F2P Salfir's Warlock Guide

rsq said:
Edit: After testing (wanted to see for myself!), added in Tentacleman's point about Soul Siphon and Jinx. Drain Life does NOT improve healing received when talented, despite how deceptive the wording is. Thanks for the really great piece of information!
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Yeah man, its flat out unacceptable how stupid the wording on some tool tips is. "Increases the amount drained" is so misleading when it could just say "increases damage by x%"

Also I'll add that I use shadow bolt when bursting, if I have time and space to cast.. As Affliction, when compared to the other options for hard casting burst dmg spells searing pain and soul fire, shadow bolt does the most dmg per second of casting time. Not saying one way or another that its optimal but I personally do use it.

One other thing, not sure if this was covered in the guide and I missed it, but id love to see a section or a discussion about the effects of different interrupts and being locked out of your spell schools, how locks should approach fake casting, and whether its beneficial to purposely have one of your spell school get locked out so that you can use the other, which classes have blanket silences, etc.
 
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If and when I make a warlock, BAM! Dis guide will be opening in my browser da whole time :)!

Yes, I said 'opening' woOoOoOo spoOoOoOoky.
 
KainUFC said:
Also I'll add that I use shadow bolt when bursting, if I have time and space to cast.. As Affliction, when compared to the other options for hard casting burst dmg spells searing pain and soul fire, shadow bolt does the most dmg per second of casting time. Not saying one way or another that its optimal but I personally do use it.

One other thing, not sure if this was covered in the guide and I missed it, but id love to see a section or a discussion about the effects of different interrupts and being locked out of your spell schools, how locks should approach fake casting, and whether its beneficial to purposely have one of your spell school get locked out so that you can use the other, which classes have blanket silences, etc.
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Great points, added them both.

And Rhae... You so spooky!
 
Hi mate, this is incredibly helpful.

I'm making a 20 aff lock myself and didn't realize there was such an in-depth and tested guide as this. Cheers for putting the time into this!

Billy
 
imo you should note the undead racial change happening in mop .
 
billymáys said:
Hi mate, this is incredibly helpful.

I'm making a 20 aff lock myself and didn't realize there was such an in-depth and tested guide as this. Cheers for putting the time into this!

Billy
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I really appreciate that. Thank you!

Snowjobs said:
imo you should note the undead racial change happening in mop .
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At the moment, I have no plans to incorporate any MoP changes into the guide as they are not current, incomplete, and very prone to further change. I may add some warlock-related information to the Useful Links section, though.

P.S. people are far overestimating the undead racial change. While not listed yet, I imagine it will have a relatively steep ICD and won't be nearly as powerful as people are expecting it to be.
 
Looking around the forums for an appropriate place to hold a continuing discussion about warlock gameplay in the F2P bracket, looks like this thread is as good a place as any.

Just let me briefly preface this by saying I mostly play BGs and WSG specifically so a lot of what I posted will probably be geared towards that setting.

For the most part I've stuck to Affliction spec almost all the time. I wanted to play a supporting style where I could spread a lot of dots and overall dmg, to mess with stealth classes and pressure healers' mana pools. I also feel that Warlock dots are something that almost all classes in the bracket have a hard time dealing with and have no answers for in a lot of situations. I believe that Warlocks have the potential to be one of the strongest classes in the bracket.

Not having had much Warlock pvp experience prior to my F2P twink, I've tried to approach everything as a learning experience and I've been aware that I wanted to learn and improve my skills. I guess if you're reading this guide to begin with you've probably felt the same way.

The first thing I learned was tab-dotting and trying to get the most dmg and pressure output by running around and dotting anything I could get in range of.

The second thing I knew I needed to learn was to use my fears effectively. Warlock Fears are a super effective CC that might be a little underrated right now.

Among other things I am still in the process of learning to control my pet really 'tight' and effectively. And weaving my fears between targets to avoid the effects of diminishing returns.

But another thing I've been kind of toying with recently is filler spells and which spells to use in general for dps when you have time to cast. Here are just a few general numbers from an Affliction spec.

Searing Pain does around 70 dmg in a 1.5 sec cast. I'm starting to think this might be the best spell to use when enemies hit that sub 50% health range fully dotted, where they are going to get low from your dots but won't die unless you sink more dmg into them.
 
Drain Life does 90 dmg over 3 sec and heals you for around 120 hp when untalented. I know other locks such as Bizr like to use Drain Life as a filler dmg spell but personally I've never like to use it. In fact I've tried to consciously decrease my use of it because I used to sometimes spam this spell when I was a mental loss for what other damaging spells to cast in certain situations. This is where I like to use Searing Pain.

I was using Shadowbolts pretty liberally up until the last few days. They do around 180 dmg on a 3 sec cast that feels really sluggish and is very easy to interrupt. I really like the damage of this spell as it can turn somebody in a decent situation (fully dotted but with plenty of life) into a suddenly desperate situation where my dots are going to finish them if they don't get help. But since I've started using Searing Pain spam this spell feels really slow now. If your opponent is far away its nice to cast a Shadow Bolt into Searing Pain spam for some burst.

