hey nisstyr !

[PaJaMa]

Do you mind sharing your spec... i'm going rogue or warlock just want to know.. i think i'm going warlock for OB

[Nisstyr]

Affliction Talents (31 points)

# Improved Corruption - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Corruption spell by 2 seconds.

# Improved Life Tap - 2/2 points
Increases the amount of Mana awarded by your Life Tap spell by 20%.

# Improved Drain Life - 3/5 points
Increases the Health drained by your Drain Life spell by 6%.

# Fel Concentration - 5/5 points
Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while channelling the Drain Life, Drain Mana, or Drain Soul spell.

# Amplify Curse - 1/1 point
Increases the effect of your next Curse of Weakness, Curse of Agony, or Curse of Exhaustion by 50%.

# Nightfall - 2/2 points
Gives your Corruption and Drain Life spells a 3% chance to cause you to enter a Shadow Trance state after damaging the opponent. The Shadow Trance state reduces the casting time of your next Shadow Bolt spell by 100%.

# Grim Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Affliction spells by 20%.

# Curse of Exhaustion - 1/1 point
Reduces the target's speed to 90% of normal for 15 seconds. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target.

# Siphon Life - 1/1 point
Transfers 13 health from the target to the caster every 3 seconds. Lasts 30 seconds.

# Improved Curse of Exhaustion - 4/4 points
Increases the speed reduction of your Curse of Exhaustion by 20%.

# Shadow Mastery - 4/5 points
Increases the damage dealt or life drained by your Shadow spells by 8%.

# Dark Pact - 1/1 point
Drains 250 of your pet's Mana, returning 100% to you.



Demonology Talents (0 points)

# None


Destruction Talents (20 points)

# Cataclysm - 5/5 points
Reduces the Mana cost of your Destruction spells by 5%.

# Bane - 5/5 points
Reduces the casting time of your Shadow Bolt and Immolate spells by 0.5 seconds.

# Devastation - 5/5 points
Increases the critical strike chance of your Destruction spells by 5%.

# Shadowburn - 1/1 point
Instantly blasts the target with 87 to 90 Shadow damage. Requires 1 Soul Shard. If the target dies from Shadowburn, and yields experience, the caster gains a Soul Shard.

# Destructive Reach - 2/2 points
Increases the range of your Destruction spells by 20%.

# Intensity - 2/2 points
Gives you a 70% chance to resist interruptiong caused by damage while channeling the Rain of Fire or Hellfire spell.

[Gigashadow]

Interesting, so you chose Intensity + Reach over Demonic Embrace.

Is reach really that important? You have enough shadow spells with 36ft range, you can probably make do with 30ft for immolate.

For intensity, how often are you casting hellfire/rain of fire?

[Nisstyr]

I'll have to rethink my spec now that they changed taunt, it used to use hellfire religiously in instances and dal could easily keep the agro off me with the occasional 1 or 2 that would jump me, but tahts not a probelm because i had the channeling talent, now who knows. Also i'm on the pvp server, theres been countless times when somone runs JUST out of my range as im casting a immolate on them, not to mention the range works on rain of fire which is amazing for those standoffs i can run up there and toss a rain of fire in their faces, im sure you've seen in our videos what that can do to a zerg as they scatter.

[Rekuul']

Nisstyr, you should help me test new demonology changes... I went full demo spec with some affliction thrown in and cleaned up in guru arena. Id like to see how it pans out at cap... maybe some other nurfed can help you out, but from what I saw... it was pretty frickin awesome.

-Rek

[Nisstyr]

i dont like speccing in pets as i cant get shards in pvp ;o

[Gigashadow]

I noticed you got Devastation (+5% increased crit chance on destruction spells). However, this seems like it would be a terrible investment.

Since you don't have Holocaust, you are getting only +50% damage on crits. This means Devastation is increasing your average destruction spell damage by a piddling +2.5%. Less than that when you consider that Immolate's DoT cannot crit, so you can only crit on 33% of Immolate's damage component!

When you consider that maybe half of your damage comes from destruction, that is an overall improvement of perhaps +1.25% for those 5 talent points. Less, even, when you consider that most of the time you are getting that bonus on only 33% of immolate's damage when it crits.

There aren't any other especially good choices, since the top level talents in destruction are pretty bad, but Aftermath would seem to be a better bet.

[Nisstyr]

actually i have holocaust in my current build, and have dark pact, you could say im a cheater =(

and i like the +5% chance to crit for my insta cast nightfal shadowbolts. regardless tho what would you suggest other then the +5% chance to crit?

[Kailea]

i dont like speccing in pets as i cant get shards in pvp ;o

Well how many pets do you need to summon in an average pvp fight that shards would be a problem? I'd imagine shards are more of a problem for other spells that use them, not summoning pets. Don't people normally attack you before the pet unless you use imp or succubus? From what I've seen felhunter looks like an awesome pet pvp and is also pretty tough so people would probably go for you first if you use that. So you don't need to resummon, and even if you do you can get fel domination and master summoner for 3 points which allow you to summon a pet almost instantly every 10 minutes. And if you decide to go all the way down the tree, soul link allows you to split 50% of damage with your pet which would be nice if you use a felhunter or eventually infernal. Not to mention other goood stuff in the tree like 15% more hp, better healthstones, more hp and mana for pets, better torment if your vw is acting as a backup tank and for soloing.

