Not being a warlock, I'd like some inside perspective into this.

As we have all seen, warlocks have come along way from their former selfs. From being the Curse Monkeys to DPS powerhouses, I wonder how their support styles have changed.

Back in the day (Naxx and the like) CoR used to be one hellova curse. Now, I'm not neglecting CoE at this moment, but for the sake of arguement my guild always prefered CoR, due to the amount and quality of our melee. Obviously ignore fights like the Emps where it's benine to use one or the other.

So, it got me thinking. With the whole Raid composition up the shitter from what we all used to know, how should curses be handled these days? I understand most encounters (and therefore guilds) favour range over melee, especially with in terms of spellcatsers. This being said I'd have a stab-in-the-dark at most raids using CoE. However, what if a guild had generally a balanced (if not more melee) group?

If there is a short obvious balance issue with one curse shitting on another, then by all means state my ignorance to it.


My main reason for asking, is that the last Gruul kill we had only one lock, 2 mages and 1 shadowpriest. Considering that it CoR lasts for 2 minutes, it would bring us up to 4 growths where he starts actuaslly hitting harder and it wasn't a good idea to buff him. I checked his OT hit (here) and noticed no moding around AP, just a fixed value. Seemed to work well. Also, we're working on Mag at writing, and considered putting CoR on the first one/two warlocks who don't cast very quickly (with Mind Numbing poison anyhow) and might buff the DPS that little bit more, however, the adds seem to be wearing toliet paper anyway. Not asking about Mag strats, but just to bring into light the way we are considering the curses.

All in all, is CoE just vastly suprerior to CoR reguardless of raid setup? Is it all about what boss you are on? Raid composition?

[Warlock] Explaining curse of recklessness

should give you some insight into numbers and let you decide for yourself what's the best curse if you have only one warlock, with your group composition.

Also, you seem to be completely ignoring CoS for some reason. In your specific example you have two people benefiting from CoE, and two from CoS. Given that shadowpriests and warlocks easily match mages for dps these days, why not CoS? It'll give the shadowpriest's group noticably more mana as well.

Here's the general rule we use. We will use CoS or CoE only if there are three or more people that will benefit from it in the raid. Meaning you have two warlocks and a shadow priest...one of the warlocks will be doing CoS. If you have 3 or more mages, CoE is used.

CoR is only used on certain boss fights such as Shade of Aran...where it becomes really overpowered with melee dps. Gruul does far too much damage to be using it, unless you have an absurd amount of melee.

Perfect, thanks very much. I didn't even think of CoS which shows how neglectful I am about locks and raiding, hence the topic.

Seems it boils down mainly to the composition judging from the referenced post.