Your help needed: Voidwalker Pet Profile Page

[Akasha]

Following on from the Your help needed: Imp Profile Page page, it's time for pet number 2!

To see what kind of information I am looking for, please have a look at: Pet Profile Page: The Imp (Draft #1)

Voidwalker Info
I'm looking for a general 'about the Voidwalker' section. Who is the Voidwalker? Where does he come from? What is his general role?

Tips & Tricks:
I'm wanting to list any neat little tricks you can do with the Voidwalker... are there any?

The Instance Voidwalker:
Information about the Voidwalker's role in instances.

The PvP Voidwalker:
Informationa bout the Voidwalker's role in PvP. Both Battlegrounds and Arenas

Talents that will affect / improve the Voidwalker:
A list of all the talents that affect/improve the Voidwalker


Anything else that you think should be included, please let me know.

The idea behind the profile pages is to help Warlocks learn more about their pets, and to learn how best to use their pets. Sorry, minions. So for example, I'm not after "Don't use the Voidwalker in PvP, it sucks". I'm after why you wouldn't use it in PvP, what are the disadvantages etc. Could there be any situations it might come in handy.

I want it so that someone who is looking for the information, can walk away going "oooh, I get it now, I understand why ... "

[Zaculea]

Voidwalker Stats:
(Level 70 Base stats - Unmodified)

Stam: 280
Int: 133
Str: 153
Agi:109
Spi:122
Armor:9070
AP:286



Voidwalker Lore:

Voidwalkers are demons created from the chaos of the Twisting Nether. Their touch is misery, and it can momentarily blind a creature to other threats. This touch brings a victim’s most painful memories rushing to the surface; for a brief moment, it can think of nothing but destroying the source of this mental anguish. Like elementals, voidwalkers, wear a set of magic bracers. These bracers form automatically when the voidwalker leaves the Twisting Nether, tying the voidwalker to Azeroth and allowing it to exist outside of the Twisting Nether. A voidwalker that loses its bracers also loses much of its power and might inadvertently return it to the Twisting Nether. Voidwalkers exist only to consume and bring more into the void. Voidwalkers are a paradox of life itself. They are created through a time space anomaly in the void which grants them sapience. To exist they constantly have to devour the energies of the physical world around them, furthering its dissolvement. A voidwalker can draw in and absorb the darkness surrounding it by setting its deep concentration to channeling in the dark energies, thereby healing it of wounds. A voidwalker may consume shadows in shadowy illumination but heals only half as much as it would in total darkness. A voidwalker’s sole purpose is to unconditionally serve a master.


Voidwalker Info:

The Voidwalker is the second demonic pet available to the Warlock. It becomes available at level 10 after completing a series of quests. Voidwalkers are good tanks against non-elite mobs at or near the Warlock's level; therefore, they are excellent for solo play. Although they can be used in at least low level instances as a substitute for a Warrior class player, due to their comparative fragility this is generally not advised.
Among the four regular Warlock pets, the Voidwalker has the most health, but the least mana. The Voidwalker requires a Soul Shard to summon. It is the first Warlock pet to require one; the acquisition of the Voidwalker coincides with the acquisition of the ability to collect Soul Shards with Drain Soul.

The voidwalker is ideal for solo target fights as it has the ability to generate high amounts of threat through its abilities. It has high amounts of stamina and armor which make it able to take large amounts of damage and keep on going. The voidwalker does the least amount of melee damage of the 4 basic warlock demons, so don’t rely on the voidwalker to kill a mob by its self. Their key role is to keep the enemy away from the warlock to sustain their ability to continue casting spells at the target with little to no interruption or damage.

The voidwalker also has capability of AoE tanking but it lacks many high threat AoE abilities. The spell that does generate high AoE threat unfortunately has a long cooldown. However, it can be used to pull multiple targets and hold them all if you focus fire the target of the voidwalker and do not generate too much AoE healing threat on the remaining mobs via health funnel while trying to eliminate all the hostile targets.

