Well with all the whining going on about warlock survivability and even cataclysm promising no hope when it comes to upscaling the survivability of the warlock I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands.
Quite frankly since I did my best to complain about various warlock problems whenever I had the chance I thought it fair to take a look at the situation and come up with some kind of build that should be able to withstand a bit of a beating.
The build, how else could it be, is hardly what anyone would consider a standard warlock build, it's not highest in DPS, it's a pretty lousy instancing build and odds are you'll get kicked out a raid the second you even try raiding with it.
It's about cold hard survivability: letting go of all those lovely damage oriented skills and supplanting them with the few mediocre survivability talents a warlock has.
In the end my primary concern was to create a warlock build that would allow the warlock to take the battle to the enemy in a bg setting rather than spending the entire bg waiting on healer rez timers (aka the warlock watercooler).
Before we dive into the why lets take a quick look at the build I am proposing:
Build
Or alternatively dropping the 10% physical damage mitigation for a lot more room in the affliction tree:
Build
Clearly this is nothing like the average cookie cutter spec. We dig deep fairly deep into both affliction and demonology to pick up a few key survivability talents and then top it off with a little more damage reduction from the destruction side.
A quick look at the build will identify the focus areas: Mobility through instant cast dots, draining capability through various drain talent enhancers, boosted survivability through voidwalker sacrifice, improved shielding, master demonologist (in case of the first build) and molten skin.
We're completely ignoring the high tier options from the various trees because they generally add very little to survivability and whilst increasing the damage output is good it is not what we're looking for with this build.
The additional issue with some of the high tier talents is that they require you to stand still to cast which, as a warlock, is most likely the last thing you want.
Destruction apart from nether protection, molten skin and shadowfury stun offers very little in terms of protection so we take what we can get in this case and spend the 8 points to top off molten skin.
Playing the build
The build focusses on mobility and generally relies on having a voidwalker available. While the voidwalker himself adds very little to the battle (other than a good way to occupy people's pets) his primary purpuse is to be sacrificed. Demonic brutality will ensure that you get the benefit of a 10k damage absorption shield every minute which is something even a discipline priest wouldn't scoff at and your voidwalker makes an excellent dump for soul link damage. Try not to lose him, you'll miss him when he's gone (or are voidwalkers female? hmmm).
The trick is to stay mobile. Drop your demonic circle on a ledge, preferably somewhere elevated and focus your combat around your circle. If the battle moves away from your circle the first thing you should do is move your circle. Not having a teleport available when things get too tricky is what causes most warlocks to die.
Dropping your circle on top of a wall means you'll have a nice place to return to to lick your wounds... leave the dying to the lesser mortals.
Spread your dots around, don't worry about trying to kill single targets, instead spread the corruption, use your curse of exhaustion and even throw in the occasional seed of corruption. Non-instant cast spells can be used occasionally but don't focus on trying to spread those around unless you have a lot of breathing room.
You're not a single target combatant but you have the potential to be worse than any catapult in large groups. If you do get caught out on your lonesome use your fear liberally, drain and bubble up as much as you can, you'll be amazed how frustratingly hard to kill you can be and sooner or later someone always comes by and saves the warlock.
Last but not least remember that drains are your friend. People often say draining is a lousy way to dps but personally I think doing damage while getting a bunch of hitpoints for free which can easily be converted to mana is priceless.
On stats
There's not much to say about stats. As a caster you get very little choice in the stat department and whilst I would love to say stack up on armor it's really not an option for us. Instead focus on stamina and spellpower like an ordinary warlock.
The choice between crit, haste and spirit is a bit of a toss up. Haste clearly does nothing for you except lower some GCD's which is nice but hardly crucial. Spirit vs crit is a debate in itself and I simply put to you to go with what you appreciate more. Personally I have a tendency to run with fel armor 99% of the time and spirit translates very nicely to spellpower in that way but as said crit vs. spirit is not a debate I am willing to take on.
Resilience as always is a good choice for any bg'ing warlock. 500 of it should be easy to obtain but you'll really start to feel the difference resilience can make once you get above 700.
All in all I have to say I am quite pleased with the builds. The second build was my attempt to irk out just that more damage without sacrificing too much mitigation and it seems to be working out well so far. While the damage still remains lackluster the combined effort of my pvp trinket, the demonic circle, a much needed defensive proc with the voidwalker sacrifice and the healthstone means that I can survive the initial burst of most of anything.
In the end these builds gave me what I wanted most out of the battlegrounds: The ability to /smile at a rogue and mean it.
That's something isn't it?
Showing posts with label warlock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label warlock. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
We don't need no stinkin damage
So the warlock Q&A has been answered. I am not going to bore you with details because there's really nothing concrete in there except some vague promises that things will improve for warlocks. Looking at the 3.2 patch notes it puts me in a somber mood to see that the actual warlock buff doesn't come from changes to the warlock talent tree itself but indirectly through a resilience change.
Resilience will be changed to a flat damage reduction across the board. Since previously both our dot damage and later our dot crit damage was taxed by resilience the change effectively means warlock damage will be higher relative to the damage that everyone else is doing.
The problem however never was our damage (not in pvp or pve). Warlocks left alone can output a significant amount of damage well capable of causing significant havoc in the enemy ranks.
The reason why warlocks fair so poorly in PVP at the moment is purely down to survivability of both the pet and the warlock (and maybe that darned felpup spell interrupt missing all the time).
While some changes to pet scaling will hopefully help the pet to stay alive longer (possibly even 3 whole GCDs) the actual issue is still with warlock survivability itself.
Warlocks don't live long enough to deliver their damage because their ancient high-stamina drain tanking capability has been stripped down to nothing and they received no other relevant buffs to their survivability (if anything the constant fear nerfing is really doing them in now defense-wise).
This makes warlocks easy targets for any melee that can manage to keep stepping on the warlock's toes, so easy in fact that a decent melee will maybe need 5-10 seconds to tear the warlock to shreds healing applied or not.
I see the signs on the wall though... if you keep buffing damage now to the point where the damage starts having an impact once again and only then address the survivability you can have a guess what will happen.
My thought on the current situation of the warlock class, beyond that the whole class is really poorly designed and could use at least some 'vision' is that we really don't need all the extra damage they're alloting us.
I never wanted to be a glass cannon... I wanted to apply my dots and then by the good graces of high armor (for a caster) / high stam and a few solid life-returning abilities live long enough to see my dots slowly ticking away on the enemy before having to re-apply them.
I don't envy anyone in charge of class balance but it seems to me it's harder to balance a class that was not blessed with a clear vision of what the class should/could be.
Perhaps it's time to delve deeper into the warlock design...
Resilience will be changed to a flat damage reduction across the board. Since previously both our dot damage and later our dot crit damage was taxed by resilience the change effectively means warlock damage will be higher relative to the damage that everyone else is doing.
The problem however never was our damage (not in pvp or pve). Warlocks left alone can output a significant amount of damage well capable of causing significant havoc in the enemy ranks.
The reason why warlocks fair so poorly in PVP at the moment is purely down to survivability of both the pet and the warlock (and maybe that darned felpup spell interrupt missing all the time).
While some changes to pet scaling will hopefully help the pet to stay alive longer (possibly even 3 whole GCDs) the actual issue is still with warlock survivability itself.
Warlocks don't live long enough to deliver their damage because their ancient high-stamina drain tanking capability has been stripped down to nothing and they received no other relevant buffs to their survivability (if anything the constant fear nerfing is really doing them in now defense-wise).
This makes warlocks easy targets for any melee that can manage to keep stepping on the warlock's toes, so easy in fact that a decent melee will maybe need 5-10 seconds to tear the warlock to shreds healing applied or not.
I see the signs on the wall though... if you keep buffing damage now to the point where the damage starts having an impact once again and only then address the survivability you can have a guess what will happen.
My thought on the current situation of the warlock class, beyond that the whole class is really poorly designed and could use at least some 'vision' is that we really don't need all the extra damage they're alloting us.
I never wanted to be a glass cannon... I wanted to apply my dots and then by the good graces of high armor (for a caster) / high stam and a few solid life-returning abilities live long enough to see my dots slowly ticking away on the enemy before having to re-apply them.
I don't envy anyone in charge of class balance but it seems to me it's harder to balance a class that was not blessed with a clear vision of what the class should/could be.
Perhaps it's time to delve deeper into the warlock design...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Is blizzard playing with warlocks?
Following a postlink from our good friends over at locksucks.com I decided to take a look at the newly created Q&A thread about the warlock class.
You can take a look at it here but anyone who plays a warlock already knows the issues and has known of most of the issues since the wrath beta.
Everyone playing a warlock... or playing against warlocks on a regular basis knows our pets are soft targets, knows that most melee classes are ridiculously hard counters to warlocks and know that warlocks are about as squishy as they come. With our 2 second fear (yes, it only lasts 2 secs if you throw on some dots and it's not like you can cancel the dots for max fear effect) and no escape mechanisms other than a short-range teleport we're literally snacks for anything melee. And there is the age old issue of soul shards still taking up a full bag, all our minor glyphs being practically useless and yadiyadiyadi QQ whine whimper... *sigh*
We've known all this, in fact we've known it for so long there were even decent post in the oboards for a while indicating our dismay where other classes even chime in and agree. And you know your class is doing poorly when you're being pitied by other classes.
Blizzard has done quite a bit with the warlock class since wrath but none of those have really addressed the core issues and the latest Q&A thread strikes me as something I would put up in a forum simply to give people the impression that there is someone out there who cares.
It's not all fire and brimstone of course, overall there are warlock builds out there that do ok in PVP and a good affliction build will definitely hold it's own in any raid situation (apart from killing trash) but still... the Q&A is up to 12 pages now and all blue has said was 'keep up the good work'.
The question the whole thread raises with me is not so much whether blizzard cares or not (they're not going to give up just yet after all) but whether or not they're actually serious when they put up a Q&A like that.
What do they hope to learn from the trolls on the blizzard forums that they couldn't find out themselves if they read a few dozen threads on the arenajunkies and elitistjerks forums?
To a certain extend it seems that due to not having posted on the warlock forums for a while they decided to just toss something up to keep the masses occupied for a while.
So what say you? Is blizzard playing with warlocks or is that thread actually going to be more than one huge pile of QQ about issues that we knew about for almost 6 months now?
You can take a look at it here but anyone who plays a warlock already knows the issues and has known of most of the issues since the wrath beta.
