The Warlocks Den - WoW Warlock Discussions

First I put this in the General Forum because I wasn't sure where it should go. Second, while we have a lot of threads for discussing talents amongst ourselves I did not see one directed to raid leaders. The genesis of this was when my GM and raid leader asked for a summary of all raid buff talents and abilities currently provided by each class. As things change it is difficult to keep track so I wrote out (cut and pasted) the following;

Raid wide buffs provided by Warlocks

Besides the typical Healthstones and Summon spells.

Demons:
FelGuard - Intercept 8 - 25yd Range, Charge an enemy, causing 189 damage and stunning it for 3 sec.

Felhunter - Fel Intelligence 20yd range, Increases party and raid members Intellect by 48 and Spirit by 64.

Imp - Blood Pact 20yd range, Increases party and raid members' health by 1330.

Fire Shield 30yd range, Surrounds the target in a shield of fire, increasing Fire resistance by 63 and making every strike against the target cause 33 Fire damage to the attacker. Lasts 3 min. The caster cannot cast Fire Shield on himself.

Succubus - Soothing Kiss 10yd range, Soothes the target, increasing the chance that it will attack something else and decreases melee attack speed by 10% for 10 sec.

Void Walker - Consume Shadows Channeled, The Voidwalker consumes nearby shadows to bolster its form, recovering 3468 health over 6 sec and greatly increasing stealth detection to all nearby friendly targets within 30 yards. Cannot be used while in combat.

Suffering melee range, Taunts all enemies within 5 yards, increasing the chance that they will attack the Voidwalker and reducing chance to hit by 10% for 15 sec.

Curses:
Curse of Recklessness - Curses the target with recklessness, increasing melee attack power by 135 but reducing armor by 1260 for 2 min. Cursed enemies will not flee.

Curse of the Elements - Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow resistances by 165 and increasing magic damage taken by 10%.

Curse of Weakness - Target's melee attack power is reduced by 478 for 2 min.

Crowd Control:
Fear - Strikes fear in the enemy, causing it to run in fear for up to 20 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect. Only 1 target can be feared at a time.

Howl of Terror - Howl, causing 5 enemies within 10 yds to flee in terror for 8 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.

Talents:
Affliction - Curse of Exhaustion, Reduces the target's movement speed by 30% for 12 sec. Can be increased to 50%.

Frailty, Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness by 20%, and reduces the amount of attack power granted by your Curse of Recklessness by 100%.

Improved Felhunter, Your Felhunter regains 8% of is maximum mana each time it hits with its Shadow Bite ability, and increases the effect of your Felhunter's Fel Intelligence by 10%.

Improved Fear, Causes your Fear spell to inflict a Nightmare on the target when the fear effect ends. The Nightmare effect reduces the target's movement speed by 30% for 5 sec.

Destruction - With the exception of some chances to stun Destro currently provides no raid wide buffs. However, Patch 3.1 is set to change that as follows:
Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch). (in the first level of Destruction tree, most warlocks can make use of this talent but is not useful to fire spec deep destruction warlocks...go figure)

Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)

Demonology - Improved Imp, Increases the effect of your Imp's Firebolt, Fire Shield, and Blood Pact spells by 30%.

Improved Healthstone, Increases the amount of Health restored by your Healthstone by 20%. (in the first level of Demonology tree, most warlocks can make use of this talent)

Demonic Pact, Your pet's criticals apply the Demonic Pact effect to your party or raid members. Demonic Pact increases spell power by 10% of your Spell Damage for 12 sec. Does not work on Enslaved demons.
Of all buffs Demonic Pact needs more explanation. Currently Pre-Ulduar spell power is beginning to top 2800 which makes this buff more powerful than Totem of Wrath and while the spell power buffs do not stack, the 3% increase to critical strike on the Totem of Wrath is actually a debuff on the MOB, so the two talents do work together. However, the amount of personal DPS lost in getting to this talent is seldom worth the benefit to the raid. Raid composition and damage output make this an extremely variable talent. Under current conditions a well geared warlock can surpass the raid wide buff benefit with his personal DPS under most conditions. This does not however take into account the healing benefits from the increased spell power. Buffs to the demonology tree expected which have been mentioned as possible in Patch 3.1 promise to make deep demonology a viable PvE spec, if that is true and personal DPS matches even that of hybrid specs then the deep demonology talent of Demonic Pact will be all but mandatory for one warlock going into Ulduar. In addition, the most popular build with this talent will also make use of the Improved Shadow Bolt

What did I miss? Oh, and please note that my opinion on a DP specced warlock being all but mandatory was in relation to my guild...your mileage may vary.

