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Seed of Corruption

Seed of Corruption

6% of base mana	40 yd range

2 sec cast
Requires Warlock (Affliction)
Requires level 21

Embeds a demon seed in the enemy target, causing (94.5% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 18 sec. Detonates for (68.25% of Spell power) Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yards after the target dies or takes [6 * 0.5 * ((15.75% of Spell power) + (15.75% of Spell power))] damage from your spells.

Affliction
Soulburn:
Your Seed of Corruption detonation effect will afflict Corruption on all enemy targets.

Buff

Seed of Corruption	Magic

Causes (15.75% of Spell power) Shadow damage every 3 sec. After taking 0 damage from the caster or dying, Seed of Corruption deals Shadow damage to the caster's enemies within 10 yards.
18 seconds remaining

Spell Details

Duration

18 seconds

School

Shadow

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

Magic

GCD category

Normal

Cost

6% of base mana

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

2 seconds

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Periodic Damage
Interval: 3 seconds

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Dummy
Value: 1
Server-side script

Effect #3

Apply Aura: Dummy
Server-side script

Guides

Warlock DPS Guide

Warlords of Draenor
Warlock Changes

Comments

Comment by Carighan

This spell will probably get changed to one of the following two (with the first being a lot more likely):
a) Every Warlock can only have one Seed active at any given time.
b) Damage from a Seed exploding is not counted towards the trigger of any other Seeds in the area.

And _possibly_ it'll be both.

Comment by skitzosmeagol

This spell is amazing in AV from what i hear, put i on a couple people along with the other dots, they see their life dropping and retreat, and end up retreating to their team and blow 1/2 of them up.

Comment by Hobbes

Unfortunately SoC does not benefit from corruption talents

Comment by rlyeh

From a Horde perspective - a pair of lvl 70 Warlocks using this and UA together can rip apart a bottleneck defense at the bridge in AV or anywhere for that matter. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful as 4 of these going off with UAs on people? The panic that ensues is unbelievable.

Bottleneck breaker spell in PvP. Actually you can pair this with either UA or Shadowfury to completely wreck a group's composure. Sprinkle on a little Rain of Fire with talents adding stun% and you're melting faces off.

Comment by Venox

This is a very useful spell to farm with, contrary to what others might believe. It does take a bit of skill and eventually luck to get it to work right though. Near Manaforge B'naar in the Netherstorm, one could send a voidwalker (or a Felguard) to round up various Geologists and Engineers around the area, getting 5 to 6 or even more is ideal. Though this becomes more risky with larger numbers of course. Anyhow if you're able to get at least 3~4 SoC's off on the groups, and keep them rounded up, you'll be able to annihilate the entire group.

Of course there are several drawbacks, which will probably outweight the advantages in some eyes. Obviously if at any point in this does a mob or two miss out in the explosions, or if your voidwalker/felguard die, you'll be in a whole lot of trouble. But it's interesting to try nonetheless.

Comment by Gutts

this spell can crit so walocks should be careful when to apply it.Best if you leta mage get all the aggro beofre you spam it on the mobs.

Comment by littlidabbi

Warning : Seed of Corruption explodes through floors and walls and can pull mobs from other levels and rooms(Common in Scholo pulling the basement and mobs in rooms below u at Gandling). So avoid using Seed of Corruption in instances with 2 levels or rooms close to each other.

Comment by Scivar

It's good to use against non-elite adds in dungeons, basically kills all in range instantly.

Comment by smdante

In battlegrounds...

If you find that an opponent is taking a lot of damage in a huge cluster 'em but is being healed through it by a healer, casting curse of tongue on the healer and spamming the seed on the one taking the damage will cause lots of numbers fly and wipe out lots quickly.

The explosion is even more damage than a shadow bolt... but to multiple targets. It can be very mean when you can find a chance to use it.

Comment by mcmuff

Seed of Corruption was really OP on the PTR, check the videos below:
Epic moments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtDihmthvH8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xL6jjllza0

It did 2-3k more DMG than usually, 60000yd range, instant cast, AoE-spell and you could also cast it while dead as a ghost.

And you said fear was OP ;D

(got fixed pretty fast)

Comment by NaraRaven

As a 70 BElf lock i have to say it has got to be one of my favorite abilities. Its great to use in AV is u see a huge group of people put it on like 3-5 people and just watch the fireworks!

Comment by Tankadin

i'd just like to say (as a mage) flamestrike is childsplay

this move tears everything(and everyone) apart this is the one spell that is arguabily better then any AoE spell a mage has talented or otherwise...i may reroll a lock for this and many other reasons though i have to say this seems somewhat OP but if i'm correct it can be removed which helps...ALOT

Comment by CaptainUnusual

This is useful for farming large numbers of lower level mobs, such as the eels in zangarmarsh which drop motes of water. I can gather 5 or 6, then cast 3 of these, and collect the motes.

