Afflicted with Decisions ...

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

So ... first and foremost, I know that I want to play my Warlock as a PvE Drain Tank on Darrowshire.  In vanilla retail a decade ago, I was playing a Dark Pact build and using my Imp as a Mana Battery and was really enjoying the playstyle that grew out of that.  Wind up the DoTs and let stuff expire at my feet.  The whole thing played as a sort of "you're already dead, you just haven't gotten the memo yet" with nigh infinite mana at my disposal.  So I'm looking at wanting to do that again here on Darrowshire.

The thing is, a Drain Tank really doesn't "need" to have Dark Pact, since the playstyle is all about leveraging the combination of Life Tap and Drain Life to keep yourself topped up.  Also, a Dark Pact build essentially "wants" to have the Imp out for the "bottomless mana" effect, but keeping the Imp on Passive mode so they can remain Phase Shifted (and thus invulnerable), which renders them useless for anything other than being a mana source.

So, to put it politely, I'm looking for other options amenable to making an efficient PvE Drain Tank.  So far, I've come up with 3 alternatives, none of which involves Ruin, ironically enough.

(33/0/18) DP/SB: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0iVMboVoZxV0tM

(30/21/0) SM/DS: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0iV0boVZfthuM0o

(20/31/0) Soul Link: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IA0iVZfMhuGxot

The DP/SB build is one meant to leverage 2/2 Nightfall for Shadow Trance procs to fire off Shadow Bolts opportunistically in between channeling Drain Life for Drain Tanking.  This is kinda sorta the Dark Pact build I was playing a decade ago.  The flaw in this build (as I see it) is that pretty much all of the Affliction spells that the build uses have no use for increased critical hit chance (since they're all DoTs, so the build really only uses critical chance for Shadow Trance procced 5/5 Improved Shadow Bolt debuff procs and for Shadowburn (yes, I know there are other Destruction spells, but they'd be of situational use to a Drain Tank playstyle, rather than routine use).  The thing is, I'm pretty sure(?) that the debuff from Improved Shadow Bolt proc needs to already be on the target BEFORE hitting the target with Affliction DoTs in order to boost the Shadow damage throughput of the DoTs.  So the question I have here is ... if an Affliction DoT for Shadow damage is already applied and in progress, does proccing an Improved Shadow Bolt debuff increase the damage of the DoT ticks that are yet to happen, or not?  I have the sinking feeling that the answer is "not" and that the debuff needs to be in effect (and therefore available to be taken advantage of) before the Affliction DoT is cast.  If true, that would functionally mean that Shadow Trance procs that yield instant cast Shadow Bolts fired between Drain Life channeling would realistically only buff the damage (and health drain?) of the next Drain Life casting, without bumping up the damage already being done by Curse of Agony and Siphon Life, short of recasting them during the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff duration (which would be wasteful).

The SM/DS build is oriented around the notion of maximizing Shadow damage via use of Demonic Sacrifice.  This functionally winds up being a sort of counterpart to the Dark Pact build in that your Pet becomes something of a "non-factor" during combat because they aren't actively participating in directly damaging your target(s).  Both Dark Pact and Demonic Sacrifice cast your Pet into a "support" role in which their contributions are routed through you, the Warlock, in order to influence the outcomes of your battles, rather than leaving them as free agent independent actors fighting alongside you.  For a Drain Tank build, going with Dark Pact functionally optimizes on the Imp, although the Succubus or Felhunter can be used as alternatives at higher risk to the Pet's survival.  Conversely, for a Drain Tank build, going with Demonic Sacrifice optimizes on the Succubus being sacrificed for +15% Shadow Damage.  Combine that with 5/5 Shadow Mastery and 5/5 Improved Drain Life (assuming this talent is working as advertised) and you've got a combined +25% Shadow Damage (SM+DS) and +20% Life Drain (SM+IDL) for some extremely strong Drain Tanking performance.  The downside is that you are now "Petless" as a Warlock, but have some pretty strong survival potential as long as you can keep Drain Life and Life Tap going for all the mana you're going to need.  Right now, I keep thinking of this as the Afflic Succ-Sac build, which doesn't exactly make for the best acronym to remember it by.

Looking at the SM/DS build with its +25%/+20% bonus Shadow and Life Drain performance, I started wondering what happens if the build got shifted towards Demonology instead of going so deep into Affliction?  In other words, could 5/5 Master Demonologist and Soul Link in any way make up the balance of what is "lost" by not going with Shadow Mastery and Demonic Sacrifice (of the Succubus) by keeping the Succubus around and using her as a supporting fighter Pet rather than as an aggro magnet?  Obviously, the Drain Tank buffing from talents falls way down with this option, since you go from +25% Shadow damage and +20% Life Drain performance down to +13% Shadow Damage and +10% Life Drain performance in the build that I'm offering here, AND losing Siphon Life into the bargain!  But conversely, I'd have a (living) Succubus fighting alongside me delivering additional damage, and with the talents chosen in the tree, she'd be delivering an extra +43% damage from her Lash of Pain every 12 seconds (Improved Succubus+Master Demonologist+Soul Link), be available for Seduction on Humanoids (situational advantage), and be doing an extra +33% melee damage (Unholy Power+Master Demonologist+Soul Link) while I'm Drain Tanking.  Meanwhile, I'd be taking only 70% of the incoming damage, while the Succubus lives, thanks to Soul Link, counterbalancing the loss of direct Life Drain performance relative to the SM/DS build.  And that's not even counting on the utility of being able to hot swap Pets as needed for different situations.  So the Soul Link build looks like it's a much more versatile one with more tricks at its disposal.  The question that I have though is would keeping the Succubus alive (and Lashing/Seducing/support meleeing) make up for the difference between +25%/+20% and the alternative of +13%/+10% and losing Siphon Life from Affliction if going the Soul Link route?

Operationally, this all basically comes down to a question of whether or not having a Pet "out" is worth it for a Drain Tanking playstyle build that's intended to rely more on Affliction spells (and thus, Shadow and DoTs) than it is on Destruction (and Fire in general).  Bear in mind that I'm looking at this from a strictly PvE perspective for playing on Darrowshire.  I suppose the ultimate determining factor here would be whether trying to keep a Succubus "alive" and fighting beside me is more trouble than it's worth in either 5-man or 40-man environments, because if the Succubus is prone to dying then the Soul Link build strategy loses nearly all of its competitive advantages over the Demonic Sacrifice option.

Are there any Soul Link Demonologists around who can share their experiences of playing on any of our servers here?  What are the pitfalls and advantages in PvE that you have found to going all the way to Soul Link in Demonology, knowing that "everyone" expects you to be playing a SM/Ruin spec instead?

Right now, my Warlock is Level 22 and I don't have to make a decision about which way to go with my build immediately, but I would like to know what my options are before locking myself into one path or the other (so as to save on respec expenses).

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

After posting this, I was amused to watch the thread views climb over 100 with zero replies, but then I started thinking that maybe the reason no deep Demonologists have spoken up about their experiences with Soul Link is because ... there aren't players here who have experienced Soul Link?

According to some historical youtube videos I stumbled across, there were apparently some Players who thought that Soul Link was OP ... and then they proceed to demonstrate it in PvP Battlegrounds, without ever explaining the "nuts and bolts" underpinning the playstyle and how the parts and pieces all fit together in a way in which the whole is more than just the sum of its parts.

Or maybe there are plenty of Soul Link Demonologists around, but they don't want to let the magic smoke get out of their build strategies.  ^_~
After all, it's hard to counter what people don't understand.

