5-box all Warlocks: Best group ever?

Hey folks *waves* first post here although I've been lurking for a while. I've 2-boxed for a few months, and finally getting my 5 box setup going in the next few weeks.

I'm very strongly leaning towards a 5 Warlock setup for this simple reason, the L70 spell Seed of Corruption.


Seed of Corruption
882 Mana
30 yd range
2 sec cast
Imbeds a demon seed in the enemy target, causing 1044 Shadow damage over 18 sec. When the target takes 1044 total damage or dies, the seed will inflict 1110 to 1290 Shadow damage to all other enemies within 15 yards of the target. Only one Corruption spell per Warlock can be active on any one target.



Running the math: it gains 22% of your +damage and ~30.5% increase from talents / Curse of Shadows (improved). With 5 or more mobs and 3 casts per Warlock with good gear. This works out to over 20K+ in damage for ~8 seconds of casting. With around 1000 +damage and 20% crit you have over 25K damage. This is sufficient damage to instantly kill the vast majority of elites in the L70 instances. (Notable exceptions would be the high-HP single pull mobs, such as the Overseers in Shadow Labs)
Alternatively you could keep your spell damage low (~600 or less) and you may be able to get off 4 casts, if your latency is low enough, button mashing fast enough, and no damage from other sources to set off the bomb early. This puts you over 26K damage.
Also, above 1400 +damage you would only get 2 casts off before the bomb drops, dropping you less than 20K AE damage.

I'm not sure how to beat bosses with this group, but you could chew through trash at an extremely fast rate! Thoughts? Something I'm overlooking?

I think survivability will be an issue with no healer when you reach BC...
Siphon life + life tap aren't really a replacement for a direct healing, especially as the higher level elites hit hard! Even if you go demo, with 5 felguards tanking, there will be times when health funnel just won't cut it for healing a pet.

Personally I would drop one warlock for a priest - you get all the healing you need, a nice stam buff, extra shadow protection & the ability to dispel magic.

I would not roll without a healer. Believe me, you do not want to do 5 locks. 5 shammys maybe, bc all 5 can heal.

I've been dual-boxing with my existing characters (70 warlock and 70 hunter) but have been thinking about expanding to tri-boxing and starting new characters.

My question is what class combinations would be best to 3 man instances? Is it even possible? I was thinking 2 warlocks and a priest might be able to pull it off. Am I just deluding myself that it's possible?

I am really happy so far with shaman as support class.

Earth Shield is argo less heals (uses +heal at time of cast but crits based on targets spell crit)

Nature's Swiftness is awesome for that big heal or even Ghost wolf (2m timer)

Self-Rez 40 minutes (w/ talents) is handle for deaths

Shaman can use totem for any class and they do not suffer from LoS much (Windfury gives my main 650dps non-raid-buffed)

My Earth Shield heals my main for 560 (level 68 so far) per tick and will tick 10 times. All that agro is on main and not healer which makes things more simple me thinks :)

Shocks interrupt well or snare and are easy to macro into your mains style of play (20 yard range I think)

Purge!

I really happy with my support toon being a shaman so far and was turned off by the amount of micro manage I had when I tested my warlock. I would do a shadow priest thou ;)


2shaman 3warlocks might be nice. Chain Heal since they all be close by due to /follow

Well see that's the thing, there's no need for healing at all if you blow up an entire pull in a few seconds.

Have those of you running 4 Warlocks + 1 Priest ever tried doing AE pulls in instances with Seed of Corruption? It should still be enough damage to totally destroy pulls in the lower instances, but probably not in the L70 ones. I'd love to see a video. :)

Normal instances should be doable with some decent spell dmg, heroics would be a no go imo. One hit is usually a death for a clothy (especially with life tapping locks! ;))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stabface

Well see that's the thing, there's no need for healing at all if you blow up an entire pull in a few seconds.

