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Blood Pact: Leveling a warlock, 60 to 80
Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we had forgiven? Behold, now, the terrible vengeance of the Forsaken! Death to the Scourge! And death to the living!" ~ Grand Apothecary Putress Whether you're racing towards the endgame or pootling along enjoying the ride, everyone likes to make that leveling experience a little smoother. Blood Pact caps off this series of guides with a look at the final (for now) twenty levels. We'll look at the talents you can play with, the spells you can learn and some of the quests you don't want to miss. We'll be covering the Outland and Northrend experience from the warlock's point of view. Maybe you have been leveling for a while and are looking for some insight into this final push or have had a lock 'parked' at 60 or 70 for some time; hopefully this guide will help you push that demon-loving toon to the final malefic leveling milestone.
Blood Pact: Spelling test
With a flash of flame and a gout of smoke, Blood Pact appears again! It demands that columnist Nick Whelan make a sacrifice! Either he must write on a relatively simple subject this week, or be doomed to perform poorly during his finals! Left with no other recourse, Whelan submits to the will of the column.Spells are the essence of playing a Warlock. Just about every part of playing the game, save role playing, has spell casting as a central feature for us. Fighting for control of Arathi Basin, dueling on matters of honor with some upstart Mage, questing and leveling, or any instance from assailing Defias scum in The Deadmines, to unlocking the secrets of Azeroth in Ulduar. Without spells the only things a Warlock could do would be run, jump, and weakly bonk our foes with our staffs. And there just aren't enough platforming sections in WoW to make that kind of thing fun.Depending on our spec and in-game vocation, different Warlocks focus on different spells. And the decision of which spells to focus on is based on numbers. Such as the time required to cast the spell, potential damage output the spell has, or the amount of time that the spell will allow us to reign destruction on our foes while they run around screaming in abject terror. Understanding the mechanical uses of spells is essential if we're to be effective Warlocks. But as I've said in the past: Rain of Fire isn't just an area of effect spell channeled over 10 seconds which causes 2-3k non-crit damage every 2 seconds to enemies within a 15 yard radius--it's fireballs falling out of the sky!
Blood Pact: Raiding as Affliction
I'm stubborn. I am. Even though Blizzard have themselves admitted that Affliction's rotation just might be a little too complex, I insist on sticking with it. Partially because it's fun and partially because it really does give the highest returns once our gear gets up to par. My gear is slowly starting to improve, and one Valorous Plagueheart piece away from the 4-piece Life Tap spirit bonus which should help quite a bit. The new Ritual of Summoning -- which some of my guildies have dubbed the TV from Hell -- has impressed everyone and I feel somewhat useful again. Specially if people die during the run to Loatheb's room.Let's for a moment forget that Survival Hunters are in the equation. We do this for our sanity. For now, let's focus on getting our own performance up to par. The spec I use for raids is a 53/ 0/ 18 as opposed to the more popular 56/ 0/ 15, but I've found it gives tremendous returns with just a few talent points allocated in some talents. It's been difficult, but it's slowly becoming rewarding. I say slowly because it must be noted that some classes scale better and faster with gear and the raid. Let's take a quick look at the build right after the jump.
[UPDATED] Warlock changes in patch 3.0.3
Patch 3.0.3 isn't a hefty patch by any means, but it did bring some pretty nice changes for Warlocks. Some were simple bug fixes but others were outright improvements. As we reported, the Dreadsteed spell will become trainable to all Warlocks at Level 61. Players no longer need to do the quest line, which opens up at Level 60. The character must have Journeyman riding skill and the Felsteed spell learned. Despite this welcome change, I implore all Warlocks to do the quest. It is one of the best and most flavor-rich quest lines in the game, and any Warlock worth her salt will have fun keeping up the Bell, the Wheel, and the Candle. The cost of materials are trivial in the new economy, so there really shouldn't be any excuse not to do the quest now. High level friends can and should (we're Warlocks, after all) be bribed to chaperone Level 60 Warlocks with the Dire Maul Achievement.[UPDATE: Thanks to our industrious readers, I needed to change my shorts (I'm sending you my dry cleaning bill, Augustus) when I read about this change... the coefficients to Corruption and Immolate were significantly buffed to 20%. That's just... wait, let me change my shorts again (blast you, Augustus!). Oh, and apparently Ritual of Doom is actually cool now. It no longer kills a party member, the Doom Guard lasts for 15 minutes and just disappears afterwards like a zit to Oxy afterwards. How polite. So wow, yeah. Bdew, you can split my dry cleaning bill with Augustus.]