Still, with all the recommendations for DM/Ruin or DM/DS that we see to frequently in these forums, I'd like to think that someone out there is playing a Soul Link Warlock somewhere on our servers.  Be nice to hear how Soul Link plays, both in PvP and in PvE.  Sort of a look into "how the other half lives" kind of thing.

[Marwat 0]

Hello !

I must say that I've read your posts with a lot of interest. I've been playing warlock since Nostalrius launched and yet I still manage to learn some new things about it.

I leveled in full SM/Ruin spec and it was just great. I remember thinking, back then, that going demonology would not be very efficient because I'd always take aggro back from my pets, even with just some dots, not even shadowbolting. But, to be fair, I never gave it a try.

When I ranked I was SM/ruin too because in premades you basically need a huge dps output in order to bring your fully-buffed opponents down. Maybe if I just played PvP for fun i'd have tried some SL build ! Actually I tried one time, for fun, and warriors/rogues were still raping me... I'm pretty sure I was doing something wrong, but gaining 10s of extra survivability wasn't worth the huge dps loss. Besides this, I'm convinced warlock is the class with the second highest skill cap after hunters. 

That being said, if I had to level another warlock, I'm not sure I'd change from SM/ruin. I had almost 0 downtime with siphon + life drain, and of course tapping from time to time. What demonology spec would grant literally 0 downtime? 

[Milarepa 1]

Not sure what to say about drain tanking, never tried it.  When I leveled I did the standard affl/demo specuntil lvl 40, then I respecced SL and put points in affl.  SL alone was very useful just using void walker (with points in it).

At lvl 52 I chose this spec: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IZbxcuGxotZxxM

This maximized succubus damage.  If I was soloing she could tank a mob for a few seconds, and by the time I got aggro and the mob ran to me it was almost dead.  Note that at level 52 she gets a Lash of Pain upgrade, plus twice the lash of pain frequency and 30% more damage, plus 13% overall extra damage.

In dungeons like BRD she was doing 25% of my total damage.  Also, seduction worked really well with those talent points.  It was really fun.  Like being a BM hunter, the pet damage has nothing to do with your gear, so it can be really good but totally not viable at level 60.

[Aethelwulf 12]

It's a question of what you want to do as a drain-tank. If you're looking to kill mobs fast as a draintank, then SM/DS 30/21 is your best option by far. It's the build that's known to be more Shadow Priest than the Shadow Priest. For SM/DS a Succubus Sacrifice does give a very nice bonus to damage, but a lot of people prefer to sacrifice the Voidwalker instead for the health regen to completely eradicate downtime issues. You will always be at full health and can freely Life Tap to generate mana. If you actually want to be durable and tank dungeons and the like, then Soul Link is your best bet, although SL tanking favors the use of Searing Pain to build up aggro. Builds that depend on pets for damage aren't really an option until Burning Crusade since vanilla pets do not scale.

If you're curious about the PvP viability of Soul Link, it's mostly strong in 1v1 and if you have very high amounts of spell damage. However it's usually better to get Shadowburn and improved Shadowbolts than dig for Grim Reach, amplified Curse of Agony, and Nightfall procs. Soul Link PvP is very straightforward. You have fewer tricks, you do less damage, but you're much, much harder to kill. Not only do you have Soul Link, you also have bigger healthstones, +15% stamina from Demonic Embrace, and possibly bigger Spellstone shields as well. In addition you will have +60 all resists with the Felhunter out, making enemy Mages and Warlocks a complete joke. As SL, you mostly depend on high damage to make it work. The downsides of Soul Link are that enemy Warlocks might banish your pet (hard to stick on a Felhunter though - it still has 185 resists with Curse of Shadow and the auto should slow their casts, especially if you have Curse of Tongues on them), Shamans and Priests can dispel Soul Link from your pet (you can defend against this by putting worthless buffs like Unending Breath, Detect Invisibility, and low-ranking magic scrolls on your pets as dispel shields), and Rogues can sap you, kill your pet, and come back to dealing with you (assuming your pet is not an invisible Succubus and that you are not using the Catseye Goggles + Felhunter combo to spot rogues before they sap you). In addition you no longer have things like Ruin, Siphon Life, or Curse of Exhaustion and you will probably not have the extra spellcasting range talents.

SM/DS similarly trades your summoned pet (you can still enslave demons however, including Infernals and Doomguards, or summon a pet in a pinch with Fel Domination) in exchange for a lot more survival (assuming you sacrificed the Voidwalker).

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

14 hours ago, Marwat said:

I must say that I've read your posts with a lot of interest.

It's a bad habit of mine that I keep wanting to challenge the Conventional Wisdom.  Sometimes you find stuff, and sometimes there's really nothing there ... but it's better to quest and fail than to have never quested at all, right?

14 hours ago, Marwat said:

I leveled in full SM/Ruin spec and it was just great. I remember thinking, back then, that going demonology would not be very efficient because I'd always take aggro back from my pets, even with just some dots, not even shadowbolting.

That's the curious thing about being an Affliction Drain Tank.  You don't CARE if you steal aggro from your Pet.  In fact, if you DON'T steal aggro from your Pet, you aren't putting out enough DPS and are (in effect) gimping yourself.  The whole point of being a Drain Tank is that you're stealing enough Health that even if mobs do try to pound on you, they can't hurt you fast enough to survive what you're doing to them.

The playstyle has a lot in common with the Beast o' Melee Hunter Survival build I posted over in the Hunter Forums, except that instead of trying to Debuff Attack Power (via Screech from your Pet) you're instead just draining Health directly from your Target(s) to "negate" incoming damage.  That's because whether or not the Pet has aggro is a distraction, since in either case you want your character to be tanking, not your Pet.  For a Warlock, it's cheaper (quicker, easier, more seductive...) to Drain Tank directly than it is to be using Health Funnel to try and keep a Pet healed up.

15 hours ago, Marwat said:

When I ranked I was SM/ruin too because in premades you basically need a huge dps output in order to bring your fully-buffed opponents down.

PvP, by its very nature, strongly favors the insta-gib surprise attack where you defeat someone in as little time as possible so as to close off opportunities to counter quickly, thereby securing the victory.  Very rarely does PvP favor "the long grind" to victory in which you can win on the margins after applying sufficient pressure.  This is why PvP builds tend to be built for "spike" damage rather than for applying a steady load of "pressure" damage over a long enough period of time.

14 hours ago, Milarepa said:

Not sure what to say about drain tanking, never tried it.

It is, in its own way, about as formidable a change as Shadow Form is for a Shadow Priest.  It does require a different mentality to make use of it most efficiently though, but when you're doing it right, there definitely is a sense of "I'm Invincible!"  To do it properly though, you do need spend 21 talent points in Affliction to get Siphon Life and 5/5 Fel Concentration.

14 hours ago, Milarepa said:

At lvl 52 I chose this spec: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IZbxcuGxotZxxM

This maximized succubus damage.

I would imagine so ... ^_~

14 hours ago, Milarepa said:

so it can be really good but totally not viable at level 60.

Point of distinction.  Are you saying it's "totally not viable" on 40 man raids?  Because I'd think that build ought to be plenty viable on 5 man dungeons and other single party content.  Also, I'd expect that if 25% of your damage is coming from your Pet (as you cited) but is not being attributed to you on the damage meters that I can see how that might become an issue for certain raiding groups, since it wouldn't look like you're "pulling your weight" in the raid (even if you actually are).  That then becomes a "hazard" of empowering your Pet at the expense of yourself, even if the combination is stronger than it looks (on the meters).

4 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

It's a question of what you want to do as a drain-tank. If you're looking to kill mobs fast as a draintank, then SM/DS 30/21 is your best option by far. It's the build that's known to be more Shadow Priest than the Shadow Priest. For SM/DS a Succubus Sacrifice does give a very nice bonus to damage, but a lot of people prefer to sacrifice the Voidwalker instead for the health regen to completely eradicate downtime issues. You will always be at full health and can freely Life Tap to generate mana.

