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The Fury Warlock- melty faces and you.
kattefjaes
Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 2,270 Bounty Hunter
This is a guide to the Fury Scourge Warlock, in PvE. Please bear that in mind. Questions going “mer mer mer, what about Temptation/Damnation/PvP/baking spongecakes?” will just have this quoted underneath them 
I may expand it a bit to cover PvP eventually. I don’t see me going Damnation or Temptation any time soon. Obviously, things change, and so might I, though- so that could just be LIES. Right now, it covers what I find to be a largely effective approach. Other cat-skinning methods are available.
Yes, it's a wall of text. I like words.
Preamble:
The Fury Warlock is a caster DPS machine pure and simple. It combines extremely solid single-target DPS with reasonable (if somewhat fiddly) AoE. It tends to be less squishy than a CW, and relies upon synergies involving curses for DPS. Warlocks don't bring much effective CC to the party, other than the gift of face-melty death. There are a few ways to rig Fury for solid DPS, and this is a crit-centric approach.
Curses:
Your tab ability is to curse. You can curse up to three targets at once. You do 20% more damage to cursed targets (I'm not sure if targets cursed by other people count). In addition, some of your abilities have a different or enhanced effect on a cursed target- causing a “curse consume” effect, which also removes the curse when it procs.
Be aware that curses aren't completely reliable, and seem to drop off targets sometimes. Generally, this seems to happen when you curse an out of combat target without damaging them. If you drop a Hellish Rebuke on them to get them in combat, and then drop the curse, it seems to help.
When it counts, always double check your target's curse status.
Stats:
Try for high initial rolls in CON and CHA. Get CON as high as possible as you allocate bonus points. CON boosts your HP and damage directly. CHA boosts your crit and combat advantage bonus. Combat Advantage matters slightly more for a Warlock than some other classes. Your tertiary attribute is INT. I wouldn't put extra points in that, if you're just going fury.
As regards overall stats, you'll get all the lifesteal that you need from gear and boons- no need to gem for it, once you're wearing the right armour. 1300 or so is fine. Don't worry unduly if you overrun a bit. Don't go crazy stacking it on purpose.
Try to get your damage mitigation up to about 30%. Your initial high CON roll and any extra HP from gear/radiants should push you over 30k HP easily without any real effort.
For offensive stats, get your ArPen sorted first. Remember that you get some from INT, and that it won't show on the percentage in the main stats section of the character sheet. It's the usual 1% added per point over 10 INT. Thus, 15 INT gives you 5% extra ArPen. Add that to your character sheet value to get your true ArPen. Try to get it to 22-24% total. Less than that and you're gimping your DPS. More than that is wasted in PvE. I like to get it to about 23% and let the camp fire stats buff make up the difference, rather than overshooting.
Once ArPen is looking right, push crit up. Fury is supposed to be a crit machine, with effects that proc from crit. You should also be looking to boost crit severity and Combat Advantage bonus through pet bonuses too. The best Vorpal that you can afford is your best bet for a weapon enchant. This will synergise nicely with your high crit and boosted Combat Advantage bonus (with CA also proccing via class features). While you're probably familiar with the crit/power trade-off, the mechanics of the Fury Warlock mean that it's sensible to have “too much” crit overall. Pushing your crit to at least 3500 is probably not crazy- and combined with the bonus from your CHA, you'll be sitting around 35% or more, which isn't bad at all for the uptime of various effects. Once ArPen and crit are right, dump any further slack offensive points into power. Don't start stacking power until your other stats are right. If your power ends up high enough that your crit values look sane- add more. You should probably be trying to keep your crit in the "too much" zone, especially if you're running a Perfect Vorpal or similar.
Spec:
This is the spec that I am using right now.
I went through a few respecs after a bunch of ACT parses, and this seems to be a pretty good setup with the current state of the game. The intent is to spec for solid reliable damage- rather than tweak everything for maximum AP gain. When Tyrannical Threat is fixed (see below), you will be up Poo Creek without a visible means of locomotion, unless you’re used to playing “properly”. Without basing your whole spec around exploiting the bug, you still have way too much fire-power coming from it..
Because it’s hard to get proper groups on preview, my respecs had to take place on the live servers- ouch. Irritatingly, after I had done tons of testing, I discovered that Kaelac had written a guide suggesting a very similar spec. Argh, that could have saved a lot of AD and time! His is a more general Warlock guide, but like all his stuff, it's well-written and useful, and so well worth a look if you want a second opinion.
Note that I am experimenting with a Half-Orc. The optimal race would seem to be Human. If you choose human, then put the extra points in Blood Pact Of Cania.
Gear:
Without listing every possibly item that could go in a slot, there are two very specific bits of advice. The first is to obtain the T2 Accursed Diabolist set. This is like the Avatar Of War for Warlocks, there is nothing to beat it. Stats are decent, but the four-set bonus is really the point. It procs a lot, and usually does 9-10% of your DPS in a T2.5 dungeon. If you're considering another set, don't. Remember that Lesser Soulforged enchant, too. Don’t mess with anything else.
