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Blood Pact: Embrace your inner demonic lord at level 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is forever remembering to soulstone herself while questing after falling victim to the across-the-map graveyard in the Dread Wastes. I should know better by now than to expect the beta to hold off on its new builds until I've finished working out my latest testing idea. The night I had planned to get Matticus to wipe with me valiantly heal my Dark Apotheosis tank warlock through a dungeon, the beta unveiled level 90 and other things. Along with such wonderful content was a bug involving dungeons that left numerous characters stuck at the loading screens for hours, some almost the entire day. At least I knew enough to have a Plan B, C, and D for posting this week. I was able to get my first warlock to level 90 and play with the final tier of talents in non-group formats. So let's review those three talents while I plan my warlock tank adventure again.
Blood Pact: "En Doomguarde!" shouts the warlock tank
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is really just looking for an excuse to take the big hits as a warlock tank. We have the Glyph of Demon Hunting, whichever side of the warlock tanking fence you're on. Maybe it's just for soloing old content. Maybe it's for tanking in a pinch while the real tank gets battle ressed. Maybe it'll just be the chunky flag-carrier glyph for PvP. Any way you slice it, there's going to be a beefier stance than Metamorphosis. Someone in your future pickup group will try to tank with it, guaranteed. Let's explore the possibilities of warlock tanking before we tell that pugger how silly they are.
Blood Pact: Demonic Leaping to new heights of awesomeness
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is disappointed that moonkin are allowed to ride mounts, but not metamorphs. That's just not fair. I admit: I don't play demonology. As much as I'm a maestro at affliction, corruption gliding from my fingertips, I just fall apart when it comes to mastering the demonic arts like Illidan. So on the one hand, I don't really know where demonology is supposed to be heading in Mists of Pandaria, apart from Metamorphosis being just more awesome now. On the other hand, I don't have the old habits to rewrite over. I'm new blood, much like the revamp of warlocks in Mists will certainly attract people who don't play the class now. I'm perfect for testing how easy the spec is to pick up for newbies. I can tell you this: I was having fun on beta demonology. All you have to do is Demonic Leap with me beyond the break.
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: Those who are not afraid to wield power
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wants you to take a look (it's in a book!) at what warlocks are all about. We've snuffed out Old Gods. We've unseated the unruly undead. We've eradicated old empires. We've banished demonic eredar lords. We've slaughtered powerful dragons from Ultraxion to Onyxia, including the former Aspect of Magic himself. We've drowned lieutenants, purged second-in-commands, and dissolved elemental councils. We've braved the deepest lairs, delved into the elemental planes, and pried the latest corruption off Azeroth limb by limb. What should mortals do now? Who cares about what we should be doing? You heard the Lifebinder -- the Age of Mortals is dawning! Power is for the taking!
Blood Pact: Affliction struggles to burn soulfully on beta
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finds DoTs no longer crash her client, so she sets about corrupting every soul she can find. Unfortunately, she finds her Abyssal Bag empty, and with frustration wishes that shards could be as plentiful as before. The Soulburn system of Cataclysm was a big bust for affliction, offering plenty of utility but lacking in role-buffing damage abilities. The biggest issue was that Soulburn didn't feel like a real resource. Soulburn largely felt like a complicated set of "oh, crap!" buttons. In Mists of Pandaria, demonology and destruction are each departing from soul shards to gain new secondary resources. Soul shards will be affliction-only, so it's finally time to tailor shards to affliction purposes. Unfortunately, beta is where many things are broken or unfinished, including soul shards.
Blood Pact: 4 thoughts on destruction in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finally dives into beta and found that she was having more fun flinging fire than draining souls. I got into the beta a week ago (and with the last Annual Pass wave, a lot of the rest of you should be, too). So I went marching around Jade Forest and found myself continuously crashing to affliction spells triggering a fun little error. I'd heard things about moonkin and fire mages also having troubles, primarily when DoTs or debuffs were being cast. But errors are odd things, and I found I could cast Immolate all day long on my destruction spec. So I did destro for a day of questing and flinging fire at the training dummy. Here are a few of the first thoughts I had.
