...because finally, after what seems like endless discussion and countless, fruitless patches, Blizzard has finally relented.
As of the next Beta build, people, Corruption is going to be instant-cast as a base ability.
Oh, and Ruin is going to be accessible for 20 talent points (!!!), switching places with Devastation and going from 1 to 5 talent points. This means that talent specs will be able to revel in Ruinous glee without giving up their 51pt talents.
This is huge. This is more than huge, this is amazing. Sure we give up 5% crit, but every talent tree will have access to Ruin!!
Oh, and Metamorphosis is getting seriously buffed. The warlock love is layered on thick with this patch.
Continue reading 'Hell Froze Over...'
Showing posts with label Warlock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warlock. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
What Fel Dealings This?
So unless you've been living under the proverbial rock, or simply have more sense than 99.99% of the WoW population, you have probably been salivating over the promises of the new expansion. Wrath of the Lich King is like a frightening, undead pinata - vaguely threatening, but loaded with delicious candy. Talent candy! Skill candy! Candy that helps you remember how many murlocs you've killed!
But no self-respecting gamer would be satisfied with the 'Official' list of changes, and this warlock is certainly no exception! While I'm very excited at the prospects of Haunting things and transforming into a Demon, I've got my own little list of 'lock-related changes that I'd love to see in-game.
In no particular order:
Firestone:Physical Effects as Spellstone:Magic Effects
So hear me out, this one takes a bit of logic. Spellstone works by periodically purging all magic effects from your person. It's a great way of dispelling multiple DoTs from rival warlocks, shadow priests, or even Ignite procs from Mages. Now that Fel Armor is a physical buff, warlocks can self-purge with impunity. The added buff to spell crit is always a plus, and helps this otherwise mediocre conjured item get some more traction. But what of Spellstone's neglected step-brother, Firestone?
Oh what a maligned spell that is! All other budding warlocks who were thoroughly confused by Firestone when they first trained it, raise your hand.
::raises hand::
There are two benefits to Firestone presently. First, it boosts your fire spell damage, which is a cute bonus that is somewhat useful as you level because its not till much later that you can find a wand with comparable +spell damage. The melee proc is supposed to make daggers, a staple warlock weapon, a useful means of finishing something off as you level.
But lets be honest, most of the time you'd be much better off with a wand that you could use to blast something mana-free as it's running in Fear-induced hysteria than going toe-to-toe with a mob while wearing CLOTH. Anyone else see the problem?
Firestone is mediocre, but here's a way to buff it that seems to make sense: give it the ability, on use, to purge all physical maladies on the warlock, just like how Spellstone purges magic effects.
Imagine the warlock using the captured flame to cauterize and cleanse his wounds, and you'll get a flavor for the logic behind the change.
This would give locks choice of conjured item for use in pvp, one for use versus magic users, and one that would give us a little more breathing room vs. Mortal Strike, Rogue stuns, Bleed effects, and the like. With a cooldown similar to Spellstone it wouldn't be overpowered, since most melee can re-apply their effects within the next few swings. It would however provide a tactical power that, if used correctly, could give us a better chance against our worst matchups without being a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Oh, and give it the ability to shoot, like a wand. That would be awesome.
EDIT: lol I didn't even notice, they are relics now. Whee!
Health Funnel Friendly Targets
This one is going to be a little more controversial, but what if you could channel Health Funnel onto any friendly unit, not just your demons? I know that lore-wise, warlocks can heal their pets because they are bound to them, so to preserve that, give us a spell that costs a soul shard to mark a friendly target for 30 minutes, making them a viable target for Health Funnel.
ZOMG Feren warlocks can't heal, they is DPS!
I know, I know, which is why, as a heal, this is about as terrible as you can get. It's a channeled spell, meaning it is hugely open to interruption. There's a big laser beam that tips people off to our location. But most importantly, while we're channeling WE CANNOT CAST ANYTHING ELSE. Sure our DoTs are going to be working hard, but no nuke spam is a huge hit to our DPS. What this does do is allow warlocks to do some last-ditch tactical healing, at the cost of their own HP bar and damage potential. Seems like a fair trade to me.
Maybe augment the Demonic Circle spell such that warlocks can Health Funnel any friendly target within the circle? That might be a viable alternative to a whole new spell with such narrow applications.
Danger: Summoning Zone
Demonic Circle has so much potential from a thematic perspective it isn't even funny. Magic like this isn't to be trifled with, and to reflect that, I think Demonic Circle should augment more than just summoning speed and be more than just a teleport anchor. What if, kind of like hunter traps, Demonic Circle had an offensive component as well?
Say, a 30% slow effect on enemy targets that enter the circle? Decreased hit rating due to the babble of demonic voices? Or, ideally, make any enemy target standing within demonic circle succeptible to Banish. There should be a risk in breaching a warlock's rituatlistic field, enough that it acts as a deterrent to stabby melee and pernicious pets.
Of course, if I really could have my way I'd have the circle act as a beacon to some Elder God and watch in glee as my enemies are torn assunder by unspeakable, madness-inducing horrors. Continue reading 'What Fel Dealings This?'
But no self-respecting gamer would be satisfied with the 'Official' list of changes, and this warlock is certainly no exception! While I'm very excited at the prospects of Haunting things and transforming into a Demon, I've got my own little list of 'lock-related changes that I'd love to see in-game.
In no particular order:
Firestone:Physical Effects as Spellstone:Magic Effects
So hear me out, this one takes a bit of logic. Spellstone works by periodically purging all magic effects from your person. It's a great way of dispelling multiple DoTs from rival warlocks, shadow priests, or even Ignite procs from Mages. Now that Fel Armor is a physical buff, warlocks can self-purge with impunity. The added buff to spell crit is always a plus, and helps this otherwise mediocre conjured item get some more traction. But what of Spellstone's neglected step-brother, Firestone?
