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Blood Pact: On armor spells and warlock survivability
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. I believe that somewhere along the line, I promised that I would write more this week about how terrible mages are -- which, you know, that's entirely possible, but I say lots of things. Trusting that what I said was accurate or true, well, that seems like a pretty big lead of faith; I personally wouldn't take it. Besides which, I feel that Archmage Pants does quite a good enough job of that for me. Why should I bother? It's like kicking a wounded puppy. Although I'm not entirely against that, either. No, no, there will be no puppy kicking today -- well, perhaps minimal puppy kicking. Instead, we're going on an adventure -- a literary adventure! I know, get excited, because those are the best kinds. This week is all about keeping yourself alive. If you recall, a while back I wrote on the art of surviving as a warlock. This time, I'd like to take a look into exactly how this works, what's paying off, and what's better left off being passed down to mages.
Blood Pact: The fine art of staying alive, part 2
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. The first installment of Blood Pact: The fine art of staying alive, published two weeks ago, was more leveling/PvE-focused. This time around, we'll explore the PvP side of making sure that you come out of the fray still ticking (at least with all your limbs that were intact before still there). Before starting on that, I want to bring up one other thing. I've mentioned it a few times in comments now, and I'm sure that most of you have already figured it out on your own, but I would like to take this time to say that, yes, I am now going to be the new writer for Blood Pact until a horde of screaming demons chases me off into the Nether.
Blood Pact: The failure of Soul Shards
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. Greetings again, warlocks. For the past few weeks, we've been discussing raiding strategies for the various raids of this tier. In this week's edition, I would like to take a slight change of pace and discuss warlock mechanics at a more basic level. I understand that most come here for guides or reference materials -- and I promise to get back on track with those soon -- but I also like to highlight what I view as flaws within the game in order to bring about dialog within the community on how to adjust these issues. When playing as a warlock, the most unavoidable mechanic that you run into is that of Soul Shards. For years, warlocks pretty much hated Soul Shards; they were annoying, took up vast amounts of bag space, and had to be farmed for every raid. In Cataclysm revamping, Soul Shards was one of the major goals for warlocks. Now we have a system in which warlocks only have three shards usable in conjunction with the new Soul Burn ability, which can be used to alter certain spells in a variety of ways. But is this really an improvement? Did Blizzard actually fix the problems associated with Soul Shards?
The Art of War(craft): Three kinds of warlocks and how to kill them
Zach brings warmth to your day with a regular weekly dose of good, old-fashioned PvP. Like a comforting hot cup of cocoa with little pink marshmallows in the shape of stars. And battle axes. And skulls. We'll take this opportunity in the lull between Cataclysm news to continue our introductory guide to killing this and that. Sure, it'll be radically different from now and the next expansion, but it should ultimately be useful to help a lot of beginners getting their feet wet (or bloodied) in the Battlegrounds until then. And believe me, the Battlegrounds is where it's going to be at. So take this opportunity to immerse yourself in the Battleground experience before Cataclysm shakes things up. We left our guides hanging with an introduction to warlocks and the usual abilities they employ on the battlefield. Today we'll wrap things up with a closer look at the three specs. The fun thing about Wrath is that Blizzard made an earnest effort to make each warlock spec feel and play differently from each other, going so far as to tailor certain pets to work better with a specific spec. It was in Wrath where felpuppies became affliction warlocks' best friends, and destruction warlocks were encouraged to hang out with imps. Demonology, as always, had their burly bodyguards. After the jump ... how to spot them and, hopefully, squish them.
The Art of War(craft): Introductory guide to fighting warlocks
Warlocks are a pesky bunch. Warlocks. Well, this should be interesting. Perhaps no class has suffered such an ignominious fall from grace in PvP reputation as that of the warlock. Once a fearsome -- quite literally, in this case -- force to be reckoned with, the class has suffered a few bumps in the road that has led it to become less of a threat on the battlefield. Mostly, this has something to do with the ridiculous burst of the low resilience Season 5, which resulted in warlocks getting blown up in the opening ten seconds of a match, the rise of death knights, who are kind of like warlocks in plate armor, and the homogenization of caster gear, which meant far less Stamina for warlocks than they were used to prior to Wrath. As resilience built up in Wrath of the Lich King and burst decidedly went down, warlocks have once again taken a return trip to power. Well, at least respectability. While with the balancing of crowd control, players no longer cry about how OP warlocks are, they still have a powerful arsenal at their disposal. They've also never been more fun to fight. With the distinctiveness introduced in Wrath, warlocks are now (a little) more than just getting your butt feared into oblivion. After the jump, we'll take a look at the common tools you should expect from every warlock and how to counter them.