I haven't played a warlock to a level worth mentioning so I may be completely wrong but the demonology tree looks pretty nice to me.

[Rekuul']

It is pretty nice now, but Niss is set in his ways so I shall be the pet spec warlock and he can have his silly affliction tree!

-Rek

[Nisstyr]

they've already stated they wont be changing the fact that you dont get soulshards in pvp, and as i'm going to be playing on a pvp server and spending most of my time post 60 pvping i have no desire to farm shards for an hour every day before i go out on a pvp run so taht i can make use of 50% of my talents, just not my thing.

[Rekuul']

Guards.

-Rek

[Gigashadow]

Do you find that Dark Pact helps much when PvPing? Or is it more of a solo + instance tool?

[Nisstyr]

you dont get exp off guards, hence no soulshards

and dark pact is amazing in pvp i summon an imp set him on passive and follow and its just basicly a mana battery that follows me who also happens to give me like 450 more HP.

[Rekuul']

Man... that is so weak. Die Blizzard.

-Rek

[Gigashadow]

I've been agonizing over affliction vs destruction.

With affliction it seems there isn't really any way to kill someone quickly, and speed is life in pvp. I'm also very concerned that warlock DoTs are so easily dispelled by 2 opposing classes, priests and paladins. And is siphon life even that useful? 385 drained over 30 seconds is slow, and easily dispelled, even if you can theoretically put it on a few people.

In PvE even, even instance mobs don't live long enough for corruption's full duration, let alone curse of agony, which means only Immolate is likely to provide its full damage.

With destruction, you could make your fast kill spells really hurt. Immolate improves fairly significantly; +25% initial damage, +10% overall damage from inferno, and avg +10% from crits (with holocaust and crit talent). Conflagrate has some reasonable damage also. Less mana efficient, but much faster killing.

For example, if you cast Immolate + Conflagrate immediately after, you have done 800 damage in 3 seconds (assuming you have inferno), more if you crit. And of course it's even more effective if you let immolate burn a little first.

I don't have a high level warlock to play around with right now, so it's really hard to look at the talents and say if destruction would be a good PvP choice or not. I'm just concerned about running around waiting for DoTs and the pet to slowly drain off health from an enemy, while I get whacked on or nuked, and my effects are dispelled.

Is Curse of Exhaustion a must have skill in PvP? It's a pity it takes up a curse slot if you use it.

I'd really like the get the Fel Stamina talent also, as +15% more health is a lot of survivability in PvP (and if you're going to kill through attrition, being able to survive longer is useful). But +15% more health obviously doesn't make you kill any faster.

[Nisstyr]

The destruction talents are very impressive, but after playing with them all for long enough i came to the conclusion that warlocks are in the same boat as warriors as far as talents go... you HAVE to get dark pact its FARRRRRR too good to NOT get. Dark pact basicly translates into infinate mana my imp regens 200 mana every 2 seconds which i can convert completely into my mana.

Also our dots all being able to be dispelled is a little dissheartening i've suggested 100 times that they shouldn't be dispellable but i doubt they'll ever change that. Curse of exhausion is one of those spells where its not used REALLY often, but the times i use it i couldnt imagine not having it, a snare with a class that has a fear is ALWAYS a wonderful thing.

[Gigashadow]

Good points indeed.

I'm looking at a similar build, but I'm not certain about the upper level talents to purchase in Destruction. I'm not all that thrilled with 3 of the 4 skills on the first 2 ranks (the cast time reduction is a must have, obviously).

I was considering getting Aftermath instead of the +5% crit talent. This might be more useful, especially if it procs well with a rain of fire (e.g. if it has a 10% proc rate with each of RoF's 4 waves), since that can potentially dazee multiple people. Also, with the staple Immolate and the occasional insta-Shadowbolt, there's a chance here and there to slow someone down. I mean, the crit talent is a pretty marginal improvement by itself.

I'm a little disappointed by the top level talents of destruction. A 5% reduced mana cost on destruction spells is really the sort of skill that should be in a tree devoted to doing damage.

[rjah]

Nisstyr could you post your updated talent spec? I am seriously considering playing a warlock on release, I think they are much more enjoyable, and powerfull than a mage. (my other option at the moment)

[Trev]

Just out of curiosity over having a hard time choosing between warlock and rogue, do you all feel that a Warlock would be an irreplaceable member of the "ideal PVP group?" I know this question is very subjective, but was just curious of your thoughts.

[Nisstyr]

If soulshards were atainable in PVP i would say yes, but we can easily be replaced with any other dps / utility class in a pvp group as it stands now.

[Trev]

Also, how often do you utilize Hellfire in PVP? Wondering how the Warlock AE stacks up to the Mage in both large and small-scale PvP. Thanks for your time.

[Nisstyr]

rarely now that they changed the voidwalkers sac thing to a shield instead of an invul... if i was alliance tho it would be a different story.

[Iliuminki]

rarely now that they changed the voidwalkers sac thing to a shield instead of an invul... if i was alliance tho it would be a different story.

Would I be correct in assuming you were thinking of Seal of Protection + Hellfire?