Everyone playing a warlock... or playing against warlocks on a regular basis knows our pets are soft targets, knows that most melee classes are ridiculously hard counters to warlocks and know that warlocks are about as squishy as they come. With our 2 second fear (yes, it only lasts 2 secs if you throw on some dots and it's not like you can cancel the dots for max fear effect) and no escape mechanisms other than a short-range teleport we're literally snacks for anything melee. And there is the age old issue of soul shards still taking up a full bag, all our minor glyphs being practically useless and yadiyadiyadi QQ whine whimper... *sigh*
We've known all this, in fact we've known it for so long there were even decent post in the oboards for a while indicating our dismay where other classes even chime in and agree. And you know your class is doing poorly when you're being pitied by other classes.
Blizzard has done quite a bit with the warlock class since wrath but none of those have really addressed the core issues and the latest Q&A thread strikes me as something I would put up in a forum simply to give people the impression that there is someone out there who cares.
It's not all fire and brimstone of course, overall there are warlock builds out there that do ok in PVP and a good affliction build will definitely hold it's own in any raid situation (apart from killing trash) but still... the Q&A is up to 12 pages now and all blue has said was 'keep up the good work'.
The question the whole thread raises with me is not so much whether blizzard cares or not (they're not going to give up just yet after all) but whether or not they're actually serious when they put up a Q&A like that.
What do they hope to learn from the trolls on the blizzard forums that they couldn't find out themselves if they read a few dozen threads on the arenajunkies and elitistjerks forums?
To a certain extend it seems that due to not having posted on the warlock forums for a while they decided to just toss something up to keep the masses occupied for a while.
So what say you? Is blizzard playing with warlocks or is that thread actually going to be more than one huge pile of QQ about issues that we knew about for almost 6 months now?
Monday, March 9, 2009
3.1 patch notes part 2
Warlock changes... and there's a lot of warlock changes in 3.1 to come so lets take a quick look at what I would consider one of the more aggressive changes to the warlock class. A lot of stuff has been removed or seen their talent point cost reduced which should give warlocks a little more room to breathe in terms of point distribution.
Let's dispense with the pleasantries and dive right into the sarcasm (for a full list of changes simply scroll past my endless dribble till you see the word 'warlocks' come by).
Blizzard decided to radically solve out soul shard problem by not allowing us to have more than 32 which is likewise compensated by drain soul now creating shards when fighting non-gray mobs. Considering I reguarly go out to solo instances of the low level variant and I remember burning through shards in pvp like nuts I have a few doubts about this change but this change is undoubtedly easier than making the suckers stack (*caugh*).
Curse of recklessness and siphon life go to the trash bin, one dissapearing alltogether and siphon life being rolled into corruption. The change to siphon life will change how warlock rotations look and should definitely simplify things... that is if 40% of corruption damage is about what siphon life returned in the first place at any rate and our damage doesn't go down the drain over losing siphon life (not likely). Curse of recklessness... well I won't miss it now considering they already removed the ability to control our fear with it.
With the masses of demons in northrend all those lovely changes to enslave demon will undoubtedly pass most warlocks by unnoticed, I'd wager good money that enslaving a demon will never make it past the level of novelty spell in the next 2-600 expansions.
The extra damage for curse of elements is taken out of malediction leaving affliction warlocks not really feeling the difference but now having to decide if malediction is still worth the effort.
Pandemic will make affliction warlocks a bit crit happier and went on a diet now saving us 2 points. Beyond that affliction now seems to benefit shadow more and we will probably see immolate drop out of our rotation due to not getting any benefits from talents anymore.
Demonology also got slimmed down a bit losing demonic empathy and 2 points from mana feed which can be re-invested into a new talent called nemesis reducing cooldowns on some interesting demo talents. Decimation may put soulfire back on the map as useable by reducing it's cast time and removing the reagent cost. Failing that it'll completely invalidate nemesis and soulfire will remain the absolute poorest choice for a warlock to do some damage.
I'll leave destruction to the destruction enthusiasts to comment on but it looks like the tree got tightened a little by bumping bonusses on the less used talents and shaping it to be what I would call a more pvp oriented tree. Lets hope the bump in survivability via molten skin will mean we won't have to scrape our precious warlock off the floor after each arena match... then again he better not use any soul shards anymore or start draining a little soul now and then.
Overall some interesting changes but the cleanup to affliction's rotation will definitely be felt (and if not implemented too poorly) welcomed by what few warlocks haven't switched to dk's yet.
Warlocks
• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) : Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness: Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.
• Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
• Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
• Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
• Talents
- Affliction
• Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt : Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
- Demonology
• Demonic Empathy has been removed.
• Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
• Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.
• Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
• Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
• Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%
• Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
• New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
• New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
- Destruction
• Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
• Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
• Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
• Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
• Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
• Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
• Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier 8).
• New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
• Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
Let's dispense with the pleasantries and dive right into the sarcasm (for a full list of changes simply scroll past my endless dribble till you see the word 'warlocks' come by).
Blizzard decided to radically solve out soul shard problem by not allowing us to have more than 32 which is likewise compensated by drain soul now creating shards when fighting non-gray mobs. Considering I reguarly go out to solo instances of the low level variant and I remember burning through shards in pvp like nuts I have a few doubts about this change but this change is undoubtedly easier than making the suckers stack (*caugh*).
Curse of recklessness and siphon life go to the trash bin, one dissapearing alltogether and siphon life being rolled into corruption. The change to siphon life will change how warlock rotations look and should definitely simplify things... that is if 40% of corruption damage is about what siphon life returned in the first place at any rate and our damage doesn't go down the drain over losing siphon life (not likely). Curse of recklessness... well I won't miss it now considering they already removed the ability to control our fear with it.
With the masses of demons in northrend all those lovely changes to enslave demon will undoubtedly pass most warlocks by unnoticed, I'd wager good money that enslaving a demon will never make it past the level of novelty spell in the next 2-600 expansions.
The extra damage for curse of elements is taken out of malediction leaving affliction warlocks not really feeling the difference but now having to decide if malediction is still worth the effort.
Pandemic will make affliction warlocks a bit crit happier and went on a diet now saving us 2 points. Beyond that affliction now seems to benefit shadow more and we will probably see immolate drop out of our rotation due to not getting any benefits from talents anymore.
Demonology also got slimmed down a bit losing demonic empathy and 2 points from mana feed which can be re-invested into a new talent called nemesis reducing cooldowns on some interesting demo talents. Decimation may put soulfire back on the map as useable by reducing it's cast time and removing the reagent cost. Failing that it'll completely invalidate nemesis and soulfire will remain the absolute poorest choice for a warlock to do some damage.
I'll leave destruction to the destruction enthusiasts to comment on but it looks like the tree got tightened a little by bumping bonusses on the less used talents and shaping it to be what I would call a more pvp oriented tree. Lets hope the bump in survivability via molten skin will mean we won't have to scrape our precious warlock off the floor after each arena match... then again he better not use any soul shards anymore or start draining a little soul now and then.
Overall some interesting changes but the cleanup to affliction's rotation will definitely be felt (and if not implemented too poorly) welcomed by what few warlocks haven't switched to dk's yet.
Warlocks
• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) : Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness: Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.
• Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
• Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
• Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
• Talents
- Affliction
• Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt : Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
- Demonology
• Demonic Empathy has been removed.
• Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
• Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.
• Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
• Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
• Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%
• Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
• New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
• New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
- Destruction
• Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
• Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
• Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
• Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
• Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
• Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
• Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier 8).
• New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
• Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
Monday, January 19, 2009
NURF MY WARLOCK!
With arena representation hitting an all-time low and the population of the warlock community melting away faster than a snowman in the desert blizzard is presented with the very rare opportunity to phase out an entire class in favor of the death knight population.
Since the day that Kalgan has started his blizzard sponsored vendetta against the warlock class a great many of strategic direct and indirect nerfs to the warlock class have resulted in the complete and utter loss of OPness, utility and survivability...
And yet a handful of warlocks still remain.
Having failed miserably Kalgan was executed and sacrificed to the lich king forever to roam the lands as a scourge warrior and a replacement was appointed to finish what Kalgan could not.
With the promise of being the only warlock to remain I have taken upon me the task of the eradication of the warlock class and as a result I propose the following changes to be patched in with 3.0.8. 3.1. or otherwise 'soon' (tm).
Fears
It has come to my attention that despite the dozens of hard counters that other classes now have against fear some classes are still unable to interrup the fear casts timely and effectively. To avoid further issues with fear the cast time will be increased to 4s and the effect's duration will be shortened to 5 seconds. This will ensure that even the most dimwitted keyboard turner will have ample time to interrupt the cast with minimal consequences if they fail to do so.
- The fear effect will be removed from deathcoil to be more in line with the Death Knight's death coil.
- Instant howl of terror will no longer be instant cast.
DoTs
To prevent the warlock from being overly dependant on dot timers the next patch will ensure that any and all dot-timer addons will cease to work. A new generation of dot timers will be prevented from working by removing all public methods related to reading out dot times. This will be a warlock only change as to not affect healers.
Individual dot times will also be adjusted to ensure warlocks spend 99% of their time attempting to keep dots up.
all dots will furthermore instantly be dispelled upon the untimely death of the warlock.
Drains
Token buffs will be given to drain mana. These token buffs will look good on paper but will not effectively change the spell to prevent warlocks from using it more than once.
The mana cost of drain life will be increased with each token buff to drain mana to compensate for the (non)buffs.
Drain spells will also check LOS every tick and be interrupted (with no mana refund) if LOS is broken.
Demonic circle
Due to the nature of this spell in 'certain' arena's and the potential use of this spell for exploiting terrain bugs the following changes will be implemented:
Demonic teleport will no longer work if the warlock is out of Line of Sight from his circle.
Demonic teleport will also teleport any melee currently attacking the warlock to the demonic circle.
Demonic circle now requires a soul shard as reagent.
Soul shards
To address complaints by warlocks of having soul shards take up all their bag space soul shards have been added to all cast-time spells in the warlock arsenal. This will ensure the quick removal of soulshards from the warlock's bags thus leaving him with significantly more bag space.
Pet survivability
Rather than addressing the low HP, terrible scaling and useless pet abilities warlock pets will now only last 1 minute after being summoned.
This is more in line with lore and will prevent warlocks from confusing their demons with actual pets like a hunter's pet.
Demon abilities will be set to autocast to circumvent discussions about spell-lock resistance and other similar problems.
Curses
Warlocks have long since complaint about the useless of curses outside of curse of agony. As a result all curses will be rolled into a single much much weaker curse providing: 10% movement speed reduction, 10% slower cast times, 10% attack speed reduction.
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis has been reworked. While in demon form the warlock's movement speed is reduced by 50%.
immolation aura has been redesigned entirely to provide a blastwave like attack without the knockback that does damage to the demon in equal proportions to the damage done to others.
The warlock will not be able to cast any spells in demon form other than the new immolation aura and 'cleave'.
Other
- Seering pain is now instant cast but causes 25% more threat
- Soul linked warlocks will now be connected to their pet with a clearly visible bright pink line
- Due to the lack of banishable mobs in Northrend this spell has been removed from the warlock arsenal.
