“Ok, mage sheep the moon, lock banish purple diamond, rogue sap circle, hunter trap square, I’ll make the pull, run out of line of sight, thunderclap and pray to any and every god ever conceived in the human mind the CC sticks and no one else pulls aggro.”

Also known as Warrior tank meets Shattered Halls.

Obviously that’s a bit of an exaggeration, there is no banishable target in Shattered Halls for instance, but its what aoe tanking sure felt like for a lot of people in Burning Crusade. This kind of coordination of CC seems like overkill in today’s world, most certainly you don’t need a gameplan this complex for WotLK heroics, but it was actually fairly common in BC. Shattered Halls in particular could still be a punishing instance even after picking up some tank gear from Black Temple and Hyjal.

In general, I’m glad we don’t need seven different kinds of crowd control just to get through a single pull in a heroic anymore. At the same time, swinging wildly to the opposite end of the spectrum here in Wrath has left an equally bad taste in my mouth.

Was spamming sheep on the Tempest Keep trash fun? I guess that depends who you ask. I did it some on my mage and found it to be a little scary at first followed by not very interesting as I got used to doing it. I lean towards saying this was acceptably fun CC however because if you were smart about it you could set up a situation where you’d “accidentally” let your target run loose for just a split second resulting in at least a few melee folk’s death.

Yes the strategic, planned murder of my own teammates was fun for me.

So then, as asked, what is my idea of good crowd control? To be honest, the examples that spring immediately to mind aren’t valid in this day and age but I’ll list them anyway.

Fear Yo-yo

One of the best kinds of CC ever. In BC, Curse of Recklessness made the target immune to fear effects. Using this curse in conjunction with Fear, a good warlock could incapacitate multiple mobs by chain-fearing them and still keeping them from running completely wild. One of the best instances to apply this CC was in the notorious Magister’s Terrace.

Several pulls in the Terrace include a lot of mobs and they really hurt at the time. You could fear one sure, but the chances were pretty good it was just going to run headlong into another pack and wipe you. That is of course, unless you were good at applying Curse of Recklessness to your target if it started to wander too far. As soon as you put the curse on, your target would beeline right towards you and you had limited time to change the curse to let the Fear effect carry it away again.

Juggling multiple mobs like this during the Delrissa fight could be hard work but it felt great when you pulled it off successfully.

Chain Trapping

I suspect Pike may agree with me on this one. You see, hunters used to have this trap that would freeze a target in a block of ice for a period of time. I say they used to have this trap because its been so long since I’ve seen it I’m not sure it still exists.

Once again, hyperbole. It still exists.

Going back to BC again for this one, there used to be a time when you could judge whether a hunter was awesome or not based on their ability to chain trap. The rough idea is the hunter would lay down a trap and wait for the timer to wind down a bit. The tank would pull, the hunter would get her target’s attention and lure it into the trap. Then the hunter ran over to their secondary trap location some distance away and pewpew the thing the rest of the group was killing until her trap target busted out. The mob would get trapped again in the second trap and the hunter would run to a new location to set a third trap. A good hunter could keep this up indefinitely. A great hunter could do this to manage multiple mobs even.

I saw claims from a survival hunter on one of the popular hunter forums out there, I forget which, boasting of a hunter trapping six mobs simultaneously and having them each break out of their traps as the preceding mob was killed by the rest of the hunter’s party members. I can’t say how true that was, I suspect there was some exaggeration, but its certain that isn’t possible in today’s world.

Summing up, I don’t think that fire-and-forget CC abilities like Polymorph and Hex are all that much fun. They serve their purpose for the most part and they’re not anything to complain about but I’ve never been wowed by a mage sheeping something. At least, I’ve never been impressed by a mage sheeping something in PvE content. PvP is different but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I don’t have an issue with how CC works in PvP for the most part, possibly because I lost interest in PvP a while ago and thus, rarely have an occasion to think about it.

Generally however, good CC is an involved process that may not be 100% predictable and should require attention and focus for some period of time. It should involve an awareness of your surroundings and should make use of a player’s skill in their chosen class.

Good crowd control is an art in and of itself.

Check out another perspective on the subject here!

Here at 2fps we take your complaints seriously and work 24/7 to ensure that you have any problems resolved quickly and effectively by our staff. Your complaint is so important to us here, we’re dedicating a whole post to it.