Oh what a maligned spell that is! All other budding warlocks who were thoroughly confused by Firestone when they first trained it, raise your hand.
::raises hand::
There are two benefits to Firestone presently. First, it boosts your fire spell damage, which is a cute bonus that is somewhat useful as you level because its not till much later that you can find a wand with comparable +spell damage. The melee proc is supposed to make daggers, a staple warlock weapon, a useful means of finishing something off as you level.
But lets be honest, most of the time you'd be much better off with a wand that you could use to blast something mana-free as it's running in Fear-induced hysteria than going toe-to-toe with a mob while wearing CLOTH. Anyone else see the problem?
Firestone is mediocre, but here's a way to buff it that seems to make sense: give it the ability, on use, to purge all physical maladies on the warlock, just like how Spellstone purges magic effects.
Imagine the warlock using the captured flame to cauterize and cleanse his wounds, and you'll get a flavor for the logic behind the change.
This would give locks choice of conjured item for use in pvp, one for use versus magic users, and one that would give us a little more breathing room vs. Mortal Strike, Rogue stuns, Bleed effects, and the like. With a cooldown similar to Spellstone it wouldn't be overpowered, since most melee can re-apply their effects within the next few swings. It would however provide a tactical power that, if used correctly, could give us a better chance against our worst matchups without being a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Oh, and give it the ability to shoot, like a wand. That would be awesome.
EDIT: lol I didn't even notice, they are relics now. Whee!
Health Funnel Friendly Targets
This one is going to be a little more controversial, but what if you could channel Health Funnel onto any friendly unit, not just your demons? I know that lore-wise, warlocks can heal their pets because they are bound to them, so to preserve that, give us a spell that costs a soul shard to mark a friendly target for 30 minutes, making them a viable target for Health Funnel.
ZOMG Feren warlocks can't heal, they is DPS!
I know, I know, which is why, as a heal, this is about as terrible as you can get. It's a channeled spell, meaning it is hugely open to interruption. There's a big laser beam that tips people off to our location. But most importantly, while we're channeling WE CANNOT CAST ANYTHING ELSE. Sure our DoTs are going to be working hard, but no nuke spam is a huge hit to our DPS. What this does do is allow warlocks to do some last-ditch tactical healing, at the cost of their own HP bar and damage potential. Seems like a fair trade to me.
Maybe augment the Demonic Circle spell such that warlocks can Health Funnel any friendly target within the circle? That might be a viable alternative to a whole new spell with such narrow applications.
Danger: Summoning Zone
Demonic Circle has so much potential from a thematic perspective it isn't even funny. Magic like this isn't to be trifled with, and to reflect that, I think Demonic Circle should augment more than just summoning speed and be more than just a teleport anchor. What if, kind of like hunter traps, Demonic Circle had an offensive component as well?
Say, a 30% slow effect on enemy targets that enter the circle? Decreased hit rating due to the babble of demonic voices? Or, ideally, make any enemy target standing within demonic circle succeptible to Banish. There should be a risk in breaching a warlock's rituatlistic field, enough that it acts as a deterrent to stabby melee and pernicious pets.
Of course, if I really could have my way I'd have the circle act as a beacon to some Elder God and watch in glee as my enemies are torn assunder by unspeakable, madness-inducing horrors. Continue reading 'What Fel Dealings This?'
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Crawlers of the Void 01
In the pursuit of knowledge, great care must be taken to ensure that the eye does not catch sight of the unreadable, the ear word of the unspeakable, the mind thought of the unknowable; for while wounds earned in battle may be healed, the mind is a devious thing: that which is learned may never be unlearned. ~ A Hymn of Shade and Sorrow
-----------
The Depths of the Undercity shimmered with the sickly green glow of its noxious river. In the larger chambers vaulted ceilings, though cloaked forever in oppressive dim, helped alleviate some of the closeness and claustrophobia the catacombs inspired. Here though, in the bowels of the Undead citadel, there was no such comfort. The rough-cut tunnel walls dripped with something foul and glistened with far worse than deep rock niter in the sputtering, oily torchlight. The tunnels were an afterthought, carved hastily into the very walls after the main causeways were excavated above, and were resoundly ignored by most of the Forsaken. It was in these prime estates that the most reviled of Undercity's prisoners found residence; the final resting places of things that death had long forsworn. The cells were reserved for traitors, deserters, and conspirators of the Scourge, and for any such prisoner to have a visitor was nigh unheard of.
That's what made Lucius Morgov, keeper of these jails, so uneasy: the man that stood beside him in the harsh torchlight had made not one, but several trips into this very cell, and with each departure left behind a fog of palpable malaise in the already sullen corridors.
The brief silence was broken an instant later as the screaming resumed. It reverberated off the walls, piercing in its intensity and completely incomprehensible in meaning, but Lucius knew it well; the screams had begun three days ago, barely ceasing, and always repeating the same blasphemous, unintelligible gibberish in a screeching, gnawing rhythm. When the stranger had returned with yet another sealed parchment granting him access to this prisoner, Lucius was almost relieved. The screaming was starting to get to him; just that morning he had been rudely interrupted from his daily chores when, to his complete shock, he had found himself standing in the mouth of this very tunnel, swaying to that accursed screaming, with no recollection of how or when he had gotten there. All he could remember was that maddening voice, and the overwhelming fury that gnawed at his senses. Lucius had stood at the mouth of that tunnel, shaking with rage at the intolerable screaming, as thoughts of murderous intent had danced on the red-hazed surface of his minds eye. Rage had turned to sudden dread when he had noticed the set of keys clutched firmly in his mottled hand, at which point Lucius had swiftly drawn as far away from the mad keening as he could manage. An hour or so later, the stranger had returned.
