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Blood Pact: Looking for loot in tier 14 raids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wishes she has a sorcerer's apprentice to run Simulation Craft over and over again with different reforges. Loot lists are about as boring to write as they are to read, but they're helpful for when you're staring down a 20-second timer on the EPGP window and you're not sure what GP-spending button you'd like to hit. After we get done with the tier 14 gear, we should be set to talk about cooler things, like whether capping hit makes sense or particular boss strategies.
Blood Pact: Useful addons for raiding warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill does actually have 100some addon folder things in her Addon Control Panel profile. Laugh all you want; her UI is spacious and pretty to play on. I've been asked several times from either new warlocks or old warlocks who came back to the game about what addons are out there to help a PvE warlock. Recently, it's been through Twitter, which isn't exactly the best place to explain how to get the most out of your UI. Gear is one important preparation for raiding, and I've set you up with most of those considerations. Knowing your class and spec is another, and I promise, I'll get to that. But a good buff to your spellcasting techniques is a well-done user interface, so let's talk about that.
Blood Pact: Reputable gear and more for raiding
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill opens up Shado-Pan dailies and then promptly decides that things like having 4-slot farms for all her alts and leveling her shockadin are more important. What a slacker. Three weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the rewards from having reputation with Pandaria's factions. Three weeks ago, all I had was beta to go on, and on beta all the factions had dailies open to me independently of each other. When Mists of Pandaria went live, we found out that it really should have been named the Golden Gate Lotus faction, complete with "You Shall Not Pass into August Celestial reputation" signs. Then we had a hotfix of the Justice Points and Honor Points gear to bring them in line with each other ilvl-wise, a hotfix that removed reputation requirements for justice point gear, and some more hotfixes opened up some of the valor gear behind faction reputation lines. While your heading was spinning with all the faction-made gear changes going on, I was writing it all down to figure out which pieces I should be questing for.
Blood Pact: Look Dreadful with PvP gear for warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill personally loves this tier of PvP gear since the horns look like her favorite Disney villain, who was also purple and had a tinge of green in her fire. Even the name -- Malevolent -- is so close! I have only 7268 Honorable Kills on my warlock. I scored a few during a cross-realm Sha of Anger raid hosted by a PvP realm, but I've only played casually in random battlegrounds in past tiers. My experience includes memories of an SL/SL demonoloy lock in Isle of Conquest during Wrath of the Lich King and dealing with the, shall we say, "vicious" turnover of the Season 9/10 gear transition. Everything's a bit fuzzy for PvP in between those memories. Recently, I'm sure my DoT dominance of battlegrounds was due more to my company of guildmates, my Dragonwrath, and my heroic Cunning of the Cruel than any skill I had, but I'm not entirely new to flinging my enemies around in fear. But this is the warlock column, not the Warlocks-Who-Only-Raid column. While I reach out to warlocks around the world for warlock-centric PvP advice, how about we peruse the gearing options for dipping our toes into level 90 PvP?
Blood Pact: Enhancing your evil gear at 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is pand-a-ren, every day. All the dailies. All of them. Especially the Golden Lotus ones. What enchants will help me hit hit cap? What will help me reach that haste breakpoint? How can I get more mastery? Should I gem for the socket bonus? What professions are best for warlocks? OK, I might be lazy or otherwise occupied with all the Lorewalkers scrolls to figure out which professions are best before the Elitist Jerks do. But I've put it off long enough and raiding won't wait: it's the consumables, enchants, and profession perks post.
Blood Pact: Zone into Pandaria with 85-90 leveling tips
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill delights in getting off her night-shift work at 3am Eastern -- just in time for Pandaria leveling! There are things I'll do and things I won't do when it comes to playstyle and gear advice. I'm not going to tell you that there's a best spec for leveling. There are many ways to level and Mists of Pandaria is all about doing what you want to do, so following what I do may not be best for you. I'll have you know that I think leveling is far too easy still, so I tend to pick the inefficient or harder ways of doing things on purpose just to keep it interesting. I'm also not going to debate which faction first with people. The gear choices are as varied as the leveling choices, and are meant to be mixed and matched as your drop luck will do for you. I will, however, point out the reputations you'll want to at least reach for reasonable raiding preparations.
Blood Pact: Preparing for level 90 raiding with heroic dungeon gear
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill puts so many bullets into one article, she dreamed her warlock could dual-wield pistols like Lord Godfrey. I make my own list of loot every tier, just so I know what piece to roll on in my guild's raids per raid boss. I make a similar list of possible 5-man heroic loot so I know what to run or what I can look for when a certain dungeon comes up in my random queue. You can stick to a Wowhead search list if that's your thing. But it's my thing to explain what a database can't -- like whether PvP crafted gear is really viable in PvE now or what two-handed weapons you might find for your felguard in Mists.
