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Warlock Guide: Drain Tanking
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108385
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Post by
Scammich
I am leveling my Lock and he is currently 43. I attempted to drain tank last night and had some success, but know I can be more successful with it.
My problem is, the first mob that I tag evades from all my running around, trying to grab more mobs. By the 3rd mob he is running back to where he started. I'm guessing that once my DoTs start ticking for more, this won't be much of a problem, or will it?
I can see myself easily taking on 7 or 8 mobs my level or lower with this technique, I just need to keep that many on me. I'm guessing if I use Howl of Terror, they won't have a chance to run, but I don't get enough on me to make it worth it.
Also, is there a macro that I can make that will cast Dark Pact every time I use an instant cast DoT? I'm guessing the only way to do it would be to use a cast sequence, but it would be nice for both to go off at once like the druid instant pot, healthstone and shift macro that I use for tanking. Thanks for the guide and for any help that can be offered.
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91244
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Post by
Scammich
Thanks. After more practice with it, it wasn't as much of a problem. The problem seemed to be that I was running too far and too much time lapsed between the last time I hit the mob with a spell. Instead of quickly hitting them up with all of my DoTs, I waiting a little in between applications and it seemed to go better.
Now my problem is paying enough attention to my mana to Dark Pact well before I'm OOM. Also, getting to 46 so I have insta-HoT will make things much easier. I will say that I am amazed so far at how much damage I can put out and how little damage I take. While questing, it has made killing x number of mobs a breeze and farming for x number of quest drops from mobs as well. Not to mention the xp gains of the quest/ mob farming while questing that I receive. Thanks again.
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91244
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Post by
Kurtosis
Excellent guide, just one quibble. This should probably be called iHoT Kiting instead of Drain Tanking.
Drain Tanking you can actually start at lvl 26 when your Succubus gets Seduction, but this is only necessary on PvP realms. Basically, mob beats on you, you tank it with Drain Life, while your Succubus is available to Seduce any incoming ganker. Immolate + CoA + Corr a mob, Life Tap, then Drain Life it while it beats on you till it dies. Let your Succubus beat on it too, unless a ganker shows up. Seduce the ganker, finish the mob, then take care of the ganker. Helps to use a Seduction mouseover macro so you can Seduce immediately without changing player target:
#showtooltip
/cast Seduction
There's also Fear Kiting, which is similar to iHoT Kiting, except it only has two mobs in play at a time. At max spell range from the mob, UA/Immo + CoA + Corr + SiphLf + Fear. Then repeat from max spell range on the next mob. By the time you transfer Fear to the second mob, the first should be nearly dead, and should die before it gets back to you, presuming enough spell dmg. Dark Pact, repeat. Use imp for Dark Pact mana battery.
Post by
Moltare
Fantastic guide; looking forward to pimping out with my imp out for fun and profit now.
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Post by
Oohla
A variant on the drain tanking build that I find quite fun:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Ii0riRckqtbZdxczIbz
It foregoes the "burst damage potential" to gain demonic sacrifice. Depending on the situation sacrificing a VW (usually) or sometimes the felhound or succubus this allows you pretty much the same experience but without dark pacting as you solo. (You'll be life tapping as usual which is more mana per GCD recovered than dark pact, and you will regen much more health from your siphon, drain and sacrifice.)
The playstyle for this build follows pretty much the outlined style in the OP except I'll only stop to drain or iHoT if I'm getting punished.
I kept dark pact there for instancing since the imp is usually preferred for it's buff and you'll usually have less targets for your health regen so the healers will appreciate you getting your mana for free instead of having to heal you all the time. (In instances I find that dark pact = infinite mana more or less.)
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91244
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Post by
Oohla
No.
Allright first off I don't know where you get the idea that you can answer "no" to the statement "here is a variant that I find fun". But anyways let me adress your points:
Lack of Nightfall is borderline retarded.
Not for this particular purpose. Perhaps for instancing or PvP or whatever, but for the purpose of what this thread seems to be about (efficient farming) Nightfall falls between irrelevant and downright counterproductive. (Depending on how you use it.)
Shadow Bolt is, instant or not, less mana efficient than siphon life, curse of agony, corruption and immolate. It's slightly more mana efficient than drain life if you only look at the damage, but considering the healing effect of drain life it's still not worth it.
Besides if you shadow bolt a target that you've already dotted up the mana is most surely wasted, since your dot rotation would've killed it anyway. If you shadow bolt something you haven't dotted up already you need to figure out what dot to not put on it then. Probably corruption as a general rule though. The only thing that could save the efficiency of this is the fact that you kill (some) mobs faster and therefore they hit you less and therefore you've got more health to go fetch more mobs to hit on you. (I can't be arsed doing theorycraft on that particular situation right now though.)
