LifeTap
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Blood Pact: When beta taps the life out of affliction
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill continues to pinch herself, hoping to wake up from the nightmare of dying to a training dummy in Stormwind. I admit, destruction in Mists of Pandaria looks very cool. I've been leveling with it, and although a handful of buttons can get boring, I like the back-and-forth rhythm of Incinerates and Conflagrates. To top it off, Chaos Bolt looks totally badass, even if it still casts like slow fire. But as I hit the level cap once more, I decided it was time to return to my roots: affliction. I've always loved the flow of affliction -- health is mana is health is mana is health. To scare an affliction warlock, a master of fears, you can do something sneaky like spell reflect or spell stealing. Or you can just drain me of all my self-healing and expect me to continue tapping as normal -- that horrifies me just the same. I find myself fervently hoping that dried-up self-healing streams as affliction are just bugged.
Blood Pact: The Warlock's way ahead, part 2
In my last article, we looked at the Warlock in alpha: Atrocity, Metamorphosis (yay, demon form!), Decimate, and new synergies between our spells. All three top tier talents seem to have more utility in PvP and the Arenas, with Atrocity possibly having some amazing utility in some PvE situations. The synergy between DoTs and nukes is something to watch, particularly Eradication and Everlasting Affliction. New additions to the Destruction tree that seem to encourage cross-school casting turn out to be just minor improvements to the tree's PvP viability in their current form. We turn our attention now to the other talents, and Blizzard definitely plans to make Spirit matter to warlocks.
WoW Insider Show Episode 28: Lifetap, Lifebloom and online antics
The 28th episode of the WoW Insider Show included myself, blogger Amanda Dean, Druid columnist John Patricelli and Turpster in an hour of lively discussion on this week's hot topics. Stories covered included: The debate raged on over when, or even if, is it acceptable to go afk without notice? The latest rollbacks on the PTR for Warlocks and Shaman and why players shouldn't be ready to quit over temporary tests on that server Blizzard so cleverly dubbed the Test server. The effects of the Lifebloom nerf and how Blizzard may have not seen the results they were looking for. Amanda Dean talks about introducing her Mom (hi Amanda's Mom!) to WoW and how she is handling her first few levels in Azeroth Each participant on the show gave their personal opinion on what playable race they would choose if a new one were introduced to the game. If you missed the show, there are plenty of ways for you to listen today including the Flash player on the WoW Radio site, free iTunes download or mp3 file. And you can listen in live every Saturday at 3:30p ET on WoW Radio.[Listen] to this week's show.[iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.[RSS] Get your favorite reader in on the fun.
WoW Insider Show Episode 27: Impressing class leads and improving Lifetap
Turpster wasn't actually around for this episode of our podcast, but just in case you really enjoy his tunes (that we usually play during music breaks on the live show), both of his albums are now available for download in the WoW Insider Show forums. Enjoy. And the latest episode of the WoW Insider Show is also up for your listening pleasure right now on WoW Radio -- in this, Episode 27, Duncor, Daniel Whitcomb, and John "BigBearButt" Petricelli and I sat down and talked about the biggest issues in the last week in Warcraft: We hit up reader email as usual, including whether the game is more "carebear" than it used to be, whether Blizzard should update pre-60 quests, and exactly how you can impress your guild's officers and class leads We chatted about the Warlock's Lifetap nerf and what it means for the rest of the game Does it matter to us exactly what classes the CMs or the devs play? And we had a small bit of commentary about the results of our patch 2.4 guess contest Plus much, much more. Make sure to give it a listen -- you can use any of the links below to jump right in and hear our podcast. And don't forget, we do this every Saturday, so next weekend at 3:30pm EST, you can tune in to WoW Radio and hear us do this live. See you then.[Listen] to this week's show.[iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.[RSS] Get your favorite reader in on the fun.
