Demon Armor Warlock Build

Introduction

Welcome to our Demon Armor Warlock build! In this build, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to utilize the Life Drain Warlock build in Dark and Darker. This includes Skills, Perks, Stat Priority and more!

This Warlock build focuses on becoming an unstoppable magical juggernaut of death and inferno. To achieve this, the heavy use of melee and plate armor is essential. This set-up has a hard requirement of a specific perk – Demon Armor.

Skills

Phantomize and Spell Memory are the recommended skills required to run the Demon Armor Warlock build. Spell Memory can fill out the Warlock kit with some damage & utility. Life Drain and Summon Hydra is the focal point of the build for sustain and disruption. Phantomize provides a way to escape dangerous situations or push through monsters and players by phasing you into a spirit form.

Recommended Demon Armor Warlock Build Spells

For this particular Warlock build, the recommended spells are the following:

Life Drain
Curse of Pain
Summon Hydra
Hellfire
Flame Walker

Life Drain and Summon Hydra are currently the two most important spells of the build. Curse of Pain and Flame Walker assist with DoT damage and mob clearing. However, both Curse of Pain and Flame Walker can put pressure on enemy players too. Additionally, Flame Walker can be used to make enemy players not push you, if you are to back away from them. Hellfire is a fantastic tool to break doors in a pinch. Both for escaping or chasing players and monsters.

Perks

For this Warlock build, we recommend the following perks:

Demon Armor (A MUST HAVE)
Dark Reflection or Malice
Shadow Touch
Antimagic

Demon Armor is the essential perk that allows the Warlock to wear Plate armor. Shadow Touch provides a decent amount of sustain in-combat and some additional damage. Antimagic serves as a generally good defensive perk versus magic damage. The last perk slot is flexible between Dark Reflection and Malice. Malice is a simple percentage increase to your Will, while Dark Reflection inflicts damage to attackers.

Stat Priority

Knowledge
Max Health
Vigor
True Magical Damage
Magical Power
Additional Movement Speed

Knowledge and Max health are the highest priorities in the build. Reaching around 120-130+ Max Health is preferred. Knowledge, however, has two breakpoints. The first breakpoint is the ability to use all of your equipped spells. The second breakpoint is around 32~ for casting speed. True Magical Damage is a BIS stat, however, it is VERY expensive to buy. As a result, try to focus less on the Magical Power & True Magical Damage at first.

Movement Speed is very important in Dark and Darker – we highly recommended finding some of this stat on boots where possible.

Weapons

Weapons for the Demon Armor Warlock build is a fairly straightforward situation and not too important overall. The main choice for the build that we recommend, however, is a combination of Spellbook & Long Sword. The alternative, is to run a combination of Spellbook & Falchion + Heater Shield. Feel free to mess around with either combination if you prefer a “front-line style” with the Falchion and Shield.

Armor

For the Demon Armor Warlock build, a mixture of plate armor, leather and cloth is ideal for stats and movement speed:

Greathelm
Fine Cuirass
Occultist Boots (preferably with Additional Movement Speed rolled onto them)
Heavy Gauntlets
Leather Chausses

The above loadout provides the best possible resistances without compromising your movement speed too much. Try to build your loadout with the above in mind to yield the most optimal results. Finally, do not forget to find the associated stat priorities required for the build!

How to Play the Demon Armor Warlock Build

The playstyle surrounding the Demon Armor Warlock is fairly similar to a standard Falchion-style Warlock setup. However, this build provides the option of zone control with Summon Hydra and a potent combo with Hydra + Life Drain.

The main goal of the build when fighting players is to hit the following priority:

Open with Curse of Pain if you’re in range to apply pressure
Summon Hydra to either block your opponent’s exit or your opponent’s path to you
Push your opponent by crouch jumping over your Hydra and with Flame Walker active, or by Phantomizing through
If you have to retreat, cast Flame Walker and pull back
Play as a frontline sustain tank for your teammates

The best way to utilize being a plate armored Warlock is to apply pressure and gain or take space in a fight between players. Typically, it’s expected that a plate user is up front and tanking. However, you can play a game of push and pull with your enemies via ranged casting pressure. You’re usually safe too as you are FAR from squishy when it comes to casters. As a result, don’t be afraid to push up and get active as a spell-slinging fighter.

Between this priority, you have a potent combo at your disposal for your sustain. First, cast Summon Hydra at any location near you. Then, cast Life Drain on your Hydra. Doing this Combo allows you to gain a lot of your missing Health back for free, a much-needed combo. Once you have this playstyle loop down of fighting, finding time between rooms to cast the Hydra + Life Drain combo, then fight again – you’re set!

It should be noted that Hellfire is a fantastic tool for chasing or escaping through closed doors. To utilize this safely, get up close to the door. Then, cast Hellfire while looking at the very top of the door frame. Casting Hellfire in this way means you can safely run through the door right after without dying to yourself.

PVE

For PVE, the usual pattern of just using melee to kill monsters is totally fine. Another method is to fire a hellfire into a clump of enemies from a distance. However our recommended way to clear monsters is the following:

Gather up the entire room of monsters
Once gathered, cast Summon Hydra on top of yourself
Cast Flame Walker and activate your Phantomize
Run back and forth between all the monsters until they’re dead

Running constantly between monsters constantly re-applies Flame Walker to each of them. Additionally, running next to the monsters causes them to try and attack you. However, while you’re in the Phantomize skill – you cannot be hit physically. Usually this means the monsters hit each other, making the clear much faster.

Multiclassing Options

Multiclassing has been taken out of Dark and Darker to be reworked. We’ll update this section when more information is released.