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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: FinalBoss interviews Sparkuggz and Shinafae
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill fails at predicting patch day. Whoops. So I was moving living spaces and then I thought it'd be only a week before the patch launched. I have the gear drops list set up, and I figured no one wanted 1000 words when the obvious numbers pass happened -- our DoTs went up and our fillers went down. But then the patch release date became September 10th instead of August 27th. You'd think I'd have learned this by now. What I have learned by now is to read up on other warlock things, particularly in aspects of WoW I don't personally play. I am in a 5/13 25H guild, but I doubt I'll reach world firsts any time soon, so it's fun to hear perspectives of warlockery from the likes of Sparkuggz of EU-Twisting Nether's Method and Shinafae of US-Illidan's Blood Legion. Fortunately, new video series FinalBoss.tv got the chance to interview both for its third episode about warlocks in Mists of Pandaria.
Blood Pact: Fewer drastic changes, loot still developing
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. I think I've copied my warlock over to the PTR for most of the copies allowed, but I finally got Unerring Vision of Lei Shen (UVLS) to get into my backpack a weekend ago, so an update to test out playstyles on the PTR is needed. Look at all those imps! I'm seeing more tweak-type changes being datamined than drastic changes like our tier 90 talents, and most gear names were revealed, so we might be getting down to the end of it.
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: Catching up on Patch 5.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is free to pet battle all day, e'ry day. I tried to gauge when Patch 5.3 would hit so that I'd end the series on World of Logs just in time, but unfortunately I overestimated and the new patch has cut me off. With my original plan of posts, I'd be a week short, but now...uhhhh it might be a halftime break. In case you've missed the World of Logs posts so far, here's a recap: A brief overview of ranking and the combo of how to tell what warlock or pet you would or should be looking at, Looking closer at some of the graphs on World of Logs, and How to use the buffs and debuffs graph to gauge proper cooldown or proc usage, as well as a basic understanding of what stats (for trinket procs) do for each spec. I intend to explore some warlock-specific examples using the expression editor to dive deep into the combat log, but I'm not sure I can fit it all into one post. I'll finish the series off with a deeper look at the damage done tables and how the spells spread for each spec in general raid encounter styles. But this week? This week is a little shorter and lighter while we go over what Patch 5.3 means for warlocks.
Blood Pact: Find greater knowledge in elites' tricks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finally landed a heroic-mode soulwell this Ji-Kun kill. Every time we hit Ji-Kun, I try to place a soulwell mid-air. There isn't any performance-breaking reason to do this other than pure amusement as raidmates try to "grab the cookie from my jar, young grasshopper." But it's possibly my favorite use of KJC so far. This isn't an trick that requires super skill. Mostly, it's whether or not you can time your cast, your latency, and the wind that grabs you off Gastropod Boulevard. But what I do like to do sometimes is watch elite players from the top guilds in the world do fights in a crazy or simply slightly different way. Usually this involves watching a lot of soloing videos: e.g, Spygnesy, who just uploaded a warlock solo of Ragnaros in Firelands. But when it comes to minor tips for huge meter wrecking, I love watching Sparkuggz of play.
Blood Pact: Vault's end with multitarget magic
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill continues on with Mogu'shan Vaults while hunting pets in old raids. I thought maybe I'd goofed, that I'd mis-timed the first two-thirds of Mogu'shan Vaults and would need to interrupt to make a fun post about Black Temple and some new warlock lore. Sadly, the felfire questline got postponed for a little while. Oh well. In the meantime we can alternate between old raids and new as a warlock. First, let's finish up Mogu'shan Vaults with two complex-to-explain but simple-to-do fights.
Blood Pact: Staying slightly alive as a warlock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill completely devours a real-life box of cookies while listing out all the ways a warlock can heal herself. Om nom nom. Dead DPS does zero DPS. We all know that saying. I introduce to you my Princess Bride collorary to the Dead DPS rule: Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Inigo Montoya: What's that? Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change. The perfect description of what happens when a mob dies in an RPG aside, Miracle Max is right: mostly dead is slightly alive, and slightly alive means you can still do more damage. Naturally -- since we are magnificent, resilient bastards instead of glass cannons -- warlocks are quite excellent at staying slightly alive.
Blood Pact: How to use your warlock's party toys
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill steps back to cover some group functions of warlocks she feels she must explain every week to her raidmates anyway. It's in our fel nature to want to work alone, but warlocks actually have some great party utility. We lost some of that utility in Cataclysm with the advent of a specific guild perk, but now in Mists of Pandaria we've resurfaced in lore and game mechanics. It's time to relearn our old tricks and introduce a new party toy to group content play.
Demonic Gateway teleports party members without a Dial-Home Device
Demonic Gateway is one of the many new abilities for warlocks in Mists of Pandaria. With the beta level cap rising to level 88, making Demonic Gateway learnable, we can now see how fantastic the portals are. This pair of fel stargates works with party members. The first portal (purple) sits where you are standing, and the other end (green) is directed to anywhere with a small target circle. Demonic Gateway has both a minimum range of 20 yards and a maximum range of 70 yards. Once you've selected a spot to spawn the portal, the finishing cast animation looks like Glyph of Shadow Bolt plus Glyph of Verdant Spheres. Around each portal in its respective green or purple color will be up to five fiery orbs. These represent the number of charges the Gateway currently has, and it recharges one every 15 seconds that it's not being used, starting at zero charges on the summon. To travel, simply walk through the opening and fly to the other side in a fel green or purple ball. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
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.