Blood Pact: Affliction and Demonology in Patch 3.0.2
It's easy to be disappointed with Warlocks, really. The best tree we have right now is Affliction, and is just really fun to play while dealing incredible damage. This is sad news for a lot of players who enjoyed playing Demonology or liked pressing their Shadow Bolt button with a dead Succubus. For one thing, going deep Demonology nets us a half-baked 51-point talent (more on that later) and killing off your Succubus for 10% more Shadow damage doesn't seem as compelling anymore.To top it all off, we're simply squishier than ever in PvP. We've lost Stamina, lowered survivability, and need to make major sacrifices in PvP if we're to pursue deep Affliction or Destruction. Thankfully, Blizzard recognized this and -- according to Ghostcrawler -- will be making an important change to Soul Link by increasing the damage absorbed to 20%. It will still be inacessible if we take 51-point talents at Level 70, but it should be alright by Level 80. Unfortunately, when we finally get there, we'll be sharing gear with lowlife Mages and Priests. I mean that literally -- those guys simply used to have lower life totals.
[EDITED] Patch 3.0.2 primer for Warlocks
First things first. Things will be changing this Tuesday for all of us. One sobering fact that we must all face is that from that day forward, we're going to be just a little bit squishier. Demonology, in particular, has taken some hits in survivability with the rework to Demonic Embrace (Stamina increase reduced to 10% from 15%, but Spirit penalty removed) and Soul Link (15% damage transfer, down from 20%). General homogenization of cloth items also means that we will no longer be getting more Stamina than other squishies in gear past Level 70. Stamina stacking from gear is about as good as it gets at Level 70, so enjoy it while it lasts. On a good note, Soul Link has been moved up to an 11-point talent, giving us some very interesting choices to make when considering going deep into Affliction or Destruction. In fact, out of all the 11-point talents, Soul Link is the only one that should give us any pause for thought. Considering that for about a month, we can only allocate up to 10 points in another tree if we choose to get a 51-point talent. Anyway, Patch 3.0.2. What's in store for Warlocks? An overview of the talent trees after the jump.
So much for Chaos and other Warlock stories in build 9014
You might have heard that Chaos Bolt now deals Fire damage instead of the nebulous "Chaos" damage, which was actually an amalgamation of all schools of magic. On one hand, this is good news because getting Kicked or Counterspelled while casting it won't lock Warlocks out of every spell. On the other hand, this means Fire immunities will stop it cold. This makes the spell easier to implement or work with, and further enforces the use of Fire spells for Destruction. It's not even a Shadow and Fire version of Frostfire Bolt. It's just... a bolt Fire that looks like Alien larvae. Now, the coolest thing about Chaos Bolt was how it conceptually penetrated through immunities. Ghostcrawler explained that making immunities have vulnerabilities would only create a vicious cycle. Now, the spell only goes through absorption effects -- which is fine, really, but makes Chaos Bolt merely another direct damage Fire spell. Is it a great 51-point talent? I don't know. It deals pretty good damage, I'll give it that. But I'm not sure it's worth 51 points.Curse of Doom can now only produce Doomguards from targets that yield experience or honor, which was a necessary change considering it's now a 100% chance if CoD delivers the killing blow. It still can't be cast on players, though, which is a bummer. Haunt was retuned to heal for 100% of the damage it deals, which isn't so bad considering the 200% I raved about last time was bugged to hell, anyway. Oh, and Everlasting Affliction affects Haunt instead of Shadow Bolt, which is excellent because it relaxes Affliction's already complex rotation.
Warlock changes in Beta build 8982
Mostly good things for Warlocks today. Well, since yesterday, I mean. In the latest Beta build, Haunt has been thankfully buffed to heal you for 200% of the damage it did, up from a measly 20%. This is massive. Did I say massive? I mean gargantuan. Godzilla-like. This is the pure awesome that you can only ask for in Beta. Except... it actually doesn't heal for 200%. In fact, I think it still heals for 20%. Koraa has popped over to the Warlock Beta forums to say a couple of things about this: one, that "it should be more than 20%" and two, that they'll fix it. That should be comforting. Although it's Koraa talking, so... light your Doomsday Candles now and start chanting.Metamorphosis cooldown has been reduced to 3 minutes instead of 5, which feels a little more useful. Although to balance this out, it lasts 30 seconds (down from 45) and increases damage by 20% instead of 40%. It's a nerf to total DPS, but still not a bad change, as a shorter cooldown allows more flexibility in the use of the ability. The real problem with Metamorphosis right now is that the demon abilities are just... all wrong. Demon form actually merits it's own post, so I'll write about that some other time, but I'll leave you with this one to chew on: Challenging Howl. Yeah, just in case you're one of those cuckoohead Warlocks who've always dreamed of tanking, you've got your wish. You weirdo.
