Class Talents
This talent tree will generally fit with any PvE-related content, including raids, mythic+ or open word. All active abilities are pretty much mandatory, but some passive ones can be swapped out for something else, depending on the situation.
Let’s say you don’t get much use of Amplify Curse, but if you need some extra Damage Reduction, you can take Abyss Walker. There is more flexibility within the talent tree, but it will be covered a bit later in the expansion when we have more data. Those changes will be minor and relate primarily to 0.1% of situations, such as the highest M+ possible or mythic raiding in the first few weeks.
Situational talent points that can be changed: fel domination, amplify curse, shadowfury, frequent donor, fel synergy.
Other useful talent points options: Fiendish Stride, abyss walker, banish, sweet souls, darkfury or shadowlame, profane bargain. These talents are pretty straightforward and speak for themselves, so you just pick whatever you feel you are lacking in a specific situation.
Talent Builds
With our tier set in Season 4 centering around Soul Rot this talent will always be picked aswell as an increase in the pick rate of Soul-Eater's Gluttony to reduce its cooldown to better sync with other damaging talents
Full Single Target
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This build works for both 1 and 2 target fights.
Dread Touch is currently the strongest talent for Single Target, collecting Xavius’ Gambit on the way. These two talents have good synergy since they amplify our DoT damage, which is almost all the damage that we do.
Putting 2 points in Soul Eater's Gluttony drops Soul Rot’s cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 allowing it to sync with every Vile Taint for strong burst every half minute due to our tier set
Tormented crescendo is a good talent that synergizes greatly with new talent Focused Malignancy, but keep in mind that the more hectic the fight is, then more value you would lose from Crescendo since it requires you to cast as many drain souls in free globals as possible.
Wrath of consumption is a good talent but obviously has no use on Single Target.
Soul Swap has zero use in Single Target either, but is needed to reach Withering Bolt.
AoE / Cleave / Mythic+ (Burst AoE)
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This is the strongest build in AoE situations. By combining Soul Rot and Vile Taint with Dark Harvest it provides a unique AoE burst profile of 30 seconds, this would usually be every minute but due to Soul Eater's Gluttony reducing Soul Rot’s CD by half from 1 minute to 30 seconds both it and Vile Taint both have the same cooldown. This build is played mainly after obtaining the set bonus due to how these talents synergise with the bonuses, making Soul Rot the main focal point of the spec. This build does however fall short in pure single target boss environments, but the gain in AoE DPS makes this the best build.
The recently changed Doom Blossom (10.1.5) provides more AoE damage than before by proccing from Seed of Corruption explosion on the primary target but rendering it useless on single target. This trade off is overall a net gain in mythic plus and AoE environments.
The other capstones each have their uses depending on group comp and dungeon:
- Haunted Soul provides good single target / priority damage and can be used on Tyrannical weeks or dungeons where mob pulls aren’t large.
- Grim Reach had recently seen play in past seasons but due to our set bonus this tier amplifying Soul Rot damage and duration (2pc) combined with Soul Rot buffing our shard spenders (4pc) and extending our dots we go down the Dark Harvest tree to get more Soul Rot casts from Soul Eater's Gluttony and thus are unable to obtain Grim Reach
- Soul Flame is a strong passive AoE that triggers upon the death of a target you have damaged (killing blow isn’t required).
Spread Cleave
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AoE with ST Funnel
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This build is only used in a handful of spots, but is played at quite a large percentage even over the other warlock specs in these specific situations.
This build is used in fights where there are adds present, like in Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Scalecommander Sarkareth, that don’t need to be fully nuked immediately. Because of this, it’s worth spending a shard to apply Corruption via Seed but only to that end, resuming normal rotation by spending shards on Rapture in order to funnel the boss. pandemic invocation can be swapped out for sow the seeds if the adds are dying slowly or need to quickly be killed off by a quick spam of Seed.