(Elune) Simple guide to Corrupted Maelstrom Weapon.

Welcome to my build guide for Rising Chaos.

In this guide I will go through the core abilities, talents and general advice/information to get you started with my version of this build.

I have made a Manastorm focued version of this build (which can be found here), and due to how popular it is, the feedback I have recieved and how many people seem to be enjoying it, I decided to try and push this builds limits and optimise the damage more than what the Manastorm focused version can realistically achieve.

This guide will mostly be the same but does not have Manastorms in mind so self sustain and defensive layers are out of the window. There is still defensives abilities we pick due to them being something you want in general, but talents wise, its pure damage.

If you just want the build and don't really care for the entire guide: Current build as of June 24th. The damage breakdown and dps is self buffed and no world buffs. Can achieve higher with better gear and raid buffs. (Check the bottom of the page for more information)

Be sure to check out this guide on card locations to see if any cards you don't have can be earned for this build.

What exactly is Rising Chaos and how does it play?

Rising Chaos is a talent that requires you to use melee abilities such as Gloomblade (which this build is centered around) to build stacks of Corrupted Maelstrom Weapon. Once you are at 3 stacks, you can then throw a Chaos Bolt / Pure Chaos Bolt, afflict Chaos Burn or drop down a Chaos Meteor at your enemies with zero cast time allowing for a warlock/melee hybrid!

How does the build work?

When attacking enemies with your melee abilities, you generate a single stack of Rising Chaos and once you are at 3 stacks, your next Chaos Bolt, Chaos Burn, Chaos Meteor or Pure Chaos Bolt can be used with no cast time and has increased damage.

The core aspect of this build is dealing Shadow damage and launching Chaos Bolts at our enemies to rain destruction down upon them. It is a very thematic build, visually satisfying to play and also very fun if melee is your thing.

If you think you would enjoy playing a Rogue and Warlock themed hybrid spec then this could be just for you!

Core Abilties and what I recommend to start with.

With the new Synergy system and card slotting changes that came with Chapter 2, depending on your prestige level and how many scrolls you have available when you reach level 60, it is beneficial to not card anything during the levelling process and wait til you run out of scrolls to card the important stuff or just things you miss in general for builds.

If you didn't know about the card slotting changes, with the release of Chapter 2, we have more card slots available now and you no longer have to be below level 10 to slot cards anymore so you are able to wait til level 60 to slot abilities or talents but you still want to use this to get your starting abilities. Just make sure you remove your starter spells after you lock them in!

Starting Abilities.

• Enslave Demon - Super important as we will be using Necromancer's Touch to help deal a ton of our damage. The demon choice does not matter so if you want, you can choose whatever demon you like the most. I use Terrorfiend since they look cool and share the same abilities with Felguards. You can check the database for tameable pet locations or if you wish to buy Summoner Stones, Area52 has some REALLY cheap ones from TBC on the Auction House if you have any gold laying around on there. You can transfer these to Elune via Courier Malik near the Auction Houses and use Vanity Collection Sync. They will be Soulbound this way and in your vanity collection once transferred.

• Sinister Strike - We will be using this as our main skill for the levelling process until we get Gloomblade later on.

• Charge - Simple gap closer that allows us to get to our enemies with ease. Super important as our build relies on being in melee.

• A choice of these:

  • Seal of Wisdom - You will have mana problems once you get the build going without a means to sustain. This helps with that until you eventually learn Shamanistic Rage. Seal of Wisdom will not be needed in the min-maxxed state. Getting Seal of Wisdom or Shamanistic Rage means we can full invest into damage talents and not have to grab mana sustain with talents.

  • Flametongue Totem - We want to get 1 of each totem type (Fire, Air, Water and Earth) at some point to gain the benefits of Totemic Focus. That talent will provide you with around 8% crit with all 4 totems active. Make sure to grab Call of the Elements from the Manastorm vendor at a very cheap price. Very nice Quality of Life for anyone that invests in totems!

  • Eviscerate - This allows you to play the build from the get-go. Having one Eviscerate is important due to the build scaling with Shadow damage and Master of Shadows providing us with a huge amount of increased shadow damage dealt. Eventually you will want Solar Strike in the min-maxxed state. This would be most ideal as mana sustain can be gained elsewhere but if you wish to rng these later, it's fine.

