Which Drain Pact Build after Lvl40?

[JanK 0]

Hi there,

i just hit 40 with my warlock and specced into this Darc Pact/Drain Tanking build:

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#Ii0iA0boVo

So far, so good. The build works very well (no void aggro issues!).

But i'm not sure which talents i should choose next till lvl60. Two options imho:

1. Shadow Burn: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#Ii0iA0boVocxzZE00z
2. "Convience talents" http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IE0iAMboVofxV

Is Shadow Burn really worth the 11 talents points?

Edit: To give myself the answer: Yes, Shadow Burn is absolutely worth it in combination mit Darc Pact. Grinding/Questing is so much easier than with any other builds i've tried.

I'm currently lvl56 and using this build: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IiMbARboVofZVx0z

Shadow Burn is really useful to finish a mob and gives the missing burst of a Darc Pact build. Cataclysm helps saving mana (Nightfall), Bane pushes your DPS in dungeons. Improved Drain Life is not really necessary. Improved Drain Life is just a gimmick. If you do PvP, then shift the points into CoE.

Regards,

Jan

 

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

Based on my (decade old) memories of playing with Dark Pact, I'd honestly say that Shadowburn isn't THAT worth it.  It gives you access to a "finisher" shot that costs around ~1 to ~1.25 damage per mana (plus a Soul Shard) base and its an Instant Cast spell, so the spell power coefficient isn't all that wonderful (43%?).  But hey, on a DoT build, sometime you're going to want that "YOU DIE NAO!" option, rather than waiting, so it might be worth it to you.

To be honest though, I think I'd personally prefer the 36/15/0 build you posted, with the one exception of swapping 2/2 Grim Reach for 2/2 Improved Drain Soul.  My rationale for that exchange is ... 2/2 Nightfall and the Shadow Trance procs.  If your Affliction spells have a 36 yard range, and your Shadow Bolts have a 30 yard range, you can wind up "wasting" the occasional instant cast Shadow Bolt due to being at 31-36 yards from your Target.  Conversely, if you're finishing stuff off with Improved Drain Soul, you're not only going to be recovering mana faster after (honorable) kills, but you can then turn around and "bank" some of that mana into Health Stones that you get into the habit of using simply to churn damage spells more quickly via Lifetap.  That then gives you a Mana to Healthstone to Health to Mana "churn" cycle that gives you a much deeper Health (and thus Mana) pool than you'd otherwise be expecting to have, not because the mana/health is "extra" (per se) but because it's time shifted.  It also lets you "hand Healthstones out like candy" in group situations and gives you plenty of reserves for making Spellstones to use for absorbing Magic damage.

That's because, at its core, an Affliction spec "wants" to be a Drain Tank that just DoTs things to death.  All of those stacked up DoTs make Drain Soul pretty reliable at generating Soul Shards.  Might as well get more mana out of each (xp/honorable) kill so as to keep cranking out the damage than to put an extra 6 yards of range onto your DoTs and Drains while not extending the reach of your Shadow Bolts, because all mana that gets used needs to be recovered from somewhere.  The less you need to worry about going OoM (or worse, OoH...) the more you can just cut loose and start piling on and adding insults to injuries.  The beauty of the Dark Pact build is that if you play it right, you ought to feel like you've got bottomless Health and bottomless Mana ... but it's still wise to hedge against edge cases where things don't always go according to plan.  So it's wise to make sure you've got "margin" on your Health and Mana burn and recovery rate, even if you don't always "need" to have it ... hence why I'd recommend the 36/15/0 build you'd posted as being the more satisfying one for a Drain Pact build.

[JanK 0]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer.

i will change my build into this http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IyMiAoboVofxV

Grim Reach > Improved Drain Soul

1 point Supression > Amplify Course (just to have a cooldown and 4/5 supression is more than enough for leveling)

[Jazzwah 1]

Hey Jank. If you rly like Dark Pact so much and your only purpose is to drain tank world mobs, i would advise this build: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IiMicRboVobxA0x

However, be aware that for playing instance pve or pvp that build is heavily suboptimal(as is anything Dark Pact related). So if you plan to do anything else besides grinding mobs i would look into something else. Also Shadowburn without Ruin(21 point talent in Destruction) is almost never worth it imo. Hope this helps.

[JanK 0]

Hi Jazzwah. You're right, these a pure grinding/questing/leveling builds.

Does your build really works? Can the void hold the aggro?

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

So long as you let your Blueberry land the first hit (or few) and have his Taunt on Autoattack, he can hold aggro while you DoT.  I usually wind up the Immolate spell while my Voidwalker is charging in to melee, so the spell lands after the first Voidwalker hit.  After that it's just Curse of Agony, Corruption and then either Wand or Drain Life (not yet up to Siphon Life) or Drain Soul while the Voidwalker holds aggro just fine.  This is with no talent points in Voidwalker in the low/mid 20s.