A cloak was drawn across his emaciated, unnaturally lean frame, clasped at his breastbone with an insignia that seemed to shift if one gazed too long at it. A wide-brimmed hat was perched low on his pale head, leaving most of his face in shadow. What little was left to be seen lay hidden beneath the ebony sash of cloth that was blindfolded across the undead's eyes. Like many of the Forsaken, this one sported signs of extended, though halted, decay; most pronounced was the lack of flesh about his lower face, where nothing so much as an unyielding, skeletal grin was left.
At their first meeting, Lucius had been unnerved to learn that, despite the blindfold, the stranger was inexplicably capable of moving about the darkened catacombs with nary a stumble, and with next to no hesitation. The faintly glowing staff he held in his right hand did not sweep the ground searchingly ahead of him, but tapped resolutely with each stride. How the undead navigated, Lucius had no idea...but if the rumors he'd heard about this one were true, it was the work of a particularly dark kind of magic.
"You say he's been screaming like this for the last three days?" the stranger asked upon their arrival at the heavy, chained prison door.
Lucius nodded in assent. "Aye," he muttered, "almost non-stop. I were about ready to go in there myself and shut him up permanently just before you arrived."
At this, the stranger seemed to regard Lucius with a strange tilt of his head, and the jailer felt his undead flesh prickle. "Been a little eager with your keys lately, Morgov?"
To this, Lucius grunted vaguely, swallowed hard, and led the stranger to the cell door. His hands rolled back the keys with practiced efficiency, and with a swift turn the massive lock on the door was snapped open. The portal opened with groaning protest, and all at once the screaming was piercingly louder. Before he could enter, the stranger grabbed Lucius's shoulder with surprising force and pulled him aside.
"Today you will stay outside," the stranger said, to which Lucius felt his anger rising, only to be quelled a second later by the sudden change from within the cell; all at once, the screaming stopped, and was followed moments later as low, insane laughter gurgled forth from the darkness. Then, words Lucius finally could understand crawled across his skin.
"You would deny him the wrath I have so lovingly stoked in his dead heart, would you, warlock?" the thing in the cell cackled, "Had you taken a moment or two longer, I could have been free of your loathsome questioning!"
Lucius made to spit a curse at the wretch in the cell, but his companion rapped him hard on the shoulder with the head of his staff. "Leave him to me," Ferenzys rasped, "I will require some isolation with the prisoner this time."
"Can't do that!" Lucius snapped, shifting his anger at the grinning visage of his strange charge, "Against the rules, can't leave prisoners alone with visitors, not s'posed to HAVE visitors, just who do you think ye're--"
Lucius was cut short as Ferenczys muttered something incomprehensible in the dark that made his jaw suddenly snap shut, his limbs seizing. Torrents of old, shunned memories cascaded uncontrollably from Lucius' fevered mind. Fear, concentrated and gibbering, bubbled up from his quaking throat in a halting scream. The last thing Lucius Morgov saw before his feet carried him blindly back into the depths of Undercity was the memory of seeing his father torn apart by the spider-thing that had destroyed their home.
Ferenczys waited until the man's screams had faded into the gloom before turning to his quarry, who sat cross-legged and cackling in the dark. The only illumination came from the sewer grate in the low, domed ceiling. The bands of green light revealed that the prisoner had recently been gnawing at his wrists, just below the thick shackles holding him to the ground. Stepping inside, Ferenczys shut the door to the cell, and gazed at the prisoner in what might have been pity, had any remained in his still heart.
The creature had been human, and if the tattered remains of its clothing were any indication, it had once belonged to the order of the Scarlet Crusade. Ferenczys did not know his name, and did not care to. Provisioned to him by an old friend in the Apothecarium, the human was little more than an experimental tool. The experiment had proceeded quickly though, and now scant little humanity remained in the creature's visage. Taking a heavy tome out of his satchel, Ferenczys withdrew a long quill and began taking preliminary notes.
'The flesh has taken on a mottled, sickly appearance, spattered with boils, growths, and tufts of thin hair; bone protrusions along the spine and arms have grown at least another half-inch. The stench...more pronounced, but at least the leprosy seems to have halted its progression. The eyes remain cloudy, faintly luminous, and appear to have developed an infection of sorts. Limbs continue to twist and gnarl.'
Having completed the note, Ferenczys placed the book on a small wooden pedestal in the corner of the room. Then, ignoring the curses and insults the creature spat in his direction, Ferenczys stepped behind the shackled prisoner and unceremoniously drove the end of his staff into the thing's back. It snarled in pain, but submitted and bent forward. Ferenczys waited expectantly, head cocked curiously to one side. At first nothing seemed to be amiss, but a moment later, something stirred beneath the parchment-thin skin.
'A closer look if you'd please, Grim,' Ferenczys said, more forcefully pushing the staff between the struggling thing's shoulder blades to still a new surge of struggling. The air beside the warlock's left leg suddenly began to shimmer as if in a heat-haze just before a single, disembodied flame flickered into existence. Suddenly illuminated by the otherworldly fire smoldering on the tip of its tail, Ferenczy's imp, Grimdoom, scampered across the grimy floor to leap up and grab hold of the warlock's staff. Spinning itself about the runed rod, the fel creature lowered its toothy face to the squirming mass. Its luminous eyes stared intently, wide and white, and through the dark magic binding the creature to his will, Ferenczys watched through the imp's eyes the unnatural gyrations occurring just beneath the thing's skin with cold, clinical intensity.
Had Lucius been capable, Ferenczys would have had him secure the prisoner while he conducted the examination, leaving him free to record his observations, but the jailer's behavior had been most troubling. It confirmed that the parasite, as Ferenczys had come to perceive the entity even now undulating along the prisoner's spine, was steadily growing stronger, and in more ways than expected. The physical deformities, the rapid onset of mutative decay, these were more common 'symptoms', but in recent visits the warlock had made discoveries of a more disturbing nature.
