My Epic fail

[Bradster]

As of last Saturday I hit 70 with my group. As I progress on trying to do end game content, I must be totally honest with myself, I am not happy. So I�m going to break down some of the things I�m unhappy with. Perhaps you fellow lock group�s (if any?) may have run in to these problems and overcome them.

I�ll use today as an example.

I head out to the island for the daily (first time there). A 70 rogue and Druid kill me. I think Heck, no problem I�ve taken down 14 people before this will be cake. Well they were geared. Druid would come in range pop some heals and run out. I�d dot him up with 16 dots on him. He could out heal 16 dots without breaking a sweat. He would also jump in and CC me priest, I have no pvp trinket. Mean while the rogue could 3-4 shot my locks. This happened a few times. I was able to kill the druid a couple times. In that time my locks would all be dead. The rogue, Cloak of skill took care of my dots and resists 4 howl of terrors and a fear every time.

I went from god to a punching bag lol.

Frustrated being passed around like a Pez dispenser by those 2 and more jumping in for some free hks, I decided I�d work on the quest chain in Shadow moon Valley that gives a blue helmet. I figure it would be worth the effort, at the very least replace the ugly greens helms I have. So I spend an hour gathering up all the crap and start on one of the group quests required for it. I had to fly out, land on a hill and kill a dragon. I wiped 4 times. I did it get to 2% after using all my soul stones (desperate to finish it).

Thought well ok, maybe now I can finally kill That roaming elite in Nagrad to finish that quest, it�s green now (forget that giant things name). Wiped three times, left.

Decided, ok well I�ll head to underbog/steam vaults (the hard one down there). Bog lords 2 shot my tanks then my group. This happened a few times. Which point I just logged, wasn�t a good night, or week that matter.

This isn�t just a frustration of a single night. Lately I�ve been consistently let down unable to complete group quests and such. By nature that�s the point of the whole thing. Well, it�s failing and maybe it�s my fault, the class selection, whatever the case not very rewarding.
There is positive things about the combo of 4 locks and a priest. In the lower levels it�s very strong in both PVP and PVE, no problems until I reached the outlands. Since then it�s been a downhill spiral. At level 65 I ended up taking a break for a year because I saw it and just didn�t want to face it.

At 70, at least without better gear (I�m not sure how dots scale) but man, even with 16 dots on someone it feels like a single lock fighting someone at this point. Takes a long time to kill someone. Can�t kill most players with just dots anymore, doesn�t cut it, unless it�s cloth.
So here�s my thinking and what I have to work with. I have a 70 shaman already. I also have 5 shaman at level 17. I�m thinking, what if I took out a shaman out of my group of 5 and replaced it with a prot pally. Level these things, then if I want to PVP I simply replace the prot pally with my existing 70 shaman. If I want to PVE I just bring in my Prot Pally I leveled with the shamans. To me it sounds like a soild plan. Least with the shamans I could always go defensive with chain heals when something like cloak of skill is up, not to mention the mitigation difference and totems.

There�s all this talk with �boosting� I assume this is grouping up with a 70 and running your alts in an instance or something for exp? Would it be faster for me to take the 4 shamans and a 70 and run SM a lot, then do it for the pally (so twice)? Vs. just quested with all of them together and instances the old fashion way? Haven�t had much experience in the boosting department.

Thanks

[blast3r]

I think the giant mob you are talking abou is "Durn the Hungerer". Go to one of those camps where they have the elite felguards and enslave a few of them. You will have no problem taking that mob down. Those felguards will be a totally effective tank and I think they each hit for about 1200 to 1500 crit. I don't have anough MB experience to help you with the rest but Vyndree has a great video on boosting with a prot pally.

[shaeman]

Ouch - sounds like a rough day.

Firstly the rogue and the druid - that's was always going to be rough. It sounds like you are suffering from gearing issues, they were geared you weren't.

Rogues are horrific for locks.... cloak of shadows is overpowered. To completely remove all effects and to then have it grant 5 seconds of almost guaranteed immunity is hellish.