Blood Pact: The importance of heroic Spine
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill, Savior of Azeroth, revisits some old patch 4.3 raid fight that everyone might have forgotten about and reflects on the insights into DPS it gave her. Heroic Spine of Deathwing, 25man: I hated this fight with a passion. At first I hated it because I could not possibly contribute as my favorite spec affliction and call it even with the rest of my guild's raid. I could pass by on normal, blaming my lack of burst for my low-metered results, but that wasn't going to cut it on heroic. Then I started to hate the fight as I struggled to squeeze out every last drop of damage I had in me, even min-maxing my offspec demonology to progress with. Warlock hell, they called it. What a lockblock! My anger started to extend to things outside of WoW, emotionally and physically, because I was so frustrated with my apparent failure to kick some Destroyer derriere. But the fight really opened up a lot of the finer points of DPSing an encounter. Heroic Spine reminded me that the fight isn't all about the end DPS number when the combat logs stop flowing.
Blood Pact: Dominating Dragon Soul in patch 5.0.4
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill has too much fulling killing mages on the damage meters in raid to stroll into a BG to kill them personally. Don't worry; she'll get to them soon. She's already gotten her Fox Kit from stored up tokens. Silly mages who wait to farm Tol Barad! How many mages did world-first guilds bring to heroic Spine again? Nobody cares. There was no panic of praying to RNG that Metamorphosis would reset before the next lift occurred. There was no cursing that the Fiery Grip held me for 0.1s past my Will of Unbinding stacks. There was no frenetic button mashing of three different macros to make sure that all my trinkets and cooldowns went off, only to realize I had the wrong pet out. There was just myself and my four Chaos Bolts blowing up the meters for damage done on Burning Tendons. You can talk about Power of the Aspects' rise to 35% all you want, but I doubt it was the extra 5% that flipped me from bottom-middle to the #1 spot overnight.
Blood Pact: Playing an 85 warlock with MoP mechanics
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill recovers from a near-death experience on beta in Vortex Pinnacle involving Falling Meteor. Tomorrow, we can summon a wrathguard or an observer or a shivarra. Tomorrow, we can have AoE Drain Life. Tomorrow, we can ride felsteeds on water. Tomorrow, we can enter Metamorphosis whenever we wish. Tomorrow, players everywhere will be begging the superior class for summons. (I take bribes). I've got your back with a summary of what to do as an 85 warlock with Mists of Pandaria mechanics in the final month of Cataclysm. Later, I'll flesh out the differences between levels 85 and 90. We'll visit tier 6 talents again, look at consumables and enchants, and get your gear ready for tier 14 raiding. But for now, you just need to survive patch 5.0.4.
Blood Pact: Guide to grimoires and demons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks about making an orc warlock just so she can put on a black robe transmog -- including pointed black hat -- and stand on top of Karazhan, waving her arms, while yelling "FLY, MY PRETTIES! FLY!" into Ventrilo. Some time ago, I said minions were things we warlocks can't live without. I apologize. I was too enamored with the Supremacy demons to see that yes, you can live with demons just fine as a warlock in Mists of Pandaria. This week, we'll visit all the demons. I do mean all the demons; I'm going to review even the most basic of pet mechanics all the way to Command Demon and the Grimoire talents. If you missed the minor glyphs for pets or the new voice emotes for the Supremacy pets, you should check those out.
Blood Pact: Core summary for warlocks in patch 5.0
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill binged on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series while trying to gather faction loot when the beta's LFR was out of service. She's still in Season 2, and still has more loot to collect. I didn't realize my paladin's transmog from last week would be so popular. For those who are still wondering, here are the items on Wowhead, with a sword and that fel green, two-handed axe for extras. Moving on, it's time to break out the 101 skills again. Warlocks have been reworked in several ways, though the core still remains familiar. In the coming weeks, I will go over the changes to and general likings of all warlocks, everything you need to know about our pets, and a quick rundown of how each spec should play out. As we get closer to the release of raids, I'll write up the item enhancements like consumables, enchants, and gems, as well as collecting all the faction and dungeon gear in one spot for readers. This week, let's get changes that affect every warlock out of the way.
Blood Pact: Transmog your Felguard's weapons and other minor glyphs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill gets excited for old content's two-handed melee weapons. Time to go soloing! The header picture is actually a transmog outfit I've done up in MogIt for my paladin. I had a shield version for her protection off spec, but linking it on Twitter led me to this badass fel-green two-handed axe, which I just had to go get. Then it hit me: I probably did the quest line on my warlock too long ago for Loremaster and vendored said axe for gold because transmogrification wasn't even in the cards yet. WTB a retroactive quest reward vendor, please! If your warlock hasn't done the Cipher of Damnation quest line, for fel's sake go do it and grab the Torn-Heart Axe of Battle. This comment guides you through the whole thing. It's a long quest line that might take you up to an hour depending on how much you AFK through auto-flying, but the axe is going to be worth it in Mists of Pandaria.
