New Raider's Guide

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Three rules apply in every mode:

1. Stay alive. A dead warlock does zero damage. Any damage you lose moving out of fire is tiny next to dying.
2. Keep casting. Affliction is a DoT spec, which means your damage keeps ticking while you move, but only if you keep refreshing and keep filling the gaps. Every second you are not casting or moving on purpose is lost damage.
3. Keep Agony and Corruption on the boss. Agony is your Soul Shard engine and both DoTs feed Dark Harvest and Darkglare. Without them, nothing else works.

What to check in your logs

After a raid night, open your character on Warcraft Logs and look at these five things, in this order. They tell you more than the big DPS number does.

Fix these in order. Deaths first, then active time, then cooldown count, then DoT uptime, then shard spending. Parse percentile climbs on its own once those are right.

Affliction 101: the five ideas behind every button

Affliction is a resource loop. You keep damage-over-time spells ticking, they build Soul Shards, you spend the shards on a bigger DoT, and you press cooldowns to make the whole pile of DoTs hit harder at once. Learn these five ideas and every priority list below will make sense.

1. Soul Shards are your currency. You hold up to 5. Agony generates them while it ticks. Unstable Affliction spends them one at a time on a single target. Seed of Corruption spends them on a group. Sitting at 5 shards means new ones are thrown away, so never cap.
2. Agony and Corruption are the engine. These are your two damage-over-time spells. Agony makes shards. Corruption is steady damage and gives your filler Nightfall procs. Dark Harvest and Summon Darkglare both hit harder for every DoT on the target, so if either DoT falls off, your cooldowns get weaker too.
3. Haunt is the amplifier. It makes your spells deal 16% more damage to that target for 18 seconds. Cast it on cooldown, and pre-cast it before the pull. Only one Haunt can be active at a time, so it goes on the boss.
4. Unstable Affliction is the payoff. Your single-target spender. It stacks on the target, and casting it twice every 15 seconds keeps the Cascading Calamity haste buff rolling. Casting it also shortens Dark Harvest's cooldown.
5. Two cooldowns, two timers. Summon Darkglare (2 minutes, lasts 20 seconds) buffs every DoT and turns your filler into Malefic Grasp. Dark Harvest (1 minute) channels for 3 seconds, hits everything with your DoTs on it, and gives you 3 shards back in the recommended Soul Harvester build. Press both on cooldown. They line up again every 2 minutes.

Easy Mode: six buttons, one order Mode 1

This is the whole rotation. Read the list top to bottom every time a cast finishes and press the first thing that is true. It uses the Soul Harvester build from the setup section, which is what every source recommends right now.

1. Agony if it is not on the boss. Check the debuff under the boss frame. If it is about to fall off or already gone, cast it.
2. Corruption if it is not on the boss. Same check.
3. Haunt if it is off cooldown. It is a short cast and a free damage boost.
4. Summon Darkglare if it is off cooldown and both DoTs are up. Press it at the start of the fight and every time it lights up again.
5. Unstable Affliction if you have 4 or more Soul Shards. Spending at 4 keeps you from capping at 5.
6. Drain Soul. When nothing above is true, channel this. It is your filler. If it lights up with Nightfall, it is faster and hits harder.

That is it. Ignore Dark Harvest, Seed of Corruption and Malefic Grasp for now. They are a bonus, not the foundation.

The opener

When the raid leader's pull timer hits 2 seconds, start casting Haunt. Then Agony, Corruption, Summon Darkglare, and fall into the list above.

When you have to move

Agony and Corruption are instant, so refresh them while you walk. Then just move. Do not try to finish a Drain Soul channel while standing in something that will kill you. Your DoTs keep ticking while you run, which is the whole point of the spec.

Pet

Summon the Felhunter for raids. It gives you Spell Lock, your interrupt, which the raid leader will ask for. Other pets do a little more damage in some situations, but a new raider should have an interrupt until they are told otherwise.

Intermediate Mode: three bonus habits and a second target Mode 2

Same skeleton as Easy Mode, with Dark Harvest, the Cascading Calamity habit and Nightfall discipline slotted in. Each one is worth a few percent of your damage, and together they are the gap between a passable warlock and a solid one.

