Soulbinder Damnation - Master of Puppets

Shabok's Scourge Warlock Guide - Souldbinder Damnation Build ( < 3-3.5k Item Level)

''Please note, this build is what I have found to bring optimal DPS for a SW that is less than 3-3.5k il. That does not mean you have to switch once you reach that point. I encourage you to play in whatever manner you have fun. You will still be effective no matter what. This build will borrow heavily from my Fury SW guide, with a few things such as strategy, rotation, and the feats/powers changed.''

Update 6/28/16 - As expected, the Orcus Set is the way to go now. I would recommend getting this as quickly as possible. It's very expensive (it'll cost you about 5.5m AD on average), however, so start saving if you haven't already. With the Lostmauth set being fixed, the set bonus it provides is useless for Warlocks. Your best options until you get Orcus include:

- Trading in your Lostmauth set for the Black Ice set in Protector's Enclave (claims agent)

- Disregarding set bonuses all together. Keep the Lostmauth Horn (because its stats are good), Hoard necklace (because its stats are the same as the black ice cloak), and trading in for the Grater Belt of Black Ice. The belt gives CHA and CON which boosts SW DPS more than 2000ish damage on a critical hit.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Hell! I previously wrote a guide on the Soulbinder Fury tree, and you'll notice that much of this is fairly similar. This guide is for what I believe to be the best build for low to mid-range geared SW. Soulbinder Damnation offers great survivability, flexibility, and ridiculous DPS. The absurd damage is almost entirely due to the fact that the Soul Puppet is either BUGGED or BROKEN. It will account for over half of your DPS without you having to lift a finger. I don't know when/if they will ever fix it. But until they do, I'll be riding the runaway gravy train all the way to 3k IL. You should join me! Anyway, on to the good stuff.

Some things will never change for the SW if you spec Fury or Damnation:

-         You are a glass cannon. This means you deal lots of damage but can’t take a hit. At all. Ever... :'(

-         Your one and only job is to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible

-         The best party utility you can offer is to melt faces. Do it, and do it well.

-         Until you reach 2.3k-ish, You need a tank in the form of a companion during leveling or teammate during dungeons/skirmishes. The Soul Puppet can sometimes fill this role, but I wouldn't rely on it unless you take the Mocking Spirit feat (1000% threat generation from the Puppet). I feel those feat points are better spent on maxing DPS.

-         Combat advantage is your best friend and we’ll talk about that later

-         Curse. Everything. Always. Pressing RB is your new compulsion as a Warlock. It takes ~.1 seconds to cast and increases your damage to the point that it’s worthless to attack anything without cursing it first

Common Abbreviations that I’ll be using in the guide:

SW – Scourge Warlock

FB – Fiery Bolt

KF – Killing Flames

DT – Dreadtheft

WB – Warlock’s Bargain

HG – Hadar’s Grasp

ED – Essence Defiler

DSA – Dark Spiral Aura

DPS – Damage Per Second

WC – Warlock’s Curse

LC – Lesser Curse

BT – Borrowed Time

DtD – Dust to Dust

ACC – All Consuming Curse

RI – Resistance Ignored

CA – Combat Advantage

Character Creation

The best race for SW is Tiefling, followed by Human and Dragonborn. The racial choice probably matters the least in overall DPS, but some races are not “viable” in the min/max sense. As a Tiefling/Dragonborn You’ll want to roll for 18con/18char/12int/10 for the rest. Human can just go for highest Con/Char they can. High constitution gives us bonus damage via our feats, charisma for bonus CA damage, and intelligence for the RI.

Powers

Be sure to max out TT, DT, SS, Immolation Spirits, HG, BoVA, HS, WB, BT, DtD, ACC, as you get post 70 power points.

Feats

Heroic:

Toughness 3/3

Weapon Mastery 3/3

Energizing Curse 5/5

Empowered Rituals 3/3

Determined Casting 1/5 (you can put 5 in here and one in energizing curse if you want. just as good. Some extra AP gain vs ~1sec encounter cooldown reduction)

Devastating Critical 3/3

Blood Pact of Cania 2/5 (5/5 if Human)

Paragon:

Damnation Tree:

Parting Blasphemy - 5/5

Sparkbinder - 5/5

Spiritfire - 5/5

Warding Spirits - 5/5

Ghastly Commander - 5/5

Wrathful Souls - 5/5

Soul Desecration - 1/1

Fury Tree:

Critical Promise 5/5

Burning Soul 5/5

Boons

Your choice. Anything that increases DPS, AP Gain, CA, Life steal, etc is recommended. I do not have all of mine yet so I cannot make any specific recommendations.

