warlock-pets
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Should you be playing a warlock?
We've said before that there's a WoW class for every type of player and if you find yourself a bit drawn to the darker side of WoW, perhaps warlock is the one for you. Warlocks have a unique playstyle in the game: they're a bit like mages, in that they're cloth-wearing casters, and a bit like hunters, in that they rely on pets. And yet they don't play very much like either class, relying on DoT (damage over time) spells and channeled spells to do damage and restore their own health and mana. So is it time to go over to the dark side and level a warlock? Let's look at what the class has to offer. Just what is a warlock? As mages are master of the arcane, warlocks are masters of the dark arts, focusing on shadow and fire spells. They summon demonic minions, place curses on their enemies, and drain health from their opponents, and can even send the most fearsome of warriors running in terror. Their abilities are powered not only by their mana pool, but will sometimes cost health, which warlocks can drain from their foes as they die. They do their damage at range, using curses, banes, DoTs, drains, AoEs, and direct damage spells. Warlocks also offer a good amount of utility to a group with conjured Healthstones (which restore health on use) and Soulstones (which can bring a dead player to life) as well as their curses (which cause a variety of negative effects on a monster).
Mists of Pandaria beta: New warlock pets get their voice emotes
The level 75 talent option Grimoire of Supremacy grants the warlock more powerful minions, and now those minions have their own voice emotes for their actions. Every demon gets a few options for summoning, attacks, spellcasts if the demon casts, dismissing the demon, and a joke for idling or clicking on them. Wowhead compiled all the voice emotes into one video and have transcribed them all. Each demon's general personality is reflected through the voice emotes. We have the combustive fel imp, the slow but steady voidlord, the ravenous observer, the self-serving shivarra, and the brutal but loyal wrathguard. Fel imp: (spellcast) Yeah, it's fighting time! It's burning time! Let's heat things up! Voidlord: (dismiss) When I consume your world, my armies will save you for last. Observer: (joke) Did you see that, hehehe? Uh Uh Uh Uh. I see what you did there. Shivarra: (summon) How dare you summon me? I am not some trifling toy for you to call upon as you please. Wrathguard: (attack) By your orders! I live to be commanded. Since warlock pets are moving from a spec-based choice to a situational decision, master and minion personality compatibility means more than ever! 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: Do warlock pets need to be redesigned?
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. We hear the talk all the time about how the Blizzard development team sits around in their comfy chairs all day long, puffing on cigars, sippin' G&Ts and generally discussing the finer points of how they can further prove that mages just don't have a place in this game and, really, it was a mistake to add them in from the beginning. I mean, honestly, wouldn't have just been easier to have an NPC to port players around the major cities? There are already drink vendors, so I'm not sure what other purpose mages serve. Aside from all that, the developers also toss around ideals, thoughts, and generalized feedback on the game. This is something that I have always been a huge fan of. While GC (Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, lead systems designer) may have his illustrious Watercooler Blog, I have Blood Pact. So stuff it, spectral crustacean -- I'm gonna talk about warlock pets, and you can just stand there, leaning, drinking your "water." I get an awesome chair, sweet computer, and wicked coffee on my gig. Top that! Oh yeah, about those pets ...
Warlocks find their pets renamed in patch 4.0.1 [Updated]
This is actually kind of sweet, especially for a class that spends the larger portion of its time channeling dark magic and cursing everything in its path. When patch 4.0.1 hit, warlocks suddenly found themselves toting new and unexpected minions around. No, new pet skins didn't go live, and Blizzard didn't program any new demons into the game, but many of warlocks' trusted minions are sporting different names. For example, my own baby warlock has had an imp named Pagfip who's accompanied him since his earliest days in the Tirisfal countryside, but now I've got ... Garloz? That can't be right. Most warlocks have had at least one demon's name changed. Many have lost demons they've had since classic WoW and -- to put it mildly -- they're not happy about it. Even non-warlocks have chimed in: "Zilnip, our GM's imp, is an important member of our family and we'd like him back, please." If you're not familiar with minion names, the usual deal is they're randomly generated upon creation (whether of the minion or the warlock toon itself, I'm not sure) and remain the same thereafter; lorewise, it's assumed that you're summoning and resummoning the exact same demon from the Twisting Nether. If you really wanted to play with this, you could run with the story that your real felguard's on vacation or whatever, but this seems to be a bug that most warlocks would just as soon have fixed as quickly as possible. That's assuming it's fixable at all, and I'm a little worried that it's not; the only other recourse would be petitioning a GM to have the names changed individually. Notes Cornpuff of Uther, "It's like someone came into my house in the middle of the night and swapped all of my children with evil clones." Thanks to Scott and Zhiva for writing in! Update: Bornakk and Bashiok hit the forums to provide an update on this issue. Warlocks, you'll be getting your original pets back during the next maintenance period! This is it! Patch 4.0.1 begins the slide into December's upcoming expansion. It's a whole new game from here on out. Get oriented with our roundup of everything there is to know about patch 4.0.1 and how it changes the game until the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
Status update on current patch 4.0.1 issues
Vrakthris (Blizzard customer service representative) posted a list of major issues people are coming across in patch 4.0.1, along with updates and expected timetables on when some of them will be resolved. If you're having issues with any of the following topics, read on to find out what is currently being done about the situation. Master riding Missing enchantments Insect Swarm Guild issues with authenticator Warlock pets renamed Missing characters Item durability standardization Removed from battleground
The Art of War(craft): Introductory guide to fighting warlocks
Warlocks are a pesky bunch. Warlocks. Well, this should be interesting. Perhaps no class has suffered such an ignominious fall from grace in PvP reputation as that of the warlock. Once a fearsome -- quite literally, in this case -- force to be reckoned with, the class has suffered a few bumps in the road that has led it to become less of a threat on the battlefield. Mostly, this has something to do with the ridiculous burst of the low resilience Season 5, which resulted in warlocks getting blown up in the opening ten seconds of a match, the rise of death knights, who are kind of like warlocks in plate armor, and the homogenization of caster gear, which meant far less Stamina for warlocks than they were used to prior to Wrath. As resilience built up in Wrath of the Lich King and burst decidedly went down, warlocks have once again taken a return trip to power. Well, at least respectability. While with the balancing of crowd control, players no longer cry about how OP warlocks are, they still have a powerful arsenal at their disposal. They've also never been more fun to fight. With the distinctiveness introduced in Wrath, warlocks are now (a little) more than just getting your butt feared into oblivion. After the jump, we'll take a look at the common tools you should expect from every warlock and how to counter them.