Even now, in the imp's peripheral vision, Ferenczys could make out the charred corpses of bloated, malformed sewer rats the thing had somehow incited into frenzy. During his last visit, while Ferenczys and Lucius had been occupied with the prisoner's flailings, three of the twisted things had come surging out of a drain pipe, clawing and biting rabidly at their legs. Though fierce, whatever influence of the parasite's that had granted them their unnatural size and vitriol had also made them frail of form. One had split open like an overripe fruit as Lucius kicked it away, and the other two had quite literally exploded at the first ignition of the warlock's fire magic.
And Ferenczys was certain, after examining the corpses, that the same magic twisting the prisoner into the monstrosity he was becoming had also perverted the rats, but apparently with a recklessness beyond the seemingly careful prodding of its host's body. The way the prisoner had cackled during the attack only emphasized the point; they were created out of pure spite, an expression of its growing rancor for its captors. This latest episode with Lucius, however, went beyond mere nuisance. It belied the cunning intellect that was even now burgeoning in the gibbering shell of the prisoner, an intellect Ferenczys now felt confident had thoroughly consumed what little remained of the Scarlet Acolyte's mind.
Whatever magics at this creatures disposal, Ferenczys had immediately recognized the influence on Lucius as being very similar to that generated by a Curse of Recklessness, but one administered not by sight, but by some other, unknown medium. A mental command sent Grimdoom climbing up the warlock's staff to perch expectantly on his left shoulder. Releasing the pressure of the staff, Ferenczys bent forward and hauled the man to his gangrenous feet. "It took three days for your spell to find its mark, which tells me you were not focusing on the jailer specifically. Why?"
The abomination grinned. "An evil word always finds an ear, warlock. Someone was bound to hear Us."
Ferenczys snarled the words to a spell, and the prisoner's laugh was immediately broken by a renewed scream as the flesh of his neck started to blister and smoke. It was the screaming, then, Ferenczys noted, that had delivered the spell, and all at once the wretched scenario unveiled itself in his mind. The seemingly random gibberish would somehow incrementally weave the curse upon anyone within earshot, gradually forming into the supernatural rage not unlike that seen in the rats. Lucius, as the only one of Undercity's jailers charged with this wing, would have been the one most frequently exposed. The enraged victim would then have followed the maddening screams into the bowels of Undercity, to this very cell...to do what? The only thing the spell seemed to induce was violence towards the spellcaster, which suggested...
"You wish to die," Ferenczys spat, smoke still coiling away from where his hand gripped the prisoner's neck. The cloudy eyes swiveled onto him, and slowly the pain-wracked rictus twisted back into that empty smile.
"We wished for freedom," it responded, "but if that was not possible, We wished to hasten your return." The grin widened, splitting the skin at the edges of the froth-caked maw, "And return you did!"
"You knew I would be back," Ferenczys responded dryly, unimpressed, "My studies require periodic observations. Why so impatient?"
Though the warlock did not bear the physical strength of Undercity's more militant denizens, the wretched prisoner was so emaciatedly thin that he had no trouble hoisting him yet higher, until it seemed that the man's neck might snap from the angle. Came the strangled response, "W-we wish to deliver a message."
"Speak quickly," Ferenczys replied, "For I am of the mind to rip out your tongue and see how well you shriek your spells then."
Suddenly, from beneath the tattered garments clinging to the withered frame there came a sickening ripping sound, followed by a shriek as a long, toothy tendril erupted from the man's abdomen and lashed out at the warlock's face. Hurling the prisoner away, Ferenczys barely snapped his head back in time to dodge the whipping appendage as it tried to latch a lamprey-like mouth to his skull.
On his shoulder, Grimdoom began chattering in a panic, spouting off demonic curses at the vile thing that had almost knocked him from his perch. Ferenczys backpedaled, quickly distancing himself from the thrashing corpse and the three-foot long worm that rose like a stalk from its flower bed. The vertical slit along its belly was filled with razor-sharp teeth, and its skin bore a diseased, mottled look to it. In contrast to the dessicated husk of the man it inhabited, this creature appeared bloated, ripe with the fluids of decay, and gleaming with foul secretions. Ferenczys was snapped out of his disgust when the prisoner spoke again, only this time, Ferenczys saw that the worm's mouth undulated in time to the agonized words.
"Heed Us, lest your soul be defiled by the maggots of the void," it hissed, "You who carved the hollow and invited Us in, the eyes of the infinite are upon you! Go now and gnash your teeth in despair, for quickly We come to cover the land in Our tread!
"You who carved the hollow, you are known to Us, and no temple will give you shelter, no sacrifice will appease Us, save the last dregs of sorrow We will wring from your bones! You who--"
But the creature never finished its sentence; Ferenczys, no longer interested in mere interrogation, unleashed the full strength of a shadow bolt into the prisoner's corpse, immediately engulfing it in spiraling black fire. Noxious gasses began to billow from the burning flesh, and now the voice of the thing was intermixed with the feral screams of the prisoner's body, mindless, but still capable of expressing pain. Grimdoom lashed his tail about in warning, barring his fangs at the dying thing as it twisted in its death throes.
The tendril's maw gaped as it lashed blindly about, its tether, its lifeline now severed. It screamed and hissed, reaching spitefully for the warlock as he silently stormed to his heavy ledger and stuffed it in his backpack. Wordlessly, Ferenczys threw the cell door wide and stepped out, before turning to regard the smoking thing in the center of the floor.
