Soul Madness PvE Build: My way to #1 Paingiver

btfd

This guide won't be updated anymore.

Preface

Hey guys,
as I have read many posts about people complaining their SWs are "broken" and even being outdpsed by clerics, I wanted to give you a push into the right direction. I play Neverwinter since mid Mod 4, I think, with my first and still main character Naz Tarlor - a Scourge Warlock. There was no Soulbinder paragon path then, just the Hellbringer one. As a Hellbringer I always managed to outdps all Soulbinders I met in the game. Therefore I never really tried out Soulbinder myself as I thought the feats/powers/mechanics were not as useful. With the launch of Mod 6 I really struggled to do any noticeable damage. Somehow everything changed and all my strengh was gone. Also the changed lifesteal mechanics bothered me a lot as it was and still is the only defensive power a Warlock can rely on. After a few weeks I got in contact with a really good SW who was one of the first I know to clear all T2 legit. He shared his build, which does not make use of questionable elol/fabled sets or overpowered puppets, in the german forums. So I tried it out myself using the free retraining token and changed my paragon to Soulbinder. First I was sceptical but after seeing myself on the top of paingiver statistics again I knew I did the right thing. Also you gain a lot more survivability as a Soulbinder, which is needed with Mod 6/7.

In the following I will present you said guide, give some comments and sum things up. But why doesn't the author of this guide do that for you? Well, sadly he stopped playing. Still I love this build and even if it's a Mod 6 guide, I'm sure it might be useful for some people. If you guys have any questions you can post them here, also I think about dealing with Stronghold gear in some time. For now my guild's hall is not yet at rank 8 so it will take a while for me. Also the guild boons will become important at some time.

Please note that I myself and the author of the guide are German so don't expect perfect English. Still everything should be understandable but enough talking, here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0fHPUPq95c

This guide is crit-based. Especially timing and your own ability to be a good player are an important part. Unfortunately SW seems to be the class where gear matters most in fresh lvl 70 state, which will make the time in the 60+ areas a little difficult. But when you receive better gear your performance will increase a LOT! I for myself started this way to play the SW with all-epic gear and was very successful clearing T2s. Once I had an ETOS run with 2 other SWs who, unlike me, were all mythic and legendary using their puppet build. It was head-on-head

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Races and Ability Scores

The most recommended race is the Tiefling giving you 2% more crit and 5% more dmg to targets below 50% HP with its race bonuses.
In abilities you should choose +2 points in CHA and CON to start with 18 points in both of them. Also these are the ones who should recieve the leveling upgrades.

Feats

With adds not hitting that hard anymore and the VIP HP buffs you can also drop that points from "Toughness" and put them into "Energizing Curse" for more AP gain if you'd like to. This way you can use your daily more often.

Boons

Sharandar:

Dread Ring:

Icewind Dale:

Tyranny of Dragons:

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Gear and Pets

This combination of gear works just fine:

Elemental Elven Assault Cowl
Elemental Elven Assault Longcoat
Elemental Elven Raid Wristguards (more crit)
Elemental Elven Assault Pigaches

All this gear can be reinforced. I'd suggest crit.

Elemental Artifact weapons.

AP-gain cloak like Lostmauths Necklace, Charisma Belt for more crit chance and Personalized Adamant Ring of Recovery because you will get enough ArmPen from other gear (remember the cap is at 60%). These can also be reinforced. AP gain seems to be the best choice.

