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Blood Pact: Soul Shards, talent specs and the 4.0.1 warlock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. Today, Zach Yonzon fills in while the new warlock columnist dusts his robes off after his trip from the Twisting Nether. A new warlock columnist? Why, yes -- holding the warlock columnist position here at WoW Insider is akin to holding the Defense of the Dark Arts teacher position at Hogwarts, you know. Let's get this one out of the way: The game isn't balanced for level 80. You can't cry about being broken or your spec not being viable or your DPS not being up to par because, right now, everything is in flux. The new mechanics are balanced for level 85 and some values in the game aren't properly scaled for this level, so none of the numbers you see will be truly representative of how it's going to be a couple of months down the line. You won't even get a feel of how important mastery is because there just isn't the proper gear to support it. Unless you're hell bent on being on top of the meters at a time when it's largely meaningless, you're better off using this period to get a feel for how the class plays.
Blood Pact: Deep in the third tree
Staring at you from the darkest corner of the dank tavern is a shadowy figure, garbed in deep purples with scarlet trim. As you step closer, you realize that before you stands the dreaded Blood Pact. Behind it, drowning in his own cliches, sits Nick Whelan. For my second foray into non-Affliction specs, I decided it was time to go deep Destruction with 7 / 7 / 57. There aren't a lot of people who champion this spec, or any spec that includes Chaos Bolt really. But I tried the more popular 0 / 31 / 40 earlier in the week and found it far too similar to the spec I covered last week to justify posting about it so soon. So I did some research into what deep Destruction Warlocks are doing these days, and this is what I came up with. I was somewhat surprised that this spec decides to put points in Affliction rather than spend the full 13 points in Demonology required to get Demonic Aegis, but part of the experiment is that I don't tweak the specs in any way that might affect DPS. Still, I'm tempted to switch some points into Demonic Aegis over the weekend to see if there's any improvement -- but I digress. Lets get down to business.
Blood Pact: Educating myself on fel / emberstorm
The editors of WoW Insider have spoken the dark words, and another edition of Blood Pact has appeared to wreak havoc on the readership. This week, the first installment of Operation: Respec. And yes, columnist Nick Whelan is well aware that other classes have it way worse when dealing with respec costs. Please don't hate him.I'd like to begin a new project for Blood Pact, which should prove both entertaining to play with, and interesting to write about, if this week is any indication. In an attempt to expand my perspective on the Warlock class -- thus expanding the perspective of this column -- I will test out a variety of different 'cookie cutter' specs, and detail my experiences playing with them. I've ever-so-inventively dubbed this project 'Operation: Respec.'These won't be perfect tests of course. My contract with WoW Insider doesn't allow me to bill them my expenses, in or out of game. So any money spent on these tests will come straight out of my own digital pocket. I say this not to complain, but rather to explain why I won't be buying new gems, enchants, and gear for every test. Fortunately the stat requirements of the different Warlock specs are relatively similar. Mostly it's just crit rating and haste rating that get switched around, and for those I can at least switch between Spellstone and Firestone, as well as by using different statfood. Glyphs, unfortunately for my bankroll, have become rather essential to different play styles, so I will of course be switching between those within reason.
