Seduce: Banish: Fear

Warlocks have three forms of crowd control. And we can use all three at the same time (which makes the warlock the superior crowd control class.).

We can seduce humanoids with our succubus.
We can banish demons and elementals with a spell.
And we can fear lots of things with another spell.

No where do you see a warlock doing multiple CC's as much as you see it in MrT. And maybe the big pulls in Slabs.

In MrT, a lot of the groups come in sets of five. Or six. They usually include one demon (Sister of Torment) and lots of humanoids.

So you, the uber-warlock that you are, have your succubus out for seducing and are ready to banish the demon and maybe if one of the other people lose it, fear-yo-yo a third. (Remember, DPS is for wussies. You are all about the CC, locky!)

If you're using a focus macro, it can hopefully be done easily. Just remember, you can't have two focuses, so don't use a focus macro for seduce and banish.

However, if your focus macro decides to NOT WORK ever, and you have no idea why since you haven't done anything to it and you aren't using both focus macros for seduce and banish... then you have to do things the hard way.. manually.

Which can be done and done well if you're quick with the mouse or tab-targetting. But it is a little sloppy.

You can't reseduce until the old seduce wears off. A good seduce macro will include some form of stop-cast on your succubus, so she stops her previous cast and recasts at the same time, same button. Is nice.

However, manually, you'd have to click follow, then seduce. I guess it could work that way, but oy... so annoying. Otherwise, you have to watch our dot timers (which should include seduce) and as soon as it ends, you should have the seduce target targetted and be ready to click seduce.

You also can't rebanish until banish is out. This isn't a macro thing, it's simply you cannot rebanish something until it's not banished anymore. Stupid Blizzard. Sure, you can RESHEEP something... grumble.

So, again with the dot timer... when it hits 2s, wait half a second (or a breath, whichever is easier for you to calculate), then recast your banish.

If you are using necrosis, there is a banish button on the necrosis module, a left click should cast rank 2, a right click casts rank 1. If you're close to being ready to take the banished mob, then try to slap a rank 1 on it. It makes everyone happier.

As for fears... ah, lovely lovely fear. Our bread, butter, joy and happiness.

Remember that fear-yo-yo is a finely turned art. If the mob gets too far away, it can run into something else and you wind up ... all sorts of dead.

Curse of Recklessness is your friend. Don't forget it. Ideally, you'd be able to pull said mob well away from where it could run into something else, so you can fear freely and openly, without the use of curses. Especially if you're also handling a seduce and a banish.

Otherwise, you're standing between feared mob back in the cleared area, and the group you're fighting currently, and are having to swivel around and around to make sure all your targets stay under lock and key.

Is it doable? Yes.
Is it fun? Hell no.

Seduce Macro: shift+macro clears last focus, sets new focus.
#show Seduction
/clearfocus [modifier:shift]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/petstay
/petfollow
/stopcasting
/cast [pet:succubus,target=focus,exists,harm] Seduction; Seduction

I don't use a chain fear macro. I tried one once, didn't like it. Since fearing is, for a vast majority of time, something you need to watch closely, I don't like simply using a macro and forgetting about it.

I cannot find on the interwebs where my banish macro is... so I'll have to look at my character in game. So I'll have to edit it in later. So you'll just have to wait.

Heroically ready and heroically dead!

Many many people of awesome talent, ability and gear are suddenly able to do heroics that they previously could not do, simply because they did not want to run the same instance.. over and over and over and over again to get the reputation. With the new patch, the reputation required to purchase your heroic key has been lowered to honored.

This is good news to the people I have mentioned above, those of talent, ability and gear! Note I said AND.

Something I've already encountered, and something I'm sure I will be encountering more and more are people who have talent, or ability or gear, but not talent/ability and gear.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'll be the first to say that it isn't gear that makes the player. I've partied with epic'd out idiots and with normally geared genius's. However ... to a certain extent, you need the gear to survive a heroic. You need to do the DPS. You need to do the healing. You need to survive the tanking. Whatever gear it takes to do that, you need to have it.