Here, Dotdealer, is your recent complaint on the post Warlock Q&A with Kahleena:

I read this artical and it told me nothing as far as helping a warlock. Why is it people dont stick to the subject matter anymore. Nothing on builds,macro’s or anything that could help someone other than bull . Get with the program if your trying to help someone…sad buisness here

Here is the administrations response:

I totally approve of this comment. It has entitlement, judgement, elitism and ignorance all rolled into one.

First let me say that your refund of the zero dollars that you paid for the information you didn’t find on my site is being mailed back to you immediately.

You’re right. This post had nothing about builds. Nobody asked about builds and it was, as the title states, a Q&A. Not an “artical” about builds. As it happens I have three other posts that directly talk about just that very thing.

In fact, because you do seem like the type that is in need of help, here’s a reference to a forum that has all kinds of useful and relevant information.

This comment about the “sad buisness” here made my night. I thank you sir.

We hope this resolves your problem adequately and wish you all the best!

P.S – Had you complained about the formatting of the post I would have agreed with you. That formatting is just dreadful, particularly a nightmare in any kind of feed reader. I sincerely apologize for that.

A little while back Kahleena and I decided to co-author a little warlock Q&A with questions taken from our readers. The post was delayed a bit due to various reasons but fear not, today it is here!

Questions appear in italicized black text, Kahleena’s answers appear in classic warlock purple and my own responses appear in dark blue.

Temitope:

*I’ve got loads of questions, but they’re all kind of specific to my playstyle – like “what advice would you have for a level 66 Warlock trying to three-man Outland with a Cow Warrior and a Tree”.*

Cut down the tree and use the fire to cook up some steak?  Actually, my advice would pretty much be the advice I’d give anyone else, since you seem to have the tank and healer legs of the trinity covered.  Do as much damage as you can, but don’t pull aggro.

You’re going to pull aggro anyway. You’ll die but hey, a healer will be right there! Get used to dying after pulling aggro, its a warlock legacy. Oh hey, that should be better now that soulshatter is on a shorter cooldown right? Warlocks are awesome because how many other classes get half of their threat taken away every three minutes provided the target didn’t resist?! Sigh. …I got off on a tangent in this post a lot quicker than I expected.

In your case, as you are CC and DPS wrapped into one (and you have no backup), I might suggest learning to use seduction macros with your succubus.

Ewwww seduction D:

Out of the box, as it were, her cc is completely useless, but with adequate macroing, she’s very useful for crowd control.  Well, fairly useful.  Okay, she dies if you look at her crosseyed.  But she’s more useful in an instance, at any rate, than any of your other crowd controls (unless your enemy is a demon), given the tragic and untimely demise of fear-kiting (RIP Curse of Recklessness).  Consider Heroic Magister’s Terrace, which I’m led to understand from Tam’s blog is a favorite.  How awesome is it to be able to banish one of Delrissa’s minions, seduce another, and fear a third, all by yourself?

Quick story to illustrate that point:

In BC, before I finished leveling my warlock, I had a very scary looking lock in my Underbog party. The pulls were beating me up and back as the tank so I asked if the lock could do something to CC one of the Naga mobs. He said he’d take care of it so I pulled. He got its attention with Searing Pain and then ran away down the stairs we had just come up with the mob following after. Then he was gone for a very long time. Just as the rest of us killed the last mob in that pack he came back up the stairs alone. I asked if he had managed, he said he had taken care of it and was fine and shouldn’t we be pulling the next group?

Warlocks have an amazing box of tools for managing mobs, learn how to use them and you’ll make other people blink in awe.

More Temi:

*I’m running Destro at the moment – if you can remember anything about how Destruction plays in late Outland that’d be cool.*

Destruction, in late Outland, played for me like shadowbolt spam, but that was the old 0/21/40 build.

When we were gods among men! /brandishes fist

Destruction now is far more interesting, thankfully.  But I have no idea how it plays in late Outland, as I only started playing it at 80.  One suggestion:  pick up the glyph of Conflagrate.  It is absolutely critical to a functioning deep destro build.

Yet more Temi:

*Ooh – that was what I wanted to ask: should I invest in Improved Soul Leech?*

Depends – Improved Soul Leech is a tradeoff.  You’re passing up on the opportunity to gain DPS in exchange for utility.  Replenishment (the buff ISL procs) is a very important buff in group play, but there are several possible sources for it, including frost mages and shadow priests. Basically, given the three-person group you describe above, if you go into ISL, you’ll be doing it to help your tree stay in mana (you don’t need it personally, as a warlock – this is pure party utility).  Personally, I have it for raiding, because I’m not infrequently in situations where I don’t have a shadow priest or frost mage in my party, and in raiding, Replenishment is critical on long boss fights.  I look at it as doing my part for the healers that keep me in HOTs as I Life Tap my blackened, withered little heart out.

