I’ve been playing my warlock a little more recently, particularly affliction. When going through the spells and types of damage they cause, it got me wondering about how they actually function lore-wise in terms of where they are drawing their powers from.
Even though they are heavily associated with fel and demons, affliction doesn’t feel like it uses fel as a school of magic very much. All of the spells have a shadow damage base, and when you have a voidwalker out it only adds to a more void-y feel. Destruction revolves a lot more around fire based spells (outside of chaos bolt, which has a more warlock feel), so I wonder how it differs from the fire based magic that mages use. Demonology feels the most like a warlock, since it revolves around summoning demons.
I know that classes can have access to multiple schools of magic, but it just seems off. Particularly with affliction, which doesn’t feel as “void” as shadow priest spells, but doesnt have that pure demon “fel” feel, either.
The difference between affliction warlocks and shadow priests is that, while warlocks harness and control the same Void/Shadow magic, shadow priests give themselves fully to it (ex. Insanity).
From the Legion Class Preview for Warlock, Blizzard says two things about affliction:
“Warlocks peer into the Void without hesitation, leveraging the chaos they glimpse within to devastating ends in battle—their greatest abilities are fueled by the souls they’ve harvested from their victims. They exploit powerful Shadow magic to manipulate and degrade the minds and bodies of their enemies.”
and
“Affliction warlocks are masters of shadow-touched powers, but unlike shadow priests—deadliest when pushed to the brink of insanity—these warlocks delight in using fel forces to cause intense pain and suffering in others.”
It could be that affliction warlocks use fel magic to manipulate shadow-magic even further.
I guess some of the confusion recently for me is related to Void Elves as well. I always thought delving into the void/shadow magic lead to insanity if you went a little too deep, but Void Elves have added the notion that one can resist that and exert your will over the forces. Kind of makes the insanity resource seem out of place if you go by the literal definition of the word. Unless it’s temporary insanity…that isn’t completely insane because you’re still focusing it the right way?
I guess warlocks have always had the inherent association of being fel users, which is why affliction seems weird to me since there isn’t a lot of fel based spells that they utilize outside of summoning a demon companion. They almost feel like a corruption-focused shadow priest. Maybe I’m just thinking too hard about it 
Their current Animations show them as using Shadowfel(Corruption, Death Bolt and Seed of Corruption) and Shadow(the latter for the Agony and Unstable Affliction Spells).
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Warlocks use basically any dark magic they think will let them get ahead. Notably, the Council of the Black Harvest (the warlock class order) is mentioned as both going to the Firelands after Ragnaros’ death to study the powerful elemental fire magic there and hunting down members of the Twilight’s Hammer after Cho’gall’s death to learn their shadow magic. Additionally, warlocks have several spells like Deathbolt and Haunt that imply they use death magic as well.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the fight against Xhul’horac show that fel and void don’t mix very well?
I guess this makes more sense. There’s just such an emphasis on demons and fel, that it feels odd how little fel is actually involved in their spell set when you break it down. Demon Hunters have more fel-related abilities than Warlocks do.
It still took him a while to blow up(long enough for us to kill him) so the Magics can be combined long enough to be shoved into an enemy for extra damage.
They don’t stay mixed because the user becomes everything and nothing as Xhul’horac himself stated. Kosak or Afrasiabi once Tweeted that Fel is Chaos and Chaos is all Magics combined which as we can guess is everything.
Fel is the opposite of the Void by technical definition just as it’s also the opposite of Light.
Affliction is the “weird” spec. There are not many characters who represent Affliction, most things that are close would be identified as priests or necromancers.