Affliction Drain Life Build

Classes Warlock
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I’ve been theorycrafting a build around Drain Life and I wanted to see what the Lock forums were saying about it, here’s how I see it:

Assumption: Level 60 test lock on the beta.

Drain Life deals 755 damage over 4.7 seconds, healing for 500% of damage done (3775).

Drain Soul for comparison deals 1415 damage in 4.7 seconds, so a bit less than double DPS. I know about the Necrolord Drain Soul discussion, but bear with me here.

Inevitable Demise (new talent) increases the damage of Drain Life by 12% per stack, stacking 50 times, up to 600% increased damage. So that’s 755 * 6 = 4530 damage, and 22650 healing. For comparison, my test lock has 23000 HP, so that’s a full heal.

If you pick Night Fae you get Soul Rot. Soul Rot deals 100% SP damage to 4 targets, and Drain Life hits all 4 targets while Soul Rot is active. So that’s 4530 * 4 = 18120 damage, and 90600 healing.

You will also likely need to take an Endurance Conduit in your covenant system, for which I recommend Accrued Vitality, which doesn’t seem properly implemented yet - but heals up to 100% (depending on Conduit rank) of damage as extra healing as a HOT over 10 seconds after it ends: so thats another 18120 HOT.

So what I’m saying is that while the Necrolord Drain Soul build seems pretty crazy for single target execute (like raid bosses), for M+ or world content, the Night Fae Drain Life build, assuming you have 4 available targets, is going to do like 3 times as much damage probably, while also making you functionally immortal for ~15 seconds of every minute.

Oh also, in PVP Affliction Faes take it to another level, because Rot & Decay (PVP talent) increases the duration of all your DOTs by 1 second whenever Drain Life deals damage - and with Night Fae its hitting 4 targets with every damage instance, and further Essence Drain (PVP talent) reduces damage taken by 25% from targets hit by your Drain Life, which again - now hits 4 targets instead of 1.

If I missed the discussion posted somewhere else, let me know, otherwise - Discuss! :smiley:

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mana is a factor youre not taking into account, ID adds a mana multiplier to drain life, and it currently counts as casting drain life 4 times at once. you can oom yourself in about 7 seconds if you wanted to.

also youre significantly more punished by movement due to ID’s stacking mechanic being the entire crux of the value and a timed window of burst that you must be stationary for.

it might find play in some niche scenarios, but i dont see it being worth over the current necro setup *at current tuning

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I didn’t test the mana issue you’re right that’s a big concern. Thanks!

I don’t think the ID stacking mechanic is much of an issue though, especcially in something like M+, world content, or PVP where you will be multidotting Agony anyways. Agony is instant, so movement shouldn’t punish your Agony uptime at all.

The timed burst window is also a pretty minor concern. It’s 4.7s in blue gear, but with haste increasing, haste procs, etc - it would likely drop to like 3 seconds. A 3-4.5 second stationary window is not hard to plan around.

Also as mentioned, you don’t need to move out of fire during the cast or after it, because you are healing for ~500% of your max HP during that time. Any mechanic that won’t interrupt you, or one shot you, is completely irrelevant. This build encourages turretting, where the Drain Soul build - I’d say - is far more penalized by movement, interrupts, mechanics, etc.

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there seems to be more than a few of these in raid testing thus far. BUT, thats not to say this isnt a valid build. im just here to play devils advocate for an environment i know

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