Warlock DPS vs. Loken

[Malekyth]

Pally tank, three Warlocks and Holy Priest say, "die Loken, die!!"

I don't know if anyone else has trouble with this guy, but I finally downed him on heroic. Decent gear: 78-80 blues, crafted epics, and 40-badge belts. It took me several wipes (right up to repops, ugh) to figure out the right combinations of running around vs. standing still and eating the damage, what potions to use, and which specs. My afflic locks could burn him efficiently but this was definitely a sprint, not a marathon -- I needed to down him before the third or fourth lightning nova finally caught me off-guard with one or more toons at less than full health. I changed to Demo/Destro spec (Felguard + Ruin) and dropped him within two minutes for the achievement.

How:

-All five guys run in behind an Avenger's Shield, tanking him at the throne, standing in a huddle at his feet. Hit the pet attack button, Immolate, Corruption, curses and tankin' stuff. Then spam Shadow Bolt like mad and don't let up. Loken has a tendency to backpedal so tap forward as needed between Shadow Bolts, but don't interrupt a cast to do it. The rest of the fight is all healing timing. Don't worry about the arc debuff, just watch the party's health and try to keep it as close to topped up as possible. Watch for him to start casting Lightning Nova. You'll want to start casting an overheal Prayer of Healing by the time his cast bar (4-5 seconds) is around 50%. The nova will knock everyone down to slivers (16,000 damage before resistance) but the heal should land just afterward. AOE heal the party back up to full. Repeat until he falls over.

Things:

-I won't bother with nature resistance potions again. While they absorb a fair amount of damage, I wasn't going to save a critical amount of healer mana with one less Prayer of Healing. After I stopped using them, I was able to save the cooldown for a life-saving mana pot near the end of the fight. Having to slow down for a Hymn or even Life Tap might've sunk me.
-Felguards are Loken-proof. They're barely scratched by the lightning nova. I'm an afflic lock fo' life, yo, but these guys truly kick ass.
-I tried deactivating my priest's spam flash heal macro, thinking I wanted to save mana for the big AOE heals, but the attention I had to pay doing manual healing on the tank threw me off my timing. I put the macro back and just let the priest spam. I didn't have to worry about the tank dying between novas, and therefore could pay close attention to the boss's cast bar. Anyway, I had that potion cooldown available so the odd overheal wasn't a big deal in the long run.

[Ken]

I just found some postings that claim that you can line-of-sight Loken's AoE attack. This means we might be able to tank him next to his chair and switching to the left/right side after each AoE. I'm gonna try this soon :)
I used to just strafe left/right away from him in normal mode, but due to higher damage and bigger AoE range, this doesn't work for me anymore in heroic mode.

[Liquidity]

My locks are at 61.

Should I respec them to Demonology or keep em with affliction for leveling?

Thanks!

[Taliesin]

I just found some postings that claim that you can line-of-sight Loken's AoE attack.

This would be news to me, as I understood that LOS doesn't work on that attack. Not trying to be negative here, but it could be that only certain things actually provide the LOS you need. As you pointed out, maybe using the chair to pull it off, as I thought the pillars near him didn't work. Just seems strange that strats don't mention using LOS to avoid it, as you would think that would be the first tactic people would try on massive AoE attacks (like Ingvar in UK, where LOS does help on roars).

I just use the same strat as Malekyth already, but of course I have a nature resist totem down and overlapping health buffs to make the attack merely an annoyance. Standing still means you're DPS'ing harder and he drops sooner. Not all group compositions will work like this, so someone may need to put this idea to the test. Just for testing purposes, I may have one of my DPS run and hide in various spots from now on to see if they can avoid the damage somewhere, possibly even down around the floating globe in his antechamber (definitely looks big enough to block the effect). I don't need all 3 DPS anymore to kill him anyways.

EDIT: Another thought is maybe they just recently fixed the behavior where the LOS not working was actually a bug. Not like Blizz mentions all the changes in every patch.

[Greythan]

My lock was my main prior to multiboxing.

For my money, I would not spec anything other than demo (felguard) as a lock. The sheer beauty of PASSIVE sustained DPS on a boss fight is worth it alone.

It is simply much harder to ensure perfect reapplication of dots (affliction) and a consistent spam of SB while watching for DPS-enhancing procs (destruction).

The notable exception here would be fights that require constant movement. This is where insta-cast DOT's shine, obviously. However, even in the fight you describe with some movement the felguard is one hell of a dot (that requires no timing/refreshing).

[Memn]

-I tried deactivating my priest's spam flash heal macro, thinking I wanted to save mana for the big AOE heals, but the attention I had to pay doing manual healing on the tank threw me off my timing. I put the macro back and just let the priest spam. I didn't have to worry about the tank dying between novas, and therefore could pay close attention to the boss's cast bar. Anyway, I had that potion cooldown available so the odd overheal wasn't a big deal in the long run.

I haven't played a Holy Priest since I retired my L70 heroic clothy group, but my macro for my "dps spam" button was

/castsequence [target=focus,help] Prayer of Mending, Renew, Prayer of Mending

This kept PoM up on the tank as often as possible, and had a renew up on the tank 66% of the time.

I still had to manually heal with Flash of Light, but not nearly as often, and it consumed slightly less mana than I regenerated. You may want to experiment with something like this.

[unseen]

An alternate method I've found works is to bind everyone's strafe keys together. When he starts his AOE you strafe the whole group to the right/left out of range. Line up and dps again. Rinse and repeat. It's hard to get down considering after the first time he doesn't line up properly, but I can usually avoid one or two of the aoe's with this.

Healing through the AOE is viable as long as your priest has enough health/mana to do so.