When you’re out leveling or grinding on your own or what not you tend to get beat the hell up as Destruction. No pet to take the heat and no Haunt healing coming in can really make you feel like you’re made of paper. ISL can help you feel like slightly more resilient paper. Brawny paper towels kind of paper maybe.

Aurorai:

*I would like to know why it is that your T3 set (which looks like a gas mask in garish colors and is just plain horrible) is beloved of warlocks? They seem to think they look GOOD, when really, they just look comical. Is bad taste a thing that goes with playing a warlock? I just don’t understand.*

The questioner must be a mage – “You’re ugly and your art department dresses you funny” is the level of discourse one expects from vending machines. Besides, the mage set has glowing purple crystal antlers.  Such things breed hostility towards one’s sartorial betters.

Seriously, though, I actually agree with the criticism of the T3 set.  In fact, when I read that they were recycling the art, I wrote a post on the forums (which I now can’t find) more or less /wristing over it (my precise phrase was, I believe, that the set looked like the 1970s had thrown up all over a hazmat suit).  I’m still not entirely crazy (to put it mildly) about the 10-man T7 (which is identical to T3).  The recolor in T7.5, on the other hand, is very, very nice looking, and quite warlock-y.  Black and red suits the design much better than  yellow and green and brown and whatever other colors form the T3/T7 melange.

Like the 1970′s had thrown up all over a hazmat suit… goodness that’s the best description of that set that I’ve ever heard in my life. While I also hate the T3/T7 look I do have to say one thing in its favor. The shoulders emit poison gas. That’s pretty darn cool.

Astoreth:

*What glyph(s) do you find most useful? Why?*

Depends on your build.  I could simply recite the cookie-cutter list of the glyphs that Elitist Jerks claims are the highest DPS glyphs, mathematically speaking.  As I’m a raider, and so much of raiding comes down to math, I tend to be partial to such lists.  It doesn’t help that warlocks are a bit (well, a lot) short on the “sexy” glyphs.  As I mentioned in response to Temi, even ignoring those lists, if you are Destruction, you simply must have Glyph of Conflagrate, or the rotation doesn’t work.  That may be the closest thing we have a to a truly sexy glyph.

Nearly all the warlock glyphs are fairly boring “increases damage of x by y%” or “reduces cooldown of x by y seconds” sorts of things. Conflag is, as mentioned several times already, absolutely a must if you’re Destruction. If you’re feeling spiteful towards your raid members you can opt for the Glyph of Succubus. This makes it so Seduction clears away all debuffs on your target. You can do this after the mages put up Scorch and Living Bomb and what not to lower their dps.

Not that I recommend doing that!

*Aside from pulling worms and standing in fire, what should I absolutely NOT do?*

Never permit a mage to show you up on the DPS charts.  Never Life Tap to 5% moments before the pull and expect your healer to heal you.  Never put your pet on aggressive.  Never cast Fear in an instance (Death Coil may, and I stress “may”, be okay, depending on layout and proximity, but “Fear” or “Howl of Terror”, absolutely not – better to die than to wipe the group/raid by pulling more adds, which Fear tends to do).

Its shocking how many warlocks will cast Fear in a crowded instance. If you’re ever in a situation where a mob is coming after you because you pulled off the tank or something then you damn well better handle the consequences like one of the big kids: stand up straight, look stoic, mash the crap out of soulshatter and when that fails and your tank doesn’t like you enough to get the mob back, you die like the fragile scrap of tissue you are and then do your best to act sheepish about it.

*I tend to use my voidy and felguard as pseudo-tanks when I’m levelling, and the imp for (what I understand to be) a party-boost in instances… but I have this nagging feeling that I’m overlooking better ways to use my pets. Do you have any recommendations?*

For soloing, use whatever works (felguard/voidwalker for tanking is definitely one effective approach – I tend to either drain-tank, if affliction, or nuke-the-mob-down-before-it-reaches-me, if destro).  In instances, pet selection is very situational.

Yes use whatever works. The imp works for Destro, the felhunter or succubus for Affliction and the Felguard for Demo. The voidwalker doesn’t work for anything and even if he does work, he works poorly.

