Felguard Tank (PVE, no instances!)

I'm thinking about a druid (healer) + 4x warlock setup for farming
the dailys and questing.

Anyone got some experience in using the felguard as a tank?
I'm not interested in doing heroics or even non-heroic instances...
it's just about tanking an elite mob to complete the quest (like
the 4 elite quests in dragonblight / wintergarde keep) or the arena
quest in Zul'Drak or killing the elite mobs for the daily Qs in icecrown.

I'd like to know if it's possible to heal the felguard or the void
and keep them alive with some hots or are they dead within
the blink of an eye?

I don't know about felguard, but I guess warlock pets would be about similar to hunter pets, so I will share my experience.

I ran four hunters and a druid healer from 1 to 80, and they were a very fun a viable group. I cleared all instances on my way and then converted the group to PVP.

Pets do fine on quest elite bosses and normal instances. As you guessed, heroics are not really an option, though.

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Originally Posted by Asterix

I'm thinking about a druid (healer) + 4x warlock setup for farming
the dailys and questing.

Anyone got some experience in using the felguard as a tank?
I'm not interested in doing heroics or even non-heroic instances...
it's just about tanking an elite mob to complete the quest (like
the 4 elite quests in dragonblight / wintergarde keep) or the arena
quest in Zul'Drak or killing the elite mobs for the daily Qs in icecrown.

I'd like to know if it's possible to heal the felguard or the void
and keep them alive with some hots or are they dead within
the blink of an eye?

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Oh yah. You can solo those quests with your felguard and no healer if you spec somewhat correctly in demonology (not hard to figure out where). The only problem I ever had was aggro, not him dying. Once and a while you'll need to aggro drop with void shatter or whatever it's called. Obviously you'll also need to DPS very very slowly. Easy to watch if you have an aggro addon like Omen. Let him build aggro and then MORE DOTS.

A healer would be overkill imo. The whole problem was aggro, not sure how you can counter that with boxing.

EDIT: Come to think of it, doesn't earth shield add aggro to the person it's cast on? That would help to have a shaman around as well as the bonuses from strength of earth, flametongue, healing stream, and windfury. Also the shaman could drop earth elementals to help.

Second best choice would be a priest if reflective shield adds aggro to the person it's cast on.

A pally would help with ret aura i guess.

Druid is just a great combo with warlocks period, but I'm not sure how they could help with aggro control.

No matter the choice, they'd be doing a whole lot of standing around tbqh.

Finally, don't forget that your gear effects your felguards stats, so don't slack on your gear.

With a druid, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Aggro getting tight? Root and chill on the DPS for a sec. I also made use of Fear+Root for tough mobs {mobs aren't hitting/casting when feared, and root keeps em from bringing friends}.

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Originally Posted by Khatovar

With a druid, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Aggro getting tight? Root and chill on the DPS for a sec. I also made use of Fear+Root for tough mobs {mobs aren't hitting/casting when feared, and root keeps em from bringing friends}.

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When I solo leveled my lock, I found that most of the group quest mobs and such were immune to fear. If they were not they would have been laughably easy. Anything that can be feared is a joke for a warlock to kill. Though for the mobs that are vulnerable, root is a great idea.

If I was going to try this I would go for voidwalkers on all the warlocks.

Run with omen - and use the warlocks soul shatter a decent margin before they pull aggro.
I would have manual cast of the voidwalkers taunt on round robin so that if you do pull aggro you can always taunt the elite back (might even work to move the elite on to a full health voidy so the first one can be healed up).

I'd probably try this as affliction and let the dots eat away so there would be less burst aggro gain.
I'd make sure I had points in demonology for the demonic brutatily talent for improved taunt.

If you put a couple of talent points into Health Funnel, you can keep a Felguard alive through so many quests.
My warlock was able to solo current level - 5 player group quests with this method.

With five warlocks, or four and a druid, this would be very simple.

With the way soul shards generate now, you can keep a non-demonology-spec voidwalker alive effectively forever on most elites. Magic-casting elites are a bit tougher but it's not that bad. I solo'd Sarathstra at 74(or was it 76?) on my solo affliction-spec lock while leveling, and was never in any danger of either dying or running out of mana. Just put a couple points into improved health funnel and the voidwalker taunt/aggro one and you'll be set.

If you don't plan on doing any heroics 4 felguards would be overkill on any world elite. Coupled with an AOE healer of some type and they are a walking death squad. That doesn't even include the warlock yet. Toss a couple dots and a couple shadowbolts and your set. Much like hunters they excel at world PVE.. lol..

What advantage is there to not have a tank if you want to do PVE? Even doing normal instances, you'll have a huge headache on your hand and be doing far less DPS than if you just plain tanked stuff with three DPS and a healer.

