So I spent a bit of time raiding as a Felguard spec 7/44/10. Granted I only did Gruuls lair (and Kara), but I did spend about 6 weeks as it and feel like I understand it well enough to give an assessment on it's level of performance and raid-viability.
Definitely raid-viable. Many raid leaders forbid Felguard specced Warlocks because they think that it is a non-raid-viable spec. Demonology is a PVP talent tree. They think that it does not do as much damage as Destruction (false), or that the Felguard can't survive raid encounters (false), or that the Felguard doesn't deserve to be healed or buffed (false). Demonology does a hell of a lot of damage, more than Destruction at many gear levels, much MUCH more at certain gear levels and specific bosses. In addition, the Felguard can survive most raid encounters perfectly fine with little need for extra healing. They are not much different than a BM Hunter, which I do not see anyone preventing Hunters from speccing BM. Buffing the Felguard further buffs the Lock. Being in a Shadow Priest's group is enough to keep the Felguard up most of the time.
Insanely High DPS. At my gear level (all T5 quality, but few T6 yet), Demonology was higher DPS than Destruction. Quite a bit higher too. I gained about 12% more DPS with the Felguard over Destruction. On some fights, Demo absolutely destroys. DPS is gimped a lot if you lose your Felguard to death (Felguard does 15-20% of your total damage), so any of the melee unfriendly encounters are going to also be unfriendly to your Felguard and be more difficult for you to maintain high DPS. But on other fights you can just send it in to attack and forget about it. It's like a persistent DOT.
Fun and Challenging. Unlike Destruction, where you are just spamming Shadowbolts for a minute or two before needing to refresh a curse, Demonology has a lot more to it. Since Sbolts do a bit less damage, Corruption and Immolate are likely better to keep up than not. And, obviously, micromanaging your Felguard is crucial to successfully raiding Demonology. It's a bit challenging at first, but not at all impossible to get the hang of it. Just move pet away if it is taking some damage. Pretty much follow what the melee is doing.
Lower Contribution to ISB Uptime. This is the only legitimate complaint about the Felguard builds. Because they spend less time casting Shadowbolts than Destruction Locks (75% compared to 90+%), there is less chance for you to crit and thus you provide lower uptime for the Improved Shadowbolt, which lowers overall raid damage (Shadow Priests and other Locks.) If you have enough shadow users, the loss in raid DPS will be greater than the gain in your personal DPS. In my case, we usually did not even have any Shadow Priests in the raid, thus it didn't matter. (This hurt my DPS, but that's another story.) You can exclude Immolate and Corruption from your spell cycle and just Sbolt spam of course. Your personal DPS goes down a lot, but you will get over 90% of your casting time on Sbolts, same as Destro, and contribute equally as them to ISB uptime. Depending on your personal gear and stats, Demo still may come out on top of DPS by a little.
Finally, making sure that your Felguard gets the full round of buffs that he deserves can be challenging, depending on the guild you raid with. They may be reluctant to give your demon buffs it missed due to being cast while you were still summoning it or if it died during trash. If you are lucky enough to be in a good guild, they should be understanding of this. But even if they are understanding, it is still a pain sometimes. It also uses up a lot of shards due to the need to sometimes resummon your pet to avoid a death (and in the process keep it's buffs.)
Once getting the 4pc T6 bonus, I would imagine Destro clearly outperforms Demo at that point as Sbolts scale best with Destro. Getting more crit and haste at that level would probably benefit Destro more too. But till that time, Demo should perform very well. A lot of early T6 fights are very melee friendly in fact, so Demo should be very good.
In conclusion, I discovered with many already have (see Raiding With Felguard) - that the Felguard is a very worthy Raiding spec. It is a very fun, challenging, and rewarding experience. It's also great for farming or doing Daily's or even PVP between raids. The added challenges and potential loss in ISB uptime, however, maybe make Destruction the better build for serious raiding. At the end of the day, when I joined a new raiding guild, I didn't even ask to raid with the Felguard. I went back to good old 0/21/40 Destruction just because it is easier. There are enough challenges in raiding - sometimes you don't want to add more.
PS. There are 3 "almost" necessities for successful Felguard raiding. 1 - Having the 2pc T5 bonus. 2 - Having the Voidstar Talisman. 3 - Being grouped with a good Shadow Priest. I unfortunately, dispite having seen it get disenchanted many many times, do not have the Talisman. I do have the 2pc T5 bonus, which helps keep the Felguard buffed, and normally, in a real raiding guild, would be grouped with a SPriest, which also helps with keeping the demon healed as well as restoring mana (which felguard uses to cleave.) If I ever get the Talisman, maybe I'll try out some Felguard raiding in MH/BT.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Finishing the Affliction Leveling 40-70
By know you should be pretty familiar with how to play as an Affliction Warlock and don't need me to baby you with spell rotations and how to drain tank or when to use which pet. You just want to know what talent points are important to finish it up till lvl 70. So I am going to speed things up and finish the leveling guide of an Affliction Lock.
