This week we are joined by Rho from the Realm Maintenance and All Things Azeroth podcasts to talk about warlocks.
We cover everything from the Celestials (no August) to mouseover pet macros (of course) to when Rho sleeps (yes, that’s weird) and all points in between.
As promised, here as the macros discussed in the show.
Mousover pet attack command
/petattack [@mouseover,harm][@target,harm]
Swap focus and target macro. Plunk this in to macroexplain.com to get a full breakdown of what this beast does.
/cleartarget [@target, dead]
/clearfocus [@focus, dead]
/target focus
/cleartarget [@focus, noexists]
/targetlasttarget
/focus target
/targetlasttarget
I hope it’s okay if I add my two cents into all the warlock talk. =)
Point One – Destro is not a bad spec right now. Is it optimal? No, it’s not but the numbers are comparable, especially if you look outside of the warlock class. Affliction is number one (of all dps classes period, at least for the moment), but alas, it’s not quite as much fun to play, at least in my opinion. Affliction is a super easy spec to play, especially once you get the rhythm down. It’s not my favorite (my personal favorite is Demo and I like the numbers I see with Demo) but if you’re looking to be optimal, you’ll learn Affliction quickly with some practice.
Point Two – Another addon to really help with rotations and such, especially on a dot-ish heavy class is SpellFlash. You can get them specifically for any class and they are awesome and available on Curse @ http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/bittens-spellflash-warlock
Probably the best DoT timer is ForteXorcist on Curse at http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/fortexorcist
Point Three – For Demonology, at least this moment in time, it is best to take Grimoire of Service as a dps cool down, because you’ll get higher over all numbers with this short CD rather than with the static dps increase from Grimoire of Service.
Point Four – Warlocks, at least in what I can tell so far (my warlock is 3rd in priority for the toons that I play but she is level 90 and raiding but she was my main until Mop) warlocks are not quite gear dependent as they have been in the past. In Wrath, warlocks were EXTREMELY gear dependent and so far, this hasn’t seemed to be the case.
Point Five – For 5-mans, I’d personally say Demo or Desto is the best spec. Ideally, nothing is going to be alive long enough to get super amazing numbers with Affliction. Destro and Demo both have REALLY high burst and really strong AoE so even trash packs won’t be alive long.
Point Six – There are a lot of talents that warlocks have now to help with movement while in combat. All specs still have Fel Flame, which still helps keep your damage uptime. There are also two talents that help with movement – Kil’jaden’s Cunning, like mentioned, is a little iffy at times to use but can get easier, especially if you can train yourself to hit ESC to cancel casting rather than moving. Burning Rush (level 60 talent) drains for 4% of your max health to increase your movement speed by 50%. This is an AMAZING talent for high movement fights but only if it won’t put a strain on your healers. And as always, demo locks still have Demon Leap which actually moves you further now.
Point Seven – You actually want to dump your Demonic Fury as Demo as often as possible at lower level because it’s a huge increase to your damage, which will kill things faster. As long as you’re not out of combat too terribly long, you should keep a fair amount of Demonic Fury building at a time. And while you’re leveling, something that is completely overlooked by a LOT of warlocks, use your healthstones! ^.^
Point Eight – I’m actually Rebecca, the one that asked the Facebook about Spiritbinder (Sorry for not mentioning Destro!! It’s just not my personal favorite as it feels too mage-ish to me).
I tried out each spec and tried each one out, comparing my results with what I could find out and it really depends, for that fight at least, what you’re looking for.
If you’re looking for survivability, Destro is the way to go. With the way consuming embers work, you can stay alive in the Spirit Realm even without a healer. Bonus points if you spec’d into Dark Regeneration.
If you’re looking for Shadowy Minion control, I’d say go Demo. With the Manaroth’s Fury talent and such heavy heavy AoE damage, there were several times I could be the only dps go in and be able to clear the entire room with time to spare (but keep in mind, Hellfire is really a mana burn and Demo isn’t as good with mana regen now. If you Life Tapping will put too much strain on an already intensive healing fight, this isn’t the spec to go).
If you’re looking to keep as much uptime on the boss as possible, Affliction is the way to go, just because even when you go into the Spirit Realm, your dots will still be ticking and SB + SoC will still do a decent amount of damage, just remember that other people’s damage will no longer cause your Seed of Corruption to pop so you need to be hitting them in order to get the add damage. In my opinion, this fight is really situational and what your specific raid group needs to down the boss.
This has been one of my favorite shows yet and Rho had a TON of really good advice (I’m also a fan of All Things Azeroth)! Thank you for getting him on here!
Locks have always sorta scared me. I remember during wrath people saying that feral druids and locks had the most difficult rotations. I am happy with feral but still scared of locks. My friend has a lock main and he plays affliction.
Shout out to Rho
~Elamari