Curse-of-Doom
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Blood Pact: Leveling a warlock, 40 to 60
Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "Closer! Come closer... and burn!" ~ Keli'dan the Breaker Once again Blood Pact turns its gaze towards those up-and-coming warlocks; those who are learning the craft, battling foes to hone their skills and sharpen their minds. I've said before that leveling a warlock is great fun and part of this is due to the diverse ways in which you can go about it. By the time you start getting a decent pile of talent points to spend you can shape your lock in many and varied forms. There's the unstoppable train of death that is the affliction lock, cursing and corrupting all around it as it passes smoothly through the world. The demonologist, pouring their power into their minion and pushing them into the fore while sitting back and calmly picking off their foes. And of course, the destruction warlock, blazing a trail of raw power in an explosive display of mental prowess over physical frailty. Let's see how these locks in training are getting on.
So much for Chaos and other Warlock stories in build 9014
You might have heard that Chaos Bolt now deals Fire damage instead of the nebulous "Chaos" damage, which was actually an amalgamation of all schools of magic. On one hand, this is good news because getting Kicked or Counterspelled while casting it won't lock Warlocks out of every spell. On the other hand, this means Fire immunities will stop it cold. This makes the spell easier to implement or work with, and further enforces the use of Fire spells for Destruction. It's not even a Shadow and Fire version of Frostfire Bolt. It's just... a bolt Fire that looks like Alien larvae. Now, the coolest thing about Chaos Bolt was how it conceptually penetrated through immunities. Ghostcrawler explained that making immunities have vulnerabilities would only create a vicious cycle. Now, the spell only goes through absorption effects -- which is fine, really, but makes Chaos Bolt merely another direct damage Fire spell. Is it a great 51-point talent? I don't know. It deals pretty good damage, I'll give it that. But I'm not sure it's worth 51 points.Curse of Doom can now only produce Doomguards from targets that yield experience or honor, which was a necessary change considering it's now a 100% chance if CoD delivers the killing blow. It still can't be cast on players, though, which is a bummer. Haunt was retuned to heal for 100% of the damage it deals, which isn't so bad considering the 200% I raved about last time was bugged to hell, anyway. Oh, and Everlasting Affliction affects Haunt instead of Shadow Bolt, which is excellent because it relaxes Affliction's already complex rotation.
[UPDATE] Demonology 101: the Doomguard
I have a confession to make. I don't know the Ritual of Doom. I guess I'm just not hardcore that way. I wish I did the quest chain, although after this post, I might actually make my way to the Blasted Lands and start it. I've actually died to the Ritual of Doom, so I know what fun I'm missing.Anyway, here we go. The Doomguard is the last demon we'll discuss on Demonology 101. Lazy Warlocks such as myself can luck out on a Doomguard with Curse of Doom, our favorite spell on Netherspite. It's a fairly low percentage to spawn one, and Curse of Doom needs to deliver the killing blow on the mob... which can be a long wait considering the curse only deals damage at the end of one minute.[UPDATE: Curse of Doom has been revised to spawn a Doomguard 100% of the time if it delivers the killing blow! Ritual of Doom also no longer kills a player but damages them, apparently with a Curse of Doom-size damage spell. Doomguards remain enslaved for 15 minutes and disappear thereafter, eliminating the need to enslave.]