The fire had found the thing's bloated body, which began to blister and crackle, blood boiling. Death, Ferenczys noted with some finality, was certain. He would find someone from the Apothecarium to dispose of the remains. Jaw clenched in disgust, the fel-sighted spellcaster began striding away from the chamber. He had gotten less than ten feet away when he heard the thing hiss something that made his still blood turn to ice.
"...know your...name....FERENCZYS...of the Neth..re...ziim...."
Ferenczys spun about, another shadow bolt at the ready, but the thing was dead. The flames had died to a smoldering crackle, and the corpse of the prisoner and his vile parasite were already falling to ash. The catacombs echoed faintly with the sounds of the Undercity above, but from the prison cell, nothing further was heard. Very soon, Ferenczys would be stepping through a mage portal to return to Shattrath city, but it would be several hours before those last words would fade from his memory, and the chill would leave his undead veins. Continue reading 'Crawlers of the Void 01'
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The Depths of the Undercity shimmered with the sickly green glow of its noxious river. In the larger chambers vaulted ceilings, though cloaked forever in oppressive dim, helped alleviate some of the closeness and claustrophobia the catacombs inspired. Here though, in the bowels of the Undead citadel, there was no such comfort. The rough-cut tunnel walls dripped with something foul and glistened with far worse than deep rock niter in the sputtering, oily torchlight. The tunnels were an afterthought, carved hastily into the very walls after the main causeways were excavated above, and were resoundly ignored by most of the Forsaken. It was in these prime estates that the most reviled of Undercity's prisoners found residence; the final resting places of things that death had long forsworn. The cells were reserved for traitors, deserters, and conspirators of the Scourge, and for any such prisoner to have a visitor was nigh unheard of.
That's what made Lucius Morgov, keeper of these jails, so uneasy: the man that stood beside him in the harsh torchlight had made not one, but several trips into this very cell, and with each departure left behind a fog of palpable malaise in the already sullen corridors.
The brief silence was broken an instant later as the screaming resumed. It reverberated off the walls, piercing in its intensity and completely incomprehensible in meaning, but Lucius knew it well; the screams had begun three days ago, barely ceasing, and always repeating the same blasphemous, unintelligible gibberish in a screeching, gnawing rhythm. When the stranger had returned with yet another sealed parchment granting him access to this prisoner, Lucius was almost relieved. The screaming was starting to get to him; just that morning he had been rudely interrupted from his daily chores when, to his complete shock, he had found himself standing in the mouth of this very tunnel, swaying to that accursed screaming, with no recollection of how or when he had gotten there. All he could remember was that maddening voice, and the overwhelming fury that gnawed at his senses. Lucius had stood at the mouth of that tunnel, shaking with rage at the intolerable screaming, as thoughts of murderous intent had danced on the red-hazed surface of his minds eye. Rage had turned to sudden dread when he had noticed the set of keys clutched firmly in his mottled hand, at which point Lucius had swiftly drawn as far away from the mad keening as he could manage. An hour or so later, the stranger had returned.
A cloak was drawn across his emaciated, unnaturally lean frame, clasped at his breastbone with an insignia that seemed to shift if one gazed too long at it. A wide-brimmed hat was perched low on his pale head, leaving most of his face in shadow. What little was left to be seen lay hidden beneath the ebony sash of cloth that was blindfolded across the undead's eyes. Like many of the Forsaken, this one sported signs of extended, though halted, decay; most pronounced was the lack of flesh about his lower face, where nothing so much as an unyielding, skeletal grin was left.
At their first meeting, Lucius had been unnerved to learn that, despite the blindfold, the stranger was inexplicably capable of moving about the darkened catacombs with nary a stumble, and with next to no hesitation. The faintly glowing staff he held in his right hand did not sweep the ground searchingly ahead of him, but tapped resolutely with each stride. How the undead navigated, Lucius had no idea...but if the rumors he'd heard about this one were true, it was the work of a particularly dark kind of magic.
"You say he's been screaming like this for the last three days?" the stranger asked upon their arrival at the heavy, chained prison door.
Lucius nodded in assent. "Aye," he muttered, "almost non-stop. I were about ready to go in there myself and shut him up permanently just before you arrived."
At this, the stranger seemed to regard Lucius with a strange tilt of his head, and the jailer felt his undead flesh prickle. "Been a little eager with your keys lately, Morgov?"
To this, Lucius grunted vaguely, swallowed hard, and led the stranger to the cell door. His hands rolled back the keys with practiced efficiency, and with a swift turn the massive lock on the door was snapped open. The portal opened with groaning protest, and all at once the screaming was piercingly louder. Before he could enter, the stranger grabbed Lucius's shoulder with surprising force and pulled him aside.
"Today you will stay outside," the stranger said, to which Lucius felt his anger rising, only to be quelled a second later by the sudden change from within the cell; all at once, the screaming stopped, and was followed moments later as low, insane laughter gurgled forth from the darkness. Then, words Lucius finally could understand crawled across his skin.
"You would deny him the wrath I have so lovingly stoked in his dead heart, would you, warlock?" the thing in the cell cackled, "Had you taken a moment or two longer, I could have been free of your loathsome questioning!"
Lucius made to spit a curse at the wretch in the cell, but his companion rapped him hard on the shoulder with the head of his staff. "Leave him to me," Ferenzys rasped, "I will require some isolation with the prisoner this time."
"Can't do that!" Lucius snapped, shifting his anger at the grinning visage of his strange charge, "Against the rules, can't leave prisoners alone with visitors, not s'posed to HAVE visitors, just who do you think ye're--"
Lucius was cut short as Ferenczys muttered something incomprehensible in the dark that made his jaw suddenly snap shut, his limbs seizing. Torrents of old, shunned memories cascaded uncontrollably from Lucius' fevered mind. Fear, concentrated and gibbering, bubbled up from his quaking throat in a halting scream. The last thing Lucius Morgov saw before his feet carried him blindly back into the depths of Undercity was the memory of seeing his father torn apart by the spider-thing that had destroyed their home.
