Can you build Vampire Lord for Wildcard Mode

Vampire Lord

Your path through Azeroth has been a long and troublesome journey, filled with hardships. You believed that your time in these lands had harden your soul against corruption, but you can hear it's whispers lingering in your ears, like a bad melody.

Despite your fight against the darkness, it has taken hold of you and you have been reborn as a Vampire Lord. However, these new found powers although filled with Shadow Magic, you instead stay by your allies side to keep them in the fight while also slaying those which would do them harm.

How it Works

As a Vampire Lord you have infused your Shadow Magic to not only damage your enemies but to heal all allies in range. While looking at this build, we're going to be tackling it from a DPS and Healer aspect as both go hand in hand.

Since all the healing we do will come from the Shadow Damage, we want to focus on these type of Abilities. Others that also deal Shadow Damage are ones that deal Chaos, Plague, Shadowflame and Twilight Damage. The advantage of these damage types is they also scale from other energy types. So if you do get one or more Abilities with Talents that boost the other energy type, then you could see a higher increase to the damage you do and in turn your healing output.

Starting Abilities

• Shadow Bolt will be our main Ability to not only Damage Enemies, but to heal the party with.

• Corruption will aid with passive healing during boss fights.*

• Shadow Word: Pain is an additional passive heal during boss fights.*

• Arcane Intellect will provide some extra Spell Power to boost our damage.

*Don't use these abilities on Multiple Mobs as this will quickly drain your mana, and mobs don't tend to live long enough for your DOT to deal enough damage.

Ability Cards

• Vampire Lord main Ability needed or this build doesn't work.

• Beacon of Shadow marks an ally and will receive 5% of the damage you deal with Shadow Bolt or 25% if in Spirit allocation.

• Shadowform grants an increase to your Shadow Damage by 10% and also allows Shadow Word: Pain to Critically Hit and benefit from Haste.**

• Shadowfury will provide some nice AOE and stun enemies in range.

** While in Shadowform you aren't able to heal via normal means or use Priest Holy Spells. If you do want to heal while in Shadowform , look out for Unholy Light or Unholy Prayer which will provide Shadow Healing as long as your in Spirit allocation.

Talent Cards

• Pure Shadow can stack up to 10 times and will increase Shadow Critical Strike chance and increase damage dealt with Shadow Bolt .

• Everlasting Affliction Great way to reset your Corruption so you're not having to reapply

• Improved Shadow Bolt to increase the damage we do with Pure Shadow.

• Shadow Power to give our Critical Damage an increase by 200% but to also give our Periodic Shadow Damage a chance to make the target weaker to Magic Damage.

• Fel Concentration Improves our Spell Haste and also heals ourselves further by the damage we do.

• Bane will increase our Critical Strike Chance and also reduce the Mana Cost for Shadow Bolt and other abilities.

Mystic Enchants

With these we're looking for ways to increase our Shadow Damage or ways to reduce the mana cost. If something seems off when playing, have a change around could help your play style.

Improved Shadow Bolt x3 Wizard's Shadow Bolt x3 Fierce Mind x3 Improved Corruption x3
Fuel for Shadows x1 Shadow Igniter x1 Darkness x1 Dark Embrace x2

How to Play

Until you hit level 10, your starting play will be very much like any other. Start off in Intellect Allocation and ensure you have Arcane Intellect up, and spam Shadow Bolt with the odd mob getting Corruption or Shadow Word: Pain depending on how you feel.

Once level 10, we'll unlock Vampire Lord and Pure Shadow which will help increase our survivability with passive heals as you deal damage and bolster your damage while slaying enemies.

By the time we hit level 15 to start doing dungeons. You'll have the majority of our core Talents and Beacon of Shadow. If you haven't got Beacon of Shadow to run this build, then you could switch the card out for Shadow Waste Bolt. This would replace our Shadow Bolt but would also apply a Shadow DOT on the target. This is an Ability we want to look out for while doing our rerolls.

Change to Spirit allocation and you're ready to start being the Vampire Lord you were reborn to be.

If you're new to this build, and running with random hero's, it might be worth advising them you're running a "Test Build", that way the Tank knows not to over pull or to watch your mana to ensure you have the resources to keep going.

Apply Beacon of Shadow to your Tank and then focus on casting Shadow Bolt or Shadow Waste Bolt on mobs. If you happen to get Fel Strike or Unbounded Drain Soul to hit multiple targets with Shadow Damage. Although, the heals might be low from Unbounded Drain Soul, when combined with Improved Drain Soul is a great way to get your mana back up.

When fighting a Boss, apply Corruption and Shadow Word: Pain initially and then continue to cast Shadow Bolt or Shadow Waste Bolt while making sure your DOTs are still applied. If theory you should be able to deal some decent single target damage while keeping the party alive.

You should try and keep Pure Shadow active, before reaching the boss, but it's not the end of the world if it does drop since Shadow Bolt or Shadow Waste Bolt is our main casting Ability.

As we hit Level 60 or do our rerolls, there are some Abilities and Talents that we want to watch out for.

Target Abilities

Twilight Shock Seed of Corruption Mind Blast Soul Swap Summon Void Zone Unleash Fel Energy Shadowfall Curse of Agony

Target Talents

Molten Core Nightfall Nightfall's Promise Pandemic Shadow and Flame Shadow Embrace Shadow Mastery Improved Shadow Word: Pain Improved Shadowform Improved Corruption Shadow Crash Deathbringer

There is many more Abilities and Talents I could add but this would just be a massive list. If you're curious about what might work well, then search for the name of Ability in Talents and you'll soon get a picture of ways to improve your Vampire Lord build.

Final Thoughts

Vampire Lord isn't an easy build to get started and can be even hard to heal with if you A. Don't have the right abilities/ talents and B. Your Tank is over pulling. That said, if you do get an understanding group until it's in a workable form, it's a very enjoyable build to play.

If you're find it difficult to run this as a healer, switch to Intellect Allocation and run it as a DPS. For the most part you'll do some decent damage until you hit level 60 and can make the important rerolls you need to make a workable build.

I've ran this build without Beacon of Shadow, and it's much hard to keep the tank alive without. I've found that you need at least one other healing spell (ideally one with a low cast time) to quickly use in critical moments. Although Unholy Light or Unholy Prayer have a high cast time at least these scale with your Shadow bonus.

When it comes to gear, make sure you're hit capped and then focus on Haste > Spell Power > Intellect/ Spirit > Critical Strike Chance.

If you can't hit your target, then your party aren't going to get heals. However, I CAN NOT stress enough how important getting your Shadow Bolt cast time below 1.5 seconds. While testing, I found that if your Shadow Bolt has a cast time of 1.75 or 2 Seconds, the build will fail. Doesn't matter if you have rolled godly Talents or got all the right abilities, you tank heal from your Shadow Bolt, and if it takes you ages to cast, then your gonna suffer keeping them going.

You might have noticed I didn't include Vampiric Embrace as a core Ability, this is due to it focusing very heavily on Priest related Shadow Spells. If you do roll Vampiric Embrace, then do keep it as it'll bolster your Vampire Lord healing further while active.

While testing this build further and looking for ways to improve. I found that Vampire Lord in it's current state isn't a viable build for Season 9. For the most part you need about 80% of required abilities and talents to make it work, and even then it still struggles. The idea behind it is great and something I would love to see developed further.

If you do have any questions about Vampire Lord to please let me know and I'll be happy to share what I've learnt if you wish to attempt this yourself.