Has anyone done it? The imps just overwhelm our mage and all the guides and how-to's refer to using a warlock for Seed of Corruption. We currently do not have any kara keyed/equiped warlocks so we're looking for other strats. We can get Illhoof to about 40%.

We didn't have locks when we first took him down. However, our mage had some sick amount of fire gear on, so literally, the imps never touched him. He just sat there doing his aoe and got the occassional heal over time tossed his way for the 1-2 pts of dmg the fireballs were doing to him. Get your mage over 300 fire resist and you should be ok.

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Have you tried having a paladin with Rightous Fury and no salv gather them so the mage can AOE them without taking a lot of damage?

Yeah I've done this fight without a lock, but we had a pally tanking.

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Yea, Pally tank and Mages/Hunters AEing can work. Just be sure everyone stands just outside of the circle in the middle so the imps are close enough to hit consecration and be AE'd easier. Concentrate on killing Illhoof and don't even worry about his pet. He'll die from the AE easy enough. And of course, be sure to kill the Demon Chains the second they appear around someone (/target demon macro works wonders).

Yeah I've done it on my hunter without a lock (with a pally tank), but we ALWAYS focus on Kilrik or whatever the shit's name is. Order of priority is: Demonic chains > Kilrek > Illhoof, and I make a target macro for the chains because that shit has to go down ASAP. When on Kilrek or Illhoof, I'd multishot when it came up, and AoE shoot when the imps seemed to get rather plentiful, but my main focus was dpsing the shit out of the fight.

I also used a scorpid pet and kept it on Illhoof/Kilrek the entire time, never putting it on chains (takes too long to go to it, and I want it keeping up the poison).

Hope that helps, but the biggest thing seems to be with a pally keeping agro on the imps so that mages and others can get down the imps as needed, and having enough dps to do the fight as quickly as possible.

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Shaman fire pet is immune to fire, they're quite useful on this fight.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

i used to do this with my warlock who was affliction speced. Just have him/her only target illhoof and put the dots and seed on him only. Soon as you seed you recast right away, it will go off before you get the next cast off. its how we did it. if i had to stop and life tap we had a hunter or mage ae til i could tap back to full and then i jsut repeated what i did before. Pretty easy to pull off, its makes it alot easier if the lock has a paly in his group for concentration aura.

Can be done with a mage who has a good amount of + damage but we never did it that way.

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Well, the obvious way is to have the Warlock(s) just cast seed on Illhoof, but I don't think the original poster has a Warlock available.

Obviously, reason for the


smart guy


you guys can try this is you have alot of rogues and dps wars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDplbwmGAf0

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This is the group that has gotten us past everything except the dragons and Illhoof.

Prot Warrior
Feral Druid (tank)
Resto Druid
Holy Priest
Holy Pally
Fire Mage
Elemental Shaman
Rogue
Marksman Hunter
BM Hunter

We didn't try it last night but will go back there this weekend. Our shaman was available this past weekend for Illhoof but I thought the fire pet wasn't controllable, ie it just aggros on whatever is near by.

I was thinking of respecing for improved barrage just to get the 100% chance to not be interrupted during volley but between that and explosive traps, I'm not sure if that would be enough damage to help the mage out. If we can find a lock, we would probably just replace the BM hunter.

It's not controllable, but if you drop it away from Illhoof/Big Imp (only things that can kill it) you increase the chances of it aggroing on little imps where it will proceed to destroy them.

And in addition to the fire pet, an Elemental Shaman's AoE is respectable (fire nova/magma totem) but without a Shadow Priest he'll be out of mana in short order.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

It isn't, but it regularly spits out an AoE. But.....it also won't last long enough for people that are just learning/doing this encounter before it poofs. The cooldown on it doesn't make it that attractive of an option. Bump up your mage's fire resist. You'll be surprised how easy they are to deal with for him once that is done.

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is this fight worth having one of your locks spec destro? we have 3 locks but all are UA.

No fight is worth having a warlock spec destruction.

It's more about having a warlock just show up.

How could they not? I love seeing those numbers scroll by. heh.

