Warlock’s Guide to Fear and Fear Kiting for PvE

Fear and Fear Kiting is a skill all its own. What you will do with Fear is have the enemy out of direct physical contact with you while you keep dots applied and blast their panicked butts!

As with all of my guides, this is simply a compilation of my experiences and what I have fun with. I’m not the best textbook Warlock, but my friends enjoy my play style. See if there is anything here you can use to make playing a Warlock more fun for you.

Fear is one of the harder spell effects to master and not get you or your whole team killed in the process. In the early levels you will be discouraged from using it in teams, but you should start practicing with all of your effects to get to know their potential. For a long time your teams will tell you not to use it, but when it is needed, they will expect you to be an expert in its use. Personally, I consider using Fear powers an advanced skill and trying to use the Fear spell you get at level 8 is simply a “save your ass” endeavor for quite a few levels. To effectively use Fear it really helps to have the set of spells for it, and I will direct my advice to the post level 42 uses of the effect.

Spells that have Fear effects:

Fear
Available at level 8. This is the straight up single target Fear that you will use for most kiting.

Howl of Terror(HoT)
Available at level 40 1.5 sec cast 40 sec cooldown Howl, causing 5 enemies within 10 yards to flee in terror for 6 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.

Death Coil
Available at level 42.
30 yd range
Instant cast 2 min cooldown
Causes the enemy target to run in horror for 3 sec and causes XXX Shadow damage. The caster gains 100% of the damage caused in health.

The Do Not’s about Fear:

Do not fear targets that Hunters have Pets on. The Pets will draw aggro, even if the feared enemy does not on their own.

Do not fear your main Tank’s target. He would rather that he dies before having to chase a feared target. You should assume that the healer can do their job. (Granted, if the healer is still alive in the fight.)

Do not fear any direct melee’s target unless requested to do so for that matter. These do not’s are subject to change with advanced skill, and regular running mates. How you will use your skills with seasoned veterans and friends will differ from some guidelines for Pick up Group behavior.

Know your enemy
Some mobs do, and some mobs don’t call for reinforcements. You can take on some pretty nasty Elites if they like to attack you solo. One of my first true testing of Fear Kiting was in the 58-60 range in Winterspring. The Frostmaul Giants are solo attackers for the most part. They are great training. This is an advanced skill, so I do recommend that you start serious training for this after you get into the 50’s. You can start using the Elite giants in Aszura in the mid to late 50’s for Fear Kiting training.

Hints about who does and doesn’t call for reinforcements will be in your general chat. If you decide to take on one type of enemy in standard Void Tanking style, and you see “Infected Timberwolf calls for help” during a standard battle, you know that if you fear that type of Wolf, then they will call in for reinforcements as soon as the fear wears off, and in some cases by just running around other Infected Timberwolves. Then, instead of just one wolf to deal with, here comes the whole pack. Humanoids almost ALWAYS call for reinforcements, so assume that’s the case for all general Humanoid encounters.

Many enemies cannot be feared at all. If it’s undead, find other means of crowd control if needed. They’re all immune. They’re dead……. why should they be afraid of you!? If you are not going to use a game Add-on or Mod to help you know who can and cannot be feared. Start making those mental notes now.

Know your surroundings
Where to use fear can sometimes be as important as when. Find areas where the mobs have no other enemies to pull in. Or find locations that the game graphics work to your advantage.

A prime example:
I was working over an instance with some buds and it was working us pretty hard. I was leading Crowd Control and we were pulling 6-7 mob pulls. Just a little too many to tank and seduce. We were in a long hallway and near its end. I recommended that we simply pull the mobs way down the hall and I would fear one, seduce the other.

This plan worked better than expected. The walls had little cubby holes for pillars or statues or whatever….. The enemy I feared ran straight into a wall and got hung in the graphics. I sat there and very easily kept him dotted up while I maintained my seduction control duties. When the fear dropped, I used Death Coil, reapplied the main Fear and he ran right back into his corner and got stuck.

Tight passageways and busy graphics tend to get them stuck when feared as often as it does when the mobs use it on you. Look for advantageous locales to use this feature. Did you just clear a big ole room just behind you? Drag your fear assignment with you into that room and let him run around all by himself. Make sure the room and surrounding doorways to it do not have adds to pull in. Some instance runs do not require complete clearing of all enemies in it.

Why Fear at all?
You are a cloth wearing class. Bottom line is to keep enemies out of direct melee with you or not attacking you at all while you burn them down. In other cases it will be to reduce the overall DPS coming into the team, or Team’s Tank while a primary target is taken down. This is our means of crowd control by taking one enemy that is supplying DPS against us out of the fight.

Game Add-ons and Mods I’m only going to touch on this briefly. Mods are a touchy subject with some, and those who do use them are pretty loyal to them. I use and prefer Necrosis for my Warlock specific needs. For this discussion, I like it because I get a screen notification and sound bite if desired to notify me that my target cannot be feared. I recommend this or any other Mod that will give you a notification before you attempt to use this effect, but it’s by no means a requirement.

