Affliction Warlock DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Affliction Warlocks aim to apply a series of damage over time effects to targets, weaving in procs and managing Shards as a resource. Much of the optimization revolves around maintaining your active effects while ensuring you spend Soul Shards correctly.

1. Maintain your Agony, and Corruption effects at all times.
2. Maintain your Agony, and Wither effects at all times.
3. Cast Unstable Affliction if you are at maximum Soul Shards.
4. Cast Haunt whenever available.
5. Cast Malevolence on cooldown.
6. Make sure to have 2 or less Soul Shards before casting Dark Harvest.
7. Cast Dark Harvest whenever available with any periodic effect such as Corruption, Agony or Unstable Affliction active on target.
8. Use Shard Instability free Unstable Affliction within the buff window.
9. Cast Unstable Affliction to avoid capping shards.
10. Cast Drain Soul as a filler.
11. Cast Shadow Bolt as a filler.

1. Maintain Agony and Corruption. If there are 3+ targets stacked together, use Seed of Corruption to apply and maintain Corruption.
2. Maintain Agony and Wither. If there are 3+ targets stacked together, use Seed of Corruption to apply and maintain Wither.
3. Cast Haunt whenever available on the primary target.
4. Cast Seed of Corruption if already at 5 Soul Shards to avoid capping.
5. Cast Seed of Corruption if above 2 shards before Dark Harvest comes off cooldown.
6. Cast Dark Harvest whenever available with any periodic effect such as Corruption, Agony or Unstable Affliction active on every target.
7. Use Shard Instability free Unstable Affliction on dying targets if below 4 shards.
8. Use Shard Instability free Unstable Affliction on the primary target.
9. Cast Drain Soul as a filler.
10. Cast Shadow Bolt as a filler.

1. Pre-cast Haunt.
2. Pre-cast Shadow Bolt.
3. Apply Agony.
4. Apply Corruption.
5. Apply Wither.
6. Cast Malevolence.
7. Cast Agony again to reach max duration.
8. Cast Dark Harvest.
9. Use your trinkets and racials.
10. Cast Summon Darkglare.
11. Cast Unstable Affliction until reaching 2 shards.
12. Cast Dark Harvest.
13. Spend all shards on Unstable Afflictions.
14. Cast Nightfall Drain Soul.
15. Cast Nightfall Shadow Bolt.

Summon Darkglare is the spec main cooldown featuring a baseline DoT amplification effect which encourages pooling resources before entering this window. The existence of supporting talent such as Malefic Grasp further emphasise maximising the amount of GCDs spent strictly on Unstable Affliction and Malefic Grasp, and consequently reducing the amount of time spent reapplying Haunt or Agony.

As such it is best to ensure a pandemic-extended duration on Agony before casting Summon Darkglare.

Summon Darkglare baseline has a single target continuous cast, and Nether Plating is required to enable 5 targets cleave.

Dark Harvest by default should be casted on cooldown, making sure to line it up before Summon Darkglare. Talenting Cull the Weak increase the frequency, especially during AoE with the ever present Seed of Corruption spam however is still beneficial to sync it with Summon Darkglare.

While Hellcaller does not directly influence Dark Harvest behaviour, Soul Harvester Shadow of Death requires to go down to 2 shards before casting Dark Harvest in order to avoid overcapping and wasting shards.

Malevolence is a rather straightforward cooldown which lines up naturally with Affliction damage profile, and thus should be used in tandem with Summon Darkglare and Dark Harvest when talented.

Pandemic is a hidden mechanic that allows you to refresh certain timed effects early without penalty. You can refresh your DoT effects when they have less than 30% of their maximum duration. This will add the new DoT's maximum duration with the remaining duration of the current DoT.

For example, if you cast a fresh Agony while your current one has a duration of 3.5s, your new Agony will now have 21.5 seconds.