Blood Pact: Newbie tips for demonologists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. Today, Megan O'Neill visits the last warlock spec for Cataclysm newbies and rerollers, before diving back into Mists of Pandaria speculation. One torment ended as I finally received my beta invite. Then another started as I began to get error #132 over and over again. Whether it's my old toaster of a laptop's problem or maybe beta is just really unstable right now ... you and I are still stuck with old Cataclysm warlockery. So let's finish out the newbie tips for those who are reacquainting themselves with demonology before Mists of Pandaria. As a class with all three specs dedicated to DPS, warlocks always have one spec that serves up first in simulations. In the standard Patchwerk-style, no-holds-barred contest, who's king of the lab? It's a question I've been asked recently by some dissatisfied moonkin in my guild who are considering turning to the dark side. (After all, everyone knows we have cookies!)
Ghostcrawler talks demonology warlocks in Mists of Pandaria
Warlocks are the most changed class in Mists of Pandaria, and demonology is getting some serious attention from Ghostcrawler as its new playstyle is flushed out. Notable in Ghostcrawler's discussion is that the days of using both fire and shadow spells with a lot of demon damage are being looked upon as something that weren't super compelling. Importantly, Ghostcrawler also says that demonology warlocks aren't intended to be melee casters anymore. As a raiding demonology warlock, I find that Ghostcrawler's design intentions really make me pleased. Right now, if you want to do good DPS as a demo 'lock, you're going to be in the melee group as much as possible to get the most benefits from Metamorphosis and Immolation Aura, while at the same time staying stationary to turret out your DPS. In Ghostcrawler's plan for Mists, the necessity of melee-range spells is going to be situational. No longer am I going to be pestering my raid leader to put me in the melee group for Zon'ozz, and I should be able to stay at range and enjoy such benefits there as much as I can (which, at least in my perfect world, would include less movement). It'll be interesting to see how this kit plays out in the end. It always seems to be one of those specs that gets changed around a fair amount in one way or another, and Ghostcrawler does say that Blizzard is looking to make a home for demonology. So have faith, fellow 'locks! Things are looking evil. Ghostcrawler's full statements, after the break.
Blood Pact: Newbie tips for destruction warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. Today, Megan O'Neill is still breaking for beta, and in the meantime, brush-fires up on her flame-flinging techniques. Destruction has evolved a lot since the one-button Shadow Bolt days of The Burning Crusade. Now in Cataclysm, destro has a convoluted cast rotation, still retains shadow DoTs despite being the master of fire, and has a clunky buff mechanic to boot. While skilled warlocks can pull off amazing numbers with their fantastical weaving of spells, the clunkiness of the spec is still present for beginners.
Blood Pact: Some advice for newbie affliction warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. Today, Megan O'Neill is taking a break from beta, instead offering some Pointilism 102 advice. My friends, Blizzard is trying to torture me. The large number of drastic changes to the warlock class makes for cool columns. I have no beta access yet (c'mon, late Burning Crusade wave!). The greater likelihood of people playing through beta on weekends rather than on weekdays means those with beta access update information threads on the weekends. I write most of my columns before the weekends. The timing of new information contrary to my writings has had me wanting to drain my own soul out for a couple of weeks here. ... OK, you got me. The real reason I don't want to talk about Mists this week is because Wryxian broke my heart with the no green fire trickery. Don't worry, though! I got my evil groove back by proving my preparedness and fast reactions to my guild. I gloriously dropped a QQ train during a heroic Ultraxion attempt when my raid leader jokingly called for it. Sadly, the next night, many guildmates brought train-wreckers to raid. What are you saying? A Heroism filled with choo-choo yells and fist pumps isn't the best DPS buff ever? Blasphemy!
