5x Warlock Drain Tanking?

[fogy]

Any veteran locks out there who can speak to the boxing potential of the following approach?

My original original toon was my warlock, but he got shelved once I discovered the joys of aoe tanking my pally. Now that I'm boxing I came across this thread suggesting drain tanking with your warlock and was wondering about its potential for a 5x lock team.

Drain Tanking! Forget everything about letting the pet tank, because when you pull number 10 mob, they'll be all over you and hitting you. Isn't that bad you say? No because you'll kill all the mobs because you've got so much Spellpower that you simply CAN'T die! Siphon Life and Drain Life will keep you alive through anything. Oh and Elites!?! You're gonna laugh at ELites while you solo every single group quest in Northrend. I've had Guildies thank me for convincing them into this spec, because they felt so useless leveling the Warlock like a Hunter with a wand.

This sounds just like when I was told about, and subsequently fell in love with Protection Pallys, so I'm curious if just such a revelation is possible here.

I'm currently boosting a set of locks, lazily abusing the fauna with a mage and 4 locks simply Draining Life and Souls. Single targets are usually dead before my mage can finish a 5 second pyroblast. Makes me wonder what 5x dots and the full monty could do.

Bonus: 4x drain soul animations looking down from above is sweet.

[Tim]

Hmm, I'm not really sure about drain tanking, but it would be a rather fun way to get your health back up in BGs

[ebony]

i gto 5 locks somethink i just started i manged to tank a lot off dungons with voidey to say 45 BG weekends are the best way i been leveling them. or getitng frined to powerlevel them with and my main group to AV level (for next weekend) now the fun starts on them

[Tim]

I think Warlocks could easily tank up until Utgarde Keep. I'd really like to know how it goes in there.

[Paws]

I would like to see a short fraps of 5 seed of corruption detonating in an instance

[Smithnweson]

Used to be easier... before they went and kicked the voidwalker with a 90% hp nerf QQ

[Paws]

Originally Posted by Smithnweson

Used to be easier... before they went and kicked the voidwalker with a 90% hp nerf QQ

Well it was kinda dumb that they had the same HP as most raid geared tanks...

[Ualaa]

Not sure how well it would work.

I'd assume Soul Link, possibly glyphed for the extra 5% health transfer.
You'd also take at least a couple of points in Demo, so the pet is healed as you DPS.
So 25% of all damage is ignored, but you're still taking 75%.

The talents in Affliction, for your Drain spells to lose less casting time, when taking damage will be essential.
You'll want the talent for Siphon Life, which is now a percentage of Corruption damage.
So increasing Corruption is probably fairly decent.

This spec used to be based on instant cast Dots on a lot of targets.
And then either (Life) Drain tanking the mobs.
Or instant-cast Howl of Terror to buy additional time.

I don't see the (Demo) talent, which improves your pet in a specific way, the one where you (and your pet) would take less damage if you had the Voidwalker out.
So most pets are viable, if they have the health for Soul Link.

If you spec Demo, I cannot see a pet other the the Felguard.
It's probably our best AoE pet, not that pets spec for AoE.
But you also improve your Hellfire and have Metamorphosis.

I could see you spec'ing Affliction, for the increased dot potency.
And Haunt helps to heal.
With Affliction, you'd either go Succubus for more pet based damage.
Or Felpuppy, for use against caster players/mobs.

You could spec 1+ warlock(s) Affliction, for the Unstable Affliction dot, which would give the rest of the team dot removal protection. Depending what you want to do, you could have all warlock pets out, and play all three specs. Then have hotkeys for managing your pets; a succubus focus/seduce macro, a felguard charge macro, a felpuppy decurse/spell lock macro, etc.

With five warlocks, or four and a healer (Resto Druid or Disc Priest, for the mobility probably), you'll have a lot of DPS, so won't need to drain tank nearly as long as a solo warlock would.

[Hpdark]

My main is a warlock, and I think it's one of the greatest farming classes, even more-so now with cata. Personally I would go demo, it's so versatile and beastly.
whether it's farming honor or farming dungeons, your greatest combo is to go demon, flame aura, hellfire (you can move around with it now) and whirlwind with your felguard. If you had 5 of those i gurantee you wouldnt die in 5v5 arena, anyone within 10 yards of your warlocks is straight up F---ed. You can also use your infernals if you're not in arena. At 80 i was farming H MGT and H seth halls, normally i could pull a group at a time but as soon as demon form is up i could take an entire room easily.
I suggest you get the shadowflame glyph as well, it slows their speed by 70% and you can run backwards using hellfire staying out of reach.
At 85 I can run through all the trash to the first boss in kara and take them out in 1 pull