WoW Life-Gaining: Warlock, Felhunter, Herbalism, 3.1.1 Talents

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My warlock Slobberknokr used to have a really rough time soloing, not just in dungeons, but pretty much anywhere.

But once I remembered to re-spend all my talent points when the 3.1.0 patch came out, my new talents weren’t bad at all. When every point was reallocated, I discovered I had 3 talent points to spare.

And by the time I got to Level 52 and made one small adjustment, I realized I had one great series of combos going.

Before you get developing your character for power life gain, you will need a few prerequisites.

The most important will be the Herbalism profession. Not only can you strengthen the effects of your healing potions with Mixology, but Lifeblood is an awesome resource with Lifetap. As long as you don’t redline your health in a fight, chances are good you can pull the extra mana you need, then deal damage and recover your invested health. And once Dark Pact starts kicking in mana with no life loss, that extra Lifeblood will help you win all but the most uneven of drawn-out matchups.

The second requirement is a Felhunter, obtained through a series of quests starting in Ratchet. (To keep you from pulling your hair out, they’re called Mana Eaters in Mannoroc Coven, for when you need to defeat one and capture its essence.) When you first get one, you may be put off by its offense and defense, which are lower than a Voidwalker’s. But as time goes by, the Felhunter will develop a synergy with you that includes heightened intelligence, damage based on the number of afflictions you throw on a target (Shadow Bite), feeding you easily regenerated mana, and healing you.

To get healing from your pet, you need to use a Glyph of Felhunter. While these Glyphs are often pricey for a mid-level character in the Auction House, you will see the results in many a fight against spellcasters, and be able to focus more on extra damage instead of just draining life to stay alive. And a Glyph of Siphon Life makes another excellent insurance policy.

Last of all, you will need to focus on heavy spell power increases. Since you are doing smaller amounts of damage over time, giving each tick of damage a bonus makes for a bigger overall effect. Don’t give up on your Spirit and Intelligence buffs, but let your Felhunter take care of a good part of your Intelligence requirements.

While you build this tree up, you will need to alternate between Voidwalker and Felhunter. There is very little Demonology in the setup, so your pets are working with very basic power levels. Voidwalker’s Torment and Suffering abilities are key for taking the heat off you when you’re in over your head, and Felhunter can handle regular fights and spellcasters better and better as your tree progresses. The basic Succubus is awful and about as menacing as a paper airplane so I never use it.

The key parts of this setup are maxed-out Corruptions, Siphon LIfe, Fel Synergy, Glyph of Felhunter and Dark Pact. Here’s how it all works branch by branch:

Row 1 has 10 points in Affliction (maxed out), 1 in Demonology, and 7 in Destruction (4 Improved Shadow Bolt, and 3 in Bane for more burn spells fired per combat). The goal of this tree is to finish fights as adaptively as possible and to do that fights need to be ended ASAP. One of the cornerstones of this setup is Fel Synergy. Even with a single talent point, you get a 50-50 chance to heal your pet for 15% of all spell damage you do. With damage over time and several sources, it smooths out your pet’s life recovery reliably. Best of all, mass damage on more monsters at a time heals the Felhunter all the better. See below for some extra survival tips.

Row 2 is just enough to keep you alive until your Row 3 talents: 1 point in Improved Curse of Weakness (which now reduces armor too), 2 in Improved Lifetap as an inefficient but handy source of mana until you can reach Dark Pact in Row 7. No skills in Demonology, 2% damage reduction and 4% cheaper spells in Destruction.

Row 3 ignores Fear, which I think is one of the weakest spells in the game (controversy anyone?). Fel Concentration helps keep your drains from getting interrupted too soon, and Amplify Curse speeds up your Curse of Agony, a vital source of damage over time. Again, there are no points in either Demonology or Destruction from here down: it’s pure Affliction and I made sure that all further Affliction talents were related to life gain, damage increases, and buffing up Intelligence.

Row 4 ignores the very tempting Grim Reach and the sometimes handy (but unpredictable) Nightfall. One chance out of 50 to fire a free Shadow Bolt just isn’t worth it, so I didn’t wait a level to spend a second point there either. It’s all in Empowered Corruption, which ups damage dealt with it by 36% of my spell power. Again, this is where wearing a lot of equipment with spell power boosts really helps.

Row 5′s most important improvement is in Siphon Life: it turns Corruption into an extra lower-efficiency Drain Life. And since Drain Life is shadow damage, Shadow Embrace (and, later, Shadow Mastery), is a good way to up the damage while keeping enemy healing down. I spent 4 points out of a possible 5.

Row 6 rewards you and the Felhunter with extra Fel Intelligence and mana gain on a Shadow Bite hit. With Dark Pact, this helps the both of you out. Shadow Mastery increases damage dealt or life gained by shadow spells by 15% when maxed out, which in turn keeps your pet constantly healing for big amounts.

By the time you get to Row 7, it’s 2 points in Contagion to up your pet-healing Corruption by yet another 2%, compounding damage dealt with other bonuses.

Once I hit levels 52 and 53, the game actually started getting easy! Most of my combats consisted of Curse of Agony, Corruption, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, Drain Life, Drain Life, and then more quick DoT or another Drain as time permitted. Often I would be able to finish with a Dark Pact and end up at 90% or above for life and mana. I may be adding another point in Fel Concentration to reduce the mana I have to re-spend on interrupted channeling drains.

This setup requires a few changes in your fighting style. When you fight large crowds, keeping your Felhunter alive, not you, is the most important thing to do. With its healing Shadow Bite, extra offense, intelligence boost and tappable mana reserve, all it asks is that you keep feeding it life. To do this, I don’t focus on just one enemy, but instead I throw as many damage over time effects in a ring around the enemies. For example, if I’m fighting three Un’Goro Apes, I’ll throw a Corruption on each of them, then a Curse of Agony each, and an Immolation. With the life gain coming from 9 of these spells, it’s plenty to keep the Felhunter going, even without Shadow Bite. At that point I’ll be able to get extra drain for each affliction on one target thanks to Soul Siphon. Anyway, once you get this tree fully set up, you’ll have more life than you know what to do with, so don’t be afraid to drop part of your own life gain to help out your pet. If all else fails, and you’re peeking between fingers with 100% health, give your Felhunter all the life it needs with a repeated Health Funnel, then drain to catch yourself up (and of course heal your beast more).

So I hope this helps, especially if a patch resets your talents and you’re thinking of respecializing. It may take a lot of setup to get going, but if you’ve got a character you want to build this way, it could easily become a WoW way of… life.