- Several warlock talents have had their talent point cost increased (particularly affliction talents)
- Lifetap had it's scaling adjusted and will now give 5% of max mana for 10% max health and no longer scales with spirit.
Since the day that Kalgan has started his blizzard sponsored vendetta against the warlock class a great many of strategic direct and indirect nerfs to the warlock class have resulted in the complete and utter loss of OPness, utility and survivability...
And yet a handful of warlocks still remain.
Having failed miserably Kalgan was executed and sacrificed to the lich king forever to roam the lands as a scourge warrior and a replacement was appointed to finish what Kalgan could not.
With the promise of being the only warlock to remain I have taken upon me the task of the eradication of the warlock class and as a result I propose the following changes to be patched in with 3.0.8. 3.1. or otherwise 'soon' (tm).
Fears
It has come to my attention that despite the dozens of hard counters that other classes now have against fear some classes are still unable to interrup the fear casts timely and effectively. To avoid further issues with fear the cast time will be increased to 4s and the effect's duration will be shortened to 5 seconds. This will ensure that even the most dimwitted keyboard turner will have ample time to interrupt the cast with minimal consequences if they fail to do so.
- The fear effect will be removed from deathcoil to be more in line with the Death Knight's death coil.
- Instant howl of terror will no longer be instant cast.
DoTs
To prevent the warlock from being overly dependant on dot timers the next patch will ensure that any and all dot-timer addons will cease to work. A new generation of dot timers will be prevented from working by removing all public methods related to reading out dot times. This will be a warlock only change as to not affect healers.
Individual dot times will also be adjusted to ensure warlocks spend 99% of their time attempting to keep dots up.
all dots will furthermore instantly be dispelled upon the untimely death of the warlock.
Drains
Token buffs will be given to drain mana. These token buffs will look good on paper but will not effectively change the spell to prevent warlocks from using it more than once.
The mana cost of drain life will be increased with each token buff to drain mana to compensate for the (non)buffs.
Drain spells will also check LOS every tick and be interrupted (with no mana refund) if LOS is broken.
Demonic circle
Due to the nature of this spell in 'certain' arena's and the potential use of this spell for exploiting terrain bugs the following changes will be implemented:
Demonic teleport will no longer work if the warlock is out of Line of Sight from his circle.
Demonic teleport will also teleport any melee currently attacking the warlock to the demonic circle.
Demonic circle now requires a soul shard as reagent.
Soul shards
To address complaints by warlocks of having soul shards take up all their bag space soul shards have been added to all cast-time spells in the warlock arsenal. This will ensure the quick removal of soulshards from the warlock's bags thus leaving him with significantly more bag space.
Pet survivability
Rather than addressing the low HP, terrible scaling and useless pet abilities warlock pets will now only last 1 minute after being summoned.
This is more in line with lore and will prevent warlocks from confusing their demons with actual pets like a hunter's pet.
Demon abilities will be set to autocast to circumvent discussions about spell-lock resistance and other similar problems.
Curses
Warlocks have long since complaint about the useless of curses outside of curse of agony. As a result all curses will be rolled into a single much much weaker curse providing: 10% movement speed reduction, 10% slower cast times, 10% attack speed reduction.
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis has been reworked. While in demon form the warlock's movement speed is reduced by 50%.
immolation aura has been redesigned entirely to provide a blastwave like attack without the knockback that does damage to the demon in equal proportions to the damage done to others.
The warlock will not be able to cast any spells in demon form other than the new immolation aura and 'cleave'.
Other
- Seering pain is now instant cast but causes 25% more threat
- Soul linked warlocks will now be connected to their pet with a clearly visible bright pink line
- Due to the lack of banishable mobs in Northrend this spell has been removed from the warlock arsenal.
- Several warlock talents have had their talent point cost increased (particularly affliction talents)
- Lifetap had it's scaling adjusted and will now give 5% of max mana for 10% max health and no longer scales with spirit.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Warlocks Represent!
I have a nasty habit of making up lack of skill with reading the appropriate material so I can at least talk like I know about things even though I don't always get to bring actual skill to the table (theory is better than execution so to speak).
I did however read and play enough to be able to predict that warlock population for this pvp season would be as they call it absolutely 'terribad'.
Take a look at this table: here
And note that the once feared all powerful OP warlock is now 'the' most underrepresented class in the entire arena world (not to mention completely not present in any top 100... unless there's a top 100 of suck online somewhere). Sure sure it's only been a few days since the season started and figures will adjust a little as resilience starts scaling, but we all know how PVP works.
The (gear)lead you build in the beginning of the season will be the lead you have for the rest of the WotLK PVP seasons. The fact that there's now around 4% of the total arena population playing a warlock means that warlocks are pretty much doomed when it comes to arena PVP.
Doomed, as in destined to always be one or more gear steps behind the rest.
I am not surprised. After seeing all the massive burst damage that is generated these days and knowing full well that a warlock is still a very much dot-based class I knew things were going south.
Add to this the fact that warlocks will now have approximately the same amount of armor and only moderately more stamina as well as 0 survival tools (no meta jokes) beyond abilities that are taxed with heavy cooldowns means we can literally kiss the warlock goodbye as OP PVP class.
I am not bitter about it, I am doing decently in PVE, but it was obviously coming down the tube and the cries from people over at arena junkies could be heard for miles and miles without being adressed which is what bothers me a little.
You know things are in a sad state when even the most experienced arena players can't think of reasons why they would want to take a lock over 'any' other class to an arena match.
And that's where the problem comes in. Assuming blizzard will eventually deal with the glaringly obvious problems of the warlock the fix will most likely be too late. It takes some arena players as little as a month or two to get a significant lead in gear... even if the warlock gets fixed they will be behind so far that only the most tenacious warlock PVPers will be able to catch up.
To me the problem is easily circumvented by levelling another alt, something I always enjoy doing, but in the end going from a decent PVP class which the warlock was at some point to being a liability for your teammate(s) is going to be a bitter pill to swallow for most warlocks.
Still, there's some hope for warlocks... something like a tenacity buff of some sorts for the fact that you had enough guts to enter the arena as a warlock in the first place...
On the plus side: If you ever make it into deadly gear as a warlock you should be rightfully considered the most 'bad ass' person on your server.
So have hope warlocks... have hope and represent!
I did however read and play enough to be able to predict that warlock population for this pvp season would be as they call it absolutely 'terribad'.
Take a look at this table: here
And note that the once feared all powerful OP warlock is now 'the' most underrepresented class in the entire arena world (not to mention completely not present in any top 100... unless there's a top 100 of suck online somewhere). Sure sure it's only been a few days since the season started and figures will adjust a little as resilience starts scaling, but we all know how PVP works.
The (gear)lead you build in the beginning of the season will be the lead you have for the rest of the WotLK PVP seasons. The fact that there's now around 4% of the total arena population playing a warlock means that warlocks are pretty much doomed when it comes to arena PVP.
Doomed, as in destined to always be one or more gear steps behind the rest.
I am not surprised. After seeing all the massive burst damage that is generated these days and knowing full well that a warlock is still a very much dot-based class I knew things were going south.
Add to this the fact that warlocks will now have approximately the same amount of armor and only moderately more stamina as well as 0 survival tools (no meta jokes) beyond abilities that are taxed with heavy cooldowns means we can literally kiss the warlock goodbye as OP PVP class.
I am not bitter about it, I am doing decently in PVE, but it was obviously coming down the tube and the cries from people over at arena junkies could be heard for miles and miles without being adressed which is what bothers me a little.
You know things are in a sad state when even the most experienced arena players can't think of reasons why they would want to take a lock over 'any' other class to an arena match.
And that's where the problem comes in. Assuming blizzard will eventually deal with the glaringly obvious problems of the warlock the fix will most likely be too late. It takes some arena players as little as a month or two to get a significant lead in gear... even if the warlock gets fixed they will be behind so far that only the most tenacious warlock PVPers will be able to catch up.
To me the problem is easily circumvented by levelling another alt, something I always enjoy doing, but in the end going from a decent PVP class which the warlock was at some point to being a liability for your teammate(s) is going to be a bitter pill to swallow for most warlocks.
Still, there's some hope for warlocks... something like a tenacity buff of some sorts for the fact that you had enough guts to enter the arena as a warlock in the first place...
On the plus side: If you ever make it into deadly gear as a warlock you should be rightfully considered the most 'bad ass' person on your server.
So have hope warlocks... have hope and represent!
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
On reagent removal or the absence thereof
I was flaying around in sunken temple for a bit trying out a new destruction build on my warlock to see how backdraft would work together with soulfire and despite fairly good results in terms of damage I hit the wall fairly quick.
I hit the wall... not because my casting rotation was wrong, not because I had issues keeping monsters from closing in and beating on me, not even because my pet scaling bites and I have to recast the damn thing every 5 minutes... I hit the wall because I ran out of souls.
I had gone into the instance having spent a good 15-30 minutes farming shards in nagrand beforehand so I knew I had at least 40 of the little buggars wasting space in my inventory.
Turns out that between casting the occasional healthstone / soulstone, re-summoning pets and heavy use of soulfire and shadowburn I literally ran out of souls in about double the time it took to farm them.
Now petless and with no capability of re-summoning the damn thing I had to roundtrip back to outland and start farming all over again... farming time which of course resulted in half the instance trash mobs respawning.
Trash mobs that don't give me shards because they're grey to me (apparantly low level creatures don't have useable souls).
.../grrr
This wasn't the first time either... I usually have to take along about 60 soulshards into a larger raid instance to make sure I don't run out. If there's a lot of re-summoning of people going on I am most definitely going to run out.
In arena's the situation is worse. With no trash mobs around and only a tiny chance of getting a soulshard from a player I reguarly run out of shards if I don't spend a solid 30 minutes farming before arena sessions.
The problem has become so bad that I completely threw overboard the idea of regularly re-summoning pets or heavily using abilities with soulshard cost during arena. All that just so I could make it through 10 matches without having to run off and find me some hapless creatures to de-soul. Which is also one of the reasons I usually run around as deep affliction (imp = free, affliction spells don't have extra cost).
The worst thing about all this is the inventory management aspect. It takes a full bag slot to carry around about 40 souls and another bag slot to carry around any additionally required soulshards with 0 added benefit other than having a soul shard ready when you need one (or more commonly when someone else needs one).
Taking a look around at other classes we see that most classes got their reagent cost for various spells removed based on the fact that blizzard thought they were taking up too much inventory space and/or required farming of 'older' content. For those spells where the reagent cost wasn't removed glyphs were added to remove the reagent requirement (at least for the most part).
The warlock receives no such thing and at best can hope for a double return on soulshards via a minor glyph.
