1) You are not a traditional pet class. Don’t try and exclusively tank your pet, unless you are using your Voidwalker (level 10 pet) and then, the trade-off is security for exp rate.
2) You are not a nuker. Shadowbolt is good. Searing Pain is good. However, you can’t win on dps alone.
3) DoTs and Drains are your best friend.
4) Fear sucks and is basically an emergency feature.
5) Do not base your assessment of a warlock on dps. We do not rely on dps.
6) Stamina is your primary stat, followed by Intelligence. Your skills allow you to drain and steal health, and convert health to mana. You need to learn to use your health as a mana battery and use first aid and cooking as your health.
7) We get a free horse at 40, but have to spend lots of coin on pet spells as we level, so it’s really a wash over time.
Pet Specifics:
Imp – A good group pet. It gives a great stamina buff and has a very good fireball spell. It has low mana and hit points. If you solo with the Imp, you need to tank while the Imp nukes.
Voidwalker – A good solo pet. This pet is a health point sponge but has a very low dps. You need to have good aggro management around this pet and usually the kill is slow, but you have full health at the end. This pet can even allow you to kill like leveled elites, but the process is slow.
Succubus – Apart from the butt-slaping goodness, this pet is the best all around pet IMHO. She has a good CC spell, seduce, which affects only humanoids. She has great dps and adequate hit points. She works well in group and solo and pvp situations. Keep Soothing Kiss turned off. This spell cancles built up aggro on a MOB and is only situationally useful. A succubus is great for ‘drain-tanking‘ (see below).
Fellhunter – Currently this pet has an ability that can only be described as a mistake. At level 42, you get the Paranoia spell for that pet. Spam Paranoia and you will never be touched. I was even able to peal a MOB off of a Rogue and Mage. It is an instant cast, zero mana buff spell that creates aggro on the pet. The puppy has adequate dps and hits and it’s devour magic can strip negative buffs from your party and positive buffs from your enemy. Spell lock shuts down casters very well.
Fighting Strategies:
Drain Tanking – Most warlocks recommmend taking affliction to level 40 and then respec if you wish. The skills in that line let you cast your drain spells virtually ninterupted. Here you send in your succubus first, then cast your DoTs and gain aggro. Rather than mele, you health drain while your succubus is still attacking. It is very effective and only requires small health gains upon the end of each fight.
Mage Tanking – At level 45, I have almost 3,000 hitpoints. Demonic Embrace is a great tallent that gives a 15% bonus to Stamina after all other items and buffs are taken into account. With this kind of build, you can basically tank effectively (repair costs for cloth is low). I have sword and dagger skills maxed and do decent damage in addition to my pet and spells.
Stand off Pet Tanking – This is the traditional pet caster approach and does work in some situations, especially with the VW out. This technique is slow and you must know aggro management.
Fear Kiting – Yes, you can fear kite very well with the Warlock. You must have the correct circumstance for this to occur. Fear will cause MOBs to recruit help, so you need to have a fear kiting path planned out before you enter this course of action. The recent patch decreased fear kiting’s effectiveness, but using this technique, many Warlocks were safely soloing many elites and bosses.
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