If you’re Demonology (you mention the felguard), you should be using your felguard in instances, not your imp.  Make sure, however, to turn your felguard’s taunt off autocast (I would say “ditto the voidwalker”, except you should never be bringing out a voidwalker in an instance anyway).  You might also consider turning off cleave, unless you’re facing multiple mobs. Cleave’s a major mana-suck.

With the point in Mana Feed the cost of Cleave shouldn’t be too problematic, especially if you’ve got replenishment going. It used to be that Cleave would sometimes break crowd control if your positioning was bad but that’s not so much an issue in a time when crowd control is needed so rarely.

The succubus has a bad reputation as a crowd control, largely because without macros, her Seduction is nearly impossible to use effectively without a level of micromanagement that gimps the rest of your performance. Also, she dies if she’s so much as downwind of a mob.  With assistance, though, her crowd control can be useful – see wowwiki for a good one-button seduction macro.  Also, as of the last time I checked (which was, admittedly, 3.1), the succubus is the top DPS pet for an affliction build.

Right, I haven’t seen anything yet saying any other pet outperforms the succubus for Affliction after the patch. Just to make sure the point is driven home, the succubus dies quickly and easily! She has absolutely terrible performance anxiety, give her something important to do and she’ll muck it up quick.

Don’t be fail and use a voidwalker in instances.

The felhunter is another situational pet – I recommend practicing with its Spell Lock and Devour Magic until you’re very comfortable with them.  They are very powerful abilities, used properly.  The Int/Spirit buff isn’t terrible.  Despite that Felhunter-buffing talent in the Affliction tree, though, the felhunter is not top DPS for Affliction (or any other build).

If you’re Destro spec, then barring special cases (for example, I’m Destro spec, but I tend to drag a felhunter with me through around half of Naxx10′s Military Quarter to eat the bone shields), you bring out the imp.  Also, if your party needs the stamina boost to survive, bring out the imp.

…I’m totally useful in the Military Quarter like that too. Definitely. I never forget to do helpful things like create soulstones or healthstones or dispel things or… ok so sometimes I’m a little fail. I can change!

Some of those pet control macros at Wow Wiki really are quite good. Damn near essential really.

*Even when I’m spec’ed destro, I seem to be doing lower DPS than the fire and arcane mages of equivalent level (high 60s/low 70s) I run around with a lot. If nothing else, I FEEL less effective. What should I be looking at first to improve my damage?*

First, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples – is your gear equivalent?  Second, not to sound like a broken record, use the Glyph of Conflagrate.  Your cast priority (and it’s not a rotation, it’s a priority) should be: (a) Immolate (don’t clip, don’t let it fall off), (b) Conflagrate (this is why the glyph is so key, because if you’re not glyphed, you have to then reapply immolate, or drop Conflagrate altogether), (c) Chaos Bolt, (d) Incinerate.  If it’s a lengthy boss fight, go Curse of Doom, otherwise don’t bother with a curse (unless your party needs CoE – something you should be doing at the beginning of every instance run is looking for a Boomkin or an Unholy Death Knight to see if Curse of Elements duty is covered).  Now, you’re missing about ten talent points from what a level 80 Destruction warlock would spec, presumably from the Demo tree.  So you’re missing some nice DPS-boosting talents like the talent that improves Fel Armor.  Finally, realize that even in your burstiest tree (Destruction), you still take longer to get up and running than a mage does.  I often start runs in the mediocre middle of the pack.  Then we hit the first boss fight, and I tend to jump ahead (and stay there).

If you’re not specced Destruction, then at least on short fights, you have no possible way to keep up with a mage.  So don’t try.  Know that where you really shine is long fights, the longer the better.  On that 10-minute boss fight, when the mage is gasping for mana, you will be continuing to perform at the top of your game.  If you’re Affliction, the longer the fight, the higher your DPS goes.  Until the mob’s down to the last 25% of its health, and then you really start to bring the pain.  Embrace it.  And make sure to look at boss-fight-specific DPS meters – you’ll be more encouraged.

One thing I notice a lot with people new to caster dps is that they don’t chain-cast like they should. You aren’t melee so you don’t have an auto-attack doing white damage while you ponder what you should cast next.

Increase the number of Incinerates you cast, increase your Immolation uptime, keep Chaos Bolt on cooldown, mash Haunt whenever its up, don’t waste Decimation procs, don’t let your dots fall off generally. There shouldn’t ever be a time when you’re just standing around with nothing to do. Time your casts so that the second the first one goes off you’ve got a second one starting immediately. Again, no gaps between casts!

