Any use for the felhunter's Tainted Blood?

[xdiesp]

Suppose that a felhunter (whose Tainted Blood ability has been trained) gets hit 5 times by a mob: the attacker's Attack Power will drop by 200. About half of what you might get with a Curse of Weakness,not a throwaway (but not even so great). But whatever attack you or anybody else would launch at that point would overaggro the felhunter and the Tainted Blood effect will irrimediably be lost after 10 seconds,proving the effort useless. So I ask myself: am I missing the point of all of this? Even if the pet aggroed well (which it does not),it would still die much faster than a VW at tanking. Summoning many suicidal felhunters one after another doesn't seem so viable either. Any suggestion on how to use this ability? Thanks for any help.

I was hoping to use it as a supplementar damage reduction utility,together with CoW (350 unimproved,420 improved) and Shadow Embrace (5% less damage caused),but it sounds artificial.

[Vaeldavenie]

Little bit derailed, but nonetheless part of the thread.

The tainted blood comes really nicely in play when the felhunter tanks himself. The one thing he is really good at is tanking is casters. And what casters do we fight ? Elementals. Primal farming. The tainted blood is just a minor benefit, of him getting hit a tad less, while he dominates all other pets in that situation ( I know, I have yet to see any Lock besides myself farm Elementals with a felhunter) since he heals himself by eating their shieldbuff. Try it, you will be amazed. Sure he needs a headstart for aggro, but he is not half as bad as one might think. Specially with demo build.

For action lovers, try cod/banish rank1+2 on mob1, while felhunter is on mob 2. Make sure felhunter tags your mob 1, beforehand so the rotten *alliance* does not snatch your kills

If tainted blood has many other uses or raid uses, I have no idea.

[xdiesp]

Vaeldavenie: do you dot mob 2 or it's just to keep it occupied? Does your felhunter last longer than a FG (or even a VW?) against a fire elemental in Nagrand? Mine dies so fast...but I'm intrigued by the idea.

EDIT
Incredible,I was browsing through a Warlock's guide about a couple geologic ages old (from the beta) and look at what I found:

Felhunter leaching: You will find that the felhunter is an exceptionally talented pet when fighting casters. You will also find that he can solo mobs that give xp (but you must “tag” the mob to get xp/loot). This strategy only works against mobs that do magic damage (air/water elementals are ideal) and preferably mobs that cast some sort of buff or debuff that he can eat for free hp. Send him on a mob, find a mob for yourself and after he has done some damage to his cast a dot or two and go back to finishing yours. The lock will kill a couple before the felhunter kills one if you don’t aid much but it ends up being essentially free kills. You’ll find yourself using this strategy for farming fairly often especially for a demonology specced lock ;).

[Vaeldavenie]

He does much much better then the other pets, due to you almost never having to heal him (he can crit heal up to 1400ish), no other pet can manage to keep up with that. He just needs a headstart, and you can dot or nuke and the mob will eventually drop at your feet.

This works exceptionally well in Nagrand on air and fire ele`s.

For real fun, you cod/banish mob1, send felhunter onto mob2, and fear/dot mob3

[xdiesp]

I am very sorry for digging up this old thread,but I could only test a full demonologist felhunter by myself in this day against an elemental 71 in the elemental plateau.

And I have to say,it's been absolutely brilliant: I suggest this thing to everybody,the felhunter is worth a rediscovery in pve...or at least primal farming.

The fight went like this:
- the felhunter loses few life and it quickly heals itself afterwards;
- slow dps and slow threat generating;
- about 4k threat at 50% of mob dead (7.5k when dead)
- at the end of the fight,the felhunter was as good as I had just summoned it.

I had never considered that the felhunter can devour less-than-1-second long debuffs like stun from non caster mobs. However the low threat per second means that you can only drop one or two affliction dots before overaggroing the minion.

[Duckie]

Why even make that much trouble?

dot, dot, fear, dot dot, lifetap --> next, dot, dot, fear, dot dot, lifetap --> next, dot, dot, fear, dot dot, lifetap --> next

first mob dies or drain him a little and keep the pet out passive for extra mana. If you get attacked by 3 or 4 (almost dead) mobs use HOT and finish them off.

I can keep the COMPLETE elemental plateau (the fire elemental part atleast with a few air elementals) dead alone and make it about impossible for others to even kill a few mobs when my running patern is up.

I can tagg 5 or 6 at the same time without getting hurt and kite them alone the plateau while tagging even more if needed.

[xdiesp]

Why not? Because when the warlock-that-wanted-it-all makes a mistake and dies chased by 5 mobs, he gets called a noob by the entire Elemental Plateau Farmers Inc. Not that I don't like affliction farming. Yet...

[Duckie]

Originally Posted by xdiesp

Why not? Because when the warlock-that-wanted-it-all makes a mistake and dies chased by 5 mobs, he gets called a noob by the entire Elemental Plateau Farmers Inc. Not that I don't like affliction farming. Yet...

Well don't make mistakes... you can single-target-felhunter-farm-one-mob-at-the-time and say your found a omg way of farming... and no-one will call you noob, I'm sure that is because they kill the rest of the elementals.

And who cares if someone calls you noob if he has 1 mote and you 10 primals.... Then again I never died there as long as I can remember to begin with....

But lets me clear, if you want to use a certain pet or way of playing, you have my blessing ;)

[Vaeldavenie]

Why not..? Because the dot,dot, dot etc way does get boring too.

I find it fun and interesting to hunt with the felhunter, (given I am not affliction either ), so basically is it something different, then the *normal* way.

And once you figure out felhunter, you easily could add cod/banish, and fear along.

I do not even farm there for the motes, I farm there cause I find it fun.

[Corina]

But Curse of Weakness causes no aggro (unless it's the only thing on the mob with nothing else attacking it) so why can't you have the Felpup solo an elemental with CoW on it and his tainted blood? That combo would appear to work really well while you take care of another mob yourself with dot-dot-dot then fear + DL.