(Elune) Simple guide to Corrupted Maelstrom Weapon (Manastorm Focused).

Welcome to my build guide for a Manastorm oriented 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.

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.

Alongside its strong single target and self sustain, it also has AoE abilities to help clear the reworked Manastorms in Chapter 2.

I have seen a lot of people struggle with early levels. This is the only build I have been using to push Manastorms and it's been more than fine at 900+ so I decided it would be good to give players a build guide that they can use to also push Manastorms with ease.

This build is more than capable of doing Ascended Raids and possibly Raid Trials. You can opt in for more damage instead of survivability if you wish to push the damage and don't care for going into the very high Manastorm levels but my guide is built for Manastorms in mind.

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 to our enemies and using Soul Leech combined with Vampire Lord to heal us via a portion of our damage dealt. This gives us a bunch of self sustain so you don't have to go out of your way to hard cast any healing abilities or try finding the Hearts within Manastorms and during boss fights.

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, people are a bit unsure whether or not it is actually best to use all your card slots so if you want to card different abilities, talents or none at all and want to wait til you get to 60 then card abilities/talents that's up to you.

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.

• Shadow Bolt - With the new synergy roll system, this is important to have to get the warlock related talents we need. We can also use this in our rotation while levelling if we get synergistic talents such as Shadow Strikes and Nightfall's Promise or if you just want to level as a caster for the time being. During the later stages of the build, we won't want Shadow Strikes and Nightfall's Promise since using only Pure Chaos Bolt is far more damage than trying to weave in Shadow Bolts. We will eventually unlearn this so picking a buff such as Blessing of Might is fine if you want to choose something else as your starter.

• Enslave Demon - This is so you can benefit from Soul Link plus Demonic Embrace for some extra damage reduction with Master Demonologist giving us a flat 5% less damage taken and 5% more damage done also. The pet we want to use are Felguards. They have an attack that can be spammed with only a 2 second cooldown making them apply our Necromancer's Touch stacks super fast.

• 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 importan as our build relies on being in melee.

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 us so much damage, especially if we randomly get or choose to card Fan of Knives. 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, 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.

• Vampire Lord - Gives us so much sustain that it allows us to not need any external healing. It also heals our pets when we have Soul Link. As you reach the higher Manastorm levels, the self sustain becomes super important and the more Shadow damage we deal, the more we heal from this.

• A choice of these defensives:

  • Divine Shield - Super helpful when we get into a bad situation or run out of defensives and allows for some breathing room.

  • Divine Protection / Unending Resolve - You want at least 2 defensives for pushing higher manastorms so carding one of these is ideal. 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 - 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. Casters and magic damage are the biggest threat in manastorms right now!

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 is 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 - The entire build relies on this talent. Cannot be played without it!

• 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.

• Felstorm - We can play the build without this talent but then we 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 or buffs.

• 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.

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

• Wild Felfire - I've been chasing this for a long time. It drops a Rain of Fire when you use any Chaos Bolt and this has Shadow Damage scaling so free AoE!

• Necromancer's Touch - I usually keep my pet on passive since the AI on the pet is super annoying when it keeps mobs in combat miles behind you (can be solved with a /petattack macro) but for raid bosses this is insanely good for our damage when combined with the talents below. Only downside with carding this is how many talents we need to synergise with it. If you decide to card this, I would recommend not carding Felstorm, pickup up Chaos Bolt or Chaos Burn, and then take all the talents syngergising with this listed below. I pushed to 900 without this so it's not needed, it's just really nice damage to have.

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

• Soul Leech - The main reason why this build is capable of sustaining its life being able to push so easily. Without this you won't have the means to heal well and would have to rely on the Hearty Hearts inside manastorms for healing which sometimes wont be possible as certain boss mechanics can get in the way of your path to said Hearts. Wouldn't recommend carding this but if you're new or don't want to risk RNG controlling your chance of getting this then card it so you won't encounter sustain issues.

• 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.

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. Can be buffed with Opportunity

• Eviscerate or Solar Strike - We want one of these with Solar Strike being the most ideal. Needed for Master of Shadows buffs.

• Chaos Meteor - This is pretty much a Chaos Bolt but AoE. Very nice to have for clearing Manastorm trash or adds during boss fights. Also benefits from Soul Leech since it uses Chaos Bolt modifiers!

• Fel Strike - Combine this with Chaos Meteor at the start of trash packs and you will pretty much 1 shot the entire group. Really nice combo to have and it's also a ranged ability so you can use it when moving out of mechanics or moving into a group of mobs.

• Solar Strike - This is simply an Eviscerate clone. I like this as its some extra dot damage but the build works fine with just normal Eviscerate if you chose not to card this and want to try getting it later with rng.

• Fan of Knives - As mentioned above when combined with Fel Infused Weapon, it provides with a bunch of AoE and can be very nice during big pulls. Very nice to have during levelling so if you want to card this it is more than fine. I'm still using it past Manastorm 600!

• Shamanistic Rage - Combine this with Primordial Fury and you have quite a bit more passive damage. With the changes to Necromancer's Touch and it allowing pet auto attacks to generate stacks now, pet mana shouldnt be something to worry about in general, so if you decided to grab Improved Soul Leech, you could opt into swapping it with Shamanic Rage Harvest to reduce the cooldown on Shamanistic Rage if you want to persue more damage.

• Shadowfall - Cab be very nice to have for bigger pulls. Just note that if you are stunned, it won't do any damage. Also Knightfall will not cast this as it is a different spell.

