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Affliction Warlock

Soul Harvester

Reliable ⓘPatched ⓘ

With the Single-Button Assistant and its cooldowns, Affliction Warlock (Soul Harvester) deals 80% of perfect manual play in M+ dungeons (rank 30 of 51) and 87% of perfect manual play on a raid boss (rank 13 of 51). In M+, the best build we found for the button deals 9.1% more than SimulationCraft's.

At a glance

4-piece set · SimulationCraft's talents · share of manual DPS kept

FightManual DPSSBA + cooldownSBA aloneAssisted HighlightRank (SBA + cooldown)
M+ dungeon258,74980.4%−19.56%68.4%−31.60%88.3%−11.70%30 of 51
Raid boss244,89087.0%−12.98%72.1%−27.89%95.0%−4.97%13 of 51

Against real +15 players

Real dungeons · data from 7 Nov 2026

−8%damage with the button and cooldowns, simulated on real +15 routes, against typical Affliction Warlock (Soul Harvester) players, from 326 real runs. With our button talents. With the talents most players use: −15%.

All specs against real players, and how it is measured

Fight
Tier set
Talents

What the assistant costs

M+ dungeon · 4-piece set · Best talents for the button · data as of 2026-11-11 08:07 UTC

81%of manual DPS with SBA + cooldown. SBA alone reaches 67%, Assisted Highlight 84%.
  1. Manual280.0Kreference
  2. SBA + cooldown227.1K81% of manual
  3. SBA alone188.2K67% of manual
  4. Assisted Highlight234.5K84% of manual
Patched: SimulationCraft needs a fix to play Blizzard's list for this spec.Patch 0006-warlock-sba-drain-soul-malefic-grasp-and-imp-lord. In the game Shadow Bolt becomes Drain Soul when talented, and Malefic Grasp while Darkglare is out; SimulationCraft never cast them. The patch lets the button become them. Grimoire: Imp Lord was missing from the cooldowns SimulationCraft presses for the assistant (Summon Demonic Tyrant was there). The patch adds it, so it counts in SBA + cooldown only. Without the fix (SimulationCraft as published, or Raidbots) the assistant's figures differ; manual play is not affected.

Best Mythic+ talents for the button

For one-button play in M+, import this build: +9.1% damage with SBA + cooldown over SimulationCraft's build.

Best of 12 builds tested with the button (SimulationCraft's and the top 10 Mythic+ players' on murlok.io, plus a talent search), 2026-10-30: a talent search for the button, one talent swap at a time from the build of the #5 M+ player on murlok.io.

One-button damage (SBA + cooldown DPS), M+ dungeon, 4-piece

  1. Best M+ build for the buttonRecommended227,132+9.1%
  2. SimulationCraft's build208,140
Best M+ build for the button: talent string Recommended for one-button
CkQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwMzMzoZjZ2mZGzyAAAmxsMLmZ2GDAM22GYATwMsFYYbAAAYAAAYmhZMjNGzMmZmZMDzMzAAMDMA
SimulationCraft's build: talent string
CkQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwMzMzoZhhZmZmlBAAYmZZ2mZmFzAAjllBGwEMDbBG2GAAAmBAAwMDzMjBzwMzMzMGMzMzAAGwA

In game, open the talent window, choose Import and paste it. The best build we found for the button. Every figure on this page uses it.

Best raid talents for the button

SimulationCraft's raid build is already the best we found for one-button play on a raid boss.

Talent search for the button on the raid boss, 4-piece set (2026-11-10): it starts from SimulationCraft's raid build, tries every legal single talent swap, keeps the ones that add damage and repeats, never touching a defensive talent; a build wins only when it beats SimulationCraft's raid build by more than 0.2 %. Perfect manual play keeps SimulationCraft's raid build, so the Ranking compares the button on its best talents with the best manual build.

SimulationCraft's raid build (best on the raid boss for the button): talent string Recommended for one-button
CkQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwMzMzoZhhZmZmlBAAYmZZ2mZmFzAAjllBGwEMDbBG2GAAAmBAAwMDzMjBzwMzMzMGMzMzAAGwA

In game, open the talent window, choose Import and paste it.

Where the damage comes from

M+ dungeon · 4-piece set · Best talents for the button · data as of 2026-11-11 08:07 UTC

Compare manual play with

Damage per second and casts per ability, averaged over the simulated fights. Pets and summons show their own name in brackets.

