Voidwalker Aggro Problem

[Crazyj 0]

Is anyone else having trouble with their voidwalker? I have trained him up as far as I can, torment set to auto, and he can't hold aggro. Even just wanding he looses aggro towards the end of the fight, and if I put a dot on the mod at all he looses it really quick.

[Rayaleith 2]

In Nost, you need the improved Voidwalker talent. It is not like Kronos 2 where void could hold tremendous agro.

[Crazyj 0]

I have the talents, 3/3. Same problems.

[Uriel Ventris 224]

Do you have Suffering already? If so then use it in the beginning of the fight and then every time it's off cooldown.

It's said that it is a taunt in the description yet the spell just produces an immense ammount of aggro really.

[Crazyj 0]

Since suffering has a 2min CD its going to be useless on most fights. I shouldn't be pulling aggro from my VW by simply wanding. Can't believe I'm the only person with this problem.

[AgentMulder 2]

Since suffering has a 2min CD its going to be useless on most fights. I shouldn't be pulling aggro from my VW by simply wanding. Can't believe I'm the only person with this problem.

 

It was well discussed back on the old Nost forums.  An update or a patch went in, and the Warlock forums lit up for days with this topic...everyone started complaining about their VW's not being able to hold aggro any longer.

Edited December 26, 2016 by AgentMulder

[els1v 0]

is this going to be fixed? i am constantly pulling aggro from my vw with just corruption and wand. this is NOT blizzlike for sure

[ambrosiah 0]

Is anyone else having trouble with their voidwalker? I have trained him up as far as I can, torment set to auto, and he can't hold aggro. Even just wanding he looses aggro towards the end of the fight, and if I put a dot on the mod at all he looses it really quick.

 

Hey mate,

 

Aggro with the voidwalker is tricky and game in itself. It took me some time to learn how to work with it. Now, I've had no problems with my voidwalker holding aggro. I often fight 3 - 4 mobs at a time and have literally no problems. Sometimes a work around is the answer, although I'm not sure there is an actual bug with voidwalker aggro.

 

Try this rotation, it always works for me (I'm affliction btw with no talent points spent on the improved voidwalker talent):

 

1.) Send your voidwalker out first to collect mobs (I usually nab 3). 

2.) Immediately cast siphon life on the mob the voidwalker is facing and attacking then choose one other to cast siphon life on. Leave the third alone to attack the voidwalker.

3.) So at this point, you have 3 mobs. One mob is being taunted by voidwalker and has siphon life, the second is aggro'd to the voidwalker without any dots and the third is aggro'd to the voidwalker with siphon life. At this point, the third mob will switch aggro to you. This is fine.

4.) Fear that mob. Fear is easily controllable. A mob will always fear into a cone in front of the caster, so strategize your fear placement so the mob doesn't pick up more mobs. 

5.) After it's feared, unleash all of you dots. Life tap, fear again if you need, drain life. Once it's dead, the other two will still be attacking your voidwalker. Then, target the mob that doesn't have siphon life on it, the second mob. Repeat step 4, unleash dots, life tap, drain life.

6.) Then finish off the third mob that's being taunted by your voidwalker.

 

After this fight it finished, I always end up back to full health and mana. Plus, if you mess up your drain life, life tap you have an SS you can use to rez from and get back most of your health and mana back anyway. And if things get really hairy, voidwalker sac works like magic.

 

Using your wand + corruption, as many as said in this thread, will always pull aggro because the damage is greater than the taunt of the voidwalker. Warlocks are perfect survivalists (we have an SS, voidwalker sacrifice, life tap, drain life, drain mana) so you must play it as one and use all of your resources in strategic ways. If you're just sitting there with your voidwalker and attacking one mob at a time with corruption + wand and that's all you're doing, you're not playing the class to it's fullest potential and PvE'ing incorrectly. 

 

At least in my opinion!

 

 

I hope this helps you out. If you have any questions lmk 

Edited December 26, 2016 by ambrosiah

[Mozq 1]

I have minor problems with aggro so far with improved vw. I let it get two torments off before I start dpsing fully. I open with Curse of Agony and Corruption, wait like a second or two, then I go all out. So far this has been working really well for me.

[Rayaleith 2]

 

3.) So at this point, you have 3 mobs. One mob is being taunted by voidwalker and has siphon life, the second is aggro'd to the voidwalker without any dots and the third is aggro'd to the voidwalker with siphon life. At this point, the third mob will switch aggro to you. This is fine.

4.) Fear that mob. Fear is easily controllable. A mob will always fear into a cone in front of the caster, so strategize your fear placement so the mob doesn't pick up more mobs. 

5.) After it's feared, unleash all of you dots. Life tap, fear again if you need, drain life. Once it's dead, the other two will still be attacking your voidwalker. Then, target the mob that doesn't have siphon life on it, the second mob. Repeat step 4, unleash dots, life tap, drain life.

 

 

 

 

 

I think that the mob with no siphon will aggro you from the healing you get from the siphoned your VW is tanking. The same applies with your draining life. This will aggro the 2nd mob as well.

 

You are right though that lock is better utilized by fighting more than one mob at a time. The only problem is on PvP server your life tapping can make you vulnerable. 

[ambrosiah 0]

I think that the mob with no siphon will aggro you from the healing you get from the siphoned your VW is tanking. The same applies with your draining life. This will aggro the 2nd mob as well.

