lock-talents

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  • Blood Pact: Dungeon gearing for warlocks in patch 4.3

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    11.29.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. If I did not know any better, warlocks, I would think that the world was conspiring against me. Last week I had promised that I would be doing a gear list from the newest 5-mans to be released with patch 4.3, but I was deterred by not having access to Wowhead's marvelous PTR site. This week, it's Blizzard itself attempting to knock this train off the tracks by releasing the ability list and talent calculators for Mists of Pandaria. While the talents are important in their own right, nothing from said ability list was really all that shocking; indeed, a majority of it I had predicted rather well in last week's issue. Therefore, despite all attempts to get me to focus otherwise, I will actually be keeping up my promise and providing you with a cleanly laid-out gearing list for the next patch (which should be coming out tomorrow, truth be told). To prevent you from wasting your days farming for an item that you might replace, valor point items will also be listed given that you can earn the currency through 5-man content. Let's be on with the show!

  • Blood Pact: The cost of talent consolidation in Pandaria

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    11.21.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. Greetings, warlocks. It's that time of the week once again when we talk about all those dark arts and such that we do so love to practice. My original intention this week was to talk about many of the sweet items that you can pull out of the new dungeons coming out in 4.3. All of them are on the same ilevel as what you can get from regular Firelands, making them ideal for non-raiders or players who haven't gotten every drop that they've been looking for -- and in some cases, a few items are even better that what you could find from raiding. Alas, at the time of this writing, Wowhead's PTR servers aren't working for me and seem to be down -- a shame, but there's always next week! In lieu of that, I'll take this opportunity to discuss a different matter that's be on my mind of late dealing with the changes coming in 5.0. Talents are undergoing a major overhaul, and we know that many of the current talents are going to be baked into the base class. While this works well for other classes, it's a bit awkward when it comes to warlocks. Join me as I show you and toss in a bit of speculation for affliction.

  • Blood Pact: Looking at the developer's Q&A

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    11.13.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. All right, this past Wednesday, there was an extremely awesome Live Developer Q&A about class and system design that pretty much rocked house any way you look at it. While there were some good questions fielded about the next patch, a majority of it focused in on things to come in the next expansion; with the changes that we'll be seeing, this isn't surprising. In perfect form, Xelnath handled everything warlock like a beast. Respects, hats tipped, and similar jazz of the sort out to Blizzard. Without wanting to waste much time, let's jump right into all of what we have learned from the chat. It's certainly worth waiting for.

  • Blood Pact: Distinguishing destruction from fire

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    11.07.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. I like to think that I've been a solid supporter of the warlocks in their struggles against the devil mages. I know that I do have some split loyalties with the druids, but let's be fair in saying that a druid is wicked awesome in comparison to a mage. With that in mind, know that it brings me no joy to say that I'm worried. We talked about the new talents coming in the next expansion last week, and while I love what talents warlocks had and I think the new system has some great potential, there's one facet about it that concerns me. Destruction and fire are very closely linked in playstyle. Both are heavy nuking specs that also utilize DOT effects to boost their damage. They both make use of an otherwise unwieldy long spell, albeit in different methods, but one cannot deny that the two specs are fairly similar. One of the key differences right now to set destruction apart from fire is Conflagration and Backdraft -- destruction has a form of focus on speed that fire doesn't. With traditional specs going out the window, one has to worry about how Blizzard intends to distinguish destruction from fire.

  • Blood Pact: Looking at new warlock talents

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    10.31.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Welcome back, warlocks! I know that this is technically the second post-BlizzCon article that you'll be reading, but with how scheduling has to be done, for me at least, it's actually the first. I know that it can get a little aggravating to have to wait this long for your roundup of new information, but let me assure you that it is well worth the wait. Unlike the rest of the writers around this place, I'm not suffering from an incurable plague ... guess it's just a warlock thing. Shadow priest writer Fox Van Allen might joke that he's getting 15% of the damage done by the BlizzCon Flu back as health, but clearly I'm just sitting there channeling Drain Life with no one to care about interrupting me. Speaking of Drain Life, the talents for the next expansion seem extremely promising. Why don't we take a look at them? (You like that leap of topics, don't you?)

