Posts with tag wow-warlocks

Blood Pact: Taking care of your DoTs

by Megan O'Neill Jan 29th 2013 at 2:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill admits to problems with DoT clipping (*gasp*) and finds a way to fix it.

Every warlock has at least one damage over time effect to take care of. Destruction has Immolate. Demonologists flip between Corruption and Doom (Metamorphosis), though I suppose you could count Shadowflame off Hand of Gul'dan as one. Affliction is the "DoT spec," starring Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, with appearances of Haunt.

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

Should green fire be prestigious?

by Megan O'Neill Jan 21st 2013 at 9:00AM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wishes the mages would stop sending out the bad voodoo vibes to everything she owns so she can buy new fun things for her birthday instead of old replacements.

There's plenty to look for through the datamining, but the question on everyone's mind is, "How do I start the questline?" Trust me, when someone finds out, I'm sure the internet will explode about it. It'll probably be on a Monday, during my other job's hours, and right after this column posts, knowing my luck.

But before I get into an all-out walkthrough of the questline, I want to discuss one thing: does green fire have to be exclusive? Is exclusivity required for meaningfulness?

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

Warlock green fire quest reward and more

by Anne Stickney Jan 15th 2013 at 4:00PM

The exclusive warlock quest to nab green fire now has a quest reward to go with it. Not the expected green fire, but an actual piece of gear. MMO-Champion managed to dig up Akama's Seal of Courage, which is the reward for helping Akama out in the Black Temple -- presumably part of the Black Temple portion of the warlock quest. But how does a clever warlock obtain the quest in the first place?

We don't really know just yet. We do know that according to Ghostcrawler's tweet pictured above, it's not going to be something that players can grab immediately. There is a peculiar and interesting aspect to this whole chain, however, and it's in the form of Deathwing's meddling kiddo. That's right, Wrathion is somehow involved in the chain, according to quest information found over on WowDB. Why, exactly, Wrathion is so invested and involved in what warlocks are up to is also up in the air. For more information on the quest chain, Wowhead has a detailed guide available -- beware, spoilers abound!

Even though we don't have the total picture just yet, the bits and pieces that have been dug up via datamining are making it much harder to ignore my long-forgotten warlock alt. The thought of wielding green fire is pretty cool of course, but it's more the story potential in the chain that fascinates me. Just what are those shadowy masters of demonic entities up to, anyway? Time will tell.

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.

Filed under: Warlock, News items, Mists of Pandaria

Patch 5.2 spell changes and tier 15 for warlocks

by Megan O'Neill Jan 14th 2013 at 9:00AM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thought the druid T15 was the warlock tier originally, and she thinks that the Season 13 warlock gear looks like a cross between Shannox and a Faceless mob.

My apologies, fel-slingers and fiendish friends. I stepped through the Dark Portal to visit family and when I returned, my hard drive had dead clusters, almost as if someone came by and Frost Nova'd the lot of it. Maybe dropped a few Nether Tempests while he was at it.

I blame the mages. I've already had my flu shot, so they must've realized they had to get at the latest Defender of the Dark Arts electronically. Silly mages -- I'm a warlock, so of course I backed up my stuff.

But Patch 5.2 wasn't going to wait for my new hard drive, so let's look at the changes so far.

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

Blood Pact: Soloing the vanilla raids for pets and more

by Megan O'Neill Dec 17th 2012 at 1:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill laments being knocked successfully up past the Suppression Room, only to pull the boss and be knocked back down and across the Suppression Room while the original knockback mobs die. UGH.

Well, Naxxramas is big enough that I'll leave a whole article to it. The other raids from the original raiding scene of level 60 can fit into one since they're relatively easy to do. The roadblocks to finishing them are largely mechanical tricks, not damage output or survivability problems.

There's no real difference between the specs in these earliest raids. I run as destruction mostly because it's fast-paced, but any spec and almost any talent setup can do these raids.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

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: Vault's end with multitarget magic

by Megan O'Neill Dec 3rd 2012 at 8:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill continues on with Mogu'shan Vaults while hunting pets in old raids.

I thought maybe I'd goofed, that I'd mis-timed the first two-thirds of Mogu'shan Vaults and would need to interrupt to make a fun post about Black Temple and some new warlock lore. Sadly, the felfire questline got postponed for a little while.

Oh well. In the meantime we can alternate between old raids and new as a warlock. First, let's finish up Mogu'shan Vaults with two complex-to-explain but simple-to-do fights.

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

Blood Pact: Delve into the soul of Mogu'shan Vaults

by Megan O'Neill Nov 26th 2012 at 5:00PM

Blood Pact Soulsearching in Mogu'shan Vaults MON

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill looks back at the easy but fun fights in Mogu'shan Vaults as warlock.

Between getting to level 90, gearing pains, the American Thanksgiving, and raiding only two nights a week, you might be in my guild's boat, which is still finishing Mogu'shan Vaults on 25man. Or maybe your raid team was fast and focused and you're already having a jolly time in Heart of Fear or even Terrace of Endless Spring.

Whether you're fast on progression or taking your time, main class or alt character, here's a refresher on Mogu'shan Vaults as a warlock.

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: How to use your warlock's party toys

by Megan O'Neill Nov 12th 2012 at 3:00PM

Blood Pact Working with a warlock in party MON

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill steps back to cover some group functions of warlocks she feels she must explain every week to her raidmates anyway.

It's in our fel nature to want to work alone, but warlocks actually have some great party utility. We lost some of that utility in Cataclysm with the advent of a specific guild perk, but now in Mists of Pandaria we've resurfaced in lore and game mechanics. It's time to relearn our old tricks and introduce a new party toy to group content play.

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

Blood Pact: Zeroing in on the purpose of spell hit

by Megan O'Neill Nov 5th 2012 at 2:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill tries to answer whether haste or mastery is better. While the simulations are churning, let's have a little chat about that hit cap.

The spell hit table is actually quite simple: the dice behind your character's stats roll to see if you hit or miss, and then roll again to see if you critically strike. There's no seeing if the mob dodged, parried, or blocked you. If you can see them in line of sight, you could possibly hit them. Things can absorb your attacks, however, and reflect your spells.

You probably learned as you were leveling that very first time that you missed some of the time, and you missed more often against higher level mobs. There is a natural miss chance for a spell to hit based on level difference. The point of hit rating on gear is to cover this gap so you never miss.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: Looking for loot in tier 14 raids

by Megan O'Neill Oct 29th 2012 at 2:00PM

Blood Pact Looking for loot in tier 14 MON

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.

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

Blood Pact: Useful addons for raiding warlocks

by Megan O'Neill Oct 22nd 2012 at 9:00AM

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.

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

Blood Pact: Reputable gear and more for raiding

by Megan O'Neill Oct 15th 2012 at 8:00PM

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.

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

Blood Pact: Look Dreadful with PvP gear for warlocks

by Megan O'Neill Oct 8th 2012 at 3:00PM

Blood Pact Gear up against your PvP fears MON

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?

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

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