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Know Your Lore: Famous Warlocks
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Yesterday, we covered the warlock as a class, discussing their motivations and history. Today, we're going to talk about specific warlocks. Now, one warlock we're not going to talk about is Gul'dan, not because he doesn't deserve it, but because we've covered the guy. We have covered the heck out of Gul'dan. It's not that he didn't deserve it. He did. But it's been done. Likewise, other important warlocks, like Archimonde the Defiler, have been covered as well. However, there are still a great many warlocks to discuss, from the six masters of the Council of the Black Harvest to lords of the Shadow Council, and its subsidiaries such as the Argus Wake, the Burning Blade, the Cult of the Dark Strand and others. When talking of the individual warlock, we must remember the most important and powerful living warlock, Kil'jaeden the Deceiver. With the death of Archimonde and the absence of Sargeras (at least as far as we can tell) Kil'jaeden is the de factor commander of the entire Burning Legion, and therefore, in terms of raw power and knowledge first among warlocks. This does not mean he rules warlocks as some sort of leader, as Darion Mograine does for death knights, for warlocks have no ruler. Indeed, almost every living warlock would love to wrest from Kil'jaeden his over 25,000 years of experience and knowledge -- if it weren't for the fact that they would have to face him in order to make the attempt.
Know Your Lore: The Lore of the Warlock
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. The warlock may be one of the most interesting classes in terms of its lore in the whole World of Warcraft - warlocks come from many roots, as many different people throughout history have succumbed to the lure of absolute power offered by the demonic beings of the Twisting Nether. In terms of chronological history, the warlock dates back to the time before the fall of Sargeras, when the corrupting Nathrezim would offer demonic secrets to mortals and use them to help unmake their own worlds. Sargeras defeated the Nathrezim (today known as Dreadlords) but their all-consuming evil and corruption bothered him greatly. In a way, they successfully corrupted a Titan, for it was in contemplating what their existence meant for the cosmos that Sargeras fell, becoming the Dark Titan who would come to create the Burning Legion. The first beings to call themselves warlocks, as far as we know, are the eredar. Once corrupted by Sargeras, the arcane mages of their race abandoned their study of the mystical forces of creation, favoring the destructive power of the Twisting Nether and the demons that served the Dark Titan. As great as they were as mages, the newly fallen eredar became warlocks of astonishing power. The eredar warlock tradition would become the most widespread - warlocks from the satyrs to the orcs owe their warlocks to those of the Legion. But make no mistake - it is impossible to assume that the warlock you may happen to be dealing with is beholden to the Legion. Many, if not most, serve no other master than themselves.
Weekly news roundup with Panser of TradeChat
Panser of TradeChat fame is back once more with the WoW Insider weekly news recap, and this week is all excitement as she speculates about the upcoming Siege of Orgrimmar raid complete with BoA heirloom drops from Garrosh and dreams of a level cap set to three digits. These weeks topics are heavily focused on patch 5.4 and include: Pet collection cap raised to 1000 Warlock class mounts get green fire Garrosh drops level 90-100 heirlooms Hearthstone state of the beta Discussion topic: Will you be playing Hearthstone? If you like the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave comments, and tune in next week for a new episode!
Warlock 'green fire' quest delayed until Patch 5.2
If you're a warlock and you've been eagerly anticipating Patch 5.1 and the upcoming quest to gain green fire effects to your spells, you're going to have to wait a bit longer.Lead Designer Dave Kosak tweeted today that the quest has been bumped to patch 5.2. So, sorry if you're a warlock player waiting for this, but apparently the current plan is 'to do it all in patch 5.2' rather than delay it over several patches. So the bad news is no green fire today, but the good news is, when patch 5.2 drops you'll get it all in one gulp. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Ghostcrawler discusses class design in Mists
You're going to want to read this post from the forums discussing the rogue class and the design process for classes in general. It is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting posts Ghostcrawler has made on the forums. There's a lot to discuss, so let's break down some bullet points before reproducing the whole thing. "Rogues are in a good place in Cataclysm in both PvE and PvP. We don't see a lot of huge, glaring problems that need to be fixed." The dev team understands that sometimes people want change simply to freshen up their playstyle, but the danger there is alienating players. Both the Cataclysm redesign of paladins and the Mists redesign of warlocks are offered as changes the dev team felt were necessary but that absolutely alienated some players. Rogues haven't seen a lot of change in part because the rogue has it pretty good and is potentially the best-designed class with the best resource system, strong class abilities and an easy-to-understand role in PvE and PvP. Even fixing broken mechanics risks turning off players because they have to relearn the class. We'll take a look at the whole post and then discuss it.
