Corruption - Part 1

This post in particular took significantly longer to test and to write than I expected. This post will be a thorough review of all of the feats in the Corruption tree. The next two parts that will be posted will be an 'overall' review and comparison to Lotus, with applications of both and possible builds including full Lotus, full Corruption, and Hybrid builds.

Active requires you to use an ability.
Passive is effective all of the time, and requires you to do nothing other than spend the feat points.

Improved Unholy Stance (passive)
This is the basic Unholy Tree feat. The important thing to know about this feat is that you proc Corrupting Blades from it, which lowers your targets evade by 5%. This is particularly useful against mobs, rogues, and soldiers.

Corrupting Strikes (active)
What you get in this feat with 5 points is +20% offhand hitrate for 10 seconds. The cooldown is 20 seconds, and requires a soul fragment.

Vile Corruption (passive)
Vile corruption gives +25% damage to the DoT portion of your Slow Death Strike combo.

Looking at Corrupting Strikes and Vile Corruption, the two "tier two" feats that you have to choose from you really only have to ask yourself one question:
Am I spec'ing for PvE or PvP? I haven't tested Vile Corruption thoroughly enough to say that Corrupting Strikes is without a doubt more useful in PvE, but I have tested Corrupting Strikes and can say without a doubt that if you use Slow Death Strikes at all Vile Corruption is better than Corrupting Strikes which you may never use. The problem with Corrupting Strikes in a PvP environment is that it requires a soul fragment and it requires a button press. The skill, which is +20% offhand hit for 10 seconds is *great* in PvE and I kept it up almost all of the time. When you're in a PvP encounter the fight is usually short to the point that you do not need to use this skill, or it long to the point that your soul fragments are better used on various life leeches, Death's Gaze, and Avatar of Death.


Unholy Strength (passive)
This is yet another solid feat. 5 points in Unholy Strength give you +25% damage to your Swift Strikes combo which, when you get it off, is pretty devestating. On mobs in particularly I was doing Swift Strikes IX for ~7000 damage, but we'll touch on that later with feat usage/timing. I don't see this as an absolute necessity in PvP but for PvE it will be. If you're spec'ing for PvP I can see *passing* on this for the upcoming feats, Spirit of Nightfall and Soul Prison and using Slow Death Strike with the 5 points in Vile Corruption rather than using Swift Strikes. Some people would opt to go Corrupting Strikes/Unholy Strength for it's PvE strengths and some prefer people the upfront damage of Swift Strikes to the DoT from Slow Death Strikes. I believe that both are equally viable but should be mutually exclusive in that, I wouldn't go Unholy Strength, Vile Corruption, as it turns out being a redundant use of feats.

Rapid Striking (passive)
Rapid Striking reduces the cooldown on Swift Strikes. This feat is 100% PvE oriented, and while I would strongly recommend it for PvE, I would equally recommend NOT taking it for PvP. My reasoning behind not recommending this in PvP is that often times you'll find yourself wanting to chain combos, or you'll follow a long hard to land combo such as Swift Strikes by a short, easy to land combo such as Grim Corruption or Impede Life. The times you want to use Swift Strikes back to back in PvP are so few and far between that this is essentially a waste of 3 feat points. That being said, for PvE you want to use your hardest hitting combo repeatedly and as often as it is up, so Rapid Striking in that regard is good- in the 'group' 80 instances I've done, I mostly spammed Swift Strikes (with a lot of cooldown usages in between) and came out on top in damage done (excluding AoE packs.)

Spirit of Nightfall (passive)
This feat gives you a small chance to capture soul fragments on regular hits (ie, you don't have to combo.) I didn't do significant testing on the proc rate, but if I had to guess I would say 15% (5/10/15% for 1/2/3 points spent.) This is a prerequisite to Soul Prison.

Soul Prison (active)
This feat further improves upon its prerequisite (Spirit of Nightfall) by giving you a usable ability that makes regular attacks (including combo starters, and combo pieces prior to the combo actually firing off) a high chance to capture soul fragments. Once again, I didn't do significant testing on the proc rate but if I had to guess, I would say that with Spirit of Nightfall and this active the proc rate on regular swings for Soul Fragments is somewhere around ~80%.

