4 locks and priest

[vic20]

Title says it all. Just how far has anyone gotten with that line up? How well do multiple voidwalkers with a dedicated healer stack up against a regular tank?

[Bigfish]

Interesting concept. I think Steph had something similar to this, though I don't see him around much any more. Regardless, there are a number of factors to consider:

Leveling, Voidwalkers will work just fine. Early instances, again, voidwalkers will work fine. As you progress though, they will become less and less able tanks, to the point they may be struggling to tank level 80 instances, if they can at all. Forget Heroics.

That said, there may be some potential in this set up if you utilize Ritual of Doom at 60 and get a round-robin Doomguard going on. They last 15 minutes and have a 60 minute cool down, but with 4 locks, you can always have one up, and they are absolute BEASTS, with amazing damage and tons of HP. They MAY be able tanks in that regard, but I haven't played with it enough to say one way or the other.

The upcoming changes in soul shards should help with Aggro issues, so this set up may work out after 3.1.

If this is what you want to run with, go for it. Just keep in mind you'll be blazing mostly new territory as far as multiboxing group composition goes.

[shaeman]

Probably would struggle mightily with Wotlk level instances - heroics I would very much doubt it.

However level them up and you can always swap out a lock and level up a DK tank with them.

[X-Ifist]

If you get one of youre lock to be assigned to just casting Healt Funnel you can tank Heroics if you got the gear for it.

Whit healt funnel VW got 45%dmg reduction + 60% armor reduction so shouldent be to hard.

[Bigfish]

If you get one of youre lock to be assigned to just casting Healt Funnel you can tank Heroics if you got the gear for it.

Whit healt funnel VW got 45%dmg reduction + 60% armor reduction so shouldent be to hard.

Seriously? Damn, glad someone knows something about locks.

[vic20]

If you get one of youre lock to be assigned to just casting Healt Funnel you can tank Heroics if you got the gear for it.

Whit healt funnel VW got 45%dmg reduction + 60% armor reduction so shouldent be to hard.This is one aspect I was considering. I've seen and heard of multiple guilds using a voidwalker with massive i.e. ~70k hp tanking sarth with 3 drakes. I didn't participate in the raid with that set up so I can't say for certain how difficult it would be but it does make you wonder what else those voids could do when speced accordingly. Another thing to be concerned about is the threat generation of the voidwalker. Just how much threat can it put out?

[X-Ifist]

:\ not mutch, the first 10 mins of the fight is verry slow, but as soon as the boss get to around 50-60% hp all youre locks can Soulshatter reducing youre threat by 50% giving you a full DPS out the rest of the fight.
3.1 will give desto locks replenishment so mana wont rly be a problem

[unseen]

I did almost all normal BC instances with this composition and it worked just fine. I would run 3 felguards and an imp, pulling out voidwalkers for bosses if needed (most of the time it wasn't). Once wotlk came out I added a tank.

In my opinion I'd guess that 4 warlocks + priest would be able to do all normal wotlk instances just fine, but heroic content (just like in BC) would be out of reach.

It is incredibly nice to have 4 dpsers in a group -- it makes things so much easier. This is what makes 4 shaman + tank groups work so well (in addition to bloodlust).

[vic20]

The more I think about it perhaps this is something that bliz has intended. They have as much as said that pets will be viable off tanks. Add this to the changes with soul shards and it almost begs to have soulshatter cast repeatedly, just as was pointed out earlier. Multiple dots in addition to an essentially constant health funnel will be a lot of aggro to manage though. I'm not sure that soulsahtter will be enough. With a 5 minute cool down you don't have a whole lot to work with unless it's a lengthy fight. The real trouble would be if said mob resisted the soulshatter. You'd have to be fast on your feet to figure something out to keep the warlock alive. With multiple pet tanks you could plan out a strategy that would allow you to switch pet tanks in that event but I think your overall dps would suffer by using that contengency plan. If the cooldown were reduced I think the aggro dump might be a bit overpowered. On the other hand feign death only has a 30 second cooldown.

One other thing to consider is the dps output of 4 locks as opposed to 3 dps of the trinity. With the affliction tree as bloated as it is can 4 locks be managed well enough to put out a comparable amount of dps?

[unseen]

The more I think about it perhaps this is something that bliz has intended. They have as much as said that pets will be viable off tanks. Add this to the changes with soul shards and it almost begs to have soulshatter cast repeatedly, just as was pointed out earlier. Multiple dots in addition to an essentially constant health funnel will be a lot of aggro to manage though. I'm not sure that soulsahtter will be enough. With a 5 minute cool down you don't have a whole lot to work with unless it's a lengthy fight. The real trouble would be if said mob resisted the soulshatter. You'd have to be fast on your feet to figure something out to keep the warlock alive. With multiple pet tanks you could plan out a strategy that would allow you to switch pet tanks in that event but I think your overall dps would suffer by using that contengency plan. If the cooldown were reduced I think the aggro dump might be a bit overpowered. On the other hand feign death only has a 30 second cooldown.

