Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

I would be very grateful if anyone could confirm / deny / comment / add anything to following info on Vanilla Doomguard (gathered mostly from Vanilla/private Vanilla WoW forums, Warlocks Den, WoW/VanillaWoW Wiki and Youtube).

1) For Curse of Doom to have chance to proc Doomguard, multiple sources claim that the cursed mob/player was not required to give honor/XP (this was changed in WotLK IIRC) which gives me ideas with randomly cursing every critter in sight, especially in BGs...!?

2) I found 3 sources claiming 10% Vanilla CoD proc chance, one Youtube guy roughly estimated proc per 15 kills while one blogger back in the days claimed - I don´t want to believe this! - 2% chance, without any further comment/source.

3) After Lock´s death in BG (and probably anywhere else?), Doomguard/Infernal are unfortunately lost (?) and cynically replaced, upon revival on graveyard, by Imp...

4) Enslaved demon seems to despawn after zoning out (tell me this isnt true!), so good luck with bringing your own pocket elite minibosses in BGs. I hope that we will have lots of world PvP.
On a bright side, looks like one can banish / runaway / de-banish / wand / banish... kite and finally enslave elites across huge distances, naturally - starting with perfectly fresh enslave timer. Given example was kiting Lord Banehollow from Felwood to Orgrimar, then enslaving/soullinking him (this was obviously early vanilla).

5) WoW Wiki confirms that Demonic Sacrifice buff (Demo talent, saccing pet for strong buff) remains on after enslaving another demon. I was, initially, surprised that this was not considered an exploit - namely, having any of Void/Succy/Imp Demo Sac buffs with active Doomguard (check fancy list of his abilities below!) seemed quite OP.

For example, Demonic Sac (Void) in Vanilla was giving 3% of total HP per 4 sec (!), and Locks were anyway notorious for their huge H-pools. Looks like Blizzard agreed with my initial impression, since it was soon nerfed to 2% (but Doomguard, while also nerfed, became SoulLink-able) sometime in BC.

Doomguard Abilities:

1) Cripple: reduces movement speed by 40% and time between melee and ranged attacks for 45% / instant, 30 yd range, 20 sec duration, 30 sec CD

2) War Stomp: instant, 2 sec AOE stun/ 20 sec (!) CD. A couple of incomplete vanilla tooltips without CD enlisted, a couple of blogs/forum posts that describe it ˝...as Tauren racial˝ without mentioning CD while some other directly claim ˝20 sec CD˝ and finally 20 sec CD can clearly be seen in an old Vanilla/early TBC video I digged out.

3) Dispel: instant, 30 yd range, removes magic buffs from enemies or magic debuffs from allys, no CD(?) On vanilla tooltips I was able to find there is no CD enlisted (which, OFC, means nothing), and in various Youtube Doomguard vids it´s either not Warlock´s PoW, or Doomguard is hostile or Lock uses only stun/cripple.

4) Rain of Fire - similar to Warlock´s ˝rain˝, handy for checking druids and rogues...what else?

5) Last, but far from least, it seems that Vanilla Doomguard was dealing quite decent damage, probably higher than any other lock pet.

Tips to keep Doomguard enslaved ˝up to quarter of an hour˝ (!), ˝full AB duration˝ (random guys from old forums and Youtube comments) are, naturally, use of Curse of Shadows (first one, OFC, pre-enslave then repeat) and Improved Enslave Demon (Demo talents) while one guy speculated that additional threefold banish/de-banish prior to enslaving further prolongs it´s duration!?
Unfortunately there is no vid of these long (re)enslaves, while ˝Youtubers˝ tend to summon / instantly release demon to terrorize Goldshire (Xroads) or to simply enslave him without pre-banish & curse of shadows (and most likely without improved enslave talents), even so first session lasts 2-3 minutes (or, to use another old and somewhat bitter forum quote ˝usually 1-2 min, then 30 sec then nothing˝).
Looks like 10-12 min is reasonably possible, while 15 should be extremely rare. Folks on Warlocks Den agree, additionally claiming that Doomguard most likely has heartbeat enslave break-check every 5-10 sec, where both curse of shadows and + spell hit gear should help (but this part of discussion mostly referred to TBC level range and gear together with Outland demons, on which some guys did quite extensive testing).

