I used Succubus seduce to good effect in dungeons, moreso in TBC but it should work just fine in Vanilla dungeons that have humanoids (Strat Dead side is pretty much the anti Warlock CC). The biggest issue I had with using Seduce in dungeons was convincing groups that I was capable of competently using seduce as a CC.
I did a bit of a write-up on using Seduce for dungeons in this thread back in May.
As for spec, and being much more PVP oriented at the time, I went with the SM/Ruin build.
Depends on your focus. For myself? I’d probably drop 10 points in the Affliction tree, reducing the cast time on Corruption and maxing Improve Drain Life. Two points in Improved Healthstone, five each on Demonic Embrace, Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina, two on Improved Health Funnel. That already gives you a respectable boost to survivability for solo play. Fill in the rest depending on what fits your playstyle.
You can go to WoWhead to figure out what you want to do, since they have a talent calculator up. https:// classic.wowhead. com/talent-calc
7/21/23 or bust. It competes with mages in aq40 to a degree. you wont go below hunter with it. You can pull out 1.3k dps with it.
Best overall set of talent trees in my opinion and I can’t wait to play the OG warlock in classic. There are lots of fun and viable builds for warlocks besides the SB spam raid spec builds. Heck even DS/ruin had A lot of options for styles of play beyond sacrifice succubus to spam shadowbolt.
30/0/21
7/21/21 +2
32/8/11
19/21/11
9/31/11
19/32/0
30/21/0
The more ‘interesting’ talent point choices were IMO when you started going deeper into demonology because you could start taking points in talents that gave you options to play your class in a variety of ways like buffing a specific pet while having the option to play with no pet.
0/30/21 was almost as good as ds ruin and still better than sm ruin for pvp and pve. you just loose out on suppression and implifetap.
If you can live with being an inferior mage, warlock is plenty of fun. But there’s not much diversity for builds. You’re basically going to be 30/0/21 like everyone else. It’s the top damage raiding build (assuming debuff limit is 16), and most flexible. It can do everything. It also keeps the pet out for seduction, devour magic, spell lock, void shields, or just bloodpact. You don’t have demonic sacrifice at all so you’re not required to run without a pet to max your damage. The irony is that the build with 0 demon talents actually uses the pet the most, vs the builds with demon talents, because they just just eat the pet for buffs.
I really like 30/21/0 though. Outside raids, it is fantastic. You’re almost unkillable if you run this build well. It’s the best for leveling 50-60, and farming. It is not top damage by any means, but its self healing/survival are incredible. Just… pray your dots aren’t dispelled and you get plenty of nightfall procs… else you’re not going to do much damage in BGs.
Thanks for the reply. The 30/21/0 build seems super fun for everything but raids. But maybe you’d get away with it providing the improved blood pact in a tank group and offering up buffed health stones.
In a raid environment would there optimally only be 1 sm/ruin warlock and the rest would spec ds/ruin?
I’m guessing even with the 10% from sm and 15% from sacrificing a succubus the 3 second cast time shadow bolts and lack of ruin would not allow the 30/21/0 build to compete with sm/ruin or ds/ruin in dps?
If there happens to be a shadow priest keeping up shadow weaving is warlock still just nowhere near a mage? Or is it more just a matter of having to hold back because of threat that keeps them from competing?
They suck at organized pvp hard.
Awesome pve class though due to chain fear that won’t break in pve like it does in pvp.
Basically a weak mage that depending on pet and spec can either fight casters or melee.
Level with affliction, pvp as destruction.
Orc is best race for warlock, they lack stun break on pvp trinket.
In terms of damage yes. But then you’ll have more mages competing for same gear. And you won’t have warlock needed in phase 6.
Warlocks were so underrated back then, and now people know full well of their potential. They have terrific DPS, are desired in both raids and PvP, can easily hold their own in World PvP, they level quickly and farm efficiently, have really great class quests along with the famous epic mount quest, can soulstone people, summon people, and sacrifice group members (or even themselves) to unleash horrible demons. Those demons could rampage if left uncontrolled.
Not to mention all their Tier gear looks fantastic.
They’re such a great class in Vanilla.
You won’t regret rolling one.
No, everyone runs SM/Ruin, and they all get to use corruption. With 16 slots, there’s room for everyone, unless you simply have too many warlocks, or want to dock some for a shadow priest. Shadow weaving is better than ANY number of warlocks, so trading corruption slots for the shadow to function is a profit for everyone.
30/21/0 basically has no nuke damage due to the lack of crit talent. The tactic with this build isn’t to use cast time for bolts at all. You cast drain life instead, then hope you get nightfall procs. This bypasses the cast time talent. The problem is that drain life takes up a debuff slot (so forget about using it in raids), and takes twice as long vs an improved bolt to cast. This means enemies might run away or will most likely kick your shadow tree. It also suffers to pushback. But despite everything, the healing is nice, making it very good to solo with. Think of it as “nightfall fishing”, if nothing else.
Warlocks already outdamage mages until they get to use fire spec. The problem is that warlock doesn’t have any threat reduction. You have to be very careful not to pull a boss due to a string of lucky crits. The mage however can spam non stop. He’s never going to pull a boss. Assuming he is in trouble, he can blink or ice block. You cannot. You’d have to use an invulnerable pot. This potion is important for warlocks because if you pull aggro, using it will make the boss drop target. You can ride the threat fence more daringly if you have these ready.
Once mages get to use fire spec later in the game, things change. But this doesn’t mean guilds will suddenly start kicking out all their warlocks. Your damage will never be irrelevant, as either caster.
Why do you think they suck in organized pvp?
Watching a few of the old videos of Warlock PvP action…I start to wonder if I should really main a Warlock…
I watched one video of a horde Premade, where 2 warlocks and a hunter sat back at range and destroyed any ally that came into contact.
The PvP players where good, all the right elements of 10 players in unison. Calling targets, CC’ing the right targets, focusing healers. The second an ally pally or warrior over extended they where all over it.
This is exactly why a warlock will be fun to play…
Que the music for PVP action Metallica: Seek and Destroy
i Played one. It’s like an inferior mage in pvp. Very inferior.
Geared warlocks were gods in PVP. With an SM / Ruin or Soul Link build I used to take on 3 or 4 people at a time. Rogues were even easy enough. As soon as I got a fear off it was game over.
Summarizing a class with a rotation that you perform about 15 total minutes a week is pretty thin. It is understood that you don’t know much about the game but you can not say anything and the same effect will be achieved, to no detriment to the posters knowledge.
Nice way to lose a ton of honour earned that week… Dishonourable Kills are quite painful.
But what does a rank 14 do better with their spare time ?
I could eat a mage no problem, and kill your rogue and priest friends while I was at it. Then I’d turn and laugh at your warrior buddy wondering why his druid friend was running away… Locks are Mage-killers in vanilla. Rarely ever had a problem with them or any class, with the exception of very well played geared Warrior, but they all die to my dots once I’m dead, then I soulstone and sit down laughing.
There was a build, a very little known one that I loved so much, it was nerfed to the ground the minute BC dropped. I’ll play it once more and be known as the raid boss I once was.
Play SM/Ruin. It’s a good dps build and has some fun PVP elements to it. I don’t want everyone cookie cutting my builds so I’ll keep that to myself.
Never felt inferior to mages in PvP on my lock back in vanilla. In fact I would be hard pressed to consider myself inferior to a class that I could kill without blinking or breaking a sweat.