If I then compare this to my hunter who arguably is the only other class that is 'forced' to waste a bag-slot on ammunition then I see that the hunter comes out on top here as well. Arrows/bullets can be bought at minimal cost, don't require a time investment to farm and on top of that the quiver bag-slot also improves firing speed.
So while other classes get to save 1-5 bag slots on various reagents now the warlock after a solid 3(?) years of complaining still has to put up with half of his inventory consisting of shards?
I am not opposed to the mechanic of collecting souls to fuel my spells... I think it's rather novel and adds some nice 'evil' aspect to the warlock.
But there are numerous ways now how the shard problem could be addressed without removing or even changing the mechanic of collecting souls significantly:
1. Remove soul cost for damage abilities. This would allow us to actually consider using shadow burn and soulfire without having to think about our 'fuel efficiency' all the time.
2. Allow souls to be redeemed from low levem mobs which in turn would make low-level instance runs a lot less tedious.
3. Allow soul shards to stack. Stacks of 5 would be plenty, hell I'd even settle for stacks of 2 which would stretch my shard carrying capacity and reduce inventory waste.
4. Give us an ability that takes the souls from nearby bodies. So if you're standing in an instance and there's trash mob corpses all over you hit your new 'redeem' ability and all the corpses turn into nice little soulshards (if you have looting rights).
5. Add soulshards to the currency tab removing the need to inventory manage the darned things.
6. Make bags automatically replenish shards as you kill or over time (a free shard every 15 minutes would be a godsent in itself).
There's a lot of simple things that could be implemented to alleviate the warlock's infinite problems with soulshards and there's really no reason why collecting soulshards should be so much of a chore.
If it takes you 30 minutes to farm the required shards before you can play your warlock it simply means that you just wasted 30 minutes of your playtime on something that gives you nothing other than the ability to cast spells.
Would you play a frost-mage if you had to go out and collect non-stacking snowballs to cast blizzard? Would you use pyroblast if you had to collect individual bits of magma to cast it? How would you feel about your protection paladin if you had to have a spare shield in your inventory for every time you 'threw' your avenger's shield? How much would you enjoy your hunter if you couldn't buy bullets/arrows from a vendor but had to manually craft them each and every day?
These are all very off-the-wall examples... but a warlock without soulshards cannot function at it's optimum and having a limit to how many shards you carry means that there's literally an 'invisible' cap on how long a warlock can last in any situation.
Finally lets look at this from a cost perspective:
If it takes you 30 minutes to collect about 50 shards (that's pretty good in itself) and it takes you about an hour to farm 100g (not unrealistic for me) that means that every soulshard is worth about 1g.
That adds up quickly in a normal day's worth of play... it adds up even quicker in a raid... and it's just plain ridiculous when you start using your shards to taxi people all over the place.
Let's be honest... I really don't mind spending a shard on summoning a demon, it make sense that they would need a soul to consume since they're demons after all. But soulfire and shadowburn? Those spells have been normalized ages ago. The damage is far from spectacular and doesn't warrant the soulshard requirement.
Do we even remember what the soulfire animation looks like? I rediscovered the spell with the new backdraft haste procs but now I am going to have to bench it again simply because I don't want to drag 70 shards around just so I can cast some hasted soulfires...
Something needs to be done... and that something doesn't look that difficult... so the question begs to be asked: Why is nothing done about the soulshard situation?
I hit the wall... not because my casting rotation was wrong, not because I had issues keeping monsters from closing in and beating on me, not even because my pet scaling bites and I have to recast the damn thing every 5 minutes... I hit the wall because I ran out of souls.
I had gone into the instance having spent a good 15-30 minutes farming shards in nagrand beforehand so I knew I had at least 40 of the little buggars wasting space in my inventory.
Turns out that between casting the occasional healthstone / soulstone, re-summoning pets and heavy use of soulfire and shadowburn I literally ran out of souls in about double the time it took to farm them.
Now petless and with no capability of re-summoning the damn thing I had to roundtrip back to outland and start farming all over again... farming time which of course resulted in half the instance trash mobs respawning.
Trash mobs that don't give me shards because they're grey to me (apparantly low level creatures don't have useable souls).
.../grrr
This wasn't the first time either... I usually have to take along about 60 soulshards into a larger raid instance to make sure I don't run out. If there's a lot of re-summoning of people going on I am most definitely going to run out.
In arena's the situation is worse. With no trash mobs around and only a tiny chance of getting a soulshard from a player I reguarly run out of shards if I don't spend a solid 30 minutes farming before arena sessions.
The problem has become so bad that I completely threw overboard the idea of regularly re-summoning pets or heavily using abilities with soulshard cost during arena. All that just so I could make it through 10 matches without having to run off and find me some hapless creatures to de-soul. Which is also one of the reasons I usually run around as deep affliction (imp = free, affliction spells don't have extra cost).
The worst thing about all this is the inventory management aspect. It takes a full bag slot to carry around about 40 souls and another bag slot to carry around any additionally required soulshards with 0 added benefit other than having a soul shard ready when you need one (or more commonly when someone else needs one).
Taking a look around at other classes we see that most classes got their reagent cost for various spells removed based on the fact that blizzard thought they were taking up too much inventory space and/or required farming of 'older' content. For those spells where the reagent cost wasn't removed glyphs were added to remove the reagent requirement (at least for the most part).
The warlock receives no such thing and at best can hope for a double return on soulshards via a minor glyph.
If I then compare this to my hunter who arguably is the only other class that is 'forced' to waste a bag-slot on ammunition then I see that the hunter comes out on top here as well. Arrows/bullets can be bought at minimal cost, don't require a time investment to farm and on top of that the quiver bag-slot also improves firing speed.
So while other classes get to save 1-5 bag slots on various reagents now the warlock after a solid 3(?) years of complaining still has to put up with half of his inventory consisting of shards?
I am not opposed to the mechanic of collecting souls to fuel my spells... I think it's rather novel and adds some nice 'evil' aspect to the warlock.
But there are numerous ways now how the shard problem could be addressed without removing or even changing the mechanic of collecting souls significantly:
1. Remove soul cost for damage abilities. This would allow us to actually consider using shadow burn and soulfire without having to think about our 'fuel efficiency' all the time.
2. Allow souls to be redeemed from low levem mobs which in turn would make low-level instance runs a lot less tedious.
3. Allow soul shards to stack. Stacks of 5 would be plenty, hell I'd even settle for stacks of 2 which would stretch my shard carrying capacity and reduce inventory waste.
4. Give us an ability that takes the souls from nearby bodies. So if you're standing in an instance and there's trash mob corpses all over you hit your new 'redeem' ability and all the corpses turn into nice little soulshards (if you have looting rights).
5. Add soulshards to the currency tab removing the need to inventory manage the darned things.
6. Make bags automatically replenish shards as you kill or over time (a free shard every 15 minutes would be a godsent in itself).
There's a lot of simple things that could be implemented to alleviate the warlock's infinite problems with soulshards and there's really no reason why collecting soulshards should be so much of a chore.
If it takes you 30 minutes to farm the required shards before you can play your warlock it simply means that you just wasted 30 minutes of your playtime on something that gives you nothing other than the ability to cast spells.
Would you play a frost-mage if you had to go out and collect non-stacking snowballs to cast blizzard? Would you use pyroblast if you had to collect individual bits of magma to cast it? How would you feel about your protection paladin if you had to have a spare shield in your inventory for every time you 'threw' your avenger's shield? How much would you enjoy your hunter if you couldn't buy bullets/arrows from a vendor but had to manually craft them each and every day?
These are all very off-the-wall examples... but a warlock without soulshards cannot function at it's optimum and having a limit to how many shards you carry means that there's literally an 'invisible' cap on how long a warlock can last in any situation.
Finally lets look at this from a cost perspective:
If it takes you 30 minutes to collect about 50 shards (that's pretty good in itself) and it takes you about an hour to farm 100g (not unrealistic for me) that means that every soulshard is worth about 1g.
That adds up quickly in a normal day's worth of play... it adds up even quicker in a raid... and it's just plain ridiculous when you start using your shards to taxi people all over the place.
Let's be honest... I really don't mind spending a shard on summoning a demon, it make sense that they would need a soul to consume since they're demons after all. But soulfire and shadowburn? Those spells have been normalized ages ago. The damage is far from spectacular and doesn't warrant the soulshard requirement.
Do we even remember what the soulfire animation looks like? I rediscovered the spell with the new backdraft haste procs but now I am going to have to bench it again simply because I don't want to drag 70 shards around just so I can cast some hasted soulfires...
Something needs to be done... and that something doesn't look that difficult... so the question begs to be asked: Why is nothing done about the soulshard situation?
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Can someone cry NERF WARLOCKS please?
Courtasy of
The more I play my warlock the less fun I am having with it. You know things are really bad when even other classes are no longer crying: NERF THE WARLOCK
I am not really sure I enjoy being pitied on the public forums:
Warlock Pity
In fact I'd rather be completely underpowered and still have people cry nerf. At least that's something... that's class... that's the fear of times long past carried on to the next generation. That's what a warlock should instill... fear or at least a bit of respect.
Maybe we've been normalized... but when my hybrid moonkin brings more to the table in terms of utility and DPS and even my paladin tank has better pvp viability than my lock you really start to wonder what happened to this 'pure dps' class.
Sure sure a warlock is still a relatively powerful thing in PVE and PVP but there's one caveat: The warlock needs to be left alone. The second it gets any attention it's a dead warlock. It's not like noobcoil, fear or howl of error makes for a solid defense.
Is it QQ? Do I need to learn to play my warlock? Perhaps, but after playing my paladin, druid and even hunter my warlock feels a little 'meh' and I am not the only one who feels this way.
I haven't given up on him just yet. There's other specs to try and there's hope that things will look up with another 10 talent points. But for now I slap on my 'inspected by earl Z. Mode' t-shirt dive into the nearest hole in a BG and hope no one sees me because I truly am an easy HK.
Someone cry nerf warlocks... please... I miss it. It's ok if you lie... I'll understand.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
WotLK Warlock changes lackluster
With my main being a warlock I've been keeping a finger on the pulse of the warlock community, the changes to come to wotlk and I've even been keeping an eye on the warlock beta forums even though I usually avoid wow forums like the plague.
And while some of the changes to the warlock seem interesting for PVE affliction overall the changes are extremely underwhelming. Whilst most classes get significant new talents that will change the course of the game for them (for better or for worse) the new warlock talents are 'more of the same' at best and 'bloody boring' at worst.
The overall opinion of fellow warlocks on the warlock boards is one of general dismay. The feeling of not getting any talents worth their salt and very few changes to the overall gameplay leaves most of them wondering if they shouldn't just re-roll to a deathknight which seems to be the new warlock archetype.