Secondly, get the DC artifact. Right now, the Warlock's party trick is the horribly broken and overpowered Tyrannical Threat daily. This will let you more or less double the frequency of casting, and thus massively increase your damage on large pulls. If you don't have a DC, consider making one, as this artifact is one of the most useful on many classes. DC is getting a rework soon, so it might well be worth having one in the stable anyway.
For your weapon, start with whatever you have when you ding 60. Buy a set of blues and rank 5 enchants (at least) and hit the T2s to collect your Accursed Diabolist set. Use the resulting Drake Seals to buy the Drake Seal main and offhand. With these two and the T2 set, you’re more than ready to hit VT/MC/CN, if you’re a reasonably experienced PvE player. If you spam a few VTs, you’ll have the Dread Legion main and offhand before very long at all- it’s a brilliant start.
You can also pick up the Draconic set quite easily- offhand from eSoT and mainhand from eLoL. The stats are a bit odd, but the set bonus is nice, and the damage range is solid. I went with the Draconic set for a while, until I got my artifact weapon to purple (and later orange). If you're using an artifact weapon, just go for the offhand that balances your stats out best. The Fallen Dragon offhand is great, but I seem to be cursed with VT mainhands, having done hundreds of clears on my GWF without ever seeing one, so I am using the Dread Legion one from the VT chest for now.
For your weapon enchant, the best option is to just go with the best Vorpal that you can afford. Lots of people got excited about Lightning proccing all sorts of stuff on preview pre-mod 4, but it doesn’t really win any more on live. Moreover, it’s a bit of a pain to not be able to hit a specific target without accidentally hitting nearby mobs.
Also, don’t be fooled by weapon enchants that do necrotic damage- that necrotic damage source no longer procs your Creeping Death itself, the way it did in preview. Thus Terror and things will be no better than they will for other classes. Go with Vorpal, as lots of the good things about a Fury Warlock depend on critting, proccing on crit, boosting severity, or proccing Combat Advantage.
For your other gear (jewellery etc.), choose whatever gives you the stats you need most- as ever. There are lots of good options, appropriate Ancients, Corrupted Black Ice, or the “..Of The Shore” stuff. The ancient and "..Of The Shore" sets can be picked up fairly cheaply from the AH. Ultimately, though, I ended up using 3x Ring Of Pain and 1x Ring Of Suffering from eLoL, paired with a Necklace Of Suffering and the CON belt. This seems to give me pretty solid stats. You can swap Pain and Suffering rings around to balance out your crit/power tradeoff in the time-honoured way. Don't forget that you should overdo crit a bit if you stack a lot of severity.
Powers:
Right, well, the good news is that you can be reasonably effective in single and multi-target situations with minimal skill swapping- unlike the GWF!
For single target, I like to use Warlock’s Bargain, Killing Flames and Dreadtheft. For at-wills, I’m usually slotting Hand Of Blight and Hellish Rebuke. Things to note- curse your target, then hit it with Warlock’s Bargain. This means the curse isn’t instantly consumed when you hit it with Dreadtheft. Try to keep curse up, Hellish Rebuke rolling, and then burn your Warlock’s Bargain/Dreadtheft/Killing Flames as they come off cooldown. Pretty numbers..
For strictly single target, dailies are a bit unclear. It’s not worth using Tyrannical Threat on one target, so you’re best off using Flames Of Phelgethos or Brood Of Hadar. Either is pretty good, but I prefer Brood, as the damage is a bit more immediate, plus it’s necrotic- proccing the capstone feat makes me happy. You may prefer the giant vomiting DoT skull of Flames, in which case, go for it.
For class features.. first up, “No Pity, No Mercy” should never leave your bar. Ever. It’s really decent. With enough crit and CA bonus, this is a really powerful feature. For the second feature, it’s less clear. Shadow Walk is really good, if you want an extra turn of speed. Otherwise, Flames Of Empowerment is a solid choice.
I have found that single target damage is surprisingly solid on the Warlock, as long as you keep everything ticking. You generally won’t need to spend an encounter slot on Vampiric Embrace, as your life steal will keep you going. If you are having difficulty, swap out Killing Flames for VE- but be aware that you’re losing out on some crazy damage spikes:
(That was ages ago, things have improved..)
For multi-target and trash use, I tend to go with Blades Of Vanquished Armies, Warlock’s Bargain and Dreadtheft. That’s just swapping Killing Flames out for Blades, most handy. Remember that you can curse three targets, and bargain a fourth, to make Dreadtheft hit harder. For at-wills, I tend to go with Hand Of Blight and Hellish Rebuke. I like to curse and DoT up a few random mobs, drop Warlock’s Bargain on the highest HP target, get Blades running, and then cut loose with Dreadtheft on the bargained mob. Anything that runs at you will get some spinning blades in the snout, if they survive the nuking on the way in. If your encounters are all cooling and mobs are in melee range, it’s enormous fun to abuse Hand Of Blight. Laying down Warlock slaps with your giant green haunted hand in Castle Never is just pure fun. Remember not to get too carried away- don’t stand in the red!
