Post by Lochart on Jan 31, 2008 8:32:57 GMT -5
I decided to combine all the specs in the general section to save myself repetition and time. So just look at the section that applies to your spec.
Solo play:
If you’re going to be soloing a lot as a warlock, play style varies a lot from that of a group. Using the soulstone on yourself instead of a healer, using whatever pet you want, and not worrying about CC.
Affliction: Soloing is great for affliction warlocks: you toss instant cast dots on as many mobs as you can, kite them around gathering more and more, the fear bomb them and watch as they scatter, all the while taking damage and draining health to you. The important thing to remember about affliction warlocks is how to use the pet. The pet’s only real purpose is to act as a second mana bar for you to drain repeatedly with Dark Pact, so you don’t have to waste time drinking. Affliction warlocks can truly have almost no down time, and take out 8-10 mobs of the same level or higher without blinking. Because you are effectively ignoring your pet while soloing, it is best to have the imp out for two reasons:
One, it has the blood pact buff, which gives you stamina which can in turn be used to life tap. Two, it has the highest spirit of all your pets, and if left on passive and out of combat, it can regenerate its entire mana bar by the time you kill a few enemies, then you can drain it entirely again and keep going.
Demonlogy: Soloing is great with Demonology spec as well. You tank a mob with your voidwalker or felguard, smash it with whatever spells you like, and on the off chance you steal aggro from your pet, just fear the mob, stop dps, and let your pet recover aggro. You can have relatively little down time with this spec as well because your pet will be taking most of the damage, so you can Life Tap and Drain Life to keep your mana and life totals where you want them with relative freedom. You will eventually have to rest of course, but you can generally wait until both your pet and you are essentially out of both health and mana. Then you drink and heal your pet simultaneously, and are back in action. The only real limitation on this spec as far as speed goes is that your pet can only tank 1-3 at a time (realistically).
Destruction: This spec again shifts the major source of damage back to you. Because of the relatively high spell crit rate, keeping aggro on your pets will be difficult. So you have to be quite careful about how and when you cast what spells. It is widely recognized that Destruction is a less than ideal leveling spec, and not great for solo play. But if you like the spells and the high damage and crits, don’t let that stop you. It just requires caution as far as your spell casts to keep aggro on your pet.
Group play:
In instances you have several primary responsibilities as a warlock that differ greatly from solo play and take some getting used to.
First, put a soulstone on a rezzer. Sounds easy, but choice of the person can actually differ. If a priest is the healer, great. If a druid is the main healer, you should see if you have a shaman or a paladin in the group, because a druid can only resurrect one person, while a paladin or shaman can resurrect the entire party in case of a wipe. So even if they’re not the healer, you might think about putting it on on offhealer class.
Second, distribute healthstones to the whole party. They’re on a separate cooldown than health potions and can be lifesaving in certain circumstances. Always be sure to tell people to ask you for another one, or constantly offer them to people.
Third, there are two useful pets in group play: the Imp and the Succubus. That’s it. If you don’t have one of those two out, you’re doing something wrong. And even then, the Succubus should only come out if you are being asked to help with crowd control by seducing a target. Otherwise, it should be the imp, because everyone benefits from Blood Pact. And as a corollary, ALWAYS have your pet on passive. NEVER use the imp’s fireball, or Succubus’s Lash of Pain. EVER. You only have the pet in instances to help with CC or passively provide Blood Pact. Otherwise it should be totally ignored.
Fourth, ALWAYS have a supply of soul shards. It’s what make warlocks warlocks. If you don’t have any, half of your abilities that make you useful to a group are worthless. I highly encourage getting a soulbag to store 16-24 shards, but if you really don’t want to give up the inventory space, have no fewer than 5 with you at all times.
