Darkwinjax wrote:It's a terrible spec, you can even dispel soul link from the felhunter directly, skipping alot of buffs normally, since most warlocks retarded enough to play soul link are also retarded enough to not protect it with thrash buffs.
Lack of trash buffs is not the fault of the spec. That's the fault of the player. If you spec Soul Link you generally should drop Detect Invis and Unending Breath on your pet just for the dispel shields and if you want to go out of your way, you can drop a ton of shitty scroll buffs too. For alliance that's an extra effective protection against Shamans since their Purge is nature-based so it can get resisted, so if you Soul Link, then apply 4 trash scroll buffs (you could make it 6) and then put Detect Invis (iirc you might be able to stack multiple ranks of detect invis) and Unending Breath buffs on him, then a Shaman needs to get at least 4 successful purges off in order to remove Soul Link while your pet has 260 nature resist base (make sure to keep your pet out of melee). And then you can still recast Soul Link. For world PvP Soul Link is pretty solid since only a Priest could dispel that, but it's still a Priest, and even without SL you're still a Warlock with a Felhunter and MD bonus.
Ravni wrote:For about half of retail vanilla soul link was actually a 50% (!!!) dmg absorb and was a magic buff ability on the lock that could be directly purged/dispelled. Shortly before AQ opened (patch 1.8 w/ emerald world dragons) it was lowered to 30% and it could then only be dispelled from the pet, not the lock. Your pet could also just spam cast it off the gcd each time it got dispelled, so no big deal unless you were getting focused down as a flag carrier or something.
Not exactly. The 30% nerf, +3% damage addition, and pet-centered aura cast was done in 1.8, but making it undispellable on the Warlock wasn't done until 1.9 where they also nerfed Soul Linking anything other than your summoned pets (originally SL was meant to be used with enslaved demons, and the Doomguard and Infernal were envisioned as the ultimate Warlock pets, but at some point they started nerfing the shit out of Enslave Demon too during vanilla because reasons) because players were having too much fun combining the Gnomish Mind Control Cap with Soul Link. Originally it was also a 30 second Warlock buff that the Warlock had to cast.
It becomes non dispellable in TBC along with a nerf to 25% instead of 30% dmg reduction (I think, not sure)
It actually gets nerfed to 20% while the damage increase reaches +5%. On the other hand Fel Stamina gets buffed and increases your max health by another 3%, so effectively it is closer to a 25% SL compared to vanilla.
Drain wrote:Insecure ego trip.
Drain, we're not here to hear you bitch and moan about how you think you deserve more respect from a guy who gave you shit for recommending a weaker race pick and thinks SL is a shitty BG PvP spec. Stay on topic. Also, you don't need to go 9/31/11 or 20/31/0 as SL. It's possible to put 2 extra points into Improved Spellstone, for instance.
Ravni wrote:Oh that reminds me, banish also correctly removes soul link on this server. Curse of shadows + grenade on pet to avoid spelllock -> banish is very effective if the lock doesn't have 5-pc tier1/2 for resists (and/or shadow resist buff/aura on the felhunter). Banish seems to work for the full 30 seconds on pets once it lands even against high resists and I don't think I've ever seen a heartbeat resist on a banished pet. So it's basically game if you land it.
Assuming no other SR buffs, and with resist down to ~100 from CoS, the Felhunter only has about a 25% chance to resist, and you get 2x free banish casts from a grenade stun. This becomes more effective once you get 50+ spell penetration at later gear levels and enemy locks stop using 5pc tier2.
Felhunter has 185 SR with CoS on since SL's MD bonus also gives the Felhunter +60 resist. With 5/8 T2 it's still 305 resist. Banish is a very good counter, but a SL lock can return the favor and summon a second Felhunter (which can also get banished) or just summon an Imp and Soul Link it with Phase Shift and Blood Pact active so you can't Banish it. It's not the greatest SL combo (might do better with a Robe of the Void), but it certainly beats having no pet and no Soul Link. He can also just summon a Voidwalker and Demonic Sacrifice it for the 3% hp / 4 sec regen.
