I’ve never played warlock except for a very short time during tbc. Seems like they may be more popular this time around in classic. But overall what are y’alls opinions on them?
Messing around with the talent calculators lately and warlocks seem to have a pretty large amount of flexibility in builds. At least more so z other classes I’ve played. Might make for a fun class instead of basically only having 1 or 2 remotely viable end game builds.
What are some of your favorite builds? I’d imagine a sm/ds build would be fun in 5 man dungeons, solo grinding, and potentially PvP. Ds/ruin or sm/ruin seems like the go to max dps raid specs. Even something like 31 affliction and improving your imp to use dark pact on for mana and provide a buffed blood pact to the party may be a welcome addition to a raid group even if not max dps. Those are just a few I’ve mulled over.
I’m sorry I don’t have too much insight from an internal aspect by actually playing the class.
From an external point of view, I’m always happy to see one. Summoning is absolutely huge, especially in Vanilla. When Blizzard introduced summoning stones everywhere, it really took away from them.
From a raiding standpoint, there’s healthy demand for them. In PvP, they are excellent, especially in battlegrounds. When I see a Warlock guarding a node in AB for example, I have to play my A game to take him/her down as fast as possible otherwise I’ll be thrown around and killed easily.
Also, that tier 3 gear is arguably one of the best looking—very intimidating to me at least.
Thanks for the detailed reply. That’s pretty much what I was thinking there seems to be such a large variety of builds. Other classes builds seems more set in stone.
Since you seem knowledgeable I’ll have to ask. How is spell hit handled by warlocks? I know you need 16% to be pve hit capped and I know you can pick up 10% in affliction. But that doesn’t seem to help out your destruction spells like shadow bolt. Is it even feasible to acquire 16% spell hit just from gear? Or do you just take the 10% in affliction and look for another 6% from gear and just live with the constant shadow bolt resist?
So I guess you initially take as many points in suppression as your gear permits allowing your affliction spells to be hit capped. And you just have to live with shadowbolts not being hit capped until you are well into t2/ZG level gear?
A sm/ds build looks like it would just be really fun. Sac the succubus for maximum dot dmg in a dungeon or sac the voidwalker for some health regen while farming mobs and drain tanking. I’d imagine raids wouldn’t be great. But perhaps the 15% extra shadow damage would somewhat help make up for the loss of ruin and 2.5sec shadowbolts?
I don’t see much of anyone discussing dark pact. Is it really just that bad? I assume it’s because most of the time life tap is just a better option and doesn’t require you going 31 points into affliction removing your ability to pick up another trees 21 point talent.
It always bothered me immensely not being hit capped. Seeing your spell just plain not work was frustrating. Seems like getting 16% spell hit from gear alone would be a giant feat to say the least.
that’s what 5 in suppression and the staff from the lv50 quest are for. you can get 300shadow damage and 12% hit on aff spells before you hit 60. They excel early and drop off when mages can go fire. lock stat priority is spalldamage>hit>crit >int anyway spell damage takes priority over hit even when not capped. If we’re talking pve it’s a 7/21/23 build always.
Shadowbolt is not an affliction spell. Since Shadowbolt is almost all of your damage in raids, suppression obviously isn’t going to help you much there. Hence me talking about the need for hit.
Threat is a problem for warlocks in vanilla or at least it was for me. Big shadowbolt crits with ruin can cause spike damage. You may need to use a threat meter.