The one short term answer would be to spec felguard.... horrible I know but It helps to make up for gear deficiencies until you can get gear. It also would make a rogue think twice..... 1v1 I've had more success with rogues with a felguard build (not much - but more survivability. setting four of them on the rogue is going to hurt him even with clos (as it doesnt prevent melee damage).



I would recommend a focus fear macro. I basically had one that replaces my fear. If it doesn't have a focus target it sets it to what you are currently target.. .and fears the focus.

druids are susceptible to fear. Also if he was resto and did that tree of life thing remember you can banish him.

However I've always stayed affliction and just accepted the fact that rogues own me... but I do play on a pve server and don't have the frustrations of being ganked while trying to achieve objectives.

As to the other quests - you are picking on some of the hardest elites in the game.

Durn the hungerer although only a 67 elite is one of the toughest hardest hitting son of a guns ever. He will mash through a clothy in seconds. You really need a dedicated tank for that one. I also think he is quite likely to switching target as well. I've seen 5 individual players struggle on that dude - so don't feel too bad.

I also know the dragon in netherstorm is an absolute nightmare.

I think you would definitely benefit from levelling your pally and 4 shamans.

I definitely think boosting is quick and easy - although I only tri box and so boosted two lowbies on seventies. You may have additional fun doing a combination of boosting your alts and then letting them loose in an instance to take it on normal.

I levelled through to 40 from about the minimum level of scarlet monastery and it seemed quick enough. (but dull). I wish I had 5 boxed and run it as a group at least a few times. It can be quite a drag power levelling a group when you don't stop for a bit of fun on the way.

[Esquilo]

I'm MB noob, but I have a 70 Shadow Priest that I PVP'd with quite a bit. (Phinius on Kirin Tor, if your interested in build) I can tell you that your priest is going to get owned until you get your resil up. I did ok with T4 gear, but was total rogue fodder until I got my resil about 200. Once you do that, a rogue is still a battle, but once you break the stuns, the rogue better be a running fool. Gobs of +shadow damage didn't hurt either :P

I'm guessing your priest is holy, I would suggest looking a hybrid desc/holy build for him/her. Desc tree will give you much better survivability, but less healing power(still very good though).

It really comes down to your lack of gear more than anything, it's not something I'm looking forward to for my team either.

[Naylix]

if it indeed was Durn the Hungerer, I must agree - he hurts like a ton of bricks... when I did him first on my hunter, I had a pally tank and shammy healer + 2 other dps in group and he went down just fine, even though we were in greens... hooray for plate dmg mitigation

We were lvl 65-66 at the time, but all very experienced players who had played together for years on different classes....

When we hit lvl 70, and had grabbed the first few Kara pieces + 1-2 badge pieces, we went back there to try it for fun - me and the healing shammy 2manned him, BM specced hunter-pets are just amazing tanks... But this was like 30% epic gearing, which is what really makes the difference.

All in all, form a 5v5 arena team. Do it now, dont wait for it. Play 10 games. In all likelyhood, you will loost 90% if not 100% of them. Collect your 300-350 ish arenapoints. Next week, disband the team and make a new one to reset ratings. Rinse and repeat. In a month, you can buy the S4 Gloves, requires no rating, just 1125 points or so. In the meanwhile, grind battlegrounds and if possible as many dailies as you can take. Accept the ganking, it will happen. S4 Belt for honor, also requires no rating. Buy S3 offpieces aswell, they are only 4% weaker than S4, and require no rating. Once your health goes up, your resilience and spelldmg follows, and you will see your 16 dots suddenly eat away opponents health, as opposed to now.

But it takes time and patience. There really is no shortcut, the rogue and druid who ganked you, probably have 30-50+ days /played @ lvl 70. Even as a MB'er, that is hard to catch up to.

