Out of curiosity, how did warlocks perform best in vanilla and TBC?

[Deleted]

I didn't play in vanilla and only joined late in TBC with a paladin, and with the MoP revamp the class has undeniably changed away from the original class.

so, how did warlocks work? I once heard a passing reference to the 0/31/30 playstyle being best, but what was that exactly? and were there alternatives that performed better or worse?

[Dhrizzle]

Warlocks performed pretty poorly in vanilla; we did pretty low damage for high mana and threat (when compared to mages) plus life-tap didn't scale with gear so you needed to use it every two or three shadow-bolts when mana got low. Also there was a very low limit to the number of debuffs the raid could put on a boss so the DoTs didn't really work. Mostly they were taken for Curse of Elements (which only affected Fire, Frost and Nature back then; Curse of Shadow was for Shadow, Arcane and Holy), Soulstones and the occasional Banish.

In TBC the spec was 0-21-40, taking Demonic Sacrifice from the demonology tree and Shadow and Flame from destruction to make our nukes hit as hard as possible. The other key component was Improved Shadow Bolt which put a debuff on the mob that increased shadow damage by 20%. The optimal build was to take 3 or 4 warlocks to ensure the debuff was always up. Combining it with Curse of Shadow and a Shadow-Priests' Shadow Weaving (which I think was 15% more shadow damage taken) made shadow bolts hit like a truck. By the time you were nearly in full tier 5 the DoTs had become pretty worthless so you only used CoDoom or Shadow and spammed shadow bolts.

Most important was the synergy with Shadow Priests - back then they restored health and mana based on how much damage they did.

[Azutael]

Well, it was hell in classic. We where usually only brought along for summons, healthstones, soulstones, banish and curse of elements/shadow.
Otherwise we weren't all that great PvE wise :P

Things got better with the sick gear from AQ and naxx though, and in TBC we got to shine more in PvE.

[Khiyone]

@Dhrizzle

No, the 21/0/40 spec invested 21 points in Affliction for Shadow Mastery (increased shadow damage by 15%), and 40 points in Destruction (allowing you to get Ruin); there were no points invested in Demonology.
Improved Shadow Bolt didn't increase shadow damage, it increased Shadow Bolt damage and put a debuff on the opponent that increased your critical strike chance by 5% on that particular target for 30 seconds. . . Did you play a warlock in TBC?

It was easily the best DPS spec in the game (or, failing that, the best burst specialization). I've seen 13.5k Shadow Bolt criticals in a video.

[Schmeebs]

Press Shadowbolt.

Thats playing a warlock in Vanilla and BC.

[Thelxi]

Shadow bolt shadow bolt shadow bolt

[xuros]

''Warlocks performed pretty poorly in vanilla; we did pretty low damage for high mana and threat (when compared to mages) plus life-tap didn't scale with gear so you needed to use it every two or three shadow-bolts when mana got low. Also there was a very low limit to the number of debuffs the raid could put on a boss so the DoTs didn't really work. Mostly they were taken for Curse of Elements (which only affected Fire, Frost and Nature back then; Curse of Shadow was for Shadow, Arcane and Holy), Soulstones and the occasional Banish.''

??????? Warlocks did excellent damage in vanilla with SM/Ruin. Was one of the top damage classes in the game then along side combat rogues. Then when 2.0 talent came about you could go deep demonology for the fel guard and really tear shit up. Sucked when he died to AE though. I paid a healer stacks of mana pots before raids to keep it alive ).

[Deleted]

TBC: Shadowbolt spam.

I liked Affliction best...and luckily my guild allowed us to play what we prefered.

I was the same, spent karazhan as demonology, went affliction when we hit Gruul, went SB spam spec once we hit BT.

Was a fun time.

[Dhrizzle]

@Dhrizzle

No, the 21/0/40 spec invested 21 points in Affliction for Shadow Mastery (increased shadow damage by 15%), and 40 points in Destruction (allowing you to get Ruin); there were no points invested in Demonology.
Improved Shadow Bolt didn't increase shadow damage, it increased Shadow Bolt damage and put a debuff on the opponent that increased your critical strike chance by 5% on that particular target for 30 seconds. . . Did you play a warlock in TBC?

It was easily the best DPS spec in the game (or, failing that, the best burst specialization). I've seen 13.5k Shadow Bolt criticals in a video.

That might have been the spec used in Kara before gaining enough hit rating to use Destro properly, but the combination of SnF and DS was much better than just Shadow Mastery. You're thinking of a later version of Imp. Shadow Bolt, from vanilla to the end of TBC it was a shadow damage debuff.

http://www.gamestool.net/tc/wow243/warlockt.php

??????? Warlocks did excellent damage in vanilla with SM/Ruin. Was one of the top damage classes in the game then along side combat rogues. Then when 2.0 talent came about you could go deep demonology for the fel guard and really tear shit up. Sucked when he died to AE though. I paid a healer stacks of mana pots before raids to keep it alive ).

Not for PvE; we burned through mana too fast, had no threat reduction and our abilities scaled nowhere near as well as a mages, mostly because DoTs didn't gain any benefit from gear.

[Zylos]

??????? Warlocks did excellent damage in vanilla with SM/Ruin. Was one of the top damage classes in the game then along side combat rogues. Then when 2.0 talent came about you could go deep demonology for the fel guard and really tear shit up. Sucked when he died to AE though. I paid a healer stacks of mana pots before raids to keep it alive ).