 

Can confirm this doesn't happen. Your commanding the voidwalker to attack three mobs so it has natural aggro from initiating an attack. One with siphon life is being taunted by voidwalker taunt consistently, one with siphon life is being feared and dot'ed and one is being left untouched affected by the natural aggro from the voidwalker when it initiated attack. It doesn't break.

 

If you want to get real spicy, you can do this with 4 mobs. Only difference is you'll have to health funnel to your voidwalker in between fearing the one that's attacking you and have less health coming out from the fight, but you can easily gain that back with drain life and/or siphon life.

Edited December 27, 2016 by ambrosiah

[athero 0]

no this shouldnt happen, if i remember correctly void did hold aggro fine if you use Curse+Corr+SL and some wand attacks, and lose aggro if you do more dps. Bonus spell damage and low ranks of taunt vs high ranks of spells changes it a little of course, but you should never lose aggro from 1 dot and wanding.

 

Taunt can get resisted though and void can miss attacks, and with big lag it sometimes cant properly position and hit the mob, also void will run OOM fast, in those cases you will obviously aggro from single dot

Edited December 27, 2016 by athero

[Numi 0]

I think that the mob with no siphon will aggro you from the healing you get from the siphoned your VW is tanking. The same applies with your draining life. This will aggro the 2nd mob as well.

 

You are right though that lock is better utilized by fighting more than one mob at a time. The only problem is on PvP server your life tapping can make you vulnerable. 

Siphon Life doesn't produce healing aggro, nor should Drain Life.

Ofc this is assumign it works like Nostalrius 1.0

 

no this shouldnt happen, if i remember correctly void did hold aggro fine if you use Curse+Corr+SL and some wand attacks, and lose aggro if you do more dps. Bonus spell damage and low ranks of taunt vs high ranks of spells changes it a little of course, but you should never lose aggro from 1 dot and wanding.

 

Taunt can get resisted though and void can miss attacks, and with big lag it sometimes cant properly position and hit the mob, also void will run OOM fast, in those cases you will obviously aggro from single dot

In general the first four or five levels after a new taunt (so 10-15, 20-25, 30-35, 40-45, 50-55) will be relatively easy for the void to hold aggro, but it'll run OOM.

 

The other five levels you'll have to pay attention to the void and how much aggro it produces, and it shouldn't run out of mana as easily, but it'll lose aggro instead.

 

There's also a weird place of void aggro, IIRC it's 35-40 or 25-30, where the void just simply cannot survive or hold aggro no matter what you do without the improved void talent, but it'll be enough to still want to run void with the talent atleast, that's what inspired me to run that build in the first place.

 

The voidwalker is tricky to deal with, you have to know what you're doing and it takes a little bit of getting used to him, I'd recommend making a macro to toggle autocast on the taunt, as well as learning how much aggro each rank of taunt produces so that you can do some on the fly math if you can cast another shadow bolt or not. 

Also, when the void struggles to hold aggro, try to start moving in between mobs faster and use more of your health to funnel a bit to the void, it'll be harder and leave you slightly more open to being ganked, but it was a huge time saver in the weird zone where the void really struggles to hold aggro.

[Larsen 3]

If you have a high DPS wand, the Voidwalker can't really hold aggro consistently through dot+wand. It's just how it is.

You might actually consider not training the highest level of Torment, because while the mana cost doubles, the threat generated doesn't. It loses aggro either way around 60-70% of the way through the fight. After a few mobs, pet mana becomes a limitation more than its threat generation and you'll get a smoother grind out of keeping its Torment one level below max. You can't select a lower rank if you've trained a higher one so be mindful of this when training your pet.

After level 40, I had better results leveling with a Dark Pact drain spec. You just take the drain talents and Dark Pact and dot+drain-tank mobs. Pet aggro becomes irrelevant then and you have literally no downtime at all, it's just smooth sailing. You alternate between Lifetap and Dark Pact to recover mana, usually with one Lifetap after killing a mob (you'll have full hp from drain-tanking it) and Dark Pact when you don't have full life.

Use either imp on passive (its DPS costs mana) or succubus with just auto-attack. Imp has more mana regen for Dark Pact but provides no damage while succubus' auto-attack does about as much damage as one dot so you kill faster but might have to occasionally bandage yourself because you don't get as many Dark Pacts per minute. I liked having the succubus out in case of ganks but only the imp gave me absolutely no downtime between kills because the extra mana meant I almost never had to Lifetap. With succubus I sometimes had to bandage but got maybe slightly more xp/hour because of faster kills if I was in a place that had enough mobs for it.

This spec took me to 60 without any trouble. It was way nicer to play than the normal Voidwalker+wand style where you have to wait for pet mana a lot and struggle with aggro. I imagine having succubus up will be really convenient on fresh PvP because of frequent ganks.

You can fight more than one mob at a time by keeping the other(s) feared and dotted, but it doesn't seriously save you time because you'll end up clearing everything in sight as soon as it respawns anyway, and fighting multiple mobs means you spend too much mana on things other than killing your target. It also leaves you way more open to ganks. Single target drain-tanking means you're always at full life, facing only one mob, and you can have your succubus ready to CC anyone who jumps you. It's super safe.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Larsen