Ferenczys waited until the man's screams had faded into the gloom before turning to his quarry, who sat cross-legged and cackling in the dark. The only illumination came from the sewer grate in the low, domed ceiling. The bands of green light revealed that the prisoner had recently been gnawing at his wrists, just below the thick shackles holding him to the ground. Stepping inside, Ferenczys shut the door to the cell, and gazed at the prisoner in what might have been pity, had any remained in his still heart.
The creature had been human, and if the tattered remains of its clothing were any indication, it had once belonged to the order of the Scarlet Crusade. Ferenczys did not know his name, and did not care to. Provisioned to him by an old friend in the Apothecarium, the human was little more than an experimental tool. The experiment had proceeded quickly though, and now scant little humanity remained in the creature's visage. Taking a heavy tome out of his satchel, Ferenczys withdrew a long quill and began taking preliminary notes.
'The flesh has taken on a mottled, sickly appearance, spattered with boils, growths, and tufts of thin hair; bone protrusions along the spine and arms have grown at least another half-inch. The stench...more pronounced, but at least the leprosy seems to have halted its progression. The eyes remain cloudy, faintly luminous, and appear to have developed an infection of sorts. Limbs continue to twist and gnarl.'
Having completed the note, Ferenczys placed the book on a small wooden pedestal in the corner of the room. Then, ignoring the curses and insults the creature spat in his direction, Ferenczys stepped behind the shackled prisoner and unceremoniously drove the end of his staff into the thing's back. It snarled in pain, but submitted and bent forward. Ferenczys waited expectantly, head cocked curiously to one side. At first nothing seemed to be amiss, but a moment later, something stirred beneath the parchment-thin skin.
'A closer look if you'd please, Grim,' Ferenczys said, more forcefully pushing the staff between the struggling thing's shoulder blades to still a new surge of struggling. The air beside the warlock's left leg suddenly began to shimmer as if in a heat-haze just before a single, disembodied flame flickered into existence. Suddenly illuminated by the otherworldly fire smoldering on the tip of its tail, Ferenczy's imp, Grimdoom, scampered across the grimy floor to leap up and grab hold of the warlock's staff. Spinning itself about the runed rod, the fel creature lowered its toothy face to the squirming mass. Its luminous eyes stared intently, wide and white, and through the dark magic binding the creature to his will, Ferenczys watched through the imp's eyes the unnatural gyrations occurring just beneath the thing's skin with cold, clinical intensity.
Had Lucius been capable, Ferenczys would have had him secure the prisoner while he conducted the examination, leaving him free to record his observations, but the jailer's behavior had been most troubling. It confirmed that the parasite, as Ferenczys had come to perceive the entity even now undulating along the prisoner's spine, was steadily growing stronger, and in more ways than expected. The physical deformities, the rapid onset of mutative decay, these were more common 'symptoms', but in recent visits the warlock had made discoveries of a more disturbing nature.
Even now, in the imp's peripheral vision, Ferenczys could make out the charred corpses of bloated, malformed sewer rats the thing had somehow incited into frenzy. During his last visit, while Ferenczys and Lucius had been occupied with the prisoner's flailings, three of the twisted things had come surging out of a drain pipe, clawing and biting rabidly at their legs. Though fierce, whatever influence of the parasite's that had granted them their unnatural size and vitriol had also made them frail of form. One had split open like an overripe fruit as Lucius kicked it away, and the other two had quite literally exploded at the first ignition of the warlock's fire magic.
And Ferenczys was certain, after examining the corpses, that the same magic twisting the prisoner into the monstrosity he was becoming had also perverted the rats, but apparently with a recklessness beyond the seemingly careful prodding of its host's body. The way the prisoner had cackled during the attack only emphasized the point; they were created out of pure spite, an expression of its growing rancor for its captors. This latest episode with Lucius, however, went beyond mere nuisance. It belied the cunning intellect that was even now burgeoning in the gibbering shell of the prisoner, an intellect Ferenczys now felt confident had thoroughly consumed what little remained of the Scarlet Acolyte's mind.
Whatever magics at this creatures disposal, Ferenczys had immediately recognized the influence on Lucius as being very similar to that generated by a Curse of Recklessness, but one administered not by sight, but by some other, unknown medium. A mental command sent Grimdoom climbing up the warlock's staff to perch expectantly on his left shoulder. Releasing the pressure of the staff, Ferenczys bent forward and hauled the man to his gangrenous feet. "It took three days for your spell to find its mark, which tells me you were not focusing on the jailer specifically. Why?"
The abomination grinned. "An evil word always finds an ear, warlock. Someone was bound to hear Us."
Ferenczys snarled the words to a spell, and the prisoner's laugh was immediately broken by a renewed scream as the flesh of his neck started to blister and smoke. It was the screaming, then, Ferenczys noted, that had delivered the spell, and all at once the wretched scenario unveiled itself in his mind. The seemingly random gibberish would somehow incrementally weave the curse upon anyone within earshot, gradually forming into the supernatural rage not unlike that seen in the rats. Lucius, as the only one of Undercity's jailers charged with this wing, would have been the one most frequently exposed. The enraged victim would then have followed the maddening screams into the bowels of Undercity, to this very cell...to do what? The only thing the spell seemed to induce was violence towards the spellcaster, which suggested...
"You wish to die," Ferenczys spat, smoke still coiling away from where his hand gripped the prisoner's neck. The cloudy eyes swiveled onto him, and slowly the pain-wracked rictus twisted back into that empty smile.
"We wished for freedom," it responded, "but if that was not possible, We wished to hasten your return." The grin widened, splitting the skin at the edges of the froth-caked maw, "And return you did!"
