Interesting how a threat titled "Is a shadow priest better than a mage?" has turned into a long dicussion on "is Mage AoE better than warlock AoE?".
Damage aside, Arcane Explosion is much more flexible than Hellfire. You can cast it on the run. There's no health penalty. You're casting time is only limited by mana pool, and whether enemies are beating on you or not.
Hellfire has more limitations, but it can still get the job done. The key is in preparation. One preparation is to mitgate the damage to self from the spell. My warlock carries around a stack of fire protection pots, and they're very effective. If you have a priest in the party, they can pre-shield you. You can also sacrifice a void walker.
The next step is to limit the amount of interuptions to the channeling. That means waiting until someone else in the party has aggroed the swarm in question. Concentration helps. Shields help.
Even then its pretty unusual to channel for the full 15 seconds. I find the monsters are either all dead, I've been interupted, or there is a good reason for me to move and break the channeling. On the other hand, I can't think of many situations where a mage has spammed 15 arcane explosions in a row either.
The situations you use it are much more limited that for a mage (who can use AE for general grinding, killing an escaping runner, a finisher, etc etc). But when you have a swarm of non-elite monsters bearing down on your party and you want to nuke them to hell and back, the difference between Hellfire and Arcane Explosion seems pretty small.
Chris
Edit: Because I was overusing the word "effective"
Damage aside, Arcane Explosion is much more flexible than Hellfire. You can cast it on the run. There's no health penalty. You're casting time is only limited by mana pool, and whether enemies are beating on you or not.
Hellfire has more limitations, but it can still get the job done. The key is in preparation. One preparation is to mitgate the damage to self from the spell. My warlock carries around a stack of fire protection pots, and they're very effective. If you have a priest in the party, they can pre-shield you. You can also sacrifice a void walker.
The next step is to limit the amount of interuptions to the channeling. That means waiting until someone else in the party has aggroed the swarm in question. Concentration helps. Shields help.
Even then its pretty unusual to channel for the full 15 seconds. I find the monsters are either all dead, I've been interupted, or there is a good reason for me to move and break the channeling. On the other hand, I can't think of many situations where a mage has spammed 15 arcane explosions in a row either.
The situations you use it are much more limited that for a mage (who can use AE for general grinding, killing an escaping runner, a finisher, etc etc). But when you have a swarm of non-elite monsters bearing down on your party and you want to nuke them to hell and back, the difference between Hellfire and Arcane Explosion seems pretty small.
Chris
Edit: Because I was overusing the word "effective"