One other thing to consider is the dps output of 4 locks as opposed to 3 dps of the trinity. With the affliction tree as bloated as it is can 4 locks be managed well enough to put out a comparable amount of dps?It is incredibly easy handling 4 dpsers and healing. You don't have to worry about tanking at all since the demons just run automatic. This makes micromanaging things like soulshatter and dots a lot easier.

Keep in mind demonic empowerment is up every minute as well.

[Powerwar]

Warlocks themselves are known to be cloth tanks.

I have been MT in Onyxia and Ragnaros, even MTed Vaelstraz and Nefarian in BWL after getting aggro from the raid tank... as usual. That all before TBC lots of years ago when BWL was the end game content.

If you have a priest in the group I suggest you to try a mixed demo/affliction build in instances.

Try this build for your lock tank:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warlock/talents.html?tal=215002203022321005000000000010503 301135210050313220000000000000000000000000000000

With this setup you are the tank and your pet is just a walking buff.
You must use a playstyle known as drain-tanking

Your rotation should look like:
1 ) Put soul link on
2 ) Use voidwalker because of the 10% melee reduction buff from master demo talent and the sacrifice shield in case of need. It also could offtank some add meanwhile if needed, but will never be the main tank due to your crazy aggro generation on single target and your passive healing on him with your damage, building more aggro for you.
3 ) Seed of corruption, immolation, curse of agony, syphon life (seed of corruption should have done it's AoE), fire a normal corruption. Except the seed of corruption and immolation that will hit your target by the same time all the other spells are instacast.
4 ) Drain life, Drain life, Drain life... reapply curse, corruption and syphon life (only these 3 that are instacast), drain life again.
5 ) Instant shadow bolt when nightfall procs.
6 ) Life tap and repeat rotation.

Remember to put curse of doom on some random target in long fights and curse the other targets with curse of agony. It builds damage over time (last 3 ticks to 45% of the total damage), so if you apply it to everyone at the beginning of the fight it's good bonus for damage and aggro.

The voidwalker will take 20% of your damage, but you will heal him for 15% of your damage, that is quite big number usually, specially if you multitarget curse, syphon life and corruption.

If things go wrong you can always sacrifice the voidwalker for the shield and ninjasummon a new one. Then hit demonic empowerment and use it's AoE taunt from the viodwalker. This will let you with only one mob hitting on your face.

When low on mana just life tap and continue draining life. The rotation is relatively easy but hard to amster life tap and drain life. Once you manage to master it properly you will be at a constant 90% mana and 90% HP during all the fight.

Other optopn is to sacrifice voidwalker for the stamina buff and summon doomguard or enslave some demon in the instance (TBC instances have several good ones enslaveable). This basically makes you to have a constant renew buff on you.

The priest only will need to throw a renew on the voidwalker and then heal you. The micromanagement is not difficult if you have played a hunter before.

This build gear priorities are the following:
1 ) Stamina
2 ) Intelect + spell power
3 ) Armor/defense on rings and cloak

The other locks you have should go affliction/destruction mix. Remember to SKIP the Ruin / devastation talents at the beginning till your tank lock has enough spell damage. Otherwise BIG crits will happen and he will lose aggro.

Things will go really fast if your support locks switch targets and toss a corruption and curse of agony on every target in the mobs pack. Seed of coorruption would create lots of aggro and will mess things.

Other option is to send the voidwalker, use it's AoE taunt ability and put 4 seeds of corruption on every target in the pack. They will lose aggro after the second AoE boom, but by the time that happens all the mobs will be almost dead on trash pulls. The only problem is that they will target a random lock and then destroy him Probably the one that critted them for more.

Plan 2...
Have one voidwalker + 3 succubus out. You can seduce 3 humanoids and destroy the other one or two mobs in no time. I personally dislike this way because it's very unreliable and doesn't allow you to use AoE spells like seed of corruption.

Also feel free to try this build (no idea why the url looks yellow, doesn't want to change colors):

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warlock/talents.html?tal=215002203122000000000000000000523 301135210050313120135100000000000000000000000000

It will work around demon form and it's fire aura. The downside is that demon form is on a large cooldown (3 minutes or alike) and you lose lots of damage from your instacast dots that you will use during most of the fight. also syphon life, that is an extra dot and is like another renew running.

[unseen]

I'd advise against Powerar's post.

That's just me talking, but I can say that even with 30% health reduction your warlock that is tanking is going to get stomped to the ground on most bosses. Additionally, this would put heroics completely out of the picture.

There is a lot to be said for keeping things simple and letting the demon tank.

[Powerwar]

The problem will be trash rather than bosses using a drain tank because it requires good tmining and watching lots of debuffs.

With spell damage (instance and quest rewards gear) and this build drain life is really killer spell recovering about 1k HP /sec while also damaging the mob meanwhile as long as the 3 instacast dots are up. With better gear it only goes more insane.