  • Blood Pact: A warlock history

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    10.24.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. BlizzCon has since come and passed, and I am quite sure that epic adventures were had by all who attended. Despite the event's being done and gone, I am in the unfortunate position of needing to write this nearly a week in advance, which can be killer when there's so much juicy news floating around there now. At the moment, I'm probably hovering somewhere over the midwest, or I've finally gotten home and have crashed into my long-missed bed. But don't worry -- not even death would prevent my ego from finding a way to get my self-important words to your screen. If you happen to also follow my Shifting Perspectives column and read this past week's, then you would have gotten a nice brush of moonkin history. While I'm not generally the type to mix my colors with whites (at least, not after that bout of horrible pink underwear), I thought that the topic was rather appropriate, given the circumstances. I've spent much of the these past few weeks talking about the future of warlocks; it's only right that we now return to those things that have gotten us to where we are today.

  • Blood Pact: The new destruction in patch 4.3

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    10.17.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. This is a good week to be a warlock, my friends (although I would find myself hard pressed to find a week when it isn't). While there are all the usual means for celebration, today is a particularly special one; today is the day when we move one step closer to the ultimate dream. Yes, partially the dream of Blizzard's finally waking up to its mistake and deleting the mage class, though that one still needs a bit more work -- but I'm talking about a different dream here, the dream where warlocks are free to choose whichever spec they prefer in PVE without feelings of holding back their raid. The latest PTR build has held a number of delicious buffs for destruction, buffs that have been long past due. Will they be enough? Will warlocks be a pure class with three -- count them, three -- viable raiding specs? That's a matter still up for debate; what's worth mentioning is that Blizzard is making an effort. This week, of course, will be dedicated to that effort: what's changed, how those changes impact the spec, and what this means for destruction come 4.3. Hold on to your demons, lovelies -- things are about to get hot. Get it? Destruction ... fire ... hot. It's a funny.

  • Blood Pact: Encounter design, demonology, and tier 13

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    10.10.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Patches are always trying times, more so for pure classes than any other. Hybrids benefit by generally only having a single DPS spec that Blizzard focuses on balancing; pures have to worry about which of their three specs is going to remain viable and scale well into the next raiding tier. While some of that is dependent upon the raw damage a spec is capable of putting out, many times the situation is far more complicated than that. Tier bonuses, encounter design, and gearing all play a vital role in determining which spec reigns supreme and which falls by the wayside. We've talked before about all of these topics, but it's time to focus that on how the game is shaping up for the next raid. While most of the encounter design is still slightly unknown to players, there are things that we do know and concerns that we have to be wary of. This week, we'll take a look at what might be in store for demonology, the part that tier 13 plays in that, and how the bosses themselves will be the deciding factor.

  • Blood Pact: Learning from the witch doctor

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    10.03.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. I have been grateful as of late to have been invited into the Diablo 3 beta. While this might just seem like some bragging that has no relation to WoW, you couldn't be more wrong. If there is one thing that I have learned while playing through Diablo 3, it is that the game has been heavily influenced by the many paths that WoW has taken over the years. While the ARPG and MMO genre may not appear to have much crossover at first glance, the fundamentals are all there, more so in a game such as Diablo. The witch doctor class in particular has been heavily inspired not just by the Diablo necromancer but also by WoW's warlock, even going so far as to have the Haunt spell, much in the same capacity that we do. As much as the development team has clearly learned from WoW, I think it is fair to say that there are quite a few things that went into creating such an amazing new game, and some of those things can also be brought back into WoW.

  • Blood Pact: Looking at tier 13 bonuses

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    09.26.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Many welcomes back once again, favored warlocks. If, like me, you are a studious creature of the night who probably has coffee flowing through his veins instead of anything closely resembling blood, then you know that late on Saturday night, Blizzard released some fun new information. My personal favorite CM (just don't tell the others), Zarhym, released the new set bonuses associated with the up-and-coming tier 13. While at first we cursed that Zar would have the audacity to post such a thing in the wee hours of night, let's take a look at what we're to expected for the next patch and the terrible implications that come with it. All does not seem to be well in the house of warlocks, my friends. Both of our newest tier sets hold warning signs of terrible things to come. We'll be looking into those not-so-quiet rumblings and what they might hold for us in the next patch as we battle Deathwing himself.

