Questions about boosting with a Warlock

Hey all,

[insert trite first time poster comment here]

Anyways, ;), I was recently graced with a new computer that I picked specifically to 5-box softwareicly. Thanks to all of the great information on this site, I have decided to boost my group through instances. My main is a Warlock: sl/sl atm with okay gear due to the fact that I had to leave wow about 1 month after BC and came back 2 months ago. All of my friends are in BT and... blah blah blah.



I'm boosting a variety of character, but primarily a pally and sha-men. I'm not overly concerned with what I can do at 70: I'll get there when I can. My question is this: Are there any tricks to doing SM in an effiecent manner? Is my +dmg too low? I got wrecked in Cath trying to go fast, and I feel like I'm going way too slow there. Are there any good tactics I'm not seeing? Right now I have to SL+CoA on each mob and even then some of them are still up from heals. How fast do you (as a warlock) do SM? any other instances for 20-40 that are better for my class? No pally yet, so I suck.

Any suggestions?

Also, has anyone made a list of MB friendly quests? if they have, I use Tour Guide, and I would not be against designing a Guide for MBs.

I have a 70 warlock and I love to boost people through SM. He has +1000 spell dmg when self buffed. He is a demon based and has the fel guard up but a Void should work.

I have the fel guard tag as many as possible, the more the better. Void should work for this too.
I have /petattack hot keyed and attack 3-4 or 5 items so they he's fully engaged.
then I pump out as many seeds of corruptions as I can. I'm usually get 3 off and sometimes 4.
The only flaw in this plan is if you re-seed a target before the previous seed has blown.
no curses needed, heal up pet, rinse repeat.

The reason more is better is that it's easier to make sure you hit 3 seperate targets with seed of corruption on a larger group. if it's only two or less then you need to use curses or something like that.
I have to admit I have noticed that it is much easier these days, I probably only had 600-700 spell dmg when I started doing this. Now have some gear and at +1000 spell it's really easy.
The last part of SM is AWSOME, pull about 20+ of them to the center of the room and hope you get enough seeds going to wipe the whole room, one missed seed (or a double seed) and your dead.

I seem to remember someone making a very good post on here about how to insta-pull SM. It was a real forehead slapping "of COURSE!" thing that might help

You target the area boss (with a macro if you cant see to click) send in your Voidwalker/Water Elemental/Pet right into the the bosses and BOOOM, you insta-pull all the trash in the area. Proceed to AOE & profit before moving into the next boss area.

SM Cath was my PL spot for 15 levels for my 4 lowbies.

I'm demo specced as well with 925'ish spell damage. I will say this, 900 was a magic threshold for me in SM. Below that it would take 3+ seeds to kill of everything. At 900 I only need 3 SoC's for basic pulls. (I used VW since the FG is really a subpar tank and you don't need his DPS. Also, could sac VW if things went bad. Saved me many times.)

As an SL/SL spec you could go the siphon life everything route. Seems like a lot of micro to me.

Finally, at the end of my run with 925 SD and about 18% crit (before talents) I would pull the front of the Cath to empty the mobs that are "kneeling" and then simply attack the "Mograine" guy to autopull the rest of the Cath. Fun and fast. I was right at 15 mins per run. Hard to imagine a faster way to level other than a better class booster (Paladin and maybe Mage).

Are there any must have talents in the demo spec? I don't mind respecing if it's more dps.

The heavy affliction spec just gimps your +crit. SoC grinding is about direct damage bursting which is +sp dam and +crit. I like demo better for grinding since you get soul link and other pet boosts. Destruction is probably viable for SoC grinding, but I've had good luck with demo. Just do some standard 7/43/11 build or other varient.

Or, again, you can go the siphon life route. Its pretty well documented as a solid way to clear SM too. Again, just a lot more micro (have to dot each mob twice verus planting 3 SoC's on a group of 20'ish).

I'm just about to start boosting my alts with my 70 lock (43/7/11) and have been toying with a possible respec to make things easier. I've only got 643 Shadow Damage though at the moment, and as I hardly play him at 70 I can't see him getting much more Spell Damage from Gear. I'm not averse to using some wizard oil\elixirs etc if it will make a big difference to the feasibility of the farming.

I want to keep insta corruption and Siphon Life tho, as I dont think I could live without them

I spent the last couple days perfecting my pull sequence in SM and I'll just post some of my notes/thoughts below. One tip for VW pulling: turn suffering off. Then, once everyone's grouped up, click it manually. It hits an unlimited number of mobs(it seems) and is decent aggro without putting points into Imp VW.Suffering is usually enough to keep aggro on a passive VW even through 2-3 SoC pops. my spec is http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Iq0riMbuMZotczIiz0xs and self buffed I have 858 dmg.

