Welcome to the Wondrous World of Warlocks!
If you’ve come here looking to throw wimpy frozen bolts of pew-pew magic at your foe, bombard your enemy with holy magic as you sit in a bubble and “LOL,” or QQ like all Paladins/Rogues/DKs/Warriors do, you have come to the wrong place!
This page is dedicated to all those who wish to curse their enemies to the pits of hell, watch them burn in a fiery apocalypse, and drain their soul while reveling in the misery of the weak. That’s right; this page is all about the Warlock!
Warlocks are ranged damage dealers that hurl fire and shadow magic at their enemies and slowly drain the life of their target with their numerous damage over time (DoT) spells. Oh and did I mention the nasty demons we get to control as well? That’s right, the Warlock has a PhD in pain and suffering.
First off let’s look at our stats and their priorities:
Hit Rating
This is our number one stat just as any of those other wimpy, whiny DPS classes. Why do you ask? Well if you can’t hit your enemy, you can’t kill them and where is the fun in that? Our hit cap rating is 17%. Achieving this rating will ensure that you never miss your target with your delicious bolts of pain! At level 85 this rating is 1742 rating.
Intellect
This is our number two stat. As we already know Warlocks are much smarter than any other class but that doesn’t mean we don’t need more intellect! Intellect directly increases our mana pool, spell power, and crit rating. You cannot have too much Intellect! This becomes our number one stat after we have reached the hit cap and it won’t be hard to find because we will find it on all of our gear.
Now it starts to get a little tricky… In no specific order…(See Talent Spec pages for stat priorities of the stats below)
Haste
Faster! Faster! Kill them faster! As much as we like to enjoy watching our enemy die an ever so slow and agonizing death, we need haste. Why? Because haste makes us cast faster and our DoTs tick faster. Plus, if you stack enough haste you can get another tick added to the duration of your DoT. You know what that means!! MORE PAIN! The haste thresholds for extra DoT ticks are as follow: 157, 781, 1,406, and 2,030.
Crit
Critical strikes do double the damage of a normal attack. Crit Rating increases the chance your spells have to be a critical strike, even your DoTs. That’s double the pain in one shot!
Mastery
This is a new stat in Cataclysm and the benefit of it varies for each talent spec within each class. Since we are a pure DPS class each of the benefits will boost the damage our spells in a certain way.
Affliction: Mastery increases all
periodic shadow damage done. Watch your DoTs eat their soul away!
Demonology: Mastery increases all damage done by your minions (at all times) and yourself when in Metamorphosis. Being torn apart by a demonic being, sweet!
Destruction: Mastery increases all
fire damage done. Burn them alive!
Spirit
This is a stat that we no longer need, since the buff from Fel Armor no longer increases Spell Power by 30% of our Spirit also there is no more buff from Glyph of Life Tap. This will appear naturally on our gear at times, but note that this is more for healers than for us. Healers aren’t cool enough to be able to convert their own health into mana like us.
Armors
We have two armors to use while we run around torturing our enemies.
Fel Armor - Increases spell power by 637 and heals the warlock for 3% of all single target damage done. Essentially this healing is not a great deal, its more of a means to recouperate the health lost from life tapping. What this means is that you won't get any bonus healing from AoE effects, but you will for all damage done individually to targets. So if you DoT up 4 targets, thats a lot of healing! But spamming Seed of Corruption won't heal you. This is your standard raiding or dungeoneering armor.
Demon Armor - Increases armor by 2345 and increases all healing from potions, spells, and other sources by 20%. This armor is ideal for PvP, but also has great situational use when raiding. Any fight that is healing intensive, or has a healing intensive phase(ie. Chimaeron), this will help your healers tremendously. Also think of switching armors before popping your healthstone, or before using Soul Harvest.
Stat conversions for level 85
- Hit - 102.45 hit rating gives 1% to hit with spells
- Haste - 128.05 haste rating gives 1% spell haste
- Crit - 179.28 crit rating gives 1% to crit
- Mastery - 179.28 mastery provides a 1.5% increase
Which one of my nasty little demons should I use?
For
Affliction the top DPS pet is the
Felhunter. With the 4.1 Patch the Felpuppy is now top dog!
For
Demonology, this is a HUGE change, the
Felhunter is top DPS for single target. For Multi/AoE, use Mr. Felguard. (Note that this is for extreme ultimate DPS output. Using your Felguard at all times is not going to be a huge DPS loss.)
For
Destruction, the best DPS pet is the
Imp.
BUT we can have another pet for a limited amount of time!
So for single target fights summon your Doomguard.
For AoE/Multi Target fights, summon your Infernal!
Gemming for Locky-Locks!
As a general rule of thumb if the socket bonus is less than 20 of any DPS stat, then it would be better to ignore the bonus and gem Brilliant Inferno Ruby.
Dark Intent
Our version of the wimpy mage's focus magic. With this spell we grant ourself and our target 3% haste for 30 minutes. In addition, any critical strike on a HoT or DoT by your linked ally, will grant you a 3% damage buff for 7 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. That means if you put it on the right class you can have a 9% buff to your damage for the whole fight! This also works in reverse, so all of your own DoT crits, will buff your linked ally by 1% per stack, up to 3 stacks. Note that this also effects healing as well. Also, this does not stack with another warlock, so you cannot "trade" DI's. However, the effect does stack on a recipient, so two warlocks can give DI to the same target and they will get double the benefit from it.
Priority List of who to target with Dark Intent
-Note that this list is meant to note which class will give the biggest boost to the lock proper, not the raid as a whole. It may benefit the group more to put it on a DPS rather than a healer if a certain fight or phase is a DPS race. (If this is the case, a Shadow Priest or Balance Druid should be your main target)
Resto Druid- Yes a resto druid over a DPS. Why you ask? A resto druid's arsenal consists of about 90% HoTs, which can all crit. Plus they are guaranteed to be rolling Lifebloom constantly on a target. So this gives you a big increase in damage and a big increase in their healing as well, helping them keep the party/raid alive!
Shadow Priest - Mainly DoT focused.
Balance Druid - Only two DoTs, but they tick every two seconds as opposed to three as in other classes.
Holy Priest (Raid Healing) - Heals have a HoT after effect.
Feral Druid - Rip and Rake make this a viable target.
Fire Mage - Not DoT focused, but with the fire mage being such a crit machine (causing their DoTs) expect a fair amount of DoTs from them.
Resto ShamanSurvival Hunter (Anything after this, don't expect to proc much)
Enhancement ShamanAssassination RogueElemental Shaman
Talent Specs
Addons
SpellPriority
Links
The Warlock's Den - A great site for warlocks by warlocks.
Elitist Jerks - Well they are leet...and jerks. Tons of indepth stat discusion
FelFire - A new Warlock blog that I believe has promise.