Warlock Felguard Grinding Build

A Felguard pure-grinding build. I would not recommend this build until the mid-50's because the Felguard does not receive all of his abilities until 56.

The Felguard build is an alternative to a heavy Affliction build for grinding. Both are very effective, and neither have significant downtimes in normal grinding. Affliction is more efficient at dealing with multiple mobs, but Demonology grinds down single targets better.

There are many variations of this build, and it completely depends on what you plan to do during your grind. The build shown has most of the vital talents in Demonology. Some would debate the use of 3/3 in Mana Feed, but I believe that it helps to have that third point to maximize grinding efficiency. A Felguard who can't spam Cleave as much as possible is a lower DPS Felguard. Demonic Tactics could be valuable, as crit Felguard Cleaves with Demonic Frenzy stacks can deal nice damage.

The build shown has a balance of DoTing and nuking power. The strength, in my opinion, of Demonology for grinding is that you are capable of choosing between an efficient or a quick kill. An efficient kill would send the Felguard to the mob, DoT with CoA/Corruption, and then Life Tap -> Drain Life until the mob is dead. A burst kill would send the Felguard to the mob, maybe throw up DoT's, and nuke the mob down. Thanks to the Felguard's tanking ability, you can alternate between these methods of killing.

The main hassle of the Felguard is the rate at which is health drops at higher levels and his mana-sucking abilities. These flaws can be mitigated by Health Funneling during combat with your target DoT'ed and by takiing points in Mana Feed and using Life Tap -> Drain Life instead of a wand.

One final note - take Improved Drain Soul in this build. Casting a Shadow Bolt and using Drain Soul on the mob as the bolt is traveling towards the target is a very effective way to improve killing speed, as you'll usually get more than the mana you spent back from Improved Drain Soul. I consider it important for grinding with the Felguard.