For your dailies, well.. say hello to Tyrannical Threat.
What it does is reflect some of the damage you do to a cursed target to any other cursed target nearby. If you have three cursed targets, and one running Warlock’s Gift, and then cut loose with Dreadtheft, you can melt entire large t2.5 trash packs in seconds. If you’re fighting a boss with adds, then it’s ridiculous. Don’t forget that DC artifact to reload your daily quickly for a second crack- if it’s a boss fight, and there are any targets that haven’t been reduced to crispy, smoking boots. If you can have Blades spinning just before you cast Dreadtheft, you’ll be pumping out even more damage, which means more to bounce around. If you do this properly, your screen will just be a mass of flying numbers and virtually nothing else.
Arcane Singularity or the MoF immolation that groups mobs are great here, making it really easy to hit a lot of the cursed targets simultaneously with your Dreadtheft. Obviously, then, if you're actually hitting all of your cursed target, you're doing primary damage to each one, and receiving three sets of 50% bounces. The damage magnification is crazy on a tight group.
A good CW and a good SW are a real wrecking crew, and can trivialise multi-target encounters.
Regarding class features- for multi-target stuff, especially trash clears, I like to run with No Pity, No Mercy and Flames Of Empowerment. You should always try to have your Tyrannical Threat for bigger pulls, so Flames Of Empowerment gives you a nice DPS boost the rest of the time. You can use Shadow Walk rather than Flames if you want, but your Warlock should already be highly mobile- if you're not fast enough without it, you might have bigger problems. However, it is fun to zip around that bit quicker, so it's a valid option.
Boons:
Obviously, selection of boons is mostly down to common sense. In the case of stats, choose the ones that you need most, or that are hard to obtain. For example, in a life steal/regen tradeoff, you may as well pick regen when you are already over 1500 life steal. Remember that for offensive stats, you’re capping ArPen first, then getting your crit up, and then dumping the rest in power. For defensive, get your mitigation around 30% or so, with about 1500 defense etc., when your defense and lifesteal is enough, just keep using HP as your defensive dump stat. I know I am repeating myself a bit, but some people just ignore these basic heuristics and ask questions like “which is best???LOL” with no reference to what they have and need. Remember- the stats you need depend on what you have and what you lack. You need to think for yourself a bit.
An incoming healing boon can be pretty good, it will help with your lifesteal.
The top tier boons can be a bit hit and miss. For Sharandar, I took Elven Resolve. It’s a lot of extra mobility, and more valuable than the others in practise. For Dread Ring, I took Endless Consumption. For IWD, I took Winter's Bounty as the only really useful top tier option. For ToD, the 5% severity is too good to miss. Ditto Sleet Skills in IWD, I am trying to be a bit of a crit machine, so every shred of severity is welcome.
Otherwise, be sensible, choose the stats that you need.
Pets:
I am using an Ioun Stone Of Radiance, upgraded to blue to unlock all the slots. This is simply because I have it unlocked account-wide, and it’s a solid choice for a free pet. A cat’s a great choice too (Warlocks can’t fly), as are the other Ioun stones. Fill the runestone slots with bonding runestones of some sort. Fill the ring slots with Ring Of Pain/Ring Of Suffering depending on which stats you need more.
I have several other pets, for the active bonus. I am using the Warlock booster pack pet. This is an amazing pet, and an account-wide unlock. Once you upgrade it to purple, it gives +10% critical severity. Highly recommended. I am also using a Blink Dog, upgraded to blue- due to the massive uptime of Combat Advantage. The other slots just have whatever green promo pets I have handy, for the stats. I’ll probably pick up a Dancing Blade at some point for yet more severity. I think I am really focussing heavily on crit, severity and the like. The other slot could maybe be better filled with something like a Fire Archon, in the place of the other promo pet.
Right, that’s it for now. This will possibly be expanded and edited over time. However, for now, get out there and melt face..
I may expand it a bit to cover PvP eventually. I don’t see me going Damnation or Temptation any time soon. Obviously, things change, and so might I, though- so that could just be LIES. Right now, it covers what I find to be a largely effective approach. Other cat-skinning methods are available.
Yes, it's a wall of text. I like words.
Preamble:
The Fury Warlock is a caster DPS machine pure and simple. It combines extremely solid single-target DPS with reasonable (if somewhat fiddly) AoE. It tends to be less squishy than a CW, and relies upon synergies involving curses for DPS. Warlocks don't bring much effective CC to the party, other than the gift of face-melty death. There are a few ways to rig Fury for solid DPS, and this is a crit-centric approach.