Fifth, unlike solo play, what you cast when matters. Make sure you know what the CC targets are and ignore them. Put your dots up on anything that isn’t CC’ed, then focus your remaining fire on the tank’s main target. Here is where the traditional power of the affliction warlocki varies a little bit. If you just put yoru dots up and wait for them to expire, you’re not doing enough damage. You don’t really need to drain life constantly because you won’t be getting hit (generally). So in instances is when you want to use your other spells that require casting time and can be fired off constantly like shadowbolt, shadowburn (if you have it), conflagrate, and searing pain (if you’re far enough down the threat list that it won’t matter). The standby is shadowbolt of course. So as far as your general role as a dps’er, you should put up any and all dots you have, then cast shadowbolt until the dot timers expire, rinse and repeat. That way you’ll be doing as much dps as possible without the down time of waiting for your dots to cycle. I will cover the mildly differing role of each spec in turn.
Affliction: cast all your dots (Corruption, Curse of Agony, Unstable Affliction, Immolate, Siphon Life) and then fire shadowbolt until the dots expire. Repeat. When out of mana, drain your Imp, and do it again. If your Imp isn’t providing enough mana, vary your casting slightly by life tapping repeatedly, then cast drain life until you’re comfortable you won’t die. Then revert to your initial casting routine.
Demonlogy: I stand by the fact that demonologists are at an disadvantage in instances and raids because the one thing they’re pump all of their talents into improving doesn’t see a lot of use in instances. Felguard in particular, because of its cleave, is dangerous to use in instances if it is near any CC’ed mobs. But enough of that. As a demonlogist, you have difficult job because your pet control must be nearly perfect. Unlike the other specs, as a Demonlogist you can use your pet in instances to do damage so long as your confident it will only attack exactly what you want. To most easily do this, you should still keep the pet on passive, and then manually tell it to attack the main tank’s target. Then you just let it do its damage and worry about casting your own spells in the mean time. The important thing to note about high end instances in particular is that your pet despite the talents you've put into it, won't make a very effective offtank for more than a few seconds. Otherwise it will be an additional drain on the healer, and because mobs already hit so hard, splitting the healing between two tanks is dangerous. So the pet should primarily be used as additional damage on a target that is already being tanked (unless of course you're in charge of seducing a mob with the Succy). Along similar lines, remember to turn any pet taunting abilities off so as not to draw aggro off of the tank.
In the alternative, if you’re not comfortable with using your pets in instances, you can use Demonic Sacrifice to significantly boost your own performance.
The trouble there of course is most groups expect you to at least have your imp out to boost the stamina of the party, and may not appreciate your not having any pet out at all.
Regardless of what you do with your pet, your casting is virtually the same as in Affliction, merely with fewer instant dots. You lose Dark Pact, but you still have Life Tap and Drain Life, so you can constantly generate mana and do damage.
Destruction: Here, you are more like a fire mage than a warlock. Destruction focuses on burst damage from shadowbolt, immolation, conflagrate, and soulfire crits. As a result, your casting will be far more focused on longer casts with higher damage and more frequent crits overall. So toss up a few dots to get going. Then, you can focus either on immolate and conflagrate, or blast away with shadowbolt and the occasional shadowburn. This will depend on what casts you like personally as well as if your fire damage or shadow damage is higher. If you’re very coordinated, you can combine them, by casting immolate, letting the dot tick while you cast a shadowbolt or two, then burn off the immolate with conflagrate before it expires. With this spec more than any other it is possible to steal aggro (albeit still not likely) because your spell crit will be relatively high compared to the other two specs. Just something to be aware of. From what I've read (not personal experience) it is generally accepted to wait on this spec until late in end game raiding to give your +spell damage a chance to get up over 1000 and have your bolts and fire pack the most punch possible. But I haven't put that into practice myself, and figure the spec is just as viable in early end game if you are comfortable with it and know what you're doing.
General stuff:
Regardless of spec and solo/group play, one of the most important things to remember (and perhaps hardest to get comfortable with) is the idea that the warlock is the most functional class when operating below 100% health. Your Demon Armor self buff regenerates your health automatically, and Fel Armor causes your life gaining abilities to be 20-25% more effective depending on spec. This includes not only Siphon Life and Drain Life, but bandages, healthstones, health potions, and other player's heals. So, you should get used to starting fights at anywhere between 50 and 80% health, because over the course of the fight, a lot of abilities will help you regain that health at the cost of mana, which you can then cycle back INTO mana for more offensive spell casts.