With the opening of heroics to people who are only honored, we not only get a lot more people trying to do heroics, which is all to the good if you've ever tried for 4 hours to get a tank for a single heroic run.... but all to the bad because now we'll be trying for 2 hours to get a tank for a single heroic run and die and die and die and wipe and die and wipe s'more if s/he isn't appropriately geared. I don't know about you -- I don't mind trying if there's a chance of success. I do mind mindlessly wiping when there isn't a snowballs chance in hell (unless you believe in Dante's version of hell, then it's a different story!) of success.

Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE heroics. I went into heroics with blue gear and after tons of heroic runs, I'm now decked out in pretty pretty purple. And I had a blast doing it! But I was pulling my weight (even if at times it was slightly substandard) and I didn't try to do heroics that required ridiculous amounts of heroicness to complete. I think EVERYONE should do heroics. But just like everything else ... be prepared. Know what you're doing. Know what healing/dps/tankability you need to have to pull it off.

You'll die in heroics. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this. But you shouldn't go from 100% durability to 0% durability and only be at the first boss because a: the tank keeps dying after two hits by a single mob, b: the healer spams their biggest, best heals and the tank just keeps losing health over a period of time until he's dead or c: the tank is doing great, the healer is keeping the tank up, but it's taking too long to kill the mob and the healer runs out of mana.

I love being DPS for just that reason. Even if I'm somewhat slacking in gear or ability, I have two other people who will hopefully make up the difference, though it will make the instance harder. Doable, but harder.

However, this doesn't mean that I should walk into Heroic Ramparts with green gear and 150DPS. That ain't gonna fly. But I do get some slack. A tank and a healer however, poor blokes, need to be at the top of their game because there isn't another healer to take over (in your typical 5-man), or another tank to take over if you just aren't up to doing the job.

Oh, and CROWD CONTROL.

Know what crowd control you can and cannot do. Know how your tank pulls (sap's are terrible with pally tanks, unless there are more than three mobs and even then know how the pally shield is likely to bounce and sap the one that is least likely to be whacked, etc), know what mobs can be mind controlled, sheeped, charmed, cycloned, blinded, gouged, trapped, feared, etc. Even the best tank will have problems if 3 super-elites are whacking on him (or her). Know what your kill order is, and for heavens sake, do not ever ever DoT something that should be crowd controlled until the tank is whacking it! Sometimes there's an accident, I understand that. But I hate hate hate rogues who say 'I was just getting it off the priest!' but OH NOW IT'S POISONED, !@#@*#&!^!. You know what I say to that? DEATHCOIL! Deathcoil gets it off the priest and goes away in 3 seconds, ample time to get it reCC'd.

But I digressed. Crowd control is vitally important in heroics. It just is. Don't argue with me. Accept what I say.

This is why warlocks are the superior crowd control class. We can charm humanoids. We can banish demons and elementals. We can enslave demons. We can chain fear anything except undead (and a few other exceptions).

What can a rogue do? Oh.. I can sap a humanoid... but only before battle... and it can't be reapplied.
What can a mage do? I can sheep a humanoid or a beast!
What can a hunter do? I can trap a single target! Maybe two if I'm really good. (oh, and I can fear a beast every so often)
What can a druid do? I can hibernate a beast or cyclone a target for 6 seconds.
What can a priest do? They can mind control humanoids, so long as the priest doesn't take damage and the priest can't do anything while mind controlling and gains a ton of aggro if the MC'd mob doesn't die.
What about a shaman, warrior or paladin? Nada! Ya'll suck! (just kidding, love you guys! :)

Now, a warlock.. well.. we can charm a humanoid (as long as our succubus stays alive) while banishing a demon/elemental (which can't be broken, just has to wear off). Or we can banish a demon/elemental while enslaving another demon and use it as our minion, still attacking all the while. Oh, and that thing hitting the priest?

DEATHCOIL!