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Please gibbe lock tank spec , turtle devs even added a new stone "Wrathstone" which increases threat generated from hellfire , but we have no hard taunt. They removed the threat modifier from searing pain so that's no longer an option.

Hail Octo

- Microchip

Some mechanics I'd like to propose:
Voidwalker ability that transfers threat to the warlock.
Buff Soul Link when you have a voidwalker out, but gives voidwalker Sac a short cast time.
An armor spell that converts a percentage of all damage taken to shadow.
Wrathstone increases all threat.
Obviously a taunt.

The armor spell would allow the warlock to effectively obtain defense via shadow resist, so no major itemization changes would need to happen, and a lot of warlock tier already has some shadow resist. Plus shadow ward, shadow protection pot, and spellstone become active mitigation.
Wrathstone and voidwalker threat transfer would allow tanking in MC and BWL, plus it buffs melee weaving for some added engagement.
Soul Link was nerfed from vanilla for arguably good reason, but voidwalker with an interruptible sac doesn't really have any substantial PVP utility.

Wanted to toss a few more ideas into the pool.

First off, gearing needs a fresh look. Locks are basically sponge tanks like Druids—no parry, block, or base plate armor, just a massive HP pool. We really need more cloth gear itemized for this with high stamina, armor, and defense (similar to Cryptstone Circlet with 161 armor / 25 stam / 14 def). Ever since Soul Link got nerfed down from 30% -> 25% -> 20% over Turtle's lifecycle and we lost the VW bonus healing, taking big hits got way harder. Also spell hit rating is a huge issue right now—if your Searing Pain gets resisted in harder dungeons or raids, aggro is basically gone.

Agreed with #2 on the Wrathstone point. It really needs to boost threat on ALL damage types (shadow, fire, melee, and wand). Whenever you get kicked or silenced, you're forced to rely on melee/wanding to hold threat, so having Wrathstone cover everything would save lives.

As for talents:

Demonic Embrace: Adding ~10% defense here would help prevent getting crit by big elites and raid bosses.

Soul Funnel: Could add a mechanic where each tick transfers 3-5% of the locks armor to the demon (stacks up to 5 times, lasts 20s). This gives the VW/demon actual survivability to off tank extra mobs on 4+ pulls so the lock doesnt take every hit at once.

Demonic Aegis: Id drop the shadow res and HP5 from Demon Armor completely, focus purely on armor, and buff the talent from 20/40/60% to something like 40/80/120%. Losing the 24 shadow res for Twin Emps later is a downside, but honestly that feels very vanilla to have to gear around it.

I Have a bunch more ideas on lock tanking in general, might just start a separate thread at some point.

Outed wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2026 10:11 am Demonic Embrace: Adding ~10% defense here would help prevent getting crit by big elites and raid bosses.

Demonic Aegis: Id drop the shadow res and HP5 from Demon Armor completely, focus purely on armor, and buff the talent from 20/40/60% to something like 40/80/120%. Losing the 24 shadow res for Twin Emps later is a downside, but honestly that feels very vanilla to have to gear around it.

Armor contribution from equipment might be more pertinent, and defense is half as effective for warlock (and druid) than for warrior because of the lack of block and parry.
I thought the damage conversion would be a good way to handle crit immunity without a boring buff like in sod, but another way they could go about it is to just have crits converted into shadow damage entirely, but regular damage is unaffected. Or even have crits redirected to your summoned demon, because the talent for health funnel makes it heal so much that it generates a shit ton of threat.