Making the PvE-PvP break
There's been quite a bit of talk about the PvE vs. the PvP game lately -- with Arena PvP basically dictating the changes to drinking and Lifetap, and Mortal Strike-like abilities also taking center stage (which are almost useless in PvE), Blizzard's plan of having the same characters in PvE and PvP seems to be backfiring on them. They originally wanted to let you use all the abilities and techniques that you use in PvE in PvP as well, but reader Raul recently sent us a comment that more and more players might agree with: it's time Arena PvP became its own game, and Blizzard split the two up for good.This is the case in Guild Wars -- when you roll a character in that game, you choose it for PvP or PvE, and there are certain things you can only do with each. And even Blizzard is heading this way, believe it or not: with the debut of the Arena realm this weekend, some players are already clamboring for characters that they only play Arena with 24/7.Are we really ready to split the game into World of Warcraft and Warcraft Arena? There will no doubt be a lot of players who want to continue to play their characters in both PvE and PvP, balance be damned. But if Blizzard is as committed as they seem to be to balance Arena as precisely as it needs to be balanced to turn it into a real e-sport, they may have to eventually make the jump and separate the two games completely.
March of the Warlocks
The World of Warcraft community has pounded it into our heads that the recent Life Tap change was pretty lame. Luckily, Hortus has let us know that there will be additional changes coming to Lifetap, as Eliah told us a bit earlier.I'm not here to hit you with the shovel of logic, detailing the Life Tap change yet again, so don't worry. My question is on the methods of giving feedback that the WoW community has displayed. Most specifically: Protests.The Warlocks were a little more creative in their griefing than the Shaman have been. While it hasn't happened on all servers, many of them saw Warlocks summoning, enslaving, or kiting many powerful demons into the heart of Shattrath. Uvuros, Pit Lords, et cetera. Did this non-peaceful protest have anything to do with the devs' decision to make further adjustments to Life Tap? Personally, I somewhat doubt the protest was a direct contributor to that decision.I don't think that a protest has ever directly changed something in WoW. I don't believe it strikes fear into the heart of Blizzard. However, it does bring the fact that there are issues into the spotlight. Is this the best way to do that? No, probably not. It does seem to get noticed, at the very least.[EDIT: My apologies for any misunderstanding: I am aware that this protest was unofficial and not widely organized amongst the Warlock community, and I do not mean to trivialize the feedback the Warlock community has given on the topic. It is merely something that accompanied the Life Tap incident that I wished to supply thoughts on, and see the views of others.]
Healers and their extra heals
Hal over in the WoW Ladies lj forum posts a really interesting question: What is a priest's (or other healer's) responsibility on all those "extra heals"? For example, it's when a pet needs healing, or when a warlock lifetaps their way down to almost no health. To those, I'd add healing for warriors and other melee classes after a fight, when everything is dead.Personally, I'm pretty conservative. On one side, I've played a priest and a resto shaman, and I will throw a lifetapped warlock a heal only when I'm at full mana and impatient to start the fight. Otherwise, he should be eating-- I shouldn't have a responsibility to heal him after he's hurt himself. Now, some guildie warlocks I like, and I'll do it anyway. But I don't think there should be a responsibility there. As for pets, I'll heal them in a fight 1) when we need them, and 2) when I've got mana left. If I'm healing the main tank with little to spare, sorry, but your kitty is gonna die. But if your VW is the only thing between me and a melee add, I'll keep him alive. Still, I don't think any pet class should ever count on heals unless the situation has called for it. Pet classes have ways to heal their pets for a reason.On the other side of things, as a warrior, if I'm out of a fight and still hurt, I make it a point to be eating or bandaging before the priest even has a chance to look at me. With mages around and food extremely cheap, there's no reason a priest should have to waste mana in between pulls, even if it's as simple as throwing a HoT on. Carry some bandages (no excuse for not having runecloth), or eat that bread ASAP.Of course, there are lots and lots of exceptions. Most priests I know will heal me anyway out of combat. And as a priest I'll usually throw off a few extra heals before I drink, including a few to the pets. But as for responsibilities, I think there should be as few as possible on both sides. Your thoughts?
Warlock's Life Tap in Patch 1.12
This afternoon Tseric posted a surprise in the warlock forums - the the functionality of the skill life tap (which converts health into mana) will be changing in the next patch - to be modified by +spell damage gear. Rank 3 and higher of the spell will now benefit from 80% of your spell damage gear (it's unclear as to whether it will benefit only from +spell damage, or whether it will benefit from +shadow damage), meaning it will both give more mana and take more health. As a warlock myself, this will take a bit of getting used to, as a loss of 400-ish health (which is spammable when necessary) becomes a loss nearly twice that - ouch! However, the reaction on the warlock is overwhelmingly positive (aside from the occasional query "But what about Dark Pact?").
