Warlocks are just too much fun.

As my sig suggests, my first team to 80 was a 4 class mixed group - Pally, 2xMage, Warlock, Priest. After the new Dungeon Finder launched I took the opportunity to rapidly gear my tank ... and for the first time actually played each of the dungeons from the solo point of view. One thing I noticed was how everyone used AoE on the trash instead of CC. Big difference. So, I went and solo'd my warlock through a bunch of instances. Horrible gear (avg ilvl was around 180). However, I managed to go from 800 DPS (you've read that correctly) to >2200 DPS (same gear) simply with a respec and a change of rotations (yeah forum search!)

Now that I understand a lot more about warlocks, I decided to level a team of them (if 1 is good... 3 is better, right?). SoC in heroic trash clearing is simply epic... x3 and it just seems like it will make my runs smooth and fast.

My new team consists of my old main Pally (who was left at level 70 when I started mBoxing), 3 Warlocks, and a Shammy healer. Last night I hit 68 on my slaves, and tried The Black Morass. With my old team, I was never able to do it until I leveled to 80 and went back for the achieve. Here I was, not even 70 on 4 of my toons and trying it ... and cleared the place in record time. No deaths, no issues. The work was mostly done by my FelGuards, which got me thinking... the best of both worlds:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IcxrM...usxzZVo:oq00zV

This build gets a lock the Felguard, 5% more crit on SoC, 5% more damage on SoC, 24sec Immolates (so you can spam Incinerate for just about the whole fight). The Glyphs give the Felguard a nice DPS boost and your Immolate and Incinerate spells a nice DPS boost as well. 1 lock casts CoE, the others use CoA, and you're off to the races.

The true beauty of this is when you have 3 felguards running in mopping things up while I AoE. It has simply amazed me how useful having several pets is. Sure they die... but they aren't there for protection they are there to provide CC in the middle of all the AoE madness that's going on. Oh, and all that free healing they get from the damage the locks are doing? Yeah, it makes them that much more survivable.

For leveling and questing ... I never have to stop. I simply toss CoA, Corruption and target the next mob. The felguards finish them off for me. I can clear an area faster than my mages could AoE because I don't have to "gather" mobs.

TLDR: Try out a bunch of Locks. They are certainly more fun than I thought they would be. My only complaint (and this is a small one) is they don't provide the ports that my mages did. With the new dungeon system, however, that's really not the issue it used to be. Food/Water? I just create it on my mages and hand it out :)

The multiple pets is a win
I play three hunters with bears the bears carry 2 AoEs each so thats 6 total and then 3 volley and its all dead
one of the bear AoEs is Thunderstomp which has an increased threat gen so the hunters never agg and i can stay in viper so mana is a nill issue again hunters never take agg so health is not an issue and every target change starts with a mend pet so pet health is not an issue in PvE the bears are near invincible it really works well when they get TS out of sync because they start to swap agg between them and they are all running HoTs all the time so they stay all full up on health In PvP no one wants to kill pets so they go in and 6x AoE the whole group and The burst DPS is MADD i can burst dps a tank toon in like 4 seconds in AV

I just finished levelling a team of 5 locks to 80 and so far they have been a blast to play.

I initially had them all destro spec'd, but changed them to affliction after playing around with them in BG's. While affliction is not as bursty as destro, the amount of self-healing you get as affliction is crazy, almost negating the need for outside healing (especially if you use the Siphon Life & Soul Link glyphs). Survivability is much better (kinda needed since I'm running around in the crafted blue pvp set).

Other goodies:
5 x instant AoE fear .
4 x silience / interrupts / purges from Felhunters (I have the 5th pet as Imp for health bonus)
Self-res every 15 minutes
Stronger SoC's for AoE carnage
Shadow Embrace partially stacks (the HoT reduction does, the damage buff doesn't).

Currently I'm toying with the idea of moving 5 points out of Demo into Bane for .5 secs of SB casts for a faster nuke...I find during BG's that I'm casting SB quite a bit when haunt is on cooldown and the target is already dotted up (very helpful against resto druids and disc priests).

Cheers,
S.

This is very close to what I theorycrafted for my locks when I first leveled them. 4 of them sitting at 62 still with a priest. Recently speced them destro for the around 500dps they can pull, this however is teaching me perhaps I was initially correct in the warlocks strengths. Respec here I come.... again.

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Originally Posted by Stealthy

I just finished levelling a team of 5 locks to 80 and so far they have been a blast to play.

I initially had them all destro spec'd, but changed them to affliction after playing around with them in BG's. While affliction is not as bursty as destro, the amount of self-healing you get as affliction is crazy, almost negating the need for outside healing (especially if you use the Siphon Life & Soul Link glyphs). Survivability is much better (kinda needed since I'm running around in the crafted blue pvp set).

Other goodies:
5 x instant AoE fear .
4 x silience / interrupts / purges from Felhunters (I have the 5th pet as Imp for health bonus)
Self-res every 15 minutes
Stronger SoC's for AoE carnage
Shadow Embrace partially stacks (the HoT reduction does, the damage buff doesn't).