To conclude, I guess that Vanilla Doomguard was heavily under-used due to relatively high summon/maintenance ˝cost˝ together with succy / felhunter ˝laziness˝ of players (IMO Doom is much more demanding - but also more rewarding - to handle precisely in PvP, and only sometimes not clearly superior to the aforementioned two) and also great majority of people being unfamiliar with at least some of tips mentioned here, without which he becomes totally worthless one-minute annoyance.

On higher levels - in TBC and later - he was reportedly scaling poorly (stat-wise I guess), additionally suffering from few damage & abilities nerfs and some more powerful pets/builds that appeared meantime, which certainly didn´t help his bad reputation. Therefore I believe that 60 is Doomy´s peak, and his real chance to shine.

Hmm...I guess I better stop here

While I'm no expert on Doomguard shenanigans in WoW, and I can't help you confirm any of these.
I however do have to say that the Void sacrifice was the least powerful buff to get if you ask me, and I don't think it's OP to maintain that buff if you Enslave Demon something, because the Demonic Sacrifice specifically says the buff "is cancelled if any demon is SUMMONED".
You're not actually summoning anything when you Enslave Demon. However, if you were to summon the Infernal, then I believe that removes the buff. Again, I'm not a Warlock player myself, maybe someone can confirm this for me.

Also you have to put some time, and effort, into acquiring even a decent Enslave Demon target. So I think the extra time and work put into getting a decent Demon to enslave, after sacrificing your pet, to maintain the buff, isn't gamebreaking at all. It's a niche gameplay style, it might give you a bit of advantage, but only temporarily, and if you zone like you said, into BGs f.ex., you lose it, I believe. (Again, not a Warlock player, please someone confirm this for us).

So I don't see any issues with maintaining a buff that is only lost by SUMMONING a demon, when you enslave a demon temporarily under your command. That act by itself is so situational, there's not often you can even go to the place you want to even find the demon you want to Enslave. This is quite a bit of investment just to get a temporary "advantage", aka, keeping 1 extra buff while maintaining an enslaved demon.. Which is risky business by itself.

I see no issues with that at all, frankly. In fact I'd be super curious about seeing someone actually do that in-game. Rarely anyone ever even used that skill outside of solo PvE situations every now and then. I'd love to see an Enslave Demon party of Warlocks running around lowbie zones wreaking havoc.

Yea, I understand that it´s OK with tooltip to have both Demo Sac buff and Doomguard, just I wouldn´t be surprised if some random WoW tooltip (for the umpteenth time) was simply wrong. On the other side, having in mind what some other classes can do in - quite bursty BTW - Vanilla (and with much less investment and shorter CDs), on a second glance it is perfectly fine, just my initial reaction was WTF?

Speaking of best type of demo sacrifice, it´s tough choice. For example, heavily destro talented lock will automatically go for imp sac etc. I always preferred various demo-affliction combos ( = succy or void sac ) probably because back in the days I was told that going Destro is pointless without gear and crit, and my highest lock was 45 (In Vanilla; I also had one lvl 29 ˝parked˝ in AB during TBC).

Strangely enough, my heavy altoholism didnt prevent me from dinging 60 on my Sham/Rogue and then even 70 on my Sham; naturally I remained quite analphabetic about high end locks (which is probably obvious anyway )

Back to demons (and PvP which I am mostly interested in), it´s not so big deal having your own miniboss-pet out of BG or having some nasty fun with lowbies of Crossroads. I would prefer to try and make Doomguard work inside some BGs. Or, if world PvP turns out to be massive, anywhere on the map (thou I am afraid that 90% of people will go heavily into PvE grind...).

But my worst fear is that Doomguard bugs (which seem to be inevitable initially) and Doomguard mechanics itself will be extremely low on dev´s priorities list (perfectly understandable, I might easily be the only one genuinely interested), which seems to be quite common (status quo sometimes lasts for years based on what I´ve read on Feenix, Valkyrie etc. forums) unfortunately. Let´s hope I´m wrong on this.

1) http://wow.gamepedia.com/Bane_of_Doom
Patch 3.0.2
"Curse of Doom will now only summon a Doomguard if the target yields experience or honor."
Critters should work, but they should drop aggro on their own <1min unless you keep annoying them. This "annoying them" will probably kill them. Find real mobs instead, which can be left to attack you while Doom waits. Low level mobs have a pitiful damage value vs level 60s.