Kahleena over at Fel Deeds Awake! and I are going to be doing a collaborative post wherein we take your questions about all things warlock-ish and share with you our absolutely infallible answers. If you have a question you’d like us to answer, feel free to comment here on this post or over at Kahleena’s page. You can also pose your questions privately by sending an email or using my contact form.

If your name is Thorim you have to pony up the token.

You know which one I mean you bastard. The one you’ve been holding out on, giggling as you watch me open the cache to find yet another warrior, hunter, shaman token inside. I should just let Yogg eat you.

Your quest chain sucked too.

Warlock armor sets will no longer be numbered by tier.

Henceforth there shall only be two labels for warlock armor sets: the Putress set and the Others. I know that for my warlock, the T8 helm will be the last helm he uses in this expansion. Seriously, the dead bird face set is the best set Blizzard has ever come out with ever.

Just look at it!

People have to stop sending rubbish to my Twitter.

I’m not against ranting. I enjoy ranting quite a bit in fact. There’s a difference between good ranting and bad ranting however. The tone and spirit of this rant for instance is entertaining and enjoyable. There are other rants I’ve seen of late that most certainly are not entertaining and enjoyable and all of these bad rants are being piped through to me via Twitter. I’ve said before, if you’re just frothing at the mouth, spewing hate at people who disagree with you and complaining about everything happening in the game you probably need a new hobby.

Chances are pretty good that if you’re seriously referring to other players as ‘bads’ or using the term ‘casuals’ to refer to anyone you don’t think is as good as you, you’re being a douchebag. Gear doesn’t make you cool, it doesn’t prove you’re not absolutely terrible at playing the game and your achievements are not a divine mark showing how much better you are than everyone else.

Let’s just settle this now. Nobody is out to get you. The people who were stuck muddling through Karazhan while you were wiping on Mu’ru are not holding meetings and plotting against you. Blizzard is not dumbing down the game to benefit your imaginary persecutors. Blizzard simply does not want to be in the business of making a game that is largely focused on the small fraction of people who cleared Sunwell or the original Naxx. We can sit here and debate whether they’ve gone a little too far or talk about how awesome it was to wipe a billion times on Vashj with 20ish strangers that you didn’t like but frankly, your self-satisfying hatemongering isn’t interesting and I don’t want it sent to me.

Ultimately, you vote with your dollar (or mark, pound, yen, ruble, etc.). If you really do think that Blizzard is trashing the game and destroying everything good you saw in it, stop paying them to do it.

By that same token, you vote with your Follow button on Twitter and there’s a few people I won’t be following from now on.

The first time I saw some of these things I was in awe. I would get on /gchat and start raving about it to anyone in earshot. Then I’d have a moment of disquietude and slowly decide that I never wanted to see them again.

Come to think, that pretty much describes all my past romantic relationships.

Anyway! Here’s a little list of things I’ve seen in recent battlegrounds that made me go whoa.

1. Mirror Image – Warlock style

Me: Ok… looks like a warlock coming in…
[Battleground]: [Me] 2 inc DR
Enemy lock gets closer, his friend also comes into view and is another lock.
Me: Hm, they have really similar names… and gear… and friends…
Enemy lock multiboxing 4 other locks: /metamorph x5, immolate aura x5, charge x5

Spirit Healer: Resurrecting in 29 seconds…

2. You choo-choo-choose me! And there’s a picture of a train… barreling down on me.

Ah an EotS already in progess and lo! Horde is ahead by 1200! An excellent game to step into if I do say so myself. Why, those heathen gnomes would have to have a miracle to win this one.

Or a death knight grip-chain team.

There was a sudden change in the makeup of the Alliance team as floods of people left the battleground and were replaced by seemingly random death knights from a variety of servers.

I must not have gotten the memo from Acherus saying that all death knights were going to start sharing a hive mind. A small pile of Alliance would stand way away from the bases towards the middle. Then one death knight would stand some 20 or 30 yards off from that group and another would stand 20 or 30 yards off from that guy and so on and so on until you came to the one standing in the middle of BE tower. That guy would grip you into range of the next furthest death knight who would then grip you into range of the next one down the line until you got to the pile in the middle who ate your face.

They ran this routine at each base we had and since our side was already thinking victory was a foregone conclusion they didn’t bother to regroup. Good game Death Knight gank-train, you earned that one.