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Going full destruction is not worth it at all. I went 0-40-21(which is alot better then full dest with the xtra crit, 10% shadow bonus damage from your succy, and roughly 200 more spell damage) for a while and it was nice having 1430 shadow bonus after i did it and had the 7k Sb crits but meh, if a mob resisted a SB i felt it on the meters.

I went back to full affliction 42/8/11 as are the other 3 locks in our guild and at the end of boss fights its 1.2.3 locks at the tops of the meters with the 4th one whos got malediction at 6th or so. pretty much 1 2 3 locks on the clear up to the boss. Destruction is fine for when yuo want to see the big numbers scroll by, but it does not beat a geared aff lock out.

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Destruction at the higher end can be and often is, superior to affliction.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Hahahahahahahahaha.

No.

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Maybe not "superior", but it can definitely do adequate DPS and can outdamage Mages.

What's laughable is this is coming from someone who thinks the mana returned by Shadow Priests is just a nice perk. I won't bother linking WWS reports this time around as they just get conveniently ignored anyways.

All things being equal or nearly equal, 'fast' damage is better than 'slow' damage, one would think that'd be obvious but clearly is not the case.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

The reason I don't put a lot of faith in the "It is better later" arguments is usually by the time you can gear up enough to make those kinds of specs work, you're already at the end of the content so it doesn't really matter.

Sure you can move over to destruction when you got the top of the line gear on farm to make any spec work and fine tune your role, but that isn't the case here.

I see the same shit happen with hunters, and how they sing the praise of survival spec early on before a decent set of gear is avalable and they end up gimping themselves and their raid damage while singing the praises of some silly debuff that while helpfull somewhat, will not make or break the raid the way doing sub par DPS does..

Sounds familiar tho....Oh yeah, the ignorance of the ret pally.

well we have one lock who was casting drain life as dpssssssss

given the right talents, drain life can be dps ;p

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Destruction is at best marginally better, and it gimps your ability to do much else besides raid. Affliction just has too many uses outside raiding.

Sarissa Candyangel

we run our raids with 4 aff locks, with all of us having full dots on the mobs in 25 mans and with imp drain life we tick 1k damage per second with drain life. SO with 1200 shadow bonus and higher drain life is really nice for dps when you know you will not have time to get that last shadow bolt off when the mob hits 25%.

And like givin said a destruction locks with the GEAR to make it work can keep up somewhat with a affliction lock but by the time he gets it, its a bit late. To make it work you need to have 28% or so spel crit to make it worth it. Ill keep my affliction build and enjoy rocking the meters.

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I don't understand this. When I did Illhoof as the only AoE'r or with another Mage, the issue was never about dying, it was about a total lack of mana efficiency when AoEing compared to Seed of Corruption. So it was easy to burn through all of your mana. Granted I haven't done Karazhan in a long ass time, so maybe something has changed. That fight was terrible without a Warlock though.

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Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

Seed of Corruption might be my favorite spell in any mmo, ever.

I never said it was 'only a nice perk', in regards to mana restoration. in fact I had to correct you twice in that thread for misstating what I was saying, in a thread which was primarily about PvP changes. For the record and stated bluntly for the retarded: Yes mana restoration is great in really long fights, that's why my Spriest is in mage groups in really super long fights. But as I said multiple times in that thread SHORT TERM...is quite different.

But hey...attack the person on a completely different and old topic when you can't pony up actual evidence. I'd LOVE to see your WWS showing that destruction locks OFTEN ARE SUPERIOR to affliction. That's what you said, and it's utter bullshit.

It's laughable. Hence multiple people laughing at that statement.

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Soooo OP. Warlocks in general though are just unbelievably OP. Though I have warlock friends seriously bitching about the patch changes, in that other classes are getting nice things, and they're not. All mages getting ice block I think is kinda bullshit...but my opinion seems to be somewhat minority since they're too squishy without it in arenas I guess. It will be interesting to see what happens with mage specs after that change though, I wonder if the shift will be back to fire (I suspect it will be).

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Arcane is dead in 2.3. Most everyone will shift back to Fire, some may go Frost for some utility stuff. I myself will try Frost again just to see how it compares to Fire. If it's a lot worse than Fire, I'll switch back to it.