AbilityManualSBA + cooldownSBA + cooldown vs manual
Seed of Corruption (AoE)39.1K14.0%4,9322.2%−34.2K
Demonic Soul26.8K9.6%28.2K12.4%+1,323
Unstable Affliction21.6K7.7% · 46.1 casts28.0K12.3% · 85.6 casts+6,342
Corruption24.5K8.7%17.3K7.6%−7,131
Agony21.4K7.6% · 41.6 casts14.5K6.4% · 25.1 casts−6,894
Wrath Of Nathreza (Desperate Soul)20.1K7.2% · 17.3 casts19.1K8.4% · 16 casts−973
Eye Beam (Darkglare)16.8K6.0% · 60.5 casts12.9K5.7% · 53.4 casts−3,976
Dark Harvest (Tick)13.3K4.8%14.4K6.3%+1,051
Soul Anathema11.6K4.1%12.8K5.6%+1,229
Shadow of Nathreza12.2K4.3%8,6933.8%−3,484
Soul Swipe Aoe (Demonic Soul)9,6853.5% · 92.9 casts9,8224.3% · 89.7 casts+137
Wicked Reaping9,4733.4%9,5614.2%+88
Haunt9,3203.3% · 24.9 casts8,4733.7% · 22.2 casts−847
Shadow Bolt8,9263.2% · 65.4 casts8,5943.8% · 60.9 casts−332
Malefic Grasp8,2392.9% · 16.2 casts5,4452.4% · 11.3 casts−2,794
Vexhul's Everflowing Gland6,6042.4% · 2.2 casts7,3943.2% · 3.3 casts+790
Soul Swipe (Demonic Soul)4,8281.7% · 92.9 casts4,6462.0% · 89.7 casts−182
Shadowbolt Volley3,8321.4%2,9741.3%−858
Total280.2K227.7K−52.6K

A dash means the ability was never used in that mode. Damage is attributed the way SimulationCraft reports it, so a pet's damage appears under the pet.

Questions about Affliction Warlock (Soul Harvester)

What are the best Mythic+ talents for Affliction Warlock (Soul Harvester) with the one-button rotation?

The best build we found for the Single-Button Assistant in Mythic+ deals 9.1% more damage with the button than SimulationCraft's build. It was the best of 12 builds tested (SimulationCraft's and the top 10 Mythic+ players' on murlok.io), plus a talent search for the button. Its talent string is on this page, ready to import. The raid build is searched separately.

How much DPS does Affliction Warlock (Soul Harvester) lose with the Single-Button Assistant?

With the Single-Button Assistant and its cooldowns, Affliction Warlock (Soul Harvester) deals 80% of perfect manual play in M+ dungeons (rank 30 of 51) and 87% of perfect manual play on a raid boss (rank 13 of 51). In M+, the best build we found for the button deals 9.1% more than SimulationCraft's.

Related builds

DPS lost with SBA + cooldown, 4-piece set, SimulationCraft's talents (a top player's build for the hero talents SimulationCraft has no profile for). All specs · Ranking

How it's measured, and its limits

  • SBA + cooldown is a best case: the simulator never misplays. It is always better to sim your own character.
  • Manual play is SimulationCraft's own rotation executed perfectly, so it is an upper bound for what a person can do, not a typical player.
  • Assisted Highlight assumes every suggestion is seen and pressed at once, which is generous for a player reading the highlight.
  • The M+ dungeon is SimulationCraft's own DungeonSlice fight style, its approximation of Mythic+ pulls, not a specific dungeon route.
  • Best talents for the button: of SimulationCraft's build, the top 10 Mythic+ players' builds on murlok.io and a talent search for the button, the one that deals the most with SBA + cooldown in the M+ dungeon. Gear and rotation are unchanged.
  • SimulationCraft ships no profile for some hero talents (9 here). Those use SimulationCraft's gear with a top player's build: a top Mythic+ player's build on murlok.io in M+, and on the raid boss the most played build in top raid kills on Warcraft Logs when there are any, otherwise SimulationCraft's raid talents with that Mythic+ build's hero talents (or the Mythic+ build itself where it deals more). No talent search for the button has been run for them yet.
  • SimulationCraft ships no profile at all for Devastation Evoker and Balance Druid. Those use the median gear of real +15 players, raised to the item level of SimulationCraft's profiles, with the build most real players use (or a top player's build where too few play that hero talent), and a talent search for the button.

Full method, reliability rule and patches: Sources · Simulated with SimulationCraft 1210-01 (WoW 12.1.5.70575) 710c240 +16 patches, 10,000 iterations per figure.