February 13, 2009, 06:01 PM	#1 (permalink)
Koldfeat Character Info Koldfeat 80 Undead Warlock Draenor US PvE Guild: Trouble Talent Spec: Spec?	Re: A Guide to Warlocks for Raid Leaders Very nice. You missed Curse of Tongues.

February 13, 2009, 06:03 PM	#2 (permalink)
Darksumone Status: I am Death Character Info Darksumoner 80 Human Warlock Tanaris US PvE Guild: Samsara Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58	Re: A Guide to Warlocks for Raid Leaders Not bad some mistakes. Isb is now caster only needs to be in big letters or left out entirely since it is not a raid buff but a personal buff Seduce/Banish/Enslave are also forms of CC that we have. Improved Soul Leach DOES NOT offer Raid replenishment yet that is possible in a future patch. Missing Afflictions talent Malediction. Honestly if my raid leader was to give me this project i would have stated that imp gives 1300 Health to all in raid. that is overwrote by Battle shout(I think something else as well) Dog gives out Intellect by 48 and Spirit by 64. overwrote by priest and mage buffs CoE(used to be mandatory) is now overwrote by Druids and DKs Only thing that we have truly to Raid Buff now is DP big IF our Sp is high enough or your raids do not have a ele shammy in them almost anyone raiding should be well above normal totem. __________________ I think that you shall Die NOW!!! Haatoom Attack!!!!

February 13, 2009, 06:28 PM	#4 (permalink)
Darksumone Status: I am Death Character Info Darksumoner 80 Human Warlock Tanaris US PvE Guild: Samsara Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58	Re: A Guide to Warlocks for Raid Leaders Being that those are just mention for possiblities for 3.1 I would take them right outta the guide though maybe put a side note on the bottom of the thing say btw eheh if bliz loves us this is what they are thinking of doing. and i didnt mean to come off as short and say that what you wrote up was wrong but you may want to seperate out what actualy is Raid Buffs and what they are overwrote by/ what they overwrite. and the general Usefullness of having a lock around. Alot of what you wrote is more just explaing the lock class and abilities to your guild then answering the question that was presented to you. __________________ I think that you shall Die NOW!!! Haatoom Attack!!!!

February 13, 2009, 06:44 PM	#6 (permalink)
Darksumone Status: I am Death Character Info Darksumoner 80 Human Warlock Tanaris US PvE Guild: Samsara Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58	Re: A Guide to Warlocks for Raid Leaders Then forgive me, I was mistaken and as a general overview with the afforementioned changes liek succy what not it sounds like your putting together a very nice guide. __________________ I think that you shall Die NOW!!! Haatoom Attack!!!!

February 13, 2009, 08:45 PM	#8 (permalink)
Rrasyrogen Character Info Kyannastar 44 Human Warlock Shu'Halo US PvE Guild: Orange Crush Talent Spec: 0/35/0	Re: A Guide to Warlocks for Raid Leaders i like what you have started here Dunwich and it should progress well if people try to help you to make it the guide for non-lock raid leaders (which usually the leaders are not locks... lol). i like what Darksumone wrote to add to your start-up of this guide about the buffs being overwritten so that the leaders also know if priests or mages are not there what they will have, there are added benefits knowing what classes are in the group. i also am wondering about making sure they understand that if a tank goes down that we can put in a void to take up the lack or maybe any other situation that we can fill in a hurry if need arises. i have fel domination that takes only 1/2 second to summon my next demon... as demonology allows (with a 10 min cd i think). all specs should add to this since i do not know affliction or destruction, never having thought of them while being demonology myself? my affliction lock is only lvl22. i really do like the idea of this guide... please continue with it and maybe we can make our GM's happy with it too (especially if they are not locks)

February 14, 2009, 03:34 PM	#9 (permalink)
Vazhkatsi Character Info Vazhkatsi 70 Gnome Warlock Dalaran US PvE Guild: Phoenix Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/21/40	Re: A Guide to Warlocks for Raid Leaders one thing i'd like to note is that while CoE can be overwritten, it is still useful to have an Aff lock, because for it to be overwritten you need a boomkin(don't always have one on my server) or a deep unholy DK, (the popular spec seems to be frost/unholy without ebon.)