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Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

I wouldnt say that we are OP. Yeah we can dish out some ncie dps in raids now, pre bc we had to goprettymuch SM/Ruin in order to be top notch dps on raids. pre BC we were the shit in BGs now unless we spec a Hybrid spec with soul link in it we are very squishy in pvp, especialy with the changes being made to Drain life with MS effecting it and would poisons, we cant drain tank warriors anymore.

Way im looking at it if a warlock is just handing your ass to you all the time in pvp either you are going against a well geared and pvp speced lock or the person complaining just sucks ass lol. I do well in pvp and can dish out some pretty nice numbers on raids, but i am far form overpowered. Nothing id like to complain about with my class, i love it the way it is,, but i think im far from OP.

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Here's what I know.

We got to Illhoof and had no lock in guild (which is what led to me leveling one). So we read up on the fight and one of our mages decided to give the fight a try with super high fire resist. We didn't really have many other options at that point. We dropped him first try doing it that way. I don't think it was a question of him KILLING them fast. Just getting their attention to keep them off the rest of the raid and the fact their fireballs weren't touching him.

It wasn't long after that we finally had locks up and ready to go, and it is a total no brainer to use a lock if you have one, but I know the fight is doable with a fire resist buffed mage. I will admit that this particular mage is probably our best geared guy short of the guild leader himself, but it is doable. I think the combo of us having some really sick dps numbers + a well geared mage made that fight doable. We went all out because we knew we had to. While it has been some time since we had to do the fight that way, I don't remember it being a case of "wow, we squeeked by on that!". It was a nice clean kill.

Still, if a lock makes that fight a cake walk. 2? it may as well be renamed "chess2".

I'll ask the mage in question more about his gear and role in that fight when we did it that way.

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Here's what he said:

He has 350 FR fully raid buffed for that fight.
He has a second tier arcane tree talent called Magic Absorption to all 5 levels.
He'd down rank Arcane explosion to keep attention on him without burning high mana cost spells

Still, he stressed that the arcane talent was the key. Even with that, he'd go through 3 mana stones and a magic pot before the end of the fight.

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Who's laughing? All I see is Givin, Sarrisa, Lich Ekilam admitting it has merit albeit with the difference not being huge.

So even if the damage was comparable (and I still contend destruction pulls away the better geared you get), I'll take 'fast' damage and more available debuff slots any day of the week.

As for some WWS reports, here you go:
http://wowwebstats.com/zx2o2om36ie1u?s=9513-9815
http://wowwebstats.com/sacgwuefbzx5g?s=995-1183
http://wowwebstats.com/ftargafn3bez3?s=4292-4545
http://wowwebstats.com/mqcotiwhq4m6m?s=4207-4563

Hilarious stuff I know.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I wish this thread would stop getting new posts, I always hope theres something interesting to read but then it's just this thread.

=(

2.3 tomorrow. I am sure we'll see some posts more entertaining than Tarot's Warlock "expertise" soon enough.

I'm actually enjoying this thread because my lock just hit 49 and I was considering respeccing after playing around with a felguard for a while. I'm on a PvP server and considered destro for being more effective, but I imagine once I'm 70, I'll want to raid...so sounds like aff is the way to go. I just wanna keep hearing the discussion tho...

I'm still a die hard demonology lock.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Gonna relay this info and see what happens. Thanks, Rugen.

Van, did you fill the tree, or did you stop at 41 pts then go somewhere else?

I'm at 12/43/0

Maxed out top tier in demonology for more stamina from the imp, more stamina added to base, and better healthstones.
Second tier is empty.
Fel Domination, Fel Stamina, and Fel Aegis are full.
Master Summoner and Unholy Power are full.
Demonic Sacrifice
Mana Feed and Master Demonologist are full.
Soul Link and Demonic Knowledge (full)
Demonic Tactics is full.
Felguard (dur)

Affliction talents are just a mishmash atm. 5/5 imp corruption, 2/2 soul siphon and imp life tap, 1 in suppression, and 2 in fel concentration.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

LOL, I feel ya homie. I hate it when that shit happens.

