Looking for advice on how not to die

[Fendaria]

I went on my first few raids with my warlock recently and it went like this.Single target mobs died so fast to the scouts I couldn't get any spells going on them.Multi mob encounters either used my AE's, pulled agro on the off mobs, and died, or waited and the scouts churned through the first one or two of the linked mobs quickly with the off mobs already at 50% when we switched to them.  And unlinked mobs?  I died even faster.The tank had no problem holding agro on one mob.  The tank had no problem holding agro on the other linked mobs, as long as I didn't nuke.When I'm grouping, encounters are similar to this, except my survivability is much greater cause the mobs die faster.  If my AEs go off and the mobs aren't dead I'm in trouble.I can hold back and wait so I will live, but stuff just dies so fast I barely do anything in the fight.About the only thing I've ever seen do a half decent job at control is the Palidin Amends hate buff thing, but that is it.  Are we tied to one other buff to live?I suppose I wouldn't mind the agro so much if I felt like there was a trade off, if I was doing good enough DPS to warrent dying like this.  But I'm not.  I go slow with poor DPS and live or I nuke hard doing above average DPS, and get agro and die while the scouts seem to have no problems beating me no matter what I do.  I'm getting agro off of nukes and spells that when I look at parses just shouldn't be drawing as much agro as they do.Its all got me very confused as to where this class is in the game and what I should be doing to live and do good DPS.Any help is appreciated.Fendaria

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p>Hope that the next expansion has more linked content.</p><p>Warlock aggro is [Removed for Content] IMO.  I regularly get aggro 5th or 6th on the parse.</p><p>And there is a long, long thread on what the WIS boost etc did to locks.</p><p>but they are fun to solo!</p>

[Fendaria]

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hope that the next expansion has more linked content.</p></blockquote>Except I'm begining to wonder what good more linked content is going to be with the way agro is now.  I'll just have more encounters the off mobs will be waltzing over and smacking me on.Fendaria

[Rhayv]

<p>Most warlocks have your problem.  Most of us just quit complaining about it cause it seems to do no good. </p><p>You will have to figure this out on your own.   Maybe you will have a good group and raid setup to help with this problem.   As for the paly amends, It doesnt really work well unless the pally is the MT or the healers watch him very closely.  Otherwise he just dies first with you right behind him.   Just get a feel for your raidforce and what they can handle from you.  Thats the best advice I can give you.  =( </p><p>Feel free to add your input to the warlock issue thread.   </p>

[CelebornXI]

well, my suggestion would be to watch the raid chat for when the other raid members are casting specials, like plate tank tsunami, or the 1 hate position increase thing guards get, get used to when the tank pops that off, work on your longer duration spells (armageddon will work fine for this even though it is a huge ae, still gives the tank time to hit them) then when the mob most people are focused on starts moving down quickly i would pop off your bigger nukes, the tank should have enough hate gain and hate built up on the mob everyone is whacking away at and he/she should be tabing through and attempting to hold the rest. Really practice makes perfect, or in most cases dead =)

[Windowlicker]

1. Get your epic(fabled)2. Get your claymore(fabled)The claymore will be the harder of the two, but is extremely easy at level 80.  You can solo through almost the entire quest line as it will be grey.Both of these items proc an effect that boots you backwards on the hate list.  So as your casting, they are constantly going off and pushing you backwards on the hate list.Also, what you can do is open up with all single target spells and move to multi-target once the tank has had a chance to build aggro on the additional mobs.  Understand that the more mobs that are added, the more you will need to hold back in order to stay alive.Broodlings is NOT a single target spell, keep that in mind.Your group setup is also key to you being able to perform properly in a raid.  You will need to be attached to a Paladin to be truely safe (And even then, the Paladin needs to be able to take a hit ... or he/she will just die and you'll still have a problem).You should ideally be grouped with an Illusionist(running TC on you), and a troub as a bare minimum.  The troub will add around 30% hate reduction.Alternatively, you can kick-out extra damage with a Guardian running Moderate on you .. or a coercer running it's hate buffs on you.Hope it helps,

[CelebornXI]

I prefer blaming it on the tank failing, but thats me.

[SageGaspar]

I started my warlock raiding a couple months ago and in my opinion it's much more heavily gear, buff and skill locked than a lot of other classes.I had (have) the same difficulty you do. My first two trips into PR I spent the adventurers fight largely staring up at the ceiling. The first couple splitting mobs in Shard of Hate got nabbed by one of my dumbfires and instagibbed me before I got my act together. First time against OK the second set of adds ate my face. One set of books before Druushk I launched acid storm a second early and ate dirt. Tairiza... well, it just ain't pretty.If you're like me you looked at the parses after that and saw a scout crapping out more damage by pressing autoattack than you were by frantically casting spells in varying orders to see which worked the best. You figure you should be rocking AE fights at least but it's not happening. Moreover you can put scouts in a variety of groups and they'll still be rockin it. You on the other hand really need some specific classes or else you're gonna be casting like molasses and generally [Removed for Content]. If the brig falls asleep you can spend 9 seconds banging resists against a mob. On trash mobs for max DPS you need to be up their butt in AE range but you can't eat the frontal AE like scouts can if the tank pulls it in sideways. Plus you need to root yourself in that AE range with FC.It does get better though. The more gear I'm getting the closer the gap is becoming. The more I get used to the tank we have, the better I adjust to pull strats and aggro. Play around with your spell order, try precasting different things, maybe see if a troub can spot you a JC if they're giving it to someone less than optimal. Basically if you're looking to be king of DPS from day one just by dropping concealment chains and rolling your head around the keyboard in between you'd be better off playing an assassin, but if you stick with warlock it can be a pretty rewarding trip.For specific advice, on short fights it really depends on exactly what kind of time period we're talking about. This is the kind of thinking you need to do. First, pretty much always precast acid storm if it's up. By precast I mean time it so that it casts just as the tank has the mob settled in position. It takes some getting used to. Let's say this is going to be a thirty second fight. Then you might as well have precast Gift since it'll last long enough to cover the fight anyway, and I usually precast netherealm too because I think there's better use of casting time during the fight (you might disagree). Now your big hit is armageddon, and especially without set bonuses you're realistically going to get off one armageddon. That armageddon might as well be when all the debuffs are in. So if dispatch goes out on every fight wait for dispatch to put armageddon in. Also, if you cycle aura, distortion, absolution while you're waiting they'll already be recharging and ready to go again when you're done with armageddon. Acid is pretty good damage per cast time if it ticks full duration, and it's unresistable so it's nice early too.On AE fights not much to say that hasn't been said. Don't be afraid to cycle the deaggros or focus more single target if you're having trouble too. Five seconds of glory is not worth eating the dirt if your tank really can't handle it.