Warlocks and the DotDotDotDead

Ah, the warlock. The Alliance side evil. The shunned, the hated, the feared. Also, one of the most fun classes to play.

Many people argue that the continued changes to this class have utterly ruined it and yes, I can see where they are coming from. Many warlocks of old have had a certain mindset as to what talent tree was for what purpose. I joined the ranks of the warlock in Burning Crusade, but never actually did anything with the character until well into Wrath of the Lick King.

I leveled to 60 in the Demonology tree and found it extremely irritating that my survivability depended solely on the hardiness of my Voidwalker. At early levels this was easy, especially before they changed the amount of damage, and thus aggro, a pet could keep over their owners. Nowadays a Curse and a Shadowbolt will rip threat off your Voidwalker or if you wait too long, you run the risk of it either dying, or you getting aggro because of your continued use of Health Funnel. As a leveling warlock survivability and downtime are your key areas of interest, thus I changed over to affliction. Affliction helps you keep yourself alive, do nice burst damage and gives you the option of a better Life Tap and also lets you steal your minions mana if you’re in a pinch. For soloing your way to 80, this is probably your best bet.

Raids and the warlocks you take with you.

Destruction, Destruction, Destruction. Yes, I said it, Destruction is the way to go for raiding. Yes, I am a Destruction warlock, but I tried Affliction as well. I opted to not bother with Demonology because the numbers are just too low. When most people see a warlock in raid the first thing that pops into their head is “omg i hope this guy has the 5k cookies for me and he can summon me back 9 times after i go to Dalaran because I keep forgetting to bring my things with me”. Well fellow raider, go f_ck yourself is what most warlocks are thinking before they join. Don’t get me wrong, we provide cookies, no problem, but don’t expect us to toss up a new Soul Well every time a late person comes in and demands to be treated like a star. Same with summons, we will toss up a stone, it lasts 5 minutes, get the most use out of it while you can and don’t expect us to throw one up every single time you feel too lazy to summon that epic flying mount to get to a raid location. The last thing you want is a surly warlock. We might not have the hunters fabled Misdirection, but a skilled warlock can abuse Soul Shatter to the same effect.

But I went off on a tangent there, back to the main idea. Warlocks and DPS(at least in the Destruction tree). Please please please realize that as a Destruction warlock, you will eventually become a threat whore. I have been blessed to run with a great paladin tank who knows what he is doing and can generate an awesome amount of threat. Even with this, I generally ride the edge of his threat. Now don’t get me wrong, I am by far not the best warlock out there, but I seem to have an inherent talent in bringing out the best of what I’m dealt in game. We’ve all heard the saying “it’s not the gear, but the player” one time or another and I fall into this classification.

Back in the days of old a warlocks DPS depended on the amount of dots they applied to a target and then spamming a single attack in the interim to actually do something. With Destruction warlocks we tend to use either Curse of Elements or Curse of Weakness in most raid encounters with the occasional Corruption thrown in when we have an extra second on a cooldown. I have run with many warlocks, in all talent trees, that claimed to get the most DPS out of simply spamming Shadowbolt at a target. Now i was fairly fresh at the time and decided to put this to the test in all 3 trees. Yeah, epic fail. Spamming a single talent will never give you maximized DPS. I could sorta imagine this back in the day when you gear stacked shadow damage and haste, but in today’s raids and the simplified gear, it is just not possible.

Incinerate is your friend, as well as a big tool since it is the spell that allows you to use Conflagrate. Conflagrate and Chaos Bolt are your heavy hitters, but Incinerate makes sure they hit even harder, plus Conflagrate is your only spell that hits huge, without a cast bar. Learn it, use it, love it. The best part about is, even before you get into Naxx or Ulduar, the Incinerate/Conflagrate spell combo will crit at least 8k on any target, ensuring you kill it, and kill it fast.

In a raid situation I urge everyone to hang back a moment, let the tank position and then do a bit of  “prep damage” before you unleash the abused inner child we all harbor. I cannot stress this enough for warlocks, sure, toss up your designated curse, hell, even toss up your corruption, but after that stop because if your tank is still moving you have a high chance of pulling the target off of them, I know, I’ve done it and yes, so have you. I tend to stick to the 5 second rule in most cases with tanks that I know, in any other case, 10-15 seconds. Make sure you know your tanks before you start riding their threat because yes, we can Soul Shatter, but the 3 healers between you and the tank sure can’t. Dead healers = qq. QQ = angry raid leader. Angry raid leader = qq. See where I’m going with this?

Once you get yourself situated you are now ready to start doing some hurt to the target. With all those nice buffs you got (or didn’t because everyone hates you for the crap you pulled last week after wiping the group 5 consecutive times because you couldn’t keep yourself and the darkness inside you in check) you will be doing some serious hurt. With most of your spells critically striking for upwards of 10k you know you hit the sweet spot. Remember to pace yourself, keep moving if there are AoE elements and to watch your threat.

Add-ons I use for my Warlock

I like to keep my UI clean and simple so I started using CTBarMod for my hunter and since then applied it to most of my toons. Lets you keep your screen very clutter free and every aspect of the UI is configurable to your needs. It is similar to Bartender, but has less problems and a lower memory footprint so those of you with older machines can get this instead.

Elkano’s Buffbar is an addon is use again to alleviate clutter, I like my buffs neatly stacked on the top right corner of my screen in a click through window that scrolls down, timers included and also fully adjustable to your needs.

DOTimer is one that gives a CD of your dots on a target. This addon is a bit more difficult to configure, but once you got the basics you need the rest you can turn off. Great to have for multi target boss fights since a simple mouseover will give you a popup on the pointer of all your damaging dots without having to click over to the target. Works great in PvP as well as in the dumbass ToC10/25 PvP event.

That’s it for now.