Following Rugen's advice, we bought up any FR gear we could find on the AH. Stacking Flask of Chromatic Wonder and a shaman's Fire Resist Totem, we got his FR to 260. At about 30% or so, the mage went down because he was unlucky enough to get Kil'Rek's amplify debuff. We got Terestian to around 19%.

The second time around we got him to 24% but that was 9-manning it since our Shadow Priest DC'd at around 75% and never came back. I think we'll get him during the next run.

Have any from Kara level locks, where it is NOT even close to equal? Of course you don't. Destruction spec for end game locks (ones doing BT as in those WWS) can be quite worthwhile. For warlocks respec'ing to it for Illhoof (Kara level locks) it is not, and is a laughable statement.

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It's ok to admit you are wrong, Tarot. He said "at the higher end," you laughed and said "no," he proved it, you now act like the conversation was about Kara, when it never was.

I have no problems admitting when I'm wrong Neesha, which happens quite a bit as I'm human. However I was talking about Kara, the thread is about Kara, Givin even said it's not worth respec'ing destruction for Kara...and destruction doesn't become really viable (IMHO) until very very end game. And my comments were directed at that. Especially since 'destruction at the higher end' to me meant specialization not "at Black Temple".

If they're saying 'hey destruction becomes viable around black temple when you have the gear to support it" then sure, okay I agree, and it's completely OT regarding Illhoof and Kara which is what I'm refering to.

Additionally that poster, the original one (who reminded me by bringing up the issue when they played the 'you don't know shit about your spriest' card) continually strawmanned what I said about vamp and shadow priests jumping back and forth between pvp/pve and various bosses. What is true in one circumstance doesn't necessary follow for others. IE mana regen is very nice for certain fights...like Gruul (though a shadow priest isn't raid essential, it's nice to have). In other instances it's not as meaningful. The dynamic is pretty easy, the longer the fight the better it works out, so for short fights...it's not really important. Though that's a rather old thread, and one I had to dig to find, I thought it funny they brought it up.

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Whatever you say, boss. I took "at the higher end" to mean "at the higher end of raiding." I'd be curious to see who thought "at the higher end" meant "when you get more talent points in it". My guess is 2 people, tops, in this thread (you being one and someone else who just wants to side with you).

Ah Neesha, you're always so quick to think the best of people. Too bad I can't post a picture for you here too.

Given the fact that I really don't have a problem admitting when I'm wrong (and me being wrong, is hardly a rare event ), and my reputation...I'm betting most people will take me at face value. If they don't, oh well.

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Even at the higher end, being dps viable in destruction does not counterbalance the loss in utility vs affliction unless all you do is raid. End game gear just lets you be different without enduring raid leaders complaints about gimped (but still disgustingly high) dps.

Sarissa Candyangel

Well, I'd have to say that pvp spec and raid spec are two very different beasts. Though with some classes it's easier than others to compromise a bastardization between them. My spriest's spec is a bastardization which isn't optimal for raiding, but doesn't gimp me for it either. The biggest compromise was putting the points in blackout instead of spirit tap. I still argue spirit tap is fucking useless, but I also am not a big fan of spirit (while shadow, though even not shadow I think most people overrate it). However that's a YMMV, since I know really good spriests who violently disagree with me over spirit tap.

Anyhoo, once you're at that point, destruction isn't just viable in a 'well you can get away with it' way, but based on my understanding has some benefits that make it good, for raiding. But I think people should tweak their spec. to what they're doing most often anyway, but I know not everyone has that freedom since some guilds mandate what they require.

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At the higher end does not mean Kara, under any circumstance. So yeah, you're wrong Tarot. Kara isn't even mid-end. heh. It's more like the hind-end.

Tarot explained earlier that she thought "higher end" meant when you reached 70 and put more points into the build.

It's absolutely priceless you went here in an attempt to save face but there's two problems.

One, Givin never said "it's not worth respec'ing destruction for Kara". Givin said:

Now Givin may very well have intended that to be applied just towards Karazhan but by itself, it's a rather absolute statement and my comment served to clarify that. So although the thread started life about Karazhan, comments were made that extended beyond Karazhan, however unintentional.

Two, the fact that you read Givin's response to my statement (you paraphrased it, as seen above) would imply you understood the argument at hand. That is, T5/T6 destruction stands to be equal or greater than T5/T6 affliction.

