Monday, April 20, 2009

Warlock hate runs deep

A lot of times I am struck by sheer amazement on how much hate people harbor towards classes that either counter them or that they simply do not play. More often the reasoning doesn't make sense but obviously human beings are more than just compilations of rational thought.

Still, the guy who decided to complain about the fact that soulshards can be gotten from training dummies these days and calling for a hot fix might've just gone off the deep end.

Bug, perhaps, game breaking in a fashion that it needs hotfixed: hardly

Read the original report here

Oh ... did I mention you can get soulshards from training dummies? I didn't did I... well you can, bugs are a beautiful thing.

You can also trigger your lightweave cloak enchant off of fel armor life ticks which really makes me appreciate the little bugs that seem to prevail despite any horrendous fear nerfs that seem to abound every now and then.

Also in the 'not so latest news' section it seems that warlocks and rogues are actually now the least popular classes at level 80, death knights and paladins taking the top 2 according to wow census.

Still despite all the negativity the warlock is quite decent to play as affliction in 3.1... I wouldn't want to try and pvp with it still (perhaps as destro) but if blizzard ever lets warlocks back into the drain tanking game via a boost to the health returns I'd actually be quite pleased.

On the other hand it's probably better to wonder what'll get nerfed next.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any chance you can post your strategy/spell rotation for affliction--both in and out of instances? Trying to get as much dps as possible.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Census sounds right to me. Rogues I can kinda understand (DPS class, which DPS's no better than non-pure dps, but warlocks have a number of great utility abilities.

Summoning portals are awesome and literally save hours of raiders times. Not many other classes can say this.

Captain The First said...

@anonymous:

Most things are still being looked at with the new 3.1 patch but in general the warlock rule has always been to cast the highest damage per cast time spells first which more or less looks like this:

Corruption / Haunt
Curse of Agony
Unstable Affliction
Drain Soul <25% HP
Shadow Bolt

More often than not your casting will look like this on regular spank & tank fights:

Haunt->Shadow Bolt->Corruption->Unstable Affliction->Curse of Agony

obviously refreshing dots where needed (only really relevant for CoA and UA).

Solo play I tend to focus most rotations around corruption which is crucial and from there on your gear decides together with the level of the mobs you're fighting. If your dots rarely get to the end of their cycle you can usually drop a dot from your rotation and replace it with an sbolt cast which is still a decent filler.

Nightfall procs are a bit of a toss-up... I use them practically always in solo play but in an instance I will skip an entire nightfall proc if there's a chance of a dot falling off.

I suppose I will make a post of this somewhere further down the line. I still have a longer session planned with mr training dummy to verify some stuff.

@bobturkey: Yeah I was kind of surprised that rogue's did so poorly in the census but then with dual spec there isn't really that much interesting to dual spec into as a rogue.

LinebargerCL said...

Thanks, Captain, on the rotation information. Will check that out tonight. I am just now getting into instances (solo'd my way to 80) and I'm curious what your rotation is on trash mobs when there is AoE tanking going on. Currently I do a lot of haunting, dots, seeds o' corruption and Lifetaps. Suggestions would be appreciated

Captain The First said...

@humero:

Trash mobs are pretty much the warlock's main weakness since our dots rarely run the full duration.

What I usually do is I spread the corruption dot (used to add siphon life to it but that's no longer needed) around and then go heavy on the seed of corruption if the tank holds decent aggro on multiple targets. So basically corruption on all targets except the one I am using for seeds.

If that's not an option it's back to ye ole filler spell sbolt since haunt's primary benefit comes when a full stack of dots is running on the target which is rarely the case.

Avoid CoA on weak mobs since it's damage is primarily backloaded which doesn't do you any good on trash.

Beyond that if you have a keen eye you can usually start up a drain soul when the target is below 25% since drain soul's damage is pretty solid then but unfortunately only when the target is below 25% health when you start casting.

It really depends on the tank you're running with. A good aoe tank can hold seed of corruption aggro which should be your goto spell... a 'lesser' tank can probably hold aggro from you dotting up multiple targets with a few dots.
A 'poor' tank means you can only hit the primary target in which case your dps will go down the drain no matter what.

As said, I'll try and squeeze out a post on this in the near future since the above is starting to look like a word jumble hehe.

*vlad* said...

Rogues bring nothing to the raid table except for dps, and wearing leather armour does not help.

I can't believe someone complained about getting shards from dummies.
Farming shards is one of the dullest things to do in the game;
time we got a boost in this in the same way Hunter's got endless ammo.

When soloing as Affliction, I usually let the Voidwalker tank for me (why get hit when someone else can?).
A couple of dots - Corruption, UA or perhaps Haunt, will kill most non-elite mobs at 80 without much problem, and your Void will hold the aggro for that amount of time, too.
Finish off with Drain Soul or Drain Life, mix in the odd Life Tap, and you should be at full health and mana, even after taking on multiple mobs. Easy.

Fish said...

I have a warlock, but I admit, I don't really enjoy the class that much, I did level one past 60, and it wasn't an unenjoyable experience in general, I just prefer mages as a caster class, purely a personal decision. I will say, my least fav class in the game is Rogue and a lot of that has to do with ganking.

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