"You knew I would be back," Ferenczys responded dryly, unimpressed, "My studies require periodic observations. Why so impatient?"
Though the warlock did not bear the physical strength of Undercity's more militant denizens, the wretched prisoner was so emaciatedly thin that he had no trouble hoisting him yet higher, until it seemed that the man's neck might snap from the angle. Came the strangled response, "W-we wish to deliver a message."
"Speak quickly," Ferenczys replied, "For I am of the mind to rip out your tongue and see how well you shriek your spells then."
Suddenly, from beneath the tattered garments clinging to the withered frame there came a sickening ripping sound, followed by a shriek as a long, toothy tendril erupted from the man's abdomen and lashed out at the warlock's face. Hurling the prisoner away, Ferenczys barely snapped his head back in time to dodge the whipping appendage as it tried to latch a lamprey-like mouth to his skull.
On his shoulder, Grimdoom began chattering in a panic, spouting off demonic curses at the vile thing that had almost knocked him from his perch. Ferenczys backpedaled, quickly distancing himself from the thrashing corpse and the three-foot long worm that rose like a stalk from its flower bed. The vertical slit along its belly was filled with razor-sharp teeth, and its skin bore a diseased, mottled look to it. In contrast to the dessicated husk of the man it inhabited, this creature appeared bloated, ripe with the fluids of decay, and gleaming with foul secretions. Ferenczys was snapped out of his disgust when the prisoner spoke again, only this time, Ferenczys saw that the worm's mouth undulated in time to the agonized words.
"Heed Us, lest your soul be defiled by the maggots of the void," it hissed, "You who carved the hollow and invited Us in, the eyes of the infinite are upon you! Go now and gnash your teeth in despair, for quickly We come to cover the land in Our tread!
"You who carved the hollow, you are known to Us, and no temple will give you shelter, no sacrifice will appease Us, save the last dregs of sorrow We will wring from your bones! You who--"
But the creature never finished its sentence; Ferenczys, no longer interested in mere interrogation, unleashed the full strength of a shadow bolt into the prisoner's corpse, immediately engulfing it in spiraling black fire. Noxious gasses began to billow from the burning flesh, and now the voice of the thing was intermixed with the feral screams of the prisoner's body, mindless, but still capable of expressing pain. Grimdoom lashed his tail about in warning, barring his fangs at the dying thing as it twisted in its death throes.
The tendril's maw gaped as it lashed blindly about, its tether, its lifeline now severed. It screamed and hissed, reaching spitefully for the warlock as he silently stormed to his heavy ledger and stuffed it in his backpack. Wordlessly, Ferenczys threw the cell door wide and stepped out, before turning to regard the smoking thing in the center of the floor.
The fire had found the thing's bloated body, which began to blister and crackle, blood boiling. Death, Ferenczys noted with some finality, was certain. He would find someone from the Apothecarium to dispose of the remains. Jaw clenched in disgust, the fel-sighted spellcaster began striding away from the chamber. He had gotten less than ten feet away when he heard the thing hiss something that made his still blood turn to ice.
"...know your...name....FERENCZYS...of the Neth..re...ziim...."
Ferenczys spun about, another shadow bolt at the ready, but the thing was dead. The flames had died to a smoldering crackle, and the corpse of the prisoner and his vile parasite were already falling to ash. The catacombs echoed faintly with the sounds of the Undercity above, but from the prison cell, nothing further was heard. Very soon, Ferenczys would be stepping through a mage portal to return to Shattrath city, but it would be several hours before those last words would fade from his memory, and the chill would leave his undead veins. Continue reading 'Crawlers of the Void 01'
Friday, March 7, 2008
Entry 8: Sketches of the Afflicted
Here's a quick sample of a pic I'm working on for the site. This is the straight pencil sketch, freshly scanned and shrunk for your viewing pleasure. Next step will be to throw it into Painter and do some inking, then to play around with the paints. Still trying to decide if I'll use watercolors or oils, or go for a more anime approach with some cel coloration.
We'll see, I guess. Yes, in case you're wondering, that's supposed to be the Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders and Mana-Etched Crown he's wearing. Continue reading 'Entry 8: Sketches of the Afflicted'
Monday, March 3, 2008
Entry 5 - Regarding Lifetap
((Copied from a post I made on another blog forum. The blogger was asking for an explanation as to why warlocks were freaking out over the proposed change to lifetap on the PTR.))
Greetings. As one of the angry mob, let me do my best to provide a concise and meaningful response to the changes proposed in patch 2.4.
The problem with the new lifetap is that it no longer fits into the design of the class as a whole. As many other players have pointed out, this change was designed to negate the bonus stacking stamina provided to warlocks, both in pvp and in pve. On Live, stamina falls into place as the third most critical stat for warlocks to focus on in PVE (Spell Hit > Spell Damage > Stamina), whereas in PVP it falls closer to second place, right behind Resilience.
Everything about the warlock focuses on stamina. We have two talents that provide a passive boost to stamina (Demonic Embrace and Fel Stamina), and one of our pets, the Imp, is designed as an unkillable party buff to stamina (Blood Pact). Much of the item budgets for warlock-centeric gear tends to stack stamina much more than it does intellect.
The change to Lifetap on the PTR flies in the face of all of that.
The class as a whole has a very precarious position as a caster; we lack the myriad defense and escape mechanisms of mages, and thus must rely almost solely on our often large stamina pools to allow us to survive under focus fire. The entire concept of "drain tanking" in pve requires a good chunk of stamina and spell damage, so that we can effectively take hits and still survive long enough to drain the life back.