Skill Mastery: Haunt
When Blizzard started work on the Warlock class for Wrath of the Lich King, I imagine one of their goals was to make the underrated Affliction tree viable for raiding. Unstable Affliction was a great spell for PvP, but anyone specced deep enough for it wouldn't have Soul Link and thus were practically free kills in the Arena format. In raids, it was a wasted spell because most mobs and bosses don't dispel. It also had a cast time that ate into the Warlock's spell cycle. It was a great spell on paper, but lost a lot of luster in practice. Now along comes Haunt, the 51-point talent in the Affliction tree. It's a direct damage spell that applies a 12 second debuff that increases the damage of the Warlock's DoTs on the target by 20%. In addition, at the end of the debuff's duration or if it's dispelled, it heals the Warlock for 20% of the damage it dealt. It's a nice effect but the amount healed is rather negligible so I hope that aspect of the spell gets tweaked some more before it goes live.
Demonology 101: the Felhunter
I thought I'd do a Blood Pact on a Warlock's demons and how they'll be changing somewhat in Wrath of the Lich King, but considering there are two other trees to worry about, I've got the next two weeks loaded. Instead, we'll take a short look at one demon each day and see how the new talents and inherent demon abilities change the way you'll be playing with your pet. For today, we'll take a look at my personal favorite, the Felhunter. I love the Felhunter because its cute, scaly, and eats my opponent's buffs and locks them out of magical schools. Out of all the demons -- with the exception of the Succubus -- Warlocks get the most benefit from micromanaging a Felhunter. This demon changes the most significantly in Wrath owing to a few things. The bad news first: currently in Beta, Felhunters no longer confer Paranoia, so in Wrath you'll actually get stun-locked by surprise instead of seeing it coming and not being able to do anything about it anyway. It also loses Tainted Blood, which won't be missed because a Felhunter with a Rogue or Warrior on it is going to die, -475 attack power notwithstanding.
Blood Pact: Affliction in Wrath Beta
I know, I know, we've been slacking off. Warlocks have been wanting for some love from around these here parts and rightfully so -- there are a lot of amazing things happening for Warlocks in the Wrath Beta. Some of our readers have called us on it, so here I am taking up the demonic slack because as much as I'm devoted to the Light, playing around with the dark side is fun, too. Anyway, so Beta. Warlocks have gotten a fair amount of changes but have yet to see a major second pass which means that a lot of what's already in can still change a lot, or even completely. Michael Gray covered basic changes in the patch notes some time back while Vims giggled over the new Level 80 ability Demonic Circle (I'll giggle about that some other time...). For today we're going to take a look at the new, juicy, and ridiculously bloated Affliction tree.
Warlock talent changes added to official talent calculators
For every major class mechanic overhaul in the Wrath Beta, there's also a few minor tweaks for other classes as Blizzard works on perfecting the new talents and class balance for release. Today, it's the Warlocks' turn. MMO-Champion has discovered a few changes to the official talent calculator for the Warlock. Check it out after the jump.
Breakfast Topic: New Wrath talents
It's definitely too early to tell, but since some of you lucky readers actually got into the Beta after Blizzard sent out invites yesterday, I might as well ask -- what new talents stand out for you? Even if you didn't get into the Beta (or haven't yet... don't give up hope!), I'm pretty sure you've read up on the new talents and gotten excited about some of them. I know I'm pretty stoked, specially since Paladins got so much love. Matthew geekasmed all over Titan's Grip so much that he wrote an entire Warrior column dedicating his undying love for it. Then there's Christian, who thinks Frostfire Bolt can change everything.Personally, I'm really excited about The Art of War, just because of the name (it's one of my favorite books, after all). It's also currently bugged in Beta, with crazy reports of over 20k damage on a Judgement. It'll be fixed pretty soon, of course, but I can't help but geek out over that. The Death Knight talent Infested Corpse looks particularly gruesome! And then I want to spec for Haunt to complement SL/SL. If you haven't looked at the new talents yet, you can check them out over at Wowhead's talent calculators or Blizzard's official one. Did anything catch your eye?