Blood Pact: Don't sell your soul for a warlock tanking spec quite yet
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. Today, Megan O'Neill is your host, and she wants to remind Matticus that warlock fire cannot be rainbow-colored in Mists of Pandaria, else we'd kill all our wild imps that we summon. Everyone's excited about the warlock tanking glyph for demonology. I'm cautiously excited. It's one of those things we warlocks always put on our wish lists, alongside green fire and warlock flying mounts. While we still wait on the flying mount, EU CM Wryxian noted that green fire might be in the works! As soon as I saw the glyphs that change cosmetic things like the felguard's weapon or the color of a bear's fur, I went hunting in the datamines for green fire. I didn't see one, but Wryxian says there's "hope" that we'll get a quest for green fire. I do hope it involves Gorzeeki Wildeyes or Mor'zul Bloodbringer as a throwback to the old Dreadsteed epic mount quest chain. I'm also aware that this is beta, and betas are for testing things, not for setting things in stone. Like Wryxian's statement about fel fire coloring, things can and will change. I want to be realistic about demo tanking. I don't want the hype surrounding warlock-style tanking to lead to disappointment. Looking at some of warlock and tanking mechanical history, I have some major caveats that Blizzard would need to address if warlocks are to become tanks.
Blood Pact: A tale full of cheering and demonic fury
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. Today, Megan O'Neill is your host, and she's hopefully not an idiot, though as this post goes live with the Mists of Pandaria press release news, this could very well signify nothing. You could argue that an affliction warlock is like a shadow priest with a demon. Or that a destruction 'lock is like a fire mage with a demon. But it's hard to argue demonology as anything but warlock, especially when a demo 'lock is often a demon with a demon. And yet for a long time, demonology had been the lesser of the three specs. In Wrath, it was popular opinion that demo 'locks were only there for the raid buff, despite the fact that well-played demo could be competitive and even beat the then-reigning affliction spec. The other popular use of demo was to farm either old dungeon fun or honorable kills as the nigh-unkillable, hybrid affliction, SL/SL-specced drain tank. In Cataclysm, demo took a change for the better in its DPS output. It rose every tier and finally overtook affliction and destruction in Dragon Soul. But its ascent wasn't -- and still isn't -- without problems.
Blood Pact: Soul sticks and soul carrots
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. When she's not bribing the priest to life grip the mage through Hagara's Ice Wall, Megan O'Neill paints her damage done bar like Seurat -- that is, with lots of DoTs. Soul shards -- the special resource that has been iconic for warlocks since the beginnings of World of Warcraft. Once nonstackable in-game items that there were special bags for, soul shards now in Cataclysm are part of the unit frame as a secondary resource. Soul shards are particularly a great flavor match for affliction and will stay as affliction-only in Mists of Pandaria. The only problem is that the Soulburn mechanic doesn't jibe well with affliction. Sometimes the stick is too long for us to care about the crunchy, delicious carrot at the end. Sometimes the carrot isn't big enough for the properly balanced stick. Whatever the problem is, our soul carrots don't match our soul sticks.
Blood Pact: MoP talent calculator spells out more changes for warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This Monday, Poneria of Fel Concentration finishes zoning into the Defense Against the Dark Arts post. That must be a mage's name for the coolest class column around, because who needs defense when you can gleefully wield the Dark Arts? Greetings, my fellow masters of minions! Warlocks continue the trend of small talent calculator changes followed by intriguing snatches of development clarified by community managers. Set your pets to passive for now as I go over what's changed. In the coming weeks, we can delve into more specific topics and theories. Spells get streamlined for leveling A level 1 ability called Demonic Tactics allows the Imp, Voidwalker, and Succubus to act more intelligently. I'm tempted to say it's a name for the guardian-like actions of the newly rolled warlock's pet, only to be replaced later by the pet bar with Control Demon. But traditionally, the pet bar comes at level 10 along with group features like Battlegrounds, while the Succubus isn't introduced until level 20. If, instead, Demonic Tactics is meant as a better artificial intelligence for pets overall, why isn't the other baseline pet, the Felhunter, included? I'll wait for clarification. After Malefic Grasp was first revealed in the November Class Q&A to be not demonology as we all expected but affliction, I've learned to not assume anything anymore.
