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Warlock Warlock Specs & MD/Ruin

2xE

New Member
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Or: Why I think DS/Ruin is a situational Warlock spec.

So I posted an article related to Threat in the General Discussion subforum, here, that uses the 3 Warlock specs from my raiding days in Vanilla as examples of threat and DPS.

Now, there's already a nice PvE guide for warlocks here, so won't bother going too in depth. Except to say that I personally recommend going Improved Soul Link over Pyroclasm. 50% of normal mana regeneration while casting is superior to a stun chance any day, especially considering some trash is immune anyway. And more mana for you means more mana and time for the healers. But I digress.

This post is to reintroduce an old Vanilla warlock spec that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else in a long time. The Never-Aggro-Lock spec (or a minor variation thereof) that I posted in General Discussion, and personally believe any semi-serious raiding guild should have at least 1.

So why MD/ruin?

Because, as I explained in the other post, max damage output is not necessarily optimal. Also, when thinking in terms of raid composition, having a warlock with Improved Blood Pact for your main tank group is a big deal. Basically it's always worth sacrificing a small amount of dps to increase your main tanks HP.


That being said, there are certain items and bonuses in Vanilla WoW that makes one of the three warlock raiding specs a lot more appealing. (The 3 being DS/ruin, SM/ruin and MD/ruin).

And that is either 8 pieces of Nemesis, or one of the following; Fetish of the Sand Reaver or Eye of Diminution.

In my old Vanilla raiding guild, attaining any one of these 3 threat reductions was a pass to respecc DS/Ruin. Because threat was already a serious issue for SM/Ruin locks, the increased damage output from DS/Ruin was usually negligible compared to more groups with Blood Pact buff. However, with a serious threat decrease that DS/Ruin spec looked real nice and juicy. Basically doing more damage with less threat, hooray! This was also the reason that full Nemesis was seen as a viable gear choice on the warlock forums back then, compared to stacking Spell/Shadow Damage with items like Ebony Flame Gloves and Fel Infused Leggings. Hit% was also an issue of course, but that's a discussion in and of itself, and from AQ40 it started showing up in most caster gear anyway. And you could always save up for a Tear of course.

And, according to my personal experience. If you do manage to get a hold of Fetish and respec DS/Ruin you'll leave all other dps so far behind it'll cause balance whinning on the guild forum for days. Except of course for DPS-warriors, because nothing scales like they do. But you'll be a proud 2nd on the meters with only the dead dps warrior above you who just overaggroed, and died. Can't really ask for much more in Vanilla.
 
Improved Drain Soul (assuming you meant that) is just a terrible talent that sucks in every way possible. The mana regeneration it provides is based off your spirit, something Locks have an incredibly low amount of both from base and gear. You'll be lucky to even get 20mp5 from it, meaning that 10 second buff restored you an entire 40 mana, congratulations. Additionally, it will only proc if your Drain Soul damage makes the killing blow, something that will never ever happen in either a 20 nor 40 man raid. It is an absolute waste of two talent points.

As for MD/Ruin, it's not a bad spec (especially in comparison to some of the popular vanilla specs that completely excluded Ruin because of "Threat Issues" aka shit tanks). However, you have to realize by not going into DS or SM, you're already dropping 15% or 10% of your threat due to losing out on that bonus damage. That is enough of a threat reduction to begin with, especially when you have BoS or Tranq Totem on you (which you will in any raiding guild worth joining).

Nemesis is just a bad set, and going 8/8 is not something that should be suggested at all. The 8 piece is useless as you'll be losing out on so much damage just from all the resists you'll see due to the entire set having absolutely no spell hit. This set should never ever be recommended, the only reason to equip it is if you have room for the 3/8 bonus and won't lose out on Hit or Crit for it. Bloodvine will always outplace T2's respective pieces, and it's so much easier to obtain.

The real issue I see here is you're basing this off of retail Vanilla, where mechanics were still not fully understood (EJ believed crits caused a large amount of bonus threat just for being crits, for example) and tanks did not gear properly for threat generation (all defense, crusader on wep, no hit, no agi, no crit, etc). It's a lot different now, and tanks know what they're doing and how to maximize threat generation. This isn't to say that Locks don't have an over-aggro issue, it's still definitely present. But we really shouldn't be following the rules of retail vanilla as their information was lacking and not fully understood.