The primary problems in PVP of a warlock have not been adressed in that they will remain easy HK's for melee and while Metamorphosis looks interesting on paper at a 5 minute cooldown and a 45s duration warlocks will literally have nothing 90% of the time to peel melee off themselves.
With the overall power curve increasing and more classes being equipped with anti-fear/anti dot capacity the warlock will once again find themselves pidgeonholed into one or two cookie cutter specs for PVP and will find themselves at a great disadvantage to classes that were previously easy targets.
To top things off the beta forums of the warlock community seem completely devoid of developers. Whilst some forums are literally brimming with developer posts the warlocks have been left in the dust leaving even the most well-phrased intelligent posts untouched.
For some obscure reason the demonology tree is now filled with crit increasing abilities that have absolutely 0 effect in pvp and do not change the average warlock DPS in the slightest and the complaints for both demonology and destruction are myriad (even when you just ignore the QQ ones).
All in all the only real improvements are in the affliction tree, an area that was never seen as a problem by the warlock community as a whole. We will retain our ability to solo pve and be decent in pve in general as affliction but woe to the warlock who would like to see the inside of the arena or a bg as anything more than an easy kill.
With the news being at chaos bolt, haunt and metamorphosis I am afraid the novelty for playing a warlock in Northrend will wear off fairly quick.
It's sad to see such a grand class lose so much of it's uniqueness without gaining anything significant in return.
I'd like to think that this is not QQ although it does sound like it a lot. It is most definitely the current state of affairs as gouged by the warlock communities all over the web...
Since I am affliction and am solo PVE oriented the changes for me are looking good and I will remain faithful to the class towards the bitter end but I will think twice before I enter my lock into an arena come wrath unless I feel like being sat on or feel like humping terrain obstructions.
I am not one to accuse a class of being overpowered of underpowerd, because I really don't care that much. I want a class to be fun, exciting and unique and it seems that the warlock is losing a lot of it's uniqueness come wrath and will not be nearly as exciting as many of the other classes I play.
Maybe the death knight is the new warlock, maybe the warlock will turn out better than the math and the current talents suggest, but to me it's not about power, I really don't feel like I should be able to 'pwn' everything I come across. But an expansion is supposed to be new and exciting and the warlock changes do not reflect this in the slightest. It'll be the same old warlock in a brave new world.
(On the plus side if all the warlocks re-roll I'll be the only warlock at 80 come wrath which is an interesting prospect hehe)
And while some of the changes to the warlock seem interesting for PVE affliction overall the changes are extremely underwhelming. Whilst most classes get significant new talents that will change the course of the game for them (for better or for worse) the new warlock talents are 'more of the same' at best and 'bloody boring' at worst.
The overall opinion of fellow warlocks on the warlock boards is one of general dismay. The feeling of not getting any talents worth their salt and very few changes to the overall gameplay leaves most of them wondering if they shouldn't just re-roll to a deathknight which seems to be the new warlock archetype.
The primary problems in PVP of a warlock have not been adressed in that they will remain easy HK's for melee and while Metamorphosis looks interesting on paper at a 5 minute cooldown and a 45s duration warlocks will literally have nothing 90% of the time to peel melee off themselves.
With the overall power curve increasing and more classes being equipped with anti-fear/anti dot capacity the warlock will once again find themselves pidgeonholed into one or two cookie cutter specs for PVP and will find themselves at a great disadvantage to classes that were previously easy targets.
To top things off the beta forums of the warlock community seem completely devoid of developers. Whilst some forums are literally brimming with developer posts the warlocks have been left in the dust leaving even the most well-phrased intelligent posts untouched.
For some obscure reason the demonology tree is now filled with crit increasing abilities that have absolutely 0 effect in pvp and do not change the average warlock DPS in the slightest and the complaints for both demonology and destruction are myriad (even when you just ignore the QQ ones).
All in all the only real improvements are in the affliction tree, an area that was never seen as a problem by the warlock community as a whole. We will retain our ability to solo pve and be decent in pve in general as affliction but woe to the warlock who would like to see the inside of the arena or a bg as anything more than an easy kill.
With the news being at chaos bolt, haunt and metamorphosis I am afraid the novelty for playing a warlock in Northrend will wear off fairly quick.
It's sad to see such a grand class lose so much of it's uniqueness without gaining anything significant in return.
I'd like to think that this is not QQ although it does sound like it a lot. It is most definitely the current state of affairs as gouged by the warlock communities all over the web...
Since I am affliction and am solo PVE oriented the changes for me are looking good and I will remain faithful to the class towards the bitter end but I will think twice before I enter my lock into an arena come wrath unless I feel like being sat on or feel like humping terrain obstructions.
I am not one to accuse a class of being overpowered of underpowerd, because I really don't care that much. I want a class to be fun, exciting and unique and it seems that the warlock is losing a lot of it's uniqueness come wrath and will not be nearly as exciting as many of the other classes I play.
Maybe the death knight is the new warlock, maybe the warlock will turn out better than the math and the current talents suggest, but to me it's not about power, I really don't feel like I should be able to 'pwn' everything I come across. But an expansion is supposed to be new and exciting and the warlock changes do not reflect this in the slightest. It'll be the same old warlock in a brave new world.
(On the plus side if all the warlocks re-roll I'll be the only warlock at 80 come wrath which is an interesting prospect hehe)
Friday, September 19, 2008
*giggle* *snort* SL/SL/SL/SL warlock
I was playing around with the wotlk talent calculator for warlocks last night and nearly doubled over laughing when I fould the absolute epitomy of warlock irony.
All classes including warlocks have been complaining about the SL/SL spec which revolves around returning damage via siphon life and pushing off damage onto your demon with soul link.
Warlocks hate it because it's practically the only viable pvp spec and everyone else hates it because... euhm... there was a reason... oh yeah: Warlocks are OP.
So with a big evil grin on my face I now present to you SL/SL/SL/SL the SL spec to dominate them all:
Super SL
The traditional soul link / siphon life is now accompanied with the destruction's soul leech / improved soul leech tacking another 2 SL's to the already SL heavy SL/SL spec.
With both nightfall and backlash you will be outputting a significant amount of shadow bolts which will happily return a chunk of life / mana to you for practically free. Ruin and devastate further help into some crit happiness meaning more mana / health returned from your instant shadowbolt procs.
I really just wanted to see if I could hit all the talents that were abbreviated as SL and can happily report you can get all the SL you could possibly want. Ironically with some points shifted here and there (especially in the destruction tree) this actually looks like a viable build. Keeping up corruption at all times for the nightfall procs and doing the damage with various destruction talents should make for a nice health return and damage mitigation via the combined SLs.
I've not done any of the math behind this build so take it with a grain of salt but
in the meantime rejoice! for the so-called OP SL/SL lock is now double as SL as it was before *sniggers*
All classes including warlocks have been complaining about the SL/SL spec which revolves around returning damage via siphon life and pushing off damage onto your demon with soul link.
Warlocks hate it because it's practically the only viable pvp spec and everyone else hates it because... euhm... there was a reason... oh yeah: Warlocks are OP.
So with a big evil grin on my face I now present to you SL/SL/SL/SL the SL spec to dominate them all:
Super SL
The traditional soul link / siphon life is now accompanied with the destruction's soul leech / improved soul leech tacking another 2 SL's to the already SL heavy SL/SL spec.
With both nightfall and backlash you will be outputting a significant amount of shadow bolts which will happily return a chunk of life / mana to you for practically free. Ruin and devastate further help into some crit happiness meaning more mana / health returned from your instant shadowbolt procs.
I really just wanted to see if I could hit all the talents that were abbreviated as SL and can happily report you can get all the SL you could possibly want. Ironically with some points shifted here and there (especially in the destruction tree) this actually looks like a viable build. Keeping up corruption at all times for the nightfall procs and doing the damage with various destruction talents should make for a nice health return and damage mitigation via the combined SLs.
I've not done any of the math behind this build so take it with a grain of salt but
in the meantime rejoice! for the so-called OP SL/SL lock is now double as SL as it was before *sniggers*
Friday, May 9, 2008
The Art of Warlock
warlock
O.E. wærloga "traitor, liar, enemy," from wær "faith, a compact" (cf. O.H.G. wara "truth," O.N. varar "solemn promise, vow;" see very; cf. also Varangian) + agent noun related to leogan "to lie" (see lie (v.1)). Original primary sense seems to have been "oath-breaker;" given special application to the devil (c.1000), but also used of giants and cannibals. Meaning "one in league with the devil" is recorded from c.1300. Ending in -ck and meaning "male equivalent of witch" (1568) are from Scottish.
I used to be a Roleplayer (RP) in days long past and a lot of times playing games these days that are completely devoid of RP the urge often strikes me to give a little bit more depth to the characters I play.
So I looked up the definition of a warlock, took another look at the options I have in WoW and decided to 'amplify' the RP aspect of my warlock a bit.
Of course as in all things I had to strike a balance between 'evil warlockness' and earning myself a swift /gkick.
So here it is, the compendium of warlockness. The art of being a miserable creature of evil in the wonderful world of warlocks euh... warcraft.
Premise
These people are not your friends. In fact they hate you. They hate the fact that you drain souls, drain life, drain mana, cast fear, dots and do more damage than a mage without even as much as breaking a sweat. They hate the fact that your DPSness can be self-sufficient and they have been crying to nerf you since the advent of time itself.
And yet they force you into their pitiful alliances to exploit our ability to summon, enslave and banish. These people are not your friends, at best they are cumbersome tools present only to serve you... the warlock.
General Behaviour guidelines
1. Every kill is worth it. Be it rat, monster, elite, boss or guild member every kill is good and the gorier the better. A warlock should never pass up the opportunity to inflict a random death upon some unsuspecting stranger. Souls power our dark arts and there is no finer glove than that made out of fluffy bunnies. When in doubt: eat babies.
2. Never quite do exactly what someone wants. Someone needs a healthstone? Rank 1 will do just fine. Someone needs a summon? Only over a lava pit. You are not a vending machine... your powers are far more precious than to waste on some silly party member who thinks he's entitled to some buff. If something needs done then it deserves to be done badly.
3. Talk to yourself or your imp. No one else is really worthy of your time nor will ever understand the infinite wisdom that is the warlock mind. All whispers should be treated like email, read, but only answered when you feel like it. Questions are preferably answered with questions and any whisper that can't be warped into something completely off-topic is most likely not worth answering.
4. Never do nothing. Die running, annoy people with your eye of kilrogg, send your imp packing to the very end of the instance... do something, anything. Lesser being sit and drink, warlocks have better things to do.
5. There is no shame in death. You're a warlock, death is part of life. Seek out death in creative ways. The more you die the more you will come to understand life.