2) It was a very low proc chance. Blizzard never revealed RNG numbers such as these, so you'd have to look at old tests performed to get percentages such as these. But it could vary for every player, that's how RNG works. People would test things like this by casting the spell a ridiculous number of times and tracking the results. 5% or less sounds right to me. I farmed up a few Doomguards in my time. You'd typically had to Doom 10-30 mobs to get this thing to pop out from the curse, which translated into 10-30mins of letting low level mobs use you as a punching bag.

3) Out in the world, you revive with no pet. It doesn't matter what the pet was or how you were revived. You come back with nothing. This makes Fel Domination and Master Conjurer quite useful. If talented, you can pop a new pet in .5s for very little mana. These talents are high enough up the tree to support 31 Affliction or Destruction. For leveling, you might want to at least dock 11 in this tree for 3/3 demons and Fel Domination.

In BGs however(by 1.12), you revived with the last used permanent pet. Doomguard and Infernal are not really pets btw. They are mobs controlled by Enslave Demon. You should never revive with these under any situation, regardless of where you're killed. When the Warlock is killed before the demon, the effect is broken and the enslaved demon is then left rampage on the field, open to aggro on either faction. While uncontrolled, it can also be enslaved by any Warlock(whoever dings it first). Mobs cannot be double enslaved.

4) They should despawn when you cross a load screen/instance/portal/etc. This is because they are not permanent pets. That kiting trick should work though. This is assuming this isn't fixed lol, because kiting over long distances is an exploit. Blizzard never originally intended that and eventually fixed it with proper leashes due to players abusing it. They didn't predict players would do this, and thus didn't prevent it ahead of time. Unless Nostalrius is going to intentionally allow exploits that simply weren't fixed during Classic, then it shouldn't be possible. I would vote NO. All exploits/bugs/glitches/etc, even if they weren't fixed until after Classic, should be fixed here, IMO, if possible. Kiting across the world was an exploit. Mobs were given a chase limit for a reason, which was supposed to prevent them from chasing you forever.

5) This one isn't an exploit. It's the main intended use of the spell! Demo Warlocks are designed to be much better with demons. This includes enslaving them. The sacrifice buff, along with the enslave talent, does exactly this. By getting a buff with the mob, they are far more effective than other Warlocks using enslaved demons. It's just a good use of the talent, tree, and enslave. Summoning a pet removes the buff. These are not pets. They are enslaved mobs.

Doomguard Abilities:
They all sound right to me. Rain of Fire isn't just for breaking stealth though. It's still AoE damage and can be mixed with your own Rain of Fire.

5) This isn't really true. The Doomguard is a spell caster mob. It's meant to cast spells. It's pretty worthless after its mana is spent. A Succubus probably outhits this thing. An Inferno definitely should.

To be honest, the Doomguard was a shit pet. I hate to break it to you, but no one used to this thing beyond trolling in the game or testing it out before realizing how bad it was. If you actually go through the work of Doom camping to get this pet out, you're going to feel ripped off. If you go through the trouble of doing that quest chain for Ritual of Doom, you're really going to be pissed afterwards.

TY for feedback, guys! It inspired me to dig some more tru forgotten dusty WoW forums. @Drain - we agree on everything, except for the part that - almost! - broke my heart:

Drain wrote:
5) This isn't really true. The Doomguard is a spell caster mob. It's meant to cast spells. It's pretty worthless after its mana is spent. A Succubus probably outhits this thing. An Inferno definitely should.

To be honest, the Doomguard was a shit pet. I hate to break it to you, but no one used to this thing beyond trolling in the game or testing it out before realizing how bad it was. If you actually go through the work of Doom camping to get this pet out, you're going to feel ripped off. If you go through the trouble of doing that quest chain for Ritual of Doom, you're really going to be pissed afterwards.

I´m afraid you might be right on this...still, I secretly hope you are wrong

On Doomy DPS, at least few old sources I found suggest that CoD Doomguard is, DPS wise, clearly inferior to RoD one ( I can imagine how long and painful - virtually...ouch! - grind looks like, followed by shock of getting ˝I hit like a wet noodle˝ Doomguard ).

For example, a couple of lines from late 2006: ˝Doomguard actually is more powerful dependent on the way it was created... Through Curse of Doom, it creates a weaker Doomguard, which deals less damage than Infernal, attacks a smidge slower, and has less survivability. If you use the ritual, however, the DPS of Doomguard is greater than Infernal´s˝, followed by a reply - a couple of posts later - ˝True enough. In fact I suspect the Doomguard was balanced with curse of doom. Curse of doom allows warlocks to bypass the cooldown (even if it isn't that reliable)...˝ http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?fo ... 2290407819
I agree that talented Succy (both Demo and Dest talents) or Imp could be, DPS-wize, at least on par with RoD Doom assuming they both have mana, and when OOM I´d bet on Doom (hey, this rhymes!)

