So those of you with 2 or more Warlocks...

[Eteocles]

Seeing as I've rolled 3 of my own and have never personally lvl'd one past 20 before(lvling my ex's lock at 47 doesn't count nor does doing dailies at 70 lol), I'm at a loss as to what to spec, or what rotations/setups would be best.

I'm currently considering Affliction so the stacked dots burn shit down quick, but should I consider triple demonology Maybe 1 demo for a felguard tank and the other 2 afflic? All 3 would have varying Healthstone ranks probably, but that'd be late on my talent list. Bottom line I suppose, demo or afflic, and what talents to avoid? Some looked okay but I've read here n there some're useless, like imp drain soul or the other one that improves drain health/mana. Pros cons?

Plus I'm bored and we need more discussions going on here all day ;)

[Tamu]

I personally recommend maxing out your DOT/drain power with Affliction. But it really depends on your play-style. I prefer running around and dotting things up rather than relying more on my pets.

[elo]

Well, I'm contributing even though I don't meet the 2+ req. I have a 70 lock and based on that and my 5 boxing experience I think I can provide some value.

For leveling solo the consensus among locks in demonology spec. Great survivability, low downtime, just kill stuff a little slower.

For raiding almost all locks I know go affliction as it's the highest DPS output for those long fights.

For boxing I'd be tempted to go destruction. Reason being is that you'll be able to kill stuff in one volley of shadow bolts, and if that doesn't get it then just hit shadow burn and it's game over for the mob. Regardless of what you go with though, get the corruption talent (affliction) as soon as you start doing instances. The alternative strategy is to just blaze past everything, dotting mobs like crazy, and never stopping to see their eventual and assured death. Demo I think you'd spend more time waiting for the pet to get to the mob than it would actually take to kill it through other means.

That's all I got.

[roddo]

I leveled a lock to 70, and have a baby trio atm. I'd say take imp corruption, destruction up to shadowburn then back into affliction. Max out your drains, inc imp drain soul (gives mana back if you kill the mob during the drain, and its more than the cost of the spell) Get yourself a mod that limits the number of shards also, so you don't fill your bags up with shards due to draining. Basically your gonna end up dotting everything, but you'll have shadowburn as an Oh Shit insta cast nuke. Demo to me would be a waste with a 3 crew, can burn much faster with dots and shadow bolts, and you'll never run out of mana or health once you get a clue as to what your doing. I seriously never carried water or food until I hit outlands leveling with affliction.

[Team Squishee]

I have been rolling a priest , mage and 2 locks for a couple of weeks (hand levelling a paladin atm to 5 box).

I has 2 x alli locks at 60 pre TBC & re-rolled horde on a new server with a lock at TBC launch, so I have a fair bit of /played on our favourite evil class.

I started off my 2 locks going for instant corruption (as any solo lock does) and thinking of dot powah!

by about lv 17 i realised that with the combined bolt dps of 3 offensive casters, dots are kinda a waste of time, I can kill anything my level with 2 sets of bolts (2 shadowbolts & a frostbolt). Mobs 3 levels up will drop to 2 sets of bolts and some burst (2 x shadowburns & a fireburst).

Basically everything dies before even a couple of dots tick twice so I respecd my locks.

One is going full destruction - maximum burst dmg - for a solo lock this spec is risky because a) you dont have improved pets to tank and b) you are pretty squishee when a mob gets to you, which it will because you cant kill it in time - however with focussed fire it will die in time and with another warlock....

VW tanking is adequate WITH TALENTS , and adding blood pact to a VW boost him a lot - so one of my locks went demo - 2 pts in imp healthstone 3 pts in The stam>spirit talent. Then 3/3 improved VW. Then into destro up to shadowbolt - You could then go back into demo straight away or do what i did and stay in destro until i get enough points to have shadowburn & a felguard (remember that a felguard doesnt have all his skills at 50 - 61 is the ideal level to switch over)

I think that for boxers who have the benefits of focus fire burst damage beats dots & longevity.

However... On my first lv 60 toon I was a huge fan of the SM/DS build - dot powah with a sacrificed VW to regen health>mana - warlock aoe farming back in the day basically consisted of running round in a big circle training up to 15 mobs at a time fully dotted up leaving a trail of corpses - the build went out of fashion massively with the changes at TBC but a modified version consisting of 2 + locks at a time is something i will definitely experiment with down the line - for levelling though u got to love a big Blue tank & the burst dmg!

[roddo]

Improved Vw is really good for soloing.Definitely Get imp healthstones on one of them, it'll save you a corpse run every now and then.

[Doubleo7]

It really depends on how you want to spend your time leveling. If you see yourself fighting one mob until its dead and then moving on to the next mob then spec destruction from early on. The points that reduce your shadowbolt cast time and shadowburn will help you to almost not even need dots. However, if you see yourself fighting more than one mob at a time then you should consider getting instant corruption early on. Being able to tab from mob to mob and lay down instant corruption and curse of agony will kill everything without shadowbolts...