Curses:
Your tab ability is to curse. You can curse up to three targets at once. You do 20% more damage to cursed targets (I'm not sure if targets cursed by other people count). In addition, some of your abilities have a different or enhanced effect on a cursed target- causing a “curse consume” effect, which also removes the curse when it procs.
Be aware that curses aren't completely reliable, and seem to drop off targets sometimes. Generally, this seems to happen when you curse an out of combat target without damaging them. If you drop a Hellish Rebuke on them to get them in combat, and then drop the curse, it seems to help.
When it counts, always double check your target's curse status.
Stats:
Try for high initial rolls in CON and CHA. Get CON as high as possible as you allocate bonus points. CON boosts your HP and damage directly. CHA boosts your crit and combat advantage bonus. Combat Advantage matters slightly more for a Warlock than some other classes. Your tertiary attribute is INT. I wouldn't put extra points in that, if you're just going fury.
As regards overall stats, you'll get all the lifesteal that you need from gear and boons- no need to gem for it, once you're wearing the right armour. 1300 or so is fine. Don't worry unduly if you overrun a bit. Don't go crazy stacking it on purpose.
Try to get your damage mitigation up to about 30%. Your initial high CON roll and any extra HP from gear/radiants should push you over 30k HP easily without any real effort.
For offensive stats, get your ArPen sorted first. Remember that you get some from INT, and that it won't show on the percentage in the main stats section of the character sheet. It's the usual 1% added per point over 10 INT. Thus, 15 INT gives you 5% extra ArPen. Add that to your character sheet value to get your true ArPen. Try to get it to 22-24% total. Less than that and you're gimping your DPS. More than that is wasted in PvE. I like to get it to about 23% and let the camp fire stats buff make up the difference, rather than overshooting.
Once ArPen is looking right, push crit up. Fury is supposed to be a crit machine, with effects that proc from crit. You should also be looking to boost crit severity and Combat Advantage bonus through pet bonuses too. The best Vorpal that you can afford is your best bet for a weapon enchant. This will synergise nicely with your high crit and boosted Combat Advantage bonus (with CA also proccing via class features). While you're probably familiar with the crit/power trade-off, the mechanics of the Fury Warlock mean that it's sensible to have “too much” crit overall. Pushing your crit to at least 3500 is probably not crazy- and combined with the bonus from your CHA, you'll be sitting around 35% or more, which isn't bad at all for the uptime of various effects. Once ArPen and crit are right, dump any further slack offensive points into power. Don't start stacking power until your other stats are right. If your power ends up high enough that your crit values look sane- add more. You should probably be trying to keep your crit in the "too much" zone, especially if you're running a Perfect Vorpal or similar.
Spec:
This is the spec that I am using right now.
I went through a few respecs after a bunch of ACT parses, and this seems to be a pretty good setup with the current state of the game. The intent is to spec for solid reliable damage- rather than tweak everything for maximum AP gain. When Tyrannical Threat is fixed (see below), you will be up Poo Creek without a visible means of locomotion, unless you’re used to playing “properly”. Without basing your whole spec around exploiting the bug, you still have way too much fire-power coming from it..
Because it’s hard to get proper groups on preview, my respecs had to take place on the live servers- ouch. Irritatingly, after I had done tons of testing, I discovered that Kaelac had written a guide suggesting a very similar spec. Argh, that could have saved a lot of AD and time! His is a more general Warlock guide, but like all his stuff, it's well-written and useful, and so well worth a look if you want a second opinion.
Note that I am experimenting with a Half-Orc. The optimal race would seem to be Human. If you choose human, then put the extra points in Blood Pact Of Cania.
Gear:
Without listing every possibly item that could go in a slot, there are two very specific bits of advice. The first is to obtain the T2 Accursed Diabolist set. This is like the Avatar Of War for Warlocks, there is nothing to beat it. Stats are decent, but the four-set bonus is really the point. It procs a lot, and usually does 9-10% of your DPS in a T2.5 dungeon. If you're considering another set, don't. Remember that Lesser Soulforged enchant, too. Don’t mess with anything else.
Secondly, get the DC artifact. Right now, the Warlock's party trick is the horribly broken and overpowered Tyrannical Threat daily. This will let you more or less double the frequency of casting, and thus massively increase your damage on large pulls. If you don't have a DC, consider making one, as this artifact is one of the most useful on many classes. DC is getting a rework soon, so it might well be worth having one in the stable anyway.
For your weapon, start with whatever you have when you ding 60. Buy a set of blues and rank 5 enchants (at least) and hit the T2s to collect your Accursed Diabolist set. Use the resulting Drake Seals to buy the Drake Seal main and offhand. With these two and the T2 set, you’re more than ready to hit VT/MC/CN, if you’re a reasonably experienced PvE player. If you spam a few VTs, you’ll have the Dread Legion main and offhand before very long at all- it’s a brilliant start.
