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Then the damaging spells begin, and the rotation shown does a few things, like get two stacks of Shadow Embrace on the target. Why is Shadow Bolt at the beginning? It's a long cast relative to the others because it gives the tank that extra bit of time to get agro. In addition, it puts up the first stack of Shadow Embrace. Haunt and SB apply Shadow Embrace, which has to be specced into. It increases periodic damage by 5% and reduces healing done to the target by 15%. It can stack up to 2 times, and 10% extra damage = 100% goodness.
Early in the fight, the most important DoT you have on the mob was put by the rotation. It is not a DoT but Haunt. Haunt causes your real DoT spells to tick for 20% more damage, 23% more with Glyph of Haunt after its initial whack to the target. So you never ever want a DoT to tick while Haunt isn't on the target if you can avoid it. It's just too much to give up.
After that apply the instant cast DoT spells first followed by Unstable Affliction.
Life Tap could be cast every 20 seconds to regain the Spell Bonus Damage from the Glyph. However, Life Tapping this often is sometimes not a good idea.
So that is it while the boss has 100% to 25% of its life. You should refresh DoT spells when they fall off or spam Shadow Bolt when you have nothing else to do with the occasional Life Tap.
Things change slightly, but for the better, when the boss reaches 25% of its life remaining. At 25% with the build given, Shadow Bolt is not the best filler spell. Instead, Drain Soul becomes much better. In fact, Affliction Warlocks have their DPS jump at the end of a long fight due to DS. It causes four times its normal damage when the target is below 25% health.
You should absolutely bother to keep up your DoT spells during DS. Right after DS ticks refresh any DoT spells including Haunt, then you can restart DS, never clip DS before it ticks, that is a waste even if 2 DoT spells fall off. What do is to just refresh the DoT spell after the next tick.
Note that DS checks the boss' health once and that's at the beginning of the cast. You only get the 4x multiplier if the boss is below 25% when you cast. You don't get the extra damage if the boss goes below 25% while channeling. That's to say, you'll get four times less damage off of DS if you cast while the boss is at 25.1% than you would if you did one more SB or whatever and cast DS while the boss is at 24.9%.
