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Warlock Guide to Raiding
Warlocks enslave demons and call upon dark magic and curses to dominate and destroy their foes. Like hunters, warlocks employ combat pets, but these are summoned demons rather than tamed beasts. They are primary ranged magic damage dealers with a focus on damage over time in addition to nukes and AoE, but lack the extreme burst damage capabilities of a mage. Demon pets and fear spells give them a variety of tactical options, and they have a wide variety of interesting utility spells and abilities, including summoning party members and creating healthstones and soulstones

While Blizzard classifies the Warlock as a debuff/pet class the raiding warlock rarely follows this general philosophy. In this guide we’ll discuss different common raiding “specs”, how those specs do damage and what do to with that pet thing of yours ;) I’ll also talk briefly about leveling specs and techniques and bring in a little “theory-craft” about the Burning Crusade expansion and what it will bring for Warlocks.

As a raiding warlock most high-end guilds will require you to use certain curses and most notably, usually have an Imp out for Bloodpact (+sta group buff) Depending on how many warlocks are in the raid you may or may not be on Curse of Elements (+10% dmg from fire/cold) or Curse of Shadow (+10%dmg from Shadow/Arcane) “duty”. Some guilds use Curse of Recklessness (-Armor, +Atk power) so more dps can be laid into the mob, this curse should not be used on mobs which have instant attacks as the attack power bonus from the curse gets multiplied. (I.E. broodlord in BWL hits for considerably more damage when he strikes) being that sometimes certain pets will be required that can deter you from choosing certain specs which require you to use or kill/sacrifice pets other than your imp.

Section:

Specs and what they do!!
Spells and rotations
3. Aggro!! Our worst enemy
Specs and what they do!!

Here is a quick list of common raiding specs and a brief summary of their strengths and weaknesses.

Shadow Mastery / Ruin (SM/Ruin 30/0/21)
Commonly referred to as the most damaging raiding spec, 10%shadow damage always + 2.5 sec cast shadow bolts (normally 3sec cast) + 50% added dmg on all spell critical strikes and your damage isn’t dependant on having a pet out or sacrificed. Most common raiding spec. High DPS, Low Survivability
Master Demonologist / Ruin (MD/Ruin 0/30/21)
A god mix between damage and survivability, you still get the 2.5sec Shadow Bolt cast time and the 50% dmg bonus to spell critical strikes and a 15% bonus to stamina (HP), Improved Bloodpact and Healthstones but the +dmg/utility component of the spec is based on which pet you have out. However this offers more adaptability than the SM build. Medium DPS, High Survivability
Shadow Mastery / Demonic Sacrifice (SM/DS 30/21/0)
Not a very widely used spec because you loose the cast time bonus to Shadow Bolts and the 50% dmg bonus to Spell crits but with a sacrificed Succubus you gain 25% shadow damage. Plus the Siphon life spell and Nightfall. This spec ends up with a little more DoT damage than MD/Ruin but looses the Shadow Bolt dmg in return. I haven’t personally tested this spec but it looks to break about even. Medium DPS, High Survivability
Demonic Sacrifice / Ruin (DS/Ruin 7/21/21 +2pts)
My favorite build, with good gear rivals SM/Ruin for damage. You keep the 50% damage spell crit bonus of Ruin and can sacrifice a Succubus for 15% shadow damage increase. You also get the 15% Sta bonus and the Improved Bloodpact and Soulstone. The one major downside is that it requires you to sacrifice your pet. So if your guild requires you to have an Imp out this spec might not be for you as you. If you aren’t restricted by your guild as to which pet you have out, then watch out for aggro as this spec will cause the most damage. ;) High DPS, High Survivability
There are a number of specs I didn’t mention such as Conflag and Soul Link as they are usually considered PVP builds because of the increased burst damage and mana inefficiency of Conflag or the Unbelievable Survivability of Soul Link.
So now we have some specs to try out, and I do suggest you take a good couple raids trying each out, what does the actual warlock combat sequence look like?

Spells and rotations

Well most will say pre-The Burning Crusade that Shadow bolt spamming with the occasional Corruption cast is the most DPS, I’ve found this to be pretty accurate =) In the game currently there is a major shortage of debuff slots on mobs and even with the prioritization of debuffs, warlock dots are still pushed off the mob for things like rogues Hemorrhage. Hopefully your corruption will do at least a good chunk of its damage before its pushed off and since shadow bolt is a DD(direct damage) you don’t have to worry about debuff slots.

