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  1. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Wraend View Post
    LOL, again just one of the perks of being an officer, but back in vanilla I could sometimes get my guild to do the doomguard summon (which at the time required five people to summon, and outright KILLED one of them as a sacrifice). Also, I made it a habit in Molten Core to summon the last three people into midair above the lava, for being the laziest to get there. Yeah, warlocks were definitely more evil back then.
    My favorite past time was when you could run around cities putting Curse of Doom on rats and other critters, and when they died they became doomguards. DOOMGUARDS EVERYWHERE!!!
    Those who you know as Warlocks are your Salvation through Destruction. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by Moggie View Post
    In Vanilla? Nope. Warlocks (assuming your raid wasn't fail and didn't take more than 2 locks tops) were were the bottom of the totem pole. GG 6-7 Mages, 6-7 Rogues in the raids vs. you and only you. Lol. Zero scaling, poor quality of life vs. utilities, etc... CoS wasn't really used much. You casted CoW and CoE. That's it. If you were seriously trying to put Corruption on a boss, then I feel for your raid since it was a waste what with the 8 (eventual) 16 debuff slots. It wasn't until TBC when Warlock damage jumped through the roof. And SB wasn't entirely the best spec until the latter part of T5, T6 when you had the gear. Demo was *never* viable. It was a gimmick toy spec that had zero place in an actual raid environment. Lol
    SM/Ruin was excellent, you must have had some sad locks in your raid. This coming from a guild with Nax clear before tbc. Warlocks were not in a bad place.

  3. #43
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    /pop trinkets
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt

    ^ Grats on top damage for 2 expansions doing this!

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Ritthepally View Post
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    /pop trinkets
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt
    shadowbolt

    ^ Grats on top damage for 2 expansions doing this!
    You could only do that in TBC and top damage and ONLY around mid T5 and on, because you just didn't have the hit rating to support it before then. It was definitely funny to top charts with one button, though. Same was true about warlock aoe.

    AoE time?
    SoC
    SoC
    SoC
    SoC
    SoC
    SoC

    Topped charts.
    Those who you know as Warlocks are your Salvation through Destruction. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

  5. #45
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    i was actually one of the few that never did the hybrid specs back during vanilla and tbc. in vanilla i was full destruction and in my high warlord gear would dish out quite a bit of pain. unfortunately i was quite susceptible to the rng gods. if i got a good crit from conflag followed by a crit from a shadowbolt i could generally 1v1 with the best of them. rogues and warriors were really the only classes i had problems with in vanilla.

    i didnt buy into the sl/sl spec in tbc either. mainly only pvping most people thought i was nuts but i just couldnt stomach the playstyle. it was one of the most boring and uneventful specs ive ever experienced. theres absolutely nothing appealing, to me mind you, about running around in a 2v2 or 3v3 arena match and dotting a couple targets and casting drain life over and over again with a shadowbolt thrown in basically only when nightfall would proc.

    as such i went full demo and specced 0/41/20. i did 2's with a disc priest s1 and s2 and managed to stay in the 2-2.1k arena rating and only barely missing the gladiator cutoff =( i also did 3's with the same priest and an amazing bm hunter, we also were in the 2-2.1k arena range, sadly we all took and extended break during the middle of s3 and mostly quit up until the end of tbc and when wrath was getting ready to launch.

  6. #46
    Spam Shadowbolt
    No DR on Fear

  7. #47
    Warlocks were only used for summons, imp buff for tanks, and debuffs on boss/adds. Warlock damage was so unreliable for a couple of reasons, debuff limit(8 for first couple of tiers and 16 later on) and particularly for horde, no salvation or threat dumps. No serious high end raid guild brought shadow priests for the same reasons. Shadow weaving (shadow priest debuff)was a must for a locks to do well which was another debuff slot used. You used the debuff slots for tanks, dps warriors and rogues/mages which all blew locks/shadow priests out the water until AQ40 set/naxx 40 gear was farmed.

    Im sure there were quit a few casual guilds that used locks and shadow priests but they were basically a waste of the debuff slots until they raised the cap to 16. Even then you still had dots and such get knocked off the list. Farm/nerfed content and PvP for both shadow and locks was a whole different story though.
    Last edited by Gsara; 2013-07-10 at 08:31 PM.

  8. #48
    Deleted
    One of the things I remember most about early TBC was the tailoring robe (and some other pieces). It simply had pure +shadow damage and was slightly better then T5. This was ridiculously OP in the first months of TBC when going through T4 raids and was still a major boost in T5.

