The Voidwalker – without question the most used pet by Warlocks in World of Warcraft.
Lets talk about why.
Firstly, for solo PvP the Voidwalker reins supreme as the only pet you should be considering choosing until much later in your WoW career, or unless you’re facing a very specific type of enemy (like casters for the Felhunter to much on).
I still see level 80 Warlocks all over the place running about with Voidwalkers, because they’re the easiest pet to use, they get you out of the most trouble (see my post on how to use Warlock pets), and they level you the fastest by tanking for you.
What does that mean… tanking for you? The Voidwalker for Warlocks is like a portable damage shield and personal bodyguard. While you throw mountains of damage at your opponents, the Voidwalker keeps them occupied until they’re a smoldering mound of shadow dust on the ground.
The Voidwalker does this by “taunting” your enemies. Every time you need to take on an enemy who would run into melee with you and kill you in 5 or 6 solid hits, the Voidwalker steps in and takes those hits (and many, many more) for you. The Voidwalker is TOUGH, and will never let you down when questing and grinding at your level (and even a few levels above quite easily).
A few tips for using the Voidwalker when you’re questing solo…
While the Voidwalker is an amazing pet for keeping the enemies blades off your back with his taunt powers, you still need to be careful how much damage you cause, otherwise the Voidwalkers taunt won’t hold, and you’ll find yourself under attack.
So, I recommend that to start with you set your Voidwalker on defensive stance. This means that as soon as you attack an enemy, your Voidwalker will be off after them, and will automatically taunt and attack them to keep the enemy off of you.
Next, when using your curses and damage over time spells, you need start with curse of agony, and then hit them with Immolate. Stop right there… and wait. Your curse and Immolate will keep on damaging the enemy, and your Voidwalker will keep the aggro of the enemy monster. After a few seconds, the monster will be sufficiently “angry” with the Voidwalker, and you can continue casting at it.
For optimum leveling efficiency, I recommend you buy the absolute best wand you can afford. A good wand will cause close to as much damage as your shadow bolt spell, but won’t cost you ANY mana! If you need a hand making a little extra gold to buy a good wand, I recommend Luke’s Gold Secrets. He knows his stuff.
The trick with leveling with the Voidwalker isn’t just staying alive or killing stuff the fastest, its killing it the most efficiently… And that means making sure you don’t SLAM the monster you’re fighting right from the beginning, because you’ll cop a ton of damage and have to rest a lot, which will slow your leveling down. It also means being conservative with your mana, which is why I recommend a good wand to help you conserve mana for your expensive curses and Immolate spells. If you burn through all your mana too quickly, you’ll simply find yourself needing to rest, and again, that’ll slow you down.
Let your Voidwalker take a ton of punishment, and then use his consume shadows ability after the fight to heal him up… its much faster than healing yourself, and much faster from a leveling standpoint.
If you do this right, you should find yourself almost never needing to sit down & rest, and when you do its only for a very short time.
PvP with the Voidwalker!
Boy do I love PvP with the Voidwalker. I must admit here to having a slight passion for PvP, and for annoying other people with “cheesy” tactics… and that is, using the Voidwalkers “sacrifice” ability.
Sacrifice, while killing your pet, means you gain a huge damage shield for a short period of time… and if you’ve played ANY PvP, you’ll know that a short amount of time is all you need to either live or die.
This is not a complex tip – simply make sure you have a good collection of soul shards at all times, sacrifice the Voidwalker pet, and start raining curses on every enemy player you see! You’ll get a ton of kill assists, and a good number of kills yourself… all the while being protected by the sacrifice you made earlier.
The Voidwalker, like most of your pets will benefit from taking points in the demonology tree, but honestly, I think the affliction tree is a much better pick, especially at lower levels.
When do you want to take the Voidwalker? Definitely while soloing – its like your own personal warrior tank. And definately in PvP… the sacrifice ability is great for avoiding death while dealing out DoT’s. And definitely in PvE with groups who don’t have tanks. Just avoid taking him in groups when you already have a few tanks – just break out the Imp!
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