I’m planning on rolling warlock for classic, and I’m wondering about a few things.
I’m pretty jealous of a few mage talents, particularly the resist reductions and threat reduction. How did locks deal with spell resist and spell hit?
How does the mana regen from sacrifice compare to the +shadow dmg from sacrifice, or +dmg from a SL? Anyone play around with this and actually have hard data to go by? Is the sustain better than either of the % bonuses?
Hmm, a follow up question: the +% mps from sacrifice… does it check once, or at each tic?
Warlocks don’t get any +spell hit outside of the 10% Affliction bonus spellhit talent (which only affects curses and Corruption, really). It’s one of the reasons warlocks are at the bottom of the DPS charts until caster hit gear start showing up during BWL/ZG.
The main PVE spec is DS/Ruin. You sacrifice your succubus for 15% increased shadow damage. Saccing your succubus instead means you don’t have to Life Tap as often but it costs you that 15% damage increase, it’s not worth it. No hard data to go with it. You want Shadow Damage since all you do is spam Shadow Bolts.
Grabbing SL means you aren’t grabbing Ruin, and that’s a big no-no since that’s the single best talent for warlocks.
Felhunter: Restores 2% of total Mana every 4 sec.
From what I understand, warlocks don’t try and go out of their way for hit cap. It’s actually a dps loss.
As for spell resist, that’s just something all casters deal with. Sometimes it happens.
Granted, this is all for PvE. PvP, I believe hit cap is 3%?
Resists are by the appropriate curse, same as Mages (at least in raids). Spell hit you just get enough spell hit gear, same as everyone else. You just need more since you don’t have talents for it.
There may be some hard numbers around, but since you have Life tap the only real concerns are 1) Healer mana (shouldn’t be a real problem, but be aware of it and use bandages/Drain Life when needed) and 2) wasted GCDs from using Life Tap. The latter is the larger concern, but even with that the mana regen isn’t worth it off hand. Sac your Succy for Shadow Damage or go SM/Ruin and keep an Imp out.
Resists ARE misses, for spells. Every caster should go for spell hit cap, but it’s pretty hard to get while having decent spell damage early on.
Cap for equal level (like in PvP) is 4% IIRC.
+0 levels = 4%
+1 level = 5%
+2 levels = 6% (most 5 man bosses)
+3 levels = 17% (raid bosses)
There’s also SM/Ruin which is a 5% dps difference between the two. It’s the more well rounded spec that’s good in any content. DS/Ruin is unfortunately more limited outside of raiding.
It can be a tough choice between the two, but the raid will want at least one SM/Ruin lock for imp buff.
Thanks for the responses.
We still get hit, but we never quite hit cap. I’d link bis list, but Blizzard’s new forums won’t let me.
paste it, highlight it, and then hit the </> looking button in your toolbar
Technical Pre BiS and BiS list per stage: https://goo.gl/3bvbs9
Man, 9% (Naxx level) seems… really low. I’ll trust the number crunching that’s happened over the last 14 years, but damn. 1% through MC seems atrociously poor too.
There is a Felwood quest chain that allows locks to get a +1% spell hit staff with + spell dmg on it.
Yeah that was the ST class quest… added fairly late IIRC. I ended up choosing the VW trinket because I already had BWL gear by then and I used the trinket for farming.
It’s slightly different. “Resist” is the message that shows up when a spell misses, and what you have here is the correct base spell ‘miss’ chance.
However, it is also possible for a target to have Resistance to an element. Having resistance increases the ‘miss’ chance, but also offers the option of a partial resist, where the spell lands but deals reduced damage. (Nondamaging spells have binary resist, which means they miss more often.)
This kind of resistance isn’t something that warlocks have to deal with often, thanks to Curse of Shadows/Curse of Elements, but it theoretically might come up at some point.
Yeah, it does on a few bosses (mostly deep AQ40 and Naxx IIRC). Well, for many more with Fire but a full Destro build was so bad I don’t think anyone seriously bothered with one for PvE.
Are you sure it ups the miss chance though? I thought it was also just a “resist”, and Blizz sucked at making it visible for the players (we couldn’t tell if it was a miss or a resist when it just said resist no matter what).
Hit cap is for resists. Spells don’t miss in Vanilla, they either resist (partially or fully, depends on the spell) or they hit. Getting more spell hit lowers the chances of spells being resisted.
There’s also always a 1% chance to have the spell resist no matter how much spell hit you have. There’s 5% chance to miss in PVP but you only need 4% to be hitcapped because of that reason.
Speaking of that Imp buff, is there any popular build that utilizes the talent that increases the Imp’s buffs by 30%?
To the best of my recollection, additional spell hit will reduce the chance of ‘spell no land’ derived from additional numerical resistances.
I could be wrong, though!
Generally speaking you should focus on spell damage first and worry about hit second. Suppression doesn’t help much if your RAID leader is limiting what DOTs you can put on the primary target. DS/Ruin and sacrificing the Succubus is a very common RAIDing build. Or you may be called upon to keep your imp up for the tank group, so expect that too. Don’t throw away any hit gear you get and certainly keep a list of where various bits and pieces can be obtained from. You want those pieces when you can get them. But spell damage is what you will be looking for most of the time.
Spell hit really only matters in RAIDs. Maybe a tiny bit for PVP but I don’t recall ever actually focusing on it for PVP builds during the Vanilla days. Generally speaking other classes did not have much in the way of resists (Warlocks actually could have better resists than other classes in PVP due to the MD + FelHunter). Spell hit will never be able to override someone who specifically gears for high resists.
This may seem strange to some folk, but for 5-man Dungeons I almost universally went with a Soul Link build. I would run with the imp but always be ready to quickly pull out the VW if necessary, or if off-tanking was required to offload a poorly geared tank. The reason was simple… a Warlock can easily save a 5-man group from a wipe or near-wipe. You will have a higher percentage of smooth, successful dungeon runs with a defensive build verses being able to kill the mobs slightly faster. And you can still DS a Succubus to get some of the lost DPS back if it came down to it. Also, sometimes pulling out the Fel Hunter was useful due to the resists and dispell it offered, so building all the way to SL with some points in MD as well could be very useful for 5-man dungeons.
(Using the FH in a RAID could also be useful when you were undergeared and lacking required resists, but only as a temporary shim for particular fights where you were dying because of a lack of resists. You lose considerable DPS when you have a SL talent build).
Multiple talent builds are useful in PVP but being able to quickly call up a VW and sacrifice it for a shield is typically a minimum requirement, which means getting to at least the Master Summoner talent mid-tree. Warlocks don’t last long in PVP if their pet is killed.
Soul Link is NOT as useful as you might think in PVP. At best a warlock might talent through Master Demonologist (the MD bonuses with pet out are important and you can still get RUIN from the Destruction tree and DS a succubus)… building through MD gives the warlock a lot of flexibility, so consider it for PVP. Soul Link can be useful for flag defense but that is about it… you will have trouble finishing off opponents with a SL build. The extra 3% DPS just doesn’t move the needle.
In Vanilla I almost never DS’d for mana regen. The only time I ever did it was when I was protecting bottlenecks in AV from a hill or tower, to improve my sustain. And even then if I DS’d for regen it would usually be the Void Walker and not the Fel Hunter. Casting Life Tap is not a big deal. At most other times I needed the pet to be up.
-Matt