This is NOT SFK. SFK was easy sauce. 10-20 was simple: park your alt by the gate, body pull up to Reth (jump down to him to LOS the ones following you. then 2-3 SoC and boom. I was lazy, so I did 3 more pulls. VW pull (target different mobs and whack them with your VW) the courtyard. then I go the long way, VW pulling from the courtyard >hallway>baron>butcher>courtyard, then rain of fire (Darksouls suck). Repeat from Commander to Tormented officers (park your VW and make sure the Suffering goes off, he can get silenced, too) Then the staircase to fenris. I loved it.

Then SM kicked my ass. Because my SoCs are not powerfull enough, I cannot just go to Morgraine and destroy them. I'm almost positive that SoC has a cap on damage/mob because my normal 1300-1800 pops were hitting for less than 1k. At my best, I was able to get off 6 SoCs and they still didn't all die. By that time, the VW is dead and they all aggro on me. Not a problem, except invariably the ones that are up are monks (kick) and champions(shield slam). Even standing near to them without having aggro is likely to get an interupt.

There's obviously a magical +damage number that I haven't hit yet. I find it much more efficient (for my gear) to just SL+CoA with the VW on def. He smacks whatever I miss. I still do SoC when I can VW grab a bunch of mobs (like Armory and such) but even then it's so mana inefficient that I have to LT between pulls. With SL+CoA, I can LT during pulls. I'm sure SoC can be more time efficient, it just isn't for me.

For SL pulls, the only down time is repositioning the alts, which only has to happen about 3 times. They're so low right now that I can't have them auto follow or they aggro and die before I can pull them off. Armory, GY (which I don't recommend at all) and Cath are dangerous in that the first guards can low level aggro on them when they zone.

as for loot, I do, because I'm PLing one's enchanting. Easiest loot for me is to Master Looter an alt, and when I move them up they mousehover every sparkling corpse. Aparantly, while I was away, they changed it to show you who's loot it is and if you have ML on, it'll tell you if it's MLable.

I may do a couple PuG KZs on the lock if they come up. I switch raid mains to a priest because I was bored with my lock after raiding for 2 years. DPS is the same almost every fight (and more so with locks, but I digress). Someone said earlier that 900 is the magical number but some how, I think I'm just doing it "rong".



edit: after re-reading some of the other posts, my morgraine pulls may have been ill-concieved because I would just open the door and have at it. Maybe clearing a little bit first would make it more managable. I will try and report back later after work.

Some thoughts on use of SoC in SM Cath after just wrapping up 15+ levels of boosting there:

I can't swear to it either, but SoC's will sometimes either NOT detonate and/or somehow not affect mobs that are clearly INSIDE the AE range of the spell. So, you will have bad pulls. They do tend to be on larger pulls. Therefore, you will need to be prepared for these instances. I died a lot, but towards the end got much better. What I would do in the case where I had 6+ mobs (usually at low health as one or two SoC's had hit them) pounding on me was to sacrifice the VW (was low on health by that time anyway), calmly get another SoC or two planted, and I'd usually survive.

Key to using SoC for me in SM Cath was to not to grab too many mobs. My usual rotation was 7 groups:

1. Initial hallway + a few mobs from first lower courtyard (larger of the two pulls on this level)
2. Rest of lower courtyard
3. Left side of upper courtyard
4. Remainder of upper courtyard (larger of the two pulls on this level)
5. Central, kneeling mobs in Cath
6. Mobs in the alcoves to the left/right of the central hallway
7. Send in VW on Mograine (brings all mobs from back portions of the Cath)

This was with about 900 spell damage and 18% crit. Finished this in almost 15 mins on the nose. Very efficient once I got it down.

For pulls 1 & 2, alts at entrance. For pull 3, alts next too lower fountain, for pulls 4 through 7 tucked in the lower corner left of the stairs leading into the Cath.

SoC and all AOE's have a damage cap.

Quote:

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13,590 is the SoC cap for lock with 1000 +damage, no shadow mastery, no demonic sacrifice and not any curses, shadow weaving etc. Aka cap of the base damage. The %damage increase and the crits are calulated after it.

The cap is the damage that the AoE spell deals to single target with your current gear, multiplied by 9.

For SoC is ( 1100-1290 + 22% of your spell damage ) * your multipliers (aka DS). This is multiplied by 9. After it is divided by the number of mobs and the value is applied to each mob. After it can crit.

With less words - if u AoE 100 mobs, the total damage done to them is the total damage equal of AoEing 9 mobs.

For SoC, without Shadow Mastery and without DS. With 1000 +damage the cap is around 15K. Without Shadow Mastery or Demonic Sacrifice is around 13.5k

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when i did sm on my walock i would chain pull the whole thing with just CoA and sl and i would get about 9 min per clear
i did this as sl/sl with a VW out so i little damage and just had ppl heal my vw and you don't ever have to stop just life tap

my locks name is kagathr on skullcrusher if you want to see his gear but idk if he is in pve gear or his power leveling gear witch is a mix of pve gear and pvp gear

EDIT: i do arms in one pull also but that takes maybe 7 minutes from my first pull to the time i kill the adds after the boss