Let’s discuss warlocks please

Is sm/ds actually comparable? That build just seems plain awesome for running around solo grinding dot’ing everything you see but is flat +25% shadow damage better than just 10% from sm or 15% from ds and then taking ruin in a raid environment? I’d imagine the 3 second cast shadow bolts, no improved shadow bolt, and no devastation/ruin would kill it?

Edit: Just a thought but wouldn’t not taking Bane and keeping your shadow bolts at a 3 second cast time let them gain more damage from your spell power?

In a raid environment dots are straight garbage(except on ony) only corruption stays on the rotation even for aoe pulls when imp sb changed in 1.11… SM/DS is preferred for fresh 60s because you don’t have the crit to make ruin work, and you aren’t raiding yet. you actually level sm/ds with your last talent point at 60 in ds.

Any input on around what level gear before you’d make the switch to ds/ruin? Even beyond this gear threshold is sm/ds any good or does it just really get dominated once you have some decent crit %?

Thanks so much for all the info and taking your time to reply.

Once you have 300+ shadow damage you should switch because of dot scaling.

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So that would put you at around t2 level gear it seems. So before that assuming you’re sm/ds would you just keep corruption up (if you have a debuff slot) and just proceed to shadow bolt spam with a sacrificed succubus?

Actually that’s preraid bis (tailoring and quest rewards), yeah sb spam with curse of shadow and corruption. felcloth hood>nemesis cap lol.

My favorite thing about lock is shadow damage gear is so easy to get and the gear has so much of it on it that greens are better than all mc gear except t2 legs. SAVE THAT DKP!!!

I’ve been researching this for months, in retail vanilla I played sm/ruin. But after a lot of research ?/21/21+ ds/ruin is more versatile with ds you can sack imp for aoe too which is better than nightfall, and better st than sm/ruin with gear.

Sm/ds imo is a solo farm build, or a late game pvp build. It’s best utilized with something like 500+ “+shadow” damage

Losing bane is a bigger output loss than the gain from ds is (especially when you’re also losing ruin which is another massive loss and improved sbolt) Also cast time reduction talents don’t reduce the damage scaling from +spell power gear. That’s part of the reason elemental is given so much credit for their scaling in naxx, despite not having a curse that works on nature damage, their cast time reduction talent massively reduces the cast time for lightning bolt and it scales at a 3 sec cast time, but ends up castable every 2 seconds… Where lock sbolt is a 3.0 cast that you push out every 2.5 via bane (and then have Coshadows, imp shadow bolt, and shadow weaving boosting)

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You can get CoE, an extra dot that heals (siphon life), and you can proc instant SB’s which means there is less hard casting.

I just think if you are trying for a hybrid raid/pvp spec where you can be pretty good at both you are better off with SM/Ruin.

It seems like from my research that is the case.

Sm/ruin is the best all around spec.
Ds/ruin is the best for raids.
Soul link is the best for PvP.
Sm/ds for solo grinding/farming.

Sound about right?

-Soul Link being best for pvp VERY debatable, and I’d actually argue against it. There are a number of different pvp builds that are all top tier with various strengths, weaknesses, and gearing templates. Many of those builds will excel in different situations.

-DS/Ruin is typically best for raids, you ideally want to have 3 different warlocks each with a different rank of “Improved healthstone” from the demo tree, because a player can then hold 3 different healthstones at once (and use more than one per fight without trading mid fight, which is annoying as hell… *they do still share the cd for clarity)… A SM/Ruin lock is typically the one providing the “0” rank Improved healthstones (0/1/2 talent points being the 3 options). You use a SM/Ruin lock for that rank because of:

It’s also common nice to give at least the tank group an imp-bloodpact buff, so having a SM ruin lock with an imp out is nice there. Beyond that however, yeah DS/Ruin is generally superior for pure raid dps. The problem is that DS/Ruin is an awful build for anything but spamming sbolt at raid targets, so SM/Ruin tends to get significantly more usage.

-SM/DS is also INCREDIBLY scary by the naxxramas level at pvp, since it stacks so much shadow scaling multipliers that it ends up scaling insanely well with the massive amounts of +spellpower/+shadow gear you can find by that point… I’m talking Corruption/Agony/Siphon life alone being more than enough to 100-0 any targets that aren’t dispelled or healed… and it can get very oppressive fighting against that kind of instant cast output… and a full drain life channel in that setup, particularly when a target has CoShadows also active, is almost comical for how much healing it does.