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!
Demonic Gateway teleports party members without a Dial-Home Device
Demonic Gateway is one of the many new abilities for warlocks in Mists of Pandaria. With the beta level cap rising to level 88, making Demonic Gateway learnable, we can now see how fantastic the portals are. This pair of fel stargates works with party members. The first portal (purple) sits where you are standing, and the other end (green) is directed to anywhere with a small target circle. Demonic Gateway has both a minimum range of 20 yards and a maximum range of 70 yards. Once you've selected a spot to spawn the portal, the finishing cast animation looks like Glyph of Shadow Bolt plus Glyph of Verdant Spheres. Around each portal in its respective green or purple color will be up to five fiery orbs. These represent the number of charges the Gateway currently has, and it recharges one every 15 seconds that it's not being used, starting at zero charges on the summon. To travel, simply walk through the opening and fly to the other side in a fel green or purple ball. 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!
Warlock green fire spells spotted in MoP beta files
Green fire is coming, again! Maybe. Side effects of speculation may vary. Not only has the Codex shown up in recent datamining, but curiously also warlock spells with green fire as icons. Conflagrate, Fel Hellfire, Rain of Chaos, and Fel Immolate all have minimal descriptions and could very well be just creature or boss spells. But Fel Incinerate gives me hope, for it has not only the range and cast time, but the base mana that the real warlock Incinerate does. What boss would need to know the base mana cost, hmm? After the original flurry of excitement, Wryxian noted in the subsequent denial of green fire implementation that the devs wanted green fire "to be an epic accomplishment" for players. With the beta appearance of The Legacy of the Masters (Part 1), players are speculating among other things about a Quel'Delar-like quest line again. In the end, nothing might happen and green fire will stay unfulfilled on our warlock wish lists. But I for one haven't been so excited since I got my Dreadsteed the old way. 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!
Complexity of systems and player retention
If you don't read Cynwise's Warcraft Journal, you probably should. Cyn's been doing an excellent series of posts about warlocks in Cataclysm that are interesting and thought-provoking -- even if, like me, you're not a warlock and don't really know much about the class. For me, one of the most striking tidbits was that rogues are the second-to-least-played class overall, but the second-most-played class in high-end PvP, implying that people only play rogues to PvP. There's a lot of interesting data in there about class representation, role representation, and who is playing what and at what levels. The post that really grabbed my attention was this one about warlock complexity in Cataclysm because it highlights an extreme form of something we've talked about before, the design philosophy that argues for increased complexity in a character's suite of abilities. In its simplest form, it can be summed up as the hitting buttons is fun argument, although at the extreme Cyn describes for warlocks, it becomes a game of if X, then Y that resembles programming your first computer in Basic. If you remember making a chain of dirty words scroll on a loop up the screen, congratulations on being old with me. Cyn's comparison of the destruction rotation in Wrath and Cataclysm shows a rotation with seven elements mushroom out to one with 14 elements to remember and consider. That if X, then Y flowchart just got as complex as a subway map. In my experience, all DPS rotations in general have a little bit of this kind of gameplay nowadays. The difficulty is in hitting the sweet spot where the rotation is designed so that random elements or procs serve to liven up an otherwise predictable set of abilities (providing the fun in the hitting buttons scenario) without making a rotation so complex you need six to seven addons to help you plot it out.
Warlocks may cast green fire spells in MoP
Warlocks, think of the one thing you most want in the World of Warcraft. If you answered "the total destruction and removal of the mage class, and green fire," you're in luck -- there's a good chance that half of that statement will come true in Mists of Pandaria! Luckily for Christian Belt, it's the latter. According to EU CM Wryxian, Blizzard developers are looking into hopefully adding a quest line that will allow warlocks to use green fire in Mists of Pandaria. Wryxian Green "fel" fire for warlocks, like they've been asking for since... forever? It is our hope to introduce a quest which will allow warlocks to unlock the use of green fire. :) source Remember that the key word here is "hope." Even the slightest possibility of green fire in MoP should have most warlocks salivating. This is especially true since Chaos Bolt, which is one of only two green fire spells currently in the game, has been removed from MoP talent calculators. Given that green fire has been one of the most requested features of the class for years and that MoP is an expansion bringing to us loads of vanity choices in glyphs and challenge mode sets, this seems an obvious way to go.