Artifacts:
Wheel of Elements (active slot): 30% damage buff is just great! At mythic you have just 1min cooldown with 30 seconds duration of the buff. Also the rest of your team is able to get one of the other buffs. For example the tank should get the earth buff, which provides a lot of temporary HPs.
Vanguard's Banner: HP, Power and Lifesteal. You can only get this one by completing the PvP campaign which can be difficult with an SW. As an alternative you can use any other artifact which gives you power and lifesteal as 4k HP are not that important. Otherwise you can use the Sigil of the Hunter giving you Power, Recovery and Stamina/Guard gain.
Tiamat's Orb of Majesty: Great mixture of stats for a dps class. Also the AP-gain is very appreciated.
Sigil of the Controller: Power and Crit are always nice

Sigil of the Devoted: As the most of your damage relies on TT-spam you can use the Sigil of the Devoted on active slot. Therefore that most people won't have that one at mythic you should use it right after casting your daily power. This way your AP are more likely to be at 100% as fast as possible. Also the cooldown will start when you activate it so you will have less time to wait before you can activate it again in another fight..

For your companions I recommend you to use 3 archons, because of their damage buffs in almost every situation. Also using more than one will increase the buffs of the others.
The summoned pet should be an ioun stone. Loyal Avenger gear will give you nice stats. Slot dark enchantments for defense (lifesteal) and radiants for offensive (power).

At this point of the game special mounts can give you certain stats, so your ride becomes important. I am going for the flail snail as its feature of giving you 25% AP right after the use of a daily is just great and unbeatable.

Skills

Class Features
Borrowed Time: Your soulsparks are healing you for 0.08% per spark every 2 seconds. This is a great addition to lifesteal.
Dust to Dust: After ending the battle you get healed by your soulsparks. This healing now brings some nice AP with it

Encounters
Dreadtheft, Warlocks Bargain and...
Soul Scorch: This one has no cooldown but consumes 6 sparks for one use. With 30 sparks (max.) you can spam it 5 times in a row.

At-Wills
Essence Defiler (to generate soul sparks) and Dark Spiral Charge

Dailies
Immolation Spirits: some little companions dealing decent damage. Useful for single target or situations a TT would be wasted.
Tyrannical Threat: The best daily ever. Generates a damage link dealing 30% of damage dealt to (max. 3) cursed targets to all the other ones surrounding it.

The rotation is very well explained and shown in the video.

How to use TT

You can use TT in 2 different variations. One for super fast add clearing, the other for super fast boss clearing.

1. Add clearing.
Activate TT and cast it on 2 enemies minimum. Make sure to use the ones with the most HP. Now use your Dreadtheft to attack all you TT-monsters at once building up sparks and lowering their DR against your powers. Now spam Soul Scorch as often as possible on the TT-add with the most HP left. All surrounding enemies will recieve 30% of the damage you dealt to your TT targets.

2. Boss clearing
Keep in mind that TT scales with buffs. With this build in a proper rotation 1 Soul Scorch does the same amount of damage like KF at 30% HP left, but can be spammed 5 times in a row. Now imagine doing a 10k hit (to keep it simple) to a TTed monster. This, with the right group, will be buffed to like 100k (just to show the principle and again to keep it simple, most of the time it's even more. My Soul Scorches went up to 800k per hit at 15-16k power with a great buff troup). Now TT takes 30% of that 100k hit -> 30k. Again buffs scale this up the same amount like before -> 300k, which is the damage all other targets receive. Let me state out again that the buffs are even higher most of the time. Now let's make use of this principle of the monster being hit by TT taking massively more damage than the monster taking your first hit: TT the boss and an add with large HP pool, communicate with your team to make them activate all their buffs at the same time and hit the add with Soul Scorch, not the boss. This way the boss will take the TT damage which is way bigger than the actual damage your soul Scorch hit does. All in all I had a run where these buffs were enough to onehit the first etos Boss with one single Soul Scorch -> TT hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKxNamxWTcs

This is the biggest TT hit of Kuro, the creator of this guide, using the build presented here:

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Conclusion

All in all the SW can be a very good DPS class. The fact that timing and personal skill are important make it hard for beginners to succeed competing against GWFs or TRs for example. Note that the damage of an SW is very situational. In ELOL, where you fight single target bosses most of the time, I'm struggling to not fall behind #2. Whereas ETOS with all its little spiders, warriors and blademasters during the boss fights is just a paradise for Tyrannical Threat, which is the power your dps comes from. It's a bad thing that there aren't more dungeons designed that way, giving the SW more possibilities to shine. This point and the lack of defensive powers (TR - invisible, GWF - unstoppable, CW - controlling, SW - ... only lifesteal, which is calculated like for the other classes) is making the SW a little... not underpowered, but hard to play. Maybe the devs will do something about it. But for now this guide may help you to get the most out of your SW.
I hope I could help you somehow to get along a little better with that class. Any feedback, additions and questions are much appreciated.

btfd

*Reserved for comments, changelog, etc.*

Nov. 19th: added the "how to use TT" section including a video to explain how to do nice life drops by bosses. Also no updates in near future.

ghoulz66

Forgot about the large detail that most people aren't maxed out..... Of course you're doing good damage....

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I am far away from BIS. I started using this build at 2.1k ilvl (which is all epic and R7, full t1) outdpsing most of the players at this level. Now with 2.7k, which really is not that much, I am on top of pain giver as long as there is no 20k power Gwf with the team.

fatguns

I watched the video, pardon ;-;

treesclimber

I Have a similar build, exept arifacts and componded soul different and i've just been beaten by a much lower damnation 148k, to my 80k, no lillianbruen, beside i dont believe you do the max damage with this without TT spaming, too much recovery left and no devoted sigil(as main).

thefabricant

And your build still can't compete with devotion paladins btfd

Great guide regardless though, its about time someone else started theorycrafting for this class, its woefully underrepresented and misunderstood.

btfd

@treesclimber: The good thing is that especially with the Flail Snail (and the help of at least a tactician GF if not AP-cleric) my AP are again at 100% at the end of my rotation. Still the Sigil of the Devoted is a good point I wanted to add anyways. Thanks for reminding me about this.

@thefabricant: It can't compete against 2 of you :P but we will see if and how the devs will rework that thanks for your comment!

schietindebux

Not a single minimal Chance with your setup against a damnation lock in T2 probably even T1it's weaker
Not to talk about a GWF with normal setup, except playing against some underperforming nubs,
sry but you are wrong
Btw, every T2 endboss is perfectly made for warlock, but think about what a damnation can deal to them
Every warlock I met, and its enough of them, performed poor against my damnationbuild, except they were damnation themself
Same build in every T1 and skirmish
I played fury before and did it your way...no Option at all

btfd

Too bad I can't record any videos because I play on a laptop. As I mentioned in my posts I had a run with 2 damnation warlocks who were all mythic with legendary gear, unlike me with 1 mythic, 3 epic artifacts and epic weapons / gear, and it was head on head. I also had runs with better geared but not BIS puppet players - I outdpsd them. Of course you can write me a ingame message and we can do a fast etos so I can show you I am not that wrong using this build we can either go with 2 SW or we can take turns and see who preforms better.

Strange that we made the exact opposite experience... Like I said I'm offering you to run with me.

treesclimber

To be honest, imo this is the best build for a fury, since the power doesn't cap the way it did in mod 5 it's a non situational buff, if the goal is plain damage, then full fury is a bit better, but with dark revelry and a good ls the progression in dungeons is way better. Appart from that, damnation is better almost until the end...

schietindebux

Sure lets do a run etos, ECC, egwd
I am in

taitinhakkaaja

Wow that damage in video is awesome! I have lostmauth's set and it annoys me that DT don't proc it. Gotta try this build too.

btfd

I personally don't like elol set on SW because the stats the belt provides aren't useful at all for this class. I know the set was nerfed and should work now, but the fact that nearly every class which is supposed to do damage chooses this set - regardless of the stats - determines that is a lie :P

taitinhakkaaja

About dungeon run... I have il 2.7 too and i am specced as damnation, so do that dungeon run with me.

blinxon

Are you the player in this vid,btfd?

btfd

Sure I can run with you too no I am not the player in the video! He is the creator of this guide but sadly stopped playing.

taitinhakkaaja

i was just wondering about dark revelry. allies gain 20% of your power when you proc life steal. If you have active companion like zhentarism warlock (hope i spelled it right) with bonding runestones which give character 195% stats back. Isn't that way better than normal augment pet?
Like if u have 20k power and proc dark revelry, companion get's 4k power increase and buffs you 7.8k power.

