I very quickly learned that doing Warsong Gulch in the 20-29 bracket as an untwinked caster would be hellish. My life was naught but twinked melee 2 and/or 3-shotting my Warlocky self. Luckily, I was an Affliction Warlock. That meant that to kill people, I didn't need to be able to survive any sort of onslaught. Tabbing Corruption and Curse of Agony (and mashing Shadow Bolt when Nightfall procced) worked just fine. Along with the occasional Curse of Exhaustion on a flag carrier or their entourage, of course. Yes, I picked up Curse of Exhaustion in my talent spec, because I knew you people would keep telling me to PvP while I level and everyone told me it was a must while PvPing. I can see why. The few times I managed to take out an amazingly twinked melee was when I was able to kite them with DoTs and Exhaustion.

I experimented with all of my various pets in Warsong to figure out which let me be most effective, and in that level range it turned out to be my Voidwalker. I was pretty surprised by that, because I've always heard Warlocks calling that demon pretty awful. Admittedly, all of the tools that were advantageous to me in Warsong were things added recently, if I remember right. I didn't have a Felhound yet, so the Voidwalker was my Rogue detector. Did you know Consume Shadows has a stealth detection component? It's awesome! The new Sacrifice was pretty awesome, too. When you're up against teams of twinks, an extra damage buffer is always good. I'm sure pet choice will change completely when I'm at a higher level, but in the 20-29 bracket, the Voidwalker was a pretty clear winner, no doubt about it. The other demons I had were next-to-useless in comparison.



PvE
Now, the PvE end of things... I did Gnomeregan. Yes, Gnomeregan. Was it horrible? No, not at all! I was kind of surprised, I hated that place the last time I did it on an appropriately leveled character. For Turpen, it wasn't so bad. A little too long, and we had to do some backtracking to find everyone their Essential Artificials, but we had no catastrophic wipes or anything of the sort. I wish I had some epic tale to tell, but I really don't! I didn't snag any boss loot, but I did get the schemata for Lil' Smoky, the Pet Bombling, and the Discombobulator Ray. That's pretty sweet.

Beyond that, I've mostly been soloing this week. That's not too terrible, because you all sent me to Duskwood and Stranglethorn Vale. Duskwood is always fun, though I was a little sad this time around. I didn't get ganked by Mor'ladim even once, and when it came time to kill him, I solo'd him down with ease. Forget Hogger, Mor'ladim is where it's at. Mor'ladim (and the Sons of Arugal for the Horde) has a very special place in my heart as one of the most terrifying things I've ever run into in WoW. He was a massive, incredible threat, and it felt awesome. The cemetary had a spooky enough vibe that running into Mor'ladim didn't make me angry, it was scary. You were constantly watching over your shoulder, and that worked will in that part of the zone. Just like in Silverpine for the Horde: The Sons of Arugal weren't just annoying roaming mobs. They were scary as hell for someone leveling through that zone. It kept you on your toes, and it was great. That all went away when they lowered the levels of these baddies, and Mor'ladim is sort of a pushover now.
Now, don't take that as me whining that the game is easymode now. It's not really that big of a deal to me. I'm glad they've made leveling alts easier and all of that, I just don't think they should have made changes to Mor'ladim specifically. Hogger is up on some weird pedestal, but Mor'ladim is where it's at. Some of the raiders in my guild alliance still go back to Duskwood now and then to this day to kill Mor'ladim, just to gain some vengeance for the horrors that mob inflicted upon them. You won't see new players doing that sort of thing. It's sad.

Talents
I suppose I should talk talents, because I went out of my way to pick up a couple of things I normally wouldn't have, specifically because I was told to do some battlegrounds. To be precise, I dropped talent points into Amplify Curse and Curse of Exhaustion. Were I not PvPing, I wouldn't have bothered with those.

I currently only have 1 point in Shadow Embrace as filler, mostly because I don't Shadow Bolt much while leveling and I don't have Haunt yet. That will change when I'm running Heroics and whatever else at 80, and once I hit that point I'll probably need to respec anyway. At the moment, I'm working on filling out Shadow Mastery.

Of course, I'm also coming up on a pretty big milestone rather quickly. Level 40. I've been Affliction since I was first able to spend talent as requested by a majority of our voters. Now it's time to ask... should I respec at level 40? Do you want me to continue on as Affliction, or should I switch over to Demonology? Destruction?


I've been trying to let you guys decide via polls where I'll be leveling, but I'm coming up on what is quite possibly the worst stretch of WoW ever. The 40s. Our polls aren't very exciting if there's only one option. For an Alliance character approaching their early 40s, the only options are Dustwallow Marsh, or run around the entire world finding the numerous hubs of 3-4 quests. Outside of Dustwallow, I don't think any other single quest hub will get me to the mid or high 40s. So... Dustwallow Marsh is where I'll be heading as soon as I'm of the appropriate level to go there. If you have other suggestions, leave them in the comments. I'll pull ideas from there rather than sticking to a poll.

Conclusion
As long as Patch 3.2 news is hot, leveling is going to go a lot more slowly. My updates in the next few weeks probably won't be in 10 level chunks, because I really don't have that much time right now! I will try to update, though.

To keep these interesting, you guys should suggest things for me to do! If you want me to get random achievements, suggest away. Make sure they're level appropriate, and something I can do with fairly casual play while leveling. Don't ask me to do Loremaster. Not gonna happen. Not in a million, billion years. Holiday stuff? Sure. Quirky little off-the-road things? Sure. Loremaster? No.

Tags: affliction, amplify-curse, arathi-basin, battlegrounds, choose-my-adventure, consume-shadows, corruption, curse-of-agony, curse-of-exhaustion, demonology, destruction, gnomeregan, lil-smoky, loremaster, morladim, nightfall, pet-bombling, pvp, sacrifice, shadow-bolt, shadow-embrace, shadow-mastery, turpen, voidwalker, warlock, warsong-gulch

Filed under: Leveling, Warlock, Analysis / Opinion