1. Agony and Corruption if either is not on the boss.
2. Haunt on cooldown.
3. Unstable Affliction twice every 15 seconds, whatever your shard count. The second cast on a target that already has it grants Cascading Calamity, a haste buff. Keep it rolling.
4. Dark Harvest on cooldown when you have 2 or fewer shards. It channels for 3 seconds, hits everything with your DoTs, and gives 3 shards back. Spend first, then press it.
5. Summon Darkglare on cooldown when you have 3 or more shards. Spend them inside the window.
6. Drain Soul if Nightfall is up. Nightfall stacks to 2. Never let a third proc arrive while you hold 2.
7. Unstable Affliction if you have 4 or more shards.
8. Drain Soul.

The opener

Pre-cast Haunt so it lands as the pull timer hits zero (start casting at about 2 seconds). Then Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction twice, Summon Darkglare with your on-use trinket and potion, Dark Harvest, then dump every shard into Unstable Affliction and fill with Malefic Grasp while Darkglare lives. From there, use the list.

Two targets: both DoTs on both

For any fight with two targets that live more than 10 seconds, such as a boss plus a big add, the rule of thumb:

• Put Agony on both targets. Two Agonies means twice the shard income. A mouseover macro is in the setup section.
• Put Corruption on both if they will live 8 seconds or more.
• Dark Harvest now hits both, because it hits everything carrying your DoTs. Line it up with the add if the add matters.
• Keep Haunt and Unstable Affliction on the target that must die first.
• If the two targets are stacked on top of each other, Seed of Corruption (1 shard) spreads Corruption to both and becomes your spender at 3 or more targets. Two spread-out targets is still the Unstable Affliction game.

Planning movement

Before the pull, ask the raid leader or read the boss guide for the two or three moments when everyone has to move. Walk into those moments with both DoTs freshly refreshed and a shard or two in hand so you can Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction while you run (Unstable Affliction is instant when a Shard Instability proc is up). Drop a Demonic Circle at your main spot so you can teleport back in one press.

Full Send Mode: the complete priority Mode 3

This is the Soul Harvester single-target list as the top guides write it, plus the habits that separate a 70th-percentile parse from a 95th. Nothing here is new. It is the Intermediate list with tighter timing.

Single target

1. Keep Agony and Corruption up. Refresh them inside the pandemic window (the last 30% of their duration) so no ticks are lost and none are wasted.
2. Haunt on cooldown. You may delay it a few seconds if the debuff is not about to expire and you are holding 2 Nightfall procs that need spending first.
3. Maintain Cascading Calamity: Unstable Affliction twice every 15 seconds.
4. Dark Harvest on cooldown when you have 2 or fewer shards.
5. Summon Darkglare on cooldown when you have 3 or more shards, with Agony, Corruption and Haunt freshly refreshed.
6. Drain Soul if Nightfall is up. Finish a Nightfall-buffed channel. An unbuffed one can be clipped when something above becomes available.
7. Unstable Affliction when you would otherwise cap shards, and the moment a Shard Instability proc makes it free and instant.
8. Drain Soul.

Pooling for Darkglare

About 10 seconds before Summon Darkglare comes back, stop spending at 4 shards and let yourself ride at 4 to 5. Refresh both DoTs and Haunt so the window starts with everything ticking, then press Darkglare, dump every shard into Unstable Affliction, and press Dark Harvest the moment you are empty to refill. Fill with Malefic Grasp while the window lasts. Never cap for more than a GCD while pooling. A wasted shard costs more than the pooling gains.

Malefic Grasp windows

While Darkglare is active, Drain Soul and Shadow Bolt become Malefic Grasp. Each tick makes all your other DoTs on that target deal an extra 30% of their damage, so this is the one time your filler is a real spender. Method's wording is to cast "as much Malefic Grasp as possible while Summon Darkglare is up". Spend shards first, then Grasp until the window ends.

Proc discipline

Nightfall stacks to 2 and Soul Harvester produces a lot of them. Shard Instability makes your next Unstable Affliction or Seed free and instant. Both are wasted if you sit on them while a new one arrives. If a proc is up and nothing above it in the list is urgent, the proc comes first.

Lining up the burst window

On-use trinket, Light's Potential, and racial all go into Summon Darkglare. Every 2 minutes it realigns with Dark Harvest, so a 6-minute fight gives you three windows including the opener. Ask the raid leader when Bloodlust is coming and, if it is within 20 seconds of a Darkglare, hold the cooldown for it.