[Dominian]

I assume you play affliction since you have 16 dots wich is a awsome spec wich i prefer for my own lock but when it comes to meele your short. If your warlocks is under 7k in health i can most likley kill 4 of them on my warrior with blues and a few S1 epics if i have the right cooldowns (no not the 30 min cooldowns) Deathwish,sweepingstrikes,mortalstrike then a worldwind will do so much damage and unless your warlocks and priests are undead a int shout will completly destroy you. Ofc i will die but i will hamper 5 opposite chars and it will make us win.

Untill your well geared a warrior or rogue + a healer will destroy you.

Sounds like you dont know much about the warlock class if you use 16 pure damage dots (no offence) :P

Against healers bind theese curses, Curse of elements (increases fire,shadow,frost and arcane damage with 10%), Curse of tounges(increase casting speed with 60%, This is a paladin,shaman killer.) Curse of Exaustion (err bad spelling there, anyway it decreases the enemy speed and even thought a druid can shapshift it off he still have to use time on it)

Its not bad against druids either since he cant decurse them all he wont have the time and cyclone got a cast time.

To kill the druid dot him up and use felhunters, you might aswell use auto devour since you already have a hard time. They will eat all his hots but even if he spams 1 lifebloom your dots should do more damage.

You got 4 spellocks try to get him in a long silence run. First get a fear on him then a spellock cycle!

What you can do is to spec sl/sl and your locks will last forever but aslong as your priest doesnt wear pvp gear he will be the weakest link in your group. Btw i see no need to bind all howls of terrors to 1 button why do you want to blow them all at once?

I personally dont have multibox experiance with locks and barley shamans but warlocks always been pointed out as a easy mode class wich they can be with SL/SL and 300 resillience but try aff or destruction and the tables turns. Have you ever tried to play one of your locks singel? maybe you should try to get the hang of it because starting with 4 sounds to me like it will be messy!

[Menthu]

After reading your chinese wall of text I'd say the following:

Level that group of 4 shamans and 1 pala, and when you do PvE you use the pala, and in PvP your old lvl 70 shaman like you said.

Dont forget that a Druid as a tank is also a very good option! I'd go for the paladin personally, but its also an option.

-Jungle Love

[Meathead]

Go Destro Burst DPS is allways a win in my books in greens ive seen some locksdo about 3-4k crits and stuff.........Other then that todya for me was a Crapper got my guys to lvl 43 decide to go to ZF and wipped atleast 4-5 times wearing vengfull gear for my mage does not help. im taking a break right now so frustrating...hehe

[Darcla]

ahh the curse of the UA lock. The utlimate glass cannon.

From the sound of it, you are VASTLY undergeared than what you should be even as a fresh 70. But that is a good thing, getting geared up these days is easy enough. Just hit the BGs. In AV Especially, you will shine. Like others have mentioned, I would go Felguard spec until you get better gear/more resil. Felguards and dots would have been more than enough to kill the druid in your situation.

UA is VERY powerful once you get geared, at 1k spl damage , one row of dots kills most targets without heals. with 4x locks and 1k spl dmg each, UA and SL alone will kill everything you face.

To survive in PVP as a UA or destro lock you need at least 450 resil. I speak from experience on this. Until then, get a felguard spec, hit the bgs.

[Darcla]

Sounds like you dont know much about the warlock class if you use 16 pure damage dots (no offence) :P

Against healers bind theese curses, Curse of elements (increases fire,shadow,frost and arcane damage with 10%), Curse of tounges(increase casting speed with 60%, This is a paladin,shaman killer.) Curse of Exaustion (err bad spelling there, anyway it decreases the enemy speed and even thought a druid can shapshift it off he still have to use time on it)

Since you were mean, it opened the door. You obviously have no clue about pvp locks either. Never use CoE. It is a waste of a curse. CoT and CoEx are the bread and butter for arena. Everywhere else (BGs) stick to CoA.

What you can do is to spec sl/sl and your locks will last forever but aslong as your priest doesnt wear pvp gear he will be the weakest link in your group.

Agreed on this however, except multiboxing 4 Sl/SL is worse than doing 4 melee. trying to micro manage 4 drain life (the basics of Sl/SL), sounds like way more work than needed.