Abilties to card.

• Pure Chaos Bolt - This is our main damaging spell. This build can be played with Chaos Bolt but the normal version only scales with Fire damage, which we are not scaling. Pure Chaos Bolt has modifiers that allows it to scale with Holy, Fire, Nature, Frost, Shadow and Arcane so we use this instead. If you do not have Pure Chaos bolt and instead chose to run this with default Chaos bolt, just know that your damage will be slightly lacking untill you get Pure Chaos Bolt!

• Fel Infused Weapon - This weapon Imbue gives you so much extra passive damage. It's hard not to grab this but if you don't have it, you can also card Rockbiter Weapon which we also want for this build. Just remember, when you eventually end up with both of these Imbues, you want both active. Fel Infused on your main hand and Rockbiter on your offhand for example.

• Knightfall - This gives us quite a bit of free passive damage at level 60. As this is quite rare to see when randomly rolling, even with synergy rolls, I would recommend carding this.

• Arcane Power - Major cooldown that increases our damage dealt. Really good to have.

• Chaos Meteor - At some point you want to be getting Wild Felfire for some extra damage and a slight help with cleave but if you want more AoE then carding this can be useful. Should not be hard to roll though so this can be ignored if you wish to card something else.

• Shadowform - 10% increased Shadow damage. I find this super easy to rng so not carding this is fine but it is something you really want to grab later on.

Talents

If you get any of the talents listed or ones that have really good synergy with the build (flat % increases for example), be sure to LOCK them in so you don't accidentally roll them off until you are close to the min-max state and need to roll them off. Even getting a 1/5 talent that is good for the build can be worth locking as the new Synergy system has a higher chance of upgrading your locked talents making capstones easier to obtain!

Biggest talents to card.

• Rising Chaos - Entire build is centered around this talent but this build can achieve pretty ok single target without it if you get the Drain Life setup listed below. Majority of this builds damage comes from Pure Chaos Bolt so this talent is really important.

• Necromancer's Touch - This is the other part of the build that is insanely important for your damage. When you get the full Drain Life setup, it will compete with Pure Chaos Bolt on single target in the builds finished state. Would not recommend carding the entire Drain Life setup but I have a very hard time rolling the Deathbringer talents usually so those two are fine to card if needed as they do so much damage.

  • Spiderbite + Biting Drain + Deathbringer and Unbounded Deathbringer - Spiderbite buffs the Drain Life damage we deal and since both Deathbringer talents use Drain Life modifiers, this just means free passive damage that we can scale from our Shadow Damage buffs.

• Dark Intent - Free passive damage when we use Sinister Strike or Gloomblade. Really good as its around 5-10% of our Single Target damage with no change in rotation.

• Master of Shadows - Insanely huge buff to our Shadow damage. We will be using Eviscerate or Solar Strike to benefit from it.

• Mental Quickness - Huge for any melee hybrid spec. The spell and magic damage bonus it provides cannot be missed out on. Our primary stat for this build is Agility.

• Felstorm - You can play the build without this talent but then you would have to learn regular Chaos Bolt or Chaos Burn as well as Pure Chaos Bolt and rotate between the two. This just allows us to only need Pure Chaos Bolt for single target so we can invest into other abilities such as defensives, buffs or utility.

Complementary Talents to card if you don't have all of the ones above or have spare card slots.

• Chaos Manifesting - This just gives us more damage with no change in rotation.

• Shadow Arsenal - 5% increased damage with no change in rotation. Very valuable.

• Primordial Fury - Not only will Shamanistic Rage allow us to sustain all our mana so we can endlessly cast our Chaos Bolts, but this makes it do some passive damage with no change in rotation and can be around 3% of your single target dps if you invest further with Shamanic Rage Harvest. Shamanic Rage Harvest will give you near permanent uptime on Shamanistic Rage depending on the boss/encounter.

• Consuming Flames - Since you want to be getting 5/5 Ignite at some point, this means your Ignites will be doing 15% more damage at no cost! The reason why it is at no cost is because Pure Chaos Bolt has Fire a modifier that enables the ignite but we choose to scale Shadow so the Fire Critical strikes dealing 5% less has no effect on our build.

Abilities and Talents to keep an eye for during levelling and at level 60.

If you aren't able to card any of the above, be sure to keep those abilties/talents in mind!

