Warlock
|
Warlocks were mages that delved too deeply into the roots of demonic power. Consumed by a lust for dark knowledge, they've tapped into chaotic magic from beyond the world. The Burning Legion now feeds them its powers, allowing them to channel destructive energies and call upon the powerful emissaries of their demon masters.
|
Race
Looks aside, each race has inherent traits, some of which are more useful than others as a Warlock. Planning for the Horde PvP server the races available for Warlock are:
|
Orc
|
Undead
|
Axe Specialization and Blood Fury are wasted on Orc Warlocks, while Underwater Breathing and Shadow Resistance have little to no application to the class. Command is a slightly better skill than Cannibalize, but usually the difference isn't really noticeable. This leaves us with Hardiness and Will of the Forsaken; both of them are extremely useful in PvP, so it can be hard to choose one. Will of the Forsaken makes you immune to a variety of PvP CC, and is a great help overall. An often overlooked Hardiness provides a whopping 25% resistance bonus to stun and disorient effects - what does this mean? Very often, an Orc Warlock will resist skills like Warrior intercepts and feral charges, allowing the Warlock to stay mobile in PvP. Combined with Curse of Exhaustion from the Affliction tree, you can effectively DoT kite melee classes most of the time.
Overall, both races are fairly equal in terms of usefulness. Pick a race you like - you're going to have some useful racials either way.
From an Alliance standpoint, the races for Warlock are Humans and Gnomes:
|
Human
|
Gnome
|
Out of these it is really no contest, the Gnome wins hands down with EVERY racial trait being a useful one. The only Human trait really applicable to a Warlock at all is the increased sword skill, if you train swords and find one worth equipping. The stealth bonus is redundant as Warlocks get both an invisibilty detect spell and a stealth detection bonus from the Felhunter. Spirit is not needed for a Warlock so thats wasted and mace is not a Warlock weapon. Faction is not used heavily in the game yet but it may be more useful sometime. Meanwhile, Gnome is the best Alliance race trait-wise.
Pet
|
1 - HP values do not include Imp Blood Pact | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Remember pets have a base value PLUS this bonus | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This is a guess pulled from the World of Warcraft forums: accuracy has not been verified. |
Imp
Spell damage pet. Not used as much when going Affliction. Improved Imp can do a lot of damage but one of the points of full Affliction is using Dark Pact, and the Imp will burn through its own mana casting bolts leaving little for you to take. Where the Imp is used though is in partying. Place him on passive and with the new phase shift ability you have a protected mana battery. The stamina buff and fire shield are great party buffs.
Voidwalker
Tank pet. One of the boons of the Voidwalker is the ability to grab aggro from adds which gives time to apply DoT. An Affliction-specced Warlock can tank through fights using drain life but to do that, he want the DoT already applied so he can spend time regaining life. Voidwalker gives the time to do that better than any other pet, especially when there are 2 or more total mobs.
Succubus
Melee damage pet. With Lash of Pain adding damage, Sooting Kiss reducing aggro, and Seduce for humanoid CC, she's very formidable. While the Voidwalker is useful for multiple enemies, against singles, she is much more effective. A Warlock will usually pull aggro off his pet even if he has a Voidwalker out - the increased damage just means he will kill much faster. Seduce adds in an anti-gank factor on PvP servers, allowing you to seduce ambushers and run away (or set up for a kill).
Felhunter
Anti-mage pet. Mostly only useful in PvP, the Felhunter has a counterspell and dispell (offensive and defensive) at his disposal. A well-played Warlock with a Felhunter out should have little problem with casting classes in PvP.
Stamina
Using the Afflction set of talents, a Warlock's best stat is Stamina, followed by Intelligence; after that, nothing else really matters. Spirit is not neccessary at all for a Warlock due to how the mana recovery spells and talents work.