From what I´ve read in general, people are very seldom complaining about Doomy DPS, Vanilla WoW Wiki even uses term ˝a tremendous amount of direct damage˝ (although, truth to be said, in the same article they describe infernal´s AoE as ˝a tremendous amount of AoE damage˝...) and his DPS is, in discussions, either ignored or sometimes referred to as ˝hitting hard˝, ˝THE 1 target DPS pet˝ and such. On the other hand people tend to agree that he needs serious RoD CD decrease, CoD proc rate increase, enslave time increase or anything like that, and that he is not really worth all the money and pain in current (say, 1.12) state. Obviously, going with standard pet choice(s) is, if nothing else, much easier way.

On his other stats all I could find was bit abstract, such as Vanilla WoW Wiki´s ˝highest AC (armor class?), biggest HP of all Warlock´s...˝ (I am not sure about his armor compared to Infernal´s !?) and similar, describing him as very tough and highly resilient to shadow (unfortunately, we will have him exclusively with Curse of Shadows on...) While waiting on CoD to proc, I found couple more sources claiming it´s 10% or approx 10% (I believe - better to say I hope - that some people did extensive testing back in the day !?) Also, I am perfectly fine with hard/challenging quests, in fact I´d prefer much more of these in modern watered down games.

Another thing I´ve noticed while playing with talent calculator is - If one wants to ˝spec˝ into Doomguard / Enslave in general, ironically quite a lot of ˝fillers˝ has to be spent into boosting Succy/Void/Felpuppy/Imp (with the rotten idea to, then, DemoSac them as soon as possible...) I understand that I will be playing with other pets good part of time, still it feels like kind of identity crisis. I must admit I was even tempted, for a very brief moment, to forget it all and go classical SM/Ruin (or SL/something...whatever...damn you Doomie!)

Few more random thoughts - Doomy not being SoulLink-able together with Master Demo (previous tier) boosting only ˝normal˝ pets (and it is only one of many Doom-unfriendly demo talents...) produces additional confusion...(at least, without MD, I can reach SL/CoEx in affliction!?) Also, I accepted that my lil Doomy will spend good part of his career banished, but at least - god bless patch 1.7.0 - Demo Sac is not dispellable! Hooray!

Well, my problem is that I sometimes remember things before 1.12. Reading through the patch notes from Gamepedia helps to clarify things up. I like this site because it lists every patch note for an ability, not expecting you to blindly dig through each patch on its own.

Patch 1.11.0 (2006-06-20): If your pet is banished, Soul Link will stop functioning until Banish wears off. In addition, Soul Link's tooltip has been clarified to indicate it only works with your imp, voidwalker, succubus, or felhunter.
The first simply means that the damage no longer splits until the demon is free. This is because the pet is invulnerable and unable to take damage. The second means you can only use it with your regular demons, nothing under enslave. But you won't have enslaved demons very often, even if you drop infernos every time you can. Alternately, you could just stop at 21 for Demonic Sacrifice, which should work perfectly with enslaved demons. There's nothing wrong with a 30/21 build. It would get Shadow Mastery, one of your best talents, with Demonic Sacrifice, and the enslaved demon, all at once.

Patch 1.9.0 (2006-01-03): Can no longer be dispelled off the warlock. In addition, Soul Link can no longer be used on non-demon pets.
The first means they took the subtype(MAGIC) off the buff. Without a subtype, there's nothing that can remove it short of something like Divine Shield(which you don't got). The second change was performed because Warlocks would use the Mind Control Cap on you, throw up Soul Link, then split their damage with you even if your faction didn't want to target you. Soul Link on a player means that player is screwed, especially if the Warlock covered you in dots prior to the mind control. However, Mind Control+Dark Pact should still work.

Demonic Sacrifice:
Patch 1.7.0 (2005-09-22): All effects gained from sacrificing the pet should no longer be dispellable.
This basically means that, like Soul Link, it had its "Magic" subtype removed. With no subtype, an effect cannot be dispelled. So now you have Soul Link, Master Demo, or Demonic Sacrifice, none of which can be removed by enemy players.

