imp-swarm
Latest
Blood Pact: What's going on with 'locks in patch 5.4
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks Rygarius rocks at patch-note writing, but we'd still like to summarize it further. There's a lot of changes besides the usual number tweaking to warlocks in patch 5.4. We'll wrap up the say before patch with a loot list, but here's a prose version of what the patch notes mean before we get into the shiny gear drops. Overall, there's probably a small nerf in damage since heavy movement fights will affect us once again. Our damage is shifting to our DoTs primarily with some support either from fillers on the move or a twist on our Dark Soul cooldown, depending on the level 90 talent we choose. Since the RPPM system has been tweaked a little to account for haste affecting not only proc bonus but proc chance, we also may see a shift from haste gearing to more solid mastery gearing, also since mastery for all three warlocks boosts damage done in our top damage spells. But check after the break for more specific changes.
Blood Pact: To summon or not to summon, that's the question
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill scraps another attempt at Kanrethad to discuss being a pet class instead. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous pet bugs in encounter design like jumping down into Nefarian's pit in Blackwing Descent so your pet then did nothing but stand in the middle, or to take up Doomguards against a despawning abyssal phase 3 in Throne of the Four Winds -- and by opposing end them: to die, to sacrifice. To sacrifice, perchance to DPS; Aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death, what meter-topping dreams of 5.0 may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil (no, not that one!), must give our developers pause. My terrible warlock Shakespeare adaptation aside, we've had the ponderings about how tied to pets warlocks should or shouldn't be. As I continue to throw myself at Kanrethad's own demonic stampede, I've had some thoughts about the subject.
Warlock glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for warlocks. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Warlocks have no new glyphs but do have a lot of name switching or morphing from old abilities into the related new ability. A lot of the warlock glyph changes shift into cosmetic minors. Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Chaos Bolt becomes Burning Embers Immolate becomes Dark Soul Metamorphosis becomes Demon Hunting Felhunter becomes Demon Training Lash of Pain becomes Everlasting Affliction Imp becomes Imp Swarm Corruption becomes Siphon Life Drain Soul becomes Soul Consumption Haunt becomes Soul Shards Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Seduction becomes Carrion Swarm Soul Link becomes Crimson Banish Voidwalker becomes Falling Meteor Incinerate becomes Hand of Gul'dan Death Coil becomes Nightmares Howl of Terror becomes Subtlety Bane of Agony becomes Verdant Spheres It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Blood Pact: Playing an 85 warlock with MoP mechanics
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill recovers from a near-death experience on beta in Vortex Pinnacle involving Falling Meteor. Tomorrow, we can summon a wrathguard or an observer or a shivarra. Tomorrow, we can have AoE Drain Life. Tomorrow, we can ride felsteeds on water. Tomorrow, we can enter Metamorphosis whenever we wish. Tomorrow, players everywhere will be begging the superior class for summons. (I take bribes). I've got your back with a summary of what to do as an 85 warlock with Mists of Pandaria mechanics in the final month of Cataclysm. Later, I'll flesh out the differences between levels 85 and 90. We'll visit tier 6 talents again, look at consumables and enchants, and get your gear ready for tier 14 raiding. But for now, you just need to survive patch 5.0.4.
Blood Pact: When datamining is not what it seems
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill admires the new season 12 PvP gear for Mists and hopes she can save enough to get that purple set. I admit it: I looked at the latest MMO-Champion datamining and rolled my eyes at all the lower numbers on affliction spells. A sigh later and some words about why fix destruction when you can just nerf the other specs. That seems to be standard warlock balance operating procedure half the time, right? Wrong. Affliction mechanics actually changed a little bit, which required some number shuffling. I don't know if you saw that blue post about destruction embers, so we'll go over that and other small changes, too.