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Totally agree, Soul Link is an amazing 1v1 type build but when you need to pump out some actual group damage other builds are better.

I saw someone bring attention to a build called NightFlag (nightfall-conflag), that sounded like a super fun glass cannon pvp build. Any of you ever experiment with that?

DS/emberstorm is better, imagine 25% increased fire damage improved searing pains. for pvp 0/31/20 is geat soullink searing pain build, it can solo anything and you can tank av with it. Md/ruin is my goat pvp spec, ive seen locks 1 shot people with 3k sb’s after they suduce things back in the day, not pserver.

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NF/Conflag is my favorite overall pvp build, a step ahead of even SM/Ruin…

It’s more consistent and forgiving for seduce-nuke combos as SM/Ruin requires basically perfect 36 yard positioning to cast 2 bolts off a seduce (the second bolt should be leaving your hands as the first is landing)… Where NF/Conflag simply piggybacks the first bolt with a Immo/Conflag combo

You do lose a large chunk of top end from 10% off bolt and shadowburn, but you make up for it with more consistent chunk damage that is easier to get off (via shorter cast immolate, instant conflag, and a boosted searing pain all being used significantly more often) , more forgiving on positioning, and less prone to being locked out via single spell school reliance.

The actual single global burst is roughly the same if not a bit higher, but being divided into 3 nukes instead of 2 (bolt->immo/Conflag vs Bolt/Burn) does make you a bit more RNG dependent for them all to crit.

Gearing wise is where NF/Conflag hits the biggest hurdle however… You ideally prefer higher crit% and spellpower gear, where SM/Ruin can basically use +Shadow, +Crit, +Spellpower pretty interchangeably.

You can do that (global people) more easily with SM/Ruin or NF/Conflag since that 6 yards of affliction spell range is huge for getting those combos off without having to run forward to curse then run back out to 36 yards to nuke.

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the op imp succubus with imp lash of pain is like a bm hunters pet, it will make up for any lost damage on curses.

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You can’t have a pet out and your sacrifice buff active at the same time. You have to pick one. The SM/Ruin warlock does not. He always has his buff, and his pet. Also, he can dot up entire mob packs with siphon life then laugh, while you’re nuking them 1 at a time. This isn’t as effective as SM/DS (the best soloing build), but it’s a hell of lot better than not having siphon life at all. Siphon life is an incredible spell to have anywhere outside raids.

Again, DS/Ruin, because of nightfall, does not produce as much damage as SM/Ruin. That mere 5%, which you also sacrifice your bloodpact for, takes too long to add up to the damage of nightfall procs. Nightfall bolts can also be spent while moving, giving you better mobility as well.

Is there ever a place for dark pact? Seems not that great considering you already have life tap. I kind of feel like I remember people using dark pact and a phase shifted imp with 5/5 fel intellect maybe it was just a leveling spec? Aside from endless grinding/farming/leveling any other time this kind of build would be used?

Are you ill? imp VW tank better than dotting mobs, sacking imp and hellfire is better aoe than dotting mobs. VW has it’s own sac, then you u insta summon your succy. IK IK u can’t read so hard micro skills like that are hard.

That master demonologist/ruin build does seem cool but I just don’t think I’d have the patience to micro manage my pet that much. Seems like if they died you’re just sol.

Pet dieng is honestly not that big of a deal, it’s how lock played in cata. You probably have to hard cast one over 3 min.

A variant of SM/Ruin with Darkpact instead of Ruin is probably the best build for AV… You won’t have time to hardcast nukes like Sbolt, but you can darkpact for pretty close to endless mana while tab-dotting, and then you have Sburn still available to help finish targets…

SM/DS with a VW sac is also pretty solid for AV, however and has uses in other places.

Beyond that, I use darkpact to level and that’s about it.

Your succubus is there for Seduce pretty exclusively… You don’t want her wasting mana or even more importantly locking herself out of GCD hitting lash of pain in pvp (and then being unable to cast seduce on demand because she’s still on GCD from hitting lash)… Hell, most of the time you don’t even want her attacking since it tends to result in her getting cleaved/dotted and killed.

EDIT: Also since you mentioned a DS/Emberstorm +25% fire build earlier… That’s worse in just about every situation to just running deep Fire destro and grabbing Improved Imp and Improved Firebolt for the imp… That little sucker is an absolute terror/machine gun when fully buffed, and you can still get Conflag. I’d still rate it (and really any destro build heavier into the destro tree than Nightfall/Conflag) way lower on the overall potential pvp build chart, however, even if it is fun to meme around on.