• Gloomblade - Main abilitiy for the build alongside Pure Chaos Bolt. Note: currently I am not using any modifiers to scale this but you can look out for Opportunity until the late stage of the build.

• Shadowfall - We have a lot of freedom with Abilities so we can grab this as it gives us a bit more AoE. Just note that if you are stunned, it won't do any damage. Knightfall will not cast this as it is a different spell.

• Aspect of the Beast + Trueshot Aura - Attack power scaling Auras that you can enable and forget. Trueshot Aura can be useless depending on your group comp as other players may also have it or they could be providing Unleashed Rage. Unleashed Rage and Trueshot Aura do not stack so just keep this in mind.

• Immolate - We are not taking this for it's damage. We want this purely to buff our Chaos Bolts with the talent Fire and Brimstone. Getting either Battle Cultist: Firebrand or Controlled Burn allows you to never have to hard cast Immolate during single target encounters.

• Divine Protection / Unending Resolve - 1 defensive is highly recommended but these two are great to have. Both Divine Protection and Unending Resolve are off the Global Cooldown so they can be used right after a spell has been used without having to wait for the mini cooldown that accurs when an ability has been used. Smoke Bomb is amazing to have since this has the extra functionality of making casters not be able to target us with spells for the duration, or as long as we are inside of it.

• Soul Swap - Due to this build having slight ramp, and how we don't really want to be hard casting Immolate every time we fight a new enemy, this allows you to swap over the dots/debuffs to a new enemy with a single ability. Not really useful in a dungeon setting but can be useful now and again in specific scenarios.

• Strength of Earth Totem + Flametongue Totem or Totem of Wrath + Air and Water Totem - You want 1 of each totem as mentioned previously to get full benefit from Totemic Focus. The ones I mentioned are the most important as they provide you with meaningful buffs. The other totems can be whatever as long as they don't have a cooldown and last 5min. So resist totems for example.

• Seal of Command - Due to this build not needing Seal of Wisdom in the end, we can grab this for some extra passive damage at no cost.

• Fan of Knives - When combined with Fel Infused Weapon, it provides you with a bunch of AoE and can be very nice during big pulls and also gives you Rising Chaos stacks. Very nice to have during levelling too so if you want to card this it is more than fine.

• Demonic Leap + Shimmer / Blink / Unchained Blink - Demonic Leap plus a Blink to go with our Charge is more than enough mobility for us.

• You will want an interrupt, preferrably a ranged one. Any is fine but the best ranged one is hands down Wind Shear

• Fel Strike - If you find yourself having to move out of mechanics, this is nice to have since it's a ranged ability or if you want some ranged damage while moving to your next target.

• Death's Embrace - This talent is very big. Provides us with some form of execute which can help on those longer fights.

• Vitality + Combat Potency + Focused Attacks - The combination of these talents allow us to not run out of energy so there's no downtime in our rotation as long as we are in melee!

• Shadow Propellant or The Dark Magician - Shadow Propellant is better for AoE situations as it will help with scaling Chaos Meteor damage and The Dark Magician is better for pure single target since Solar Strike and Knightfall both deal arcane damage. Just note you cannot double dip into these for example: the stacking shadow buff from Shadow Propellant will not work with the stacking shadow buff from The Dark Magician.

• Ruin - We want one of the talents that increase our spell critical damage and this buffs the Shadow damage we deal to targets above 75% health. Could also take Vengeance for the 8% magic damage buff.

• Wild Felfire - With how often we are using Chaos Bolts, this provides you with some passive damage and a slight cleave profile! Very nice to pick up.

• Shadow and Flame - Gives Chaos Bolts some more scaling.

• Master Demonologist - 5% increased damage done and 5% reduced damage taken. Really helpful to have.

• This build takes nearly all of the talents that increases damage by % amounts. You want: Shadow Mastery, Demonic Pact, Darkness, Enhanced Weapon Mastery, Intensity, Arctic Winds, Blessed Weapons, Chilled to the Bone, Shattered Barrier, Crusade, Magic Absorption and Malediction.

• Astral Mind - This has pretty high uptime on it, typically around 50-60%+. Nice to have.

• General Crit chance talents such as Thundering Strikes. Winter's Chill is a very good crit talent as this gives the build 8% crit since Pure Chaos Bolt can proc the Frost spell damage portion of it! Raze is very good to have also.

