[HFP Gargolmar] Quad Locks at Lvl 62

[nogbog]

This is probably the least impressive video, but its one of my first
I'm running 4 destruction warlocks through Hellfire Ramparts at Level 62 (it'd be super easy if i had 5)

Attempt #1 fail ('http://www.vimeo.com/1224045')
http://www.vimeo.com/1224045

Attempt #2 success ('http://www.vimeo.com/1224061')
http://www.vimeo.com/1224061

Commentary
I've respec'd to destruction, the plan is too kill things fast. If you look at the crits, it could work
Attempt #1
The plan here was for the imps to distract the 2 adds while i nuke the boss.
I dont' know what happened, somehow my shadowbolts landed last and i still got the aggro from the adds
Attempt #2
The plan here was for the VW to gain a little threat, 1 VW was meant to die as part of the plan.
It died.. and somehow i got aggro after my 2nd shadowbolt, 2900k crit booya!

nb. my macros fail when my main dies.. i'll fix that one day

If anyone has any advice or any alternative strategies, let me know!

[iztehzha]

Drain tank spec? :>

[nogbog]

Drain tank spec? :>Respec'ing is NOT going to happen, i've never played destruction before now and destruction is fun.

[shaeman]

I'm at work so cant watch the video but I'm thinking Destro is your problem here, your critting will pull off of your pet no problem at all.

(I also know you aren't going to respec so I'll come up with suggestions, bearing in mind my experience is for one lock and may not scale with 5).

If using voidies perhaps keybind their taunt ability. Try taunting if you've pulled aggro (not sure how effective that would be, but worth a try).

Try using the succubus to cc a mob (yeuch). In a humanoid heavy environment so long as they aren't immune you could try to seduce a couple of targets.

I imagine you would need to have a round robin that sets your pettarget to your mains current target for each pet, and have them seduce that target. Have a macro that reseduces the pettarget if it breaks.

Seduction is pretty unreliable.

On to the best crowd control a warlock has - FEAR!!!!

If you have cleared a part of the way - work on pulling your mobs really far back into the cleared area so that they have plenty of room to run around. I would do something where you set each slaves focus to your current target (on a round robin basis). You then pull the mobs back and have a macro that fears your focus while you continue to dps down another. in some cases you can use that fear to snatch a quick bandage to restore any health lost from a hit or two.

Other than that make sure one lock puts on curse of tongues on casters. Put up curse of shadows from one lock as well.

Remember shadow ward if any of the mobs cast shadowbolts (I'm sure there are some locks in there and I know one of the bosses throws them.)

[Awbee]

No soulstones in that second video?!? :P

[nogbog]

I'm at work so cant watch the video but I'm thinking Destro is your problem here, your critting will pull off of your pet no problem at all.

(I also know you aren't going to respec so I'll come up with suggestions, bearing in mind my experience is for one lock and may not scale with 5).

If using voidies perhaps keybind their taunt ability. Try taunting if you've pulled aggro (not sure how effective that would be, but worth a try).

Try using the succubus to cc a mob (yeuch). In a humanoid heavy environment so long as they aren't immune you could try to seduce a couple of targets.

I imagine you would need to have a round robin that sets your pettarget to your mains current target for each pet, and have them seduce that target. Have a macro that reseduces the pettarget if it breaks.

Seduction is pretty unreliable.

On to the best crowd control a warlock has - FEAR!!!!

If you have cleared a part of the way - work on pulling your mobs really far back into the cleared area so that they have plenty of room to run around. I would do something where you set each slaves focus to your current target (on a round robin basis). You then pull the mobs back and have a macro that fears your focus while you continue to dps down another. in some cases you can use that fear to snatch a quick bandage to restore any health lost from a hit or two.

Other than that make sure one lock puts on curse of tongues on casters. Put up curse of shadows from one lock as well.

Remember shadow ward if any of the mobs cast shadowbolts (I'm sure there are some locks in there and I know one of the bosses throws them.)VW don't have a "taunt" ability, they have a something a little different.
Taunt/growl (From a warrior/druid/hunter pet POV) Forces the mob to focus attacks on you, you gain their threat level and keep it.
A VW Torment on the other hand generates set amounts of threat everytime it's cast. Kinda making it the worst tank ever.
I don't expect my pet to hold aggro for long, knew that was going to happen when i decided to ditch demonology for destruction.

I considered a succubus, it's easy to have 1 mob constantly seduced without any tricky macros/setup. Tell it to attack 1 target then tell it to attack another target, it'll keep the first target seduced.

Yeh, fear is very good.. i could have sworn fear lasted 40 seconds before.. its been too long since i played a lock.
Curse of tongues! i forgot about that one, that'll be very handy.
2nd boss in HFR throws shadow bolts, shadow ward will be up for that. I'm not sure if the felhunters spell lock will work, its not an interrupt, it's a silence so i don't think it'll work on a boss.

Thanks for that, lots to think about.

[shaeman]

Damn you!!!!! You've got me thinking of strategies now.

An alternative thought - could one of your warlocks ditch a few of the end talents in destruction to take affliction down to curse of exhaustion? He should still have big critting shadowbolts but that extra utility might just give you the edge.

It would be quite difficutl to manage but in small pulls you could buy some extra time by CoEx on the mobs in a pull. Probably easiest to pull off as the main warlock.

So for example you target your first target and throw your first shadowbolt volley - as it's about to hit throw on a curse of exhaustion. set off another volley then quickly Curse of Ex any of the others. It's a bit like having earthbind :)

So a pull of three might be seduce one, fear one, Curse of Exhaustion on the one you are burning down, if it buys you time for one more shadowbolt volley that might be enough to burn him down before he gets to you.