Spells & Talents
There's a wide variety of spells available to the warlock. Each with their unique ability but while most are quite clearly used to smite unsuspecting foes or infect passer-by's with a nifty affliction some have hidden utility.
Healthstone: Max rank healthstones should be reserved for personal use. If other people were meant to have healthstones then they would be able to create them themselves. Rival DPS should always be given a rank 1 healthstone to maximize their deaths and minimize their competition on the damage charts. Other ranks of healthstones should simply be distributed according to your whim. Reward those that serve you well, downgrade or even simply forget the ones that are more interested in their own goals or god-forbid work for the good of the guild.
Soulstones: Generally soulstones should be reserved for yourself. Your soulstone ideally should be on cooldown or on pretend cooldown whenever someone asks for it. When in doubt sell your soulstone to the highest bidder outside your raid group / party.
When forced to apply a soulstone because the RL has determined that it's obviously off cooldown 'accidentally' target the person that requested it rather than the target that was supposed to get the soulstone. Pretend you didn't notice.
Hellfire: When there is even the slightest indication that your group may die (usually indicated by the MT falling on his/her face) run out of range of your healers whilst lifetapping and then commit suicide via hellfire. Due to the nature of the spell a death by hellfire counts as a death by player and does not incur a durability penalty. Should your group happen to win despite your estimation you will still be able to loot the enemy, should your group fail miserably then you just saved yourself a repair bill.
Rain of fire: Whenever your group is fighting enemies that can cast rain of fire you should remember your own rain of fire spell. Cast a rank 1 rain of fire on your healers or DPS to demonstrate the superiority of DoT based combat. Leave no chance un-taken to disturb DPSers that rely on casting time.
Ritual of Summoning: Some uncreative warlocks consider this the bane of their existance. Requests for summons come frequently but will subside following these simple rules: A ritual of summoning portal should always appear over a cliff, a large pool of lava, within aggro range of at least 1 high level elite, at least 1000 yards underwater or some other undesireable / remote location. Always reject a request for a summon and never supply a reason that makes sense ("I am sorry, I can't summon you since you don't have a translocator beacon"). When a warlock is treated as a cab service the trip should always cost the customer it's life.
Eye of Kilrogg: A vastly underestimated warlock tool. Use it to peek up lady's dresses, jump it up and down in front of the maintank to disturb his vision and as an indication that he's not fast enough. And with enough patience and practice it can even be used to pull elites. Of course when pulling monsters pull them 'away' from the party so that when the eye finally does disappear the pulled mob will leesh back to it's original position hopefully just as the unsuspecting main tank pulls the next squad of mobs.
Summon Imp: There is no greater ally in your endevours than your pet imp. Nothing can touch a phased imp and in combination with the eye of kilrogg it is a tool that can wipe even the best of parties. Send your eye past the next room, target a mob and send your imp to attack. The imp, phased as he is, will run past a whole bunch of mobs without aggroing them, finally die to the target it was supposed to attack thus resulting in a chain reaction of mobs heading your way.
The imps fire shield can also be used to endlessly annoy a specific party member. With no cooldown and a very low mana cost it can be recast ad-infinitum on the same target resulting in a large fiery shield appearing above their head time and time again. Ideal timing (for example just before a pull) often results in a party member with severely frayed nerve endings exposed.
Fear: Fear instills fear in even the best of groups. Fear is seen as the universal uncontrollable CC, hated in pvp for it's utility and shunned in instances for it's tendency to send a mob packing into other mobs. What few people other than warlocks know is that fear can indeed be cancelled by a swift curse of recklessness. As a result a warlock should fear hard and fear often creating as much chaos as possible. Most classes are not equipped to deal with feared targets very well, a warlock whose practiced in the arts on the other hand can easily juggle 2 or 3 feared targets in a very controlled manner. Don't let the elitists tell you what to do, fear is the panultimate CC and not using it is a crime.
Howl of Terror: Hit it, hit it often, call it an accident if you will or blame the priest. Howl of terror is ideal in situations where you are under attack, it sends the mobs packing and gives you valuable time to commit a hellfire suicide. Just because the tank died doesn't mean you have to be killed by some stupid monster. Avoid repair bills at all cost, there's no shame in using abilities you have.
Searing pain: A spell with surprising utility. Not only is it fairly well spammable it also leaves no trace in the air of it's origin. Stand in a ditch and spam dots and searing pain all day on unsuspecting passer's by without the to-be-lamented trace of dirt in the air that shadow bolts and other spells leave. Also highly useful in situations where people claim that their threat is far superior to yours... Frustrate the main tank to no end who will forever wonder why in the blazes he can't create enough threat to hold aggro away from you.
Unending breath: Yet another spell with surprising utility. Encourage your party members to swim in the ocean. Hand out unending breath, liberally... but only once. Lesser beings will forget that the buff has a duration or will expect you to rebuff when it runs out. This of course will never happen.
... To be continued.
O.E. wærloga "traitor, liar, enemy," from wær "faith, a compact" (cf. O.H.G. wara "truth," O.N. varar "solemn promise, vow;" see very; cf. also Varangian) + agent noun related to leogan "to lie" (see lie (v.1)). Original primary sense seems to have been "oath-breaker;" given special application to the devil (c.1000), but also used of giants and cannibals. Meaning "one in league with the devil" is recorded from c.1300. Ending in -ck and meaning "male equivalent of witch" (1568) are from Scottish.
I used to be a Roleplayer (RP) in days long past and a lot of times playing games these days that are completely devoid of RP the urge often strikes me to give a little bit more depth to the characters I play.
So I looked up the definition of a warlock, took another look at the options I have in WoW and decided to 'amplify' the RP aspect of my warlock a bit.
Of course as in all things I had to strike a balance between 'evil warlockness' and earning myself a swift /gkick.
So here it is, the compendium of warlockness. The art of being a miserable creature of evil in the wonderful world of warlocks euh... warcraft.
Premise
These people are not your friends. In fact they hate you. They hate the fact that you drain souls, drain life, drain mana, cast fear, dots and do more damage than a mage without even as much as breaking a sweat. They hate the fact that your DPSness can be self-sufficient and they have been crying to nerf you since the advent of time itself.
And yet they force you into their pitiful alliances to exploit our ability to summon, enslave and banish. These people are not your friends, at best they are cumbersome tools present only to serve you... the warlock.
General Behaviour guidelines
1. Every kill is worth it. Be it rat, monster, elite, boss or guild member every kill is good and the gorier the better. A warlock should never pass up the opportunity to inflict a random death upon some unsuspecting stranger. Souls power our dark arts and there is no finer glove than that made out of fluffy bunnies. When in doubt: eat babies.
2. Never quite do exactly what someone wants. Someone needs a healthstone? Rank 1 will do just fine. Someone needs a summon? Only over a lava pit. You are not a vending machine... your powers are far more precious than to waste on some silly party member who thinks he's entitled to some buff. If something needs done then it deserves to be done badly.
3. Talk to yourself or your imp. No one else is really worthy of your time nor will ever understand the infinite wisdom that is the warlock mind. All whispers should be treated like email, read, but only answered when you feel like it. Questions are preferably answered with questions and any whisper that can't be warped into something completely off-topic is most likely not worth answering.
4. Never do nothing. Die running, annoy people with your eye of kilrogg, send your imp packing to the very end of the instance... do something, anything. Lesser being sit and drink, warlocks have better things to do.
5. There is no shame in death. You're a warlock, death is part of life. Seek out death in creative ways. The more you die the more you will come to understand life.
Spells & Talents
There's a wide variety of spells available to the warlock. Each with their unique ability but while most are quite clearly used to smite unsuspecting foes or infect passer-by's with a nifty affliction some have hidden utility.
Healthstone: Max rank healthstones should be reserved for personal use. If other people were meant to have healthstones then they would be able to create them themselves. Rival DPS should always be given a rank 1 healthstone to maximize their deaths and minimize their competition on the damage charts. Other ranks of healthstones should simply be distributed according to your whim. Reward those that serve you well, downgrade or even simply forget the ones that are more interested in their own goals or god-forbid work for the good of the guild.
Soulstones: Generally soulstones should be reserved for yourself. Your soulstone ideally should be on cooldown or on pretend cooldown whenever someone asks for it. When in doubt sell your soulstone to the highest bidder outside your raid group / party.
When forced to apply a soulstone because the RL has determined that it's obviously off cooldown 'accidentally' target the person that requested it rather than the target that was supposed to get the soulstone. Pretend you didn't notice.
Hellfire: When there is even the slightest indication that your group may die (usually indicated by the MT falling on his/her face) run out of range of your healers whilst lifetapping and then commit suicide via hellfire. Due to the nature of the spell a death by hellfire counts as a death by player and does not incur a durability penalty. Should your group happen to win despite your estimation you will still be able to loot the enemy, should your group fail miserably then you just saved yourself a repair bill.
Rain of fire: Whenever your group is fighting enemies that can cast rain of fire you should remember your own rain of fire spell. Cast a rank 1 rain of fire on your healers or DPS to demonstrate the superiority of DoT based combat. Leave no chance un-taken to disturb DPSers that rely on casting time.
Ritual of Summoning: Some uncreative warlocks consider this the bane of their existance. Requests for summons come frequently but will subside following these simple rules: A ritual of summoning portal should always appear over a cliff, a large pool of lava, within aggro range of at least 1 high level elite, at least 1000 yards underwater or some other undesireable / remote location. Always reject a request for a summon and never supply a reason that makes sense ("I am sorry, I can't summon you since you don't have a translocator beacon"). When a warlock is treated as a cab service the trip should always cost the customer it's life.
Eye of Kilrogg: A vastly underestimated warlock tool. Use it to peek up lady's dresses, jump it up and down in front of the maintank to disturb his vision and as an indication that he's not fast enough. And with enough patience and practice it can even be used to pull elites. Of course when pulling monsters pull them 'away' from the party so that when the eye finally does disappear the pulled mob will leesh back to it's original position hopefully just as the unsuspecting main tank pulls the next squad of mobs.
Summon Imp: There is no greater ally in your endevours than your pet imp. Nothing can touch a phased imp and in combination with the eye of kilrogg it is a tool that can wipe even the best of parties. Send your eye past the next room, target a mob and send your imp to attack. The imp, phased as he is, will run past a whole bunch of mobs without aggroing them, finally die to the target it was supposed to attack thus resulting in a chain reaction of mobs heading your way.
The imps fire shield can also be used to endlessly annoy a specific party member. With no cooldown and a very low mana cost it can be recast ad-infinitum on the same target resulting in a large fiery shield appearing above their head time and time again. Ideal timing (for example just before a pull) often results in a party member with severely frayed nerve endings exposed.
