V'Ming Chew
Articles by V'Ming Chew
Blood Pact: Why people hate warlocks
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.This progressive patch is a roller coaster ride; is Blizzard toying with our emotions? I can imagine the folks at Irvine playing WoW as a grand social experiment: "Let's put in this class-changing nerf and see how they respond, muahahahaha!" The Warlock community certainly responded, and the mood is somewhat settled, now that the Life Tap change has been rolled back and Kalgan has confirmed that "No other Warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4."I do not see this as a "victory" for warlocks, as the change was uncalled for to start off with. A PvP-driven change to a class-defining mechanic that affects PvE more than PvP simply defies logic - although some insisted that it was a storm in a teacup. Without arguing (again) how BIG this Life Tap change was really going to be, this episode brought one aspect of the WoW community into clear relief for me.We are very passionate about the classes we play, and react strongly to all changes - good AND bad. While many non-warlock players saw the implications of the Life Tap change, others simply gloated and cheered that their most hated PvP opponents were nerfed. Understandably, players engage in different aspects of the game, and even PvE players have varying degrees of experience playing with warlocks. However, there's been a plethora of rational discussion, from warlocks and non-warlocks alike, on why the LT nerf was uncalled for. There shouldn't really any grounds for hating (the class, hopefully not the players) out of sheer ignorance.So why does the class trigger such a negative emotional response with some players?
Blood Sport: 2.4, Arena patch
V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.This progressive patch is turning out to be quite an event in itself. We are seeing some pretty important changes in every PTR build and the community is watching every change with bated breath. One thing's for certain though: many of the changes are Arena-driven, as Blizzard tries to get the PvP aspect of the game in gear for the 3v3 tournament.
Blood Pact: Locks tapped out
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.This has been a sad week for warlocks, ironic given that I was just celebrating the summoning changes two weeks ago. Life Tap - a class-defining spell for locks - has been overhauled on the PTR to return 15% mana for 15% health a few days ago. The Warlock community was incredulous at first - "No way, this will be rolled back like the drain mana change" - that quickly turned to dismay when Eyonix clarified how Improved Life Tap will work with respect to this change.
Blood Sport: Is WoW turning into a PvP game?
V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.Looking at some of the upcoming class changes in patch 2.4, I can't help but feel that many of them are driven by PvP - particularly Arena - issues. Blizzard is undoubtedly trying to level the playing field for the classes before the 3v3 Arena Tournament, tentatively set to begin in April. That's a very short time to iron out problems and further imbalances that the patch will bring.A design philosophy that Blizzard has insisted on from the beginning is that each class should play similarly in both PvP and PvP. Tom Chilton (Lead Designer, or Kalgan) said at last year's Blizzcon that the game "shouldn't have significantly different rules for spells in PvP vs PvE.""Slower" water in Arenas is the latest change that depart from this philosophy, in addition to PvP-only diminishing returns, and PvP-oriented stats like Resilience and Spell Penetration. However, since many class changes apply to both PvP and PvE, PvE players seem to be "dragged" along by changes meant to tune their classes' PvP performance. Shamans and druids seem to be most affected this patch with changes to Nature's Swiftness, Elemental Mastery, Call of Thunder for shamans, and Lifebloom for druids.
Blood Pact: Why we Lock
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.I've been playing my Warlock main since forever. While some guildies have kept themselves busy by bring their fifth or sixth toon through Karazhan attunement, I've been content pottering around with my warlock, dipping into alts only when there aren't any groups or raids going on.I've talked about leveling a Warlock, but haven't really looked at why people would pick this class in the first place. Or why some don't. So all the WoW rookies out there still sitting on the fence of class choices, or seasoned players considering yet another alt, consider this an expansion of the Warlock section in Elizabeth's excellent "Choose your class!" article.
