Got Warlock Questions?

[Aquizit]

Put 'em here!

I'm an expert in affliction, with working knowledge in destro.

If I dunno the answer, I'll find it for you!

[Alphaeus]

Is Affliction still the ideal leveling build, and is the technique 'dot the shit out of it, fear it, profit'?

[Sörröw]

Why do people QQ when their class is changed.. but they never roll a Warlock when their class isn't changed that often in the patch notes?

Also, I, personally, find that Warlocks are great fun and actually have a hard earned 'role' in the game. Why do you feel it's the least played class of all? (Statistically speaking I -believe- it is but I'm not 100% on that).

If you could point out the flaws in Warlocks. What do you feel they are when it comes to PvP/PvE/Gear/Specs?

[Lisbet]

Will you faction transfer and come be a good warlock for us? They don't exsist on alliance side outside of Ansem. *nod* and NONE of them will play afflic.. at all.. ever.

[Okhu]

And then I spec affliction and lol at Yogg-Saron because I can turn my back on him and his sanity sucking skully-faces can't do shit about it. HAWWWW!

[Demitri]

*Waits patiently on the sidelines to butt in*

[drippygoo]

Is Affliction still the ideal leveling build, and is the technique 'dot the shit out of it, fear it, profit'?



well...you really dont need to fear....

just dot the crap out of it and then Drain Life.


I think I did it in for myself tho, I leveled as Destro..I loved it tho.

There is no "wrong" way to level a warlock.

[Fynne]

Is it as good for you as it is for me?

[Evanthe]

Is Affliction still the ideal leveling build, and is the technique 'dot the shit out of it, fear it, profit'?

I was leveling my 73 lock the other night, and while I started out demo I quickly reverted back to affliction for easy leveling. No need to even fear really. Dot & Drain.

[Tía]

I don't know, Quiz, I once heard that you know warlocks like you know how to screw chicks.

Got a screenshot to prove it and everything. ;)

[Yichimet]

*swoons and throws his panties at Quiz*

[Agnarr]

I was leveling my 73 lock the other night, and while I started out demo I quickly reverted back to affliction for easy leveling. No need to even fear really. Dot & Drain.
ur doing it wrong

DoT/Drain Tank one, DoT/demon tank one, and DoT/fear juggle two more.

[Evanthe]

ur doing it wrong

DoT/Drain Tank one, DoT/demon tank one, and DoT/fear juggle two more.

Eh... See, I could dot up a bunch and drain tank one without losing much if any health, so why bother with the fear?

[Agnarr]

Eh... See, I could dot up a bunch and drain tank one without losing much if any health, so why bother with the fear?
To keep it interesting.

[Evanthe]

To keep it interesting.

Touché.

[Alphaeus]

Eh... See, I could dot up a bunch and drain tank one without losing much if any health, so why bother with the fear?

To pull moar mobs to kill moar?

[Demitri]

Be a man. Level as destro with an imp for your pet.

[Aquizit]

Ok, the only -real- question has kinda been answered. Yeah Al, with the changes to Siphon Life it's almost not a problem anymore keeping yourself topped off, especially if you've got some decent spellpower (my Corruption heals me for about 900 a tick in a raid setting, plus Haunt returns).

Well, actually I'm going to touch the flaws question too.

PvP: No way to escape being stunned. We're the only cloth class that doesn't have anything to help us while stunned. (Disc priests can glyph Pain Supp) Mages have more tricks, priests can heal themselves -faster- than an Afflic 'lock can.. Demo and Destro can hardly heal themselves at all. We're not under-repped in arenas because we can't do the dps, we just can't survive.

PvE: We're pretty solid mostly, except Demo doesn't have a niche. Too many bosses in Ulduar kill pets pretty effectively, which gimps their dps AND fucks over Demonic Pact. Other than that.. our threat reduction blows.. a 3m soulshatter down from 5m is going to do jack diddly in my opinion. It's not terribad for afflic since their threat is a steady climb, but the crit-heavy destro.. threat becomes a problem especially within the first 20s of a fight.


Gear: Gear is mostly the same between builds, especially now that dots can crit. However, afflictionists still tend to lean towards spirit and spellpower over a couple points of crit than say Destro, depending on the numbers, of course. We also steal healer stuff cause it's loaded in spirit, ESPECIALLY if we're hit-capped.. so remember if you ninja from your priest.. you might die more often.. something about not being able to heal you or something.

Specs: The two main ones are personal dps affliction and replen destro. Destro is crit heavy and you see some very very nice numbers, but it's fucking terrible on a mobile fight. Afflic shines on things like Kologarn where you can dot up an arm and the face, or Yogg where you don't have to turn around.. or Mimiron where you can rotate shit on all three parts on phase 4. Where Destro's strength comes in burning shit down ASAP, they're great on Steelbreaker, Ignis, Razorscale Phase 2, etc. Blizz wants to boost afflic's 'burst' via Haunt in 3.2, but that spell doesn't crit -too- much for me and since we have no 'make your next cast spell 100% crit' it's not guaranteed burst, which kinda is the point.