The key is to hold back on burst damage to the end of a fight so as not to pull aggro from your voidwalker. The best method is the use of DoT’s with the voidwalker as it has little trouble keeping up with threat when using slow and steady damage.

Outside of farming or grinding the voidwalker is very situational in use. There are different variations on its use in this role however. Some choose to use the voidwalker as a pure solo target tank leaving the ability to sacrifice the voidwalker if the battle becomes too much granting the warlock a chance to get out of harms way while the protective shield is still present. Demonic Sacrifice spec players will typically choose to use the voidwalker for its sacrificed ability to regenerate health over a long period of time allowing for continuous grinding and little downtime due to recovering health from damage taken or from life tapping to recover mana.


Voidwalker Skills & Abilities:
(Base Level 70)

Torment - Taunts the creature, increasing the chance that it will attack the Voidwalker. Costs 130 mana and generates 632 threat. 5sec cool down.

Sacrifice - Sacrifices the Voidwalker, giving its owner a shield that will absorb 2855 damage for 30 sec. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage.

Suffering - Taunts all enemies within 10 yards, increasing the chance that they will attack the Voidwalker and reduces their chance to hit by 10% for 15 sec. Costs 355 mana and generates 885 threat to all targets within the 10 yard radius. 2min cool down.

Consume Shadows - The Voidwalker consumes nearby shadows to bolster its form, recovering 4830 health over 10 sec or 483 health per tick that cannot be used while in combat. In addition, increases the Voidwalker's attack power by 200 for 10 min.


Voidwalker Tips & Tricks

Tip - Get him Buffed: The ultimate tip when using any of your demons in a party/raid situation is to make sure to they always receive party/raid buffs. Important buffs for the voidwalker include anything that improves health, attack power, and armor (assuming it is tanking or off-tanking) and spirit. Remember to use pet buff food if you have them available as well.

Tip - The Voidwalker Pull: Allow time for your voidwalker to gain aggro, much like any other tank. When you start to dps, be sure to start slow as to not pull aggro from him. Low damage dots like Siphon Life, or DoT’s that build in damage over time like Curse of Agony are the best to start out with. Try to hold off on moderate direct damage spells like immolate until the later half of the battle and high direct damage spells like shadow bolt for the end of a fight. This will ensure that the voidwalker can continue to hold aggro throughout the duration of the fight. If engaging multiple targets simultaneously be sure to hold off on healing the voidwalker until it has sufficient threat to continue to hold them through a health funnel channeling.

** Any other tips and tricks are more than welcome. The VW isn’t too sly, so I can’t really think of many tricks…**


The Instance Voidwalker

The voidwalker can be used to do some light tanking work in instances. It will never be able to perform on the level of a tanking class player, but can be used to off-tank a target when necessary.

** I personally rarely, if ever, use the VW in instances, so any additional input here would be great. **


The PvP Voidwalker

PvP warlocks will typically use the sacrifice ability of the voidwalker at the beginning of an engagement to shield the player from damage for a short period of time. This sacrifice ability continues through the summoning of a new demon that can be chosen depending on the class of the player or number of players being engaged (typically a succubus or felhunter). Using this combination can be very vital to your survival through PvP and arena matches by giving you a short window to gather yourself or wait on help.

For a soul link spec warlock, the voidwalker is the best damage absorbing demon and due to its great health regeneration rate, it can continue to do so for prolonged periods. This coupled with master demonologist can vastly reduce the total amount of damage that you and your voidwalker take.

Voidwalkers also have the ability to distract other pets and demons of hostile targets by the use of its torment ability. This can allow you to focus fire on the enemy while keeping another demon off of you or a hunter’s pet away from you. This can be vital to your survivability.

The only other place where the voidwalker can be useful for PvP is in AV. There are several multi enemy mobs in AV that the voidwalker can be utilized against to gain and hold aggro long enough for you to burn them down before you yourself fall victim to them. Enemy graveyards, towers, and caves to name a few are places that the voidwalker can be useful.