TY for Gamepedia tip and these (early Vanilla ) SL jokes. Speaking of SL, as of 1.8.0. ˝the pet must be the target of a dispel effect in order to dispel Soul Link˝ (Banish aside...) Also ˝unfortunatelly˝ it is much easier to find such details today than a decade ago, which makes SL probably good for making those fancy 1 vs 3 videos against lowbies & newbs and...?

Anyway my private server experience is nonexistent so I can only hope dispel is not a big issue (I can live with SL banished and dispelling pets shouldn´t be that common in BGs/world PvP...!?). BTW SL seems to have bigger issues with being not-so-raid-friendly, there are better ˝I don´t have to respec for PvP˝ builds and I don´t remember Vanilla respecs being cheap. But I am SL-digressing too much (and my enslave experiments are certainly not more raid-friendly).

Back to Doomguard, 30/21/0 is fine per se, but dropping Improved Enslave Demon seems to make noticeable difference in enslave & re-enslave chance and, especially, enslave durations. Even I would agree that Doomy would be worthless in that case In ideal circumstances (which will, naturally, never happen), Infernal or Doomguard (preferably RoD one) could be out 20-30 min per hour. On a sidenote, I still wonder is Infernal any better, or at least on par, with Succy/Felpuppy in PvP, his lack of CC (and abilities overall) seems quite annoying. I never really tested him thou.

PS I´d recommend ˝The Warlocks Den˝ to any aspiring Vanilla lock, an old site with posts as ancient as mid-2004 (we would prolly be mostly interested in 2006 ones). If you don´t mind filtering forum trolling and tears (and somewhat chaotic and outdated design of practically dead site) you´ll find or refresh lots of interesting ideas and info there. I am still digging tru it, feels like time-travel

The Warlock Den: http://wowmb.net/
Forum index (probably the most interesting part of site): http://wowmb.net/forums/

I found that site a week or two ago. I used to get macros off of it back in Classic for my Warlock. It seems to be one of the few surviving sites over the years. But now you really have to dig through its archives. I'm hoping someone else will do the work of recreating all the fancy Classic macros so I don't have to do it. Macroing, pre 2.0, was a real pain. You either used the crap /cast spams, or had long complicated script ones. Someone else do us all a favor and make 1.12 macro scripts.

To me it wouldn´t make big difference, as long as Warlocks Den links aren´t broken. And even if someone did the macro job here (which will inevitably happen, and rather quickly after launch IMO) and guaranteed by his own life that they work perfectly, I´d still do test/modify on my own.

Speaking of digging tru Warlocks Den archives, the amount of info buried there is terrifying. Even if limited on, say, 2004-2006 and Doomguard only, I would still have problems what to begin with. From funny bugs and exploits making it permanent (!!) in one and almost permanent in other case (devs might be interested in this) to bunch of tips and info about his stats and enslave / re-enslave timers (I even found a Doom / Infernal comparative DPS/Aggro testing video from November 2006).

I might post a brief summary of what I´ve found once I decide what to exclude, otherwise it might grow into a series of textwalls (and people never read these).

For now, let´s just say that my main dilemma is how to talent. More specifically, since Improved Enslave Demon seems to be a must for any enslave build (and I was going for Demo/Affliction, Demo/Destro requires more crit and endgame gear to perform well IMO), I have tough choice to make between Soul Link + Master Demonologist versus Siphon Life + CoEx + Improved CoEx. It all depends on assessment of how long my Doomguard uptime will be , since Master Demo + SL is affecting only ˝normal˝ pets. With significant uptime (PvP & BG percentage - wise) I´d naturally go with Siphon L. + CoEx, otherwise it might be wiser to invest in regular pets. Lots of practical testing ahead...

You didn't play a Warlock back then, did you?

Improved Enslave and Curse of Exhaustion were terrible talents in Classic. These were the talents no sane Warlock took, just as the Doomguard was the pet no one used. The first talent was basically worthless past its first 2 points, and the second was just plain worthless entirely unless you lived in WSG. If you had your trailer parked outside the WSG portal and went no where else in WoW, then "maybe" Exhaustion was worth investing in...

These talents were actually so bad that they saw some of the biggest buffs in BC that were handed out to classes at that time. Improved Enslave was reduced by 3 talent points to max out(2/2). Exhaustion was reduced by 4(1/1). That's how bad these talents were. Compare that with most Warlock talents which weren't even touched throughout BC.