grimoire-of-sacrifice
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Warlords of Draenor: Goodbye, sacrificial demon to my demonology
In yesterday's changes to Warlords of Draenor we saw one of my most beloved spells be removed from a Warlock's demonology spec arsenal: Grimoire of Sacrifice. My Warlock relied on the Grimoire to take care of all his evil ministrations, and whenever he needed to kill something and get that blood urge out of him, his demon was always near by. It's amazing the thing never turned on him. As far as the reasoning behind its removal, Blizzard has this to say: Blizzard Entertainment We were unsatisfied with Grimoire of Sacrifice for Demonology. Fundamentally, it did not fit Demonology's theme to sacrifice their pet, full time. We had toyed with ideas where it acted as a temporary cooldown for Demonology, but have decided to replace it with a new talent, which is more theme-appropriate, and fits well against the competition in that talent row. Grimoire of Sacrifice is no longer available to Demonology Warlocks and has a new talent, Grimoire of Synergy in its place. Grimoire of Synergy: When the Warlock or their demon deals damage, there is a chance to trigger Demonic Synergy, granting the other one 15% increased damage for 15 seconds. source Personally I think the change makes sense, even though I enjoy sacrificing my little demon. As to the Grimoire of Synergy, it makes sense too, but looks to be a lot less fun. It almost feels like an old-school talent too, which is interesting given Blizzard's move to get rid of straight up increases. Update: Clarified that this is about the demonology spec.
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: To summon or not to summon, that's the question
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill scraps another attempt at Kanrethad to discuss being a pet class instead. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous pet bugs in encounter design like jumping down into Nefarian's pit in Blackwing Descent so your pet then did nothing but stand in the middle, or to take up Doomguards against a despawning abyssal phase 3 in Throne of the Four Winds -- and by opposing end them: to die, to sacrifice. To sacrifice, perchance to DPS; Aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death, what meter-topping dreams of 5.0 may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil (no, not that one!), must give our developers pause. My terrible warlock Shakespeare adaptation aside, we've had the ponderings about how tied to pets warlocks should or shouldn't be. As I continue to throw myself at Kanrethad's own demonic stampede, I've had some thoughts about the subject.
Patch 5.2 spell changes and tier 15 for warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thought the druid T15 was the warlock tier originally, and she thinks that the Season 13 warlock gear looks like a cross between Shannox and a Faceless mob. My apologies, fel-slingers and fiendish friends. I stepped through the Dark Portal to visit family and when I returned, my hard drive had dead clusters, almost as if someone came by and Frost Nova'd the lot of it. Maybe dropped a few Nether Tempests while he was at it. I blame the mages. I've already had my flu shot, so they must've realized they had to get at the latest Defender of the Dark Arts electronically. Silly mages -- I'm a warlock, so of course I backed up my stuff. But Patch 5.2 wasn't going to wait for my new hard drive, so let's look at the changes so far.
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: Dominating Dragon Soul in patch 5.0.4
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill has too much fulling killing mages on the damage meters in raid to stroll into a BG to kill them personally. Don't worry; she'll get to them soon. She's already gotten her Fox Kit from stored up tokens. Silly mages who wait to farm Tol Barad! How many mages did world-first guilds bring to heroic Spine again? Nobody cares. There was no panic of praying to RNG that Metamorphosis would reset before the next lift occurred. There was no cursing that the Fiery Grip held me for 0.1s past my Will of Unbinding stacks. There was no frenetic button mashing of three different macros to make sure that all my trinkets and cooldowns went off, only to realize I had the wrong pet out. There was just myself and my four Chaos Bolts blowing up the meters for damage done on Burning Tendons. You can talk about Power of the Aspects' rise to 35% all you want, but I doubt it was the extra 5% that flipped me from bottom-middle to the #1 spot overnight.
Blood Pact: Playing an 85 warlock with MoP mechanics
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill recovers from a near-death experience on beta in Vortex Pinnacle involving Falling Meteor. Tomorrow, we can summon a wrathguard or an observer or a shivarra. Tomorrow, we can have AoE Drain Life. Tomorrow, we can ride felsteeds on water. Tomorrow, we can enter Metamorphosis whenever we wish. Tomorrow, players everywhere will be begging the superior class for summons. (I take bribes). I've got your back with a summary of what to do as an 85 warlock with Mists of Pandaria mechanics in the final month of Cataclysm. Later, I'll flesh out the differences between levels 85 and 90. We'll visit tier 6 talents again, look at consumables and enchants, and get your gear ready for tier 14 raiding. But for now, you just need to survive patch 5.0.4.
Blood Pact: Guide to grimoires and demons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks about making an orc warlock just so she can put on a black robe transmog -- including pointed black hat -- and stand on top of Karazhan, waving her arms, while yelling "FLY, MY PRETTIES! FLY!" into Ventrilo. Some time ago, I said minions were things we warlocks can't live without. I apologize. I was too enamored with the Supremacy demons to see that yes, you can live with demons just fine as a warlock in Mists of Pandaria. This week, we'll visit all the demons. I do mean all the demons; I'm going to review even the most basic of pet mechanics all the way to Command Demon and the Grimoire talents. If you missed the minor glyphs for pets or the new voice emotes for the Supremacy pets, you should check those out.
Blood Pact: Get our MoP minions and our little felpuppies too
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill totally cast a soulstone on her old computer minion, but it's refusing to take the battle res. Maybe it disconnected. Maybe it'll be ported to the Dwarven District when she comes back next week. Minions -- can't live with them, and can't live without them. Faithful friend, loquacious lackey, silent scapegoat -- like any typical villainous class, we've got cannon fodder for our plans. It's an important step in a warlock's proper training to know about your minions and what they do so that you can steer clear of any typical villain muck-ups in the future.
