Blood Pact: Meet the minions, Part 6 - the felguard

Over the last few months Blood Pact has had a mini-series running to introduce the various demonic accessories. "Meet the Minions" has covered imps, voidwalkers, succubus and felhounds as well as infernals and doomguards. Along the way we have also covered such game-play lessons as pet-use, threat, crowd-control and mage-hate. So that only leaves the one minion to cover, the mighty felguard.
Unlike almost all the other minions there is no quest to gain the ability to summon the felguard -- you simply pop a point into the talent and this demonic knowledge is dropped into your brain. The talent is currently on the ninth tier of the demonology tree, so you will need to be level 50 before you can learn it. Even at level 80 you will need to invest almost 60% of your talent points into demonology just to reach it, leaving little room for anything in the other trees. Because of this the felguard is pretty much only seen with demonology-build warlocks. Hybrid builds were popular at the start of Wrath, but changes to spell mechanics have meant that they are rarely used these days.
So, if you have one of these meatbags, what are you supposed to do with them? It's hard to say what the original intent of the developers was when they decided to add this guy to our arsenal. We can do this with most of the others -- the imp is a ranged damage dealer, the succubus is for melee and CC, the void for tanking and the puppy for annoying mages. The felguard joins the show and not only deals a whole load of damage he can also take a huge amount as well. As such he pretty much makes your voidwalker and succubus obsolete.

This actually had almost no impact on raiding. The voidwalker could still tank Sarth (it was just harder and tanks were getting better gear anyway) and that was the only fight they were any use for (since the DPS were killing something else for the time the void was tanking). It did have a profound impact on solo play though. I don't have any access to figures about how many voidwalkers are summoned but I wager that after these changes if anyone had access to a felguard through their main or off-spec they used him instead. Maybe that tells us that the developers were looking for the felguard to be the damage minion in raids and the tank for solo play.
He certainly is the damage dealer in raids, doing more than twice that of any other minion you can bring. Indeed, you can expect over 20% of the damage you do in a raid to come from this guy. As we saw in the Blood Pact article about it, he also works very well with providing the Demonic Pact buff. Add this to the changes we are seeing in demonology damage potential and I think we're going to be seeing more felguards in Icecrown Citadel very soon.
Out in the wilds, when it's just you and your minion, just how useful is he? As it happens, he's immensely useful. As I've said, he is a very capable tank, a large part of his threat generation is based on his damage (which we know is decent) but he also has Anguish to raise his threat level further. Don't get carried away though, if you blast out your spells you will gain aggro and with no Misdirection ability there's not a lot you can do other than Soulshatter and slow down. Unlike the voidwalker he doesn't have an AoE taunt but instead he has Cleave. This isn't going to fixate extra mobs for long but it does mean he can get their attention while you set him taunting through one at a time.

At level 52 your felguard will learn a neat new trick called Intercept. Now, this is one of those abilities that I generally just left on auto-cast when leveling but I think I was missing a trick here. If you do have it auto-cast then he'll use it whenever he can, typically to start a fight all the sooner, and start it with a stun. This is good but it means that it will often be on cooldown when you could make use of it. The best time for that is when some other mob makes a run for you. This could be because you moved into their aggro range or they peeled away from the group the felguard was fighting.
What you want to have then is a means of getting that mob back onto the felguard and stopping it from molding your face to the shape of whatever weapon they are swinging. You can do this with a simple macro:
All you need do is hover your mouse over the errant mob and press the button bound to that macro. Assuming the felguard is at an appropriate range (between 8 and 25 yards) he will dash over and stun it. This will change the felguard's target but not yours, so if you want to put him back on to your target you need to send him in again (always worth having '/petattack' bound to a hotkey)./cast [target=mouseover, exists] [exists] Intercept
They have a couple of other abilities that you simply don't ever need to worry about, Demonic Frenzy means that he does more damage the longer he's been hitting stuff and Avoidance means he shrugs off all but the most crazy-serious AoE damage. These are passive abilities and are always 'on'.
In short, the felguard is a real power-house mixing survivability with raw damage output. He's a great leveling companion, he turns a lock into a group (able to take on all but the toughest group quests) and is becoming one of the must-have accessories in raids. All hail the mighty felguard!
Final words go to the classic Felguard Poem.

