summoner’s Embrace and Grimoire of Sacrifice in its respective choice node.

Summoner’s Embrace provides us an overall damage boost and incentives players to keep their Warlock pet out instead of playing without one.
Grimoire of Sacrifice‘s primary purpose is to guarantee the effects of what a pet offers without having one in the arena, mainly for their interrupt. However, by selecting this talent you lose out on 10% damage reduction from Soul Link as well as the ability to interrupt while in Crowd Control.

Affliction Warlock PvP Talents

Regardless of what Hero build you choose, your default PvP talents are:

Jinx is significant for dot maintenance, allowing us to apply both Corruption and Curse of Agony with one global.
Rot and Decay allows us to extend our primary dots on a target after hitting them with Shadow Bolt, which will typically come from our Nightfall procs.
Impish Instincts is more convenient into melees, as this allows you to use Demonic Circle: Teleport more often whenever you are affected by melee attacks.

In most situations, you will be swapping to/from Rot and Decay or Impish Instincts, depending on the matchup and which talents are required, to some of these optional talents:

Nether Ward allows you to reflect any incoming spell back to the original caster, and is super useful against caster comps to change the direction of the game into your favor.
Soul Swap, which is crucial at times where you want to spread out your dots on targets that you’re way less likely to have uptime on, primarily Healers. This can assists us with our spread pressure and opens up potential kill windows.
Gateway Mastery for larger maps like Tol’vir Arena, allowing your team to create more distance against the opposing team.

And in very niche cases where you need more defensive utility, swap out Rot and Decay for Soul Rip if you are already using Impish Instincts. Soul Rip reduces damage dealt and healing received by 25% for 8 seconds, and if enemies affected want to remove its effects, they can retrieve their soul, providing you more breathing room if melees choose to grab it. Be mindful, as this requires you to be near the target in order to work.