Morning team, wondering is theres a lock out there that can part with some advice for me. And yes I have read through all of the Icy Veins material on my TBC locks haha.
I started originally playing lock towards the end of wotlk/start of cata and at that point I found them easy enough to understand and so on. I’ve tried most specs on my current TBC lock and haven’t really found much that has stuck for me
Destruction: enjoing being able to kill things mad quickly but finding the whole loosing health quickly annoying and if I take on too many enemies - its over man
Affliction: also fun but also yawn takes a while for things to slowly drop dead, but never seemeed to run out of mana and health
Demonolgy: just havent tried it
Bit of a disclaimer, I dont really raid/dungeon - never found it super enjoyable. Got too hung up on doing the wrong thing and some people can be quite viscious about it so basically steered clear until I played wotlk in '08. I was also a rogue when playing most of wotlk. (def want to start doing it again in wotlk but just want a guild where theres an emphisas on friendliness & learning while raiding and not so competitve)
Anyway question is: any locks out there have a preffered talent build in TBC for things like dailys/world quests/rep grinding etc? Not looking to be the best - just to have like to have fun
You should try demo if you want to play some chill solo content, man. Demo is THE spec for that. Tanky pet with high threat and damage in felguard, he has it all. Deep demo is pretty much designed to be the solo player/lvling spec for warlock in TBC. Also competitive DPS with other lock specs at low levels of gear/scaling since the pet is so powerful.
Also leveling a warlock right now, and if you haven’t tried Demo then you should. I actually really disliked my Warlock until my 50’s when I finally got to spec Demo and take the Felguard. Leveling is such a breeze and once I did that I found leveling him super fun.
Affliction with SM/Ruin is IMO your best choice to raid and farm with.
Insanely powerful Corruption and Siphon Life, keeps you alive with good mobility while soloing, and in raid you’ll be highly sought after for utility (Malediction & Shadow Embrace). Also much more interesting to play timing dots and Siphon with ISB charges.
That being said, I just killed about 2000 Booty Bay guards for rep, and I couldn’t have done it without the felguard. It does come in handy soloing elites.
Destro is super high burst damage from your shadow bolts basically. Barely changed from vanilla and boring af. Great DPS but yawn.
Demonology is probably the best leveling, daily spec if you have subpar gear…and it’s fun to have a pet keep mobs of you…especially if you’re not a fan of affliction.
Affliction thrives off pulling 2-4 mobs at once to juggle them. If you’re 1v1ing mobs then yeah it’d probably be pretty boring, but Affliction and Spriests are two classes I loved leveling because once you find the sweet spot to how to pull and when mobs will die from your DoTs you’re just a pulling machine. Having first aid and being undead also REALLY helps in this regard. I also advise people to go down Demo while leveling to get Fel Dom, imp VW, and such. These are such clutch talents to basically making yourself unkillable via having two empowered VW sacrifices if it really hits the fan.
Destro also does fine at higher gear levels, but not able to pull lots of mobs as efficiently. If you’re not going to get ultra raid geared it’s probably not the PvE spec to play.
Demo would be fine from just a tanky Felguard perspective, but I haven’t touched it all expansion. For WOTLK leveling I assume it’ll be fun to play and may pick it over Affliction.
This is the Aff build I would go with, some flex up to you.
Basically Demo is just a defensive tree and offers little damage, but makes your VW a skosh better for threat and sacrifice, plus Fel Dom just really helps sometimes. When I leveled in Classic I went down to SL and then worked over to Fel Dom, but Aff talents were much more garbage for Classic and now there’s a lot more damage to pick up to UA so basically you should pick and choose based on how it feels.
Still, I ran this build for a while at 70 until I moved over into a raid spec. Won’t compete with a raid Aff build for damage, but you’re far better off being much more tanky.
It sounds like you already know all this stuff but demon is really good for soloing. That’s the one I plan to level up on and might stay with for a while at 80. It’s not even bad for groups or dungeons anymore thanks to the buff which no one else can apply. Raids will want at least 1 demon for this. Every other warlock however will switch to other builds for better damage. I look forward to trying those out vs players once my warlock has some resilience.
Affliction with the succubus is the best for leveling, just drain life tank while dots melt every thing. In wotlk the Felhunter gets a buff so it will be better but right now use the succubus.
If you are 0/21/40 spec and have a hard time with dailies due to constantly needing to stop and drink you should consider sacrificing a void walker for the passive health regen buff. It will help with the downtime significantly and once you get enough gear its more than enough to keep you going, when I do dailies I don’t ever have to stop to drink and eat.
Alot of people saying you should spec demo but if you find affliction boring then demo will absolutely put you to sleep. It gets better in wotlk but right now its just sit back and watch the pet dps while you do the most basic of warlock stuff.
I have a 70 hunter and 70 lock. Demo plays more like a hunter where you send the Felguard and sit back, one at a time. It’s nice but the hunter does a better job of this playstyle. As SL/SL you can dot multiple things and drain tank but you’re always taking a beating. It works but I find it slightly annoying compared to playing my hunter. I haven’t tried UA, maybe that spec is actually better for drain tanking. Because the pet is always taking damage from Soul Link so sometimes you have to stop to funnel it.