Gear

First, grab the ensorcelled pact blade and grimoire off the Auction House. They're extremely cheap and will be better than even your artifact weapons until you get them to at least blue and get the proper class features rolled onto them. Get these as soon as possible during leveling. If you have another character, simply buy the ensorcelled items and share them with your SW. After that, I highly suggest saving up all of your AD so you can buy the Lostmauth Set: Lostmauth Hoard Necklace, Golden Belt of Puissance, and Lostmauth's Horn of Blasting. This is the most important set for a DPS class, hands down. The tooltip description does not sound impressive, but it is buggy and that "additional hit for weapon damage on critical hit" scales up with buffs. All other sets are inferior for DPS by a long shot. Until they fix this set to do what it the tooltip actually describes, I'll be using it. I'm currently saving up Black Ice to grab the Black Ice set in the inevitable event that Lostmauth Set is fixed. Gotta have a plan B!

Crit and ArmPen are your most important stats until you reach 60% RI. Then it goes Power > Crit > ArmPen. You'll want to start running skirmishes to get Seal of the Elements and purchase the Alliance Assault gear (T1). Don't forget to either salvage or donate Alliance gear you do not need. After that, farm T2's (eToS, eCC, eGWD) and replace any pieces of armor that do not offer ArmPen and Crit as a stat with an elven piece. Wait until your Icewind Dale Campaign/Black Ice Shaping is high enough and you can use Elemental Infusion to make them Elemental Elven/Alliance Assault. If you're lucky you'll get the Elemental version as a loot drop in the dungeon. Once dragonflight gear is available, go for the Dragonflight Raid gear. At this point you can really just mix and match the sets depending on what stats you need. Throughout all of this you should be leveling up Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking to get your Personalized rings and Shirt/Pants.

Enchantments:

Azures in all offense. Dark in all defense for life steal. Dragon Hoard/your preference in utility. Vorpal in weapon and Soulforged in Armor. I recommend Black Dragon Glyph in Overload for the Aspect of Acid, but this is also your preference.

You’re gonna want to get Armor Penetration up to ~6000 or 60% RI as soon as possible. This is because no enemies have higher than 60% damage resistance in PvE. Your priority should be Crit and Arm Pen until you reach this point. After that go for power/critical strike. A high critical strike is very important for the SB because the more we crit, the more sparks we generate. More sparks = more SS spam, more healing, more damage, more AP between mobs. That being said, You'll want a 1:1 ratio of power:crit until you get to about 10.5k crit. Then go for Power. Life steal is the best defense for DPS, especially casters, since more HP from Radiants in Defense will not adequately offset our squishiness.

Artifacts: Sigil of the Devoted for AP gain, Wheel for fire 30% DPS bonus. I do not recommend using the Wheel unless you also have the Flail Snail. You’ll want the AP gain from Sigil otherwise. I find Sigil most useful for trash and mobs and Wheel best for boss fights. necklace and belt) Weapon:
 * Sigil of the Devoted/Wheel of the Elements (active slot)
 * Lostmauth Horn of Blasting (Lostmauth set bonus with
 * Thayan Book of the Dead (stats and AP gain)
 * Lantern of Revelation (great stats and free from a quest while leveling)
 * Pact Blade of Elemental Fire (go for ED for at will bonus)
 * Elemental Fire Grimoire (go for DtD for class feature)
 * Feed these into your Twisted Set once you get it

Mounts:

Flail Snail (purple, don't need orange. 15% AP recovery after using Daily)

OR

Axe Beak (4000 ArmPen)

OR

Whatever. But seriously.... Flail Snail.

Companions
 * Summoned - I'm using Black Dragon Ioun Stone at the moment, and it will remain there for a long time. Any Epic Augment with Profane Runestones in offense until you have about 10-10.5k crit from just your gear. Then switch to Bonding Runestones for Power. Start refining them slowly. You shouldn’t use an augment that doesn’t have 3 offense slots. That said, any with 3 Offense will do fine. Once you hit about 3k IL, start going for fast-attacking companions with 3 at least greater or better Bonding Runestones. If you get a fast proccing companion, such as the Young Yeti (good tank at Epic or better, good for stacking power, bloodthirsty procs often for 10% dps bonus), Mercenary (can stack all offense stats, yet to test), Air Archon (dies easily but still good at Epic), or Shadow Demon (mod 8, yet to test) then you will get more stats with 3 or more stacks of Companion’s Gift than you ever will with an augment. 30k+ power is easily achieved. Just make sure you have all your other stats in order.


 * Air Archon - Epic
 * Siege Master - Epic
 * Erinyes of Belial - Epic
 * Yeti/Fire Archon/Dancing Blade/Blink Dog/anything that grants a CA bonus - Epic. I mention Yeti beause Parting Blasphemy is buggy and actually damages yourself. This causes Bloodthirsty to proc quite often. Do not run this companion while you are with a bubble pally.