I haven't experimented a lot with hard casting Soul Fire (and I haven't played much Destruction spec which might go hand-in-hand with this strategy) but it could be viable, or it could not be.

When I get a chance to respec (Tentacleman is on sumer vacation camping in Loch Modan for a few nights) I'd like to test out the damage capability of a talented Drain Soul on a dying enemy. Drain Soul is supposed to do more damage when its target is at a certain point near death but I'm not sure about the numbers. Im curious whether its better to Drain Soul or attempt to Searing Pain spam a low-hp opponent.
 
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Good points, Tentacleman.

I'm with you on Searing Pain. I think it's probably the best filler, followed by Drain Life. As for talented drain life, it's only 9% more damage. So it's not the most noticeable increase in the world; ups the 90 to 100 damage. Every little bit helps though.

As for hard casting Soul Fire.. I really only tend to do this when I am completely unnoticed and want to pressure a key target (such as a healer) or when i get off a really solid fear on an undotted (or just Bane'd) enemy. Considering a full fear lasts 8s, I try to use it over other hard casts. Typically, as Aff I'd go fear>BoD>UA>Soul Fire (depending on if they used trinket). The fear isn't really likely to have broken from the ~2 UA ticks that would occur during the CC.

As for Drain Soul, I practically never use it for damage as it takes 3 seconds for the first tick. There are some rare cases when I let it cast for longer though, such as a priest PWS'd at 10%, as it's going to do more damage than any other filler. I've gotten ticks for approximately 180 doing that.



Imo, you should give every spec a try at least once. The playstyle of each is very similar but each require slightly different tactics. For example, Aff taught me to time BoD burst better, which in turn has made me a stronger destro player, while Demo has made me better at playing as a support class.

Happy that you brought some of these points to this thread, I'd love to see a discussion of spells/situations as people do things differently and can make some great points that no one else has thought of.
 
Hey great guide I'm finishing gearing up my lock while writing this. I was wondering if anyone had any addons that will display the time remaining of debuffs (my dots) on enemy health bars that aren't your target. I believe tidy plates does this but I absolutely cannot stand the way that addon looks. I'm also looking for something that will stack enemy plates when enemies are standing on top of each other (as opposed to them all overlapping to give me an easier time mouseover dotting)



Edit: while I'm talking about addons you should consider adding these two:

RangeDisplay: Tells how far you are from enemy and focus (great for a multitude of reasons like a healer out distancing a rogues 25 yard shadowstep kick range)

F2P Addon: I heard some bads on Aerie Peak have this
 
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I would recommend updating your guide a bit to add the new Undead changes coming with Mists of Pandaria, making them (in my mind) the hands down choice for Horde.
 
Robert the Druid said:
I would recommend updating your guide a bit to add the new Undead changes coming with Mists of Pandaria, making them (in my mind) the hands down choice for Horde.
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I'm in the process of playing through each spec in order to do full changes to the entire guide. Additionally, RL is super busy, so I haven't had a ton of free time to play games. It will be a process, please stick with me!

As for Undead > Belf... I really think it's up to debate. Utility v. a little extra damage/heal. Keep in mind that the UD racial is on an ICD (15 seconds? could someone correct me?) with a 20% proc rate. Soooo, you're already looking at a decent proc rate with a steep ICD, meaning that you'll see it but it won't often be game changing.

Furthermore, with 5.04 playing a 'dot-tab' warlock is essentially over with because:
1. Affliction's damage is poor
2. Demo/Destro only have one dot.

You're not going to have Touch of the Grave proccing very often on DoTs and imo it would most likely not be worth the utility of a 2s silence that can potentially grant kills.


As for this guide... I genuinely feel as if warlocks' skill cap (with the exception of some Demo abilities) has been effectively neutered with this patch, so I'm having difficulty enjoying the play. However, this guide means a lot to me and I will certainly update it. If anyone has any contributions, they are more than welcome.

TL;DR:
'BiS' race has not necessarily changed
I will not abandon this guide, please be patient
 
These days locks stand no chance against Judgement sprint Prot/ret pallies unfortunetly. I managed to actually beat salfir on my Prot paladin and I only bind half my action bar.
 
rsq said:
Updated the warlock guide for MoP and it should now be accurate for 5.05!

http://www.twinkinfo.com/forums/f148/salfirs-f2p-warlock-guide-35972/

Please let me know (preferably in a PM or in the guide thread) if there are any inaccuracies or broken links, as I'm sure I missed something. Also (and more on-topic for this thread) - I'm in desperate need of updated warlock armories! Come achieve eternal fame by having your MoP-ready warlock's armory linked in the guide!
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<3

Very minor: Would possibly move ESM up above MM to reflect what you talk about in gearing section. Possibly move nerfed Ivycloth beneath Crystalline (/cry). And maybe make a note that +1 Resist enchant is out of game.

Sadly the only Lock I've seen play and remembered is: Revprayer @ Aerie Peak - Community - World of Warcraft
No hat apparently though. Well, might also be cause I've played a lot less. :p
 
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