Blood Pact: Warlocks buffed in 2.4
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.With the current furore over patch 2.4, one may be hard-pressed to keep up with the latest news and developments, especially if you've got raid/ work/ school schedules to keep to and tax forms to struggle with. Ultimately, few of us really read through the patch notes line-by-line, often just skimming for parts that matter to us. As warlocks, we'd naturally be concerned with how patch 2.4 affects us - are we nerfed or buffed? Can warlocks ever not cause the world to end?Allow this intrepid columnist to dive into the murky depths of patch 2.4, to surface with hopefully some pearls of wisdom that answer the hundred-dollar question: What does it mean for me?For really busy warlocks, 2.4, in a nutshell, is a buff in terms of group and raid utility for warlocks.
Blood Sport: Predictions for the Year of the Rat
Every week, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.The year of the Rat is upon us and while this column usually relies on cold hard numbers and shies away from wild speculation and baseless assertions, I shall indulge my Lunar New Year festive mood to venture into some strictly amateur crystal ball gazing for the classes. As with any prediction - astrology, fortune cookies or otherwise - read this with a large pinch of deeprock salt, and understand that a positive attitude is always a good way to overcome defeats and disappointments.This year is the beginning of a new 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac and is a better year than the last. However, many changes are still afoot, especially with Wrath of the Lich King on the horizon. The Rat's resourcefulness and enterprising nature gives rise to many opportunities along the way, and you'll have to be as nimble and smart as the Rat to take full advantage of them. Mobility and haste ratings become differentiating factors in winning Arena matches, as Resilience becomes increasingly ubiquitous when more and more players get their Arena gear.Unfortunately, the Rat's intelligence has a dark side and manipulating the system for individual gain is certainly not above the Rat. Good examples are players selling entire Arena teams and other manipulation of the ladder system. There will also be more betrayals and confrontations - also known as drama, whether at the guild or Arena team level - as people grow increasingly restless during this period leading up to the expansion.Let's look at what the year of the Rat means for the various classes in the Arenas, in no particular order.
Blood Pact: The real Lunar Festival
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.Today being the first day of the lunar new year (for the eastern hemisphere at least), I shall lay my shadow bolts down and talk about something close to my roots: the Lunar Festival. Hey, even evil warlocks come from somewhere, you know.WoW's Lunar Festival is based pretty closely on the real life Lunar New Year that millions celebrate all around the world. It's a really nice gesture on Blizzard's part to move in-game festivities each year to match the real life celebrations, as Lunar New Year doesn't fall on the same day each year on the 'normal' or Gregorian calendar. In fact the 15-day festival is determined by the lunisolar calendar, and it begins on the first day with a new moon of the new lunar year. This is the third year we're having the Lunar Festival in WoW: 2006 – The Lunar New Year was on Jan 29; WoW's Lunar Festival was held Jan 27 to Feb 14. 2007 – The Lunar New Year was on Feb 18; WoW's Lunar Festival was held Feb 16 to Mar 8. 2008 – The Lunar New Year is on Feb 7; WoW's Lunar Festival started yesterday and will continue till February 23rd. What happens during WoW's Lunar Festival, besides Asian-style outfits, fireworks and funky red decor around towns?
Blood Sport: Warrior-Druid overpowered?
Every Thursday, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.A quick look at the chart above and one thing clearly leaps out. Clue: it has to do with mortal strikes, HoTs and cyclones. Well, every third team you meet nowadays in 2v2 will probably be a Warrior-Druid team. This comp (short for composition) seems to be running away with the 2v2 bracket currently: 20 of the top 50 US teams are Warrior-Druid comps - that's 40%. For teams with ratings greater than 2200, close to 30% are Warrior-Druid. They also make up almost a quarter of all 2v2 teams, regardless of rating. That's a lot of Warrior-Druid teams.What makes the comp tick?
Blood Pact: A Warlock's descent into Destruction
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.I have been an Affliction lock for much of my 70 career (45 days to be exact). I enjoyed wiping out fauna in Nagrand or Shadowmoon Valley by taking on multiple mobs with hardly any downtime. Between the Frozen Shadoweave set bonus, Essence Infused Mushroom, Siphon Life, Drain Life and the occasional skillcoil, my life hardly drops below the half-way point.In raids, it was fun watching an amplified Curse of Doom pop for close to 9k damage and trying to keep a full set of DoTs on the boss between Ruin-powered shadow bolt carnage. I liked the instant fire-and-forget DoTs in PvP and Arenas, and Curse of Exhaustion and instant Howls of Terror gave me a chance against rogues and warriors. You could say that I'm a happy Warlock.Until I got bored.