Strategy

Your absolute, number one priority is gaining AP in order to cast TT as often as possible. Most of your damage, aside from the Puppet, will be coming from this Daily. TT curse 2-3 targets with the most health and watch them melt with DT. Try and circle around the mob so that you can maximize the number of TT’d targets you are hitting with DT. With the Puppet and a full party you'll almost always have Combat Advantage, so no need to worry much about that. Combat Advantage means, when a target is flanked, all attackers gain 15% damage + Charisma bonus. The visual indicator is a yellow number with a sword.

Soul Puppet Mechanics

The paragon feat, Soul Desecration, states that the puppet is permanent. It is not. It can, and will, die. The good news is that, when it does die, it respawns the next time you use an encounter power, which means it is essentially "permanent". The Soul Puppet is capable of holding aggro very well, and can put out an obnoxious amount of DPS. This thing is going to account for 50% or more of your total output. Almost all party/self buffs also apply to the soul puppet, which amounts to the puppet hitting with Wraith Claw for hundreds of thousands, sometimes well over a million...per swipe. It attacks with Wraith Claw about once every 1.5 seconds. It is capable of single-handedly occupying a Scorpion in eLoL in some cases. Between mobs during dungeon runs, be sure to stay back behind the tank a good bit; do not run ahead or close at all. Otherwise your puppet will aggro mobs well before anyone is ready. There is also a glitch where the puppet will sometimes get stuck outside a Boss' room. If this happens, simply leave the instance and return to the dungeon. Alternatively, you can just defeat yourself and respawn at the campfire (don't forget to down another Superior Elixir of Accuracy!). This is happening more and more to me lately... Although now I just say screw it and go in without it. It should spawn itself in fairly quickly, but you never know. Lastly, the Soul Puppet isn't the smartest of fellas. Do not expect to be able to control it. Luckily, 9/10 time it attacks the thing you are focusing most of your attention on, such as the boss, and not all the little adds.

Rotations

Soloing or in a dungeon/skirmish–
 * Essence Defiler/Dark Spiral Aura
 * Dreadtheft
 * Soul Scorch. When soloing I preferFiery Bolt
 * Hadar's Grasp (CC and Spark gen with Lostmauth Set) OR Harrowstorm (your choice if no Lostmauth set)
 * Tyrannical Threat
 * Dust to Dust

The difference between running FB vs SS is that the more sparks you have, the higher your damage bonus. The trade off is less base damage overall, however Soul Scorch has such amazing burst DPS that I can't justify not using it right now. The choice is entirely up to you and the best one will vary depending on how much health the mobs have. Drop TT on a couple elites in a mob. HG an enemy that has TT curse already on them. Follow with DT. Spam SS. Rinse, repeat. Use your Wheel of the Elements when it's off cooldown, but not right before a boss fight unless it will be off cooldown in time. Use DC Sigil when you are hurting for AP.
 * All Consuming Curse (all times in a group)/Borrowed Time (always when solo)/Shadow Walk if needed

Single Target fight/Bosses with zero or very few adds- Warlock's Bargain essentially replaces the non-consumable curse that TT offers. There are very few enemies so the added DPS from TT splash damage is not worth taking over the single target DPS from Immolation Spirits. ACC accomplishes proccing curse mechanic buff for DT without the need for WB. This is because, with ACC active, each tick of DT will consume the lesser curse applied by DT crits, so it basically feeds itself curses. WB has excellent synergy with SS, HG, and Lostmauth Set. If you crit on your first tick of HG, all other ticks of HG will also crit, generating sparks. Use Immolation Spirits for most single target damage and some pretty crazy spark generation. Between HG and Spirits, your spark generation will be enough that you can spam SS for a long time. With a Renegade CW in your party, nearly infinite sparks. Choose Borrowed Time over DtD in this scenario because the DtD AP gain only occurs between mob fights. Also, the damage buff at full sparks from the offhand likely won't make much difference since you will almost always be using Spirits or SS.
 * ED/DSA
 * Hadar's Grasp OR Dreadtheft (If no Lostmauth Set)
 * Warlock’s Bargain
 * Soul Scorch
 * Immolation Spirits
 * Borrowed Time
 * ACC/Shadow Walk/DtD

'''Remember, always be sure to curse before you use any power that consumes curses. If the Curse is consumed, be sure to re-curse. Get used to cursing between almost every encounter use.'''

That's all for now. I'll be updating as I think of new things to put on here, as well as once the new Mod comes out and I can test a few things. I still have a ton of things to test. Above all, remember to have fun! Good luck out there.