Just be sure not to cast the first seed on the target the felguard is attacking. If you do, it will go off early, and you'll aggro all the mobs.

Comment by BigRedBrent

They need to make Fel Concentration apply to this spell as well so that I no longer need to use hellfire or rain of fire.

Comment by billybobjunior

Using this DoT on an afflic lock is real powerful. An afflic lock can siphon life agony corrupt unstable afflict immolate and SoC. Also the after effects r real cool and work real good in AV and EoS...practically any bg :P

Comment by POINGjam

Seed of Corruption is about to get a big buff with the changes to spell pushback in the expansion. Speccing Affliction is the best way to increase the damage of Seed of Corruption, but an Affliction Warlock tends to self-tank (rather than using the Felguard or improved Voidwalker), so it has a hard time seeding mobs while being attacked by a group.

Post-WOTLK, spell pushback won't exceed one second per cast, thus making Seed of Corruption usable while under attack from a group.

Comment by incoming00

originally, when casting seed of corruption, attempting corruption will create an error message to pop up and indicate a stronger spell is active. now, after the 3.0.2 patch, it appears that casting corruption will now replace the seed of corruption.

Comment by br459jr

terrible for PvE! warlocks get so screwed in end game.

Comment by reodlive

Careful when using easy to steal threat from tank with multi mobs.

Comment by Hideharu

I play on Alleria for the Horde where the Alliance greatly outnumber us (no idea how the other servers are). I have yet to enter Wintergrasp and not have at least 35000 - 40000 health (usually 13000) from the bonus.

With that said... the seed of corruption is one of the most devastating spells out there if you can actually cast it without being jumped. Since there's so many of them, all I have to do is run up to a massive fight just close enough to cast and start throwing them out there... I've seen it hit for over 10000 on each target. It's not hard to find someone retreating into the group either... which is a great place to plant a seed.

Also nice when attacking the castle. When someone is standing on the walls by the towers, you hit them with it and something else causing them to flee near the others who are usually hiding behind the wall.

Comment by yiNXs

The spellpower coefficient of the dot is 25% per tick, but the blast only has about 21% SP coefficient, like an instant cast AOE blast such as the mage's Arcane Explosion. I was hoping for more, considering the cast time, but I guess that would probably make it too powerful.

If it could run full time, the DOT itself would be one of the strongest DoT's a warlock has, strong basepower and a great coefficient, but because the damage cap is fixed at 1518, the final blast will happen faster depending on SP (assuming it's the only source of damage). Here is the the DOT live time vs SP table:

non till 202 SP: 18 sec
203-505 SP: 15 sec
506-1011 SP: 12 sec
1012-2023 SP: 9 sec
2024-5059 SP: 6 sec
5060 and more = 3 sec

Of course, talents, (de)buffs, procs, etc. will also affect this, so this is just a rough guideline. I found it useful to know this for timing and aggro prevention reasons.

Comment by SpiderGames

This spell is chainable. I was helping a guildy in the hillsbrad foothills and a lvl 50 rogue thought he would sneak in and kill my guildy. I had SoC on about six mobs after pulling half the farm. the rogue came out of stealth behind my guildy, i use my rocket launcher from Engineering. Hit one of the farmers and BOOM! Everything within a 40 yard radius was destroyed, including the rogue =D.

Comment by tom226

what happons if the target dies b4 1044 shadow dmg is taken?

Comment by Kaynos

This spell is 100% Win in AV. Cast that when the other team is turtling then sit back and enjoy the numbers.

Comment by Martie

I've been wondering about this spell.

I remember back in BC, it was lovely to team up with a lock on my tank, pull all the mobs I could find, and have them all die in a few seconds.

But the spell damage coefficient for the AoE ability is rather low - is that an issue, or is it powerful enough to pull threat easily on trash packs in places like Naxx?

Comment by Dip0sable13

wasnt there something that could reduce the cast time on Seed? aside from haste rating, i swore ive seen something that reduces it to a 1.5 cast time.

either that was in BC or something, or i was simply dreaming or imagining something.

could someone confirm?

Comment by mouni

This spell works great with http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47847... try it out... whether your grinding or pvping.

For example, AV... as two sides are fighting... go on top of a mountain:
1st http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47836 (launch as many as u can before your mana runs out)
2nd http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47847 = instant death to all and you just become number 1 in dmg charts AND most honor! GRADULATIONS, everyone is jealous and keep telling you how overpowered warlocks are... a dispute that will reach the xroads within seconds.
3rd if not everybody died due to a healer and they spoted you... http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47820
4th http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=61290

If they survived your original 2 attacks, chances are they won't have much life left and the next 2 should finish them off! Even if you die, your group will finish them off and you'll be that much closer to finish.

Little tip if there's healers during the SoC spam... aim the attack to long range casters such as locks, mages and hunters since their going to be closer to the healers and most healers pay more attention to the front lines where the melee are. You'll wipe out all the melees support including the healers and then it's easy pickings!