The thing is, you can get somewhat the same performance out of a Dark Pact build too, and for a lot less talent points invested, than doing a Voidwalker sacrifice.  The difference is that you're tapping your "mana battery" (usually Imp) rather than relying on a heightened Health Regeneration to make your pool(s) bottomless.  Different means, similar performance (overall).  The key is to maximize recovery by adding more recovery methods.

4 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

If you actually want to be durable and tank dungeons and the like, then Soul Link is your best bet, although SL tanking favors the use of Searing Pain to build up aggro. Builds that depend on pets for damage aren't really an option until Burning Crusade since vanilla pets do not scale.

Not so much dungeon tanking as solo tanking ... although being able to "pocket tank" in a pinch makes for a really nice fallback option when things go sideways.

And yes, being able to figure out how much you can get out of a vanilla Pet that isn't being influenced by the scaling of your character (and thus your gear) is the fulcrum point of being able to decide which option is better.

4 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

If you're curious about the PvP viability of Soul Link, it's mostly strong in 1v1 and if you have very high amounts of spell damage.

Soul Link PvP is very straightforward. You have fewer tricks, you do less damage, but you're much, much harder to kill. Not only do you have Soul Link, you also have bigger healthstones, +15% stamina from Demonic Embrace, and possibly bigger Spellstone shields as well. In addition you will have +60 all resists with the Felhunter out, making enemy Mages and Warlocks a complete joke. As SL, you mostly depend on high damage to make it work. The downsides of Soul Link are that enemy Warlocks might banish your pet (hard to stick on a Felhunter though - it still has 185 resists with Curse of Shadow and the auto should slow their casts, especially if you have Curse of Tongues on them), Shamans and Priests can dispel Soul Link from your pet (you can defend against this by putting worthless buffs like Unending Breath, Detect Invisibility, and low-ranking magic scrolls on your pets as dispel shields), and Rogues can sap you, kill your pet, and come back to dealing with you (assuming your pet is not an invisible Succubus and that you are not using the Catseye Goggles + Felhunter combo to spot rogues before they sap you). In addition you no longer have things like Ruin, Siphon Life, or Curse of Exhaustion and you will probably not have the extra spellcasting range talents.

That's all good to know and important factors to consider.  The more I look at it, the more I come to the conclusion that deep Demonology is more of a PvP build than a PvE one, where the advantages are intended to be defensive (longer survival time) than they are offensive (higher DPS and burst potential).

Ultimately though, I keep coming back to the notion that the Demonology tree is just really ... inefficient.  You wind up spending a lot of talent points in the first 3 tiers that you can't use full time, if going for Demonic Sacrifice, or which will only be situationally useful, if going for Soul Link.  That's a lot of investment that can't be working for you full time ... unlike Affliction and Destruction.

[Marwat 0]

Roxanne,

 

Thanks for your deep input, it's always a pleasure to discuss theorycrafting with people who know stuff. I gave a thought to your drain-tank build and, if as you say, you don't take aggro, it should be fine for grinding. However, when I was leveling I was constantly killing mobs three by three (1 feared with dots, others on me and my pet, all doted). Would drain-tanking be as efficient with multi target sine you can't life-drain multiple targets at once and knowing that even the 70% chance of not being interrupted will become almost irrelevant with 2+ mobs on you ?

For the SL build, I had greater results in 1v1 duel-situation (someone lost in a bg, wpvp, IF duels) indeed. It's kinda sad because the idea of having a tanky warlock is very appealing. I guess Blizzard somehow couldn't manage to find a balane between SL's high tankiness and decent dps output. With my current gear it can actually work because I'm not far from full BiS but I can imagine corruption ticking at 90 in green/leveling gear ^_^

 

That being said, if I ever level another warlock, which is very unlikely to happen hahaha, I'll remember your build and I'll surely give it a try ;) !

[Aethelwulf 12]

8 hours ago, Roxanne Flowers said:

The thing is, you can get somewhat the same performance out of a Dark Pact build too, and for a lot less talent points invested, than doing a Voidwalker sacrifice.  The difference is that you're tapping your "mana battery" (usually Imp) rather than relying on a heightened Health Regeneration to make your pool(s) bottomless.  Different means, similar performance (overall).  The key is to maximize recovery by adding more recovery methods.

That's true, but only insofar as we are discussing mana recovery. The health recovery perk of Voidwalker DS also ensures that you do not spend any downtime standing still and bandaging/etc. post-fight. It's particularly valuable on PvP servers where it reduces the window of opportunity for you to get ganked and allows you to recover health throughout a Rogue's stunlock combo. SM/DS plays heavily to a DoT heavy playstyle which also plays to a PvP kiting strategy since you do not need to stand still for your spells. That said you can always sacrifice the Succubus for much more powerful DoTs if you prefer. It's also true that a Dark Pact build can put a few points into Demonology to become more resilient.

Quote

Not so much dungeon tanking as solo tanking ... although being able to "pocket tank" in a pinch makes for a really nice fallback option when things go sideways

SL or DS is preferred for drain-tanking, but for solo play it's frequently better to run around enemies while DoTTing them all to death with your instant casts than to stand still and tank them. Especially given the fact that drain-tanking is not conducive to grinding multiple mobs (although presumably your pet is tanking 1 or 2 mobs as well). This is even more true since you intend on playing on a PvE server where you won't need to worry about getting ganked while you are training mobs.

Quote

And yes, being able to figure out how much you can get out of a vanilla Pet that isn't being influenced by the scaling of your character (and thus your gear) is the fulcrum point of being able to decide which option is better.

Don't knock the DS Warlock's ability to enslave demons, especially if you decide to kill mobs with Curse of Doom or if you feel like summoning an Infernal in a pinch. And as your gear improves, the damage contribution from your pets becomes increasingly marginal. And on that note of pet damage, your calculations of Succubus DPS are a bit off since percentage bonuses typically stack multiplicatively, thus they would have a 47.29% bonus to damage, 54.6545% if you are an Orc (Command gives pets +5% damage). It's better to have 2/2 Improved Lash of Pain in that case, and possibly get a Mark of the Wild buff from a friendly druid on your pet.

Quote

That's all good to know and important factors to consider.  The more I look at it, the more I come to the conclusion that deep Demonology is more of a PvP build than a PvE one, where the advantages are intended to be defensive (longer survival time) than they are offensive (higher DPS and burst potential).

That's correct. Unless you intend on tanking for some reason, Demonology does very little to help you in PvE conditions that are not prone to world PvP. There was a time when Demonology was incredibly powerful if you sacrificed your pet and either had it rez'd or used a paladin's blessing of sacrifice to make them survive the 100% life loss DS was supposed to inflict, thus giving you the Demonic Sacrifice buff on top of the pet and its Master Demonologist bonus, but it got patched out. Demonology is supposed to offer some pet DPS, but it's not until Burning Crusade that pets properly scale with your gear, so pet damage is rather negligible, unless you are using the Black Book with a demonology Succubus or machine gun imp.

Quote

Ultimately though, I keep coming back to the notion that the Demonology tree is just really ... inefficient.  You wind up spending a lot of talent points in the first 3 tiers that you can't use full time, if going for Demonic Sacrifice, or which will only be situationally useful, if going for Soul Link.  That's a lot of investment that can't be working for you full time ... unlike Affliction and Destruction.

