Alright so, I’m 100% going to be a Warlock in Classic, that much I’ve decided. Having to spend a few hours before the raid to stock up on soul stones doesn’t deter me. I’ve found a few good Warlock guides so I’m pretty sure I have a good grasp on what I need to do when Classic actually gets released, but there’s just two things I’m unsure about yet could not find answers to when I looked for them. So I come to the Classic forum in hopes of finding answers to these elusive questions.
1.) I’ve heard it said in a couple Vanilla Warlock forums that the highest rank of Firebolt for an Imp is a trap and to not learn it. Is this true and why? I mostly suspect the why is because the imp will run out of mana and just stand there, but if this is true I would like to know the actual reasoning.
2.) Spell down-ranking. In raids and dungeons, am I supposed to do this for spells like Shadowbolt during my rotation of “Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt”, and if so, how far down do I go? I understand there’s utility in downranking spells, like lower casting times and such, yet I do not know how far back I’m supposed to go just for damage purposes. I very much doubt I’m supposed to spam the first rank, yet at the same time it seems like I’d oom very easily if I just spammed max rank. Was the rule of the thumb just like, 2 ranks below the current highest rank or something?
You want to play demo/destro and sacthe pet that gives you 15% shadow damage.
Aff/destro is only better in a few trash situations. Also not having to worry about your pet is nice.
I’ve never heard of down ranking shadow bolt for dps either. Just tap when you can and pay attention to healers. I am not sure how mana drain would function in situations where you can’t tap but I’m sure it exists.
I had to correct myself there. Looks like Soul Shards do stay in your bags even after being logged out. It is only conjured items which disappear such as mage food, Healthstones and Soul Stones.
That’s what it sounds like based on what I’ve read, but I’ve also seen that raids like to have at least one Warlock to stick in the tank party that does not sac their pet and keeps their pet out for Bloodpact for the HP buff. If that happens to be me, I need to know the answer to question 1. It’s true that it may never be relevant and can always sac my pet for the shadow damage buff, but I’d like to know before I learn it and get stuck with an imp casting the wrong spell and can’t fix it.
If that’s the answer for the second question, that’s great, I won’t have to worry about it then. Thanks!
Since warlocks have life tap they typically don’t have to worry about Mana all that much. I don’t believe it’s common practice for a warlock to downrank shadowbolt.
Just to add, down-ranked banish can be important to reduce length of the banish which is very long in vanilla outside of pvp.
I hope you get the answer about the imp. Guilds have class officers in vanilla so you will have a resource to go to while leveling or when you start raiding.
On the imp thing, I don’t really know it in vanilla, but in TBC there was a talent to decrease the cast time for the imp’s fireball - but on the flip side used a lot of the imp’s mana up. Not training him later ranks basically could be a way of balancing that to get the faster shots, a little less damage, and less likely to go OOM.
(Of course, I played Afflic in PvE, so the imp wasn’t really something I paid a lot of attention to.)
Downranking shadowbolt is fairly common but not for the reasons being discussed in this thread. They don’t do it for mana, they do it for threat.
The reason they downrank shadowbolt is because warlock’s crits can be absolutely huge. It could mean the difference between “safe” and “the boss is going to murder me because I just crit him and there’s no way for me to reduce my threat”
You basically use a lower rank shadowbolt when you’re in a close range of the tank’s threat so that if you crit, you’ll likely be safe. If you crit with your down ranked bolt and are now on the edge of pulling agro, you literally just stop casting or switch to wand or maintenance abilities.
As said earlier, don’t bother down ranking, unless you’re doing it for threat reasons.
Your mana pool isn’t a warlock problem, it’s a healer problem. Your druids in particular should want to meter pad off your warlocks by just keeping a constant hot active. It costs almost nothing overall.
As for a bugged spell rank… I honestly couldn’t tell you because the imp is almost never used for damage in dungeons and especially in raids. I mean you theoretically could, but it’s better as a walking health totem. I preferred sm/ruin to DS/ruin as well…but for pvp reasons (sm/ruin is fine for pvp, and can even match or exceed ds/ruin if you also have an extra debuff slot available for corruption, though that isn’t super common). The most common time to run imp and DPS with it for me was when I was completely dry on shards and going to farm them… But even then it’s not necessary if you do the lvl 50 class quest and select the trinket reward that let’s you summon a vw without a shard (or sit in the av death ball for a few minutes just drain soul ing focus targets and you don’t even need a pet )
Finally, farming shards doesn’t take all that much time, honestly and is mostly way overblown. You can easily farm 2-3 shards a minute in the world and potentially much more with ideal circumstances (like harvesting from av raid v raid fights)…
You also don’t need more than rank 1 drain soul in 99% of situations (no need to waste the mana)… And once you get used to the class a bit you’ll find it second nature to just drain tag any mob/player you see that’s about to die and maintain a healthy shard stock.