Don't have Shadowfury?
No problem...
1st cast http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47836
then if your affliction pop some http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47843 and the same target... What's the first thing a healer will try to do? dispell (if possible). If your lucky and you get a priest to use mass dispell, the unstable affliction will instantly kill him since each one of your targets should have a SoC + UA.

If your demonology:
1st DEMON FORM
2nd Void Shield
3rd http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47836
4th http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=54785
5th http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=50589
6th http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47823 (if spec properly, you dmg from this spell can be reduced anywhere between 31 to 51%... click on the spell for more hints how)

Comment by Jorre

The very last part of the tooltip confuses me.

"...Only one Corruption spell per Warlock can be active on any one target."
I don't have acces to my account at the moment, so I can't check for myself, but when I read this I understand it as I can only cast SoC on one target at a time, thus, if I choose to cast it on another mob before it expires it's removed form the first mob. However when reading the comments and Warlock forum posts it seems this is not the case. Anyone feel like enlightening me?

...plus, if you'd like to share how this works out with ordinary corruption, feel free to do so!

Comment by Railander

This spell is possibly, if not, the strongest AE damaging spell currently in game, along with Volley and an Unholy DK's DoTs.

I coult reach 20k dps another day in an ICC 10m rep farm.

A comparison between a Destro lock's Rain of Fire and an Affli lock's Seed of Corruption can be:
%+ from critical strikes:
SoC=50% --------------- RoF=100%
cast time between damage ticks:
SoC=2 sec -------------- RoF=2 sec
critical strike damage with ~3000 sp:
SoC=5k and above --- RoF=~4k
non-critical stirke damage with ~3000 sp:
SoC=3.3k and above - RoF=~2k

Also I'd like to point out that after playing with both specs for a long period that SoC's coefficient (after all talents and similars) seems way higher than RoF's. a trinket proc for +600 sp would add only about 100 dmg crits to RoF while adding way more to SoC.

EDIT: Also note that this spell was changed to also damage its main target on the final blast. I do not know when this was changed but I could be almost 100% sure it wasn't like this back in TBC times.

Comment by lectrick

Is this one of the AOE's that breaks sheep? (Some do, some don't, lately)

Comment by Khadhar

Does the seed bomb harm the target you cast it on now?

Comment by Bishop36

Prune of Corruption

Comment by Hollingsworthrl

Does anyone have problems w/ SoC being spell reflected in the ICC heroics? I am forced to use RoF because I keep getting SoC used against me and instantly killing me and possibly others around me. LOL Really keeps me from doing as much damage as I'd like to be doing. :(

Comment by efirus

Sorry for a noobie question, but nevertheless I have to ask...

I was arguing with a friend of mine what is the most effective way to use SoC: my friend says that it does more DPS if you cast it on a single target one by one and it explodes immediately, but I'm sure that tab-spam on multiple targets would make more DPS...

So who is right?

Comment by Chaosmancer

The shadow damage bonus from Haunt also apply to SoC, making the damage even higher (20 or 23% depending on glyph).

Comment by Railander

Also note that the only thing that will not trigger the SoC explosion are other SoC explosions around the afflicted target which were also cast by you. SoC explosions from other warlocks will still trigger your own.
This means if you intend to create a chain reaction while soloing, unless you use some other aoe spell to do so (Shadowflame or Shadowfury for instance) and assuming no other source of damage besides the SoC itself, each explosion will still happen one by one with (probably) the exact same time intervals which you casted each one.

Comment by Tripster

Gah! They broke it in Cat! The Aoe effect only does 1/3 of the original damage! Or maybe the tooltip is just wrong...hopefully

Comment by Gimroth

Imbeds a demon seed in the enemy target...
Good thing they left out details regarding the application method, I honestly wouldn't want to know...

I suspect Seed of Life to be its sworn counterpart, or vice versa, depending on who you ask.

Comment by Lathdari

Comment by jtunis

There seems to be something wrong with the way this scales. It only ever ticks once for me, at which point the target has taken 2033 damage, so the seed explodes, removing the dot. As a result, I'm hardly getting any benefit from the dot part, which removes any potential cleave utility.

I've been saying this to myself for a while. The explosion threshold on the spell doesn't scale, so eventually you'll only see one tick before the seed detonates. I think that Seed of Corruption needs to be redesigned. The DoT component doesn't serve a purpose, nor does the cast time. AoE abilities are generally instant.

Here's an idea: Remove the casting time and make the DoT component tick thrice over a flat 3 seconds (which scales) before detonation. Warlocks could then just target and DoT enemies; similar to the way Mages do with Living Bomb.

Comment by Kanariya

Seed of Corruption now stacks with Corruption. It also will stack with a , allowing you to have two seeds on one target, without overwriting a Soulburned seed.

Comment by Clausi

Seed of Corruption is the Soulburn buffed dot of SoC

Seed of Corruption

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