So to recap, you read my response to you laughing, you read Givin's response (and likely the reponse by Lich Ekilam) and then responded with:

At this point in the discussion, it's would seem painfully clear to any bystander (and surely a participant) that it's about gear levels and not some nonsense argument about 'partial' tree or 'full' tree builds.

So either you're unable to follow a straightforward discussion or you're too prideful to admit you jumped on the 'lolz, destro sux newb' bandwagon prematurely.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I was merely talking about nether protection ;x

I'm sure the thread needs to die, but honestly to answer the question.. No need to do Illhoof with Destro locks period.. Affliction is fine, actually more than adequate as the locks should simply be spamming SoC for the imps.. then just DPS the chains down if someone gets sacced. /target Illhoof SoC Soc dot dot FTW.. The guild i'm in we run with 4 locks maybe 5 and 2 are Destro and 2 are Affliction due to the imp Weakness and Malediction. I'm one of the affliction locks.. Chrnic is our other affliction lock and he despises destro.


Madoran is such a backwater server

Ihnzo
Contra

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I love my way under geared warlock but this thread has convinced me to give affliction a go. Haven't tried it yet and apparently I'm missing out.

So you're claiming that you believe Givin's statement about respec'ing for the Illhoof fight, where he said "No fight is worth respecing destruction" means 'No fight in all of WoW' and not specifically to what he was commenting to.

Okaaaaay. Not the way I read it at all. I could then turn around and use the same argument you are using, which is 'Either you're a fucktard for thinking that or a liar, which is it'...but I'm not a fan of when did you stop beating your wife fallacies.

Clearly it's not the way I read it. Then you clarify saying your statements are CLEARLY about T5/6 gear. If so, there'd be no need to clarify it, you could simply quote yourself and say 'See here...it's crystal clear'. It's not. Again I could play the same card you are, either you're stupid or lying which is it? Or can it simply be that you were thinking that when framing your statements, but didn't clarify it?

Perhaps it is clear in your posts...it wasn't to me however. And despite Neesha's "helpfulness" at trying to rephrase what I said, he once again is incorrect. I'm not stating that I think 'higher end destruction' is the points you get at 70 finally. Merely that with all specializations there's point distribution. For example the build I intend to play my warlock in (which may change) has 11 points in destruction IIRC. No one would even imply it's a destro build though, and those 11 points are common enough to toss in. And there's people who balance the points on specs choosing not to go to 41 in any one branch. So I took your comment as someone who was deep in the destruction tree (around 41 points or so). Because otherwise I'd use the term 'end game' not 'higher end destruction', but that's just me.

Here's the thing that's funny though. If I had simply been wrong, or jumped the gun, or 'bandwagoned' (but there was no real bandwagon...but whatever) look how easy it is to type this: Hey good points. I was completely wrong on that, thanks for pointing that out to me. Can you explain more about X, I'm really interested to see why Z is viable, etc.

It's not hard. In fact, I do it just as much as anyone else...ehhh maybe a little bit more than others. But certainly more often than a lot of people seem to think. Instead I've explained where I'm coming from. If you think that makes me stupid and feel you somehow win by claiming so...so be it. If you want to believe I'm a liar, hey that's up to you I can't really win an argument of 'IS NOT, IS TOO' and have little desire to engage in it. Other than suggesting you use your brain there.

And just one more thing, I'm willing to take you at your word you were thinking of end game scenarios, but that's not viable for most people playing World of Warcraft anyway. So it's like saying...investing in sports rather than education is a poor move, and you say it's about equal...then give some sports guy who makes a very good living as your example. Sure it's applicable in highly limited circumstances...but most things are. For 99.9% of the rest of the time? No.

Anyhoo...Surcam says



Affliction is very nice, and this is the build I'm thinking I'll go with...but I may tinker with it some. Demonology is also very nice, but it all depends really on what you're doing. Also if you can stomach pvp, there's really nice gear you can get with honor points (cloth belt, boots, wrist, neck, ring), you can tailor shadowweave set (very nice shadow robe, shoulders, boots) and if you get an arena team, the arena gear isn't bad at all. And the new heroic badge loot is extremely nice.

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