Question from a newbie

[TheRemmy]

Hey guys, very excited for the possible return of Nost.

Before the End, I was dabbling into locks, and the build that I ended up making didn't seem convential in any way. I was wondering if you guys had criticism and insight as far as how competitive this could be end-game, and such.

Bear in mind, this is coming from a a player that has been a Mage for most of his Vanilla days, and I remembered how my Warlock friends hated that a Debuff class such as themselves were limited in raids because of the max number of debuffs on an enemy.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IVz ... 0oZEx0t00z

So. My idea, is a Warlock based on Shadow damage, by using Demonic Sacrifice, you can keep a 15% buff to shadow damage. The shadow bolt tier one talent also potentially drives this to a potential 35% after a crit. It became crucial for this build to work, to focus mainly on Crit chance, since there is also a talent that boosts Crit chance, and another for Crit damage.

My concerns: Mana consumption, and possible threat problems. Because Shadow Bolt is pretty bad as far as Mana consumption, I'm not certain how that would work in Raid circumstances. Also, getting a few crits early would possibly mean stealing aggro right off the bat, so...

Anyway, lemme know what you guys think. This has probably already been studied, I'm aware.

[Lifealert]

Mana is non issue if you don't have shit healers. Use mana pots and demonic runes to regain mana every 2 minutes. Keep tapping. Someone will heal you.

Threat is an issue on some fights since you'll be doing some giant crits. Try to manage your threat if you are on the verge from stealing it from the tank. Just stop casting. If you pull threat then you have to use a limited invulnerability pot or ask a paladin for a BoP. If you're on horde then you only have LiPs to rely on.


The build you have created is called DS Ruin and is very common. Some guilds force their warlocks to be DS Ruin and others just don't care about the debuff slots. The other common build is called SM Ruin and is very common in PvP, less so in PvE because of the debuff issue.

[TheRemmy]

Mana is non issue if you don't have shit healers. Use mana pots and demonic runes to regain mana every 2 minutes. Keep tapping. Someone will heal you.

Threat is an issue on some fights since you'll be doing some giant crits. Try to manage your threat if you are on the verge from stealing it from the tank. Just stop casting. If you pull threat then you have to use a limited invulnerability pot or ask a paladin for a BoP. If you're on horde then you only have LiPs to rely on.


The build you have created is called DS Ruin and is very common. Some guilds force their warlocks to be DS Ruin and others just don't care about the debuff slots. The other common build is called SM Ruin and is very common in PvP, less so in PvE because of the debuff issue.

Thank you, friend! I suspected that this build was a winner, but I didn't expect I got the best DPS build for locks. What kind of damage can those crits pull off? The added bonuses seem ridiculous!

[Drain]

SM/Ruin is nice early on when a guild is struggling to get anywhere. The thing is though, that the Imp buffs are flat; they don't scale with any gear. Eventually, they will become irrelevant. Demonic Embrace/Sacrifice however are percentages, with 15% being higher than the 10 on Shadow Mastery. SM/Ruin is still a winner if you can use Corruption, which will get instant bolt procs, but only a few Warlocks will get slots for this. Typically, a guild will hand pick some of its best geared Warlocks for the slots; the rest will be out of luck, and may as well go DS. Having a slot however actually means more work and risk, because on top of having to dot every 18s, you now have unpredictable instant cast bolts which could cause you to spike too high in threat. It's an unpredictable source of DPS, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. I just view this talent as best used in BGs... vs players, you can Corruption everyone in sight, with no debuff limits or threat to be concerned about.

[Lifealert]

We sometimes had 4 locks in our raids 3 of us were sm ruin and all four used corruption. Nobody complained. GOOD TIMES.