Fear: Fear instills fear in even the best of groups. Fear is seen as the universal uncontrollable CC, hated in pvp for it's utility and shunned in instances for it's tendency to send a mob packing into other mobs. What few people other than warlocks know is that fear can indeed be cancelled by a swift curse of recklessness. As a result a warlock should fear hard and fear often creating as much chaos as possible. Most classes are not equipped to deal with feared targets very well, a warlock whose practiced in the arts on the other hand can easily juggle 2 or 3 feared targets in a very controlled manner. Don't let the elitists tell you what to do, fear is the panultimate CC and not using it is a crime.
Howl of Terror: Hit it, hit it often, call it an accident if you will or blame the priest. Howl of terror is ideal in situations where you are under attack, it sends the mobs packing and gives you valuable time to commit a hellfire suicide. Just because the tank died doesn't mean you have to be killed by some stupid monster. Avoid repair bills at all cost, there's no shame in using abilities you have.
Searing pain: A spell with surprising utility. Not only is it fairly well spammable it also leaves no trace in the air of it's origin. Stand in a ditch and spam dots and searing pain all day on unsuspecting passer's by without the to-be-lamented trace of dirt in the air that shadow bolts and other spells leave. Also highly useful in situations where people claim that their threat is far superior to yours... Frustrate the main tank to no end who will forever wonder why in the blazes he can't create enough threat to hold aggro away from you.
Unending breath: Yet another spell with surprising utility. Encourage your party members to swim in the ocean. Hand out unending breath, liberally... but only once. Lesser beings will forget that the buff has a duration or will expect you to rebuff when it runs out. This of course will never happen.
... To be continued.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Scholomance
Having had no luck in getting myself a trip to DM the last few days I decided to take a different approach. I looked up the guild roster and noted a few decent level locks and decided to get them motivated to work on the dreadsteed quest.
The general idea is that the more locks are sitting around waiting for a trip to DM the better the odds are that I will actually gain the sympathy of the guild elders and get a decent escort there.
So to further my goals we ran one of the 'new' locks through scholo yesterday with 3 warlocks and a warrior... I think either arms or fury I didn't really pay that much attention beyond him not having a shield.
The run could've been better coordinated. As usual the group leader tag was tossed around a few times and no volunteers were found to do any marking so we just... euh... brute forced it.
And with any brute force approach there's a few deaths that could have been avoided.
Still, there was no ill will, no bickering over loot and generally good attitude all around and I even remembered to bring my argent dawn commission for all the lovely scourgestones and whatnot.
I really should pick up the leader role for places I am starting to know better since it would really help how we tackle things. Just blindly rushing in and laying on the pewpew is fun but very very inefficient.
In comparison we did the same run with 2 locks and a bit of marking and had substantially more control over things. I need more practise if I am ever going to be good at anything. I am not sure if the guild I am in at the moment is really interested in training me in any way shape or form.
I guess being 'just another lock' there's not really much I should hope for anyway.
The general idea is that the more locks are sitting around waiting for a trip to DM the better the odds are that I will actually gain the sympathy of the guild elders and get a decent escort there.
So to further my goals we ran one of the 'new' locks through scholo yesterday with 3 warlocks and a warrior... I think either arms or fury I didn't really pay that much attention beyond him not having a shield.
The run could've been better coordinated. As usual the group leader tag was tossed around a few times and no volunteers were found to do any marking so we just... euh... brute forced it.
And with any brute force approach there's a few deaths that could have been avoided.
Still, there was no ill will, no bickering over loot and generally good attitude all around and I even remembered to bring my argent dawn commission for all the lovely scourgestones and whatnot.
I really should pick up the leader role for places I am starting to know better since it would really help how we tackle things. Just blindly rushing in and laying on the pewpew is fun but very very inefficient.
In comparison we did the same run with 2 locks and a bit of marking and had substantially more control over things. I need more practise if I am ever going to be good at anything. I am not sure if the guild I am in at the moment is really interested in training me in any way shape or form.
I guess being 'just another lock' there's not really much I should hope for anyway.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Fear - jojoing
Lately I've been doing a lot of experimenting with various (warlock) spells and have come across a little something I like to call fear- jojoing. I am sure someone else already has figured this out and it's by no means new, but it was new to me and as a result I thought I'd share.
Warlocks, even affliction ones, need a bit of breathing space now and then. We do quite well with single targets but in multiple enemy situations we need to rely on a spot of CC to give us enough room to do a spot of safe draining.
The problem here comes in is that our only real universal CC is fear which is incredibly unpopular in groups because it increases the chance of pulling a significant amount of adds (yes there's banish and deathcoil but both are situational and/or on lengthy cooldowns).
10 seconds of fear can often result in 5-10 new enemies attacking you which kind of defeats the purpose of the CC.
To combat this affliction locks use curse of exhaustion slowing the target down as it runs, but even then the odds of pulling extra adds are not in our favor.
The answer came to me in the form of Curse of Recklessness. Curse of Recklessness amongst other things also makes the target mobile fear-immune. However it is also the case that curse of recklessness does not actually remove a fear effect on the monster but simply cancels it out.
Lets take a look at a bit of practical application:
1. You fear a mob and it starts running
2. You want it to stop running after 3 seconds or so because it'll end up pulling adds otherwise so you apply curse of recklessness. The curse cancels out the fear effect resulting in that the mob now comes after you again.
3. Now apply a different curse (curse of exhaustion, curse of tongues, curse of weakness or other) to cancel out your previously casted curse of recklessness.
Since your curse of recklessness didn't remove the actual fear effect and there's probably still a few seconds left on the fear timer the mob will now once again run in fear.
At this point you can decide to re-fear the target after the initial fear wears off and once again apply curse of recklessness to call the mob back or take other actions as you see fit.
With a little practice it's very much possible to have the enemy run from you for a few seconds, apply a curse of recklessness, have the mobile come back and then use a different curse to break recklessness and re-activate the fear effect.
Essentially the monster is trapped in an endless cycle running and returning without ever coming close enough to do damage and without being able to go far enough to pull adds.
Add a nice stack of dots into the mix and the mobile will die swiftly without leaving any nasty stains in your clothing.
It requires a bit of presence of mind, so practice it and you will find that you can comfortably control 2 mobs this way with none of the drawbacks of regular CC (damage prevention, fast regeneration and whatnot).
The only significant drawback is that people still cuss at you for using fear... something I didn't really find a workaround for.
Now go and fear fear no more.
Warlocks, even affliction ones, need a bit of breathing space now and then. We do quite well with single targets but in multiple enemy situations we need to rely on a spot of CC to give us enough room to do a spot of safe draining.
The problem here comes in is that our only real universal CC is fear which is incredibly unpopular in groups because it increases the chance of pulling a significant amount of adds (yes there's banish and deathcoil but both are situational and/or on lengthy cooldowns).
10 seconds of fear can often result in 5-10 new enemies attacking you which kind of defeats the purpose of the CC.
To combat this affliction locks use curse of exhaustion slowing the target down as it runs, but even then the odds of pulling extra adds are not in our favor.
The answer came to me in the form of Curse of Recklessness. Curse of Recklessness amongst other things also makes the target mobile fear-immune. However it is also the case that curse of recklessness does not actually remove a fear effect on the monster but simply cancels it out.
Lets take a look at a bit of practical application:
1. You fear a mob and it starts running
2. You want it to stop running after 3 seconds or so because it'll end up pulling adds otherwise so you apply curse of recklessness. The curse cancels out the fear effect resulting in that the mob now comes after you again.
3. Now apply a different curse (curse of exhaustion, curse of tongues, curse of weakness or other) to cancel out your previously casted curse of recklessness.
Since your curse of recklessness didn't remove the actual fear effect and there's probably still a few seconds left on the fear timer the mob will now once again run in fear.
At this point you can decide to re-fear the target after the initial fear wears off and once again apply curse of recklessness to call the mob back or take other actions as you see fit.
With a little practice it's very much possible to have the enemy run from you for a few seconds, apply a curse of recklessness, have the mobile come back and then use a different curse to break recklessness and re-activate the fear effect.
Essentially the monster is trapped in an endless cycle running and returning without ever coming close enough to do damage and without being able to go far enough to pull adds.
Add a nice stack of dots into the mix and the mobile will die swiftly without leaving any nasty stains in your clothing.
It requires a bit of presence of mind, so practice it and you will find that you can comfortably control 2 mobs this way with none of the drawbacks of regular CC (damage prevention, fast regeneration and whatnot).
The only significant drawback is that people still cuss at you for using fear... something I didn't really find a workaround for.
Now go and fear fear no more.
Friday, January 18, 2008
The Warlock - Part I
For the next installments of this tremendously popular blog (*waves at his 1 regular visitor*) I will try to make a somewhat extensive guide on the affliction warlock I currently have sitting at level 65.
Essentially this will be no more than a simple run-through of the things I did and my thoughts behind the process.
With a little luck you'll be able to extract some useful information from this guide or if nothing else will give you something to chuckle about.
Remember, I am no expert... I simply read things and then try things out to see how they work for me.
This has resulted in a nice lvl 65 warlock that can take on 2 - 3 mobs on at one time and leave the battle with full health.
Part I of this multiple blog series is mostly concerned with the basics, initial thoughts on race choice and talent trees as well as professions. Part II will follow up with a condensed levelling guide and part III will go more into the gearing aspect.
Talent options
A warlock has 3 very distinct talent trees each resulting in a very different playstyle. Affliction empowers your damage over time spells (dots) and allows you to go toe-to-toe with some seriously fierce monsters whilst you drain their life and mana away with your various draining abilities.
The demonology tree allows you to let your pet do all the hard work and the 41 point talent will equip you with a felguard giving you one of the best pets available in-game. Felguard specs are amongst the easiest specs to use in PvE and Felguards are often referred to as noob guards as a result.
The destruction tree has all the tools you need to output significant DPS. Destruction is all about bringing down enemies as quickly as possible but adds the utility of the warlock demons to the mix.
Each Talent tree has different gear requirements (or gear recommendations rather) and as a result it's best to pick your main talent tree as early as possible.
The notion that there is a 'best' tree is complete nonsense. After all if you prefer playing your character as a warrior type (go in and crack skulls) then speccing destruction will be a nice challenge but will not necessarily satisfy your playstyle.
On that note I decided to leave the long range bombarding to my mages. Destruction was out (although I now do have some points in it for the spiffy shadowbolt improvements).
Demonology reminded me too much of my hunter where I would simply stand back, let the pet do the work and sit there on autoattack. It's nice if you intend to do some reading on the side I suppose.
This resulted in me picking affliction as main tree, the idea of being able to suck the life out of something whilst they beat the life out of you was interesting enough and the idea of being able to tank anything as a cloth wearing class was too good to turn down.
