Posts with tag ember-tap

Blood Pact: A pewpewer's notes from tanking and healing

by Megan O'Neill Mar 18th 2013 at 12:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill muses about tanking, healing, and why she really does play a DPS.

I have a confession: I was once a tank. Technically I could have been half a tank, because I think I healed just as often, but once upon a time I rolled a druid with the intent of getting a melee DPS perspective.

One night in Wrath of the Lich King, my first guild had some trouble with kiting the adds on Gluth. So we upped the tank count to 3: the paladin tank moved to the back for holy tag with the undead while the former-bear warrior walked me through my feral spellbook as I sat in bear form on that pipe. I think it was the extra Mauls that hooked me. I became a bear tank with a branch-waving offspec.

I have fond memories of alt or PUG raids where I had cooldown-busting health pools and hero-bear resurrections between Gormok's death and the arena entrance of Acidmaw and Dreadscale. But as my guild tore apart in the beginnings of Icecrown Citadel, I've been back to pewpewing from the back as a warlock. My bear is merely an alt.

But my bear has made my warlock a little stronger.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

Blood Pact: Speccing for old world raids

by Megan O'Neill Dec 10th 2012 at 9:00AM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill harvests all the songbells ever in the search for more Imperial Silk, but slaughtering masses of Horde NPCs for reputation also works.

Patch 5.1 introduced pets to the vanilla-era raids. Patch 4.3 introduced transmogrification, which brought old raids back. Before that, some players would solo or duo old raids just for the challenge giggles. Every new expansion has raised the level cap and opened another expansion to soloing.

Whether you're soloing for a look, for improved familiarity with your spell toolbox, or for bragging rights, warlock is definitely a great class to jump into soloing old raids. At level 90, even before you're decked out in tier 14, most of the Wrath of the Lich King raids are fairly easy. But let's start with the basics -- speccing and playstyle.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

Blood Pact: Staying slightly alive as a warlock

by Megan O'Neill Nov 19th 2012 at 9:00AM

Blood Pact How to stay slightly alive as a warlock MON

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill completely devours a real-life box of cookies while listing out all the ways a warlock can heal herself. Om nom nom.

Dead DPS does zero DPS. We all know that saying. I introduce to you my Princess Bride collorary to the Dead DPS rule:

Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.

Inigo Montoya: What's that?

Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

The perfect description of what happens when a mob dies in an RPG aside, Miracle Max is right: mostly dead is slightly alive, and slightly alive means you can still do more damage. Naturally -- since we are magnificent, resilient bastards instead of glass cannons -- warlocks are quite excellent at staying slightly alive.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

Blood Pact: MoP talent calculator spells out more changes for warlocks

by Megan O'Neill Mar 5th 2012 at 9:00AM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This Monday, Poneria of Fel Concentration finishes zoning into the Defense Against the Dark Arts post. That must be a mage's name for the coolest class column around, because who needs defense when you can gleefully wield the Dark Arts?

Greetings, my fellow masters of minions! Warlocks continue the trend of small talent calculator changes followed by intriguing snatches of development clarified by community managers. Set your pets to passive for now as I go over what's changed. In the coming weeks, we can delve into more specific topics and theories.

Spells get streamlined for leveling

A level 1 ability called Demonic Tactics allows the Imp, Voidwalker, and Succubus to act more intelligently. I'm tempted to say it's a name for the guardian-like actions of the newly rolled warlock's pet, only to be replaced later by the pet bar with Control Demon. But traditionally, the pet bar comes at level 10 along with group features like Battlegrounds, while the Succubus isn't introduced until level 20. If, instead, Demonic Tactics is meant as a better artificial intelligence for pets overall, why isn't the other baseline pet, the Felhunter, included?

I'll wait for clarification. After Malefic Grasp was first revealed in the November Class Q&A to be not demonology as we all expected but affliction, I've learned to not assume anything anymore.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

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