Overpowered Warlock build surfaces ahead of WoW’s Castle Nathria raid

A broken Warlock build has been discovered hours ahead of the release of Castle Nathria, World of Warcraft’s first raid of the Shadowlands expansion.

Twitch streamer and content creator Kalamazi found what he calls his “sandbag” build today, making use of the Affliction and Destruction talent Grimoire of Sacrifice and the baseline spell Ritual of Doom.

Instead of going for Haunt for Affliction and Roaring Blaze for Destruction, Kalamazi experimented with Grimoire of Sacrifice, a usually far weaker spell that sacrifices your demon pet for power, gaining its demon ability, and causing your spells to sometimes deal additional shadow damage. On its own, it’s a clear DPS decrease. But when combined with Ritual of Doom, Kalamazi realized it was an entirely different story.

Ritual of Doom, a Warlock spell reintroduced with the release of Shadowlands, begins a ritual that sacrifices a random participant to summon a Doomguard. It requires five players to complete the ritual and has a one-hour cooldown. But the hostile Doomguard can then be tamed with the use of Subjugate Demon.

Regardless of whether this is intentional on Blizzard’s part, Grimoire of Sacrifice and the Doomguard stack, leading to a massive boost of single target damage. In testing this build, Kalamazi’s DPS shot up, with 21 percent of his damage coming from the Doomguard alone.

This combination of abilities, according to Kalamazi, makes Warlock “technically the best DPS [class]” in Castle Nathria.

The only downside of the build is Ritual of Doom’s one-hour cooldown. After wiping on a boss, the build goes to waste. Kalamazi, though, found a way around this. The last boss of End Time, a dungeon found in the Caverns of Time, has an hourglass that brings every ability off of cooldown, including Ritual of Doom. This means you’ll have to travel back and forth to Caverns of Time after every wipe, but with a few Warlocks logged in and ready to summon, it could be well worth the effort.

It’s unclear if Blizzard will step in and nerf this build before the mythic version of Castle Nathria releases next week. But for now, Kalamazi’s sandbag build is up for the taking.