Warlock tanking Leotheras in Demon Form

From EFWiki

Path: Classes | Warlock | Warlocks @ Raid Bosses | Warlocks @ Serpent Shrine Cavern

I thought I'd post here about my experiences regarding the tanking of Leo in his Demon Form. This is mostly meant to be of help to other warlocks who might take on this painful (yet very entertaining) task in the future.

Contents 1 Some facts 2 Gear 3 Talents 4 Tips 5 Some numbers

Some facts

• Leotheras will be in Demon Form a little less than half of the time.
• Every Demon Form phase (Phase 2) will last roughly 50 seconds.
• During this phase he will cast a Chaos Blast continuously. One Blast every 2-3 seconds, totaling around 20 Chaos Blasts.
• Blasts can either hit or be fully resisted.
• Blasts that hit will do rapidly increasing amounts of damage, due to a stacking debuff: 2k, 3k, 5k, 7k, 8k, 10k, 12k, 13k, 15k, 17k, etc.
• When properly geared you should expect to be hit for 12-13k at least once during the encounter.

Gear

Your most important stats for this fight are:

1. Fire Resistance, stack up as close to the resistance cap (365 buffed) as you can. At 365 FR you will on average resist 75% of all Chaos Blasts. Avoid wearing greens below level 68. Heroic badge-purchased epics (a.k.a. Infernoweave pieces) are highly recommended, as is the ring reward from this quest. Enchants on back and legs may help to increase FR even further, though you might wanna opt for spell damage enchants.
2. Stamina, kinda goes together with FR. Having a solid health pool is essential to survive those unlucky Chaos Blast hit streaks. I recommend aiming for at least 12k Health buffed. More is definitely better.
3. Spell Hit Rating, wearing this much FR/stamina gear will no doubt severely lower your Spell Hit Rating. Try to offset this by using trinkets and the Spell Hit gloves/head enchants. Having at least 100 Spell Hit Rating is essential in being able to reliably build threat.
4. Other stats like Spell Damage and Spell Crit are a luxury. Don't be afraid to lower them to 50% of what you usually wear, or even lower. I had no problem building threat with only 500 Spell Damage and virtually no +Crit.

Talents

Talents are for improving damage mitigation. Wearing insane amounts of Fire Resistance will help keep those Chaos Blast hit streaks to a minimum, but the Blasts that do hit, hit hard. The reason for this is that Chaos Blast can only be binary resisted. A Blast will either be fully resisted or will hit you for the full amount of (stacking) fire damage. To put it another way, once you have 5 stacks, any two additional hits, with no healing in between, will probably kill you. So with only binary resists, how can one mitigate damage taken?

The answer is talents, as I found out the hard way. Soul Link will transfer 20% of all damage taken onto your pet. This may not sound like much, but with Blasts easily hitting for around 12k, 20% mitigation practically means you get a 2-3k Health buff.

So, the one talent that will significantly increase your odds of survival is:

1. Soul Link, besides 20% mitigation it will also provide a 5% buff to your damage done. To pick up Soul Link you'll have to go pretty deep down the Demo tree, but there are a few unexpected (for me at least) benefits:
2. Master Demonologist, means having a Felhunter out will increase your Fire Resistance by 70. Nice!
3. Demonic Knowledge, 5 additional points here will provide a significant spell damage buff. Partly offsetting the loss of power from having to drop points elsewhere.
4. Demonic Tactics, requires a further 5 points spent in demo, but a 5% increased Crit Chance will be worth it for many warlocks.

On a side note, Nether Protection does not seem to affect in this encounter. At all. It just doesn't proc from Chaos Blast.

The complete build I went with eventually is this 0/40/21 build. It is by no means a Leotheras-only build. It works surprisingly well as a general purpose raid and solo build.

Tips

Not much to add here, that hasn't already been laid out by Kinta above. The actual tanking mostly consists of spamming Searing Pain.

A few tips:

• Do make sure you stand at max range, to allow melee to safely rip away at Leo.
• It is advisable to stop casting SP 3-5 seconds before the end of Demon Phase, to make it easier for the tanks to pick him up in Human Form.
• Even though your Felhunter can be safely used to dps Leo in demon form, it's advisable to keep it passive. The added dps is not worth the risk of drawing aggro after demon phase ends.
• A paladin's FR aura or a shaman's FR totem is highly recommend.
• Other classes to look for in your group include a Shadow Priest (VE) and a second warlock (Blood Pact).
• Make sure to click off Blessing of Salvation.
• Healers should be informed they will have to mind your pet too.
• Cast CoD at 14 seconds before the end of every demon phase. When cast at that exact moment, the curse will detonate at 1 second into the next demon phase.
• Place a Soulstone on yourself and have all other warlocks keep a Soulsoul at the ready for in combat re-stoning. It's very important to have a SS up at the start of phase 3. The reason is that it can just so happen that Leo will reach 15% near the end of a regular demon phase. That means you will have a full stack of debuffs at the start of phase 3. Not good. If this is about happen, the best thing to do is suicide at 16% to get rid of the debuffs (announce it so healers know they should stop healing). And then quickly re-summon pet and rebuff while Leo is doing his emotes just before phase 3 starts. Another way would be for the raid to DPS off at 16%, and wait until demon phase is over AND debuffs are timed out. But don't count on this happening.

Some numbers

Based on a total of 28 logged, fully tanked Demon phases.

Resisting Chaos Blasts - The fraction of resisted (100% avoided) Chaos Blasts.
At 365 (capped) Fire Resistance: 75%

Average Peak Damage Taken - The average damage of the last Chaos Blast that hits, per Demon phase.
At 365 FR (capped) without Soul Link: 8k
At 365 FR (capped) with Soul Link: 6k

Average Total Damage Taken - The total damage taken per Demon phase.
At 365 FR (capped) without Soul Link: 28k
At 365 FR (capped) with Soul Link: 22k