Oh and: Afflic's easier on Hodir than Destro. Destro can put out some SICK numbers, yes.. but Afflic is "Set it and forget it" as long as you've got the storm buff when you apply your crittable dots.. you fucking rock.

[Immermnemion]

My question:

When do you get to summon an incubus?

[Alphaeus]

My question:

When do you get to summon an incubus?

I second this.

[Aquizit]

.... /headdesk

[Yichimet]

a 3m soulshatter down from 5m is going to do jack diddly in my opinion. It's not terribad for afflic since their threat is a steady climb, but the crit-heavy destro.. threat becomes a problem especially within the first 20s of a fight.



A 5 second soulshatter couldn't keep Greebo alive, man.

[Gorvena]

Yeah, but he's Greebo...

[Nadea]

Soulshatter's CD going from 3min from 5min will be especially useful in fights like Vezax. one of the worst thing about raiding as a destro lock is that our burst gives us RIDICULOUS threat. Im psyched for the Soulshatter change. Still wish it was a 2min CD but eh, its improvement.

[Thalevia]

Soulshatter's CD going from 3min from 5min will be especially useful in fights like Vezax. one of the worst thing about raiding as a destro lock is that our burst gives us RIDICULOUS threat. Im psyched for the Soulshatter change. Still wish it was a 2min CD but eh, its improvement.

Warlocks have ridiculous threat gen to begin with regardless of spec (except demo but that's cause its dps is crap). It has to do with our utterly fail threat reduction talents(acknowledged by Blizzard in that Q and A to be rather meh compared to say a shadow priests or a mages and their fix is the 3min soul shatter) and the fact Fel Armor is a steady threat tick up every time it heals you.

Personally I think a better fix would be the 3min cooldown but make it a 100% drop in threat instead of 50%.

[Immermnemion]

Here's a question:

Is the Destruction route with a minor in Demonology (for the imp talents) difficult to use? I would imagine the imps would die often ... too often to make the build reliable damage. If they can survive, I would believe the build to perform rather well.

Then comes the added issue of having to learn the mechanical spillovers your pets get from items. I must plead ignorance on that - I don't know how pets scale with spellpower, hitpoints, etc.

[Nadea]

I raid 0/13/58 at current (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IZcr0h0hZVbGVdcuVsAfct) and use an imp. Admittedly, I let him die on occasions but if you're doing enough damage on your own, your Fel Synergy should be able to keep the imp up. Besides the Fel Guard, imps have the highest DPS out of the warlock pets. If you're destruction then thats the pet you should have out anyway, especially where you can buff him so much via talents.

If you have more specific questions, don't hesitate to ask, and I'll do my best to answer them. I have a bit of research to do in order to make sure I'm up to date with the new patch (damn patch for coming out during my 3 week hiatus!).

[Aquizit]

What Nads said above is not entirely correct. Currently for an affliction spec the succubus with Demonic Power in the destro tree is the way to go.. but for a destro build yes you want imp imp, emp imp, demonic power, and fel synergy.

[Broxigan]

A note on the leveling aspec of Destro, I am doing this currently on my warlock and I have to say, yes, I may not be able to tank the elites I used to with Demonology and I may not be able to drain tank like affli...

But man oh man if the mobs around me do not die before they can get two hits on me. With improved Life Tap and a mound of bandages and Death Coil giving me nearly 2k health back...it is near non-stop. Very fast. I do miss my felguard from time to time to tank, but with my imp at my side and the improved imp talents and the glyphed immolate...

Mmmm.

'Course, my spec is all not ready for raiding, but I am talking mostly on leveling.

However!

Question: Destro PVE spec for heroics? Also, stats [hit cap, ect]

[Agnarr]

When is Seed of Corruption useful? Seems awfully mana hoggy for not that much "oomph" (and a great way to pull aggro off your demon), and I'd almost think you could do better aoe damage with rain of fire (of course, I just got seed, so maybe at 80 its damage/mana of the highest rank will be better than rain of fire's highest rank).

[Vaaldis]

Seed is great for solo-ing instances at 80. Also very fun in AV when there's a bunch of alliance all together. Just target, cast, repeat, and then watch them all go off.
It's more of an affliction type thing, though. As destro rain of fire is mah main man for when I'm not in the mood to single target.

[Demitri]

Question: Destro PVE spec for heroics? Also, stats [hit cap, ect]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IZfM0hkhZVbGqrcuVoAcst:z0T

This.