  • Blood Pact: The future of destruction

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    09.19.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. For the past two weeks, we've been taking a look at the future of warlock design -- a bit of clairvoyance on my part, with Blizzard's asking for player feedback of a similar nature this past week. First we looked at affliction's concerns, and then we talked about demonology. This week, we'll round out the series by discussing what might come of destruction, the current wayward child of warlocks. It's easy to talk about the problems that destruction faces now, as they're things that we see inside of the game, yet damage balance is a very fickle mistress. Numbers can be tuned at the drop of a hat; whether they are or not is an entirely different matter. Dealing in numbers and figures really is a simple matter. This week's focus won't exclusively be on the damage disparity that destruction currently suffers from, but rather the mechanical difficulties and identity crisis that holds it back. Damage is meaningless when Blizzard could easily hotfix in a random buff or nerf without a moment's notice; again, it's more so a matter of if or when.

  • Blood Pact: The future of demonology balance

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    09.12.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Last week, we talked about the future development of affliction warlocks, discussing how the spec is impacted by non-damage-related factors such as encounter design and utility. Both of these game features play a significant role in the viability of any spec. More so than ensuring that specs are balanced in terms of raw, dummy DPS, Blizzard also has to ensure that specs are compatible with a raid's design as a whole. This week, we'll talk some about demonology and what needs to be done to keep it viable, yet also interesting and fun to play. It was noted last week that I wasn't able to get much into PVP balance, which is fair, as I didn't make many comparisons at all. PVP balance is an entirely different beast from anything else in the game. PVP balance rests just as much on which specs are popular as it does on the viability of a spec itself. If assassination rogues have a high representation and affliction has a slightly better counter to them, then affliction would end up being a better PVP choice, regardless of how the other two specs fare. I'll attempt to put more PVP perspective into the feature, but know that it's far more difficult to balance for all the variable situations you might come across.

  • Blood Pact: The future of affliction warlock balance

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    09.06.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. As a pure DPS class, warlocks have something of a unique flavor all of their own, which brings along with it several different balancing challenges that hybrid classes generally don't face. On the surface, spec balance is a fairly simple concept. All specs should deal relatively within the same level of damage then you're basically golden. Alas, that's just not how it does. Raw damage is only a single factor in the equation. There's raid utility to consider, how the spec interacts with encounter design, and how complex a spec is to play. We've spend a large amount of time focusing on raw damage over the years, yet when push comes to shove, it is only a minor fraction of the whole. In the new age of Cataclysm-styled DPS where damage balance is closer than it's ever been, the secondary factors of balance are becoming more and more important. This week, we'll talk a bit about the future of affliction and how it can fill in what major roles still remain.

  • Blood Pact: Styling your warlock in the next patch

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    08.29.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. It really didn't come of much of a surprise to most people that I am totally not impressed by the introduction of transmogrification on my balance druid. First, let's be real and say that most of the druid sets just aren't that spectacular. Second, I'm stuck in the shape of a giant, fat space chicken. Thankfully, I have a warlock to fall back on. My warlock is the reason that I'm not a complete Debbie Downer about the next patch. Warlocks have some phenomenal tier sets; to be fair, they also have quite a number of horrible sets, but that's true for everyone. This week, we'll take a quick stroll through the development of warlock tier sets, picking out the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Let's get our dress-up on!

  • Blood Pact: The warlock multi-DOT rotation

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    08.22.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. If you remember last week, I did a little Twitter Q&A. There were a lot of fantastic questions, some of which I wasn't able to fit into the article; this week, I want to address one of those questions. Technically, the question was in regards to the last change to Soul Swap and the impact that it holds on multi-DOTing -- but the truth is that multi-DOTing is a concept that impacts all warlock specs. This raiding tier has really attempted to tone done the impact that multi-DOTing has on encounters, a vast difference from what we saw at the onset of Cataclysm. While I applaud Blizzard on its efforts to spot a growing problem and correct it, players are still better off knowing how to best spread their damage around.