Relish in Death (passive)
Relish in Death gives you a soul fragment whenever your team performs a fatality.

I'm covering these three feats together even though they are in different tiers because they all serve the same purpose, and that is to improve your soul fragment generation. Soul Prison and by extension its prerequisite Spirit of Nightfall are useful in both PvE and PvP but not necessarily necessary. They help produce soul fragments on those longer fights which require you to use leeches, as you'll see though- a *lot* of fights won't require you to use your leeches at all, but soldier classes, other rogues, or even casters if they land a root on you will put out some damage so having the soul fragments available is helpful. In PvE, you generate enough Soul Fragments (all you do is combo, over and over-) that I do not believe that either of these feats would be *necessary* for PvE but they are useful in that you can Consume Souls more often for stamina and you can keep Corrupting Strikes up every cooldown, along with Avatar.

Dark Weapons (passive)
Dread Weapons (passive)

Dark Weapons and Dread Weapons both proc ~150-250 shadow damage procs which are practically identical in damage and I believe proc rate.Dark Weapons procs off of mainhand hits and Dread Weapons procs off of offhand hits so you will see Dark Weapons proc much more frequently, as you mainhand hit more often than you offhand hit. Without a doubt, every build in Corruption should include 5 points in Dark Weapons. Dread Weapons on the other hand is entirely dependent on certain builds. I wouldn't recommend Dread Weapons unless you are doing a PvE Corruption or an offhand damage build (both of which will be covered in the "build" section after the review.)

Life Leech (active)
Your first effective leech feat, Life Leech requires a soul fragment to use and for each feat point spent here, you get one attack that leeches back life each time you use the ability.. Whether or not you choose this feat depends upon what type of build you're looking for, but at 5 points and one soul fragment spent, I usually leech around 625 health, which is around 125 per attack for 5 attacks.

Necrotic Leech (active)
Your second leech feat, Necrotic Leech is more geared towards AoE and multiple enemies and requires a soul fragment. If you use it on a single mob you'll notice the effect is rather underwhelming, but there is no limit (as far as I could see) to the number of enemies that can be afflicted. Any time you're pulling multiple mobs (or fighting multiple players) you'll want to fire off Necrotic Leech, and for the one point investment I would take this feat in absolutely any corruption build.

Vampyric Nature (active)
This is the last of your leech feats and by far the most effective. This feat gives you an ability that gives you a short buff that allows each of your melee hits to heal you. The amount healed scales with the amount of damage you do and is by and far the best of the leech feats available. When you're fighting an individual or solo mob you'll always want to fire off Vampyric Nature first, much like if you're fighting a group you'll want to fire off Necrotic Leech first, and then Vampyric, and lastly Life Leech.

Dark Inspiration (passive)
Increases the chance of inflicting a crit with your Swift Strike combo starter. If you don't know what a combo starter is, please read my lotus leveling feat guide. This is one point, and not necessarily important. I don't hit a lot of my Swift Strike combo starters in PvP because I fire it up if someone gets feared or is kiting me so I can move in for the big hit, so for me this point is better spent elsewhere. For PvE though, where you're chain Swift Striking I can see this being a decent feat.

Unholy Armor (passive)
Unholy Armor gives you +10% to all of your physical invulnerability ratings while in Unholy Stance. This feat is absolutely necessary for PvP and not as much for PvE. In the few group instances I've done >75 most of the damage I've taken has been splash damage, or spell damage, both of which were healed relatively easy with the three leech abilities.

Unholy Soul (passive)
Soul Strike (active)

I did a lot of testing on Soul Strike as I was really interested in how it behaved with other skills such as Swift Strikes up to the last hit, Lunge, Soul Strike, combo out. I will lump in Unholy Soul with Soul Strike as it's essentially an additional cost to the feat as the unholy invulnerability that you gain isn't particularly useful for any given build or in any given PvE or PvP scenarios that would warrant 3 feat points. Soul Strike at this point in time, is mostly useless. It requires 4 feat points (3 in Unholy + 1), and it's soul purpose is to when calculating damage- look at piercing invulnerability instead of unholy invulnerability. There are absolutely no other bonuses to using this skill. Now, saying that it is useless now is not saying that it won't be useful in the future. One particular scenario in which this skill would be almost required would be if soldier classes (or anyone for that matter) obtain a particularly high piercing invulnerability and a particularly low unholy invulnerability. If gear happens to scale this was, using soul strike and then the final hit on swift strikes could be a substantial increase in damage... but as it stands now it's minimal, and not worth the 4 feat point investment.