Blood Sport: Essential Arena addons
Every Thursday, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.Like I mentioned in my Building an Arena team article, some PvPers scoff at PvP mods. For me, I like to think of addons as little "fixes" that address deficiencies in the default UI. It's not like they create a huge unfair advantage or anything, but addons, created by well-meaning individuals, simply make our collective gaming lives easier. Hey, if everyone else is using them, why not?There are literally thousands of addons out there, and some of us quickly develop an almost unhealthy reliance on all the bells and whistles. I'm a firm follower of the minimalistic movement: if I hardly interact with a particular addon during a typical game session, it disappears from my AddOns folder, no matter how nice or "useful" it seems. I prefer quicker loading and response times, to conveniences that are situational at best, thank you.I'm also a big Ace fan; who doesn't like updating all your addons with one click? Besides that, many of the most functional and bloat-free addons are emerging from the active Ace community. Hence, if there are multiple addons providing the same functionality, I'll tend to gravitate towards the Ace version. The easiest way to grab and manage Ace addons is to download the WoWAceUpdater application. With that, let's look at some addons I consider "essential" if you are a frequent or serious gladiator.
Blood Pact: How to be evil, Warlock edition
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.Sneaky, backstabbing rogues and warlocks seem to fit naturally into the evil mold - with the latter summoning demons from hell and all. Unlike rogues, who seem more like common thugs and hired hands, warlocks are more akin in flavor to evil masterminds, orchestrating doom behind the scenes and manipulating their minions to get the dirty job done. Incidentally, it was a warlock who got us into this Horde-Alliance mess.Like Elizabeth, who wrote the rogues' version of "How to be evil", I'm not a mean, vicious or even evil person. In fact, if you met me in a dark alley, you'd probably invite me home to meet mom. So how do good people like you and me play this deliciously evil class to its full creative potential?
Blood Sport: "Locks OP as hell," says top Warrior
Every Thursday, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.In Season 2, the top teams in all three brackets of the Bloodlust battlegroup all had one toon in common: Serennia, a female gnome warrior. The diminutive warrior quickly earned the nickname "best warrior in the world" and became the gnome to loathe (or love, for some) in bloodthirsty PvP circles.Behind this pint-sized powerhouse is a 23-year-old who is working on his multimedia degree in Houston, Texas. SK Gaming's Gosey had an excellent interview with him recently. Serennia talked about team setups, warriors, his druid alt, warlocks and offered some PvP tips.
Blood Sport: Arena nostalgia
Every Thursday, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.Keeping in the theme of my Warlock column, let's take a look back at one of the most important additions introduced in 2007 with The Burning Crusade - Arena PvP.You can say that Arena PvP is a mini-game of sorts, tied to the main game via gear, and vanity tokens (titles, mount). WoW gear is, in itself, a progression system - particularly for endgame players who don't have new levels or abilities to look forward to. Arena gear is desirable, in both performance and appearance, being recolored versions of top tier gear from PvE. So good that even the most dedicated PvE raiders are dipping into Arenas to gain access to "easy" upgrades.If "welfare epics" is the theme of 2007, then Arena PvP is one of main ways that they are dispensed. Never have there been more toons running around with purples than 2007, and this is a casual-friendly trend that WoW and other MMOs have been moving with.
Blood Pact: Looking back at Locks
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.What? It's the new year already? Obviously so ... judging by the sheer barrage of weight-loss ads on TV. They make reaching for my next fistful of buttered popcorn a journey in guilt, even though I'm considered somewhat undernourished in my household.Here we are in the first week of 2008 - an opportune time to look back on the past year, when memories of being fear-dotted to death are still vivid. If warlocks owned 2006 since skillcoil, then 2007 was the year that warlocks became just so OP with every nerf.