You can also pick up the Draconic set quite easily- offhand from eSoT and mainhand from eLoL. The stats are a bit odd, but the set bonus is nice, and the damage range is solid. I went with the Draconic set for a while, until I got my artifact weapon to purple (and later orange). If you're using an artifact weapon, just go for the offhand that balances your stats out best. The Fallen Dragon offhand is great, but I seem to be cursed with VT mainhands, having done hundreds of clears on my GWF without ever seeing one, so I am using the Dread Legion one from the VT chest for now.
For your weapon enchant, the best option is to just go with the best Vorpal that you can afford. Lots of people got excited about Lightning proccing all sorts of stuff on preview pre-mod 4, but it doesn’t really win any more on live. Moreover, it’s a bit of a pain to not be able to hit a specific target without accidentally hitting nearby mobs.
Also, don’t be fooled by weapon enchants that do necrotic damage- that necrotic damage source no longer procs your Creeping Death itself, the way it did in preview. Thus Terror and things will be no better than they will for other classes. Go with Vorpal, as lots of the good things about a Fury Warlock depend on critting, proccing on crit, boosting severity, or proccing Combat Advantage.
For your other gear (jewellery etc.), choose whatever gives you the stats you need most- as ever. There are lots of good options, appropriate Ancients, Corrupted Black Ice, or the “..Of The Shore” stuff. The ancient and "..Of The Shore" sets can be picked up fairly cheaply from the AH. Ultimately, though, I ended up using 3x Ring Of Pain and 1x Ring Of Suffering from eLoL, paired with a Necklace Of Suffering and the CON belt. This seems to give me pretty solid stats. You can swap Pain and Suffering rings around to balance out your crit/power tradeoff in the time-honoured way. Don't forget that you should overdo crit a bit if you stack a lot of severity.
Powers:
Right, well, the good news is that you can be reasonably effective in single and multi-target situations with minimal skill swapping- unlike the GWF!
For single target, I like to use Warlock’s Bargain, Killing Flames and Dreadtheft. For at-wills, I’m usually slotting Hand Of Blight and Hellish Rebuke. Things to note- curse your target, then hit it with Warlock’s Bargain. This means the curse isn’t instantly consumed when you hit it with Dreadtheft. Try to keep curse up, Hellish Rebuke rolling, and then burn your Warlock’s Bargain/Dreadtheft/Killing Flames as they come off cooldown. Pretty numbers..
For strictly single target, dailies are a bit unclear. It’s not worth using Tyrannical Threat on one target, so you’re best off using Flames Of Phelgethos or Brood Of Hadar. Either is pretty good, but I prefer Brood, as the damage is a bit more immediate, plus it’s necrotic- proccing the capstone feat makes me happy. You may prefer the giant vomiting DoT skull of Flames, in which case, go for it.
For class features.. first up, “No Pity, No Mercy” should never leave your bar. Ever. It’s really decent. With enough crit and CA bonus, this is a really powerful feature. For the second feature, it’s less clear. Shadow Walk is really good, if you want an extra turn of speed. Otherwise, Flames Of Empowerment is a solid choice.
I have found that single target damage is surprisingly solid on the Warlock, as long as you keep everything ticking. You generally won’t need to spend an encounter slot on Vampiric Embrace, as your life steal will keep you going. If you are having difficulty, swap out Killing Flames for VE- but be aware that you’re losing out on some crazy damage spikes:
[23:41] [Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Your Killing Flames deals 230134 (71987) Fire Damage to Merothrax.
(That was ages ago, things have improved..
)For multi-target and trash use, I tend to go with Blades Of Vanquished Armies, Warlock’s Bargain and Dreadtheft. That’s just swapping Killing Flames out for Blades, most handy. Remember that you can curse three targets, and bargain a fourth, to make Dreadtheft hit harder. For at-wills, I tend to go with Hand Of Blight and Hellish Rebuke. I like to curse and DoT up a few random mobs, drop Warlock’s Bargain on the highest HP target, get Blades running, and then cut loose with Dreadtheft on the bargained mob. Anything that runs at you will get some spinning blades in the snout, if they survive the nuking on the way in. If your encounters are all cooling and mobs are in melee range, it’s enormous fun to abuse Hand Of Blight. Laying down Warlock slaps with your giant green haunted hand in Castle Never is just pure fun. Remember not to get too carried away- don’t stand in the red!
For your dailies, well.. say hello to Tyrannical Threat.
What it does is reflect some of the damage you do to a cursed target to any other cursed target nearby. If you have three cursed targets, and one running Warlock’s Gift, and then cut loose with Dreadtheft, you can melt entire large t2.5 trash packs in seconds. If you’re fighting a boss with adds, then it’s ridiculous. Don’t forget that DC artifact to reload your daily quickly for a second crack- if it’s a boss fight, and there are any targets that haven’t been reduced to crispy, smoking boots. If you can have Blades spinning just before you cast Dreadtheft, you’ll be pumping out even more damage, which means more to bounce around. If you do this properly, your screen will just be a mass of flying numbers and virtually nothing else.
