Rift Defiler Experts Guide

Rift Defiler Experts Guide by Erethzium

Yes, yet another Defiler guide. Woohoo. This one is mainly used for Experts, but I suppose could be used in raids as well.

Spec:61 Defiler/9 Justicar/ 6 Inquisitor

Now, you may ask, “Justicar? What the ****? Tanking soul in a healing build? -Icars are dead you idiot!”, but after playing 61 Defiler in dungeons with this spec, I found that Salvation was always doing roughly 20% of my total healing. And that’s a lot. Being able to heal the group a bit with Salvation really compliments Defiler’s DPS-oriented playstyle. Also, Bolt of Radiance is in the spam macro not only because it’s instant cast, but because it does more Salvation healing, with only a little less damage than Somatic Desecration.

Anyways…

Buffs:

Grief Blight (Or, if you’ve got 4100+ SP and/or a really geared tank, I’d go with Rage Blight)
Armor of Devotion
Feast of the Fallen
Chimera’s Gift
And of course, your links: 30%, 20%, 10% and 5%.

30% link goes on the tank of course, and the other links you can do whatever with. Melee should get priority, though.

Basic playstyle:

Keep the HoT (Hideous Reconstruction) up on the tank at all times. Then just DPS normally, keeping up Marrow Harvest, Bond of Pain, and Siphon Vitality. (Then spread them using Unholy Nexus, if there are other targets around) When all of those are up, use the SPAM macro to DPS and add Foul Growth stacks to the tank/other links.

Use Ghastly/Loathsome restoration to pop Foul Growth stacks on the tank as necessary, using the Ghastly macro first, and then Loathsome if Ghastly is on CD. You can also use Loathsome as a group spot-heal, as it heals for a decent amount and has no CD. Also, don’t hesitate to use Explosive Growth if the tank is taking big hits. With Empowered Affliction, you can easily regen mana very quickly.

Tank taking big damage, or is about to? No problem, 61 Defiler has the best tank CD in the game: Unstable Transformation. -50% damage taken, +50% healing taken, and ~2200 heal each time the target is hit? What’s not to love? Pop this on the tank and his health won’t drop for the next 10 seconds, allowing you to focus a bit on DPS or healing other group members.

If you want to push DPS even higher though, you can mix Pain Transmission into your normal rotation. This also involves smart use of Beacon of Despair. Pain Transmission is easily the Defiler’s best damage ability, and is the highest DPS ability you have, when at least 2 links are in range of the target. Which is usually the tank and your beacon, but you can also stand in melee range to get even more DPS, if the boss is melee-safe. Just make sure to dismiss your beacon intelligently, so you don’t pull anything with it.

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Now, this build does NOT have an AoE cleanse, so for fights like Valthundr or 3rd/4th boss of SBP that require an AoE cleanse, this build doesn’t work. So I’d recommend carrying around a Sent or Puri/Sent spec for fights that require AoE cleanse.

This build also has somewhat weak AoE healing, but not completely weak. Putting the HoT on all of the group and then just spamming Feedback seems to get the job done, most of the time.

Anyways, have some handy macros:

SPAM

#show Bolt of Radiance
suppressmacrofailures
cast Bolt of Radiance
cast Somatic Desecration

Ghastly on Focus Target

#show Ghastly Restoration
suppressmacrofailures
cast @focus Ghastly Restoration

Regular Ghastly/Loathsome

#show Ghastly Restoration
suppressmacrofailures
cast Ghastly Restoration
cast Loathsome Restoration

Dismiss Beacon of Despair

cancelbuff Summon Beacon of Despair

At roughly 4200 SP, I can easily pull ~3500 DPS single target while still healing well, and if the whole group is stacked up on the boss (Manslaughter, etc.) I can easily push 6k with Pain Transmission’s awesomeness. I’ve used this build for a while now, and it’s capable of healing all experts, minus the bosses that require AoE cleanse, of course. I tend to use it over regular healing builds, because the added 3-4k DPS certainly speeds things up. Especially on trash, where DPS can go as high as 10-12k with Defiler’s awesome AoE.