Race options
There's a couple of race options to choose from for your warlock:
undead: cannibalism (regen health), will of the forsaken (fear removal)
gnome: remove snares / root, extra int
orc: more pe damage, stun resistance
human: perception (rogue spotter), extra spirit and extra faction gain
blood elf: silence spell and mana tap
Much like talent trees there is really no best option but it's clear that a non-demonology lock won't have too much benefit from an orc's extra pet damage so pick to match but primarily pick a race that you think looks good.
Since I am a devout Horde player and I picked affliction the undead seemed like the most suitable choice (and I have no regrets whatsoever). The extra silence and mana tap ability of the blood elf would've been interesting but of those abilities you end up only using the silence ability since the constant mana tapping has no significant benefit and can be arduous to keep doing (plus it eats global cooldowns).
Undead can break out of fear, eat corpses for extra life and spend extensive time underwater.
In the end: Pick a race you're comfortable looking at and whose abilities you appreciate (and use). I for one am a sucker for longer underwater breathing and use this far more frequently than I use life tap on my blood elf mage. Choose what you think you'll use. If you're not going to use the racials then pick a race with passives like an orc to free up slots on your skillbars.
Profession options
Let's assume we're not gold-greedy and we actually want to be able to make some good gear for our warlock. We want our professions to provide things we need during levelling... of course everything can be bought... but there's nothing more frustrating than wanting a full netherweave set only to find out that no one's selling one, the guild tailor is MIA and the one guy that can help you doesn't have enough mats.
If you are gold greedy you're best bet is to mix skinning with either herbalism or mining (I'd say mining) and sell off whatever you skin/mine/herbalize.
Beyond that we already know that a warlock is a cloth wearing class and is more likely to use a spells/wand rather than to rely heavily upon weapons. This makes blacksmithing and leatherworking a poor choice. The items generated do not immediately help the warlock so can be ignored for the purpose of getting to level 70.
alchemy whilst useful isn't crucial for a warlock. Especially affliction warlocks have a fairly easy time to manage mana and health and while elixer/potion buffs can be really helpfull at times they are not a 'need to have' for a warlock. Alchemy can however be considered quite good for a destruction warlock.
With those out of the way that really only leaves tailoring / jewelcrafting, engineering and enchanting.
Jewelcrafting can be extremely useful later on in the game when gem socketing gems becomes an option and can to a lesser extend make getting jewelry easier in the early levels. I did however note never having problems getting rings or amulets either through drops, quests or the AH so jewecrafting also strikes me as more of an 'end-game' option.
Having only dabbled in engineering I can only say that engineering 'adds' utility to your class. Don't have a good way to pull? get engineering. Got lousy ranged attacks? pick engineering.
Engineering really adds more trinkets and doodads to your assortment and if you like mashing buttons or like to be prepared for any situation then engineering is for you. Engineering deserves special mention for PVP oriented people... whilst I tend to stay away from PvP (I get that enough at home) the overall opinion is that engineering really adds to your pvp experience.
This leaves tailoring and enchanting and frankly I think they are both excellent choices. Enchanting can be a great moneymaker by disenchanting things that you don't need and selling the components. At about 300 enchanting you can pretty much disenchant any item currently available in the game and make a profit off of the materials. You can even scour the ah for items that are for sale cheap, disenchant them and sell off the resulting components for a tidy profit.
Not only that but it also allows you to (even if it is just a little) boost the quality of your items and allows you to make up for some shortcomings in your gear. Don't have enough stamina on your boots? add some! Need a fierce glow on your weapon? Add one!
Tailoring... if you don't have a shadoweave tailor yet then now's the time to get one. The capacity to make bags and a wide selection of armor that is extremely useful to any shadow oriented class is superb. Between shadoweave, netherweave and frozen shadoweave you will never have to worry about where your next piece of gear is coming from and I can confidently say that being at level 65 my gear always consisted of at least 70% tailored gear with a few quest rewards or lucky drops thrown in.
Suffice to say that I picked tailoring. I am slightly regretful that I didn't pick enchanting to go with it but instead I picked mining for the money aspect of things as I didn't understand enchanting well enough at the time to see it's potential.
In the end gathering professions are the best way to make money consistently... but they add nothing to your utility.
My recommendation at this point for an affliction lock would be tailoring / enchanting provided you don't have have a shadoweave tailor already.
We conclude by not concluding anything and I hope to see my 1 reader back for the next installment of "The Warlock"
Essentially this will be no more than a simple run-through of the things I did and my thoughts behind the process.
With a little luck you'll be able to extract some useful information from this guide or if nothing else will give you something to chuckle about.
Remember, I am no expert... I simply read things and then try things out to see how they work for me.
This has resulted in a nice lvl 65 warlock that can take on 2 - 3 mobs on at one time and leave the battle with full health.
Part I of this multiple blog series is mostly concerned with the basics, initial thoughts on race choice and talent trees as well as professions. Part II will follow up with a condensed levelling guide and part III will go more into the gearing aspect.
Talent options
A warlock has 3 very distinct talent trees each resulting in a very different playstyle. Affliction empowers your damage over time spells (dots) and allows you to go toe-to-toe with some seriously fierce monsters whilst you drain their life and mana away with your various draining abilities.
The demonology tree allows you to let your pet do all the hard work and the 41 point talent will equip you with a felguard giving you one of the best pets available in-game. Felguard specs are amongst the easiest specs to use in PvE and Felguards are often referred to as noob guards as a result.
The destruction tree has all the tools you need to output significant DPS. Destruction is all about bringing down enemies as quickly as possible but adds the utility of the warlock demons to the mix.
Each Talent tree has different gear requirements (or gear recommendations rather) and as a result it's best to pick your main talent tree as early as possible.
The notion that there is a 'best' tree is complete nonsense. After all if you prefer playing your character as a warrior type (go in and crack skulls) then speccing destruction will be a nice challenge but will not necessarily satisfy your playstyle.
On that note I decided to leave the long range bombarding to my mages. Destruction was out (although I now do have some points in it for the spiffy shadowbolt improvements).
Demonology reminded me too much of my hunter where I would simply stand back, let the pet do the work and sit there on autoattack. It's nice if you intend to do some reading on the side I suppose.
This resulted in me picking affliction as main tree, the idea of being able to suck the life out of something whilst they beat the life out of you was interesting enough and the idea of being able to tank anything as a cloth wearing class was too good to turn down.
Race options
There's a couple of race options to choose from for your warlock:
undead: cannibalism (regen health), will of the forsaken (fear removal)
gnome: remove snares / root, extra int
orc: more pe damage, stun resistance
human: perception (rogue spotter), extra spirit and extra faction gain
blood elf: silence spell and mana tap
Much like talent trees there is really no best option but it's clear that a non-demonology lock won't have too much benefit from an orc's extra pet damage so pick to match but primarily pick a race that you think looks good.
Since I am a devout Horde player and I picked affliction the undead seemed like the most suitable choice (and I have no regrets whatsoever). The extra silence and mana tap ability of the blood elf would've been interesting but of those abilities you end up only using the silence ability since the constant mana tapping has no significant benefit and can be arduous to keep doing (plus it eats global cooldowns).
Undead can break out of fear, eat corpses for extra life and spend extensive time underwater.
In the end: Pick a race you're comfortable looking at and whose abilities you appreciate (and use). I for one am a sucker for longer underwater breathing and use this far more frequently than I use life tap on my blood elf mage. Choose what you think you'll use. If you're not going to use the racials then pick a race with passives like an orc to free up slots on your skillbars.
Profession options
Let's assume we're not gold-greedy and we actually want to be able to make some good gear for our warlock. We want our professions to provide things we need during levelling... of course everything can be bought... but there's nothing more frustrating than wanting a full netherweave set only to find out that no one's selling one, the guild tailor is MIA and the one guy that can help you doesn't have enough mats.
If you are gold greedy you're best bet is to mix skinning with either herbalism or mining (I'd say mining) and sell off whatever you skin/mine/herbalize.
Beyond that we already know that a warlock is a cloth wearing class and is more likely to use a spells/wand rather than to rely heavily upon weapons. This makes blacksmithing and leatherworking a poor choice. The items generated do not immediately help the warlock so can be ignored for the purpose of getting to level 70.
alchemy whilst useful isn't crucial for a warlock. Especially affliction warlocks have a fairly easy time to manage mana and health and while elixer/potion buffs can be really helpfull at times they are not a 'need to have' for a warlock. Alchemy can however be considered quite good for a destruction warlock.
With those out of the way that really only leaves tailoring / jewelcrafting, engineering and enchanting.
Jewelcrafting can be extremely useful later on in the game when gem socketing gems becomes an option and can to a lesser extend make getting jewelry easier in the early levels. I did however note never having problems getting rings or amulets either through drops, quests or the AH so jewecrafting also strikes me as more of an 'end-game' option.
Having only dabbled in engineering I can only say that engineering 'adds' utility to your class. Don't have a good way to pull? get engineering. Got lousy ranged attacks? pick engineering.
Engineering really adds more trinkets and doodads to your assortment and if you like mashing buttons or like to be prepared for any situation then engineering is for you. Engineering deserves special mention for PVP oriented people... whilst I tend to stay away from PvP (I get that enough at home) the overall opinion is that engineering really adds to your pvp experience.
This leaves tailoring and enchanting and frankly I think they are both excellent choices. Enchanting can be a great moneymaker by disenchanting things that you don't need and selling the components. At about 300 enchanting you can pretty much disenchant any item currently available in the game and make a profit off of the materials. You can even scour the ah for items that are for sale cheap, disenchant them and sell off the resulting components for a tidy profit.
Not only that but it also allows you to (even if it is just a little) boost the quality of your items and allows you to make up for some shortcomings in your gear. Don't have enough stamina on your boots? add some! Need a fierce glow on your weapon? Add one!
Tailoring... if you don't have a shadoweave tailor yet then now's the time to get one. The capacity to make bags and a wide selection of armor that is extremely useful to any shadow oriented class is superb. Between shadoweave, netherweave and frozen shadoweave you will never have to worry about where your next piece of gear is coming from and I can confidently say that being at level 65 my gear always consisted of at least 70% tailored gear with a few quest rewards or lucky drops thrown in.
Suffice to say that I picked tailoring. I am slightly regretful that I didn't pick enchanting to go with it but instead I picked mining for the money aspect of things as I didn't understand enchanting well enough at the time to see it's potential.
In the end gathering professions are the best way to make money consistently... but they add nothing to your utility.
My recommendation at this point for an affliction lock would be tailoring / enchanting provided you don't have have a shadoweave tailor already.
We conclude by not concluding anything and I hope to see my 1 reader back for the next installment of "The Warlock"
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