Arcane Singularity or the MoF immolation that groups mobs are great here, making it really easy to hit a lot of the cursed targets simultaneously with your Dreadtheft. Obviously, then, if you're actually hitting all of your cursed target, you're doing primary damage to each one, and receiving three sets of 50% bounces. The damage magnification is crazy on a tight group.
A good CW and a good SW are a real wrecking crew, and can trivialise multi-target encounters.
Regarding class features- for multi-target stuff, especially trash clears, I like to run with No Pity, No Mercy and Flames Of Empowerment. You should always try to have your Tyrannical Threat for bigger pulls, so Flames Of Empowerment gives you a nice DPS boost the rest of the time. You can use Shadow Walk rather than Flames if you want, but your Warlock should already be highly mobile- if you're not fast enough without it, you might have bigger problems. However, it is fun to zip around that bit quicker, so it's a valid option.
Boons:
Obviously, selection of boons is mostly down to common sense. In the case of stats, choose the ones that you need most, or that are hard to obtain. For example, in a life steal/regen tradeoff, you may as well pick regen when you are already over 1500 life steal. Remember that for offensive stats, you’re capping ArPen first, then getting your crit up, and then dumping the rest in power. For defensive, get your mitigation around 30% or so, with about 1500 defense etc., when your defense and lifesteal is enough, just keep using HP as your defensive dump stat. I know I am repeating myself a bit, but some people just ignore these basic heuristics and ask questions like “which is best???LOL” with no reference to what they have and need. Remember- the stats you need depend on what you have and what you lack. You need to think for yourself a bit.
An incoming healing boon can be pretty good, it will help with your lifesteal.
The top tier boons can be a bit hit and miss. For Sharandar, I took Elven Resolve. It’s a lot of extra mobility, and more valuable than the others in practise. For Dread Ring, I took Endless Consumption. For IWD, I took Winter's Bounty as the only really useful top tier option. For ToD, the 5% severity is too good to miss. Ditto Sleet Skills in IWD, I am trying to be a bit of a crit machine, so every shred of severity is welcome.
Otherwise, be sensible, choose the stats that you need.
Pets:
I am using an Ioun Stone Of Radiance, upgraded to blue to unlock all the slots. This is simply because I have it unlocked account-wide, and it’s a solid choice for a free pet. A cat’s a great choice too (Warlocks can’t fly), as are the other Ioun stones. Fill the runestone slots with bonding runestones of some sort. Fill the ring slots with Ring Of Pain/Ring Of Suffering depending on which stats you need more.
I have several other pets, for the active bonus. I am using the Warlock booster pack pet. This is an amazing pet, and an account-wide unlock. Once you upgrade it to purple, it gives +10% critical severity. Highly recommended. I am also using a Blink Dog, upgraded to blue- due to the massive uptime of Combat Advantage. The other slots just have whatever green promo pets I have handy, for the stats. I’ll probably pick up a Dancing Blade at some point for yet more severity. I think I am really focussing heavily on crit, severity and the like. The other slot could maybe be better filled with something like a Fire Archon, in the place of the other promo pet.
Right, that’s it for now. This will possibly be expanded and edited over time. However, for now, get out there and melt face..
Post edited by kattefjaes on
0
Comments
It's a terrible waste of a slot. It's so easy to get ArPen elsewhere. There are much better choices. Maybe when you're still in blues, but really you should shovel in red gems first, as your major priority when you can.
You should be carrying 3 greater/perfect enchants with 2 alternatives as a Scourge Warlock, and i'll list these.
Lightning
Vorpal
Greater plaguefire
Top three enchantments for Warlocks (any spec).
Alternatives:
Terror
Flaming
-Kymos
I really don't agree. I was seeing consistently higher DPS over full clears of t2.5 with PVorp (with an altered set of boons and enchants to support it) compared to a (now sold) PLightning or my GPF. It's a shame, as life unquestionably looks more exciting with PLightning. It's great for lower HP trash packs, too.
As for "You should be carrying 3 greater/perfect enchants with 2 alternatives as a Scourge Warlock".. that's a little daft. I really wish that the PvE content necessitated or rewarded that level of overkill, though.
Oddly enough I'm finding that the same base rotation is almost equally as effective with a Temptation build. Less DPS of course but it still maximises effectiveness.
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
Yes, the dreadtheft dance does seem to be trick- nail the biggest target with the WB, dreadtheft it, and use it as a pivot to hose all the other mobs with DOOM. It's a fun mechanic- even if your team might think you've lost your mind, because the graphic has the purple beam waving in the air at a crazy angle (and they can't see your pretty numbers)
Thanks for posting. I never thought of cursing three then using WB on a fourth.