Also, the best leveling spec for a warlock, especially solo, imo is affliction. Leveling isn't about survivablity as much as it is about killing quickly with minimum downtime. Affliction is the king of efficency. Demonology improves as a leveling spec 50+ once you can get felguard.

[Lynly]

I have a current 3-lock team that's at 52 right now (see my blog in my signature). I also have an S3 lock that's Affliction to Unstable Affliction with the rest of the points in Demo. I've also raised 2 other locks to 70 on other servers... so I know just a little about locks. Let me tell you my experience...

Levels 1-49:
I leveled from 1-49 as affliction, getting Siphon Life, insta-Corruption, Fel Concentration, etc. That a lot of fun, with little to no downtime. Usually I roll with 1 void, 1 imp and a succy/felhunter. Blood Pact is really nice and you only need 1 blueberry to hold aggro. I had a /castsequence macro to cast Siphon Life, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Immolate (in that order... normally it's longest DOT first, but the life gain from Siphon Life outweighs that). I rarely fight more than 1 more at a time because it's too much management and quite a bit of downtime afterwards to drink up but I have been able to easily take on 6 mobs 3 levels above my team.

Normal fight is all 3 locks have pet attack at the same time as 3x Siphon Life goes on. Then it's 3x Curse of Agony. Then wand... don't neglect your wand! 3x wanding with a high DPS wand is a lot of damage. Mobs go down really really quick... we're talking less than 5 seconds here. Sometimes I Drain Life after the set of dots... I rarely need to go through the entire cast sequence. I Drain Soul as needed for shards. One thing about draining is that you have to make sure they auto-follow your main after the fight since draining will break follow.

Other pulls include sending in the pets all at once while initiating 3x Shadow Bolt. Then wand again.

These methods work really well even though I'm going against the traditional Aff-lock fight of pulling multiple mobs and letting the Dots do their thing. I find that I can go through all the mobs in an area extremely fast even though I'm going one mob at a time... with no down time.

Level 50+:

I re-spec them ALL to Felguards. I was worried about the loss of insta-Corruption more than the loss of Siphon Life. But man was I wrong. Now the cast sequence changed to Curse of Agony, Corruption, Immolate. The fight has 3 felguards attacking a mob with me simultaneously casting 3x Curse of Agony. Then wand. Mobs even level or higher are dying even faster... 3 seconds max. The Felguards are doing extremely high damage. I turned off auto-cast on their Cleaves to save mana... just have Anguish up. And they can hold aggro very well.

Last night I took on 8 mobs at once in Shadow Hold in Felwood that are 3-4 levels above me. I lost 2 Felguards, but was able to kill them all ending with about 1/2 life and almost no mana. Now that I'm 52, my locks are gaining back insta-Corruption slowly even though I really don't need it.

Trust me... go Felguard as soon as you hit level 50 on a trio. You'll mow things down really really fast. Conventional wisdom say that you should wait until mid to late 50's to spec Felguard with a single lock if that's how you want to go, but with a trio, go Felguard as soon as you can. I guarantee you will not regret it.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

For 3-boxing straight warlocks, I'd definitely NOT go destruction. They're already mana hogs until 35ish anyway, even specced affliction. My 4 warlocks at 70 are demo/aff and are a very well-rounded group. Felguards chomp face very nicely against anyone with less than 300 resilience.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Donbartolo

I leveled with a priest so I had plenty of lifetap+PoH going on but I think I would go with the standard drain-tank strategy ('http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=965581670&sid=1') since you don't have a healer. The upside is that you'll be able to quest like mad with almost zero downtime with three locks, especially later when you get Curse of Elements and Curse of Shadow going together. ;) The downside is that affliction sucks for doing your own instance runs unless you seriously outgear/outlevel the instance.

[Stealthy]

For 3-boxing straight warlocks, I'd definitely NOT go destruction. They're already mana hogs until 35ish anyway, even specced affliction. My 4 warlocks at 70 are demo/aff and are a very well-rounded group. Felguards chomp face very nicely against anyone with less than 300 resilience.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Donbartolo

I leveled with a priest so I had plenty of lifetap+PoH going on but I think I would go with the standard drain-tank strategy ('http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=965581670&sid=1') since you don't have a healer. The upside is that you'll be able to quest like mad with almost zero downtime with three locks, especially later when you get Curse of Elements and Curse of Shadow going together. ;) The downside is that affliction sucks for doing your own instance runs unless you seriously outgear/outlevel the instance.

I went Aff to 60 then respecced for Felguard. Minimal downtime with drain tanking as Don said, plus Felguards give you an effective anti rogue/caster strategy (you are playing on a PvP server after all :P).

Cheers,

Stealthy

[thinus]

plus Felguards give you an effective anti rogue/caster strategy (you are playing on a PvP server after all :P).


Felguard locks are much easier for a rogue than Affliction locks. Instant HoT, CoEx, crapload of DoTs ticking for insane amounts.

[Lokked]

Affliction warlocks basically use the damage of a succubus, CoA, Corruption and Wand to their fullest to kill a single mob. This combination + the time is takes for the dots to tick down makes them regen all the mana they spent casting CoA and corruption.