Your first priority is probably to get Unstable Affliction. This will require you to spend 10 more points into Affliction. You have to put 5/5 into Contagion. The other 5 can be used in Improved Howl Terror (very nice for solo leveling or PVP) and maybe a few more in Shadow Embrace. Or you may want to pick up Amplify Curse and Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx), if you haven't already. I personally do not like kiting as a Warlock - there are so many other, better, tactics that a Warlock can use, so I do not recommend CoEx. You could also put points into Grim Reach as the extra distance can be helpful. Since we are mostly drain-tanking, I skipped Grim Reach for now and went with Shadow Embrace to lessen the amount of damage I take. You can now grab Unstable Affliction.
At lvl 50 you should now have a build that is similar to this: 41/0/0
At this point, you can go several different ways to supplement your Affliction talents. You could go Destruction to increase your DPS or Demonology to increase your survivability. Or you could split points between the two. You can also respec and go full Demonology, but that's for a different post. Assuming you are staying Affliction, here is what I would recommend.
Demonology Route
5/5 in Demonic Embrace
3/3 in Fel Intellect
These increase your stamina and intellect respectively, which are very nice things to increase.
3/3 in Improved Imp
I would now abandon the succubus and use the Imp as your pet of choice to simply act as a mana battery and buff your health. Most of your DPS is coming from you anyway and you should be very effective at drain-tanking that there is very little need for the succubus. If you feel comfortable, you can start using the Imp earlier - results will vary - but at this point I definitely can say from experience that it is easy to level with the Imp.
3/3 Demonic Aegis
3/3 Fel Stamina
These buff your HP and Fel Armor, which as a result buffs your drain life ability.
Remaining points in Grim Reach or Shadow Embrace or whatever.
You are now lvl 70 and should have a build similar to this 45/16/0
The beauty of this build is that you have buffed your stamina and HP in a number of different ways and buffed your ability to drain life that you should be able to outlast just about anything. You have many DoTs at your disposal. You have tricks like instant Howl of Terror to use when you get into trouble. With this build you can easily take on and survive a group of mobs by just dotting them all up and drain tanking till they are dead.
A typically you can toss Siphon Life, COA, and Corruption on each mob. Then drain tank the last mob if you are sure the DOTs are enough to kill the mob. Otherwise drain tank the first mob to finish it off and cycle down each one. Keep using Dark Pact to keep your mana up. You can take on multiple mobs at the same time and pull new ones before current ones are completely dead and keep doing it for quite a while usually.
It's very fast and effective fighting. I once was farming Motes of Fire, which as you may know, typically involves racing 10 other farms to be the first to pull a mob and get credit for it. I would try to pull any and every mob I could and worry about actually surviving it later. I noticed that I would be able to kill 5x or more as many mobs as everyone else I was fighting with. In particular, I noticed a Paladin. I kid you not, I was able to kill 10-12 mobs in the time it took him to get one down. And I didn't even have to sit down to eat/drink afterwords. It's quite powerful.
Destruction Route
5/5 Improved Shadowbolt
5/5 Bane
These two talents make your shadowbolts better by decreasing their casting time and allowing them to add a debuff to the mob if they crit. This debuff will increase shadow damage by 20% which can be a lot of damage if you have a bunch of DOTs up and begin to drain-tank. These talents are absolutely essential to raiding as a Warlock. Thus if you plan to raid, you may wish to start getting used to using Shadowbolt more often.
You can now get 5/5 in Devastation or put some points into Demonology. Shadowburn is an option, as is Destructive Reach and Intensity.
At 70 your build might look something like this 41/0/20
Alternatives
Alternatively you can choose to lose Unstable Affliction (or skip it altogether) and go after Ruin. The thought here is that since mobs are dying so fast that you don't even need to use all your DOTs on a single mob, why bother having the extra DOTs in the first place? Instead you can open your attack with a couple Shadowbolts and then Drain-tank to finish. Or Fear and DOT and use SBolt to pull another mob and repeat.
Affliction w/Ruin 40/0/21
You can also, of course, split points evenly amongst all 3 talent trees. I don't particularly find this to result in anything especially effective or interesting, but maybe you will. Some people might find a way to put points into Improved Voidwalker and use a tank-and-spank strategy. I find this to be dull, not actually as good or easy as you would think, and just overall less powerful.
Of these Affliction builds, I would say 45/16/0 is the best for leveling. But be forewarned, this is NOT an acceptable, or even effective, raid spec. Don't get used to it if you plan to raid and then ignorantly stick with it as you move into raiding. Use it to get to 70 and begin preparing for end game raiding, but do not actually use it for raiding.
