• Home
  • Gul’Dan Horrifc Warlock

Gul’Dan Horrifc Warlock

by - 8 years ago

Gul’Dan has now been in the nexus for a number of weeks now and people are finally getting a good taste of what the Orc Warlock’s power can bring to a team in the nexus. Today I will cover a build that I’ve been working with that I think will serve you well in laying everything to waste in the nexus.

Abilities

D Trait Life Tap

Despite his overwhelming fel powers, Gul’Dan does not regenerate mana in any way. This lack of innate regen is made up by Life Tap, where Guldan will sacrifice a bit of his health in order to recover 25% of his maximum mana. Be very careful of mashing this as you don’t want to lose up to 50-75% of your life on accident.

Q Fel Flame

With an amazing cool down of 1.5 seconds and dealing a base 209 damage, fel flame is spamable and has a does damage in a decent cone in front of it. Cast it often and shove enemies and your lane out hard.

W Drain Life

This is where you’re going to get the max value out of Life Tap. Using this on an enemy drains life from them over 3 seconds, starting at a base 137 damage and heals you for a base 178 over that same amount of seconds. You can quickly recover your life with smart usage of this ability to keep your other abilities flying out.

E Corruption

I absolutely hate getting hit by this ability in games. It does a deceptive amount of damage and people sleep on the fact that corrpution’s damage is over time as well. There’s been more than a few moments where I’ve ate 2 bursts from this at low health, run to my well, tap it and still die to the damage. This skill is very underrated and can secure more than one kill for your team under the right circumstances.

Heroics

Horrify

Anything that makes your enemies lose control of their heroes is king, and this is pretty much the king of heroics. It does a minor amount of damage, dealing a base 124 damage, but it also Fear’s anyone hit by it for 2 seconds. The thing to note about this ultimate is that it will drive heroes away from the center in whatever direction they’re facing. It’s great to force enemies away from each other for clean pick offs and turning a team fight heavily into your favor.

Rain of Destruction

This is a long channeling ult at 7 seconds that drops really big rocks on your enemies that deal a base 171 damage. I really want to love this heroic, I love the concept behind it, its cast range is huge, but the area of effect is way too big to get any effective use out of it. Were the AOE a bit smaller, meaning the rocks would have less space to drop into and thus widen the damage area inside the heroic, this would be a great heroic to take. But as it is right now, Horrify is the vastly better heroic here.

The Build

Level 1 Echoed Corruption

With this quest talent, you need to hit 35 enemy heroes with corruption. However once you do, you will gain an additional 3 strikes on corruption going in the opposite direction giving your corruption a total of six strikes now. Great talent for an underrated ability for some massive damage onto enemy heroes.

Level 4 Consume Soul

This is going to go a long way in helping you out with Life Tap and keeping your mana up. By using this, you instantly kill an enemy creep and you heal for a base 379 health. This talent also comes with 2 charges, but it is on a 30 second cool down so keep that in mind. But again, it can help with wave push a great deal by simply removing 2 creeps from existance. Eat them ranged creeps up. Om nom nom nom.

Level 7 Curse of Exhaustion

Now we’re going to add a 50% slow effect to corruption for 2.5 seconds. This is just enough time for you to get closer to some one for a drain life or some additional fel flames to finish them off when they’re low.

Level 10 Horrify
See Heroics Section

Level 13 Healthstone

Once again, we’re going for burst heal talents where we can take them due to Life Tap being a drag on our health. Popping this 60 second cooldown talent instantly restores 25% of your health, essentially negating one use of Life Tap or bursting your health up suddenly if you get flanked and you’re missing a decent chunk of health quickly.

Level 16 Rampant Hellfire

With the slows, horrify, and everything else we’re bringing to the table now, Fel Flame is going to get a boost here. Each concecutive Fel Flame that lands on an enemy will do an additional 8% damage to them for up to 5 seconds stacking up to 5 times. That is up to 40% extra damage from a 1.5 second cool down ability. Burn everything!

Level 20 Demonic Circle

Ever wish you could just be somewhere else in the late game when a team fight goes wrong and you’ve lose a few teammates? With Demonic Circle you can do just that! Drop this bad boy down and you can teleport to it by activating the talent. This gives Gul’Dan great late game potential for split pushing. Set a circle down, push a lane until you start feeling unsafe and instead of mounting and running, you hit your Demonic Circle and port back to your safe spot.

Strategy

The most important thing you can do with Gul’Dan is learning how to properly juggle your health and your mana. You have a good 1.5 second cool down nuke that is amazing for wave clear. But the downside is you never regen mana without using Life Tap. Tapping too much will be catastrophic to your team since a low health Gul’Dan is still easy pickings for a hard diver like a Muradin, Johanna, Illidan, even Brightwing can give you fits if you attempt to panic Life Drain someone and you get stunned, polymorphed, or just flat out out damaged by your opponents. Learning how to do this will make Gul’Dan a terrifying force on the battlefield.

But for the early game, you definitely want to use your abilities to push lanes out hard and keep your life up via Life Drain and your mana high via Life Tap, you can have almost unparalleled sustain and push thanks to your skills and Consume Soul keeping your health high.

Once you start entering the mid game, you definitely want to take advantage of your heroic and put heroes way out of position thanks to a well time Horrify for easy pick offs, making a potential 5v5 into a 5v2 or worse for your opponents. Remember, taking away control of enemy heroes is king in hots and not only does Horrify do this, it can potentially push them into your direction for 2.5 seconds. That is plenty of time for you to get those key pick offs which can lead to a hard push thanks to fel flame and corruption doing absolutely absurd amounts of damage in conjunction with your teammates.

Once you start hitting the late game, including post twenty, Gul’Dan is in the unique position of being able to split push incredibly hard and then potentially rejoin teammates on the other side of the map during Demonic Circle. Play aggressive in your pushing, yet careful enough to know when to hit that circle and get out to rejoin your team for potentially game winning objectives.

Good luck out there burning everything to cinders out there in the nexus!


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


Comments are closed.