** Add anything that I might have missed. **


Talents that will affect / improve the Voidwalker

• Improved Voidwalker (Demonology) increases the effectiveness of your Voidwalker's Torment, Consume Shadows, Sacrifice and Suffering spells by 10%/20%/30%.

• Dark Pact (Affliction) can be used to draw mana from the Voidwalker. (Not recommended)

• Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina (Demonology) increases the demon’s maximum mana/health respectively by 5/10/15%. Also increases the caster’s mana/health by 1/2/3%

• Fel Domination combined with Master Summoner (Demonology) can reduce summoning time to 2/4seconds and 20/40% reduced mana; another 5.5 seconds and 50% reduced mana when Fel Domination is active (0.5 second cast).

• Unholy Power (Demonology) increases the damage done by your Voidwalker by 4/8/12/16/20%.

• Demonic Sacrifice (Demonology) will sacrifice your Voidwalker to restore 2% of your total health every 4sec for 30min.

• Mana Feed (Demonology) allows your demon to regenerate 33/66/100% of the mana you gain from Drain Mana or Life Tap.

• Demonic Resilience (Demonology) reduces the damage your summoned demon takes by 5/10/15% and the casters chance to be crit by 1/2/3%.

• Soul Link (Demonology) your summoned demon absorbs 20% of the damage the caster takes and increases the damage done by both the caster and demon by 5%.

• Demonic Tactics (Demonology) increases the melee critical strike chance for you and your Voidwalker by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Voidwalker Troubleshooting

**I’m sure these follow along the same guidelines as the imp, but feel free to give some suggestions**

[gotspork]

Originally Posted by Zaculea

The PvP Voidwalker

** Add anything that I might have missed. **

Note that Suffering, even while on a 2-minute cooldown, has the 10% increased chance to miss debuff. This can be extremely useful in a PvP encounter (especially versus a melee class - see: rogue, warrior, feral druid, enhancement shaman - or a hunter's pet), as the debuff is castable on PvP targets.

[Soulbourne]

About the tips thing, he has low mana as stated, and when micromanaging his skills for increased mana efficiency, the most I ever needed whole battle was 3 torments of regular yellow mobs, plus recasts for resists.

I went like this: Torment, Curse of Agony, Corr, Torment, SB, Torment(If I had discovered needed a third, when freshly upgraded, rare), wand/drain soul.


With that we both had good mana efficiency and the mobs went down quick. If I agroed a few extra, I'd get them near and activate suffering and just follow one at a time. Of course I only did this in my 40s before FG and after I got annoyed by him being oom.

[RubixCube]

Some players might use demonic sacrifice with their VW in pvp because that 2% health every 4 second is a very useful thing.

[Zaculea]

Thanks for all the extra input this far. It is all much appreciated. I had some free time and thought I would get the ball rolling on this guide. Keep the input coming, there can't be enough.

[Stabbity Fun]

Before you start ginding/tanking with him use Consume Shadows. The +200 attack power buff can come in handy

[Debuff]

I would say that he is the premier pet to Demonic Sacrifice for farming if you are a 0/21/40 destro lock.

Also, you can greatly extend his mana bar while grinding if you turn all of his abilities off of auto-cast and don't torment at unnecessary times (i.e.: the fight is almost over or if he has a large threat lead). Making sure you are far away from him and planning on pulling aggro from him towards the end of the pull with the mob dying before getting to you is another way to save him the mana cost another Torment.

In arenas, you can help protect against rush teams by summoning a VW right when you join the arena, Sacrifice it for the bubble with about 11 seconds until arena start, and then summon your pet of choice before the gates open. As a bonus, as long as your second summon goes off before the gates open, you won't have spent any shards.

[Devetaki]

I use him sometimes when I'm grinding or doing daily quests. More health means less down time.

[skyepirate]

he's pretty good all round except he doesn't hold agro to save his life (well actualy mine lol ) he doesn't put out enough damage to generate a high threat i recomend FG after 53 but up till then he's your best friend