[Jazzwah 1]

On 4/8/2017 at 2:13 PM, JanK said:

Does your build really works? Can the void hold the aggro?

As far as i remember, he's a real champ once you put 3 points in Improved Voidwalker. Just send your Vw to attack, stick Siphon LIfe > Curse of Agony > Corruption > Immolate > 2x Drain Life >Drain Soul. Using this rotation, if mobs are dying to fast, (under 20 sec) you may want to exclude Immolate form rotation. Not only for aggro reasons, but also because your dot's are designed so they have to reach at least 2/3 of their duration to make optimal damage. Also your hp should be always below 80% to give room for Drain Life & Siphon Life heals, so give that Life Tap a handy keybind (i recommend the same key you use for Dark Pact, but with shift/alt modifier) because you'll use that a lot. :D

[JanK 0]

22 hours ago, Jazzwah said:

As far as i remember, he's a real champ once you put 3 points in Improved Voidwalker. Just send your Vw to attack, stick Siphon LIfe > Curse of Agony > Corruption > Immolate > 2x Drain Life >Drain Soul.

Did try this. Worked until i got some +dmg gear in the end 30s. Only chance that the void holds the aggro is Corruption, CoA, wand. A simple drain life and the void lost the aggro. Transfer health has (afaik) 1.5 threat factor (damage & healing).

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

Immolate (optional).
Siphon Life has the longest duration (30s).
Curse of Agony has the lowest damage to start with and and needs to tick most of the way to be really efficient (24s).
Corruption has the shortest duration of your non-channeled DoTs (18s).
Lifetap x1 or x2 to refill mana.
Drain Life (5s) ... Shadow Bolt if Shadow Trance procs ... then Drain Life again (5s) ... Shadow Bolt if Shadow Trance procs.
Drain Soul (15s) ... 2/2 Improved Drain Soul tops off mana.

Against most trash mobs, that should be quite sufficient from Level 30 onwards.  You can use this with a Voidwalker, but you'll want to let your Voidwalker get in a couple of Torment hits before loading up the DoTs if you don't want to pull aggro too soon.  I can usually start casting an Immolate while the Voidwalker is charging the target and have the cast land after the Voidwalker has made a melee attack so I don't pull aggro too soon.

Alternatively, you can use any of the other Pets and simply tank yourself with 5/5 Fel Concentration and simply let your Pet deal extra damage when (if!) they can.  If tanking yourself, you're probably going to be wanting to use either the Succubus or your Felhunter depending on whether you're up against Humanoids and/or Spellcasters.

[JanK 0]

I'm currently lvl44, Drain Tanking/Darc Pact with imp works good with two normal or three lowlevel mobs. I think i wil test a "lazy" soul link build at lvl50 with maximal buffs for the void and play like a hunter (send void, dot, wand, afk)  http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IA0bZ0xAzxxot

 

[JanK 0]

So, i've tried this lvl45 build http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IV0bZ0xAzxxoL

The void has all the buffs except for soul link. Corruption + CoA + Drain Life and i have the aggro when the lvl40(!) mob has 50% HP. WTF? This is simply not usable. I went back to Drain Life/Drain Pact and will definitely try 30/21/0 with void sac at 60.

Conclusion: Warlocks Pets have two tasks in vanilla PvE: Getting sacced or used as a mana battery.

 

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

Should have tried letting your Voidwalker land their second Torment before opening up with the DoTs.  I know, I know, that would have wasted 5 seconds with you doing nothing in which you could have been unloading damage ... but there it is.  Once you get up into the 40s, even an Improved Voidwalker can't out-Threat the damage/stealing that you're doing from your Warlock.

I would argue that in the later game Summons serve essentially three purposes ... Sacrifice ... Mana Battery ... or Support ... with the latter meaning essentially melee plus utility, rather than acting as an Aggro Magnet.  The whole notion that your Pet can tank for you falls down when you can (easily) generate far more Threat than your Pet can.  This is why I advocate in favor of the Drain Tank model, where the basic notion is that you're not even trying to dial back your Threat generation to a level that your Pet can exceed (and thus act as an Aggro Magnet for you) ... but rather you draw the Threat onto yourself deliberately as the default assumption, tactic and strategy.  This then puts your Pet into a Supporting Role rather than being a Main Focus, and once that happens, all the assumptions about what you're wanting your Pet to "do" for you (including whether or not they should continue to EXIST or should only be summoned to get sacrificed) go in an entirely different direction.