Wanting to sacrifice your personal mana battery in an Drain Tanking builds
kills
your efficiency. Life Tap won't fix that.
Insisting on Dark Pact being essential to drain tanking is absurd. Dark Pact is dependant on the imps mana regen which is around 63 mana per second (my imp atm, dunno exactly if this scales with anything). The VW sacrifice restores 2% of total health every 4 seconds which for a 10k health lock means 50 health per second, but with 3/3 demonic aegis that becomes 63 health per second. And 2/2 improved life tap converts that to 76 mana per second. And this scales with our primary stat: stamina.
Add to that the spec I present also makes your siphon life and drain life more efficient (demonic aegis).
More importantly though the imp just doesn't have a whole load of mana, so if you use it as a mana battery when farming you will still often have to life tap to keep going adding complexity to the situation. The mana battery imp works quite well in instances though since the pace is somewhat slower than when solo farming.
Giving up UA badly hurts your damage in instances, and hurts your power in farming.
As for Unstable Affliction, yes. It's a very nice spell but unfortunately not compatible with demonic sacrifice. It's not really a big issue for this kind of farming since you should rarely get the chance to fire off a cast time spell anyways except for on initial pulls or maybe if you iHoT at a time when you don't need to drain that much.
With sacrifice you do also have the option to go for succubus sacrifice very greatly boosting all your shadow damage and not just a single additional dot. (I haven't theorycrafted on that comparison though.)
I know you want to contribute, but I have a feeling you've missed the entire point of Drain Tanking.
I haven't, it's not like it's rocket science. It's just basic mana efficiency 101 with warlock mechanics.
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91244
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Post by
Oohla
Time efficiency is as important as mana efficiency. Given the Warlock's already high mana efficiency, and ability to Dark Pact, Nightfall is a very good talent for farming.
Time efficiency is important yes. But even when instant cast the shadow bolt still takes a global cooldown and when used best it only replaces a single dot. So there's no time saved when using instant shadow bolts at all. (When multi target farming as this thread is mostly about.)
You justify giving up Nightfall in the interest of efficiency, but want to give up Dark Pact?
Your logic is off. You aren't
constantly
Dark Pacting, so it isn't at all dependent on the pet's mana regen.
You're not using dark pact constantly, no, but once you've used it the imp needs to regenerate it's mana before you use it again otherwise the imp simply won't have any mana to give you. In the long run the imps mana regen rate determines how much mana you can take from him using dark pact. And the imps regen rate, as I noted in my previous post, seems to be less than what you get from a VW sacrifice.
The logic is not off. The logic is quite sound. If you can't back up your arguments with other than "lots of warlocks do it this way" you don't really have any logic, just "truth by democracy" or something.
Add to that the spec I present also makes your siphon life and drain life more efficient (demonic aegis).
It's not that big of an effect.
It's 5% more health from all your healthgiving sources better than the untalented version. It may not seem like much but it's certainly better than 0% and when optimizing for efficiency all the little bits and pieces matter.
There's a good reason people do it this way, and have for a while now. Your method may work for you, but that doesn't mean it's optimal, and it doesn't mean it's doing any better than this method.
I never said it was optimal. I said it was fun. Then I theorycrafted to actually show that it looks to be quite efficient indeed though I did not do a full theoretical comparison between the two builds.
And it certainly isn't. Why you would give up your ability to do well in instances
and
your ability to farm with the most optimal method for... well, nothing really, I don't know.
You claim that your method is optimal with no sources other than "many locks do it like that". I cannot accept that without some theoretical backing or some actual factual measurements done in-game.
For comparison many warriors claimed lots of stuff about devastate being an inferior tanking ability, warrior threat not scaling with gear, etc., until some people (including myself) used theorycrafting to investigate these things and came up with the threat rotation tanks have been using since. I also backed it up with my personal experiences in Naxx (where I as OT quite consistently could out-threat our MT despite my gear being worse and not being supplied with rage from being hit).
( Example from back then:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=107572270&sid=1&pageNo=3
)
My point is not to make you look at years old posts in the warrior forums, but to ask you to please back up your statements with some actual arguments instead of just restating them.
My build is probably sub-optimal in instances, yes, I've acknowledged that from the start, but that hasn't been the point of this thread. This thread is about drain tanking, a warlock solo approach. It's not really applicable to instances, is it?
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91244
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