Is Dark Pact + passive imp effective for leveling?

[Komnenos]

I know it worked great in BC but I can't recall if it was about as effective in vanilla or not.

Basically you get DP, keep your imp out on passive, and use him as an invincible mana battery with very high mana regen. You spam dots on 2 or 3 mobs at a time, fear as needed, and drain life. Between drain life and siphon life you will not ever be low on health and with DP essentially cannot go OOM.

Again, worked great for leveling in BC 40+ but I don't recall if it worked in vanilla. I wanna say it did but I could be imagining that.

[Praxxia]

I did this during vanilla and it worked well. My favorite was using a Succubus (with all autocasts turned off). She does fairly good melee damage. Her mana regen is less than an Imp, but her damage output + being able to instantly seduce if someone tries to gank you is nice.

[daniellaminen]

NO NO NO, if you're leveling you use your void walker period, your imp in dungeons. you will take more damage doing this than save mana, bad bad bad bad idea.

[Praxxia]

Using a voidwalker on anything but a large pack of mobs or an elite is silly. You can easily juggle 2-3 mobs with dots + fear. During retail your VW would only hold aggro for a few seconds before you would outaggro it. SL, Drain Life, rank 1 DS (with imp. DS talent) and Dark Pact are more than enough to keep you pulling endlessly.

[Forteski]

Recently got to 40 on my Warlock so swapped from a demo/affl build for full affl with Dark Pact. Seems like the logic of lvling a warlock in BC still applies to Vanilla. Only care about shadow damage on your gear and get Dark Pact so that you can easily kill everything with no downtime.

The Imp does regenerate mana a lot faster than other demons, but I still prefer to run around with the Felhunter. He has equal auto attack dps to the Succubus while having a lot more health and more importantly his abilities are still useful even if he is being used for a mana battery.

Just make sure you still use life tap when you would just be overhealing yourself with drain life. As for the guy claiming that a VW is mandatory, no it isn't. The Voidwalker in most situations is only nice for being able to tank one mob that you only toss DoTs on, and using suffering for an easy Howl of Terror cast. It's not that amazing outside of those situations and not really needed in those situations either. Having Dark Pact to allow you to regen you mana without playing a dangerous game of being at low health against multiple mobs due to life tapping is much more useful.

If we didn't have our "of Shadow Wrath" gear still then yes Dark Pact would be pointless because our damage would suck too much to quickly kill everything with dots. However I'm currently at 151 shadow damage at level 40 thanks to the gear and can easily sustain myself with Drain Life and Siphon life. I can tank 3 level 39 mobs without bothering to fear them with Siphon Life and Drain Life healing and they will all die during the duration of the DoTs. Without Dark Pact I would most likely die trying to tank multiple mobs due to how much health Life Tap takes with all the Shadow Damage.

[narutomaster]

Of course it is. I don't know why the guide isn't talking about it but it's by far the best method to level.

When I had to kill a few mobs with the void I was getting angry about how slow it was, you're oom after 3 mobs.

With dark pact you can kill about 8 mobs, bandage once, kill 8 more then have a drink.

Don't have anything else than +spellpower and stamina on your gear.

Also you can keep dark pact for a while when you reach 60 to use in dungeons, the other mana friendly build would be to have demonic sacrifice and kill your felhunter, works well too.

[daniellaminen]

I love all these super warlocks commenting lol "I can solo tank 8 mobs cause dark pact lolol. don't even need health stone bro my life drain got dis shit."

[Numi]

Of course it is. I don't know why the guide isn't talking about it but it's by far the best method to level.

When I had to kill a few mobs with the void I was getting angry about how slow it was, you're oom after 3 mobs

This is most likely because you play the voidwalker build suboptimally, using voidwalker your most important stat is spirit, because it allows you to chainpull like mad. (120-130 kills per hour consistent from 25-60 on two Warlocks.)

I've explained how to play it properly in many posts on this subforum, but the general idea is to always be fighting a mob and constantly micro-manage your voidwalkers mana as well as your dots on targets. Using this build you end up spending most of your time dotting new targets (roughly every 20 seconds you pull a new mob).

I've also never really struggle with void aggro because the "optimal" spec for me has been to go imp drain soul -> void in demo -> SM -> back demo. Perhaps that's why you struggle with void aggro? Sure, this still means you'll gain aggro if you spam shadowbolts on the target, but considering that shadowbolt is one of our least mana efficient spells, it's a pretty poor choice of spells to use in a scenario like that.

[Praxxia]

I love all these super warlocks commenting lol "I can solo tank 8 mobs cause dark pact lolol. don't even need health stone bro my life drain got dis shit."

And I love the reading comprehension failures. Bro.