    As for locks in general, I "fondly" remember dragging dozens of people through the dps check of Black Morass to attune them to Kara. Warlocks were very high dps at the start, middle of pack during T4 and T5 and just shredded meters in T6 with the shadowbolt spam.

    As for Vanilla, our dps was decent. I could top meters in MC, but only because the other players were pretty bad. Once we had some good players as rogues, wars and mages I never stood a chance. I recently dug up a longish post I wrote about which locks to bring to raids based on debuffs (CoE, CoS, CoR) and Healthstone ranks. That was pretty much my entire argument to bring multiple locks in a freaking 40 man raid. Prio on debuffs was CoE and CoR for mage / melee and CoS was only viable if we had 4 locks, otherwise we were allowed to use the debuff slot for a single Doom.
    Being the lock officer I could be the Doom guy most of the time. This also led to our first Baron Geddon kill with my Doom doing the final hit, spawning a Doomguard that killed off the tank. Good times.

  9. #49
    Deleted
    Funny how u all mention the shadowbolt spam.

    1. immolate was worth casting even back then, if you picked the emberstorm talent (which you could, unless you wanted 5% mana cost reduced on spells, but lifetap wasnt a problem once it started scaling with spell dmg).
    2. was mage rotation any different? fireball spam / frostbolt spam = same shit.

  10. #50
    Brewmaster dawawe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zylos View Post

    The guild i joined even told me "no tier 3 for warlocks...giving it to everyone else first" and because i didnt have my 8 piece set tier 2 bonus (reduced destruction spell threat ie shadowbolt, by 20%) they wouldnt let me do certain things others could (like dps the boss on twin emps).
    This is all in vanilla of course and the spec was usually 30/0/21 (SM/RUIN) unless you needed imp healthstone like i mentioned earlier.

    How did they not give locks their tier? it was pieces that dropped not tokens and only locks could use it.

    OT: BC 0/21/30 shadowbolt spam for life

  11. #51
    Bloodsail Admiral Kanariya's Avatar
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    Don't listen to anyone that says Warlocks were bad or did bad damage in Vanilla. It's so inaccurate it really just shows they just didn't know how to play at all back then.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wraend View Post
    Ah, SM/Ruin...I loved that spec. Though I seem to remember another that was good for awhile that I haven't seen mentioned, 9/21/21. Anyone remember that one? 9 afflic for instant corruption and some other stuff, 21 demo for...sacrifice pet I believe? And 21 destro for ruin still.
    Yeah, DS/Ruin, which was better than SM/Ruin when you were in a minimum of full AQ40 gear. It wasn't as good as SM/Ruin prior though. 9 points was for Improved Life Tap.

    Quote Originally Posted by dawawe View Post
    How did they not give locks their tier? it was pieces that dropped not tokens and only locks could use it.
    Tier 3 drops were tokens.

  12. #52
    * Conflagrate was a 31 point talent and consumed immolate when used, weird
    * Corruption had a cast time if you didn't spend 5 talent points on it, really weird
    * Doomguard required a ritual with 3 or 4 player and one of them died at ritual ending
    * Warlocks used to release Infernals to run rampant in IF killing lowbies with their aoe aura
    and so on...

  13. #53
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Nivis View Post
    Actually, in Naxx, I played Fire-Destro with Searing Pain Spam.
    Oh how much fun it was - for me. Damage was competitive, though.
    Searing Pain? Sure thing.. troll .

    Quote Originally Posted by Kanariya View Post
    Don't listen to anyone that says Warlocks were bad or did bad damage in Vanilla. It's so inaccurate it really just shows they just didn't know how to play at all back then.



    Yeah, DS/Ruin, which was better than SM/Ruin when you were in a minimum of full AQ40 gear. It wasn't as good as SM/Ruin prior though. 9 points was for Improved Life Tap.



    Tier 3 drops were tokens.
    Exactly, i got no Problems with my T3 Atiesh Lock to Top the Meters

    And yeah till AQ/Naxx we where simly Mid field.

    </3 Rolling Ignite

  14. #54
    Vanilla - You were brought for cookies, summons, Blood Pact and Curse of the Elements. And Shadowbolt spam, I suppose. PvP was pretty fun, but nothing too crazy.

    BC - SL/SL started wrecking things in PvP, and was a really awesome farming spec. Dark Pact Aff in T4 and T4, back to Shadowbolt spam for T6.

  15. #55
    Deleted
    I remember the synergy between shadow priests and warlocks was quite good in classic.