6 ways to increase your warlock's DPS
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. As a warlock, I can name no fewer than six methods that the amateur demonologist can use in order to up his worth to a raid. Oh, while I could easily write out an entire Homer-esque adventure exclusively on what fledgling casters can do for their damage, brevity is oft the soul of wit -- so I will merely keep to the upped ante of six, to demonstrate that warlocks shall not have themselves outdone by trite magelings. After all, a mage really is useful for nothing more than a light snack and easy travel. 1. Know your spec. Unlike those wretched creatures that shall not be named, warlocks are blessed with multiple viable specs that they can use for raiding. I know that this is a topic I have blathered on about time and time again, but for a pure DPS class, it's rather important. Unlike my counterpart balance druid, there is no rigidity in spec choice. A balance druid will always be a balance druid, regardless of how strong their spec is in relation to feral or other DPS classes in the game. Warlocks and other pures are given that luxury.
Blood Pact: How Mists of Pandaria will fix warlock PvP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. Greetings, warlocks. I know that I have generally focused heavily on PvE instead of PvP, but this is more so due to the fact that PvP is a difficult subject to generalize. Strategies are specific to the composition that you run and what you're up against, and they are exceptionally difficult to define in rote patterns. That's the draw that PvP has over PvE -- it's always changing, always different, always unpredictable, at least in the good cases. Yet there is one thing I can say about PvP: Affliction is the spec of choice. Then again, when are the few times where that hasn't been true? There might be small pockets here and there when demonology or destruction has some meager viability in the PvP world, but they've normally been rather short-lived. Affliction has generally been our default PvP spec, much as mages have relied on frost. No more! I know people are tied of hearing it, but Mists of Pandaria will fix it.
Blood Pact: Dark Intent update and T13 gearing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. Greeting again, darklings. It's that time of the week once more for us to talk about all that drives our purpose: bringing horrible pain to our enemies. There are multiple cogs in our wheel of destruction, but this week I want to focus in on two of those. To start, there's the small matter of the ever-constant debate on weaponry and trinkets, something that comes up with every new tier. Second, there's the issue of Dark Intent. While it's been relatively established on the priority of the buff, there are a few kinks to work out, as always. The prior settlements that were made were based upon data that was relevant back in tier 11. Although there isn't too much that has changed since this, Blizzard's adjustments and gearing does merit bringing up the issue once more. There can be little doubt that shadow priests are the best recipients for Dark Intent. A significantly large portion of their damage come from DoTs; furthermore, Mind Flay has a unique interaction with the ability as well that results in an even higher return. As shadow priests gain gear, more of their damage does actually shift toward Mind Blast, plus their tier 13 increases more of their non-DoT based damage. Again, none of this changes that they are still the best target for Dark Intent, but it does slightly reduce the disparity between shadow priests and non-shadow priests when getting it.
Blood Pact: Cataclysm-era leveling guide for warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. Of all the things that I am, for all of the multitude of alts that I have, one things that I've never been all that good at is writing leveling guides. I have a hard enough time as it is following said guides; writing out my chaotic leveling process is a chore and a half. That all being said, the one thing I do have enormous amounts of experience in leveling. I've nearly reached the full limit on the amount of characters that I'm allowed to have. Allow me, then, to impart some of what I know about bringing your fledgling warlock up to speed into the endgame. After all, while the journey might be half the fun, the destination is all so glorious. We do need someone to stomp on those pesky mages. The first order of business is to know your spec going into the game. While all warlocks focus on damage (so we don't have quite the same complications as hybrid classes), which spec you choose to go with is still important. Affliction has long been touted as the prime warlock leveling spec, and that is still somewhat true. Affliction offers the best multi-target, fast-paced farming that can't be matched by any of the others. The downside to this is that mob farming has fallen the way of the dinosaurs in WoW leveling; instead, questing and running dungeons is far more efficient, and affliction doesn't have its strength there.
Blood Pact: Initial impressions of 4.3 raiding as a warlock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. The first week of raiding after the release of patch 4.3 has more or less come and gone by this point, and while raiding isn't everything, it is the primary focus on this tier. Not only do we finally get to tackle with Deathwing himself, but Blizzard also introduced the Raid Finder tool in order to bring more players into the raiding game. Another part of this patch was an effort to bring destruction's damage up to par with that of our other two specs. While there is still much more time needed in order to tell how exactly things are going to play out, for now it is time to lay down the initial impressions that raiding within this recent patch has left in my mouth. Some are good, some are bad, but the common denominator is that, hey -- at least we aren't mages.
