Dark Pact
From WoWWiki
| Dark Pact | |
|---|---|
| |
| Usable by | |
| Class | Warlock |
| Properties | |
| Type | Utility |
| School | Shadow |
| Cooldown | None/Global Cooldown |
| Talents | |
| Talented | Yes |
| Talent tree | Affliction, Tier 7 |
| Talent required | Dark Pact |
| Other information | |
| Ranks | 4 |
Dark Pact is a warlock instant ability which transfers mana from your pet to you. This spell is acquired as a talent, requiring 30 points in the Affliction tree.
| Rank | Mana | Level | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 305 | 40[1] | Talent |
| 2 | 440 | 50 | 6 75
|
| 3 | 545 | 60 | 11 70
|
| 4 | 700 | 70 | 11 70
|
- Minimum level to acquire the talent.
Notes
The amount of mana transferred receives 96% of your +shadow damage bonus.
Using this talent does not stop your mana regeneration, or your pet's, or cancel an Imp's Phase Shift.
Tips and tactics
This talent is actually pretty great, as you would expect from something at the top of a talent tree. At one talent point, it is considered a "must have" for any Warlock that is deep in the Affliction build, and many Warlocks invest 31 points into the tree primarly for this ability.
Dark Pact allows you to continually steal your pet's mana. It is most often used with a phased out Imp, which almost always can regenarate mana faster than you can spend it. Using Dark Pact doesn't unphase your Imp, so you can use your imp as a "mana battery" and play with almost unlimited mana, while he cannot be killed by anything (assuming you keep him passive).
While Dark Pact contributes significantly in PvP, Raiding and Instances, it may shine best in simple grinding. It effectivley results in no downtime for a Warlock that is grinding for experience or drops. Combined with Improved Drain Soul and a phased out Imp with Blood Pact active, Dark Pact can see a Warlock cycle through 2-3 equal level non-elite targerts indefinitely, very rarely needing to draw on Life Tap. Grinding sessions of 1/2 an hour to an hour or more, without need for food/water, are very typical.
An interesting application of this is right after dying. The first thing you do (regardless of what pet you actually want) is summon an imp. You can then steal all his mana, buff yourself up and fill your own mana pool before summoning whatever pet you actually want (or keeping the imp). It winds up being a faster way of getting back on your feet.
Past changes
Patch 2.1.0 - "This ability is now unusable while the mana and health of a pet are being adjusted by pet scaling."
Patch 1.6.0 - "Fixed a bug where the combat log was reporting an incorrect value of mana gained by the caster when there wasn't enough mana to drain from the pet."
| |||||||||||