  16. #56
    Deleted
    I can't comment on TBC as I quit just before it came out, but I raided all through vanilla in a guild called Forte (if anyone remembers it) and we got several EU firsts in 40 man Naxx and were always in the world top 3-5 kills. Anyways, it was terrible. All the locks in our guild had to be MD/ruin. That's master demonologist (a demonolgy talent that gave you different buffs depending on what demon out) and ruin in destro (make your crits 100% increase instead of 50%).

    The problem was downtime, we had super small mana pools and went oom first of all casters, life tap didn't scale at all yet and a HUGE chunk of every fight was spent lifetapping lifetapping lifetapping. We raided with probably 3-4 warlocks on average, and none of us ever broke the top 10 damage meters in any regular fight. In some gimmick fights I remember topping the meters (like that wizard guy in Naxx that split the raid in 2 half on each side of a gate, forget the name...) and you won't even believe the pride that gave me back then. On tank and spank fights like patchwerk though we're talking doing half the damage of mages/rogues/hunters (if that).

    I honestly raided super hardcore back then for 5-6 nights a week and people saying we were competitive back then make me laugh! If only you were there to teach all our warlocks how to play back then. :P

  17. #57
    Oh how I loved to get into the group consisting of me, 2 other warlocks, a shadow priest and a resto shaman in Sunwell

  18. #58
    Many people think in TBC that you had do so the Shadow Bolt spam build, but in honestly Affliction worked well till Hyjal and BT and Demon was top with Destro SB spam the whole time, but of course the majority of the people picked the easy way and made it seem the best or only way.

  19. #59
    Bloodsail Admiral Bad Ashe's Avatar
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    my lock was horrible in vanilla times. basically i was carried through everything in exchange for farming soulstones all day to summon everyone to the raid...

    ok, so it wasnt THAT bad. but it felt like it sometimes.
    Last edited by Bad Ashe; 2013-07-14 at 02:50 AM.

  20. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by jackvii View Post
    A lot of raiders wound up switching to Rank 4 shadowbolt to reduce the lifetapping since spellpower scaling was good enough that you'd only lose about 60dps by downranking. About 90% of warlock spells scaled terribly until WotLK, hence the predominant shadowbolt spam.

    Warlocks were pretty terrible throughout Vanilla, especially if you were on a pvp server. Pets would despawn because they couldn't keep up with a lvl 40 mount and there was no limit to pushback so a hunter could essentially shut you down by auto attacks + Brokentooth. My 1-60 experience was a hardship I'd never like to repeat.
    Pet part is an exaggeration, yes early on pets couldn't keep up and would despawn, but that was fixed before BWL was even out iirc. Past that, pets could keep up with even epic ground mounts so long as they didn't get dazed. The real annoying part was flight points, pets despawning and having to basically go through the two - three minute summon pet and buff up ritual to start farming shards. Once the lock lvl 50 quest was put in though, you could pick up an abyssal shard trinket which lessened the pain of that all the way to WotLK. The push back problem wasn't warlock specific either, every caster had that issue.
    Still warlocks weren't completely awful, a smart warlock could literally kite a warrior or rogue while running around naked with corruption and siphon life in vanilla. For quite awhile you could seduce, soulfire, rinse and repeat, then when the dr was introduced you could add fear in there. Up until patch 1.10, I think it was, fear had a pretty low chance to break on damage and had a baseline 30 second duration.
    Granted vanilla wasn't roses and sunshine for warlocks, BUT, vanilla wasn't roses and sunshine for anyone really. Mages had one raiding spec for the longest time. Warriors had ONE ability to use while tanking. Rogues had to stun lock other players in pvp or they'd die, AND warriors kept stealing their gear, and rogues were also super squishy to any boss that sneezed, not to mention poisons and barman shanker fickle mechanics. Priests were literally built to be fed druid innervates. Druids only existed to give priests innervate, if you thought feral was a mess pre-MoP between cat and bear talents mashed into one tree, the original feral tree was all four roles a druid could perform mashed into the feral tree, there was literally twice as many places to spend points than were available by the time you hit 60. Balance's top tier talent was hurricane, and it was a 10 second cast, when you finished the cast it then became a drop and forget. Literally none of the points you put into restoration actually helped your healing, but you needed to spec into it in order to get innervate.
    So ya, in general vanilla sucked for everyone (in comparison to today), warlocks weren't special in being worst off than others. You know what though, for the most part everyone was fine and enjoyed Vanilla while it was current. There were passionate posts and arguments about making changes that we've come to know in game today, and the game got better, and the QoL for everyone got better.
    What are you willing to sacrifice?

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