There's some truth to that, but Demonology's benefits to survival do make the tree worthwhile. If you want a high damage Succubus however, it would probably be better to get 2/2 Improved Lash of Pain from the Destruction tree as well for 6 second cooldowns. A Black Book trinket (drops from Razorgore) would also be a lot of fun (30 seconds of giving your Imp/Voidwalker/Succubus/Felhunter +100% damage and armor on a 5 minute cooldown).

59 minutes ago, Marwat said:

Thanks for your deep input, it's always a pleasure to discuss theorycrafting with people who know stuff. I gave a thought to your drain-tank build and, if as you say, you don't take aggro, it should be fine for grinding. However, when I was leveling I was constantly killing mobs three by three (1 feared with dots, others on me and my pet, all doted). Would drain-tanking be as efficient with multi target sine you can't life-drain multiple targets at once and knowing that even the 70% chance of not being interrupted will become almost irrelevant with 2+ mobs on you ?

Strictly speaking you can max out casting pushback avoidance if you have a Paladin giving Concentration Aura but if you are grouped with a Paladin it's probably better to have him Consecrate and heal while you Hellfire with 2/2 Intensity. It's also possible to reach 80% casting pushback avoidance if you have 4/8 Ironweave (the cloth tanking set), but that's 1.10 patch content so we will probably never see it and it's fairly undesirable overall given its total lack of spell damage or crit or hit, not to mention the effort involved in collecting set pieces. Plus a lot of PvP gear (defiler's set, outrider leggings, PvP set) have high armor as well without sacrificing spell damage.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

1 hour ago, Marwat said:

Thanks for your deep input, it's always a pleasure to discuss theorycrafting with people who know stuff. I gave a thought to your drain-tank build and, if as you say, you don't take aggro, it should be fine for grinding. However, when I was leveling I was constantly killing mobs three by three (1 feared with dots, others on me and my pet, all doted). Would drain-tanking be as efficient with multi target since you can't life-drain multiple targets at once and knowing that even the 70% chance of not being interrupted will become almost irrelevant with 2+ mobs on you ?

My (decade old) experience of Drain Tanking with a Dark Pact build was that it made almost no difference if you were fighting 1-3 PvE mobs.  Just DoT them all and pick one to Drain Life and it's wash/rinse/repeat until all dead.  This is where having Siphon Life on multiple targets starts really coming in handy, since you're transferring Health from multiple sources simultaneously.  The net effect is an (over)abundance of incoming Health, which you can then 2/2 Improved Lifetap into mana as needed.  That then keeps you flush with resources (health and mana) while you channel Drain Life on whatever you're burning down into the ground, whether or not they're in your face.  In fact, under most circumstances, you wind up with "too much Health" from using Drain Life all the time and need to keep shuffling the excess through Lifetap into your mana pool.  This means you need to think differently about how you "acquire" the resources (health and mana) you're using to output damage.  Rather than using regeneration to acquire those resources, instead you're STEALING those resources from whatever it is that you're fighting.

What's mine is mine ... and what's yours is mine too ... is the mentality you want to take.  If mobs aren't beating on you, then you've just got that much more margin to work with ... but if they are beating on you, it's almost "ho hum, why are you hitting yourself?" because you're often stealing health as fast as they can hurt you, leading to a somewhat dynamic equilibrium state in which it's really hard for PvE Foes to send you deeply negative.  It's a truly "vampiric" playstyle that feels even more overtly necromantic than playing a Shadow Priest.

1 hour ago, Aethelwulf said:

SL or DS is preferred for drain-tanking, but for solo play it's frequently better to run around enemies while DoTTing them all to death with your instant casts than to stand still and tank them. Especially given the fact that drain-tanking is not conducive to grinding multiple mobs (although presumably your pet is tanking 1 or 2 mobs as well). This is even more true since you intend on playing on a PvE server where you won't need to worry about getting ganked while you are training mobs.

Well, a decade ago I could pull 3 PvE mobs, DoT them all and tank them myself, with the Imp not engaging (since I was playing a Dark Pact build) and I'd end the fight with minimal Health loss and minimal Mana loss, because I'd just be stealing all those losses right back via drains.  Even when fighting sequentially, rather that AoEing them down in parallel, there was plenty of margin in being able to Drain Tank.

1 hour ago, Aethelwulf said:

Don't knock the DS Warlock's ability to enslave demons, especially if you decide to kill mobs with Curse of Doom or if you feel like summoning an Infernal in a pinch. And as your gear improves, the damage contribution from your pets becomes increasingly marginal.

Never really messed around with Enslave Demon before.  Always felt like more trouble than it was worth, to be honest.  And yes, when vanilla Pets don't scale with your equipped gear, that does mean that as you approach 60 and start maneuvering into BiS gear the contribution from your Pet will diminish simply because your Warlock will keep getting that much more powerful.

1 hour ago, Aethelwulf said:

There's some truth to that, but Demonology's benefits to survival do make the tree worthwhile. If you want a high damage Succubus however, it would probably be better to get 2/2 Improved Lash of Pain from the Destruction tree as well for 6 second cooldowns. A Black Book trinket (drops from Razorgore) would also be a lot of fun (30 seconds of giving your Imp/Voidwalker/Succubus/Felhunter +100% damage and armor on a 5 minute cooldown).

Right, it's all about the tradeoffs and the "comfort level" you have with the demands of the playstyle that results from those choices.  And yes, it annoys me to no end that Improved Lash of Pain is in Tier 3(!) of the Destruction tree, rather than in the Demonology tree.  As for the Black Book Trinket ... that's nice for a 1/10th uptime of amazing Pet performance, but like you said earlier, as you start working your way towards BiS gear that contribution becomes increasingly marginal.  Granted, it's a factor when accounting for everything, but the Pet Share of what you're doing keep diminishing as a proportion as your Warlock gets stronger.

 

For me, the big question was always one of Pet? (Y/N) ... with Dark Pact yielding something halfway in between a Yes and a No since you want to keep the Imp on Follow/Passive in Phase Shift so that he's just a mana battery because he's "present" but not "participating" in the battles you fight (and thus isn't subject to being destroyed).  Soul Link is obviously a YES answer to that question, but that brings about the follow up questions of "at what cost, and for what gain?" ... while the Demonic Sacrifice results in an obvious NO answer to that question, where almost the only reason you want to be summoning demons is so that you can sacrifice them (which has it's own "I am Ebil" connotations for roleplaying).  At the same time, the Demonic Sacrifice choice basically feels like playing a "petless" Warlock, which then becomes a sort of Shadow/Fire Priest/Mage hybrid ... so as you can guess I wanted to have a good "look" before leaping in that direction.

As matters stand, with all the input so far, I'm much more inclined towards the SM/DS build at 60, while having a preference for using a Dark Pact build while leveling my way up to 60.

[Aethelwulf 12]

20 hours ago, Roxanne Flowers said:

What's mine is mine ... and what's yours is mine too ... is the mentality you want to take.  If mobs aren't beating on you, then you've just got that much more margin to work with ... but if they are beating on you, it's almost "ho hum, why are you hitting yourself?" because you're often stealing health as fast as they can hurt you, leading to a somewhat dynamic equilibrium state in which it's really hard for PvE Foes to send you deeply negative.  It's a truly "vampiric" playstyle that feels even more overtly necromantic than playing a Shadow Priest.

Horde Priests have it much better than the Alliance in this regard. Undead Priests have Touch of Weakness and Devouring Plague (which has a high mana cost and cooldown) whereas Troll Priests have the extremely well-scaling Shadowguard which has no cooldown and is worth reapplying constantly. Troll Shadow Priests have been rather underrated ever since their racial spells got buffed.