Hit cap is 17% for raiding, 3% for heroics. Because mobs tend to die faster in heroics your rotation should be much much different. Most locks will argue against shadowfury but when you are on the move it's a good way to keep casting spells, not to mention sometimes that stun can really save lesser geared heroics groups. Shadowflame is also your friend if there are 3 + targets directly in front of you, try to tack it on after a cast time spell though as by itself it tends to be a general waste of a GCD.

Some locks will also argue against the shadow burn talent as well as fel dom and soul link. If you are full up on shards dropping shadowburn after a cast time (Not on it's own, against, waste of a GCD) is a really easy way to pick up some dps. Fel dom is important because if that little bastardy imp of yours goes down you just lost a -lot- of dps. I've run enough raids with this spec now, I can tell you that with my imp out I do more dmg then with my doomguard because of the buffs, especially the 100% crit that is great for conflags which proc pyroclasm. Soul link is just good period for the survivability buff. For fights where there is massive raid dmg being tossed around or if you happen to get nailed particularly hard. You aren't any good to the raid if you are dead, believe you me.

Anyway, that's what I suggest. In heroics I can do around 4.4k on both mobs and bosses and fully raid buffed I can do over 5k with item levels 200 and 219. It's all in finding a rotation that works for you.

[Broxigan]

Thanks Demitri!

One more quick question: Destro rotation? Pretty much right now, while leveling, I head this way: [Single Target]

Immolate > Incinerate > Searing Pain [Once or twice] > Conflag [Most likely a 4k crit by this point] > If they are still alive Chaos Bolt/Shadowflame/Conflag [I have Immolate glyphed to keep the dot after Conflag.]

What's a good group/multi-mob rotation for trash/Single target heroics.

[Demitri]

I base all my rotations around the same one, this is the one that I use on raid bosses. I suggest working around this and finding what works.

*Target* Immolate - Chaos Bolt - Conflag - incinerate - incinerate - shadowfury - incinerate shadowburn.

Basically make sure to reapply immolate as soon as it goes down but never a moment before, clipping your DoTs as they are still ticking is a massive DPS and Dmg cut even if it doesn't feel like it. Never cast conflag by itself unless you are on the move, otherwise always try to follow it right after an incinerate or chaos bolt, use chaos bolt whenever it comes up.

If you are with another lock and he dumps elements then dump doom whenever you can get it in, if not make sure elements goes up again after a cast time. Instants should almost always follow a cast time unless A) You are on the move B) It's the start of the fight C) Other rare circumstances

As much fun and potential as searing pain has...it's really a waste and worthless at just about any level with any spec.

[Broxigan]

Hm, I read over EJ today and noticed that Shadowburn and Shadowfury aren't even taken in the tree and left out of all the top end rotations.

Here is what they had:

Key Talents

Demonology

* Improved Imp Self explanatory but as you will see this tree is as much about buffing our pet as it is about improving our own DPS.
* Demonic Aegis This is an obivious talent but it buffs everything from our glyphs to our Tier bonus.



Destruction

* Aftermath This is one of the first of many of the Immolate buffing talents, Immolate is the key around which our dps is built.
* Ruin Not much explaining is needed here.
* Emberstorm Pretty self explanatory.
* Conflagrate This spell had a massive change in it's use and as such becomes a major part of our rotation.
* Pyroclasm This old talent has been refurbished to provide a nice dps boost on Conflag crits.
* Shadow and Flame More scaling for incinerate
* Backdraft This is a really nice talent that adds a significant amount of haste to 3 spells every 10 seconds.
* Empowered Imp This is not only a nice buff for our imp but more importantly increases our over all chance to crit.
* Fire and Brimmstone This not only adds additional chance to crit on at least 1/3 of all conflags as well as scaling both immolate AND conflag damage as a result.
* Chaos Bolt This is a damage boost to our normal rotation as well as being a nice extra ability.



Glyphs

* Glyph of Incinerate Incinerate scaling is very high in this spec, add in ISL and you life tap very little making the LT glyph worth far less.
* Glyph of Conflagrate Add in this to the new Conflag glyph is self explanatory.
* Glyph of Immolate It boosts immolate's damage, as well as conflag's, double win!


Spells and Rotation

Curse of Doom -> Immolate -> Conflag [backdraft starts] -> Choas bolt -> incin -> incin [backdraft ends] It's a simple enough rotation with many complexities as many of the cooldowns/dot durations float over each other.

[Demitri]

Here's where I see the problem though, conflag is an instant cast followed by immolate. Because immolate takes that half second to apply it is pretty much the same as waiting on the global CD. You could spend that time getting half a second of a chaos bolt out and then getting a conflag off instantly. Shadowfury is a pvp talent, no doubt but it is still not given nearly enough credit. When you are mid fight and have to stop casting and run it's nice to be able to just drop it on the target to keep the dmg flowing, same with shadow burn.

