Warlock Drain Tank - Affliction

Drain Tanking is a strategy used by warlocks to avoid downtime and kill mobs quickly while grinding their way through their 30s and 40s. The spec is entirely in the affliction tree but cay vary slightly to your personal preference. Here are 4 of the more important to consider talents:

2/2 Improved Drain Soul

This is optional. If you are punctual enough to drain soul at the end of every fight you will benefit from a lot of free mana. Personally, I find myself to be too lazy to live up to this tactic so Imp Drain Soul may be a waste in my build.

2/2 Improved Life Tap and 2/2 Soul Siphon

These two talents are the bread and butter of drain tanking. You'll be casting Life Tap, and Drain Life very often so you want to make sure it is loaded up.

1/1 Siphon Life

Once you can get Siphon Life you should lay this on all your enemies to increase hp regen.

Here is a sample level 30 spec.

How Drain Tanking Works

When you enter combat send in your Void Walker (more on demon selection later) and cast your 3 main DoTs, in this order, Curse of Agony, Soul Siphon and Corruption. Then hit Life Tap and start unloading Drain Life. Continue this pattern paying close attention to your hp and mana. When your hp is full, use life tap. I have even been so extreme to make sure my mana is always greater than my hp. This seems pretty effective.

The challenge won't be to keep your hp high but instead find the time to cast enough Life Taps to keep the hp -> mana transfer high. You should be able to fight equal level mobs indefinitely without stopping and keeping a kill rate. The down side is the mindless repetition of casting dots, drain life and life taps.

Demon Selection

Traditionally, people recommend using your Succubus because it has higher DPS. This is where the name 'drain tank' comes from, you're draining and tanking. I have found the Void Walker prevents drain life interrupts enough to merit using him all the time. He also allows you to keep your hp high and keep the hp -> mana flow going. If you decided to use the Succubus you'll want to invest 5 points into Fel Concentration to help reduce interupts.

Level 40

Here is a sample spec for level 40. You can see that if you wanted to put points into Fel Concentration to use your Succubus for DPS, it wouldn't be hard to find extra points from either Suppression or Shadow Embrace. Once you have Dark Pact you should use it anytime your Void Walkers mana is at or very near 100% or when you his mana is greater than 50% and you need mana yourself.