Quote

Well, a decade ago I could pull 3 PvE mobs, DoT them all and tank them myself, with the Imp not engaging (since I was playing a Dark Pact build) and I'd end the fight with minimal Health loss and minimal Mana loss, because I'd just be stealing all those losses right back via drains.  Even when fighting sequentially, rather that AoEing them down in parallel, there was plenty of margin in being able to Drain Tank.

Yes but if you DoT and run you can easily grind down 10+ mobs at the same time by running around and instant DoTting everything in sight. It doesn't matter how much damage they do if they never get close enough to do it. You will also heal a lot from Siphon Life and proc a lot of instant shadowbolts.

Quote

Never really messed around with Enslave Demon before.  Always felt like more trouble than it was worth, to be honest.  And yes, when vanilla Pets don't scale with your equipped gear, that does mean that as you approach 60 and start maneuvering into BiS gear the contribution from your Pet will diminish simply because your Warlock will keep getting that much more powerful.

If you're DS specced you would have no pet otherwise (unless you are using Gnomish Mind Control Cap or Gnomish Universal Remote) so it's a lot more worthwhile to enslave demons than usual. It is also worth noting that as DS you can still instantly summon a pet or do a dungeon run with an improved imp active.

Quote

Right, it's all about the tradeoffs and the "comfort level" you have with the demands of the playstyle that results from those choices.  And yes, it annoys me to no end that Improved Lash of Pain is in Tier 3(!) of the Destruction tree, rather than in the Demonology tree.  As for the Black Book Trinket ... that's nice for a 1/10th uptime of amazing Pet performance, but like you said earlier, as you start working your way towards BiS gear that contribution becomes increasingly marginal.  Granted, it's a factor when accounting for everything, but the Pet Share of what you're doing keep diminishing as a proportion as your Warlock gets stronger.

Agreed. There was a lot of dubiousness to vanilla balance and talent trees and the developers and CMs had a generally half-assed "we know better than you" attitude to it all. It's also worth noting that the 2nd rank of Improved Firebolt does nothing for imps because they still GCD at 1.5 seconds anyway. In Burning Crusade they addressed this longstanding complaint in the most assholish way imaginable, by making Improved Firebolt remove 0.25 seconds of casting time instead of 0.5. Now both ranks are useful, but only because it takes 2 ranks to do what the 1st rank did before.

Quote

For me, the big question was always one of Pet? (Y/N) ... with Dark Pact yielding something halfway in between a Yes and a No since you want to keep the Imp on Follow/Passive in Phase Shift so that he's just a mana battery because he's "present" but not "participating" in the battles you fight (and thus isn't subject to being destroyed).  Soul Link is obviously a YES answer to that question, but that brings about the follow up questions of "at what cost, and for what gain?" ... while the Demonic Sacrifice results in an obvious NO answer to that question, where almost the only reason you want to be summoning demons is so that you can sacrifice them (which has it's own "I am Ebil" connotations for roleplaying).  At the same time, the Demonic Sacrifice choice basically feels like playing a "petless" Warlock, which then becomes a sort of Shadow/Fire Priest/Mage hybrid ... so as you can guess I wanted to have a good "look" before leaping in that direction.

I think it's better to use Dark Pact with a Succubus with autocasts disabled than an imp, when it comes to inflicting damage at least. The imp does provide bonus health and a rather negligible fire shield though. Incidentally, Dark Pact has a fun PvP use with the Gnomish Mind Control Cap since you can Dark Pact them out of all their mana while they are mind controlled. You used to be able to use the Mind Control Cap with Soul Link as well but Blizzard then performed one of their ill-conceived nerfs and changed Soul Link so it only works with summoned demons (ruining the intended Enslave Demon + Soul Link combinations, which is why Demonic Sacrifice is a prereq to the Soul Link). Ill-conceived class changes are also partly the result of the original Blizzard WoW development staff by and large leaving WoW in the wake of Vivendi's acquisition of the company shortly before the official release. This resulted in a slew of abnormal rebalances (including the gutting of the Paladin class), since their balance motivations were rather petty overall (before Tigole ran WoW class balance, he infamously staged server crash protests in Everquest because a Paladin could out-tank him and he felt his class should be the only tank class in the game or something).

Quote

As matters stand, with all the input so far, I'm much more inclined towards the SM/DS build at 60, while having a preference for using a Dark Pact build while leveling my way up to 60.

It's the best spec if you like DoTting enemies.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

10 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

Troll Priests have the extremely well-scaling Shadowguard which has no cooldown and is worth reapplying constantly. Troll Shadow Priests have been rather underrated ever since their racial spells got buffed.

Okay, if I ever get around to playing Horde (in a year or two?) I'm definitely going to have to play a Troll Shadow Priest because of what you just said.  Would make for an interesting contrast with my Night Elf Elune's Spirit Guide build that I'm doing right now on the Alliance side in Darrowshire (which is working out remarkably well so far).

11 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

If you're DS specced you would have no pet otherwise (unless you are using Gnomish Mind Control Cap or Gnomish Universal Remote) so it's a lot more worthwhile to enslave demons than usual.

I find your arguments ... persuasive ...

11 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

I think it's better to use Dark Pact with a Succubus with autocasts disabled than an imp, when it comes to inflicting damage at least. The imp does provide bonus health and a rather negligible fire shield though.

The other reasons for using Imp are that the Imp has the highest Spirit of all the demons, so it regenerates mana the fastest, making it the best "mana battery" available to a Dark Pact build.  The Imp also has Phase Shift, and if set on Passive will be completely immune to any and all damage.  The Phase Shift advantage means that you don't have to worry about your Pet "expiring" on you at an inopportune moment.  Of course, that also means that the Imp can't be using their mana to generate damage direction via their Firebolts, since all of their mana is dedicated to being "washed" through your Warlock in order to generate damage throughput instead via Dark Pact.

If Pet survival is not an issue, then yes, the Succubus makes for the best alternative choice, since her melee attacks won't consume mana and her (unimproved) Lash of Pain will take long enough between autocasts (12s) to recover mana so she isn't net negative on mana consumption.  Simply turn off Soothing Kiss and she can become a decent supporting damage source for a Drain Tank build where you're simply not expecting her to hold aggro away from your Warlock.

11 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

Incidentally, Dark Pact has a fun PvP use with the Gnomish Mind Control Cap since you can Dark Pact them out of all their mana while they are mind controlled.

/mr. burns excellent

Yes ... my Gnome Warlock will definitely be doing Gnomish Engineering ... yes ...

[grs 1]

I like the SM/DS build, but I am wondering about a few talent choices.

In Affliction I would really like to get Grim Reach, but it seems hard to free two points for it. Do you think dropping a point in each Improved Drain Life and Fel Concentration is viable? Is there any alternative?

In Demonology I am curious about Improved Succubus. As I see it, you either sac. your pet, you use the imp for the stamina buff in a group or you use the void tank.

I would end up with something like http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0wmMboVZfxuzMho.

Thoughts?

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

10 hours ago, grs said:

In Affliction I would really like to get Grim Reach, but it seems hard to free two points for it. Do you think dropping a point in each Improved Drain Life and Fel Concentration is viable? Is there any alternative?

In my personal opinion, if you spend ANY points in Fel Concentration, anything less than 5/5 Fel Concentration is counter-productive if you're expecting to be getting hit while casting the channeled spell Drain Life.  If you really want to pull 2 points from somewhere, I'd honestly recommend going with either 3/5 instead of 5/5 Suppression in Tier 1 Affliction or just not spending (up to) 5 talent points on Improved Drain Life in Tier 2, because the latter is just a (up to) +10% Life Drain for a single (channeled) spell, rather than for all of the Life Drain spells you can cast (which Shadow Mastery provides in addition to increased Shadow damage).