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taitinhakkaaja said:

i was just wondering about dark revelry. allies gain 20% of your power when you proc life steal. If you have active companion like zhentarism warlock (hope i spelled it right) with bonding runestones which give character 195% stats back. Isn't that way better than normal augment pet?
Like if u have 20k power and proc dark revelry, companion get's 4k power increase and buffs you 7.8k power.

thats a great idea! I just tested if dark revelry buffs companions too and it does. But as I see the pet itself is on AH for 2 million AD so you should look out for cheaper alternatives. If anybody owns a zhentarim warlock pet I'm happy if you'd test it out A negative point is that many people, tanks e.g., don't like running with non-augment companions. Still depending on the level of your bonding stones this combo would be better.

blinxon

btfd said:

no I am not the player in the video! He is the creator of this guide but sadly stopped playing.

If you did know him i guess you wouldnt say "sadly he stopped". But if you didnt know him, its ok to say so. Cuzz every player who stopped is 1 less costumer.
Anyway...ths guide is good ( maybe TT get a fix, but i dont think so) and i hope it will help the SWs outta there.

taitinhakkaaja

And more benefit comes to this build when SH power increase boon activates. +8k power (max), if i remember correctly.
I have to admit, look very promising build. Thanks for sharing

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taitinhakkaaja said:

And more benefit comes to this build when SH power increase boon activates. +8k power (max), if i remember correctly.
I have to admit, look very promising build. Thanks for sharing

thank you
exactly, power is the stat to choose. For defensive I suggest to choose lifesteal.

taitinhakkaaja

How much power do you have btfd?

btfd

16.4k unbuffed

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So today I had said run with @schietindebux which showed me how broken puppet can be. We went with a full buff group which is best for the here shown build, but also made the puppet do 4-5 million damage per hit. Followed by that @schietindebux was on #1 of course. I don't know how things would've ended if it had been a group with buffs not that huge. Creeping Death capstone should cause you to do more damage this way. If some of you are interested in this I am willing to test this one, too. And of course I did not forget about you @taitinhakkaaja. As conclusion one can say that this build may be the best without using broken or buggy stuff. Sure if that doesn't matter to you, you can go with puppet, elol and iliyanbruen set. There is just the big question if the devs will rework the puppets behaviour and set bonuses like elol one...

taitinhakkaaja

Looks like you did T2 run, in T1 puppet ain't that good. So how much difference there was in DPS between you guys?
There is one major thing forgot to tell. PVP. Damnation ain't very good in PVP, puppet get's killed fast and you lose lot's of buffs. So fury is "must" for PVP SW.

blinxon

btfd said:

So today I had said run with @schietindebux which showed me how broken puppet can be.

Broken Puppets are a well known and old problem. But we all know how long it takes to fix an obvious bug in NW...
Its the same with TT. No dailie can make such a hugs dps...no dailie at all, except TT from SW. But if you ask if this is wai, no SW says "No". I dont think its wai, but its just my opinion.

felix243

btfd said:

As conclusion one can say that this build may be the best without using broken or buggy stuff. Sure if that doesn't matter to you, you can go with puppet, elol and iliyanbruen set. There is just the big question if the devs will rework the puppets behaviour and set bonuses like elol one...

This build is actually using a bug/broken mechanic: TT
It definetely does not Work as intended (sometimes)
But without using Bugs like TT, sw is simply not viable. When using it, sw simply op tho.
Kinda sad. Oh and you should really watch some Videos of Fernu Stormborn on YouTube, he is a great fury warlock using a slightly improved version of this build^^