Warlocks getting male and female versions of all demons
Zarhym just let out a pretty cool piece of information for warlock players: Some time in the future, warlocks will be getting the choice between male and female versions of all of their summonable demons.
Choose My Adventure: One of each
Choose the adventures of the WoW.com staff as we level our characters in <It came from the Blog> on US Zangarmarsh-H. We now have one of each kind of warlock. Selfloathius will be affliction, Sahko will study demonology and Yakkowakko will be all about destruction. Mr. Hobbs will have advice for our young 'locks on Wednesday. In the meantime, here is our schedule for the week: Christian Belt, as Selfloathius, blood elf warlock: Monday, 11:30 p.m. EDT Anne Stickney as Annephora, the troll warrior, will be on Tuesday at 1 a.m. EDT (which is Monday at 11 p.m. Zangarmarsh time) Michael Sacco as Sahko, the orc warlock: Wednesday, 7 p.m. EDT Elizabeth Harper as Faience, the troll shaman, and Robin Torres as Robinemia, the undead mage: Wednesday, 11 p.m. EDT Amy Schley as Patent, the troll rogue: Thursday, 10 p.m. EDT Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the blood elf paladin: Friday, 8 p.m. EDT Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, the troll mage, Michael Gray as Grayfields, the tauren hunter, Adam Holisky as Adammentat, the tauren druid, and Gregg Reece as Yakkowakko, the orc warlock, will be making appearances as they can The poll with methods for Selfloathius's demise will be on Friday, so you still have time to suggest more options in the comments and vote up your favorites. %Gallery-89597% If you want to join in on the fun of Choose My Adventure, please join us on US Zangarmarsh-H in <It came from the Blog>. Ask Robiness, Robinemia or any member online for an invite. Guild ranks of Lurker or above have the ability to invite. You are all welcome as long as you play by our simple rules, which can be summed up with "Don't be a Funsucker!" Also, please see the guild FAQ for the most common questions.
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.
Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site
Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We've translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut. Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We'll post the official English notes when they're posted as well. Update! Warbringer change clarified (again). Ghostcrawler chimed in about it. Dungeons and Raids Icecrown Citadel The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?) Halls of Stone Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he'll run faster during the escort event. Forge of Souls Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often. Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.
Blood Sport: Beginner's guide to arena, part III
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column. Listening Music: Modeselektor's Tetrispack. Allison Robert offered a challenge to our most beloved columnist last week. Ms. Roberts has chosen a clever and palatable piece with Richard Shindell's On-A-Sea-Of-Fleur-De-Lis. And now we come to my retaliation. My wife recommended our musical selection today -- it just happened to be on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. How fitting. We love this song, albeit mostly for the intro. Upon your first listen, if you correctly predict the timing and type of shift in the first thirty seconds, serious e-props to you. To wit, Robert: pan flute > no pan flute. Your move. Last Week: part two of our beginner's arena guide. We featured the cute ukulele kid who pretty much controls the internet right now. After that, we discussed frequently asked questions from new arena players. We talked about how to spec and what team composition to choose, with two different types of answers (easy and long). Today, we'll be talking some very basic class strategy. If you know your class inside and out, you'll know what I'm going to say when it comes to your class and arena. You can still learn about other classes here. I've written over 2500 words about individual class perspective inside arenas, that's a lot. Full article after the break.
Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part III
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column. We've come to a fork in our musical journey, where I'm going to start branching into genres and/or artists you might not have heard of (if you have, great, feel free to tell me what a giant douche I am for underestimating you). Today we'll be listening to one of my all-time favorite indie-folk tracks, Cold Cold Water, by Mirah. The Star Wars tribute video is a nice touch, if you're into that kind of thing (I am). Last time, we went over hunters, mages, and paladins. This week, we're going to round out the classes with the exception of rogues and warriors (they're not getting any high-impact PvP changes at all). We'll also talk about some cool glyphs and enchanting changes. Next week, we'll start doing stuff other than patch notes. I'd like us to throw around more opinion and less analysis. Read on to find out what's up in arena for priests, shamans, warlocks, enchanting and inscription in Patch 3.3!