10 hours ago, grs said:

In Demonology I am curious about Improved Succubus. As I see it, you either sac. your pet, you use the imp for the stamina buff in a group or you use the void tank.

I'm actually getting a little bit interested in Improved Succubus as well for a 31/20/0 build ... or maybe even a 33/13/5 build including Improved Succubus and, in the latter case, also including 5/5 Improved Shadow Bolt in which you use the Succubus as your mana battery, but can have an Improved Imp in reserve, should the situation call for it.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0iVMboVof0VhZx

[Numi 0]

On 2017-04-10 at 2:20 PM, Marwat said:

Hello !

I must say that I've read your posts with a lot of interest. I've been playing warlock since Nostalrius launched and yet I still manage to learn some new things about it.

I leveled in full SM/Ruin spec and it was just great. I remember thinking, back then, that going demonology would not be very efficient because I'd always take aggro back from my pets, even with just some dots, not even shadowbolting. But, to be fair, I never gave it a try.

When I ranked I was SM/ruin too because in premades you basically need a huge dps output in order to bring your fully-buffed opponents down. Maybe if I just played PvP for fun i'd have tried some SL build ! Actually I tried one time, for fun, and warriors/rogues were still raping me... I'm pretty sure I was doing something wrong, but gaining 10s of extra survivability wasn't worth the huge dps loss. Besides this, I'm convinced warlock is the class with the second highest skill cap after hunters. 

That being said, if I had to level another warlock, I'm not sure I'd change from SM/ruin. I had almost 0 downtime with siphon + life drain, and of course tapping from time to time. What demonology spec would grant literally 0 downtime? 

Not a demo spec, but it starts out as an affi / demo hybrid: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IGMZbhh

Here's a full guide for it: http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14455

However I recommend spirit / stam gear over spellpower gear, as it turned out to be slightly faster in very high kill per hour (100+).

I've tried dark pact builds, I've tried non vw builds, I've tried drain life with vw tanking, nothing is as fast as this build with dots + wands. It's possible 58-60 is faster with drain life, but that's also the worst time to be playing drain tanking, as it leaves you more open to be ganked and at 58-60 you need every point of health you can get to defend from geared 60's.

 

I really recommend all warlocks to try fire destro in pvp, it's so much fun, the math also suggest it being about the same DPS once your raid mages go fire, so it's worth the practice before that too!

[Aethelwulf 12]

On 12/04/2017 at 5:47 AM, Roxanne Flowers said:

Okay, if I ever get around to playing Horde (in a year or two?) I'm definitely going to have to play a Troll Shadow Priest because of what you just said.  Would make for an interesting contrast with my Night Elf Elune's Spirit Guide build that I'm doing right now on the Alliance side in Darrowshire (which is working out remarkably well so far).

I suppose Starshards might have its perks for mana efficient PvE grinding, although I'm not sure how you prevent pushback. Once you're geared though Starshards is worthless. Shadowguard on the other hand divides 100% of spelldmg across 3 hits, and every hit applies Shadow Weaving and can proc Blackout. For a Shadow Priest with 5/5 Shadow Weaving up, Shadowguard does 145.475% of spell damage, or about 48.49167% of shadow damage on every hit. Given 402 spell damage, your Shadowguard would hit 3 times for 363.6875 damage.

Quote

The other reasons for using Imp are that the Imp has the highest Spirit of all the demons, so it regenerates mana the fastest, making it the best "mana battery" available to a Dark Pact build.  The Imp also has Phase Shift, and if set on Passive will be completely immune to any and all damage.  The Phase Shift advantage means that you don't have to worry about your Pet "expiring" on you at an inopportune moment.  Of course, that also means that the Imp can't be using their mana to generate damage direction via their Firebolts, since all of their mana is dedicated to being "washed" through your Warlock in order to generate damage throughput instead via Dark Pact.

If Pet survival is not an issue, then yes, the Succubus makes for the best alternative choice, since her melee attacks won't consume mana and her (unimproved) Lash of Pain will take long enough between autocasts (12s) to recover mana so she isn't net negative on mana consumption.  Simply turn off Soothing Kiss and she can become a decent supporting damage source for a Drain Tank build where you're simply not expecting her to hold aggro away from your Warlock.

I suppose it depends on how much you dark pact, but it may be better to turn off both. Lash of Pain not only consumes mana but also disables mana regeneration for 5 seconds, and the Succubus isn't quite the mana battery than an imp is. That said, a lot of Warlocks aren't really concerned with ways to get unending mana off of dark pact since they can just Life Tap and bandage or drain/siphon it back.

And strictly speaking a phase-shifted imp can still take damage from Soul Link, but usually Soul Link Warlocks tend not to go with the Imp as their pet of choice (unless they're equipping Robe of the Void and/or putting fortitude buffs on the imp maybe).

On 13/04/2017 at 8:18 AM, grs said:

I like the SM/DS build, but I am wondering about a few talent choices. In Affliction I would really like to get Grim Reach, but it seems hard to free two points for it. Do you think dropping a point in each Improved Drain Life and Fel Concentration is viable? Is there any alternative?

In Demonology I am curious about Improved Succubus. As I see it, you either sac. your pet, you use the imp for the stamina buff in a group or you use the void tank. I would end up with something like http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0wmMboVZfxuzMho. Thoughts?

I would typically favor this for a SM/DS build but it's true that for strict PvE drain-tanking it's worse. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IA0bVRbkAZfxhzT0o In that case you can drop Curse of Exhaustion and a rank of Suppression for 5/5 Improved Drain Life if you prefer. I wouldn't drop Amplify Curse because a 50% stronger Curse of Agony is still potent. Improved Succubus is fairly worthless overall unless you have 2/2 improved Lash of Pain at the least.

14 minutes ago, Numi said:

Not a demo spec, but it starts out as an affi / demo hybrid: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IGMZbhh

Here's a full guide for it: http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14455

However I recommend spirit / stam gear over spellpower gear, as it turned out to be slightly faster in very high kill per hour (100+).

I've tried dark pact builds, I've tried non vw builds, I've tried drain life with vw tanking, nothing is as fast as this build with dots + wands. It's possible 58-60 is faster with drain life, but that's also the worst time to be playing drain tanking, as it leaves you more open to be ganked and at 58-60 you need every point of health you can get to defend from geared 60's. I really recommend all warlocks to try fire destro in pvp, it's so much fun, the math also suggest it being about the same DPS once your raid mages go fire, so it's worth the practice before that too!

That's just a SM/DS build designed for leveling from 1-60.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

1 hour ago, Aethelwulf said:

I suppose Starshards might have its perks for mana efficient PvE grinding, although I'm not sure how you prevent pushback. Once you're geared though Starshards is worthless.

You prevent pushback via Power Word: Shield, which Absorbs damage (so no pushback), and through the Martyrdom talent which procs when you are the victim of a melee or ranged (but not spell) critical hit.  Beyond that, it's Threat Reduction so you don't draw PvE aggro in the first place, but that's a group dynamic issue rather than something a soloist can benefit from.

As for being worthless, that remains to be seen.  The Elune's Spirit Guide build is taking me in a direction that almost nobody goes in ... a dedicated Spirit Priest build ... because Starshards gets far more mana recovery per volley cycle than just about any other spell rotation (aside from Wanding, of course) and has a very good spell damage coefficient (unlike too many Shadow Priest spells).  Using 5/5 Spiritual Guidance and 5/5 Spirit Tap creates a sort of "rolling thunder" dynamic in which after every honor/xp kill your Spirit doubles for 15 seconds, in which your mana regeneration is increased by 50% while casting.  Because Starshards has a 6 second channel time, instead of 5 seconds, simply chain casting Starshards sequentially for the full 6 second duration is ALREADY 5 second rule friendly, meaning you're already getting a full mana recovery tick while finishing up the channeling and so you'll get a LOT more benefit out of Spirit on a Starshards build than you would with just about any other Priest spec available.  This means that I'm expecting the build to get more out of Spirit than it would out of +mp5, meaning that the more Spirit I can cram onto it, the better it gets.  Considering that most people consider Spirit to be the "dump stat" of almost every class in the game, I find that inversion of (perceived) advantages to be rather remarkable.