[Updated] Blood Pact: They're not pets, they're minions
The week has rolled around, the planets have aligned, and it's time again for Blood Pact! Here to keep you up to date with all the unspeakable horrors perpetrated by Warlocks. Presiding over this week's dark ritual is Nick Deathcaller -- I mean Whelan. I was perusing the Blood Pact archives this week, trying to think of a topic which would be a little less dry than my last topic, and I noticed that an in-depth look at a Warlock's minions is rather over-due!I've long been of the opinion that Warlock minions are far more similar to a Warrior's stances than they are to a Hunter's pets. Hunter pets are very much a separate entity from the hunter them self. They have their own talent trees, different abilities they can train, and regardless of spec can account for 25% or more of the Hunter's total DPS in any given encounter -- closer to 50% if the Hunter is speced beast mastery! Warlock minions, on the other hand, have no customisability whatsoever, save the various talents which can be used to improve them. Often times a minion is used for no other reason than for the buff it provides -- or in the case of affliction Warlocks -- as a mana battery for Dark Pact.
Warlock pets to get some love
Just in time for the Love is in the Air event, Eyonix made a short note on the forums to say that some love is coming the way of Warlock pets. However, he makes no promises as to the timetable for this -- probably to defuse any high hopes that it will make it in time for Patch 3.1 (remember the Hunter no more ammo fiasco?). Although Warlock pets have been improved somewhat, their contribution to Affliction and Destruction DPS is marginal, at best. While these demons may not be buffed to the level of Hunter pets, their contribution to DPS and utility needs a little more tweaking, and the increased HP change in Patch 3.0.8 and modest DPS increase is a start. Eyonix gives absolutely no details about what improvements are on the table, but many Warlocks have had great input on the forums. We'll have to stay tuned.
Doomguard & Infernal getting buffed
Yesterday, a player posted on the official WoW forum asking about the current state of the Doomguard and Infernal Warlock pets. It's a hassle to learn how to summon these demons, requiring the completion of multiple quests for each, and summoning them requires reagents, including the death of one of your party members (for the Doomguard at least). With all these requirements, one would think the pets would be worthwhile, but their cost and unpredictability (they have to be continually enslaved, which is on diminishing returns and may break at any time) make them worse than the normal Warlock pets.Eyonix answers the original poster, saying that the devs are concerned about these pets and will buff them sometime in the future. That "future" may be the next expansion, but this is a better answer than the class has received on the subject in a long time. To the best of my knowledge, previous answers were something along the line of "These spells may have situational uses and will not be changed from that role". Now there is once again hope that these cool and iconic (watch the original WoW cinematic, if you don't recall) Warlock pets will become more than simple novelties.
Forum Post of the Day: Scaling warlock pets
Amongst all the candy corn on the warlock forums a post arose today dealing with a topic close to every lock's heart, despite how cold and twisted they might be inside. We're talking about pet scaling here, or rather the lack thereof. Pets are far too squishy at higher levels, locks say, and the chief cause of this is the fact that they simply don't scale properly as a lock's gear improves. This is largely a PvP concern, although I would love to be able to bring my Felguard into a raid instance and have him last more than 3.5 seconds. Every piece of armor my lock adds to her kit should buff her pet as well as her own locky self, it only makes sense. Well, that's the way it should be, but it's not working properly, and the locks are looking for some love. And before you go there, no this isn't a call for a buff, this is an example of a bug that needs to be addressed, and has nothing to do with whether or not locks are overpowered.The good news is that the devs are interested in hearing what you locks have to say on this issue. This is one case where they are asking for feedback and suggestions on how to improve the situation. Of course we're talking about constructive feedback, so Neth asks that you keep the complaining to a minimum if you want to have your voice heard.
Around Azeroth: The solution to warlock pet problems...
Reader George sends in this buggy screenshot that, perhaps, is a reasonable way to solve the problems with warlock and hunter pets when getting on flying mounts. Oh, sure -- Blizzard's made a change that will cause pets to be dismissed when you mount up, but, really, having them ride along with you, perhaps in a little basket or side-car of some sort, is much more entertaining.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
