Solo-MC

What to do when you are bored and lvl85 and have done your daylies? ...you solo Molten Core, what else? :)

Patron Shogoth, Champion of Accolade

Busy night tonight. First I got the Patron title from being awesome in a BG (for once), I managed to get exalted with the guild and later we dinged 24, so I bought the pet and got the 100 pets achievment. :)

Sho v2.0: Lvl 8: Demon Armor and Voidwalker

At lvl 8 you get an armor spell called Demon Armor. Nothing much to say about it, just keep sure you have it on yourself since it increases your armor and the health you get from spells.

You also get a new demon you can use instead of the imp, the voidwalker. It doesn't do alot of damage on your enemies but what it is good at is to take the focus from you and make them attack him instead.

This means that you need to take it a bit easy in the beginning of a fight to make it possible for your demon to gain aggro from the mobs. Warlocks are notorious aggrohogs and getting used to not go all out in the beginning is a good thing for later when you will be doing dungeons and raid with other players who are going to try to keep the aggro from you. :)

Sho v2.0: Lvl 5 & 6: Life tap and Drain Life.

You might wonder what the biggest difference between a mage and a warlock is. Both are ranged classes that uses magic spells. Both rely on mana as a resource to be able to cast. But mages has a nice tower in Stormwind while warlocks have a nasty cellar. And mages does more damage per second than warlocks, so, why, why on earth would you like to keep on playing as a warlock?

Because you now have Life Tap (lvl 5) and Drain Life (lvl 6) and are able to trade some of your health for mana. As long as you have a way to restore health, from a healer or by draining life from your enemy there is nothing stopping you. Keep in mind that Drain Life doesn't do alot of damage but it is a really nice spell to have if you manage to get the enemy mob to attack your imp instead of you and you can stay at a safe distance and drain some life back to you.

Just use Life Tap wisely. :) You don't want to kill yourself.

Sho v2.0: Lvl 4: Corruption

At level 4 there is time for yet another DoT. Corruption.

Your spell priority just got a bit more complicated. :) You will now have 2 DoTs to keep track of and casting Shadow Bolts as fillers while you wait to renew any of the DoTs.

Also, Corruption has a nice feature, it is an Instant cast. Thats means that you can cast it while moving. You can even run away with your back to the target and still cast it. Strategic retreat anyone? :)

Sho v2.0: Lvl 3: dots?

At level 3 you will get a new spell: Immolate. And in contrast to Shadow Bolt, Immolation is a DoT, a Damage Over Time, spell.

Actually I think that Immolate is probably one of the easiest ways to explain just what a DoT is. Immolate set enemies on fire. It does some initial damage and then keep on hurting for as long as it burns. Simple as that. :)

So, which spell should you use now when you are at level 3, Immolate or Shadow Bolt?

The short answer, both. If you keep Immolate ticking while casting Shadow Bolt in between refreshes you will be doing the most damage, it will be like you are hurting your enemies with two spells at the same time.

The long answer, this is the base of how you play warlocks, keep DoTs ticking and cast your direct damage spells as often as you can when you are not refreshing any DoTs. This means that we will now have our first spell priority (some call it a spell-rotation), in short it is a list of spells to use ordered from most important to least.

1. Immolate (if Immolate is about to run out)
2. Shadow Bolt.

See it as a version of wack-a-mole, cast the spell that is most important as soon as it is available. Start with Immolate and as long as your enemy is burning cast Shadow Bolt. Don't get too comfortable and dumb it down to "Hey, I can cast Immolate, then three bolts and then just start over, lets make a macro." cause even if something like that would work now at a low level it won't work later when you have 4 DoTs, 2 buffs and 2 cooldowns to keep track of. :)

Also, it is now things starts to get a little more interesting and we can start to talk a bit about tactics. :)

If you find yourself fighting a mob that you see is too strong for you and your health is starting to go down, do what any smart warlock would do. Warlocks are too clever to be heroes, simply put a DoT on the target, turn around and run. With a bit of luck your DoT and imp will take care of the enemy or atleast make it stop attacking you, letting you escape or gain some distance to be able to attack again without getting attacked right away.

Shogoth version 2.0

With patch 4.1 and all of my addons disabled I thought that I could take a break from my lvl85 Shogoth and bring you, Shogoth v2.0. :)

It could be nice to start a new warlock and at the same time try to document a little about it is to level one in contrast to all the you-are-a-lvl85-with-full-bis-posts out there.

So, what you start out with as a lvl 1 warlock is this. You and your imp and one offensive spell, Shadow Bolt.
The two things you need to keep in mind, even though it won't matter much at this low level are:
1. You are a clothie. You have cloth armour. Ever tried to stop a sword with a piece of cotton? Stay far away from your enemies.
2. Shadow Bolt has a long range. Keep your distance and you might take the mobs down before they even reach you.

Also worth noting is that you have no controll at all over your imp. If you attack it will attack. If you stop attacking...it will keep on attacking for you.

Let the adventure begin... :)