I have read conflicting reports about the ability of warlocks to out-damage mages with some indicating that they are held back by threat. Other than the lack of threat management tools, is there a reason why warlocks are threat-capped? Do their spells innately cause more threat, and/or do more damage, than those of mages?
Warlocks don’t have any talents for threat reduction. Mages do (in fire AND frost). Not a problem for easy mode alliance with blessing of salvation, but for horde, warlocks have a hard threat cap for their damage. If your damage is too high, you’ll literally have to stop casting or risk pulling the boss.
My simple solution was to not tunnel vision SP and spread my stats out like you’re supposed to. Less damage=less threat, and I also had higher STA/INT/resist/etc. Other warlocks preferred to just risk pulling the bosses, then chug an invulnerable pot to fix the problem. But if you didn’t do that in the first place… you wouldn’t need the potion.
This is something that will cause a lot of locks to get excluded from groups. The other will be not knowing your skills and how to use them properly.
1 Like
Demonology has threat reduction when your imp is out. Otherwise get a druid to tank.
1 Like
It’s not just the lack of threat reduction, but also because lock pve output comes in slow, big (with a potential for massive) sized chunks. Shadow bolt crit, especially with a potential nightfall shadow bolt crit landing in the game global can put out a rediculous damage/threat shift.
3 Likes
Horde may have had it rougher, but I managed to be above several of the mages in raids back in vanilla as a gnome warlock (demonology spec, no less). If I got a huge shadow bolt crit I might pull aggro, and then run to the tank so they could pick it back up. My guild wasn’t big on use of flasks and such.
Not really threat-related, but one of my favorite things to do was switch to all of my +fire damage gear for the core hound packs and use hellfire instead of rain of fire. Those hounds would go down so fast, but the healers finally told me to please not do that as they were getting heart palpitations watching my health bar plummet. I never died doing that, though, I knew when to stop. 
Things became much easier in Burning Crusade, of course.
2 Likes
This was a huge thing for horde in Vanilla and caused quite a few dead warlocks on raids who didnt watch their threat. Bit easier on alliance but still an issue. While locks are a bit beefier defense wise than mages they cant take crushing blows from bosses hehe.
Horde locks pull threat. Thats just a reality.
2 Likes
Do you guys not have soulstones? 
2 Likes
Being able to rid the threat curve and stay just under what would pull a boss was a legitimate skill for a lock.
Mine was always assigned to one of the healers as I recall 
2 Likes
I mained a demo back in the day on my old account that I had before this one. I learned that best thing to do was to stay back and DoT, let your VW or FG do your damage for you while you sat back and put up your dots, then spammed Shadow Bolt. But if a warrior engaged you he or she would simply charge and one or two shot you. Because that was back when a warrior’s execute lived up to its name. if they used it on you, you did not survive.
Yeah, they do more threat and sometimes they can do more damage (mages have an advantage overall but need Warlock debuffs). This is why it’s very important that the Main Tank has high TPS. Also, Shadow Priest’s weaving debuff pushes Warlocks even further.
My experience was totally different. The Priest’s whispered me and told me to Hellfire the Imp packs. I was scared that I would die, but they assured me all would be fine. I got a Shield and they said “go”. Was really fun tanking all the Imps and doing a ton of damage.
Yeah, Warlocks didn’t get a threat dump (soul shatter) until TBC. Ruin Talent in Destruction made it so mulitple crits close together could jump up the meter. Get used to relaxing a bit and maybe wand a tad. Always remember how threat works for melee/ranged. If you pull, but drop threat with a potion there might be a ranged right under you that the boss passes and gets 1 shot.
I’d go warlock only if I really wanted that pet. Mages just have it much easier.
Warlock threat is only a problem in raids if your guild has bad tanks with bad TPS/no tps gearsets.
No it won’t at least to part 1. A good warlock is always welcome in a group, we have a metric ton of utility and still provide more than adequate damage. Can a mage pump more DPS? Sure. Does your tank want a lock rock and your healer a soulstone? Hi.
3 Likes
Limited invurnability pot stops your threat building higher for the duration
Warlocks, like all dps, had the ability to pull threat on mobs being tanked if not careful.
Where warlocks stood out from other classes, is (without imp, which you don’t Raid with) you don’t get threat reduction from your talents. This meant your shadow bolt crits hit for a lot of threat and could pull Aggro if you weren’t careful.
People talking about stopping casting, spreading out their talents, not spamming shadowbolt, etc. it all happened, and it was all remedial.
Get a good warrior tank to spam sunder armor. Let your tank get 3 stacks of sunder up before you attack. Use a threat pot if/when your threat gets high. You’ll be fine.
1 Like
Welcome to vanilla/classic. It’s about knowing your class and not just dpsing as fast as you can like in retail. It’s about a successful group, not who can top the damage meters.
2 Likes
Threat in general works a lot differently in Vanilla than it does in modern WoW. Heck, even much different than in TBC.
Every DPS class out there has to be mindful of how much threat their tank can generate. Unlike in modern WoW, tanks don’t get a massive amount of extra threat generation: It’s easy for a DPS who’s trying to burst to out-aggro a tank and have the undivided attention of a boss.
With Crushing Blows being a thing, almost any DPS that got boss aggro will be one shot.
It’s important to be stingy with your DPS unless otherwise instructed, including DoTs. Warlock DoTs especially can tick pretty hard, and get you unwanted attention.