Blood Sport: What's your Arena resolution for 2008?
Every Thursday, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.Aye, it's that time of the year again, as one year draws to a close, and a brand new year beckons. Have you made your New Year's resolution? Granted, resolutions have a knack of getting forgotten by the second week of the new year but I guess they do set the tone for what you'll like to achieve, at the very least.Here in Blood Sport, even seasoned gladiators make resolutions for the new year. After all, one of the most important things in any competitive endeavor is to set goals for yourself and your team. What is your goal for the new year? Get four pieces of the Vengeful Gladiator set? Hit 2000 in team rating? Shoot for the 'Vengeful Gladiator' title for Season 3?
Blood Pact: The Warlock wishlist
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.The luckier ones among us would have some or most of our Christmas wishes granted yesterday, especially wishes that can be fulfilled at your friendly neighborhood mall - no, your presents are not made by elves in the North Pole.Some altruistic individuals might have wished for something more nebulous like "world peace". But perhaps nothing feels more nebulous than wishes for improving the Warlock class; world peace might happen sooner than some Warlock wishes in this thread!Combing through the current 52 pages of the thread, and leaving out complaints and unrealistic requests that will obviously upset class balance, I've come up with this (hopefully) definitive wishlist for warlocks.
Blood Sport: Knowing thy ground
Every Thursday, V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.Your team is randomly ported to any one of the three maps when a rated match or a practice skirmish starts. Given the frenetic brevity of Arena matches (other than this Shaman-Druid standoff), most players learn the lay of the land the hard way - through matches.Of course, you can size up the terrain by visiting two of the arenas in Nagrand and Blade's Edge Mountains. Unfortunately, this is not an option for Ruins of Lordaeron, which does not have a 'real' world location and is only accessible through the Arena Battlemasters.Each map has its unique terrain and tactical implications, and players quickly develop their likes and dislikes.
Media Player boosts WoW performance
Many players have experienced faster WoW loading times with Windows Media Player (WMP) running in the background. Some players are also reporting lower latency and higher frames per second.This tip surfaced in the Europe forums late November and was picked up by the US forums two weeks ago. Many players are reporting shortened loading times, some by more than 50%.I did a quick test and found that by running WMP in the background, minimized and not playing anything, the login screen popped up about 20 seconds quicker than usual. The world loading time (time between clicking Enter World button and character appearing on screen) was also faster by about 15 seconds. However I did not see any significant improvements in latency or framerate. To eliminate performance boosts due to caching or preloading, I rebooted my machine between each set of timings.Some players have also suggested adding:SET timingMethod "1" or SET timingMethod "2"to the config.wtf file to achieve the same effect without running WMP. For me, this shortened the time for the login screen to appear by 20 seconds as well, but only shortened world loading time by 5 seconds. Combining WMP and the config.wtf tweak resulted in the same timings with just running WMP alone.There's been no official Blizzard response to this yet, although a likely explanation is that WMP modifies how your computer handles background applications. With WMP open, all available CPU resources apparently become allocated to WoW, leading to better performance.Does this quirk work for you? Do you see any improvements in framerate and latency?
Blood Pact: Locked and loaded
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.Sweet 70! Time to rest on your shadowy laurels, or press on into "endgame"? Stripping it down, WoW endgame is raiding and PvP. You may have reputations to grind, heroic instances to run and daily quests to complete, but raiding is truly the only way to experience content you haven't seen before, at least from the perspective of a Warlock. Similarly, PvP - with unpredictable opponents, ever-changing scenarios and the thrill of competition - is another way to keep things fresh and challenging.Most players engage in a little bit of everything, and the choice really lies with you. Since The Burning Crusade, PvP has become a good alternative means of progression, with rewards that rival those from PvE. Many raiders also dip into PvP as a reliable source of gear upgrades to improve their raid performance.Regardless of what you choose to focus on, the game at 70 definitely involves more group work. If you have soloed all the way to 70, your lone wolf days are over, if you wish to progress further. Let's look at some of endgame expectations for warlocks.