So much to learn all the time. My SW has become my main so I'm still grinding thru Sharandar and IWD boons (just finished DR yesterday) as well as ToD boons (unlocked Shores and Lostmauth finally). Once I get all of those boons, I'll have more time to devote to the finer points but I am trying to adjust my rotation as I go. I typically run WB/HS (to help fill up AP between DC artifact CDs)/Dreadtheft. I am still working on getting my Arm Pen to 24%. I have a Vorpal, Lightning, and PF and I still can't decide on which one to use most of the time.
I've been on the fence about getting the SW pack for the Erinyes companion. I may finally get it after reading your info.
It's just a bit of a braindump of what I'm doing. I couldn't find the info I was looking for initially, so I did a lot of poking about, and some testing. Hopefully my Warlock is in better shape now than when I first blundered about in dungeons.
The Erinyes companion is excellent, for all sorts of classes. The fact that it's an account unlock makes the pack a really good option. If you have a few characters, it's even better. I know that PWE and Cryptic get a lot of complaints about their pricing, but they seem to have really nailed it this time.
Regarding your Armour Pen, if you're at 23%ish, don't worry. You generally only need the 24% for bosses anyway, and there is usually a campfire just before bosses- the campfire buff will give you the extra percent.
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
Hey, that's a good point, I keep forgetting that. There may actually be a few edge cases* where multi-mob pulls don't see your primary target dying before DF is finished, and that would actually be a slight advantage. Thanks. Obviously, 99% of the time, with any reasonable party, the loss of accurate pivot control early will actually reduce your overall DPS, though, so in the majority of situations, this is a bad idea.
* A few really high HP mobs like golems, or a very low DPS group maybe?
Who'd have thunk it?
Considering it's been what a month and no fix for something that should have easily been fixed is in sight it seems, I still posit that the tool-tip is in error and the power is working as intended since CWs still out damage a TT lock by a landslide unless they are just a bad CW. After all, the controller class, wizard, is doing the most damage, but the striker class, the warlock, lags behind that even using what people say is a broken and overpowered ability.
You know, while I am 100% sure that you're utterly wrong, I selfishly wish you were right.
Well have you talked to Crush for confirmation of me being 100% wrong? That sort of helps the credibility, a tool-tip isn't always right as even WoW has to correct tool-tips not correctly worded. Considering I've seen what Crush does with powers (see Champions Online for details) I am going to remain on the fence either way. Considering TT was already reduced in power during testing, it's hard to even believe people anymore that are so assured of something just because that's what they want to believe.
What I do know is that the crying and whining will most assuredly get a draconic "fix" to TT that will reduce is effectiveness to below useless even for the warlock.
I have tried all three specs and out of those overall, as you said for trash mobs I did find that the lightning seemed to burn them down a lot faster than P. Vorpal as a Temptation and Fury Warlock, but my damage did spike a lo higher on boss fights with the P. vorpal. Greater Plague fire, and I should have been specific on this works really well as a temptation Warlock while again, I found P.vorpal with my direct hard hitting skills more spikey in burning through my targets health.
-Kymos
Yeah, I think we can completely agree on that one. It's a shame though, Lightning is so much fun, especially with Blades running. I have given my GPF back to my Guardian Fighter again, now, but it's still available if I ever feel like messing with different specs, also.
However, for now, trash seems to die faster than people can get rotations down anyway (especially with the help of broken TT and the DC artifact), so I care more about the speed of boss killing. The massive damage spikes are fun in their own way too- Fury is loads of fun for this.
http://i.imgur.com/Ebrbpb5.png
Curious, with TT being that strong(My SW is just now high enough to have this power) and accounting for that much of your damage Katt, do you believe SW's would even still be in/near the top for damage if TT were @OverFixed@ as so often happens? That's a sizable chunk of your totals. wow
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?744001-Tyrannical-Threat-seriously-bugged&p=8840141&viewfull=1#post8840141
Mine were broadly similar though. The problem is that the discussion is polarised and over-simplified (welcome to forums), because everyone seems to be having a willy-size competition with CWs. CWs are really broken right now too- storm spell procs way too much*. A well-played CW can trivialise all the PvE content right now even without a Warlock. They are broken. Any argument that goes "of course the Warlock isn't broken, look how much damage CWs do" is simply flawed by dint of this comparison.
The problem is, that when TT is up, damage that other people do bounces around, and gets credited to the Warlock. If TT happens to be up when the CW drops his tacnuke, it's off the scale. If TT is fixed, so it only bounces your damage around like it's supposed to, your damage won't periodically "borrow" from the rest of the party. This particular aspect is binary, it can't be "overfixed", they either fix or don't. They could "overfix" the percentage that bounces, of course, or just bugger it up in general- we're both used to this.