Currently I'm toying with the idea of moving 5 points out of Demo into Bane for .5 secs of SB casts for a faster nuke...I find during BG's that I'm casting SB quite a bit when haunt is on cooldown and the target is already dotted up (very helpful against resto druids and disc priests).

Cheers,
S.

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Mine are all demo. They're dual spec but I spend most of my pvp life in demo. Hit demon form, hit trinket, hit immolation aura, hit charge and then watch people collapse around you :D With 2400sp, 2800ish with trinkets immolation aura itself does around 5000 aoe dps per second then you add in the five felguards chewing face and soc spam and you're all set :P

Don't tell my mage team but I've always preferred the warlocks.

With gear, im sure warlocks become a force to be reckoned with, as any spec provides a lot of passive healing and a good (insane) amount of dmg, perhaps a good destro / demo build with SoC burst would wipe up most AV turtles. =)

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Originally Posted by Tasty

Mine are all demo. They're dual spec but I spend most of my pvp life in demo. Hit demon form, hit trinket, hit immolation aura, hit charge and then watch people collapse around you :D With 2400sp, 2800ish with trinkets immolation aura itself does around 5000 aoe dps per second then you add in the five felguards chewing face and soc spam and you're all set :P

Don't tell my mage team but I've always preferred the warlocks.

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Might have to try that...I'm waiting until next week (when S8 launches) to spend my honor, so it shouldn't take too long to gear them up. Demo is getting a buff as well with the SP bonus from demonic pact being doubled.

Time to dual-spec! ;)

Oh, yes. Multiple pets are tons of fun. I love my 3 frost mages.

I've also been up a hunter multiboxer in BG's before, he's quite a handful. 3 spiders constantly immobilizing you is really annoying.

We should keep the topic of pets up. I don't run into many pet problems in pvp but the idea has always interested me its the reason I only played necromancers in d2. Can 4-5 pets take a player? Most aoe fears have limits like 5 units so having "10" would be a nice plus. What kinda dmg can the do/take etc.

My locks are badly geared 60's so I may be getting a skewed view of them being paper bags :P

Team Pestilence is fun so far.
But they are awaiting the final couple pieces of heirloom experience gear.

4x Affliction + 1x Discipline.
Level 22, at the moment.
But playing the druids more at the moment.
Will definitely come back to this team.

Ualaa - I would really recommend switching to Demo while leveling. Felguards are very, very nice for questing. Think of them as a manaless, retargetable DOT that keeps large groups entertained. Each Felguard can "CC" 2 mobs... so in theorycraft you can AoE spam groups of 8 without any issues. Since I have a tank, I don't really worry about that too much - but I still feel like my warlocks have sped up the leveling process. With Mages I always had to plant myself to cast - now my team only stops to loot.

The earliest I could do a Felguard would be 50th, and I'll probably go Felguards or Destruction when i start the PvP stuff in earnest... I want Affliction, down the road, as their spell power builds.

But at 22nd, that is down the road.

<-- has 5 locks team, they're good, but personally i like rogues more.

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Originally Posted by Crel

We should keep the topic of pets up. I don't run into many pet problems in pvp but the idea has always interested me its the reason I only played necromancers in d2. Can 4-5 pets take a player? Most aoe fears have limits like 5 units so having "10" would be a nice plus. What kinda dmg can the do/take etc.

My locks are badly geared 60's so I may be getting a skewed view of them being paper bags :P

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In response to can multiple pets take a player


Hell yes
My three bears go to player my main arrives first blast 2 AoEs then reg melee the second arrival is 2 more bears blast 4 AoEs and reg melee player is down a lot of life by the time the 6 AoEs are over and the hunters have not even fired a shot yet

I love to do AB as horde i run up to LM from my side stay on path behind the small hill at the top send the bears usually
its like 3 toons at LM flag at least one of them is dead before i engage sometimes 2 and since most of the damage done is AoE the last one or two fall easy i scoot in take the flag and hold it until i get D up there then move to stables and do the same thing from the bridge

I Am BM so i have points that reduce the time between pet specials so i get thunderstomp every 7 seconds and swipe every 3.5 from 3 bears each plus over 200 reg DPS from 3 so just in the first 3 seconds of bear combat we are talking about close to like 2300-2500 damage (at lvl 70) and since they are sent in at a stagger there is almost always a TS and swipe firing it does wonders for 3 big bears in your face with flashes of light at an almost constant it must be terribly disorienting and to watch your health bar fall so quickly it has to be aggravating knowing the last thing you wanna do is try to kill a hunter tank pet with a rolling HoT on him much less 3 at once

Factor in Kill command every 30 sec and intimidation every 45 sec and its a very lethal combo


EDIT: and since reading the OP i have been back to my low locks and lovin it thanks for the re invigoration

Does Improved Shadow Bolt stack? As in, do 3 debuffs on the target mean 15% extra crit rating?

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Originally Posted by Ghallo

Does Improved Shadow Bolt stack? As in, do 3 debuffs on the target mean 15% extra crit rating?

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No it doesn't stack, so if you want to spec it, you only need to do it on one of your team.

Cheers,
S.