Curse of Doom: Warlocks Taking One for the Team

Curse of Doom: Warlocks Taking One for the Team

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This week I’ve been levelling an alt warlock without an imp and I can’t tell you how peaceful it was. Not that he is need much since destro is the most useless and mana consuming spec without glyphs and incinerate. Then again I didn’t even have to worry about that with RaF. 1-60 in 13 hours. QQ blizz now I have to spend all week whoring out my succubus to pay for talents. While waiting for her to finish business I made a few notes about my new raid spec till LK is down.

‘Waiting for Wednesdays’
Since it is coming to end of Woltk there are only two instances remotely interesting to the average dragon slayer; ICC and Ruby Sanctum. It is pretty clear for both encounters affliction is the best spec, but since I have to be the raid baboon we will talk about demo.


It isn’t surprising how confusing Demo can be when you have a pet who speaks gibberish and an active 20 button rotation on certain fights (i.e Lich King). To help play demo I would suggest two things; the first is to download power auras

(http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/powerauras-classic.aspx) and have molten core proc highlighted somewhere over your character to reduce the amount of screen you have to focus upon. The second would be to take the talent Intensity (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=18136) because it stops the biggest hindrance you face in ICC, which is spell push back.

You are probably now thinking ‘wtf is he on about 20 buttons’ and ‘how can you make such as rotation simple?’ I’m not going to grind over the basic rotation, keep this on cd, don’t let blah, blah fall off. These kinds of posts can be found everywhere and are explained in far better manner than I can. If you don’t understand what order soul fire, incinerate, shadow bolt, immolate, corruption, metamorphosis and immolation aura go in during a rotation then I can’t help you either.
What causes my rotation to be larger are a few small things which add up to make a large impact.
We can begin with pet control, while blizz have given pets a retard proof 90% avoidance it shouldn’t mean you can send him off anywhere and forget about him. The Demonic Pact buff is now 40 seconds long which is enough time to point him where more dps is needed or remove him from harm’s way. A good habit is to learn to control him during your casts so you don’t interrupt your flow.

Then we have professions. Engineering is now by far the best profession for your Warlock. Forget whatever EJ or any other site tells you. The haste on glove enchant (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=54999) is simply ROFL OP at the moment and on such a small cd. It also allows you to create nitro boots (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=55016) one of the biggest life-savers available.

The last, but very important are Potion of Wild Magic (always pre pot!), Engineering bombs, Shadow ward, Teleport, Health stone and Soul shatter. Keeping yourself alive is your number one priority and the second is maximising your dps. As a Warlock you have utter crap threat reduction and shouldn’t be spec’d into the threat reduction talents unless you are destruction. Generally this means at some point during execution phase you will need to shatter. The old term ‘dead dps is no dps’ is the truest line ever said so bind this close to your hand. The same sentiment goes for increasing dps, if you can use an extra pot before pull or toss a grenade every now and then, why don’t you do it? Teleporting is also more useful than just escaping danger, if there is no danger why don’t you place it in position to save walking.
In conclusion if would say forget demo if you are not sure of A) you spec abilities and B) the boss encounter. After that it’s a matter of timing, from procs to optional cd usage and bonus items such as your prefessions. While it’s not the number 1 spec, it will never be the worst if played correctly and it’s certainly pretty fun most of the time.

Resurrection Sickness
Can’t say I’ve done much pvping while levelling an alt, playing beta and going hard on LK. All I can really recycle is how horrible pvping is up to level 80. I understand twinking and the damage full AQ40 or Sunwell geared player can do, but my RaF mate was gibbing these players for fun on his 11 hour /played ele shaman and if I was allowed to DoT up someone with between 6-8k hp, they could die in a DoT crit streak.
It’s part of the game that truly needs fixing, but I doubt it will ever go back to a rational level of decency.

Cataclysm
For anyone not able to have access to the beta, I’ll fill you in with a few details. For starters the Lords at Blizzard have only allowed access from levels 80 – 83 and it currently goes like this:
80-81 – 1.68 million xp
81-82 – 1.7 million xp
82-83 – 6.45 million xp

This obvious isn’t going live since it’s probably just allowing players to get through the necessary levels to test the content; it’s more likely to be around 3.5 million judging from previous expansions. Also currently my h.p is also jumping up by 6.5k per level without using the new gear. So at 80 I had 31k hp and at 83 I have 50.5k hp.
Because of the levelling I’ve really been able to test pve stuff and here are some of the more noticeable points for affliction.
Once you have applied your dots, just like woltk rotation, you only have to cast haunt again to keep them rolling since fel flame now refreshes U.A. Then once you get the target to 25% drain soul will also reapply U.A.
Using Soulburn + SoC is just ROFL dmg, but I’m going to test it against a decent mage first before I post screen shots to see how it compares.

Shadow flame comes fitted with a horror effect and it seems quite powerful. At any point if you think the tank might die you can shadow flame, walk off to heal and do a little dance before the mobs have any chance of reaching you again.

Your welcome to leave comments or contact me via my contact page: Curse of Doom Warlock Blog

Till next week.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 August 2010 23:38 Written by Insertfoot Monday, 23 August 2010 22:54