Viability of locks

[ThatIrishGuy]

What do you think of a 5-lock group on outland instances?

[ThatIrishGuy]

yeah mail is nice, my friend has a 70 shaman, he can do and take alot of damage.

[Vyndree]

Mudd is the only one I know with a full set of 5 70 locks. Most others go 4x locks 1x priest.

I'm leveling a few locks and they're currently at level 55, but I don't really take them to many instances. It's pretty much a breeze to take on anything in the open world -- just dot stuff up and run around in a circle. My earliest kill of a level 70 ganker was when my 5 locks were level 49, and typically people stay well away from me. If the respawn rate is good, you'll be fine doing normal questing outdoors.

Due to the mechanics of outlands instances, it would be extremely hard to complete them with "glass cannons" -- which essentially is what pure dps group makeups are. 5x Shaman are able to complete SOME instances/heroics due to heavy defensive abilities (earthbind kite, ability to self heal when needed, grounding totem, earth elementals, disease/poison cleansing) along with their extremely heavy offense (heroism, EM+NS, Fire elementals/fire novas).

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Ebolah has a group of 5 locks on Mag but he doesn't do instances with 'em as far as I know. He used to do mid-air ganks with 'em, though. 15 DoTs while floating down to the ground with that Skyguard Cape thingy was funny as hell to watch.

[Catamer]

these guys smoked the 0-60 dungeons, I thought they were unstoppable but they are just awful in the outland. They are currently afliction and the voids just can't take it. Once they pet drops your dead. There seems to be pet killers in every instance. I suppose I should have tried a demon build but I pretty much quit playing these when at 70 when I couldn't get though regular mode blood furnace. The shaman did blood furnace without a problem at 64 and they smoke it so fast at 70 it's a joke. I know my the warlocks don't have the best gear but part of that is because they can't finish any dungeons.

The cool part of 5x warlocks is seeing 25+ dots on something, but they can't take durn the hungerer down and the shaman smoke him without trying.

[Mudd]

I have two warlock boxing groups.
Team A - 5x SL/SL Warlocks, lvl 70 in S1 PvP gear.
Team B - 4x Affliction Warlocks, lvl 64 in quest/crafted greens and blues. 1x CoH Priest lvl 70 (crafted and some 10-man gear).

Team A was used mostly for non-arena PvP. Team B is supposed to be a grind/farm group to finance my priest. Its quite a challenge to do instances with just 5 locks and no healers. It is an exercise in micro management since voidtank and spank only gets you so far, even on the trash. I've been doing more instances on Team B and having the healer does make things smoother without a noticable drop in overall DPS. Team B has done ramparts, blood furnace, slave pens (except last boss) so far. Team A has done ramparts, blood furance, and underbog when they were the same level.

Threat generation becomes the biggest issue after the healing is sorted out. Our pets don't have a true 'taunt'. On some bosses I would have to wait until the voids were OOM before unloading. Using PoM every cooldown to help them generate more threat. On bosses where the voids take a lot of damage, you will find that your healer will pull aggro before the tanks becomes unhealable. Felguards might help the situation a little.

Once Team B is 70, I'm going to regroup Team A with my T6 holy priest and try out more instances. I'm not interested in decking out any of my warlocks with badge gear so don't mind the fact that they are a weak heroic group. If you wan't badge gear, roll shammies or make a tank/healer/dps team. Warlocks for a PvP face melting team that brings out the QQ in your opponents.

Maybe blizzard will buff the pets in the future.

[voodoogriff]

Maybe blizzard will buff the pets in the future.

I don't think any kind of pet will ever be up to tanking instances again. Hunters at one time could tank raid bosses (I tanked Anub'rekhan on my hunter pre-BC) and now they can't tank a 5man boss without hardcore healing or being overleveld.

[Los]

Maybe blizzard will buff the pets in the future.

I don't think any kind of pet will ever be up to tanking instances again. Hunters at one time could tank raid bosses (I tanked Anub'rekhan on my hunter pre-BC) and now they can't tank a 5man boss without hardcore healing or being overleveld.

Most bosses hit a lot harder, but the biggest problem is that pet healing change imo. When that was still possible to up your pet heals with heal gear, that was insane fun. Remember that outdoor dragon (the one in darkshire i think) tanked by that solo hunter and his pet . Great fun.

[Ðeceased]

weren't they talking about giving pets resilience and stuff like that too? depending on your gear.. Although that will again only go so far.. on some of the harder hitting mobs they will still be oneshotted

[nogbog]

I'm levelling 4 warlocks (5th is already 70) and they're currently level 51.

They're all demonology with 1 warlock spec'd for pet tanking.

When i get to outlands i'll let you know how instances are. From old world dungeon experience, i don't think it'll be too hard, i think that your characters will have to be 1-2 levels higher than the instance. Eg. Ramparts done at lvl 60, furnace maybe 61-62.

Felguards can't tank, i'll just put that out there right now. They're good for holding a mob for a bit while you nuke, but they can't tank. They just die too easily. All they do is buy u some time before the mob goes after you, hopefully the mob is dead by then.

Honestly i think 5 destruction locks would do better in instances, big crits go a long way. Someone suggested your main spec with shadowfury, which would help a bit.