Filed under: Warlock, Raiding, (Warlock) Blood Pact
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ecwfrk Mar 1st 2010 3:12PM
That is a great pic.
YO ADRIAN!! I *cleave*
Omegan01 Mar 2nd 2010 2:48PM
"I must break you."
-intimidating glare-
Thorie Mar 1st 2010 3:16PM
Best. Picture. Ever
Cephas Mar 1st 2010 3:27PM
I think it's interesting that at the top you used the plural form of all of the demon names except for "succubus". The Latin nerd inside me can't help but tell you all that the plural of succubus is succubi.
Dominic Hobbs Mar 1st 2010 3:37PM
You know it, I know it but whenever I use it I get questions.
;o)
theminifig Mar 1st 2010 3:30PM
... Best picture in a long time.
One of my ex's didn't see the appeal of Rocky .. and I calmly explained to her.. "It wasn't the fact that he didn't win that makes it a great story.. it's the fact that he tried, still beat the ever living snot out of the guy, and still lost. He tried. Damn it... that's what makes him so special. :("
All she could reply was.. "oh."
Though, I have to admit.. if Rocky went against a Felguard.. I'd probably be placing my money on the Felguard.
Fernae Mar 1st 2010 3:52PM
Picture is made of win.
I just recently got my Felguard on my undead lock, but imho, he has the most dumbest name I have ever heared for a Felguard :< The name: Orikfagaz (yes, he has f.a.g. In his name :( ) I was so lookin foward to an epic name like Haduun or Jhutuum xD
but oh well, atleast it's unique in a way :p
Dominic Hobbs Mar 1st 2010 3:54PM
Be thankful you didn't get a Thuuthan, seriously, I laugh every time I see one of those.
Tori Mar 1st 2010 3:58PM
Heh, someone I know has the name Sharoon on his Felguard. xD I can't help but read it in my head as someone yelling the name Sharon. xD "SHAROOONNNN!!!"
MightyBurebista Mar 1st 2010 5:20PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OgYWLSrmlI
Talothan Mar 1st 2010 5:49PM
Mine is 'Blagroon'. Sounds more like an onomatopoeic representation of severe digestion...
The name list for the felguard is easily his worst aspect. He makes up for it with pure badassery in every other area, though.
ladyonyx Mar 1st 2010 6:16PM
i am fortunate enough to get a bad ass name for my felguard...skelshekor. it's so close to skeletor, plus it sounds delightfully evil.
Aldarion Mar 1st 2010 6:27PM
Uh, Thuuthan... That's an especially bad name if you're playing on a German server... (as it resembles the German word for turkey 'Truthahn').
And hey, my felguard's Sharoon, too. So what? We cultivate a meaningful and deep relationship... Should I choose to talent to demo, anyway.
MusedMoose Mar 1st 2010 7:25PM
@ Tori -
That's even funnier if you remember that Ozzy Osbourne's character in his commercial was a warlock. ^_^
morvajo Mar 1st 2010 9:17PM
Thughuun for me... i kind if like it hehe
Azizrael Mar 1st 2010 4:05PM
I've had a warlock as my main for three years now and I've never met my Felguard. Maybe Demonology 101 will inspire me to respec.
hehealme Mar 1st 2010 11:59PM
I've recently switched to Demo for ICC-25 content (doing attempts on LK) and I must say I absolutely love the spec. It has the complexity Affliction used to have, the big crits Destro has, and a pet that's actually worth micro managing (and, yes, Meta is so win, especially with Levitate! If you don't know what I mean...try it).
I do wish Felguard would get his 4th ability already. Its been 2 expansions, Blizz, make the pet I spec to get at least have the same number of abilities as the baseline pets. KTHX.
michael.separovich Mar 12th 2010 10:28AM
he does, the last ability is demonic frenzy, you know the reason why he ends up with 7k ap in combat, yeah, that one.
just coz is no clicky clicky dont mean it wont help him sticky sticky
Darasen Mar 1st 2010 4:59PM
I recently switched my leveling Warlock from Affliction with a side of Demonology to Demonology because the Void simply was not sufficient for many Outland Quests after they took that huge nerf. I had canned the character for some time.
Alden Mar 1st 2010 5:10PM
Could you talk about pvp applications? I have never had a lock, but as a rogue these guys give me hell.
Can they see through stealth or something? Or do they do an AoE? It seems whenever one of these are out, I lose my stealth. I know blueberries have their stealth detection that I know to watch for... but what about these guys?