Talk:Warlock/@comment-76.181.169.31-20120412185746/@comment-85.150.42.15-20140914164544

No, hellfire is totally excellent! That damage is dealt to all enemies, whereas the damage done to yourself only applies once. Also, I would actually advize against fell armor for grinding, untill the latest levels. Also, while soul link seems great, I have tested EXTENSIVELY and fel armor/soul link slows you downmid-high levels. Honestly.

I speak from experience: With semi-decent items, I am grinding pull 3 in the 61-70 zone, at lvl 69 (have been doing so for over 5 levels) I never die (courtesy of a generous rest on 40%) and my inactivity time from resting is below 3%: 10 kills per second, 0.0164 xp per second. This with this marvelously easy build of:

10 drain life, 5 corruption, 10 siphon life

5 shadow bolt, 10 death coil, 10 howl of terror, 10 hellfire.

No need to add survivability with not dying and almost never resting, and it kills the fastest. Period. Again, courtesy of extensive playtesting. I am open to discussion about this, but give me the numbers to prove me different. I doubt you can ;)

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The next 5 levels will go to corruption, because 1% intelligence per second is the same as 7% per 7 secs (imp) or 8 per 8 seconds (bolt). However, corruption is more effective since it is cast more often and lasts till death, so you can cast it on multiple enemies, possible doubling or tripling the damage bolt or imp would give you. Then I will put 5 points in imp. Once I have enough points, I will respec the points form corruption to imp 10 and start putting them in fel armor. My last extra point will go to soul link, for lack of a better option.

So, endgame build would look like this:

10 drain life, 5 corruption, 10 siphon life

10 imp, 10 fel armor

5 shadow bolt, 10 death coil, 10 howl of terror, 10 hellfire

Last point goes to whatever you like. Soul link, presumably.

This is for the most effective pull 3 build. Dungeons is a different story, focussing on impending doom as the main kill spell, and forgoing death coil.