When you have 2+ Aff warlocks, you aren't using your dots to their full effectiveness (unlelss each of them only cast 1 dot) and thus are wasting mana.

For 3+ locks, until you get to BC, I would spec either Destro or Demo.

Destro:
1-2 casts of Shadowbolts per mob + Succubi with Imp LoP (3sec CD). You've got Lifetap + Downtime to reach next mob for your mana regen, and Demon Armor + Downtime before next mob for your Health Regen (damage probably only taken from Lifetap). I would probably only go up to getting Ruin, and then start down Demo tree to improve the Succubi.

Demo:
Felguard....that's really it. Plus Shadowbolts for damage. Again, mobs won't live long enough to make DoTs worthwhile.

When mobs start to get enough hitpoints to make DoTing them worthwhile, then I guess Aff would be beneficial.

This is all just my opinion and theory, and I realise that without actually trying this out, why would anyone listen to this advice when there are many who have run 3+ warlocks? I mainly wrote this to drone out my Wife, and you can't completely delete posts once they are posted.

Lokked

[yarr]

question to the multi-lock crowd:

can anyone describe exactly how soul siphon works with multiple locks?

1)Say 3 locks have 3 affliction effects each on a given target, does that add to 9, thus increasing drain damage by 36% to that target?
2) Can multiple locks all have the "shadow embrace" (reduce physical damage done by X % on the target) debuff on the same target at the same time?

Basically I'm thinking having 3 warlocks, all 3 can dot up the target then get crazy huge drain life ticks due to soul siphon. Dunno if this would work though, you tell me! =D

[Oldin]

It would work. The thing is you wouldn't really have time to drain the mobs. I'm not sure about whether or not Shadow EMbraces from different locks stack. I would guess not. So you would get up to 6 affliction effects easily that way, then siphon life, and the drain life is counted in the boost too. So there's at least 12 affliction effects on the mobs when they start dying. That is a lot of extra damage.

[yarr]

It would work. The thing is you wouldn't really have time to drain the mobs. I'm not sure about whether or not Shadow EMbraces from different locks stack. I would guess not. So you would get up to 6 affliction effects easily that way, then siphon life, and the drain life is counted in the boost too. So there's at least 12 affliction effects on the mobs when they start dying. That is a lot of extra damage.

i was thinking more for a pvp twink multi-lock group

the locks would be pretty durable with the stacking soul siphon life drain stuffs.

Maybe throw in a shadow priest with mega stam (probably gonna be the focus fired target) as the "main" for shadow weaving debuff & the occasional heal if a lock is gettin dmged more than he's draining.

[Mokoi]

my 3 locks just hit 50 too. respecced Demo for fun since i have never had a Felguard on any of my 3 other 70 warlocks.

Felguard > all. you dont even need to cast a spell.. they can take down 5 even lvl mobs without a single heal and you can just ctrl+1 them all over the map pick up like 15 mobs and dot / wand them all down with occasional health funnel.

pwnage.. awesome truly awesome.

[Mudd]

My recommendation would be affliction while levelling, and pick up demo talents as you need once you get siphon life. The best part about boxing affliction locks is that you can have your dots ticking on A LOT of mobs at once resulting in pretty high overall damage. Makes grinding and questing fast, you can chain pull in the earlier instances this way too once you get good at micromanaging your voids. Sure you can one shot things easier as destruction, but you will not spend a majority of your levelling time 5v1 against mobs. Stopping to cast is annoying as hell too and just slows things down. Dot everything in sight then loot after. This is where you will appreciate having 3 instant dots. Pickup quests are less painful when you can 'dot train' 30+ quest mobs and loot them all at the end.

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/425/wowscrnshot111507153516yi8.jpg

Its a little inefficent because your dots will rarely go to completion but your mana pool is sustainable with lifetap, siphon life, and some good pet micromagement at lower levels. At level 70 you will be able to put up a row of dots every GCD, life tap, tank all the mobs you dotted and be topped off from siphon life. The more locks you have the easier it is to sustain since the mobs tend to attack different toons in your group. So with 5 locks each toon is taking 5 times less damage on average but getting the full healing effects from siphon life.

Felguard is nice when soloing, but to be honest when youre multiboxing locks you don't really need that much more dps since the mobs will drop before your first set of dots wears off. If your instancing you would probably want to have voidwalkers out since they simply last longer as tanks. Its still worth speccing into for fun when you are able to.

Soul Siphon does stack and is highly recommended especially if you are the Vandar/Balinda tank in AV :-D.

Shadow Embrace does not stack. A single-boxing affliction lock will tell you to put one point in it, but that is for protecting your dots from dispell. Your dispell protection is the rows of other dots you just put up. One extra debuff out of however many dots a multiboxer can put up isnt worth it.

[yarr]

Shadow Embrace does not stack. A single-boxing affliction lock will tell you to put one point in it, but that is for protecting your dots from dispell. Your dispell protection is the rows of other dots you just put up. One extra debuff out of however many dots a multiboxer can put up isnt worth it.

doesn't it also count as an affliction effect for more drainage though? I figure a single point on a single one of my toons would be nice to get 4% more life drained on all toons.