Questions questions - but do you have the answers?

[Winstons]

Hi guys,

Despite having played vanilla back in the day with 3 characters, I have virtually no experience of how a Warlock really works. As such I have created a little low level one, and am very much enjoying this fun and complicated class. I have some questions for the wise hive-mind of the Warlock subforums. Please bear in mind I am only in my late 20s, character-wise.

1 - I'm struggling to understand the point of Immolate at this level, in PVP. With the two second casting time, and the low damage, is there an instance in which I would want to cast this rather than searing pain? When I am likely to be drain-tanking an enemy?

2 - Does anyone know of a macro command to toggle the autocast abiitiy of pets on and off? For example, I have pet attack bound to a key, but I don't want to keep right clicking the skill on the pet bar to turn the autocast on and off.

3 - That's it! Think of these questions as a two-pronged trident. A bi-dent, if you will.

[Numi]

1 - I'm struggling to understand the point of Immolate at this level, in PVP. With the two second casting time, and the low damage, is there an instance in which I would want to cast this rather than searing pain? When I am likely to be drain-tanking an enemy?

1. It's a DoT, Damager over time. It does more damage than searing pain. You'll never be drain tanking an enemy.

[Winstons]

Hiya dude. Yeah I was looking at this backwards. I was looking at DPS for whole spell duration including cast time, rather than just cast time. Late night posting - forgive me. It's just the 2 second cast time that bugs me a little bit.

[newtee2]

Immolate is a nice damage boost to cast on players for several reasons. Mages and druids dispel our curses which is a net damage reduction since agony deals good damage towards the end of its duration. And for the record I see a lot of mages not using fireward. When you are facing an opponent that has a lot of uptime on you (wars) it is good to get as many dots up as you can as you will be unable to cast any shadowbolts. Also for the simple reason of doing more and more damage. You want all of your dots up on a efc.

As for the 2s cast... the only spec that will have this cast is soul link nightfall. Sm ruin and ds ruin will have a 1.5s cast, and a 1.3 with pvp gear.

[sownu]

Hi guys,

Despite having played vanilla back in the day with 3 characters, I have virtually no experience of how a Warlock really works. As such I have created a little low level one, and am very much enjoying this fun and complicated class. I have some questions for the wise hive-mind of the Warlock subforums. Please bear in mind I am only in my late 20s, character-wise.

1 - I'm struggling to understand the point of Immolate at this level, in PVP. With the two second casting time, and the low damage, is there an instance in which I would want to cast this rather than searing pain? When I am likely to be drain-tanking an enemy?

2 - Does anyone know of a macro command to toggle the autocast abiitiy of pets on and off? For example, I have pet attack bound to a key, but I don't want to keep right clicking the skill on the pet bar to turn the autocast on and off.

3 - That's it! Think of these questions as a two-pronged trident. A bi-dent, if you will.

1. Open up with immolate or use immolate when target is feared and if dot will tick for most of its duration. Its cast time vs damage is great.

At low level you wont be draintanking anything, manage void walker. Drain tanking is somewhat usable after 40 level, dark pact, and shit loads of shadow damage gear.

2. /run TogglePetAutocast(4) - change number to whatever ability you need toggled.

[Winstons]

2. /run TogglePetAutocast(4) - change number to whatever ability you need toggled.

That's great, thank you!

[Drain]

Searing Pain is one of the most useless Warlock spells in Classic. Unless your shadow is locked, you've no real reason to cast it. For one it gives you threat you don't want, making it junk unless you're totally alone with no pet tanking. But it's designed for a deep Destruction build that uses purely fire... which no one goes for in Classic. It's all about shadow. Soul Fire is actually less useless since it's a big nuke you can pop on CCed targets.

Immolate is useful while leveling... but mostly junk at 60. It doesn't benefit from any of your Affliction talents or +shadow damage, meaning you probably have no talents in the thing. Again, without a deep Destruction build, you don't have the +fire to justify this spell. You may as well just Shadowbolt. If you're some kind of PvPlock using Soul Link, it might be of use for you in your offensively weak build. Other than that... probably not. I couldn't imagine using Immolate with Shadow Mastery or Demonic Sacrifice(which every Warlock has at least 1 of). No one goes past 21 in Destruction, meaning Immolate has no real place in max level builds, just like the Searing Pain.

[nervous]

Searing Pain is one of the most useless Warlock spells in Classic. Unless your shadow is locked, you've no real reason to cast it. For one it gives you threat you don't want, making it junk unless you're totally alone with no pet tanking. But it's designed for a deep Destruction build that uses purely fire... which no one goes for in Classic. It's all about shadow. Soul Fire is actually less useless since it's a big nuke you can pop on CCed targets.

Immolate is useful while leveling... but mostly junk at 60. It doesn't benefit from any of your Affliction talents or +shadow damage, meaning you probably have no talents in the thing. Again, without a deep Destruction build, you don't have the +fire to justify this spell. You may as well just Shadowbolt. If you're some kind of PvPlock using Soul Link, it might be of use for you in your offensively weak build. Other than that... probably not. I couldn't imagine using Immolate with Shadow Mastery or Demonic Sacrifice(which every Warlock has at least 1 of). No one goes past 21 in Destruction, meaning Immolate has no real place in max level builds, just like the Searing Pain.

you wot m8.

Searing pain is great, immolate is great. Even better if you're a soul link child

[Botmaster5]

Searing Pain is one of the most useless Warlock spells in Classic. Unless your shadow is locked, you've no real reason to cast it. For one it gives you threat you don't want, making it junk unless you're totally alone with no pet tanking. But it's designed for a deep Destruction build that uses purely fire... which no one goes for in Classic. It's all about shadow. Soul Fire is actually less useless since it's a big nuke you can pop on CCed targets.

Immolate is useful while leveling... but mostly junk at 60. It doesn't benefit from any of your Affliction talents or +shadow damage, meaning you probably have no talents in the thing. Again, without a deep Destruction build, you don't have the +fire to justify this spell. You may as well just Shadowbolt. If you're some kind of PvPlock using Soul Link, it might be of use for you in your offensively weak build. Other than that... probably not. I couldn't imagine using Immolate with Shadow Mastery or Demonic Sacrifice(which every Warlock has at least 1 of). No one goes past 21 in Destruction, meaning Immolate has no real place in max level builds, just like the Searing Pain.

this is 100% misinformation. NF/Conflag IS a thing, Deep Fire Destro IS a thing. Towards the middle of aq40 gearing, when all of your mages are fire, Fire Locks shine. please dont post unsubstantiated opinions based on what you think you know of the class

[Setup]

At 60, once you have at least ~250 spell power, the only reason to ever cast immolate is if you're conflag spec.

Some people like to play conflag. It's perfectly viable, really fun, and very bursty even if you have mid-ranged gear. I've always preferred to pvp as SM/Ruin, it's a combination of burst and survivability that appeals to me. But conflag is legitimate, moreso than SL at high gear levels.