Questions about Warlock's "Black Mass - Affliction" curse

I haven't seen anyone test this just yet and the wiki info is sparse (briefly mentions its a curse with a one off mention in a single sentence, but nowhere else on the page does it discuss interaction with curse mechanics like curse effect), so I'm looking to see if anyone knows anything about the following:

1) Does the Affliction skill count as a Hex, and if so, does it scale with curse effect?

2) If it does scale with curse effect, does it raise the damage of the minion explosion?

3) Does the explosion scale with your damage modifiers (like Maw of Mischief), or minion damage modifiers (like Minion Instability)?

I can tell you for #3, the explosion is minion damage, and is affected by support gems on the minions.
Chance to poison and Reaper's bleed chance work on it.


I don't think it counts as a curse,

I watched my life regen after casting it on a skeleton, and then watched it again after allocating 20% curse effect, and there was no difference in the amount of life regenerated on my C page

There's nothing in the description that indicates Affliction is a hex.
If Affliction were a hex, it would share the curse limit with other curses.

You say that like it's easy to curse minions with multiple different curses to test this.

At any rate, I'd also note that the wording of the skill also specifically doesn't say 'curses' or 'Hex'. It calls applying the effect 'afflicts'.