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Blood Pact: Destruction 101 at 90 in the end of Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill mentions in a quick announcer voice that green fire spells are sold separately. So, you just boosted to 90 on your warlock and...now what? This whole pet deal is bananas to you and maybe you've heard that destruction (often abbreviated as "destro") -- is a simple spec, so you figure you'll try that one out first. but where do you start? And how can you learn without embarrassing yourself? Let's start, shall we?
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: A pewpewer's notes from tanking and healing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill muses about tanking, healing, and why she really does play a DPS. I have a confession: I was once a tank. Technically I could have been half a tank, because I think I healed just as often, but once upon a time I rolled a druid with the intent of getting a melee DPS perspective. One night in Wrath of the Lich King, my first guild had some trouble with kiting the adds on Gluth. So we upped the tank count to 3: the paladin tank moved to the back for holy tag with the undead while the former-bear warrior walked me through my feral spellbook as I sat in bear form on that pipe. I think it was the extra Mauls that hooked me. I became a bear tank with a branch-waving offspec. I have fond memories of alt or PUG raids where I had cooldown-busting health pools and hero-bear resurrections between Gormok's death and the arena entrance of Acidmaw and Dreadscale. But as my guild tore apart in the beginnings of Icecrown Citadel, I've been back to pewpewing from the back as a warlock. My bear is merely an alt. But my bear has made my warlock a little stronger.
Blood Pact: Speccing for old world raids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill harvests all the songbells ever in the search for more Imperial Silk, but slaughtering masses of Horde NPCs for reputation also works. Patch 5.1 introduced pets to the vanilla-era raids. Patch 4.3 introduced transmogrification, which brought old raids back. Before that, some players would solo or duo old raids just for the challenge giggles. Every new expansion has raised the level cap and opened another expansion to soloing. Whether you're soloing for a look, for improved familiarity with your spell toolbox, or for bragging rights, warlock is definitely a great class to jump into soloing old raids. At level 90, even before you're decked out in tier 14, most of the Wrath of the Lich King raids are fairly easy. But let's start with the basics -- speccing and playstyle.
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: 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: 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.