3. Now boarding! Direct flight from Lumber Mill to the Blacksmith!

I saw his totems up on the cliffside of the Lumber Mill from the Blacksmith. He had been up there all game long. Some people just have their spot and they camp it religiously (yeah I’m talking about you again Creepindeath).

He must be lonely, I haven’t seen anyone go up to try and take LM yet. I’ll go introduce myself.

I get to the top of the hill and he comes into view.

Oh I’ve made a terrible mistake.

Hello tri-boxing shaman men. My name is Rajh and I’ve come to give you a free hk. I’ll begin my casting howl of terr– oh you have multiple tremor totems. Well then I shall introduce you to shado– I see. Well I wish you the best, enjoy the pocketful of silver you’re looting from my body.

Later I decided that I could probably take out at least one of them since I knew now what I was up against.

I crest the hill again. They don’t seem to notice me. I get bold and decide to get some direct damage going right up front.

Ah I apologize, I was rudely about to fire on you before you so graciously interrupted me. No I don’t think I should like to stay after all. I’ll just be on my– ah judging by my velocity and destination you seem to be in the airline industry. Thank you for so generously booking a flight for me. Lightning powered propulsion, you might be on to something there chap.

And now for something completely different.

One thing that I love seeing again and again and again is a particular combination that actually involves me on the side of the victor.

1. WTF nerf warl– nerf ro– nerf something!

My brother shall by playing the part of Adanis the rogue. I play Rajh the lock as usual.

Adanis (stealthed): He thinks its just you up here; he’s coming, get ready.
Enemy approaches, is sapped.
Me: /queues up Chaos Bolt/Immolate.
Adanis: /opens with cheap shot
Me: /conflag
Adanis: /backstabs
Enemy: AAAUUUGHHHH /dies
Us: /cackle

Dear fellow warlocks,

Last time we talked about demons. Let’s turn our attention to your talents now.

Your talent trees as a warlock are Affliction, Demonology and Destruction.

• Affliction is focused on shadow magic, damage over time spells (DoTs) and improving their effectiveness and utility.
• Demonology is focused on improving your demons and your relationship with them.
• Destruction is focused on direct damage, primarily through fire.

Before we get into the specifics of each tree let’s take a broad look at warlock talents generally.

There are two talents that define the warlock’s talents, one PvP talent and one PvE talent.

Soul Link – When active, 20% of all damage taken by the caster is taken by your Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, Felguard, or enslaved demon instead.  That damage cannot be prevented. Lasts as long as the demon is active and controlled.

Ruin – Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Destruction spells by 100%.








Soul Link in PvP can be very potent at reducing the damage you take. Soul Link has a very long history of being a hallmark of warlock pvp specs.  While not so useful in PvE, you’ll find that Soul Link sees a lot of action in PvP specs.

Ruin on the other hand is so critical to a PvE talent spec that you really can’t pass it up. It works by increasing the damage of your spell critical strikes.

For instance, a normal spell hits for 100% damage. A spell critical strike will hit for 150% normal damage. Ruin boosts this 150% to 200% normal damage.

Basically, if you’re serious about doing the best you can in a PvE raid setting, you’ll be putting points into Ruin.

Now we’ll go over the individual talent trees, look at some of the best talents in each tree and then give some examples of tried-and-true talent specs.

Affliction

Generally speaking, when making an Affliction talent build, if a talent improves your Corruption spell you should put points into it.

Suppression – Most caster dps classes have a talent that increases their chance to hit with spells by 3%. This is that talent for warlocks. Regardless of the tree you choose to spec into you may find yourself putting points in Affliction for this talent.


Siphon Life – Once upon a time this was a DoT that transferred health to you from your target. Now its effect is applied to your Corruption spell making this one of a slew of talents that improves Corruption.


Death’s Embrace – This talent makes your Drain Soul ability a powerhouse when your target is below 30% health. Until this talent came along Drain Soul didn’t see a lot of action. With Death’s Embrace it becomes a key part of your rotation at times.


Unstable Affliction – Anyone caught trying to dispel this DoT will get a nasty surprise. UA does good damage and protects your other DoTs from being dispelled by threatening to maim anyone trying to get rid of them.


Haunt – This talent boosts the damage of all your other DoTs by a good amount. If you want to maximize the amount of damage you do, make sure Haunt is always on your target. Its also useful when leveling due to the healing it returns to you.