It's like how most Hunters assume that their Pets are meant to hold aggro while the Hunter blasts away from range.  But for Survival specced Melee Hunters, that basic assumption gets inverted.  Instead, you want your Hunter to be holding aggro (in melee) while your Pet aids and assists you (in melee).

Same deal here with the Drain Tanking Warlock.  You build for your Warlock to hold the aggro and survive it while your Pet aids and assists you in that endeavor.  It's a completely different philosophy of how to make things work for you.

In that respect, a Voidwalker who both CAN'T as well as ISN'T expected to hold aggro away from your Warlock makes for a very poor choice of supporting Pet, since holding aggro and taking a beating is just about the only thing ol' Blueberry is good for.  So the usefulness of the Voidwalker to a Drain Tanking Warlock is severely diminished.

An Imp makes for the best mana battery, but only if they're not spamming away their mana on Firebolts, since they won't regen any mana (5 second rule) while casting Firebolts.  Without a melee attack (worth a damn) if you're using an Imp for Dark Pact you might as well put them on Passive and into Phase Shift and let them be a "pure" mana battery for you, serving no other purpose than as an extra pool of mana that isn't subject to the 5 second rule of your own spellcasting.

A Succubus can melee and use her Lash of Pain to inflict damage while having the second highest Spirit, making her the best alternate to the Imp against "physical" opponents in which she isn't expected to play Aggro Magnet for you while you Drain Tank.  She can does the highest melee damage of all the Demon Pets and can use her Lesser Invisibility and Seduce to useful effect (particularly against Humanoids) as an assistant adjunct to what your Warlock is doing.

A Felhunter can melee (although the damage isn't great) and interfere with hostile spellcasters, which can be useful when facing off against "caster" opponents.  This would be more of a defensive option than an offensive one focused more on "controlling" hostile spellcasters.  The Felhunter can't "hide" under Lesser Invisibility though and so won't always be the best option when surprise is needed.

For these reasons, I think of the Voidwalker as being more of an "early game" Pet useful from 10-30 but then losing relevance after that, particularly for a Dark Pact Drain Tanking build.  Once you get to Dark Pact, the only use you should have for a Voidwalker is as a Demonic Sacrifice (at which point, you won't have Dark Pact anymore, or are only summoning them for the Voidwalker Shield Sacrifice and are just churning through Soul Shards for the Shields).

[nooobieee 3]

8 hours ago, JanK said:

Corruption + CoA + Drain Life and i have the aggro when the lvl40(!) mob has 50% HP.

So you're now fighting a mob starting with half their health. Perhaps you should consider that mission accomplished?

[Numi 0]

On 2017-04-14 at 0:08 PM, JanK said:

So, i've tried this lvl45 build http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IV0bZ0xAzxxoL

The void has all the buffs except for soul link. Corruption + CoA + Drain Life and i have the aggro when the lvl40(!) mob has 50% HP. WTF? This is simply not usable. I went back to Drain Life/Drain Pact and will definitely try 30/21/0 with void sac at 60.

Conclusion: Warlocks Pets have two tasks in vanilla PvE: Getting sacced or used as a mana battery.

 

 

On 2017-04-10 at 0:13 PM, JanK said:

Did try this. Worked until i got some +dmg gear in the end 30s. Only chance that the void holds the aggro is Corruption, CoA, wand. A simple drain life and the void lost the aggro. Transfer health has (afaik) 1.5 threat factor (damage & healing).

Drain life in vanilla should NOT have any threat from healing, if it does, I'm assuming the developers would love that bug report.

 

The way I leveled (with my drain soul -> imp vw -> sm build), the void is hitting the target as I'm wanding his previous target, as that target is about to die, I dot'd the new mob, about half way through taunt cd on void, then drain soul the old mob and wand the new one. This turned out to be the most effective strategy I could achieve and had periods of roughly 160 kills for an hour or so while attention was high, averaging out to about 130 kph over 8 hour periods.

The general idea I used in creating that farming strategy was to give the void an initial buffer (2-4 melee attacks and a taunt) before I touched mob #2, while still spending my time and resources killing #1, meaning the efficiency loss is negligible (2-4 melee attacks on the void in extra damage taken, but easily recovered with Nostalrius broken void healing spell). 

Let me know how it works on Elysium for you lads, I'll try to help you out if I can!

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

2 hours ago, Numi said:

Drain life in vanilla should NOT have any threat from healing, if it does, I'm assuming the developers would love that bug report.

Last I checked, Drain Life does Shadow damage to the target, which I believe creates Threat.  It's also adding Health to your Warlock, just like a healing spell would, and healing spells create Threat.

[JanK 0]

*push* Edited my original post.