First lesson: The Mini Kite Death Coil
available at level 42 is a very effective spell for setting up other effects and getting a little health back from doing it. The 3 second fear is great because the enemies will tend to not go far enough to draw additional aggro. You can also get an enemy out of direct combat with you, the healer or any other squishy in the group long enough for the Tank to regain aggro or for DPS to do it’s job and take that enemy out of the fight.

I use the Mini Kite for various reasons. For full blown Fear Kiting this will get an enemy off of you long enough to apply the regular Fear spell. Or in some cases I’ll use it to just bounce the enemy off long enough for one good Shadow Bolt to finish them off. Basically you should think about all of the spells that you have that have timers on them that are under 3 seconds that you could use on the enemy. The Mini Kite can facilitate any and all of them.

Complimenting curse: Curse of Shadow. Simply because you will gain the most health and generate the most damage from casting the spell with this debuff applied.

Still important: Know your surroundings, know your enemy. If the mobs are tightly packed or you are near a village of enemies, you could still draw additional aggro with even the slightest fear. Look for wide open spaces or in an instance environment, try to have the Tank pull the mobs away from tightly packed areas. You can also use your Voidwalker to “fish” for enemies and draw them into more workable areas that are empty and may have been previously cleared by your team.

Get used to how far the enemy can run in 3 seconds. In the future, this will help you to determine when this spell is appropriate for the instance situations you will encounter. I use this a lot in the instances now that I know how much breathing room to have available while we work the mob over.

Single Target Fear Kiting
This is where you will take a single target, keep them running around scared for their life, all the while you are keeping DoTs and Blasts taking them down to a pile of ash.

The lead in: You have a Tank/distraction readily at your disposal. I prefer to use the Void for this. As this is written from the perspective of the Destruction Spec Warlock, I do not have a Felguard for this activity. I pick mobs that I know he can handle a little abuse from. I set him on the selected enemy, sometimes reeling him back in to get the enemy into a better position for me, Apply DoTs, Fear the enemy and IMMEDIATELY call the Void back in. Try to keep in Blasting Range and keep those DoT’s working. Elites have a tendency to dispel things more often, so make sure you keep the damage flowing at all times. The ability to Fear targets gets weaker the more you use it on that target.

The reason you pull the pet back quickly is that even if the selected enemy cannot draw aggro to you, the chasing pet will pick up everything it runs by like a magnet. Then bring it all back to you in the end.

The return: If the Fear wears off before you are done killing the enemy, be ready for either a Mini Kite to help you apply the next Fear, or just cowboy up and take a shot from the enemy as you get it re-applied. The range on it is pretty short, and almost every mob I use this on has enough time to hit me at least once. But once you have em feared again you can bandage or Health Funnel from them. Keep your Death Coil as a backup in case things start getting out of control. With the timer you have to deal with on Death Coil, you will only get one opportunity to use it in this procedure.

You will find that the Void will no longer have their attention. Even if it tries to Taunt again, the use of Fear increases your threat level considerably, and you will be doing constant damage while the enemy is feared in most cases, additionally building your threat level. For this reason, I also recommend that you keep your pet on Passive. Telling them when to attack, and for them to stay until they are needed. When the mob does start returning, I will sick the Voidwalker back on them to try to regain their attention, but mostly just to add a little more DPS to the mix now. Be ready to call him back quickly once you have the Fear re-applied. He also makes a decent shield if you need to sac him because you are running the raged edge and about to die.

The effect will diminish in length every time you use it on that particular enemy, and I’d say that you need to take down whatever you are fighting in 3 fear applications, or you may find that you aren’t quite so scary any more. I’ve applied more and got it to stick, just don’t expect to get away with it forever against an even leveled mob.

You may also experience an early return if you do too much damage at once. The whole idea is to burn then down quick while they run around, and before the Fear effect gets resisted. But I’ve found that a healthy crit will break the Fear effect. So be ready to re-apply it if the enemy shrugs it off prematurely, or you break it with a good wallop.

Keeping up the DPS: You can’t Fear them indefinitely. The whole point of this is to keep them running around while you are taking away their life points. The mobs will run out of range so getting your DoTs applied early and often will keep the damage ticking while you can’t Shadow Bolt, Soul Fire or whatever because of range issues. Finding good areas where the mobs can get cornered is a good idea. But that will not always be available. You may have to chase them a little to keep yourself in range for standard attack routine damage. Just be mindful you don’t chase them close enough to aggro a second enemy with your personal aggro radius.

I like to start out with Curse of Agony after the Fear. It’s an instant cast and you can get it applied very quickly before they get out of range. Then just try to stay close enough to get your other DoTs like Corruption and Immolate applied. Shadow Burn is also another good instant cast to apply as they make their first run, but a crit could give you an instant return. But the most important thing to do is to keep those DoTs applied. That’s standard Warlock 101 for almost any encounter with the exception of a few bosses that you should not apply DoTs to.