Your first priority is probably to get Unstable Affliction. This will require you to spend 10 more points into Affliction. You have to put 5/5 into Contagion. The other 5 can be used in Improved Howl Terror (very nice for solo leveling or PVP) and maybe a few more in Shadow Embrace. Or you may want to pick up Amplify Curse and Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx), if you haven't already. I personally do not like kiting as a Warlock - there are so many other, better, tactics that a Warlock can use, so I do not recommend CoEx. You could also put points into Grim Reach as the extra distance can be helpful. Since we are mostly drain-tanking, I skipped Grim Reach for now and went with Shadow Embrace to lessen the amount of damage I take. You can now grab Unstable Affliction.
At lvl 50 you should now have a build that is similar to this: 41/0/0
At this point, you can go several different ways to supplement your Affliction talents. You could go Destruction to increase your DPS or Demonology to increase your survivability. Or you could split points between the two. You can also respec and go full Demonology, but that's for a different post. Assuming you are staying Affliction, here is what I would recommend.
Demonology Route
5/5 in Demonic Embrace
3/3 in Fel Intellect
These increase your stamina and intellect respectively, which are very nice things to increase.
3/3 in Improved Imp
I would now abandon the succubus and use the Imp as your pet of choice to simply act as a mana battery and buff your health. Most of your DPS is coming from you anyway and you should be very effective at drain-tanking that there is very little need for the succubus. If you feel comfortable, you can start using the Imp earlier - results will vary - but at this point I definitely can say from experience that it is easy to level with the Imp.
3/3 Demonic Aegis
3/3 Fel Stamina
These buff your HP and Fel Armor, which as a result buffs your drain life ability.
Remaining points in Grim Reach or Shadow Embrace or whatever.
You are now lvl 70 and should have a build similar to this 45/16/0
The beauty of this build is that you have buffed your stamina and HP in a number of different ways and buffed your ability to drain life that you should be able to outlast just about anything. You have many DoTs at your disposal. You have tricks like instant Howl of Terror to use when you get into trouble. With this build you can easily take on and survive a group of mobs by just dotting them all up and drain tanking till they are dead.
A typically you can toss Siphon Life, COA, and Corruption on each mob. Then drain tank the last mob if you are sure the DOTs are enough to kill the mob. Otherwise drain tank the first mob to finish it off and cycle down each one. Keep using Dark Pact to keep your mana up. You can take on multiple mobs at the same time and pull new ones before current ones are completely dead and keep doing it for quite a while usually.
It's very fast and effective fighting. I once was farming Motes of Fire, which as you may know, typically involves racing 10 other farms to be the first to pull a mob and get credit for it. I would try to pull any and every mob I could and worry about actually surviving it later. I noticed that I would be able to kill 5x or more as many mobs as everyone else I was fighting with. In particular, I noticed a Paladin. I kid you not, I was able to kill 10-12 mobs in the time it took him to get one down. And I didn't even have to sit down to eat/drink afterwords. It's quite powerful.
Destruction Route
5/5 Improved Shadowbolt
5/5 Bane
These two talents make your shadowbolts better by decreasing their casting time and allowing them to add a debuff to the mob if they crit. This debuff will increase shadow damage by 20% which can be a lot of damage if you have a bunch of DOTs up and begin to drain-tank. These talents are absolutely essential to raiding as a Warlock. Thus if you plan to raid, you may wish to start getting used to using Shadowbolt more often.
You can now get 5/5 in Devastation or put some points into Demonology. Shadowburn is an option, as is Destructive Reach and Intensity.
At 70 your build might look something like this 41/0/20
Alternatives
Alternatively you can choose to lose Unstable Affliction (or skip it altogether) and go after Ruin. The thought here is that since mobs are dying so fast that you don't even need to use all your DOTs on a single mob, why bother having the extra DOTs in the first place? Instead you can open your attack with a couple Shadowbolts and then Drain-tank to finish. Or Fear and DOT and use SBolt to pull another mob and repeat.
Affliction w/Ruin 40/0/21
You can also, of course, split points evenly amongst all 3 talent trees. I don't particularly find this to result in anything especially effective or interesting, but maybe you will. Some people might find a way to put points into Improved Voidwalker and use a tank-and-spank strategy. I find this to be dull, not actually as good or easy as you would think, and just overall less powerful.
Of these Affliction builds, I would say 45/16/0 is the best for leveling. But be forewarned, this is NOT an acceptable, or even effective, raid spec. Don't get used to it if you plan to raid and then ignorantly stick with it as you move into raiding. Use it to get to 70 and begin preparing for end game raiding, but do not actually use it for raiding.
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