The threat reduction trinkets you listed are great, especially if you get a string of crits during their activity, but they won't be available for a long time (and good luck getting Eye vs. Fire mages). I'd say that if you're really struggling with threat, talk to your tanks and your class leader, maybe consider dropping a few spell damage consumables during threat sensitive encounters. I don't think MD/Ruin is something worth speccing into full time though.
 
You're right on a lot of points, however there are a few things:

Improved Drain Soul (assuming you meant that) is just a terrible talent that sucks in every way possible. The mana regeneration it provides is based off your spirit, something Locks have an incredibly low amount of both from base and gear. You'll be lucky to even get 20mp5 from it, meaning that 10 second buff restored you an entire 40 mana, congratulations. Additionally, it will only proc if your Drain Soul damage makes the killing blow, something that will never ever happen in either a 20 nor 40 man raid. It is an absolute waste of two talent points.

You're quite right, the main effect of Drain Soul is completely useless. No question. However one detail of the talent is that it allows for 50% of your normal mana regeneration to continue while casting. Permanently. It's specified in the very last paragraph of the description. Now, most warlocks don't get a lot of Spirit in general, and it's a stat worth avoiding whenever possible. However, it was still considered worth it (on Alliance side at least) because of Divine Spirit + Blessing of Kings. It's not a great talent, it's not essential, but it's ok.

Next part:
Nemesis is just a bad set, and going 8/8 is not something that should be suggested at all. The 8 piece is useless as you'll be losing out on so much damage just from all the resists you'll see due to the entire set having absolutely no spell hit. This set should never ever be recommended, the only reason to equip it is if you have room for the 3/8 bonus and won't lose out on Hit or Crit for it. Bloodvine will always outplace T2's respective pieces, and it's so much easier to obtain.

I never said 8-pieces Nemesis was a good idea, or optimal (it's not), but simply saying that it is an option if you want a threat reduction before AQ40. And nothing compares to Bloodvine before halfway through AQ40 anyway, so on that we agree. Full Nemesis does have 1 thing going for it though, it's a pretty amazing PvP set. But that's another discussion entirely.

The real issue I see here is you're basing this off of retail Vanilla, where mechanics were still not fully understood (EJ believed crits caused a large amount of bonus threat just for being crits, for example) and tanks did not gear properly for threat generation (all defense, crusader on wep, no hit, no agi, no crit, etc). It's a lot different now, and tanks know what they're doing and how to maximize threat generation. This isn't to say that Locks don't have an over-aggro issue, it's still definitely present. But we really shouldn't be following the rules of retail vanilla as their information was lacking and not fully understood

Now there's no doubt that Tanking and threat basics are a lot better understood now, and that'll give a higher quality of tanks in general, even assuming Kronos manages 100% Blizzlike threat (unlikely, but I trust the team will make it close enough). However before ZG is released, Tanks won't have much of a choice concerning itemization, especially not if they are progressing through Molten Core. Yeah they can ignore Valour for the shitty set that it is, but Might is pretty much a no brainer, so the gear won't be that different overall once raiding commences beyond MC, but we'll see.

I don't think MD/Ruin is something worth speccing into full time though.

Well here we hit a point of contention. Personally I'd say that any raiding guild should have at least 1 stable MD/Ruin warlock for raiding. Simply for the Improved Blood Pact buff on the main tank, and to help out any DS/Ruin warlocks with the Healthstones. Also, especially in early raiding, tanks will have some issues with aggro, and then a MD/Ruin lock is simply 1 less DPS that might wipe the raid. Not more than 2 MD/Ruin locks per raid though, and preferably only 1, but, imo, definitely worth it bringing that 1 guy along.
 
I personally will be running ms/ruin because the reduced threat is a very very tempting. I hate the idea of having to switch to using my wand because my dps is too high. Also I do love being able to bring something to a raid, other than leet dps lol. thanks for the sweet informative posts 2xe
 
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