Location: You need to maintain control of a target in an instance, possibly with the Succubus, but she squishes pretty easy. Have you cleared the previous room? Have you cleared most of the instance and there are no more adds to pull with a Fear? This is where “Know your surroundings” comes in to play again. If there are no more adds that can be pulled by a Fear gone wrong, go nutz. Granted, have some courtesy for your fellow teammates that are Melee oriented, but if you see things starting to go sour in the fight, take one or more of the enemies out of it. All of the classes have some thought processes that need to be maintained for effectiveness, but the Warlock class is definitely not the “Tank and Spank” class. Warlocks are Damage/Control/Finesse. Add in a little cloth armor for the squish factor and there you go.

Complimenting curses: This can be rotated during the process. Curse of Agony for an instant cast after the Fear is applied, but as the enemy starts coming back, Curse of Weakness is good to apply until you can get Fear applied again. You are going to take a shot or two from the current target. CoW will reduce that damage. Then cast CoA again after they run away in fear. This all depends on your mana reserves in the fight as well. Don’t keep switching curses if you are running low, keeping up the DPS should take precedence.

AoE Fear Kiting
Fear is our AoE crowd control feature. At some point you do get to open Pandora’s Box, and when that happens you will see the fun that can be had with this spell effect.

There are certain fights where you will be asked to use your AoE Fear to scatter the mobs for a boss fight with adds. A little coordination with your other Warlocks will be very helpful. Using the AoE fear effect is not officially kiting unless you are working with a group of Warlocks. So you will most likely be using this effect in larger raids, or as a panic button in the open zones when you need to cut and run.

The first important thing to address about Howl of Terror(HoT) is that it has a cooldown timer of 2 minutes. By now you should be familiar with the “Soulstone Rotation” during the bigger runs. You should also establish a HoT rotation. If you all go in at once and burn your AoE fear, then it’s a full 2 minutes before anyone can use it. I find that whatever SS rotation you are on, will work just fine for the HoT rotation. This is the plan I’ve used in the past successfully on Buru the Gorger in Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj(AQ20):

The Battle gets to the point where the boss spawns a bunch of adds(bugs in this case).

The team is aware of the Fear crowd control that will be used.

The Tank is in and has primary aggro on the boss, but he can’t take all the incoming from the bugs.

For the sake of discussion, there are three Warlocks on the raid. Warlock #1 goes in for the first HoT…… The mob scatters.

Warlock #2 and Warlock #3 are using individual Fear spells for anything missed. When they come back, many could be aggro’d to Warlock #1, so Warlock #2 needs to be looking out for him.

Warlock #1 notices his feared targets are returning, he heads towards the Tank with Warlock #2 in tow.

Warlock #2 uses their HoT. Hopefully before everything kills Warlock #1.

Warlock #1 and Warlock #3 are using individual Fears to keep things off the Tank, and themselves.

Warlock #3 is up next when the mobs return.

All the while this is happening, you are still trying to apply your DoTs on the primary, tanked target and get a few blasts in, but stay focused on your crowd control duties. That is most likely what is keeping the group alive. Just try to do what you can. After doing this a few times you will find more opportunities to add DPS to the fight.

I have found that with a minimum of 3 Warlocks, you can roll this HoT rotation over and over again. Warlock #1 will have their HoT recharged by the time that Warlock #3’s feared targets come back…….In theory. There are two problems with the plan. Timing and the inconsistency of the time an enemy is feared.

Timing: The timing takes practice. When should the first Warlock go in, and when to know the first mob is returning? Who is HoT’ing, and the best times to pull it off? All I can say is practice. I did already mention that this is an advanced skill. It won’t be easy at first but it does get better. I recommend healthy communication with your other Warlocks first, but don’t forget your team. They need to know how this is going to work as well. You are only one aspect of the fight, and they are covering your back. They might be able to help you with a rogue mob you just can’t keep off of you. K

NOW who Warlock #1, #2, #3, etc is. Without this, there is no timing.

Inconsistent Fear effects: Some of the mobs will dispel your fear before the others, sometimes there are more than 5 adds and others will be outside of the 10 yard radius. Murphy’s law dictates you won’t get them all. So be ready for it. This is why the other Warlocks are still using individual Fear on the stragglers. You have it as well, don’t be single minded and only think about the AoE effect and the HoT rotation. Keep Death Coil and Fear ready to help manage the aggro you will draw.

Important Note: Doing damage on the enemies effected by HoT can break the spell. Save your DoT damage for the primary Tank’s target if DoT is appropriate for that target. Refer to your Tank and/or team for targets appropriate for DoT spells if you are unfamiliar with the instance.

This should give you the basics for using Fear effects. With different teammates and Guilds there will probably be specific instructions on how they want you to use the effects. Be flexible and practice, practice, practice! Don’t wait till you start raiding to get comfortable with this set of effects. The Warlock class is highly solo-able so you should have plenty of opportunities to practice using Fear while questing. That way when it does backfire on you and you die, you learn how to use it properly when it’s a raid group you are working crowd control for. I can guarantee that his will get you killed. At least at first. But I have found myself in situations where I have just drawn too much aggro and I’m using my single target fear to maintain 4 to 5 even leveled targets at once to try to save my butt. Then standing in a pile of bodies when it’s over. Almost no mana, almost no health, but alive none the less!

Now go out there and scare the hell out of something!