Posts with tag seduction

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill won't give it up on Soul Fire.

Celestalon started the talk about what abilities would we be sad over losing. I don't know that warlocks would lose many spells with our recent expansion overhaul -- we're pretty streamlined as it is. Veteran warlocks can see and feel the difference between Cataclysm's complication and Mists' minimalism every time they play.

A warlock class strength is that we're so flexible at dealing damage, whether we do it through DoTs or with direct damage, or whether we're single target masters or AoE beasts. So we end up with a good deal of situational abilities that confuse the casual or fresh warlock as to what should be keybound. We might not lose the amount of abilities that, say, hunters will, but we're likely not immune from the chopping block. Let's talk some suggestions.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Join World of Warcraft's first hero class as we head into a new expansion and shed the new kid on the block label.

Now, before you get too excited about the title, we still don't know when patch 4.1 is dropping, much less when it's coming to the PTR, so don't think this is any sort of announcement. That said, it's never too early to wish and speculate. I won't deny it, I love death knights and I love balanced classes, but not everything I want for death knights is ironclad. A lot of what I want would probably turn them into horribly overpowered machines of death and destruction, powered by the tears of lesser classes. That said, as I've played my death knight day by day, there are a few things I've noticed time and time again, quality of life issues that could really use some TLC from the dev team -- things that I am relatively sure wouldn't overpower us if fixed up.

This week, I'm going to discuss three death knight issues I've noticed in Cataclysm and how I think Blizzard should fix them with the next major content or class balance patch.

Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "A succubus is a devourer of souls, destroyer of hearts, tempter of men. A creature of profound evil and of singular mind. It cannot be brought into our world without a stimulus." ~ Gan'rul Bloodeye

Previously in 'Meet the minions' we have looked at the imp and the voidwalker as well as how to manage your minions and your threat. In this installment our demon of choice is the succubus and the game mechanic is crowd control; fear, seduce, howl, banish and a svelte demon with wings. But before I delve in I need to clarify something to Blood Pact readers.

For a while now I've had a demon trying to whisper words of doubt into my ear. He's been telling me that Blood Pact readers want PvP info in the column, that they cry out for it, they yearn for it, they need it; and that I can't deliver any. It's true that my knowledge and experience of PvP pretty much extends as far as being able to smell it early enough to avoid it. Don't get me wrong, I love researching for Blood Pact but in this case I'm not going to try, and for two reasons. First, nobody who cares about warlock PvP wants to have me school them on it, and second we have some first rate PvP experts at WoW.com who can do it better.

So I've sent the demon packing (literally; don't be surprised if you find more than the normal number of broken biscuits in future packets) and have started a campaign to convince our arena and battleground columnists to get with some lock love. So enough with the preamble, lets get on with the show.

Today on Demonology 101, we'll take a quick look at the Succubus, which won't really change much in Wrath of the Lich King. It's good to note that Succubi have had their health and armor increased by 20% and 22% respectively. It probably won't stop them from getting rinsed in PvP, but a buff is a buff. Unlike the Felhunter, which is the best pet for an Affliction Warlock, the Succubus isn't specialized for any particular tree. However, there are talents in Demonology that make her more useful.

The first one, obviously, is Improved Succubus, which has been modified in the Wrath Beta to confer up to a 100% resistance to interruption caused by damage while channeling Seduction. Succubi have four basic abilities, although they are famous this one alone. If a Succubus is ever brought out for PvP, it is purely for Seduction. They are the easiest demon to kill next to an Imp out of Phase Shift and thus almost never see Arena or even Battleground play. However, Succubi provide invaluable crowd control for humanoid-heavy instances. It helps to use an AddOn like FocusFrame to keep an eye on the Succubus' target because learning to reapply Seduction -- try to key bind it -- is crucial to keeping her alive.

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.

The internet is a beautiful thing. It gives everybody a voice and an easily accessible goldmine of human ingenuity and intelligence. (It is also a repository of human scum and stupidity, but we're not going there today.) As a warlock player, there are TONS of resources out there that you can use to improve your game. Unfortunately many of these resources are scattered far and wide - and it takes a certain deftness with search engines to separate the wheat from the chaff, or simply to find what fits your playstyle.

So, for the benefit of the newly initiated and the time-challenged, I'll start and maintain this list of tried and tested Warlock tips, from the frivolous to the essential. I will not claim credit for these tips, but humbly serve as the chronicler of community content in this case, and will give due credit wherever possible. If you have pet tips that you swear by as a Warlock, please feel free to share them - and I'll add it to this list after the jump.

Crowd control is an important part of the BC instances, especially heroics, more so than it was in the old world. Polymorph, sap, banish, and shackle all play their part, but up till now Seduce has not been very usable in Heroic-mode instances. Set for a change, this is. Thus spake Tigole:

In an upcoming content patch (2.1.0) Warlocks will be able to use their succubus to seduce many humanoid creatures which are currently immune to charm effects.

To clarify, the creatures do too much damage to allow them to be charmed (whether it be by a priest or by an engineer). Seducing them does not threaten the balance of the dungeon.

This will mostly effect heroics. And it only makes things able to be seduced -- it doesn't make anything immune to mind control that was previously charmable. It's not a nerf for priests. It's a bonus for Warlocks.

That makes some sense of why these mobs were no-seduce, too. And, as a healer, if there's one thing I love more than mana, it's crowd control.