• General chance to hit talents until your hit capped such as Accuracy. Once you get Mental Dexterity, Accuracy should be the only chance to hit talent you need.

Mystic Enchants.

• Death's Embrace 3/3

• Demonic Gloomblade 3/3

• Dark Flames 3/3

• Powerful Chaos Bolt 3/3

• Brutal Chaos Bolt 3/3

• Darkness 1/1

• Black Magics 1/1

Rotation and how to play the build

Summon your pets, drop your totems if you have them and buff before anything else! Now once you've done that:

At the start of a Raid encounter or Single target fight, you want to precast Immolate, then once combat has started, Charge and use Gloomblade or Sinister Strike to build 3 stacks of Master of Shadows. Once you have that, you want to use your Eviscerate or Solar Strike followed by Pure Chaos Bolt if you have 3 stacks of Rising Chaos. Rinse and repeat! Just be sure to have Shamanistic Rage up as much as possible!

For any AoE situation like in dungeons, you don't want to be hard casting Immolate every pack and instead, you want to be focusing on dropping Chaos Meteor as often as possible. Single target rotation is still present in AoE, but instead, we weave in Chaos Meteor apposed to only spamming Pure Chaos Bolt. In groups with 4+ mobs, you can use Shadowfall.

What Armour and Weapons do I want to use?

For Armour you want Agility with Intellect and Spellpower so (Item Set #-1442) from Molten Core and (Item Set #-1456). Using 8/8 in either of the sets is perfectly fine. I am personally using 5/8 (Item Set #-1456) and 3/5 (Item Set #-1623). Using Rings, Necks, Cloaks and Trinkets with Intellect to grab more spellpower is perfectly fine too.

For Weapons, ideally you want the most Spell Power you can find on a Mainhand then a offhand. Good examples are: Sorcerous Dagger from Molten Core, Claw of Chromaggus from Blackwing Lair and Kris of Unspoken Names from Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. Qiraji Sacrificial Dagger also from AQ Ruins is very good as your offhand weapon.

Setting your Primary stat to Intelligence to open Caches from Manastorms is by far the easiest and fastest way of getting these raid weapons from AQ and the Item sets, you want your Primary stat to be Agility for the best chance from these caches.

Extra information, tips or misc.

If you're like me and constantly forget to buff, I made a weakaura to track buffs that can be toggled. This covers nearly everything you would need for this build but I will be updating this to track other buffs eventually.

This weakaura is very nice for reminding you about your pet not being summoned! The only issue is that it's not updated (at the time of writing this) for the pet we use and I had to manually add in Summon Demon. If you want to add the demon to this weakaura, then simply go to the "Warlock Pet" part, and in the "Trigger" section, add "or t[7]" to the end so it looks like this. Add a new trigger so we have 7 triggers and change the "Type" to Spell and then in the next box click "Spell Known". Spell ID you can type in "Summon Demon" and that should be it.

If you build 2 stacks of Rising Chaos, you are able to then cast Chaos Meteor since it doesn't instantly consume the stacks. After pressing Chaos Meteor you can quickly press either Gloomblade or Solar Strike to generate that last stack right before the Meteor hits enemies so it benefits from the 3rd stack.

My current build as of June 24th is a tiny bit different to what I recommend in here. This is due to me trying to test Frozen Chaos for AoE which is why I have Vitality Mystic Enchant and not the talent. Single target can be higher right now if I dropped Frozen Chaos, grabbed Vitality and swapped my Vitality Enchants with Chaos bolt ones since energy sustain sometimes becomes an issue. If you also wish to try Frozen Chaos, I am trying to get Glacial Spike or Cone of Cold to proc this but currently do not have it. What you see in the in the Imgur link is how the build performed with those exact talents/REs. Will update guide if Frozen Chaos is worthwhile in the end

As mentioned above with the build being playable without Rising Chaos. I did some testing while rolling this as I got the entire Drain life kit and the only thing I was missing were the Chaos bolt kit and it ended up at around 23k single target dps.

If you like this build guide and want to check some other guides I have also made, they are:

• Righteous Radiance.

• Corrupted Maelstrom Weapon (Manastorm Focused).

• Elemental Lord.

• One With The Light (Manastorm Focused).