Or we could look at it like this: Say there are 4 targets in front of you, what would do more damage, two incinerates (Lets assume no crits occur) each hitting for 5k? Or an incinerate and a shadowfury? Shadowfury hits each mob for about 1.5k. Times four that's 6k dmg. While it doesn't seem like much more now factor in cast times. Two 2.25 second casts or a 2.25 followed by an instant?

Do what you will, I tend to slightly deviate from the norm when it comes to warlock PvE but I can say without bias (And there are people here who can vouch for me) that I do better than locks with the same spec/rotation you listed who also outgear me. I find that actually looking at the class and finding what you can do on your own is a much better way to learn. On the one hand you can just copy the spec and rotations of what others say and you get why it works, but can you can't really really understand every little twerk and bump of the class until you yourself get in there and play around.

Now, the glyphs themselves are very debate worthy, I have found from a lot of painful hours in front of the target dummy and in other situations that LT works better for me personally then immolate, but I can defiantly understand why you would do the other way around.

[opalexian]

ur doing it wrong

DoT/Drain Tank one, DoT/demon tank one, and DoT/fear juggle two more.

-Find higher level, possibly elite demons
-Banish pull
-Enslave one
-Fear juggle rest and kill them
-Giggle psychotically

Also, demo4lyfe FUCK YO COUCH

Seed is good as Vaal said in BGs, but it's also great on a boss with a ton of adds-spam seed on the boss and it goes off faster than you can cast it.

[JukeboX]

I must say im a little new to this... lol...

Been in the game for a month now... im a level 71 Lock... affliction spec... i must say i have a decent gear... and i do beat up most fo the other guys in pvp....

Only hunters who are so OP!!! and pallys... can kick my ass... lol // FEAR FTW! XD

Im horde side...

But i have questions about the build...

So... for leveling is affliction right?... then for raiding u get to use Destruction? isnt destruction like a mage fake?

I c destruction locks kind of like shadow priest...

Now on the other hand i have not tried the build i only know the affliction spells... not even demonology... i would really like a nice epic lock to help me out here lol.

[Gorymoru]

The way I do my PvE rotation, it's rather simple to keep immolate up. Immolate lasts 12 seconds, and chaos bolt has 12 second cooldown. Conflag has 10 second CD, and immolate has 1.5 sec cast. So I cast immolate>chaos bolt>conflag> incinerate until immolate has 1 sec on it. Then I cast immolate, catching it right when it drops. Allows me to keep moving through the rotation without clipping damage. The point of this post was to put emphasis on the fact that the cooldowns are designed for this rotation.

Personally, I'd like to see some sort of DPS buff to demo. It's too....bleh. I can't see how it could possibly be viable in raids...and compared to the other specs it fails in PvP. ((Especially because going demon form makes you susceptible to two more forms of CC, Warlocks' banish and paladins' turn evil.))

[Aquizit]

Just a quick note: so far deep Demonology is simcrafting as top dps in 3.3 due to the damage buff on Demonic Pact, and Decimation proccing from Soul Fire itself.

[Broxigan]

So I cast immolate>chaos bolt>conflag> incinerate until immolate has 1 sec on it.

Wouldn't you want to use Conflag before Chaos Bolt? I would think it would be a drop in DPS unless you skipped over Backdraft (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47258) considering it reduces the cast time on CB. 'Course, I could have my rotation flubbed...

Just a quick note: so far deep Demonology is simcrafting as top dps in 3.3 due to the damage buff on Demonic Pact, and Decimation proccing from Soul Fire itself.

D:<

[Vaaldis]

Wouldn't you want to use Conflag before Chaos Bolt? I would think it would be a drop in DPS unless you skipped over Backdraft (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47258) considering it reduces the cast time on CB. 'Course, I could have my rotation flubbed...

Yes, use conflag before chaos bolt. Any destro rotation you read up on they usually urge you to use chaos bolt whenever you can when backdraft is up, following two incins, and more incins as filler. Rinse and repeat.

[Agnarr]

Just a quick note: so far deep Demonology is simcrafting as top dps in 3.3 due to the damage buff on Demonic Pact, and Decimation proccing from Soul Fire itself.

That makes me happy since my warlock is majoring in demonology with a minor in affliction.

[Gorymoru]

Yes, use conflag before chaos bolt. Any destro rotation you read up on they usually urge you to use chaos bolt whenever you can when backdraft is up, following two incins, and more incins as filler. Rinse and repeat.

I've done more DPS with chaos bolt first. It has close to the same cast time as immolate and I'd rather use backdraft procs for 3 incinerates in a row, as I can only use chaos bolt once every 12 seconds. It's really a taste thing, and in the past I used to do conflag first, but when I switched over I started doing slightly more DPS.