1 hour ago, Aethelwulf said:

I suppose it depends on how much you dark pact, but it may be better to turn off both. Lash of Pain not only consumes mana but also disables mana regeneration for 5 seconds, and the Succubus isn't quite the mana battery than an imp is. That said, a lot of Warlocks aren't really concerned with ways to get unending mana off of dark pact since they can just Life Tap and bandage or drain/siphon it back.

Granted, it is a slightly different philosophy/style/strategy for how to play.  My perspective is that having the Succubus use her Lash of Pain disables mana regeneration for 5 out of 12 seconds.  If she can recover the mana needed for Lash of Pain in the remaining 7 seconds, then over the balance of those 12 seconds she running a net positive mana recovery.  So long as the fight doesn't take too long, and you don't have to Dark Pact tap her for mana too many times too quickly, then that becomes a viable option.  By contrast, if you're in an endurance fight where you just have to keep constantly casting for minutes at a time, you're probably better off with the Imp as a "pure" mana battery from which ALL of the mana recovery can be transferred to (and through) your Warlock.

2 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

And strictly speaking a phase-shifted imp can still take damage from Soul Link, but usually Soul Link Warlocks tend not to go with the Imp as their pet of choice (unless they're equipping Robe of the Void and/or putting fortitude buffs on the imp maybe).

True, but if you're reaching for Soul Link then use of Dark Pact is no longer available and the entire dynamic shifts concerning which Pet it optimal in which situation because you're no longer using the Imp as a mana battery but rather as a damage sponge.

[Aethelwulf 12]

46 minutes ago, Roxanne Flowers said:

You prevent pushback via Power Word: Shield, which Absorbs damage (so no pushback), and through the Martyrdom talent which procs when you are the victim of a melee or ranged (but not spell) critical hit.  Beyond that, it's Threat Reduction so you don't draw PvE aggro in the first place, but that's a group dynamic issue rather than something a soloist can benefit from.

Hm, point. If you use PW:S beforehand, that would work. I thought Renew was more popular for Priest grinding, but PW:S is indeed an option.

Quote

As for being worthless, that remains to be seen.  The Elune's Spirit Guide build is taking me in a direction that almost nobody goes in ... a dedicated Spirit Priest build ... because Starshards gets far more mana recovery per volley cycle than just about any other spell rotation (aside from Wanding, of course) and has a very good spell damage coefficient (unlike too many Shadow Priest spells).  Using 5/5 Spiritual Guidance and 5/5 Spirit Tap creates a sort of "rolling thunder" dynamic in which after every honor/xp kill your Spirit doubles for 15 seconds, in which your mana regeneration is increased by 50% while casting.  Because Starshards has a 6 second channel time, instead of 5 seconds, simply chain casting Starshards sequentially for the full 6 second duration is ALREADY 5 second rule friendly, meaning you're already getting a full mana recovery tick while finishing up the channeling and so you'll get a LOT more benefit out of Spirit on a Starshards build than you would with just about any other Priest spec available.  This means that I'm expecting the build to get more out of Spirit than it would out of +mp5, meaning that the more Spirit I can cram onto it, the better it gets.  Considering that most people consider Spirit to be the "dump stat" of almost every class in the game, I find that inversion of (perceived) advantages to be rather remarkable.

Spirit is useful for leveling up and grinding, particular for Mages and Priests. There is nothing special about gearing Spirit heavily. Only Warlocks, Shamans, and Paladins avoid gearing spirit, although if Shamans and Paladins really wanted to, they could gear 3/3 Green Dragon Mail and Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon to suddenly make spirit a viable gearing option (if you want to go the extra mile, you could use the Burst of Knowledge trinket with under-ranked spells - R1 LHW for Shamans - to cast them for free and trigger the 5 second rule on demand too), and even Warlocks can use Spirit if they run 2/2 Improved Drain Soul like the build Numi detailed above, although most of them are fine with life tapping and bandaging or draining. Of all things, there is really nothing special about a Priest that gears Spirit. Given 5/5 Spirit Tap and 3/3 Meditation, gearing Spirit is extremely normal for Priests. As for spell damage, in terms of DPS Starshards has the worst spelldmg coefficient of all Priest spells. Even Mind Flay out-scales it once you get Shadow Weaving stacks. I will grant that it is mana-efficient provided you get full duration via Power Word: Shield or engineering dummies.

Quote

Granted, it is a slightly different philosophy/style/strategy for how to play.  My perspective is that having the Succubus use her Lash of Pain disables mana regeneration for 5 out of 12 seconds.  If she can recover the mana needed for Lash of Pain in the remaining 7 seconds, then over the balance of those 12 seconds she running a net positive mana recovery.  So long as the fight doesn't take too long, and you don't have to Dark Pact tap her for mana too many times too quickly, then that becomes a viable option.  By contrast, if you're in an endurance fight where you just have to keep constantly casting for minutes at a time, you're probably better off with the Imp as a "pure" mana battery from which ALL of the mana recovery can be transferred to (and through) your Warlock.

But once you factor in Dark Pact, that could still become a net negative overall. It depends on your mana consumption really.

Quote

True, but if you're reaching for Soul Link then use of Dark Pact is no longer available and the entire dynamic shifts concerning which Pet it optimal in which situation because you're no longer using the Imp as a mana battery but rather as a damage sponge.

Yep. It has its uses though, since Soul Link cannot be purged off of a Phase Shifted Imp, nor can a Rogue sap you, kill your pet, and get back to offing you, and you still have Blood Pact and Fire Shield. But you would at least want a Fortitude buff on your Imp from a nearby Priest (and maybe Druid too) and probably a Robe of the Void if you can. Shouldn't be hard, especially if you offer Healthstones. That said, no one really does SL+Imp since you have other solutions to Rogues and Priests.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

4 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

Hm, point. If you use PW:S beforehand, that would work. I thought Renew was more popular for Priest grinding, but PW:S is indeed an option.

I've been using Power Word: Shield preemptively before every fight and so far (through Level 23) my Priest is rarely taking damage.  There are exceptions and edge cases of course (such as pulling too many foes) but by and large it has been very successful to just Shield and then Starshards x2 to x4 followed by Wanding to finish, and then 10-15 seconds later be back at full mana again and ready for the next 1v1 PvE fight.  Against greys, it's just Shield and then Wand till dead.

4 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

As for spell damage, in terms of DPS Starshards has the worst spelldmg coefficient of all Priest spells. Even Mind Flay out-scales it once you get Shadow Weaving stacks.

There's a BIG difference between Spell Damage coefficients buffing your spells and the effects that debuffing will have on your spell damage throughput.  The coefficient for Starshards is very good/high because it has a long channel duration and does only damage, while the coefficient for Mind Flay is low because it is a short channel duration and does slowing in addition to damage (which gets accounted for in a lowered spell damage coefficient).  You therefore get a bigger (raw) damage boost from +10 Arcane spell damage on Starshards than you do from a +10 Shadow spell damage on Mind Flay.