The Pandemic values for safe refreshes for your other DoTs are as follows:

• Agony: 5.4 seconds
• Corruption: 4.2 seconds

When Creeping Death is talented the values change as follows:

• Agony: 4.5 seconds
• Corruption: 3.5 seconds

Malefic Grasp is perhaps one of the most difficult window of opportunity to optimise. The premise is to maximise the amount of GCDs spent with Malefic Grasp while simultaneously have the max amount of Unstable Affliction hits.

In order to achieve that any other GCDs should be reduced as much as possible, and that entails not moving unless strictly necessary and cut the amount of Agony refresh to the minimum. As such it is advised to have full duration on Agony with pandemic before entering Summon Darkglare as that will ensure no GCD spent during Summon Darkglare duration (or a single refresh required if talented in Eye Contract).

Worth noting it is best to spend all available Unstable Affliction before 8 seconds left on Summon Darkglare in order to maximise the damage extracted from both Malefic Grasp and Summon Darkglare damage amplification.

All Warlocks use Soul Shards as their primary resource. Properly managing your Shards is crucial to success, as overcapping results in potential loss of damage.

While by design the idea is to not think too much when to spend newly acquired shards, it can also be said that there is not strictly a rush associated in spending them, unless close to 5, and as a result the use case is rather flexible.

Factors such as talent selection and encounter design can influence the decision when to use Soul Shards and how to use them. Pooling resources can be advantageous if/when:

• about to enter cooldowns such as Summon Darkglare or Malevolence;
• additional targets are about to enter the encounter;
• a priority target enters or a burn phase is about to start.

Agony is by far your most important spell, as it is the sole source of Soul Shard generation in the regular rotation. It also deals severe sustained damage. The trade-off, however, is that Agony has a ramp-up period before it reaches full effectiveness. This means that if you let Agony drop on one of your primary targets for any reason, you will hemorrhage DPS. Keeping careful track of your active Agony casts is this specialization's single most important priority and the most punishing failure to mess up.

After 9.2 changes, Sayaad (Succubus or Incubus) has a clear advantage in terms of single target damage, assuming no frequent distant target swap. However, pet choice is often dictated by the unique utility provided by each one: for defensive dispel, and if there are regular swaps between distant targets, Imp will provide the highest uptime. Use Felhunter whenever an interrupt or a purge effect is required. Voidwalker can offer some additional AoE due to its torment ability, but its most significant utility comes from a taunt. Succubus offers further crowd control and permanent slow on a single target, which may be helpful under certain situations.

While it is difficult to describe the best ways to position and move during a dungeon or raid encounter, it is essential to your success as an Affliction Warlock. Demonic Gateway can be highly effective in many encounters and is under-appreciated by many players and raid groups. Think of Demonic Gateway as a raid cooldown that can teleport your entire raid group 40 yards. The potential this ability holds quickly becomes clear. Ask your group if they want Demonic Gateway anywhere specific; if not used for your strategy, use it instead as a personal cooldown.

Agony and Corruption can be refreshed when you need cover movement. Nightfall has some potential on higher movement fights, particularly with cleave, as the instant Shadow Bolt procs offer another global cooldown where you can move without losing DPS.

You can mitigate the need to move by positioning in locations central to fight movement. For instance, if a boss is being kited in a circle, you should stay inside the kite path to ensure minimal movement. You should also determine how your Demonic Circle can make a fight easier for you. You can trivialize many boss mechanics with a clever portal, which can free you up to deal much more damage.

Soulburn used in conjunction with Demonic Gateway offers a quick way to cover large distances and can be used in a rush when the need to reposition is immediate.

Many players will unconsciously move during fights, despite it being unnecessary. For example, sometimes the boss or adds will be moved by the tank a couple of yards. Though you are still in range to cast, you subconsciously mirror that movement, costing you global cooldowns. Consciously work to "quiet" your movement and reduce unnecessary movement to a minimum. The best way to see this in action is to take a video of your raid, then watch yourself play. Most players will be surprised by the amount of wasted movement they commit. When you are forced to move, make your path as direct and decisive as possible.