• Aspect of the Beast + Trueshot Aura - Attack power Buffs that we can toggle on and forget about it!

• Shadowform - 10% increased shadow damage dealt. Healing ourself with Soul Leech does not take us out of the form so it is very nice bonus to our damage. Can also combine it with Improved Shadowform for a bit of damage reduction.

• Curse of the Elements - Very nice debuff for bosses that increases our damage dealt to them.

• Blessing of Kings + Blessing of Might - General buffs.

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

• Guardian Spirit - Very useful to have when you find yourself in a bad situation. A cheat death pretty much with some bonus healing recieved.

• Banshee's Wail - When we are pulling big groups of mobs, our health sustain can be lacking so this ability allows us some breathing room with its stun and it also heals us back to full depending on how many mobs you pull! Just note its kinda bad during boss fights and it's mostly used as a panic button for trash packs.

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

• Armored to the Teeth + Deadliness - Some extra attack power scaling to help with damage.

• 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. Haven't been able to test but you might be able to grab both and get the stacking damage buffs for all 3 spell schools we deal.

• Biting Drain - If you have all of the drain life talents (Deathbringers, Spiderbite and Necromancer's Touch) then this will make your Drain life damage compete with Pure Chaos Bolt on single target, which is massive.

• Ignite - Since Pure Chaos Bolt has both Shadow and Fire scaling, we can use the Shadow scaling to increase its damage and also use the Fire modifier on it to trigger Ignites giving us some extra damage at no cost. You can also pair this with Consuming Flames to increase the ignite damage even further and since our Pure Chaos Bolt will be dealing Shadow damage because we are scaling Shadow the most, it picks Shadow damage and ignores the fire damage dealt reduction giving us full benefit from this!

• General synergistic talents that we can benefit from such as Filthy Tricks / Seal Fate / Lightning Reflexes / Ruin / Shadow and Flame

• Talents that provide us with magic damage reduction such as Magic Absorption + Spell Warding. How many you want is down to you. If you feel like magic damage isn't a problem, you can avoid taking these but ones like Magic Absorption and Mental Strength have more value since they provide more than just damage reduction.

• If you feel like you need a cheat death other than Guardian Spirit then you can grab Cheat Death or Ardent Defender.

• Talents that provide us with extra Stamina such as Sacred Duty + Survivalist.

• General Crit chance talents such as Thundering Strikes + Prey on the Weak.

• General chance to hit talents until your hit capped such as Accuracy.

Mystic Enchants.

• Death's Embrace 3/3

• Wizard's Gloomblade 3/3

• Dark Flames 3/3

• Powerful Chaos Bolt 3/3

• Brutal Chaos Bolt 2/3

• Darkness 1/1

• Black Magics 1/1

• Dual Wield Specialization 1/1

Rotation, how to play the build and what Manastorm consumables I use.

Summon your pets and buff before anything else! Now once you've done that:

At the start of the fight, 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!

For any AoE situation or big Manastorm pulls, you can run or charge into mobs, cast Shadowfall (if you have it) and then a few Fan of Knives to generate Rising Chaos stacks and once you have 3 stacks with the mobs grouped up, you can then throw down Chaos Meteor followed by Fel Strike and that should be enough to get you to the next group or boss.

For the Consumables, I'm using: Manastorm: Rage Rush Solution. Manastorm: Incantation Intensifier, Manastorm: Long Haul Liquid and Manastorm: Reflex Booster. In the lower manastorms or if you are speedrunning you can swap our the health one for a Manastorm: Sprint Serum.

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 8/8 (Item Set #-1456) until I can get the new AQ sets. 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 daggers. Good examples are: Sorcerous Dagger from Molten Core, Claw of Chromaggus from Blackwing Lair and Kris of Unspoken Names / Qiraji Sacrificial Dagger from Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. You can run any Dagger you get as long as you can use Gloomblade.

Setting your Primary stat to Intelligence to open Manastorm Caches purely to try and get Items with Spell power is the easiest way of getting them.

Extra information, tips or misc.

Fan of Knives can be casted outside combat to general stacks of Rising Chaos. This can be utilised by casting Pure Chaos Bolt then instantly using Curse of the Elements.

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.

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.

High Priestess Mar'li can be a pain regardless of level due to the poison mechanic. Because of this I've decided to permanently use Manastorm: Cleanse since this boss would be almost impossible without some form of cleanse in the 600-700+ range and the cleanse is just really useful in general. Could go with Cleansing Totem but I'm lazy and hate totems.

4minute execute target dummy test with only buffs I can apply myself. Skada is a bit inaccurate and my pet ran out of mana so it couldn't apply Necromancer's Touch towards the end. Can be upwards of 35k depending on manastorm bosses. Damage breakdown on a dummy (was a 1minute 43second fight.) Pets will not have mana issues inside manastorms but outside they run out of mana so fast so I stopped it right as that happened.

If you wish to use this as a build for any content or more focused on raiding/longer fights then you might want some mana sustain for you and your pet. If so, I would recommend swapping a single 3% stamina talent such as Sacred Duty for Improved Soul Leech. If the pet is not an issue and you are running out of mana then you could swap Guardian Spirit (if you are comfortable with dropping it) or a defensive if you have 3 or more (always keep Divine Shield) and grab Seal of Wisdom

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

• One With The Light (Manastorm Focused). Tanky build that's a lot safer but far less damage.

• Righteous Radiance.

• Elemental Lord.

• Corrupted Maelstrom Weapon. More damage than this build but focused on PvE and not Manastorms.