(The Burning Crusade will bring smaller raids and more debuff slots, this change should make Affliction Warlocks a viable dps source. However the nature of dots limits damage on “trash” or non-boss mobs in raid situations.)

Since most guilds require Curse of Elements and Shadow on the mobs they fight you can pretty much count one of those as the first spell you cast ;) Most would follow that up with a corruption and commence with the shadow bolt spamming until corruption is about to wear off. Refresh your Curse and Corruption as needed. I know it’s not rocket science but with the more mobile fights it does become a challenge to move, refresh dots cast Shadow bolts and life tap while not getting killed ;) This brings us to gear! L33t pUrpLZ!!!! I’m not going to go into the deep math of complex damage rotations, because you simply don’t NEED to know it to do your job. However if you’d like to review...

A good in-depth raiding guide (A-lot more in depth) http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11381260&sid=1

Warlocks most useful stat from gear (for raid dps) is with-out a doubt +dmg, the higher +dmg gear you have the more damage you do directly, +dmg is followed by +spell crit and + spell hit then stamina. The exact amount of +dmg that =’s 1% spell crit (or 14 spell crit rating come The Burning Crusade, for lvl60’s) scales with the more +spell crit or +dmg you have. The more crit the less +dmg you need to equal 1% crit. So as you can see there is no static X spell dmg = X% spell crit.

All spells in the game have a co-efficient for how much of your + dmg they take into account when cast. The game is normalized around a 3.5sec cast time for DD spells, so any spell which has a base cast time of under 3.5 secs only gets a certain % of your + dmg. DoT’s however receive full +dmg. Combinations of DD/DoT’s like Immolate receive a significant decrease in +dmg used. Below is a list of Warlock spells by type and their + dmg co-efficient. So if you have 1000 + dmg from your gear and Rank10 Shadow Bolt does base 482-538 dmg, when you cast your shadow bolt it will do 1342-1398 dmg. Easy enough….

Spell Damage Co-Efficients

Shadow
Shadow bolt ~86%
Shadowburn 43%
Corruption 100%
Curse of Agony 100%
Soul Drain 50%
Drain Life 50%
Drain Mana 0%
D.Mana's Dmg 20%
Death Coil 23%
Siphon Life 50%
Health Funnel 0%
Curse of Doom 100%

Fire
Searing pain 43%
Rain of Fire 35%
Hellfire 30%
Immolate's Nuke 35%
Immolate's DoT 57%
Conflagrate 40%
Soul Fire 100%

Siphon Life and Drain Life are DoT’s, however because they are drains your +dmg is split in half (50% dmg and 50% healing) then divided by how many ticks the spell is.
So there is a very sweet and to the point description of how and what we do in raids. I like to encourage our new Warlocks to test things out and play the role of a dot lock for a day or so and sadly at the moment you’ll see a huge drop in dps. But like I said you have see some things for yourself ;) Now we get to find out what a fun time raiding as a lock can be, hehe

Aggro!! Our worst enemy

Uber Mob XXXX crit You for 99999999991
You Die.
Yuppers, the one downfall to warlock dps in raids… aggro. Every class in the game gets either some talented –%aggro or an innate -%aggro, except warlocks ;) It is the sole reason we can’t go higher in dps than some classes (namely mages =) on single target boss fights.
The only real advise any warlock can give a new raiding warlock is you are going to die.. A LOT, so at least if you die learn something from it and try not to wipe the raid while learning ;) There are some encounters where aggro is next to impossible to grab from a warrior (Patchwerk in Naxx) but the opposite is true as well. There are more Boss mobs in the game that reduce or clear their aggro list than ones than create more aggro for the warriors. And because of this we NEED to learn where our limits lye. Some warriors simply keep aggro better than others, some bosses reduce aggro, it’s up to you to find out with which warriors tanking you can continuously nuke the mob with and which you have to be very careful and on which mobs you need to watch it and where an ill placed dot tick can = you dead. Sadly that’s about the best advice that can be given right now in my opinion. Come the expansion warlocks do get a fun new toy “Soul Shatter” which an insta-cast spell which reduces threat by 50% from all enemies with-in 50y. That will change the game mechanic a bit for us but all for the better ;)

In conclusion a raiding warlock is a very fun class to play but also requires a lot of attention to play effectively. We are capable of amazing things in this game but it’s up to you to play your character well enough to take advantage of these. We are the least played cross faction class and are commonly noted as EZ mode, but well played warlocks are ALWAYS a very valued member of any raid force. Well I hope this guide gave you the first step to accomplishing your raiding goals. Now go out there and show those mages what’s up