  • Blood Pact: Patch 4.2 Warlock Q&A

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    08.15.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. If any of you are readers of Shifting Perspectives, then you may have noticed that two weeks ago, I did a little number asking people to tweet in some questions about balance druids that they would like to have answered. From that, I got a good deal of feedback from Blood Pact readers that they would like to see their own version done for warlocks. Not one to disappoint, I am pleased to present the first article straight from the warlock mailbag (or Twitter feed, as it were). I have to say, you warlocks are certainly a tougher bunch than the druids are when it comes to asking questions; a number of them were tough! I'll be doing my best to answer as many as I can as well as I can, but I won't be able to hit them all. Don't get discouraged, though! If you don't see your answer this week, I've certainly kept all of them in mind for future articles that can address some of the hard-hitting ones I got. Remember as well that you can always ask any question you'd like in the comments, via email, or through Twitter, and I'll do my best to get back to you as quickly as I can! Let's get this party started.

  • Blood Pact: Quashing misleading rumors about warlocks

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    08.01.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Rumor has it, dearest warlocks, that we're pretty much the best pure caster class in this raiding tier. Now I'm not one to give in to such hearsay, but there's a pretty reliable source to support it. That said, I think it is safe to say that this is one thing that we all pretty much knew. Despite that, there are still other whisperings going around the DPS water cooler that need to be put out of their misery. This week, we're going to talk about some of those things that you may have heard in passing by, possibly even from a pretty reliably source, that simply aren't true (or aren't quite as true as those supporting them would have you believe). If you recall, as few weeks ago, I went into a few tips and tricks for warlocks to adhere to during their adventures into the Firelands. Predominantly, the focus there was on staying alive. Those suggestions should always be taken to heart. Staying alive is always the best policy -- but there are times when it's killing things that you're really interested in. Let's get started on those tactics.

  • Blood Pact: How to build a better warlock UI

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    07.25.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. As the most recent raid on the block and still relatively new, Firelands is a rather popular pastime these days. Who can blame players, either? The place is stunning, the encounters are actually fun and engaging, and it's a blast to run. As a DPSer, a part of that joy is being able to deal the highest amount of damage that you possibly can. It also involves keeping yourself alive. More than all that, you want to look good while doing it. This week, we'll explore some of the common addons that you can utilize as a warlock in order to maximize both your damage potential and your survivability. While a number of people work with the standard Blizzard UI, there are just some things that it isn't capable of doing (nor does it look nearly as good doing them). Ready to go all out?

  • Blood Pact: How to trounce through Firelands as a warlock

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    07.18.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Being relatively newish to writing Blood Pact, I'm not sure if I've yet said this. On the off chance that I have, well, then it at least bears repeating: I am a raider. What I do, what I care about, is going into the most relevant content and kicking butt. Not only am I a raider, but I raid as a DPSer. Though my main might be a hybrid-capable for healing or tanking, I have absolutely no interest in either of those concepts. There's a reason that the first four alts that I pushed to level 85 were the pure classes. That being said, even I know that damage cannot be -- is not -- everything. The tired phrase that dead DPS is zero DPS certainly holds true. More so than that, very encounters are even about raw damage potential, anyway. Although Firelands is a lot less gimmick-based than tier 11 raids were, nearly every boss encounter is going to require some non-DPS related task that has a much higher chance of wiping the raid than anything else. Are you prepared to deal with every situation? Let's find out.

  • Blood Pact: How to spend your initial valor points as a warlock

    by 
    Tyler Caraway
    Tyler Caraway
    07.11.2011

    Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... For those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. With new raids come new items that we can toss away our hard-earned money on. Only in this case, that money is valor points. The sad part about this raiding tier is that Blizzard reduced the valor point cap in order to force a stricter limit on how players gear up in this new raiding tier. The devs don't want players getting the new gear too quickly, and so they limit us by creating a stop-gap in our ability to get the non-dropped items. In reality, this isn't all that much of a bother. If Blizzard wants to create these types of gearing gateways, then so be it. The one issue that I do take with it is that this really places that much more importance on luck as a factor of early gearing. Tier gear cannot be gained via drops, except for the pieces which drop from Baradin Hold. Further, it isn't token pieces that drop but the specific items themselves -- oh, yes, and there's PVP gear to contend with on the loot table. Getting the drops from inside Baradin Hold saves you 3,850 valor points, which is four weeks' worth of dungeons. That's a big deal. Regardless, let's talk about the things you should be spending your hard-earned points on.