[nogbog]

No soulstones in that second video?!? :Pheh, i don't have a accept soul stone rez macro, which means i have to click it, i decided it wasn't worth the effort. Oh and there was still 20 minutes on cooldown, i'm impatient.

[nogbog]

Damn you!!!!! You've got me thinking of strategies now.

An alternative thought - could one of your warlocks ditch a few of the end talents in destruction to take affliction down to curse of exhaustion? He should still have big critting shadowbolts but that extra utility might just give you the edge.

It would be quite difficutl to manage but in small pulls you could buy some extra time by CoEx on the mobs in a pull. Probably easiest to pull off as the main warlock.

So for example you target your first target and throw your first shadowbolt volley - as it's about to hit throw on a curse of exhaustion. set off another volley then quickly Curse of Ex any of the others. It's a bit like having earthbind :)

So a pull of three might be seduce one, fear one, Curse of Exhaustion on the one you are burning down, if it buys you time for one more shadowbolt volley that might be enough to burn him down before he gets to you.In destruction there is a talent point called "Aftermath" and it has a chance on spell hit to daze the target, which is essentially the same as curse of exhaustion except u've gotta rely on the proc. I can kill a trash mob before it gets to me running at full speed, if it was dazed it'd be dead about half way.

What your saying would be easy to do using some focus macros. It does give me more control over the fight, BUT i'm impatient, i dont' want to set the clicking each mob and assigning its focus.

Destruction is for straight pew pew imo.

So, with that in mind, i'm thinking on a typical trash pull.
1. Nuke 1 down
2. Howl of Terror
3. Nuke the others down 1 at a time
death coils if they get 2 close, very very handy
Voidwalkers/Succys are out to buy me time if it's a big pull, i'd like to have them not die on trash which is why i don't want them tanking, they're sort of backup.

oh, fyi, immolate + conflag is instant death for non-elites. Wolves in HFR
Forgot to mention i have shadowfury on my main, aoe stun.

ps: WTH!.. when did howl of terror become a 8 second fear.. that's weak.

[Ðeceased]

got something else to throw into the mix ^^

set ur minions with a focus on different mobs.. that way just like with mages you can chain fear and use curse of recklessness to stop them from running to far away, when they start moving in CoA and byebye mob! :) can be used with coil too as you mentioned for mass fearing ^^

and to keep you destruction ^^ Shadowfury + HoT, then when they return shadowfury + HoT etc.. you should be able to do the shadowfury with just two of ur clones as its on a 20 sec cooldown, so by the time they return u'll be half way through the cooldown (HoT will have to be over at least 4, so make sure it's on round robin :) )

[shaeman]

deceased is right - but you can actually ping pong a mob using curse of recklessness and curse of weakness

e.g

you fear the mob - it runs towards some other mobs so you put curse of recklessness on it - it starts coming for you, so you apply curse of weakness which then has it feel the effects of the fear that is still on it.

It would be a night mare to deal with x4 hehe.



Nogbog - you like to make it difficult on yourself dont you. :) Must be a masochist... :D

[shaeman]

Actually watched the video just now.

Key problem in this fight is that you have the two casters accompanying him who actually heal him.

Any time I've done this on normal it's always been a case of taking down the casters first then him.

I would suggest the following. Do no damage to the bossman.

put all voidies on him (or possibly one on the other caster).

Then nuke the 1st caster down. Take down the second then all out on the boss.

Hit the second caster, then go for the boss.

I'm hoping that he might not aggro on you till then.

Give that a shot anyway. (record the results - I'd love to see it).

One other thing - try spreading your characters out more - when the boss comes for one of them stop dps and hope for a crit from the others to ping pong the boss a bit.

[Ðeceased]

deceased is right - but you can actually ping pong a mob using curse of recklessness and curse of weakness

e.g

you fear the mob - it runs towards some other mobs so you put curse of recklessness on it - it starts coming for you, so you apply curse of weakness which then has it feel the effects of the fear that is still on it.

It would be a night mare to deal with x4 hehe.



Nogbog - you like to make it difficult on yourself dont you. :) Must be a masochist... :D

/facepalm.. ay use CoW :)

hmm just thought of another one.. for lvl 70 sadly :S

5 mobs.. 4 get a focus from one warlock each. Cast Seed of Corruption on focuses and then immediately, with your main targeting the one that has no focus, cast 4 SoCs (I hope they stack). Then have your clones cast Shadow bolts on that target whilst your main casts a shadowfury on the bunch of mobs causing a Black hole of SoCs..

If it does work out as planned each mob should get hit for around 10k (depending on ur spelldamage ) whilst the main target will take more.. with the added bonus that you can then immediately begin a fear cycle :P

[Ðeceased]

Actually watched the video just now.

Key problem in this fight is that you have the two casters accompanying him who actually heal him.

Any time I've done this on normal it's always been a case of taking down the casters first then him.

I would suggest the following. Do no damage to the bossman.

put all voidies on him (or possibly one on the other caster).

Then nuke the 1st caster down. Take down the second then all out on the boss.

Hit the second caster, then go for the boss.

I'm hoping that he might not aggro on you till then.

Give that a shot anyway. (record the results - I'd love to see it).

One other thing - try spreading your characters out more - when the boss comes for one of them stop dps and hope for a crit from the others to ping pong the boss a bit.

QFT they have very few HP one, max two SB barrages each, should dispatch em

[nogbog]

Oh yeh.. forgot about killing adds first..

So i'm trying 2 things you guys suggested

1. Shadowfury + HoT
2. Fear Juggling
3. Killing adds on 1st boss first

i know.. there are 3.. cant' count

Edit: And yes, i do like to make things difficult