Have those of you running 4 Warlocks + 1 Priest ever tried doing AE pulls in instances with Seed of Corruption? It should still be enough damage to totally destroy pulls in the lower instances, but probably not in the L70 ones. I'd love to see a video. :)

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I have a friend with a Warlock/Pally combo and he runs SM and such, doing what you just stated. The Pally pulls the entire instance, puts his shield up, and the lock throws seeds out. It's almost unfair how fast they clear.

Just curious if anyone with 5 TBC-enabled accounts is willing to test this group idea out on the PTR? I only have 3 TBC-enabled accounts right now or I'd do it myself. :)

i recommend 1 healer/rezer especially for the higher up levels . on my single played lock toon i got 11k health 9 k mana and around 880 shadow damage and there is only a couple places in 70 instances that i can shoot off enough SOC to not die and pull aggro.


sure haveing 5x seeds would be nice but the AOE radius would always have you pulling back that and some mobs just hit to hard . 4locks + priest would work you can make the priest a shadow priest and that will give you even more shadow damage due to his talents. plus fearing then mindflaying a mob with 4 seeds of corruption would be a nice time bomb.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pomo

i recommend 1 healer/rezer especially for the higher up levels . on my single played lock toon i got 11k health 9 k mana and around 880 shadow damage and there is only a couple places in 70 instances that i can shoot off enough SOC to not die and pull aggro.


sure haveing 5x seeds would be nice but the AOE radius would always have you pulling back that and some mobs just hit to hard . 4locks + priest would work you can make the priest a shadow priest and that will give you even more shadow damage due to his talents. plus fearing then mindflaying a mob with 4 seeds of corruption would be a nice time bomb.

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5 locks, 5 instant aoe fears, still lots of mobs immune to it

If done correctly you don't need any fear or healing I think. As long as you can keep aggro off for 8 seconds then you win. And almost everything in the blast radius will be dead, the only thing that will live are shadow immune mobs and stuff with more than ~33K HP. And the only 5-man mobs I know of with more HP than that are bosses and the single pull mobs like Fel Overseer in Shadow Lab, or the bog giants in Steamvault (which you wouldn't be hitting with this anyhow).


Here is how I envision this working...

Pre-target 5 mobs and pull with pet on each one. Each warlock will cast 4 Seed of Corruption on 4 different mobs, so that each mob gets 4 seeds. They will be cast so that each mob gets 1 seed, then 2, then 3, then 4. This will allow the 4 seeds to stack up before the explosions start going off, to hopefully keep aggro on the pets as long as possible. If done correctly then each mob will take the explosion damage from 16 Seed of Corruption. The fight would last <10 seconds, I'm not sure if the pets + warlocks can all stay alive but it seems likely to me... a Voidwalker can handle several hits from a single mob even in Heroics before dying.

Here's a timeline...

T=0 Pet attacks, taunt, start casting Seed #1
T=2.0 pet on passive, finish cast Seed #1, start casting Seed #2
T=4.0 finish cast Seed #2, start casting Seed #3
T=5.0 Seed #1 ticks
T=6.0 finish cast Seed #3, start casting Seed #4
T=7.0 Seed #2 ticks, might get aggro
T=8.0 seed #1 ticks, finish cast Seed #4, cast Curse of Shadows, might get aggro
T=9.0 Seed #3 ticks and explodes Seed #1, definitely get aggro
T=9.5 cast Shadowburn to explode the remaining seeds, everything dies.
T=10 collect loot :)

Damage calculations...

Seed of Corruption damage: 1044/18, 1200 average AoE
Spell damage coefficient: DoT effect 150%, AoE effect 22%
Curse of Shadows: +13%
Shadow Mastery: +10%
Contagion: +5%

Seed of Corruption DoT damage needs to stay below 348/tick to to enable us to land 4 seeds. This is around +500 spell damage including Shadow Mastery and Contagion:
((1044 base + (500 damage x 1.5 coefficient)) x 1.1 shadow mastery x 1.05 contagion) / 6 ticks = 345 damage per tick.


Explosion damage with +500 damage, Curse of Shadows, Shadow Mastery, Contagion, arbitrary 20% crit rate: ~1710 average
(1200 + (500 x .22)) x 1.13 x 1.1 x 1.05 x 1.2 = ~2052

Each mob will take the damage of 16 explosions, which is ~32800 damage. Additionally the Seed-ed mobs will take ~2000 from the SoC DoT damage and Shadowburn.


