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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: Dark Soul, glyphs, and more PTR fun
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill attempts many experiments both on live and PTR realms. Last week, I had this whole thing planned to talk about the Thunderstruck scenario of damage with the olde Glyphe of Lyfe Tapp style Archimonde's Vengeance. But literally before the deadline, the PTR builds finally caught up with the PTR patch notes and Archimonde's Vengeance was completely replaced by the new Archimonde's Darkness. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like I could spend at least 1000 words on a double cooldown; today, I can't even break 150. But before we get seriously into settled number-tweaking things like the datamined loot, let's talk about some other changes on the PTR.
Blood Pact: Argggggghimonde's Vengeance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks up a silly idea for the crap talent. Although I'm pretty sure no one takes this talent, I'll probably have to preface that statement with an "almost" just to be safe. Kil'jaeden's Cunning (KJC) is the "default" level 90 talent because Mannoroth's Fury (MF) is seriously situational and because Archimonde's Vengeance just plain sucks. PvPers might have used it in the beginning of the expansion, but most PvErs don't give it a second look. The passive damage often doesn't actually work because unavoidable encounter damage can be termed "environmental" -- the same reason why your pets don't die while standing in green goop that otherwise kills you. The active damage just doesn't hit that hard. Archimonde's Vengeance (AV) needs to be better if it's going to live in the same tier as KJC and MF.
Blood Pact: Patch 5.4 has a few ups but mostly downs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill's raid sadly realized that the changes to KJC mean there will be no more air-bound soulwells. Well. It's been a hell of a week on the PTR for warlocks, hasn't it? A few of the original patch notes have been changed for the better again in response to player feedback on the forums. Don't get me wrong, Patch 5.4 is still largely a depressing bunch of nerfs for warlocks. But let's go over the changes and make sure we have everything straight. The usual disclaimer of "things can and may change" still applies to all of these patch notes.
Blood Pact: Soloing the vanilla raids for pets and more
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill laments being knocked successfully up past the Suppression Room, only to pull the boss and be knocked back down and across the Suppression Room while the original knockback mobs die. UGH. Well, Naxxramas is big enough that I'll leave a whole article to it. The other raids from the original raiding scene of level 60 can fit into one since they're relatively easy to do. The roadblocks to finishing them are largely mechanical tricks, not damage output or survivability problems. There's no real difference between the specs in these earliest raids. I run as destruction mostly because it's fast-paced, but any spec and almost any talent setup can do these raids.
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: 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.