If PvE refers to leveling up and dailies, then a tank slows you down.
Unless you're planning on running instances and/or heroics, you don't need a tank really.
I'd personally like to always include a tank type toon, or at least a dps that can dual spec to tank, but that's a preference not a requirement for PvE teams.

4x Warlocks + 1x Druid is a very mobile team.
And they'd be very strong in battlegrounds too.
Not sure on arena, but Asonimie is playing 4x warlocks as a secondary team.

I have leveled a 2 x warlock + 1 disc priest team from 55 to 80. During the invasion event pre wrath (forgot the name), I farmed the scourge with a 3 x warlock + 1 disc priest team. I run dailies with a 3 x warlock, 1 disc priest and a feral druid team. IMO, 4 warlocks and a healer would be an excellent choice for leveling and dailies, although I wouldn't use a druid as a healer. I use a druid healer from time to time when I have a real tank, so I know in advance who is going to get the damage and can stack hots appropriately. Tanking an elite with Felguards is a little more interesting, because leaving every ability of the Felguards on Auto, you'd have to heal more retroactively. The Felguards can be seen as one tank, because they will miss and crit randomly, losing or gaining aggro accordingly (provided that the warlocks are specced the same and have similar gear), so the mob will switch targets from time to time, therefore incoming damage is theoretically split between all Felguards. Normal mobs shoudn't be a problem at all, just tag them fast enough before the Felguards rip them apart :)

Thank you guys for all the input so far.

My Warlocks dinged 60 last weekend and I'm currently learning the first spells, setting up the talent tree, getting mounts,...
(I've done 1-60 with pure instance boosting). Next weekend I'll start with questing and gearing them up with BC Equipment
from the BC starting area.

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What advantage is there to not have a tank if you want to do PVE?

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I want to keep this setup clean and simple. No downtimes, just blasting through dailys and quests
and therefore the warlocks seemed to be an excellent choice because of the ability to turn life into
mana with an instant cast and the druid got an group-HOT as an instant cast, too.

So this is just for questing. My druid got a healer spec and is mainly played as a tank (when I play the char solo).
So the equipment is good and if I want to go to an instance I change one warlock with my shaman healer and
play the druid as tank.

As mentioned in the first posting - the warlock combo is just a questing / daily group.

I've been levelling my first ever character (the lock) and been swapping through the various specs to keep things interesting.

She's 79 now, but I was questing in Zuldrak and soloed the ragemanes flipper quests at 77. Ragemane is a 75. No real special abilities that I could tell. My felguard was able to tank Ragemane the entire time.
I would just dot up ragemane incinerate a little, then heal up the felguard no problem at all.
It took a while but my felguard was never in any real danger and I was able to life tap and drain life to get mana back.

I also took downa level 80 elite at 77, but that was one of the huge trees down below dalaran (the red ones). I got an add in the midst of it and it was a piece of cake.

Both elites aren't exactly toughies - but bearing in mind this is one lock with no healer and I think your 4 warlock +healer team would do just fine on a lot of elites.

my locks are packed up and ready to go.

this weekend we'll kick some demons asses :D

Dark portal.. I'm on my way.

Just a further thought - I have a Disc Priest, Frost Mage, 3 x Demo Warlock team and if you specc one of the Warlocks to heavy Demo with all of the Pet assisting skills and forgo a bit of the locks damage abilities you can make the VW into a formidable tank. When I levelled my main - Warlock - I soloed everything using the VW and a demo/dest build - I was always watching my threat meter and soulshattering - could only put 2 dots on at best and judicial Drain Life till I started to pull the mobs attention - with the new mutli team and the dedicated lock/vw team tanking I have found if I give the VW the chance to develop threat and use his 2min cooldown taunt the team can then wail away with full dps and not pull the mob away from the VW. Make sure the remaining locks/FelGuards have taunt turned off and just dps and they are amazing. The team can probably do without the priest as healing is rarely needed and I have him dual-specced shadow and he is nearly always in shadow now. The mage is mainly there for the cc and drinks and portals - love the portals hehe. When they AOE very little survives for long - remember you are questing and the mobs are really overwhelmed by this much firepower - even the end of quest-chain ones are mincemeat.

ok.. warlocks are crap. :D

(the class is ok, but... dunno... I don't like them.. it's not my way of playing and having fun
and due to the fact that I play WoW because of the fun... I think I'll trash them)

sooo.. let's see what we'll play next.

Mainchar stayes my lvl 80 tank druid and I'm looking for 2 chars for triple-boxing.

Sorry to hear about the warlocks!

If it wasn't the pet aspect of Warocks that you disliked, Hunters may be worth a try. The druid healers on the pets would trivialize any sort of quest elite you had to worry about. If you disliked the pet aspect of Warlocks, then I probably wouldn't suggest that :p

You always have the Shaman option, or two more Druids.

What sort of playstyle are you looking for?