Demonology

If you’ve put a point into the Felguard talent, the Felguard is the demon you’ll be using nearly 100% of the time.

Soul Link - As mentioned before, this is a great PvP talent but also fairly useful in PvE as well. If you ever have to tank something (and it happens from time to time!) this becomes a very attractive talent.


Fel Domination – This gives you the ability to quickly summon a demon. Felguard died? Get him back up quick! Need a voidwalker but you’re currently using an imp? Not a problem with Fel Domination.


Felguard – The felguard demon can only be summoned if you’ve put a talent point here. He’s a brute and he’ll be your best friend if you get him despite his constant threats against your life.




Demonic Pact - This is what makes the warlock a raid buffer, potentially granting the raid more spellpower than a shaman’s totem. If you’re looking to help out your raid, give this one a look.




Metamorphosis – This lets you transform into a dark demon for a short time every few minutes. It increases your damage, gives you a taunt and a truly horrific immolation aura. Most importantly, it makes you look awesome.

Destruction

Immolate is extremely important to a Destruction warlock so pick up the talents that will improve that spell.

Bane – Most caster dps classes have talents to shorten the cast time of their primary direct damage spells. Usually those talents only effect one spell. This effects three because warlocks are that much more important than other casters.


Ruin – Once again, this is an absolutely critical talent for maximizing your damage output in PvE. Don’t ever underestimate this one.




Conflagrate – An instant cast direct damage spell and a major part of your rotation if you’ve invested heavily in Destruction. Don’t forget to get the glyph to go along with this one.




Improved Soul Leech – Replenishment is one of those buffs your raid just can’t do without and this talent lets you supply that buff. Also useful for decreasing the number of times you have to use Life Tap.


Chaos Bolt – Your hardest-hitting direct damage spell. Make sure to use it every time it isn’t on a cooldown timer.

Talent builds

Now let’s look at some examples of completed talent specs, often called builds. For the PvE builds we’ll look at the ones noted for being the best for raiding at Elitist Jerks.

PvE Affliction – 53/0/18

PvE Demonology – 0/56/15

PvE Destruction – 0/13/58

Note that all three PvE builds listed above include Bane and Ruin.

PvP Affliction – 54/17/0

PvP Demonology -0/51/20

PvP Destruction – 0/20/51

If you’re looking for more PvP builds, check the armory and search for warlocks on high rated arena teams.

Note that PvP builds will vary in how talent points are spent to a much greater degree than PvE builds. Unlike PvE, you can’t run a simulator or crunch numbers on a spreadsheet to find out what the best possible PvP build will be.

However while talent choices are a bit more subjective when it comes to PvP, they’ll still follow the same basic concept to spend talents in a way that fully exploits the strength of your chosen build.

You won’t find Destruction builds that focus on shadow magic at the top of a raid’s damage meters and while it may be fun for you to experiment with an Affliction build that uses Incinerate over Shadow bolt, keep in mind that you aren’t playing to your potential.

Next time we’ll talk about your specific spells and how best to use them. Until then!

Dear fellow warlock,

Congratulations on not being a fail mage. That might be the best thing that can be said to you as you start your career in the demonic arts.

Now then, so you don’t go off into the world looking like a know-nothing mage let’s cover the basics. There’s lots to learn but we’ll stick to three topics and focus only on one today:

Demon pets, your talents and using your spells.

Today, we talk about pets.

There are only a handful of pets that we regularly enslave: the imp, voidwalker, succubus and felhunter. Some of these pets will draw the focus of your enemies, others should not. We’ll cover the other, special demons later on.
Read the rest of this entry »

Rather than put up a bland, clinical listing of the things I like about warlocks or some such I’ve decided to talk about why I like my warlock in a more anecdotal way. So here we go!

Fear

For a long time this spell made me loathe warlocks in pvp when playing my paladin. The enemy lock would dot you up and just chain fear you until you died. The spell has gotten a lot of attention from the developers and its current iteration is a pretty different animal compared to the version I used when playing my lock in the Burning Crusade.

Case in point: Priestess Delrissa

This fight broke people. It raised stress and anxiety levels to sickening highs, it turned many a “quick terrace run” into a “oh-gosh-its-been-four-hours-and-i-have-work-tomorrow-how-did-it-get-so-late run”. This was more true when the Terrace was still very new but was still pretty accurate towards the end of the Burning Crusade.

“Its like a 5v5 arena match.”