Blood Pact: When datamining is not what it seems
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill admires the new season 12 PvP gear for Mists and hopes she can save enough to get that purple set. I admit it: I looked at the latest MMO-Champion datamining and rolled my eyes at all the lower numbers on affliction spells. A sigh later and some words about why fix destruction when you can just nerf the other specs. That seems to be standard warlock balance operating procedure half the time, right? Wrong. Affliction mechanics actually changed a little bit, which required some number shuffling. I don't know if you saw that blue post about destruction embers, so we'll go over that and other small changes, too.
Blood Pact: Looking ahead at the 5.0 warlock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill procrastinates writing with dungeon soloing as she researches for two-handed transmogrification. The pre-expansion patch is coming for the PTR, and while I'll be stuck with the MoP beta client, we all still need a post about what's changing for warlocks. There's still a strong sense of familiarity when playing in Mists of Pandaria, but things have definitely changed. It'll be nice to know what to look out for when the pre-expansion patch goes live. I haven't come close to talking about everything yet, so here's a chance to see where I'm going or to suggest your own ideas.
Blood Pact: Leveling is much better in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill delayed downloading the new beta build in favor of getting her witch doctor to 60. Priorities! With the overhaul to the warlock class coming in Mists of Pandaria, guildmates and friends have been wondering whether to revive old warlocks or not. Those without warlocks on their character screens have been asking the age-old question: Should I level one now or wait until the expansion hits? Unless you're particularly masochistic about your leveling, my advice is to wait. Here's why.
Blood Pact: Do a double take in your spellbook
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill decides that she actually might miss Searing Pain in Mists of Pandaria. All three specs of the warlock class have been reworked -- and yet there are still familiar things lying around. We can still Fear and Banish and Enslave Demon. We still have Unending Breath. We still sacrifice our health to get mana back or to dump threat. We still have pets and guardians to summon. But while everyone's still focused on the new things -- the resource changes or the new abilities -- some familiar things are different. Same name, even same icon as before, but they're actually a little different. Some are obvious and important, and some you won't notice or care about. All the same, I think you should know a few of the smaller changes to our class abilities.
Blood Pact: Share the love of dead mobs with MoP AoE
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill enjoys exploding things, whether by smashing mobs to gore splats as a Diablo III barbarian or by chaining together multiple Seed explosions. A bugged Nightfall won't stop me from enjoying the new Seed of Corruption. I am completely willing to channel Drain Soul on full-health trash just so I can get a 'burned Seed and 'burned Curse combo off on the next pack. Chaining Seeds together is too much fun to pass up. With this new beta build, Mannoroth's Fury received a little nerf, and I thought about all the new AoE abilities for warlocks. Every spec has multiple AoE options now, both small-scale and large-scale. Even better, no spec feels like a mindless spamming anymore. Even affliction's constant casting of Seed requires a little setup.
Blood Pact: The problems haunting affliction
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks that the Murphy's Law of Blood Pact is that the blues will always post when she's away from the internet for a few days. At least there's an IRL PvP tournament to save her sanity. Mists of Pandaria beta has been a bit of an interesting ride for affliction, I think. With demonology and destruction getting almost totally reworked, affliction supposedly remained mostly the same. The only thing that was supposed to change was no more Shadow Bolt. But we got a nerf across the class to our self-healing, Soul Shards were more integrated into the only spec that retained them, and our DoTs finally got some buffs in their damage while Haunt got nerfed in its debuff power. Haunt isn't meant to be 100%? That changes everything for us aff 'locks. But is this a good change?
Blood Pact: Warlock tanks are void where prohibited
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill was a little disappointed by her warlock tanking experiment. So she promptly installed Diablo III on her new computer and rolled a witch doctor for all the fun zombie times. When we all first heard of the demonology attributes like Glyph of Demon Hunting and Metamorphosis: Nether Plating, we all thought the same evil thought: Warlock tanks are finally happening. We got all excited -- and then the CMs broke our cold, black hearts with news that demonology warlocks aren't meant to really tank. Those attributes, like Demonic Leap, were just for fun. The warlock tank isn't supposed to be an option, but I still wanted to try it out. When stars aligned for beta bugs, computer problems, and healer availability, I stepped into Stormstout Brewery with only Matt Low to help me test things out.