Seeds of Corruption (passive)
Seeds of Corruption is very similar to Unholy Soul in that, it doesn't benefit you in very many situations. For this feat to be effective it needs to significantly impact your damage. It doesn't. The only unholy damage you're putting out is from Slow Death Strikes and Dark Weapons and the fact that Seeds of Corruption has to actually proc on the target makes this seem like a mediocre feat at best. At some point this talent may be more useful, while raiding it'll be an increase to multiple players damage and if you're going for a Slow Death Strikes build it may be wise to test it further than I have, but I didn't notice anything special and it's DEFINITELY not worth it if you go for the Swift Strikes build.

Lunge (active)
This is easily one of the single best feats you get in either tree. This feat gives you a damage bonus on your next swing, plus it gives you a 100% chance to proc an offhand hit. At 5 points the bonus damage is 25%. The applications and uses of this feat go far beyond just popping it when you're going to swing in on a given target. You want to time your usage of Lunge so that you get the maximum effect. I don't want to give away my biggest PvP secret (yet) but one application would be to use Swift Strikes, once you get to the last attack- lunge, and then fire off the combo. You will get the +25% damage on all 5 Swift Strike attacks, and get offhand hits on all 5 Swift Strike Attacks. This turns a 1300-1400 (total Swift Strike damage) into a 1800-1900 (total swift strike damage)... non crit, not including Dark Weapons/Dread Weapons which usually proc when you fire off a Lunge Swift Strike. I will hint that this is not the absolute best use of Lunge, but I won't be giving out any more information on that until I release my PvP guide and/or video.


Prediction (passive)
+10% evade. Amazing.

From the Darkness (Active)
The staple for corruption assassins, this particular feat behaves much like intercept in World of Warcraft. You need to be in a 10-25 yard range from your target. When you fire off From the Darkness, you charge (and stun for 3 seconds) the target and then do an attack that does pretty significant damage. This acts as a combo and gives you a soul fragment. A few things you need to know about From the Darkness: The closer you are to the target, the longer the stun. The reason for this is as soon as you use the skill the target gets stunned, so if you're charging from 25 yard it'll seem like a 1 second stun as opposed to a 3 second stun. The next thing you need to know is that you absolutely cannot use this ability effectively on a moving target. You really have to work on timing and being closer also helps this as the chance of them moving during a 10yd stun charge is slightly less than them moving on a 25yd stun charge. I'll say that when I use FtD (and it lands) it's almost always immediately followed by Grim Corruption, Death's Gaze (to stun/fear), followed by Avatar of Death/Excellent Balance to make yourself immune to CC at which point I simply zerg them down with a big combo.

Burden to Bear (passive)
+15% damage on most of your attacks sound good? Well, Burden to Bear gives -15% to your targets piercing invulnerability rating. This is huge. All of your attacks except for Dark Weapon procs and Slow Death Strikes DoT are piercing. It procs relatively often, and is well worth the 3 point investment.

Death Whirlwind (active)
Death Whirlwind is an AoE unholy damage attack. This is primarily used for AoE grinding and as a prerequisite for Death's Gaze and Avatar of Death.

Death's Gaze (active)
You want CC? Here it is. Death's Gaze, with 5 points invested, fears or stuns your target for approximately 5 seconds. This effect doesn't break on damage, and I usually do it directly after my From the Darkness/Grim Corruption as that generates two soul fragments. Combined (and executed properly) will result in ~8 seconds where the target is completely unable to do anything.

Avatar of Death (Active)
Avatar of Death is a 20 second anti CC with +30% damage tacked on. I don't need to tell you how insanely good this is. It requires a soul fragment.