When they do fix it, there are a few things that don't seem to proc correctly which are affecting our damage- they will suddenly become more apparent. They're such a minor consideration right now that I can't even remember them to list, I admit- there are only so many hours in a day. I also wouldn't be surprised if there are a few things not obeying ArPen as they should. I know, right?
There are some people who will swear blind that there's nothing wrong, and that at min GS. a SW should regularly able to out-DPS a BiS group in tier 2.5. This is obviously entirely rational and realistic. I must be just pure liquid awesome, and that much better than anyone else, eh? It's the only possible explanation.
To more directly address your question, no. If CWs remain broken, and TT gets fixed, we won't be top of the Paingiver scores any more. I also suspect that all sorts of other issues will come out of the woodwork which turn out to reduce our non-TT damage. However, right now, it's a bit like fretting about small coins when you have a suitcase full of banknotes :P
*Actually, I think there's a thing that lets a good MoF proc Fan The Flames way too much- possibly using the Draconic set? Not sure. Good MoF are like hen's teeth so you don't often get to observe this glitch in action.
TT isn't that strong, Kat teamed with a few CWs going by the obvious damage numbers since none of his actual powers did 200k damage to allow for TT to do a 200k hit. In other words a nice set up environment with a few OP classes to begin with, in a few choice environments (Castle Never for instance) makes for perfect "data" gathering season for people to prove points, even though old content is old content now. But since there is another patch coming up and TT's "obvious brokeness" still has yet to be fixed, I still remain on the fence waiting for the proof from people that a synergy power is broken because it makes old trivial content remain... old and trivial.
The fact his dreadtheft is so low, being matched by the hellfire tells me a lot of the situation. He's also using the devoted artifact to make sure TT is back up that fast to. But then again taking a 18k GS team into a 9300 GS instance and expecting it to be hard is probably the funny part
In short, he's stacking the deck if you want it in simple layman's terms.
Reading comprehension isn't really your strong point, is it? Had you paid any attentionat all, you would have been saved the effort of this amusing yet florid conspiracy theory. Not my parse, nor did I claim it was. "Aliens, man".
Oh, and the "old and trivial" content for me is CN, VT, MC, Shores epic. In a day or so, it will be LoL epic too. If you know of some secret stash of less "trivial" content, then please be sure to speak up. I'd love to have something that any reasonable legit PUG team can't wreck even more effortlessly than they could could prior to the double refining weekend GS bloat:)
Reading comprehension is actually and the fact we are now what 5 weeks in, another patch and still no fix for this "obvious bug", and you keep saying you know I am 100% wrong yet you offer no dev response. Seriously. Again, I will stay on the fence but since CWs still out damage a TT spamming lock.
So again I stay on the fence just watching this play out all because for some reason, people like you have your panties in a twist from a DPS class, that still gets out done by the control class. I will also laugh my *** off if the "bug fix" is clarification in the tool tip that 'YOU' referred to everyone hitting the cursed target. *shrugs*
And please don't try to say it took them X weeks to fix other classes. Where as those were balance changes this would be a fix that all it requires it changing the value so it doesn't ping anyone but the warlock's damage. So yea, five weeks in and eating popcorn as I watch this play out.
In fact here is my prediction for TT; It won't be the fact that it pings everyone's damage that is the problem, it will be the constant outcry for some reason over this power that will get it changed in a draconic way that makes it basically worthless to the lock to even spend their initial power points in buying. The "fix" won't be that it only affects the lock's damage, it will be a draconic one that reduces the damage of the power again, and will undoubtedly put something like an ICD on the number of ticks of damage that can happen per enemy.
Then after TT is tackled like that and all the CWs and GWFs are pleased again, they will go after Dreadtheft and Gates of Hell next. And once people figure out how to use curse bite properly, that as well.
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
First of all, that ACT log was mine, not Kat's. Second, the biggest hit in the party was a <120k IBS. If your SW is any good, you'll see 100k+ hits from TT in dugeons. Highest i've seen was 400k, so according to your calculation i should have had someone in my party deal 800k in one hit, the problem is, i had only 1 CW in my party and she was leveling her pet, while the other team members were newbies. Btw, i've never seen any class do 400k in 1 hit, let alone 800k, i don't even think it's possible to do 800k in 1 hit, unless you're a Fire Scorpion from E.LoL.
Edit:
There might have been some ninja fixes to TT recently, but i've only had time to test it solo, so no HV, HP, Divine glow, etc debuffs, which allow those crazy high hits in dungeon runs.
Remorhaz Hunt (2min): http://i.imgur.com/BBHChio.png
Trade of Blades (28s, 1 TT rotation): http://i.imgur.com/dkwR3hW.png
Karru PUG (20min, no debuffs): http://i.imgur.com/cHnJJWu.png
More dungeon run logs soon.
I haven't had much time to run parses of late, any update on this? I'm intrigued.