World first Xavius solo kill achieved by Affliction Warlock

This late in an expansion, when progression has been exhausted and we’re all waiting for the next big thing, players begin to test the true limits of their class. Such is the case with MrNinjaBurger (also known as Lockolock) who, playing an Affliction Warlock, achieved a world first solo kill of Xavius. MrNinjaBurger has not only made the video available for viewing, but also provided an extensive breakdown of how this feat was achieved.

Soloing Xavius required not only a particular set of talents, but a couple of key legendaries, too:

958 Ilvl 79/80 points, standard raid talents, and Prydaz and Soul of the Netherlord.

This fight sort of hopes rng is in your favor and you get the dream first. It’s pretty important.

So in this fight you do this cool thing where you do very little damage at the start so your pet can hold aggro. Very exciting gameplay!

You do this so that your pet can take damage for you while you do some passive damage via dots. Your pet will die around the time the first manifested corruption pops up which is great because a new infernal can taunt that and it will never lose aggro.

Keep it dotted and make sure the void is back on the boss for extra dps.

Honestly for the first few voidlings you should just take the insanity hit to avoid having to stop draining. Or don’t your call. I tried kiting them and found it less than satisfactory.

Once you go insane pop all cds (you get them back) and go to town on him. Don’t let your dots fall off adds at all costs.

You need to get him to at least P2 (3 is ideal) before you finish your first madness.

The reason being meteor does 5 million damage and 40 corruption so you get at most 2 of these before you go back into madness.

On the first one I dot the mobs with DL to help get my health back up, and postpone some sanity loss in addition to getting my wrath damage started.

On the 2nd I use my defensive and put some dots on a respawning mob to keep the buff rolling.

The key to this fight is Soul of the Netherlord as it allows you to keep SL and in the final madness allows your damage to scale to insane levels. I did 165 million damage to him in 20 seconds with it. I can not recommend it enough. Finished with .6 seconds on the clock before MC. Calculated.

If you’re a pet class and he’s almost dead dont’ despair as it won’t reset until your pet is dead. So if he’s nearly dead make sure your pet is topped off (or get a fresh one) pop it’s defensives and prey it can finish him off for you.

The legendaries used, Prydaz and Soul of the Netherlord, make complete sense in a scenario like this one. Affliction Warlocks have survivability (and self-sustainability) that makes most tanks envious. The shield from Prydaz is not just huge but frequent, regularly buying time to heal back up — or just plain absorbing a few extra hits from a boss on a regular basis. Soul of the Netherlord means the Warlock can have both Death’s Embrace for the damage and Siphon Life for even more healing.

The full list of talents used are as follows:

• Malefic Grasp
• Contagion
• Demonic Circle
• Soul Harvest
• Demon Skin
• Grimoire of Supremacy
• Siphon Life

Generally speaking, this talent build is razor-focused on two things: single-target damage and survivability. Though the encounter does include some adds, they aren’t overwhelming, so we don’t see any talent picks aimed at AOE or much assistance with multi-dotting.

In Legion, Affliction Warlocks seem almost uniquely suited to absurd feats like these. While they started the expansion slow, they rapidly grew in power over time — so much so that Affliction Warlocks received a sizable nerf to their self-healing in a recent set of hotfixes, yet remain the unrivaled masters of it. Considering my own Affliction Warlock is my favorite character, I hesitate to say they’re overpowered… but honestly? They’re extremely powerful. That alone doesn’t take away from how impressive this boss kill is, though. As powerful as Affliction Warlocks may be, these solo kills always take grand execution, too.