Solo play:
If you’re going to be soloing a lot as a warlock, play style varies a lot from that of a group. Using the soulstone on yourself instead of a healer, using whatever pet you want, and not worrying about CC.
Affliction: Soloing is great for affliction warlocks: you toss instant cast dots on as many mobs as you can, kite them around gathering more and more, the fear bomb them and watch as they scatter, all the while taking damage and draining health to you. The important thing to remember about affliction warlocks is how to use the pet. The pet’s only real purpose is to act as a second mana bar for you to drain repeatedly with Dark Pact, so you don’t have to waste time drinking. Affliction warlocks can truly have almost no down time, and take out 8-10 mobs of the same level or higher without blinking. Because you are effectively ignoring your pet while soloing, it is best to have the imp out for two reasons:
One, it has the blood pact buff, which gives you stamina which can in turn be used to life tap. Two, it has the highest spirit of all your pets, and if left on passive and out of combat, it can regenerate its entire mana bar by the time you kill a few enemies, then you can drain it entirely again and keep going.
Demonlogy: Soloing is great with Demonology spec as well. You tank a mob with your voidwalker or felguard, smash it with whatever spells you like, and on the off chance you steal aggro from your pet, just fear the mob, stop dps, and let your pet recover aggro. You can have relatively little down time with this spec as well because your pet will be taking most of the damage, so you can Life Tap and Drain Life to keep your mana and life totals where you want them with relative freedom. You will eventually have to rest of course, but you can generally wait until both your pet and you are essentially out of both health and mana. Then you drink and heal your pet simultaneously, and are back in action. The only real limitation on this spec as far as speed goes is that your pet can only tank 1-3 at a time (realistically).
Destruction: This spec again shifts the major source of damage back to you. Because of the relatively high spell crit rate, keeping aggro on your pets will be difficult. So you have to be quite careful about how and when you cast what spells. It is widely recognized that Destruction is a less than ideal leveling spec, and not great for solo play. But if you like the spells and the high damage and crits, don’t let that stop you. It just requires caution as far as your spell casts to keep aggro on your pet.
Group play:
In instances you have several primary responsibilities as a warlock that differ greatly from solo play and take some getting used to.
First, put a soulstone on a rezzer. Sounds easy, but choice of the person can actually differ. If a priest is the healer, great. If a druid is the main healer, you should see if you have a shaman or a paladin in the group, because a druid can only resurrect one person, while a paladin or shaman can resurrect the entire party in case of a wipe. So even if they’re not the healer, you might think about putting it on on offhealer class.
Second, distribute healthstones to the whole party. They’re on a separate cooldown than health potions and can be lifesaving in certain circumstances. Always be sure to tell people to ask you for another one, or constantly offer them to people.
Third, there are two useful pets in group play: the Imp and the Succubus. That’s it. If you don’t have one of those two out, you’re doing something wrong. And even then, the Succubus should only come out if you are being asked to help with crowd control by seducing a target. Otherwise, it should be the imp, because everyone benefits from Blood Pact. And as a corollary, ALWAYS have your pet on passive. NEVER use the imp’s fireball, or Succubus’s Lash of Pain. EVER. You only have the pet in instances to help with CC or passively provide Blood Pact. Otherwise it should be totally ignored.
Fourth, ALWAYS have a supply of soul shards. It’s what make warlocks warlocks. If you don’t have any, half of your abilities that make you useful to a group are worthless. I highly encourage getting a soulbag to store 16-24 shards, but if you really don’t want to give up the inventory space, have no fewer than 5 with you at all times.