This is how drain tanking works (no voidwalker, the warlock does it all):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziPQ8ukpuLA

Note what happens to the warlock HP after he hits drain life (the green beam)

[X-Ifist]

Drain tanking in 80 instances and heroic is inpossible to drain tank, they will still hit you for 8k so keeping youreself up just using drain life wont work.
Since you wont rly get anny agroo compared to 3 other locks thats known for pulling agroo the priest will go OOm before the boss is down.

Lets say a boss hit for 10k whit VW tanking it it will only hit him for 2-3k making it no problem healing, since Healt funnel heal 800per sec so that and a renew on VW and youre rdy to go.

[vic20]

The problem that I've found so far isn't that the vw can't take the hits it seems that's what it does best. The problem that I -have- found so far is the lack of threat generation by the voidwalker. Anyone know just how much threat the void can put out when decently geared?

[Hachoo]

The problem will be trash rather than bosses using a drain tank because it requires good tmining and watching lots of debuffs.

With spell damage (instance and quest rewards gear) and this build drain life is really killer spell recovering about 1k HP /sec while also damaging the mob meanwhile as long as the 3 instacast dots are up. With better gear it only goes more insane.

This is how drain tanking works (no voidwalker, the warlock does it all):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziPQ8ukpuLA

Note what happens to the warlock HP after he hits drain life (the green beam)Yeah sorry that won't work - warlocks aren't going to have defense gear so they'll never be uncrittable, and there are plenty of heroic bosses that can crit for easily 15-20k per hit. Doesn't matter how much drain life gives you, 2 of those in a row will kill any warlock.

[unseen]

The problem that I've found so far isn't that the vw can't take the hits it seems that's what it does best. The problem that I -have- found so far is the lack of threat generation by the voidwalker. Anyone know just how much threat the void can put out when decently geared?For trash I always just used felguards. They can take a hit, have decent health, and can hold aggro pretty well. This would leave me to dps down the mobs one by one.

For bosses I still had felguards tanking them unless the boss hit really hard (which required my voidwalker). With felguards they would bounce aggro back and forth amongst each other which would give a little more leeway for healing. For the voidwalker I would always be sure to use demonic empowerment and all his taunts to hold aggro. I was able to manage it pretty well.

Keep in mind I was doing not doing any heroics, just regular instances up to 70 in this manner.

[vic20]

The problem that I've found so far isn't that the vw can't take the hits it seems that's what it does best. The problem that I -have- found so far is the lack of threat generation by the voidwalker. Anyone know just how much threat the void can put out when decently geared?For trash I always just used felguards. They can take a hit, have decent health, and can hold aggro pretty well. How would you quantify 'pretty well'? Not trying to be presumptuous but I thought we were functioning on the idea that this was for heroic content only. Might just be the min /maxer in me but I would consider 'normal' content to have training wheels on :P .

[vic20]

Food for thought. Doom guards are being parsed at ~ 1k dps on patch. They also no longer kill the summoner at 80, they only cause damage and come pre-enslaved as well as lasting the full duration without break. This could be interesting. Although they only last 15 minutes 1k dps x 4 is virtually another dps'er while tanking. Once again the problem still lies in the threat generation. Is it enough to allow the locks to work to their potential? Or do they have to artificially increase the tank's threat by throttling their own threat?

[unseen]

The problem that I've found so far isn't that the vw can't take the hits it seems that's what it does best. The problem that I -have- found so far is the lack of threat generation by the voidwalker. Anyone know just how much threat the void can put out when decently geared?For trash I always just used felguards. They can take a hit, have decent health, and can hold aggro pretty well. How would you quantify 'pretty well'? Not trying to be presumptuous but I thought we were functioning on the idea that this was for heroic content only. Might just be the min /maxer in me but I would consider 'normal' content to have training wheels on :P .Well, like I stated before all my experience has been in non-heroics with 4 warlocks + 1 priest. I was able to do all of them with very few problems up to 70. I don't believe heroics are possible with this composition (which is why I dropped a one warlock for a warrior).

For all the non-heroic content I almost never had problems with pulling aggro off of trash with my healer. The only real problem with trash is certain mobs would hit them pretty hard and they would die. In those cases I'd have to deathcoil/fear the mob and focus fire it down before it took out my priest. It wasn't a big deal 99% of the time, just something to remain aware of.

With the adjustment of demon health I'd suspect a lot of the heroic trash would be doable now, but I just don't see bosses being tanked effectively. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though!

[Stabface]

When talented, geared and buffed my VW has over 50K HP. Tanking 1 elite is no problem, I've solo'd every world group quest elite and quite a few other things like Thrym in Zul'Drak and trash in normal Gundrak easily. 4 of them should be able to tank heroic trash and hold aggro off the healer np, just pick up 1 elite per VW and you're golden. If it's more than a 4 elite pull (quite uncommon) you can probably nuke 1 elite down before it kills you. To kill the trash you just need to figure out how long the VW needs to generate enough threat so that SoC spam won't pull it off before stuff melts. Heroic bosses might be a bit tougher, because of aggro drop mechanics.