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Drain Life
Spell shadow lifedrain02
  • Drain Life
  • Level 9 warlock ability
  • 40 yd range
  • Channeled
  • Drains life from the target, causing 25 Shadow damage over 5 sec, and healing you for 500% of the damage done.
Properties
Class Warlock
School Shadow
Cooldown None/Global Cooldown
Other information
Level learned 9
Improvements Spell shadow lifedrain [Accrued Vitality], Warlock spelldrain [Essence Drain], Inv flaming splinter [Grim Feast], Spell warlock soulburn haunt [Rot and Decay]
Related debuff
Spell shadow lifedrain02
  • Drain Life
  • Suffering X Shadow damage every 1 seconds.
    Restoring health to the Warlock.
  • Duration: 5 seconds
"Tonight, I'll drink to your health—may it long be mine."[1]

Drain Life is a channeled warlock spell that damages a targeted enemy, draining their health to restore the warlock's own.

Tips and Tactics[]

  • While the healing returned itself cannot crit, damaging critical ticks will appropriately return twice the amount of healing.

Background[]

This appears to be the Life Drain ability that Dark Rangers used in Warcraft III. This ability absorbs the life essence of a target enemy unit and gives it to the Dark Ranger.[2]

Lore[]

Delrach the Vile TCG

An undead warlock draining the life energy of a skull.

Warlocks could leech life energy and power their own magical abilities.[3] The warlocks' death/mortal coil spell is a variation of the Drain Life spell and is one of the necromantic abilities[4] warlocks share with necromancers.[5]

Draining the life energy of creatures, plants, and people with magic ages them.[6][7][8]

Trivia[]

Gallery[]

Patch changes[]

  • Dragonflight Hotfix (2023-07-13): Fixed an issue where Drain Life would not target enemies affected by Ability ardenweald warlock [Soul Rot] via Ability warlock soulswap [Soul Swap].
  • Shadowlands Patch 9.0.1 (2020-10-13): Now learned at level 9 (was 13).
  • Battle for Azeroth Patch 8.0.1 (2018-07-17): New visual effect. Now available again for Affliction. Duration reduced to 5 seconds (from 6). Mana cost increased to 3% per sec (up from 1% per sec).
  • Legion Patch 7.1.5 (2017-01-10): No longer available to Affliction.
  • Legion Patch 7.1.0 (2016-10-25): Damage increased by 5%. Now learned at level 13 (was 1).
  • Legion Hotfix (2016-09-23): Drain Life damage increased by 10% for Affliction.
  • Legion Hotfix (2016-08-26): Drain Life now does damage of 35% of Spell Power per tick (was 30%).
  • Legion Hotfix (2016-07-22): Drain Life and Drain Soul now consider Mechanicals to be valid targets.
  • Legion Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Now learned at level 1 by all warlocks (was Affliction and Demonology only at level 10). Healing significantly increased.
  • Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14): No longer available to Destruction warlocks. No longer gains a benefit from Spell warlock soulburn [Soulburn]. Now heals for 30% less than before. Now leared at level 10 (was 7).
  • Mists of Pandaria Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): Duration increased from 3 to 6 sec. Can no longer be dispelled. Now learned at level 7 (was 6).
  • Cataclysm Hotfix (2011-05-19): Now deals 25% less damage.
  • Cataclysm Patch 4.0.3a (2010-11-23):
    • Damage has been reduced by approximately 12%.
    • The Spell warlock soulburn [Soulburn] version of this was charging 17% of base mana instead of 12% like the normal version. This has been corrected.
  • Cataclysm Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12): Range increased to 40 yards (up from 30 yards). Now learned at level 6 (was 14).
  • Wrath-Logo-Small Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Visual spell effect changed.
  • Bc icon Patch 2.3.0 (2007-11-13): Now reduce the amount healed when the warlock is affected by healing reducing effects.
  • Bc icon Patch 2.2.0 (2007-09-25): The tooltip for this spell will now update correctly when a Warlock is affected by spell haste.
  • Bc icon Patch 2.0.1 (2006-12-05): Range has been increased.
  • Test-inline Patch 0.8 (2004-07-07): Life Drain renamed to Drain Life.

See also[]

References[]

 
  1. ^ Heroes of Azeroth, Steal Essence
  2. ^ http://classic.battle.net/war3/neutral/darkranger.shtml
  3. ^ Tides of War pg. 362 - "Ambush! Attack!" cried Malkorok. He suited action to word, charging at a huge brown bear with painted markings ripping into an undead warlock who was frantically trying to drain the druid's life to power his own magical abilities.
  4. ^ The Schools of Arcane Magic - Necromancy
  5. ^ Justin Parker on Twitter (2014-08-07)
  6. ^ Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects - He spoke an incantation, and a strand of white arcane energy shot out from the artifact. It wrapped itself around the whelp, a rope of magic, and began to pull golden life energy from the small dragon. It squeaked in pain. "No!" screamed Kirygosa, lunging forward. The man jerked on the chain, hard. Kirygosa dropped to her knees, hissing in agony. The whelp grew. It opened its mouth and let out a small, squeaking cry as its body spasmed. Thrall could almost hear bones creaking and skin stretching as the mage drained its life energy, aging it quickly.
  7. ^ The Last Guardian - "Nature magic?" asked Medivh. "Ripening, culling, harvesting? Can you take a seed and pull the youth from it until it becomes a flower?"
  8. ^ Rise of the Horde

External links[]

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