Levelling pet choice

[Skyy]

Hey guys. I half expect to just get "Blueberry" or "Voidwalker" as a response but still feel the need to ask.

At level 30 now, currents doing the Felhutner quest as I write this and wonder what your experiences are with levelling with a different pet.

Voidwalker has been my go to for the most part, but his aggro is practically non-existant. Even with both the single and AoE taunt, he can't hold aggro to save his life. I did 20-25 with Succubus (mostly because it was a ballache to get and i wanted to feel the worth) and noticed she did more damage. You'd expect this, sure, but considering Voidy can't hold aggro, is there much point in using him?

On this note, is improved voidwalker worth speccing? I don't feel like his threat is good enough to be improved near to a worthwhile standard. Then again, is this simply a case of me not DoTing up as much and being very careful about threat, even if mobs die slower?

Hope this wasn't too rambly. The Tl;DR is "Void... worth?"

Thanks!

[Shrax]

Hi, I'm currently a level 38 warlock and I believe I have some insights by now that can help you out.

I believe there is a bug on this server with aggro that is making the voidwalker seem worse than he really is, but I also believe I found a work-around.

I noticed that if I was the one to pull the mob (i.e. I pull with curse of agony), then I would almost always pull aggro. I could literally just cast CoA and just use drain life after that and I'd still somehow pull off my void.

However, if I instead let my void run up to the mob and body pull, I could then cast CoA, Siphon Life, Corruption, Immolate , and then spam Drain Life and not pull off it...

I believe there's a weird bug with threat where if the mob is moving the Void's torment doesn't always work right. I think if I pull the mob with CoA and it starts running towards me and the Void torments it while it is moving then it doesn't go through. I believe the void does snap aggro onto him briefly at the start from his first Autoattack (before dots get ticking) but then the void loses it quickly.

TL;DR: Try letting your void be the one to pull and see if that helps. You can get into a rhythm where you send your void to the next mob while you go to loot the one you just killed. That way, you aren't losing significant time waiting for the void to move to the mob.

If anyone else could test this theory out I'd appreciate getting more feedback. I have tested it for a few hours and it seems to be the case for me. I no longer have aggro problems with my void after this.

[Sham]

Succubus is a great pet for leveling. It has high DPS so you kill mobs faster. But what makes it shine is seduce ability. It helps alot against ganking which is frequent thing on Nostalrius. Someone attacked you when you're low? Seduce him, bandage, dot, fear, kill.

Warlock doesnt need tanking pet for leveling since he can always fear or just dot and drainlife till mob dead.

[Sunsi]

Demonology Specced, use VW, you should not be pulling the mobs off.

Affliction Specced, drain tanking, use FelHunter. Give you the best set of PVP options if you are jumped by a caster, more DPS than the VW, and the FH abilities are excellent on mob magic dots and debuffs.



Succubus is the highest DPS pet, but not overly so. It works against warriors mostly... but she has a bad habit of draining all her mana with Lash and Invis. This leaves you defenseless.

[Bioness]

I personally find the utility of a voidwalker to be too great to use another pet. I will occasionally run around d with a Felhunter if I'm not killing a bunch of mobs. The thing is with a Voidwalker I can chain kill mobs (even if I pull aggro off of it most of the time) and if I get attacked by another player I usually Sacrifice it and since I am specced both in affliction and demonology I just cast Fel Domination to get my pet of choice out while I have a ballin' shield up.

[Faceroller1337]

I play Warlock since release on this Server and the Voidwalker (pet aggro overall from hunters too) was fine you had no problems but after 2-3 weeks they changed the aggro scaling because it WAS a bug. So right now it's on vanilla scaling. Every Hunter/Warlock had problems with this.

[Numi]

Im currently leveling my 2nd warlock to 60 and after having the chance to play around with a few builds Ive found what I think is the best leveling build by far:

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IGMZbhh

You go affi to imp drain soul to aid regen, even though it isnt used much after 20 you still benefit from it if you dont interrupt your regen for it all the way to 60, making this talent one of the best in the entire tree.

After that you pick up improved void, this allows you to always run void without overaggroing unless you waste a lot of mana on nuking.

In general this build has given me a KPH (Kill per hour) of ~130 while farming mobs for levels. At level 33-34 I tried questing again, but it was almost twice as slow (4 hours per level while questing, 2 1/2 per level while grinding), so not sure what my game plan is for the next few levels.

The true test, level 37-40 where I had the most aggro issues while leveling my first warlock is still ahead of me, but Ill update in ~1 week when Ive passed it to let you know if it works as well even here.