After explaining the fight more times than I care to think I really grew to hate that sentence. Despite that feeling, the Delrissa fight really was more like an arena fight than a typical 5man dungeon boss encounter. She had four adds and it was random as to which adds would be with her when you zoned into the instance. You’d hold your breath and cross your fingers as you passed over her on the walkway above and see which ones you got. I hated hearing someone say on vent “We got… the naga warrior” or “We got… that monk guy” so much.

The naga is Warlord Salaris. He likes to charge and hamstring people. He likes to use intimidating shout and he has the uncanny ability to oneshot anyone not wearing full plate.

“That monk guy” is Eremas Brightblaze. Nobody really knows what the hell he is but it doesn’t matter. He’s just a guy that likes to be half-naked and punch people to death.

Both of these guys were horrible nightmares and I got to be good friends with both of them while playing my warlock.

My job in this fight was never as simple as “dps x until it dies”, rather my job was to run around like a madman making sure that one or more adds were being kept feared for the duration of the fight. While other people were focused on killing Delrissa, then Apoko, then that %@!#%@ rogue, I went toe-to-toe with the worst of the adds.

Annihilate them!

The fight begins. Delrissa and co. start running towards us. Having started the cast on Fear just before the pull, I finish casting just as Salaris starts moving. I’ve already made a mistake in that I was a bit slow on the draw and Salaris almost got a charge off which, knowing my luck, probably would have resulted in the healer dying.

Salaris is running away to the left so I turn my attention to my focus target, Eremas. He’s already gotten into melee range of the mage so I have to be quick. Death Coil buys me time to get Fear going on him and he bolts to the right. These guys couldn’t be farther away from each other which is going to make things more difficult for me.

I put Curse of Agony on Eremas and start casting Corruption before he runs around a pillar (No, we Destro locks didn’t have a fancy-pants insta-cast Corruption back then!) and Immolate him when he comes back around. Now I hurry to get over to Salaris so I can recast Fear and dot him up as well. I’m not worried about Fear breaking early on damage because the only things I’m doing to damage them are dots, not big Shadow bolt nukes.

Shoot. While I was dealing with Salaris, Eremas got a little out of control while feared and he’s now making a beeline for the room we just came from… where there’s still a large pack of mobs that he could aggro. Quicklike and frantically, I mash the Curse of Recklessness button until I see him speeding towards me with murder in his eyes. As he gets to me, and safely away from the other room, I hit him with Curse of Agony and send him on his merry way feared once again.

Aiiiiieeeeeeee! The rogue is killing me help help help! A blessing of protection saves me from certain doom and I’m back on Salaris. By this time, the rest of the group is ready for Eremas so I don’t have to worry about him anymore. Unfortunately, the “rest of the group” consists of the healer and the tank since the rogue has made quick work of the other two dps. This only means I’m going to have to babysit Salaris for a little bit longer than I want however.

I miss the cast on my next Fear because he ran around a pillar. Unfortunately he’s free of my previous Fear and he’s very much on the loose and out of control. Quick as lightning he’s charged me, leaving me stunned for a moment. Unexpectedly he switches targets and kills the healer straightaway in the brief seconds that I’m incapacitated. As fast as I can I get the Fear going on him again. The tank is running after him doing her darndest to dps and I’m using Drain Life to get myself topped off.

Thankfully, this is the end for my friend Salaris and he gasps his last breath and dies. After we get everyone rezzed we loot Delrissa and I’m rewarded with a trinket I’m (ashamedly) still using today.

[Timbal's Focusing Crystal]

* * * * * * *

Sadly, this scenario will never happen again. It is no longer possible to yo-yo mobs with Fear and Curse of Recklessness which is a terrible shame. Managing a terrified mob to ensure it stays within a certain area took attention and focus and was great fun. Also, the ability to load a mob up with dots and Fear it away isn’t so very possible now either. Regardless, a similar situation could still come up in WotLK. All we need is a setting where that kind of control matters.

I wrote up a guide to Hodir (complete with pictures!) but I’m going to hold off posting it for a while. Instead, I’m going to be running a series of beginner-ish articles for new warlocks.

Random? Sort of but not really! A friend of one of the officers in my guild just started playing WoW and is playing a warlock. I’ve talked with her briefly about warlock-ish things, since my warlock was my second-ever character and my primary alt in BC, and I’d like to take some time and really get some information down about the warlock experience. The first such article in the series (why not call the series “Letters to a young warlock”?) will be up either later today or tomorrow.