AoE (3 or more targets)

1. Agony on up to 5 targets while they are being gathered. Each Agony is shard income.
2. Haunt on cooldown on the main target once they stand still.
3. Summon Darkglare and Dark Harvest on cooldown if the pack lives 15 seconds or more.
4. Seed of Corruption as your spender: first if a Shard Instability proc is about to cap, then with Nightfall procs, then whenever you have a shard. It spreads Corruption to everything it hits.
5. Drain Soul to fill, and reapply Agony to 4 to 6 targets so the shards keep coming for more Seeds.

Two targets is still the double-DoT game from Intermediate, not Seed of Corruption. Seed is only a 3-plus answer unless the two are stacked.

Fight-specific habits

Before a progression night, open the boss guide and write down three things: when adds spawn (plan Agony on them and a Dark Harvest), when the raid has to move (refresh DoTs just before), and when Bloodlust is called (hold or drift Darkglare). Those three notes are worth more than any sim.

Talents, consumables and setup

Import one of these talent strings and the guide above matches your bars. Open the talent window, click Import, paste, and save as a loadout. Both are from Method's talents page, updated 13 Oct 2026 for patch 12.1.5.

For a boss with a long-lived second target, Method's notable swaps are Patient Zero (Seed of Corruption hits the main target harder) and Sow the Seeds (each Seed sends out 3). Method also lists a Hellcaller spread-cleave build, but says Soul Harvester's on-demand burst is generally better even there. Drain Soul is the better filler on one target; Shadow Bolt pulls ahead against several.

Stat priority

Method lists Critical Strike first, then Haste and Mastery about equal, Versatility last for single target, and Haste equal to Crit for AoE. Kalamazi puts Haste first and Mastery last. Sources disagree, so once you are comfortable, run a Raidbots Top Gear sim with your own gear. Until then, take the higher item level piece and avoid Versatility.

Consumables checklist

Bring these to every raid. Half of them are provided by the raid, but a new raider should carry their own.

• Flask: Flask of the Shattered Sun
• Food: Royal Roast, or eat the raid feast (Harandar Celebration)
• Combat potion: Light's Potential, one per pull
• Health potion: Concentrated Silvermoon Health Potion
• Weapon oil: Thalassian Phoenix Oil
• Augment rune: Void-Touched Augment Rune
• Healthstone: create one before the pull, and drop a Soulwell for the raid
• Enchants: Mark of the Worldsoul (chest), Sunfire Silk Spellthread (legs), Nature's Wrath (rings), Acuity of the Ren'dorei (weapon), Empowered Rune of Avoidance (head), Lynx's Dexterity (boots)

Addons that matter

BigWigs for boss timers, Method Raid Tools for raid notes, Plater for nameplates so you can see which add is missing Agony, and a Soul Shard tracker such as Twintop's Resource Bar. Nothing else is required to start.

Macros

Put these on your bars. The first lets you put Agony on whatever your mouse is over without changing target, which is how you keep it on two adds while still casting at the boss. The second interrupts whatever you have set as focus. The third casts Soulburn before your Healthstone so the heal is bigger; Method calls the order "very important".

#showtooltip Agony
/cast [@mouseover,harm][exists] Agony

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus] Spell Lock

#showtooltip Demonic Healthstone
/cast Soulburn
/use Demonic Healthstone

Your utility kit

Damage is only half the job. Raid leaders remember the warlock who interrupts, uses defensives, and drops a gateway, not the one who parses 5% higher. Cooldowns below are the base values. Talents shorten some of them, so trust your tooltip over this table.

Two habits to build now:

1. Set a focus target. Before the pull, target the add you are assigned to interrupt and press your focus keybind. The Spell Lock macro then works without ever leaving the boss.
2. Make Healthstones before every pull. The raid will ask for a Soulwell. Have it on a key.

Reading your logs and what to practice next

After each raid night, open your character on Warcraft Logs and spend five minutes on one boss. Pick the longest single-target fight. Check the five items from the logs section, then do the one drill below that matches your mode.

Three things to compare against a top log of the same boss (Warcraft Logs, Rankings tab, filter to Affliction):

1. Count their Unstable Afflictions and yours. If theirs is 50% higher on a fight of the same length, you are capping or sitting on shards.
2. Count their Summon Darkglare casts and yours. The gap is almost always one missed cast at the start or end.
3. Look at their Deaths and yours. If they have zero and you do not, that is the whole gap.

The Venomous Abyss is the current Midnight Season 2 raid, with eight bosses from Nek'zali the Soulcoiler through Ula'tek. Read the Icy Veins page for each boss before the night you first see it, and write down the three notes from Full Send Mode: when adds come, when you move, when Lust is called.