Not sure what kind of guild you were in. Warlock dps was garbage compared to any other dps class. We had more downtime and the only class that could possibly beat us in threat was the top geared fire mage because he had control of the ignite stacks and was likely miles ahead on the dps meters. Any cutting edge fights a max of 3 warlocks would be brought (for 3 different healthstones), but many only wanted one (for curse of elements) or 2 (to get curse of shadow).

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.

Vanilla PvP was a different story though, warlocks were pretty strong with fear lasting up to 20 seconds and breaking randomly (not by damage), we also had more health than just about anyone in the game besides a top geared tank meaning unlike most we could survive those instant pyroblasts. Felhunter came with an innate huge chunk of spell resistance meaning he was basically immune to magic spells and would tear up most casters. Our dots were mostly strong enough to kill a person no matter what they did and even classes that stomped on us (warriors and rogues-more specifically undead rogues) would often fall over shortly after killing us.

TBC i did not play pve warlock but others have got it pretty much on the spot...spam shadowbolt.

PvP in tbc entailed us putting up dots and then casting drain life in a desperate attempt to kill us. Drain life and a full round of dots including siphon life (it was a 30 second dot then not a glyph and UA did not exist yet) was usually enough to keep us alive and even have our health go up despite them dpsing us. Then they nerfed Drain life and made it affected by mortal strike effects which was a 50% reduction in all healing done by it if up.

For the most part in arena, besides the drain life part, affliction plays much like it did today, your job was to put dots on everyone and wear them down. Back then it was often more succesful considering you also had drain mana and once a healer was oom they were pretty much oom. None of this huge mana regen you see today.

[Kowloon]

SM/Ruin was the best warlock spec back in the day.

[Lefeng]

Back in TBC I was pretty casual and mainly did BGs. Running with SL/SL (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warlock_builds/Level_70#SL_SL) I had crap damage but I was basically indestructible even in PvE gear.

[luckydevours]

TBC wasn't always spamming SB. Affliction was quite competitive in both T4 and T5 content.

[jackofwind]

Warlocks actually outscaled Mages with Naxx gear in Vanilla...and when you can tap for mana it doesn't really matter what your costs are. Anyone who says locks weren't top-three competitive PvE DPS in Vanilla is just wrong.

[Deleted]

It was SM/Ruin (Affliction/Destruction) in Vanilla and Shadow and Flame / Demonic Sacrifice (Destruction/Demonology) from mid to end of Burning Crusade.

I used to be a happy Healthstone-bot with purple Gear in Vanilla and a Shadow Bolt monster during Burning Crusade.

[Deleted]

Press Shadowbolt.
Thats playing a warlock in Vanilla and BC.

Actually, in Naxx, I played Fire-Destro with Searing Pain Spam.
Oh how much fun it was - for me. Damage was competitive, though.

[Schmeebs]

Warlocks actually outscaled Mages with Naxx gear in Vanilla...and when you can tap for mana it doesn't really matter what your costs are. Anyone who says locks weren't top-three competitive PvE DPS in Vanilla is just wrong.

that may theoretically be the case but you forgot one thing.
Rolling Ignites.

[Dhrizzle]

Vanilla PvP was a different story though, warlocks were pretty strong with fear lasting up to 20 seconds and breaking randomly (not by damage), we also had more health than just about anyone in the game besides a top geared tank meaning unlike most we could survive those instant pyroblasts. Felhunter came with an innate huge chunk of spell resistance meaning he was basically immune to magic spells and would tear up most casters. Our dots were mostly strong enough to kill a person no matter what they did and even classes that stomped on us (warriors and rogues-more specifically undead rogues) would often fall over shortly after killing us.

Do you remember when they first allowed spell-power to scale with spell damage and it was way over-buffed? Even as destro you could run around tab-targeting and spamming Corruption and CoAgony to watch players drop like flies. Also fun was when they fixed the imp so it had a one second cast time. Mine managed to keep pushing back a poly-ap-pyro-pom-pyro mage's first Pyroblast until the poly wore off and I could death-coil him. Admittedly he was an idiot as a singe Fire-blast could have taken down the imp but I was happy anyway.

PvP in tbc entailed us putting up dots and then casting drain life in a desperate attempt to kill us. Drain life and a full round of dots including siphon life (it was a 30 second dot then not a glyph and UA did not exist yet) was usually enough to keep us alive and even have our health go up despite them dpsing us. Then they nerfed Drain life and made it affected by mortal strike effects which was a 50% reduction in all healing done by it if up.

Destro 'lock with Nether Protection (full immunity to shadow and fire in TBC) would annihilate SL/SL 'locks, especially if their Felhound was attacking you and proccing Backlash. Sadly we were free kills to almost anything else on the battle-field but I did love it when I found a demo 'lock :-)

[Meleti]

SM/Ruin in classic. A 30/0/21 spec. Basically just DOT damage plus a crit Shadow Bolt damage bonus.

TBC was a mixed bag, but by the end Destruction was the best spec (and generally had a 1 spell rotation).

[l33t]

I personally loved drain-tanking mechanics on my Affliction lock during BC. Also, loved synergy of shadow priest's dot buffing my draintanking even more. Of course, SL/SL hybrids were doing a lot more damage in raids, but... just something very unique was in gameplay of Affliction in that times.