Question on warlock gear

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
21

With 16 debuff slots this is pretty much always going to be an issue.

22

Until you’re 60 or raiding. FYI, you can incorporate all 10 drain life talents into SM/Ruin.

Pre-BWL for raiding: Crit ≈ Hit.

It changes as you get more gear, but right now all the gear (with one or two exceptions) SUCKS.

23

Eh. Theres usually about 3-5 slots available to put dots up in. Possibly more depending on what gear your raid has brought to the table that needs slots.

24

There are usually 3+ corruptions in pugs, and they’re almost always bumping important debuffs off of the boss.

Warlocks already take up 4 debuffs before you start putting corruptions on the boss. Now you want to take up another FIVE? No. That’s how you make your mages hate you as their Winter’s Chill gets bumped off repeatedly.

25

Typical important debuffs:

Sunder
CoS
CoE
CoR
Faerie Fire
Shadowweaving
Shadow vulnerability
Nightfall(not in game yet)
Winters chill
Hunters Mark

Those 10 are about the only important ones. The other 6 slots can be used for dots, judgements, etc whatever your raid wants to use them for.

Using 1 slot for SW:P and a few slots for corruption shouldn’t be an issue.

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26

Unless you are twink-gearing from the overpriced AH with a level 60 patron, you use whatever you can find from drops/quests or the occasional affordable AH upgrade. That means you are mostly stuck with STA & INT preferred options & even some mixed SPRT gear while leveling.

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27

Spell/shadow damage 100%
Post 60 you need every single piece of spell hit you can get your hands on

28

Certainly there are a few debuff slots left and if there are 1 or 2 locks then use Corruption. Once you get 3+ it’s a good idea for just the SM locks to put up Corruption since they use it to proc Nightfall.

There are some other good debuffs such as certain weapon procs and stuff like Arthas’s Tears, which are useful depending on the makeup of the group. Also, there are paladin judgements that can be important for fights, such as Judgement of Wisdom.

So, yes, Corruption can be good but it’s not something you’d want more than a couple of people putting up.

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29

It depends on your spec and level. At higher levels spell power on gear becomes more prevalent and more useful. In the 20s/30s you won’t notice the change in damage due to a number of reasons.

  1. Gear in that level range has very low +damage, so the amount of change to your dps is negligible.

  2. You have to sacrifice stamina, intellect, and spirit to get it. While leveling you need the base stats to grind from mob to mob so it’s not worth the trade off.

  3. When you’re leveling, you’re likely using a lot of your DoTs. Say you get an item with +10 shadow damage. That doesn’t add 10 damage per tick, it adds it over the course of the spell. So if your corruption ticks for 30 damage, you might see it up to 31.

Obviously when you’re at, and near L60 you want to start stacking as much spell power as possible, but at lower levels it’s simply not worth it.

While leveling your stat priorities will change, and at 60 you’ll be focusing on spell damage and spell crit. But at lower levels you’ll want to focus more on stamina —> spirit —> intellect.

Many people think spirit is a wasted stat, especially for warlocks. However if you’re questing/mob grinding it’s likely you’ll spend a third of your time out of combat, running from mob to mob, or eating/drinking. Spirit increases your HP and mana regen, so it can greatly reduce your downtime, thus increasing your leveling speed. Don’t underestimate the usefulness. (Again, your stat priorities will shift periodically as you level, this is for low/mid level ranges)

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30

Spirit is a wasted stat for warlocks. With a drain tanking build you can go from mob to mob forever, ending up at about 10% health and mana. The amount of regen from spirit will matter so little that you can ignore it. Load up on +spell damage, you’ll just kill faster.

The point is that you won’t have downtime so you don’t need spirit. It’s completely a waste to a drain tank lock.

And, yes, there’s less spell power at lower levels but you can get some. You also do less damage at low levels so a bit of a boost in spell damage can be a decent boost in overall damage, percent-wise.

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31

LOL Improved Shadowbolt doesn’t seem important?

Demoralizing shout? Thunderclap (and Thunderfury eventually)?

We’re also assuming that no one has Annihilator or Nightfall. Actually Thunderfury will take up 2 slots when you eventually get one.

One corruption is fine. That warlock is running SM/Ruin, has an imp out, and is in the tank group.

Considering how MC groups LOVE to bring like 6 warlocks for Garr, I’m instructing most new locks to expect to run DS/Ruin and not use corruption.

Actually, Improved Drain Soul is currently bugged, and procs whenever you land a killing blow on any mob while channeling drain soul (even if the mob you’re channeling drain soul on isn’t the one that died).

Trust me, this is a major improvement. It’ll allow you to DOT up an extra mob or two, which makes for fun times in places like Jadefire Glen or Jadefire Run.

I’m not telling you to go out of your way for spirit, but it’s not a wasted stat (particularly while leveling).

32

Yeah, I gave it a try and didn’t think it was worth the points. There were more valuable places to put them that would make my current casts more effective and not require a weak channel at the end of a kill. Especially since it needs spirit to really be effective.

33

I mean, giving up a second or two to a rank 1 drain soul every once in a while to keep the buff rolling gives you about 30% of the regen you’d get from drain life
 and you can do it in addition to drain life.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aPRHdLWkURv6EZ9yjHUApY9hDw4IJbJ6/view

Seems VERY worth it to me.

34

stam , int , sp

you wont see hit until like AQ


35

Yea, there’s about 2% hit in the pre-BIS. BWL has a few VERY good hit items too, but they didn’t really start itemizing for caster hit until ZG.

36

That’s listed as shadow vulnerability.

Also, if your raids are grabbing 6 locks, whew. A lot of the time ours only manage to field 2, and it’s a rare treat when we manage to field 3 and we get curse of shadows lmao.

37

You know, I’m not sure if I’ve ever been in a 40-player raid without at least 3 locks. I’d probably drop Curse of Elements first because I’m selfish.

In my current guild, we usually bring 5 warlocks. In the pugs I’ve been in, this has been typical.

38

I feel you 100%. It just doesnt make mathematical sense to drop reck or ele when there are only two locks.

Plus side is, when we only have 2 locks, I’m a curse/banish bot and not expected for my dps to matter so I often show up in the SL/Nightfall spec that I use for pvp and do 720 jump shadowbolt trick shots whenever nightfall procs while parsing grey because its fun. I’ve also been know to level melee skills

39

At least you didn’t show up to MC as deep destro fire spec (without imp SB!) like one of our warlocks did a few weeks ago.

That was such a facepalm moment.

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40

It is offensive and defensive actually. Shadow power increases your grinding efficiency significantly as it increases your siphon life and drain life efficiency. This really only holds true after 38 when you get a strong enough drain life though. Before that, wand dps is king over all other stats.