One more interesting thing is the 4 piece bonus from Oblivion set which adds 180 to the explosion damage, assuming it's added to the base damage so that modifiers affect it then it is ~282 per explosion (~4500 in all). This would push the total over 40000 damage.



It is possibly better to go with higher spell damage which will only allow for 3 seeds, I'll rework the math for that later on.

The problem with glass cannon groups like this is if something goes wrong, your options are kind of limited.

Here's a few things to consider...

What if you get a few unlucky resists?

What if your party members get feared / slienced / MC'd?

How would you handle groups that include casters (who will stand still) and melee mobs (who will follow you around).

You're also looking at significant downtime if someone dies more than one every 30 mins, or with any wipe - having a soulstoned priest really makes a difference here...

Also, you're basing your calculations on having 5 mobs, the mob "carrying" the seed won't take the explosion damage, only mobs around it, so, 5 mobs with 5 seeds on each, each one will receive 5 seeds from 4 mobs. Or less if less are cast.

What about pulls with 2-3 mobs? There won't be enough seeds or AoE, and AoE is a waste on single or double mob pulls, and could cause you problems. IMO rolling 5 locks for SoC is misplacing your faith in the spell ^^

Stab nice calculations i mean you ahve it worked out nice.

but there is 2 many things that could go wrong.
you got runners
additional adds
Resists \immunes
to worry about


i did a botanica yesterday with 3 locks and a shadow priest+ pally ( tank) the 3 locks decimated everything and the tank had no chance for any aggro gain . but even on some of the AOE pulls one lock would die just for the fact healing will be a pain when you get 3 or more mobs attacking you .

we got to the 3rd boss ( the demon dude) in under 30 mins while still keeping our +dmg buff from the menders.


grinding to 70 though on 5 chars just to use one spell is a nice idea but from 1-69 for instances before you will have to Void tank and then dot up +fear and aggro bounce.

it will be a nice challenge but throw in a shadow priest just for off heal and rezes and you will find life alot easier.

I'll try to respond to the past few posts here, thanks for the comments guys keep it coming !

Stealthy:

"What if you get a few unlucky resists?"

With the proper spell hit gear you have 99% chance to land a spell on a mob with 0 resist, it's unlikely that you'll have more than one spell get resisted in a pull.


"What if your party members get feared / slienced / MC'd?"

Yep that would suck :)


"How would you handle groups that include casters (who will stand still) and melee mobs (who will follow you around)."

LOS pull, or just clump them where the casters are.


"You're also looking at significant downtime if someone dies more than one every 30 mins, or with any wipe - having a soulstoned priest really makes a difference here..."

Sure, but isn't that the same as any other group where the rezzer dies?


Shogun:

"Also, you're basing your calculations on having 5 mobs, the mob "carrying" the seed won't take the explosion damage, only mobs around it, so, 5 mobs with 5 seeds on each, each one will receive 5 seeds from 4 mobs. Or less if less are cast."

Actually its 4 seeds from 4 mobs = x16, not x20. Also any extra mob above 5 will eat 20 seed explosions...


"What about pulls with 2-3 mobs? There won't be enough seeds or AoE, and AoE is a waste on single or double mob pulls, and could cause you problems. IMO rolling 5 locks for SoC is misplacing your faith in the spell ^^"

With 2-3 mob pulls I'd just pull 2 groups ^.^



pomo:

"but there is 2 many things that could go wrong.
you got runners additional adds Resists \immunes to worry about"

Since all the seeds go off at once, which should be more than enough damage to kill everything in range, it's unlikely that there will be any runners. Additional adds just get blown up, as long as they are kept off long enough to land the seeds its not a problem. Resists shouldn't be a problem since the damage is overkill I can afford 1 or 2 seeds to be resisted, and I can't think of too many shadow-immune mobs -- they would be a problem for any warlock-heavy group anyhow.