World of Warcraft Patch 3.2 Warlock Guide
WoW.com has covered patch 3.2 extensively. Everything from the surprising changes to flying mounts, to the latest and greatest loot, and all the changes in between. In our patch 3.2 class, raiding, and PvP guides we take a look at exactly what changes and how the changes will affect your playing. With patch 3.2 here, it looks like Warlocks can officially start celebrating. It seems like its been far too long since we've seen a patch which has more pros than cons in it. Of course, it's also true that Warlocks aren't going to see quite as many changes as most other classes will. Not even enough to warrant any real changes in the popular talent builds. However, among the changes we are getting are several which can only be described as buffs, and for that we can be thankful. Since we do have so few changes which really affect us in a meaningful way, we may as well go over them one by one.
Blood Pact: How to be a professional Warlock
Blood Pact is a weekly column here at WoW Insider, where Nick Whelan delves into the darkest corner of the Slaughtered Lamb Inn, to take a peek at Warlocks and what they do. I've been thinking for awhile now that I'd like to approach Blood Pact a bit differently. Thus far the bulk of my posts have focused on playing a Warlock at level 80. Granted, a casual Warlock at 80, but still, my aim has been towards max level players. Aside from the obvious problem that raises of excluding lower level 'locks, this approach pointlessly limits my available subject matter. And that's just plain silly. So, since I still haven't wriggled my way into a new raid group, I think this is a good opportunity to delve into some of the topics I've been ignoring, with the goal of writing a more balanced column in the future.While pondering what specifically I should post this week, I perused the writings of some of my fellow class columnists, and discovered that most of them had, at some point, explored their class' profession choices. A topic which I then discovered had never been broached by Blood Pact. But then, since the topic of the post is rather evident in the title of the post, I guess there's no point in belaboring its introduction. I'll start with the secondary professions, move on to the gathering professions, and finish up with the production professions.
QuickArmory's Stats tool lets you browse and inspect popular talent builds
We've been covering quite a few different ways to see what players are up to in terms of talents after dual specs have been released (both 3D Armory and TalentChic have good information if you're looking for it), and here's another: Erorus at QuickArmory sent us some info on how to pull some talent demographics out of his site as well. He's created a Talent stats page that needs a little explanation, but is actually full of great info on what kinds of builds players are choosing. First, choose a class at the top, and then you'll be taken to a screen where you can see, in percentage points, the given percentage of players of that class who took those points on the tree. In other words, if you look at the Mage page, 62% (as of this writing) of Mages surveyed by the application took at least one point in Inceneration (and 61% took all the points), but only 1% of Mages put any points in Blazing Speed (probably because it sucks -- oh snap!). You can also see the percentage points by spec (by clicking the tabs at the top) and even some general distribution statistics on how people chose to spec within the dual spec system. And the main page for each class includes some percentages on glyph choices as well.But it gets wilder -- you can even compare populations by clicking on the talents, so you can look at, for example, all the Warlocks who specced Felguard (they're using Glyph of Felguard, duh), or all of the Hunters who specced both Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot.Very impressive. Of course, keep in mind the population here: these are only level 80 characters already in the QuickArmory system (about 12k as of this writing), so it's far from a representative sample of the entire WoW population. But then again, they're also self-selecting -- people who have put themselves into QuickArmory are likely to be more on top of good talent and glyph choices anyway. At any rate, even with the small selection, there are lots of fascinating ways to look at this talent data.
Phat Loot Phriday: Soulscribe
Hey hey, now we're talking. Here's our first Ulduar item, and it is an excellent caster dagger.Name: Soulscribe (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic Unique Main-hand DaggerDamage/Speed: 88-283 / 1.80 (103.3 DPS)Attributes: +54 Stamina, +49 Intellect. These stats and the name point to Warlocks as the main users of this dagger, but really, given the rest of the stats, almost any caster could get some good use out of this thing. The main thing it's missing is Spirit, so if you count on that, you might want to look elsewhere, but this is Ulduar gear: chances are it's an upgrade no matter who you are. %Gallery-33600%