You want to be DS/Ruin (Demonic Sacrifice/Ruin, aka demo+destro) for the most part, which means you sacrifice your Succubus for a bonus 15% shadow damage. SM/Ruin is the other build, which is less damage but you are running Corruption and fishing for instant Shadow Bolt procs. You aren’t going to run your imp unless your raid leader really wants Blood Pact in to buff the tank or you’re running SM/Ruin, which is worse in most situations.
I’ve never heard of downranking as warlock in raids. Faster cast times is bad in terms of DPS as your spell power coefficient is based on the initial cast time (initial meaning before talents that make spells faster), only healers want to downrank for spell cast time (and frost mages in PVP for 1s cast frostbolt to slow). You don’t have to worry about downranking for mana either because you can just life tap and get healed back up.
If you do get too close to the tank in threat, just stop casting for a few seconds.
On 1) I never downranked my imp’s fireball myself, preferring the burst damage. But yes, boosting the imp’s mana and casting speed via talents only helps the imp’s burst. It doesn’t help the imp’s long-term DPS at all. However, the latter might couple with downranking of the imp’s firebolt to give the imp higher long-term DPS for dungeons and RAIDs. It’s worth trying if 1.12 actually allows one to do it.
On 2) No. Warlocks virtually never downrank anything because they have LifeTap. You could try, but I think it will reduce your overall DPS.
Warlocks OOM quickly at lower levels, but it becomes less of a problem as you level-up and gain spell damage (shadow damage specifically), and stamina. Life Tap eventually only makes small dents in your health. In PVP or in a Dungeon run you generally don’t have to life tap a whole lot during each little engagement. Always do it just after the engagement ends so the healer can heal you up out of combat while everyone runs to the next pull.
In a RAID, however, you will be going full-out in longer engagements and life-tapping quite often. The Life Tap becomes part of the rotation, basically. The healer usually HOTs you up for health recovery, but also be prepared to Drain Life if necessary to recover your health if your healer goes down or gets overwhelmed and can no longer throw HOTs onto you.
MP5 stats on gear is often overlooked, but it is worth its weight in gold.
In a RAID at least one warlock will be in the tank group with his imp out for the stamina buf. In those situations, if you are that warlock, then you will likely be SM/Ruin with your imp out and not DS/Ruin. You might also have your imp out on dungeon runs, simply because it allows you to engage the mobs more quickly vs having to wait for a pet to run up to them. There are very few other situations where you will have your imp out… PVP maybe a little, but you will usually be running with a FelHunter (for stealth detection and other goodies), or VW (for the shield).
For leveling a boosted imp is marginally faster than a voidwalker at lower levels (before the VW really gets good), but in my Vanilla experience I wound up using the VW a lot more than the imp because it made dealing with mob groups a whole lot less dangerous. Using the imp to level requires more skill… you have to learn to bounce aggro. Basically you stand apart from the imp, let the imp take the aggro, dot the mob up, and then pump out enough damage to pull the mob off the imp and towards you. when done right the mob is spending most of its time running at the imp or at you and very little time actually DPSing the imp or you.
In terms of specs, SM/Ruin (Shadow Mastery + Ruin) and DS/Ruin (Demonic Sacrifice + Ruin) are the most common for PVE. By 1.12 Blizzard had buffed the full Soul Link spec with +3% DPS, but a full demonic build was still very rare. The Demo tree is incredibly powerful for leveling though. Conflag specs were often seen in PVP (very high burst, but lower survivability).
Outside of RAIDing, getting to at least Master Summoner in the Demo tree is actually more important than DPS. Being able to instantly bring up a new pet will save your life dozens of times while you finish leveling and is also important for PVP and Farming at 60. And will save your butt in Dungeons when the group screws up. For example, you can sac your VW for the shield and just about instantly summon a new one. In PVP, losing your pet usually means death and smart opponents (particularly hunters) will often focus your pet first and take it out.