The overall point is using your hits in combination with the pet's mana to supplement your mana pool. The increased damage and hits return of Drain Life combined with Death Coil and Life Siphon then helps to replenish life, while simultaneously increasing overall damage done to the enemy. Therefore the number one stat for mana recovery is not Spirit, but Stamina. More hits will mean more hits available to convert to mana - it ALSO means being more durable which will mean the ability to last longer to cast more Drain Life. A Mage can't kill you as quickly if you have 4,000 hits or more at level 60 (at 53 unbuffed I had 3,200 hits\3,300 mana), which will give the Warlock enough time to dish out damage and replenish life, and thirdly giving you enough time to last for a possible Nightfall kicking in.
Thus all a Warlock's equipment should be focused around Stamina. The talent Demonic Embrace increases Stamina by a percentage, so the higher one's base Stamina, the more effect the talent will have - so its a great combination. Each Stamina point will give 10 hits, while each Intelligence point will give 15 mana. Intelligence is the next useful stat, with having a larger mana pool will mean less life reducing lifetaps are needed in the first place. Still though, due to the mana recovery, a Warlock can have the benefit of 3 regens occuring at once (hits\mana and pets mana) so it's always useful to have a lot of hits for lifetaps. Say life is at 95% and mana is at 40% - the best method is to reduce downtime by life tapping and getting both to 60% rather than staying near 100% life and waiting on mana regeneration. Toss in few Dark Pacts and he goes to 60\80% and 70% on the pet's mana bar and are then ready for the next fight. Intelligence, while being important is not worth sacrificing Stamina for, the perfect class of items though are random cloth with "of the Eagle" bonus, which is + Stamina and + Intelligence.
Weapons
Warlock can learn sword and staff in addition to starting with dagger and wand. Wands are great supplemental damage and should be picked up as they do not take anything away they just add so there is no reason not to grab one and put it in the ranged slot. Later on its possible to find wands with stats, so an "of the Eagle" wand can add a little more Stamina and Intelligence. They can be a quick way to kill totems too. As for deciding on which other weapon to use, myself I will train both sword and staff so that I can pick the best one that has the highest combination of + Stamina and + Intelligence that I can find. In closed beta I was using a sword with +7 Stamina and an orb that was randomly dropped that had +16 Stamina, this combination was the best I could find for 20 or so levels until I found a staff with enough stats to warrant a replacement.
In PvE, the melee ability of a weapon is fairly useful and can be a great way to spice up fights instead of settling into a casting routine. While an offhand firestone can be a fun PvE bonus and can increase mana effiency, a Warlock does sacrifice the stats of his regular off-hand item or two-handed staff though; that can be critical if on a PvP server. Warlock melee does not add much to PvP, where you really need to get off your spells for higher damage - the only time a Warlock could make use of a weapon is fighting a player using a wand when they tried to run; and still, it's not very effective.
Talent Specs
Nightfall proc percentage
Numbers for Nightfall rank 1:
Chance to proc 2% per tick of Drain Life (5 ticks, 5 seconds): 1 - (.98^5) = 10% chance to proc over course of spell
Chance to proc 2% per tick of Corruption (9 ticks, 27 seconds): 1 - (.98^9) = 17% chance to proc over course of spell
Casting additional Corruption on different targets would be a sum for chance to proc, so 17% per Corruption cast going the full duration
Casting simultaneously with 4 Drain Life over the course of Corruption: 17 + (10*4) = 57% chance to proc
Numbers for Nightfall rank 2:
Chance to proc 3% per tick of Drain Life (5 ticks, 5 seconds): 1 - (.97^5) = 14% chance to proc over course of spell
Chance to proc 3% per tick of Corruption (9 ticks, 27 seconds): 1 - (.97^9) = 24% chance to proc over course of spell
Casting additional Corruption on different targets would be a sum for chance to proc, so 24% per Corruption cast going the full duration
Casting simultaneously with 4 Drain Life over the course of Corruption: 24 + (17*4) = 92% chance to proc