PvE Affliction Warlock Stat Priority

Affliction Warlock DPS Guide

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Gear & Best In Slot (BiS)

Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

The stat priority for an Affliction Warlock is:

1. Spell Hit
2. Spell Damage
3. Spell Haste
4. Spell Critical Strike Rating
5. Stamina
6. Intellect

Spell Hit

What’s the point in casting if we can’t hit? In The Burning Crusade, we are transitioning away from raw % hit on gear and instead have a spell hit rating. The conversion is 12.6 spell hit = 1% hit, so we need ~202 spell hit to achieve 16% hit. We do have the Suppression talent in the Affliction tree (which reduces the required hit rating to 76), but it only affects Affliction spells (not Shadow Bolt). So, it’s still a good idea to try and reach 16% hit rating since Shadow Bolt is one of the more used spells in our rotation.

Spell Damage

Spell damage is something that we hope to maximize through our gear and continuously be pushing as different phases of content are released. Ideally, we want to be looking at 650-800 spell damage before buffs to be competitive DPS in early raids like Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair. Fortunately, this is achievable through the Spellstrike and Shadoweave sets.  

Spell Haste

Spell Haste will become increasingly important as later phases are released and spell haste becomes present on equipment. During Phase 1, Spell Haste will not be a common stat you find on gear, but there are a few pieces such as chance-on-hit trinkets such as Quagmirran’s Eye from Heroic Slave Pens.

Spell Critical Strike Rating

Because most of our damage is going to be coming from Curses and DoT spells and effects, Spell Crit isn’t a high priority for us since DoT damage cannot be critical strikes in TBC.

Stamina

The stamina to health ratio is 1 to 10, so every point in stamina gives you 10 health. The main reason we want health in PvE, beyond survivability, is to decrease the impact that using Life Tap will have on our health pool. It’s not uncommon to mistake our health bar for a second mana bar, and we don’t want to be too much of a burden on our healers. 

Intellect

Raw intellect provides mana and an increased chance for critical effects on mobs. 

Every point of intellect gives us 15 mana.

Every 10 points of intellect gives us 0.125% Spell Critical Strike chance (So, 80 points of intellect provides 1% Spell Critical Strike Chance.

In general, intellect does not provide as much crit as actual crit rating, and because of Life Tap we don’t typically run into mana issues.