Pet SituationFollow

There are 3 pets currently for the Warlock: Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus. Each are received through quests at levels 5, 10 and 20 respectively.

The imp has the ability to increase the stamina for the warlock and any party member within radius of the imp. In addition, the imp can put a fire-based damage shield on the warlock and themselves. Finally, the imp has a ranged firebolt attack which does considerable damage and is upgradeable as the warlock levels. Unfortunately, the imp has almost no armor and so makes for a poor tank, but is absolutely great as a DoT or in parties that have tanks or when you don't really need a tank.

The voidwalker has tremendous armor and the ability to Taunt the enemy off of the warlock. Unfortunately, currently, this Taunt ability does not work very well. In fact, the imp can generate much more hate with its firebolts than the VW can with its taunt. In addition, the damage that the VW does to the enemy is just plain awful [read: embarrassingly bad]. The armor that the VW has is nice, but since it does not do any damage worthy of note, the mob must be taken down slowly using all of the warlock's mana or abilities to do so. I say 'slowly' only if you want the voidwalker to hold agro at all, since it won't if you chain nuke or chain dot or chain curse.

The succubus is almost the best between the two. She has relatively good armor, does good damage with her lash, taunts well with her kiss, and has the bonus ability to use seduction - which immobilizes a foe like a sleep spell as long as the victim is not damaged [very nice for adds]. Definitely a great pet.

The voidwalker and succubus use soul shards in order to be created. The soul shard is something that the warlock can obtain through the usage of a 'drain spell' used as a non-trivial difficulty victim dies. The 'drain spell' has a fairly long duration and does some damage so it's relatively easy to get more shards as needed - as long as you have enemies around who are of non-trivial level.

Overall, I use the imp the most probably -- when I'm farming, wandering or in groups where I know my pet won't get agro and I won't be responsible for taking care of excess adds. The succubus is the best pet by far, though the ranged attack of the imp is very useful for pulling.

The other reason I use the imp the most is the fact it doesn't take soul shards to create. Currently, pets often get lost or stuck and end up despawning, even if the warlock was just running along a road. As easy as it can be to get more soul shards, it's sometimes easier to just bring up an imp until you're in a place where you're going to need the armor and seduction of the succubus. The VW is nearly useless at this point. There's nothing I would be able to take with the VW that I couldn't take with the imp or succubus. These two pets are MUCH more versatile than the VW. I can ping pong mobs between the imp and myself, or let the succubus just have them and seduce them if things get rough. The VWs do look fun, though :)

NICE post Lemur, being a warlock as well this info is right on the dot.

One thing about voidwalker though, i find that at level 20 he can tank pretty well, i start him off and then have him do his taunt, throw my curses, taunt again, and nuke till the mob is at 1/4th health before it turns to me. He can tank if you know your limits. It takes practice to do, but, its possible.

I seriously need to do the succubus quest...

Is there any more pet planed that you know of?
Most of the other pets are currently rumors and wont be known till they are in the game. Current rumors: Felhound (Supposedly being revamped because original concept was for anti-magic and Blizzard felt that warlocks wont change a pet to deal with a specific mob) as well as the Infernal. Most likely a spell that wont be seen in beta IMO. To powerful, and to high of a level to obtain for the beta push.

also, do you control their abilities, or they you just summon them and they do what they want....?
They do have thier own macro set that you can press CTRL + 1 - CTRL 0 to set them up with commands. I have the voidwalker with his taunt ability on a macro. It does auto cast, but, its nice being able to control it too because it doesnt always go off (Great for adds too taunt the one attacking me and then both the void and i focus on the same mob).


Edit: realized i misstyped the macro setup for the pets.

Edited, Tue Jun 15 03:24:20 2004 by Tartesk

So after the June patch, the pet situation has changed.

Succubi and Imps have been nerfed and the long underpowered and relatively useless Voidwalker is king. The imp's nukes were nerfed. And almost every ability of the Succubus was nerfed - seduction, soothing kiss, lash of pain - oh well, it was time to try something new anyhow.

The voidwalker, on the other hand, now can do around 30-40 points of damager per attack instead of the sub-10 pts of damage it was doing previously. Comparatively in the previous patch, the Imp could continuously nuke for 80 pts of damage, and the Succubus would hit for 40s and Lash of Pain for around 140.

The Torment (i.e.; taunt) capability of the voidwalker was also increased so that the pet can actually draw agro off of you if you do something other than throw 1 curse. The armor and hitpoints are also quite augmented on the voidwalker as well.

At level 39, I was soloing using my voidwalker for the first time on some level 36 ogres in the Alterac mountains without any problem at all. I'd throw a curse of weakness (rank 4) and a corruption (rank 4), and let the voidwalker just pound away until the mob was down to about 10% hitpoints (Drain Soul range). The voidwalker would lose about 150 hit points of its 1600 during the fight so I could just continue. Interestingly, at this point, I hadn't upgraded my voidwalker's taunt [it was still rank 1!]. With the higher level taunts, I was able to throw immolation and some lower level nukes to quicken the combat and still be able to drain soul at the end of combat.

The biggest change to Warlocks besides this pet change is the Channeling interruptability. Many of the warlock spells, such as Drain Soul, Health Funnel, Siphon Mana, Hellfire, and Life Drain, are channeling spells. With the new patch, these spells became interruptible which makes the all-important Drain Soul difficult to use if you (the caster) have agro. I know the reason behind the interruptability was due to people using Life Drain to tank. Now, however, siphon mana and life drain are particularly nerfed by this patch if the warlock wishes to solo.
The voidwalker can hold agro relatively well, but there are many spells which the warlock needs to use carefully in order to not draw agro on themselves.

Unfortunately, I think this change to channeling makes the warlock a bit more boring as a class. It's difficult to use weapons and life drain as you could before because you want to keep agro on the pet; mostly because Drain Soul is the life blood of the Warlock and many of the warlock's abilities are destroyed if they can't get soul shards. It probably would have been better to lower the benefit to Life Drain and Siphon Mana rather than making them interruptible.

Level 19 here, and maxed voidwalker taunt talent I can put Immolate, Corruption, Curse of Agony and then 1 Shadow Bolt + chain wand till the mob is dead, without getting aggro 99% of the time. They changed it in the latest patch so now the voidwalker chain taunts which helps alot (I was forcing it anyway, just way more convenient if he does it on his own).

i saw people running with mini diablo pets last night in addition to the imp. can anyone tell me where i can get a diablo too and what it is?

Yes, very much like the Necro, except pets are not skellies.

Got my infernal last night.

Not worth the infernal stone used to summon it. Hopefully it'll change in the near future =\

my first double post... *sniffles*

Edited, Tue Jan 18 11:56:36 2005 by lordtyresian