Fifth, unlike solo play, what you cast when matters. Make sure you know what the CC targets are and ignore them. Put your dots up on anything that isn’t CC’ed, then focus your remaining fire on the tank’s main target. Here is where the traditional power of the affliction warlocki varies a little bit. If you just put yoru dots up and wait for them to expire, you’re not doing enough damage. You don’t really need to drain life constantly because you won’t be getting hit (generally). So in instances is when you want to use your other spells that require casting time and can be fired off constantly like shadowbolt, shadowburn (if you have it), conflagrate, and searing pain (if you’re far enough down the threat list that it won’t matter). The standby is shadowbolt of course. So as far as your general role as a dps’er, you should put up any and all dots you have, then cast shadowbolt until the dot timers expire, rinse and repeat. That way you’ll be doing as much dps as possible without the down time of waiting for your dots to cycle. I will cover the mildly differing role of each spec in turn.
Affliction: cast all your dots (Corruption, Curse of Agony, Unstable Affliction, Immolate, Siphon Life) and then fire shadowbolt until the dots expire. Repeat. When out of mana, drain your Imp, and do it again. If your Imp isn’t providing enough mana, vary your casting slightly by life tapping repeatedly, then cast drain life until you’re comfortable you won’t die. Then revert to your initial casting routine.
Demonlogy: I stand by the fact that demonologists are at an disadvantage in instances and raids because the one thing they’re pump all of their talents into improving doesn’t see a lot of use in instances. Felguard in particular, because of its cleave, is dangerous to use in instances if it is near any CC’ed mobs. But enough of that. As a demonlogist, you have difficult job because your pet control must be nearly perfect. Unlike the other specs, as a Demonlogist you can use your pet in instances to do damage so long as your confident it will only attack exactly what you want. To most easily do this, you should still keep the pet on passive, and then manually tell it to attack the main tank’s target. Then you just let it do its damage and worry about casting your own spells in the mean time. The important thing to note about high end instances in particular is that your pet despite the talents you've put into it, won't make a very effective offtank for more than a few seconds. Otherwise it will be an additional drain on the healer, and because mobs already hit so hard, splitting the healing between two tanks is dangerous. So the pet should primarily be used as additional damage on a target that is already being tanked (unless of course you're in charge of seducing a mob with the Succy). Along similar lines, remember to turn any pet taunting abilities off so as not to draw aggro off of the tank.
In the alternative, if you’re not comfortable with using your pets in instances, you can use Demonic Sacrifice to significantly boost your own performance.
The trouble there of course is most groups expect you to at least have your imp out to boost the stamina of the party, and may not appreciate your not having any pet out at all.
Regardless of what you do with your pet, your casting is virtually the same as in Affliction, merely with fewer instant dots. You lose Dark Pact, but you still have Life Tap and Drain Life, so you can constantly generate mana and do damage.
Destruction: Here, you are more like a fire mage than a warlock. Destruction focuses on burst damage from shadowbolt, immolation, conflagrate, and soulfire crits. As a result, your casting will be far more focused on longer casts with higher damage and more frequent crits overall. So toss up a few dots to get going. Then, you can focus either on immolate and conflagrate, or blast away with shadowbolt and the occasional shadowburn. This will depend on what casts you like personally as well as if your fire damage or shadow damage is higher. If you’re very coordinated, you can combine them, by casting immolate, letting the dot tick while you cast a shadowbolt or two, then burn off the immolate with conflagrate before it expires. With this spec more than any other it is possible to steal aggro (albeit still not likely) because your spell crit will be relatively high compared to the other two specs. Just something to be aware of. From what I've read (not personal experience) it is generally accepted to wait on this spec until late in end game raiding to give your +spell damage a chance to get up over 1000 and have your bolts and fire pack the most punch possible. But I haven't put that into practice myself, and figure the spec is just as viable in early end game if you are comfortable with it and know what you're doing.
General stuff:
Regardless of spec and solo/group play, one of the most important things to remember (and perhaps hardest to get comfortable with) is the idea that the warlock is the most functional class when operating below 100% health. Your Demon Armor self buff regenerates your health automatically, and Fel Armor causes your life gaining abilities to be 20-25% more effective depending on spec. This includes not only Siphon Life and Drain Life, but bandages, healthstones, health potions, and other player's heals. So, you should get used to starting fights at anywhere between 50 and 80% health, because over the course of the fight, a lot of abilities will help you regain that health at the cost of mana, which you can then cycle back INTO mana for more offensive spell casts.