The difference comes in on the debuffing side of things.  *IF* you can get all of those Shadow Weaving stacks going (and Curse of Elements, etc. etc. etc.) you're going to be able to produce a deeper "stack" of debuffs for Shadow than you will for Arcane, simply because there are more sources of Shadow debuffing than there are of Arcane debuffing.  The presence of those debuffs are what bring Mind Flay back on up into the competitive range ... but those debuffs have to be applied to be taken advantage of, which is easy on a raid boss but not always something you can count on happening (or even have the time to worry about) on Trash Mobs.  My point being that conflating the effects of debuffing with the effects of spell damage coefficients will give you misleading results because you're skipping over the understanding of how the mechanics interact in order to produce the results that you're citing.

Anyway, enough digression about Priests in a Warlock thread ... ;P

4 hours ago, Aethelwulf said:

But once you factor in Dark Pact, that could still become a net negative overall. It depends on your mana consumption really.

Exactly.  As Players we like to reduce things down to easy to remember One Size Fits All type solutions, since they allow us to be ... lazier ... in our understandings of what's going on.  In many cases, that One Size Fits All understanding of things works perfectly fine ... until it doesn't.  ^_~

But you're quite correct.  It all really does depend on your mana consumption rate, and that's something that is fluid and dynamic rather than fixed, static and unchanging, so it's hard to decide in the abstract whether a particular strategy with a specific tempo of mana consumption will be sustainable or not in actual gameplay.  The difference between "theory" and the "reality" of action gameplay, if you will.

[Aethelwulf 12]

The short of it on Priests is as follows: You're mistaking vanilla to have burning crusade spelldamage coefficients. All coefficients are capped at 100% pre-multiplier. The damage is furthermore split across each tick of the channel. Normally it would require 3.5 seconds (or more) of cast time to do 100% of spell damage. Starshards is a 6 second duration channel, and will have 100% of spell damage distributed across 6 ticks. This means that it does roughly 16.7% of spell damage as DPS whereas any normal spell will do 28.57% (like a smite). Mind Flay is a special case where it has a terrible custom coefficient (45% iirc) split across 3 ticks (15% per second), but with 4 ranks of Shadow Weaving or 1 rank plus 5/5 darkness or Shadowform multiplying the damage, it will exceed Starshards in DPS coefficient out of the box also. The only single-target channels I can think of with worse damage coefficients are Drain Soul (15 seconds of duration ruins the coefficient) and Drain Life (because drains receive half of the normal damage coefficient because they also heal for their damage, so it only does 10% pre-multiplier). In Burning Crusade the coefficients formulas were altered and no longer be capped at 100%, improving the damage of channels considerably.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

And here I was assuming a 100% coefficient cap the whole time.

Shadow Weaving requires stacking before it gets useful.  That means mutliple castings.  In a solo situation, that means it takes at least 3-5 global cooldown cycles of 1.5 seconds each before you start getting serious debuffing out of the talent, assuming you're casting nothing but Instant to 1.5 second casting time spells (which you won't be, but that's a different problem of spellcasting rotation).  In a multiple Shadow Priest situation (does this even happen?) with 2+ Shadow Priests applying their Shadow Weaving debuffs, you can obviously fill the stack to 5 that much faster and start reaping the benefits that much quicker.

It is, however, a mistake to just gratuitously assume that every single spellcasting of a Shadow damage spell will automatically benefit from 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving "out of the box" gratis without needing to spend time to build the stack (or cast anything to get it going).  If your typical rotation is Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay until done, be aware that the full 5 stack of Shadow Weaving won't be there until the third Mind Flay, and all the previous spell casts will be deriving less benefit from Shadow Weaving, meaning there's a "ramp up" before Shadow Weaving starts really making a difference.  Being able to exploit that "ramp up" most efficiently/effectively in any and all situations is neither assured nor guaranteed (especially when melting faces so fast that you never get to a full stack of Shadow Weaving).

Shadowform multiplying Shadow damage doesn't have anything to do with spell power coefficients.  Granted, the two inter(re)act with each other, but Shadowform doesn't "change" the spell power coefficient for Shadow spells.  It's a different factor that goes into calculating throughput onto target.

Now if you're talking about there being more debuffs AVAILABLE for stacking with Shadow than for Arcane, then that is quite obviously true.  Shadow Weaving, Improved Shadow Bolt and Curse of Elements all combine for some rather powerful debuffing that in turn aids and supports anyone dealing Shadow damage.  There is, to my knowledge, nothing comparable for Arcane in terms of the depths of stacked debuffing ... which makes sense, since Arcane is the "orderly" spellpower type while Shadow is the "rot and decay" spellpower type, so it only stands to reason that Shadow would have more debuffing options available to it, thematically speaking.  The "price" for that though is ... debuff slots ... and needing to work under a limited cap of debuffs that can be in effect simultaneously.  Fortunately, most raid groups have already figured out which debuff slots are spent most "efficiently" on what when stacking debuffs up to the cap and they organize (and base presumptions around) and assume things accordingly.

Anyway, enough digression.  Back to Affliction.

[Aethelwulf 12]

You only need 1 rank of Shadow Weaving with 5/5 Darkness to have a higher spelldamage coefficient per second than Starshards. With 5/5 Darkness, 1 stack of shadow weaving (applied by Mind Flay itself), and no Shadowform, the spell damage on Mind Flay already provides a higher return on DPS than Starshards. The crux of damage multipliers is that they also multiply the damage you receive from spell damage gear; that is how they improve your spelldmg coefficients. We're concerned with the total benefit of spell damage here. Not some theoretical baseline which is not used in practice. In reality, any shadow priest will have a higher coefficient on their Mind Flay alone than you would obtain from Starshards. Even with PI and your starshards doing 21% of spelldmg per sec, it would only take a Shadow Priest 4 stacks of Shadow Weaving in Shadowform to have a higher DPS coefficient with Mind Flay than you would obtain on Starshards with PI active. Starshards may be mana efficient for grinding (which is a good catch by the way), but in terms of DPS it sadly offers nothing until Burning Crusade unless you're locked out of Shadow school as a Shadow Priest maybe. I've fiddled for a while with how to make Night Elf Priests viable myself and the ultimate conclusion is that their racials are sadly rather worthless, except when using Elune's Grace against Rogues, Hunters, and the odd Enhancement Shaman in PvP maybe.

With regards to a Warlock's Affliction grinding there is nothing much to say. Numi has already listed a solid grinding build using 2/2 Improved Drain Soul to mitigate downtime even further, and we already know SM/DS tops for general grinding and DoT damage among other things. Dark Pact just gives you another mana battery if you ever wanted it, but Warlocks being what they are tend not to be too concerned on this point. I suppose it's worth noting that SM/DS has some use as alliance PvP, since there are fewer defensive dispels on the Horde to guard against your DoTs and if you have a voidwalker sacrificed for the regen a Rogue is going to have a harder time ganking you since you should never be low and if he tries stunlocking you to death in world PvP, your constant health regen (and the fact that he cannot sap you, kill your pet, and get back to offing you like he would if you are Soul Link) coupled with your higher stamina pool, Siphon Life, and larger healthstones will increase your odds of surviving through his stunlock routine. Plus a Succubus isn't as viable for world PvP as an Alliance Warlock anyway. The main downside to this is that you will have a bad time against horde priests who can dispel all your DoTs other than (Amplified) Curse of Agony, and your burst damage is pretty lousy. If you can't DoT your main damage nuke in solo PvP as SM/DS is probably going to be Searing Pain for the fast cast times. Honestly against Horde Priests you should consider tossing a Death Coil and using Fel Domination to pull out a Felhunter quick if you can. It might also help to equip a Spellstone strictly to remove the Silence condition from yourself. You similarly lack a Felhunter to interrupt and Spell Lock mages and shamans but you can drop an Infernal on their heads if you want to frustrate their spellcasts and you can equip a spellstone for the magic shield and dispel against mages.