We cannot Blink, Iceblock, Frost Nova, or use our mana as a damage buffer. We must spec for pvp survivability (Soul Link), and for our supplementary vampiric spell (Siphon Life). The only other method of effective mana regen available to warlocks is Dark Pact, and that is a 31 point talent in Affliction. There is no Evocate. We have little to no Spirit to speak of. For the majority of warlocks, Lifetap is an indispensable tool both in solo play and in group functions because it helps provide the class with the longevity necessary for our DoTs to be truly effective.
Put it simply, warlocks seem to be designed for the long haul, both in how we deal damage and how we recycle life into mana into life. This change seems very heavy handed, and goes against the grain of the entire class by making incremental gains in one of our primary stats WORSE the more we get.
The suggestions for adaptation have been maddening at best. Eyonix's own suggestion of stacking Int to somehow "exploit" the change seems to ignore that on all of our class-specific gear, Stamina grossly outweighs Intelligence. Our T6, for instance, supplies somewhere along the lines of 248 stamina and 145 intellect, nearly twice as much. Compared to our stamina buffs, we have one talent that increases intellect passively. How, then, are we supposed to "stack int"? Roll on mage gear? Have you ever met a warlock whose mana pool exceeded his health?
Other players have suggested removing party buffs like Fortitude. We would be the only class doing so. The fact of the matter is that warlocks with higher HP become a drain on the raid over time, as healers are forced to heal back a proportionate amount of HP. It just doesn't make sense.
Blizzard is implementing this to change the dynamic is Arena PVP. Fine. Clearly there is something wrong with the set up, as they're hitting Lifebloom pretty hard too. It may not seem like the biggest nerf ever, but the repercussions are many and far reaching. I only hope that Blizzard either takes the time to re-evaluate how they itemize for us, to reduce the gear focus on stamina and make it easier to keep the two bars level, or shelves the idea in favor of something a little less counter-intuitive.
Will it be back-breaking? Probably not; these things always tend to get blown out of proportion, and dedicated warlocks will find ways of adapting. Will it make me gnash my teeth at the profound dearth of consistency and logic for the sake of nerfing one PVP strategy (Siphon Life - Soul Link)? Absolutely.
I hope I didn't rant too much. Did that help frame the discussion at all? Continue reading 'Entry 5 - Regarding Lifetap'
Greetings. As one of the angry mob, let me do my best to provide a concise and meaningful response to the changes proposed in patch 2.4.
The problem with the new lifetap is that it no longer fits into the design of the class as a whole. As many other players have pointed out, this change was designed to negate the bonus stacking stamina provided to warlocks, both in pvp and in pve. On Live, stamina falls into place as the third most critical stat for warlocks to focus on in PVE (Spell Hit > Spell Damage > Stamina), whereas in PVP it falls closer to second place, right behind Resilience.
Everything about the warlock focuses on stamina. We have two talents that provide a passive boost to stamina (Demonic Embrace and Fel Stamina), and one of our pets, the Imp, is designed as an unkillable party buff to stamina (Blood Pact). Much of the item budgets for warlock-centeric gear tends to stack stamina much more than it does intellect.
The change to Lifetap on the PTR flies in the face of all of that.
The class as a whole has a very precarious position as a caster; we lack the myriad defense and escape mechanisms of mages, and thus must rely almost solely on our often large stamina pools to allow us to survive under focus fire. The entire concept of "drain tanking" in pve requires a good chunk of stamina and spell damage, so that we can effectively take hits and still survive long enough to drain the life back.
We cannot Blink, Iceblock, Frost Nova, or use our mana as a damage buffer. We must spec for pvp survivability (Soul Link), and for our supplementary vampiric spell (Siphon Life). The only other method of effective mana regen available to warlocks is Dark Pact, and that is a 31 point talent in Affliction. There is no Evocate. We have little to no Spirit to speak of. For the majority of warlocks, Lifetap is an indispensable tool both in solo play and in group functions because it helps provide the class with the longevity necessary for our DoTs to be truly effective.
Put it simply, warlocks seem to be designed for the long haul, both in how we deal damage and how we recycle life into mana into life. This change seems very heavy handed, and goes against the grain of the entire class by making incremental gains in one of our primary stats WORSE the more we get.
The suggestions for adaptation have been maddening at best. Eyonix's own suggestion of stacking Int to somehow "exploit" the change seems to ignore that on all of our class-specific gear, Stamina grossly outweighs Intelligence. Our T6, for instance, supplies somewhere along the lines of 248 stamina and 145 intellect, nearly twice as much. Compared to our stamina buffs, we have one talent that increases intellect passively. How, then, are we supposed to "stack int"? Roll on mage gear? Have you ever met a warlock whose mana pool exceeded his health?
Other players have suggested removing party buffs like Fortitude. We would be the only class doing so. The fact of the matter is that warlocks with higher HP become a drain on the raid over time, as healers are forced to heal back a proportionate amount of HP. It just doesn't make sense.
Blizzard is implementing this to change the dynamic is Arena PVP. Fine. Clearly there is something wrong with the set up, as they're hitting Lifebloom pretty hard too. It may not seem like the biggest nerf ever, but the repercussions are many and far reaching. I only hope that Blizzard either takes the time to re-evaluate how they itemize for us, to reduce the gear focus on stamina and make it easier to keep the two bars level, or shelves the idea in favor of something a little less counter-intuitive.
Will it be back-breaking? Probably not; these things always tend to get blown out of proportion, and dedicated warlocks will find ways of adapting. Will it make me gnash my teeth at the profound dearth of consistency and logic for the sake of nerfing one PVP strategy (Siphon Life - Soul Link)? Absolutely.
I hope I didn't rant too much. Did that help frame the discussion at all? Continue reading 'Entry 5 - Regarding Lifetap'
Entry 3 - Grouping as Affliction
I'm a lock who absolutely loves grouping. I love doing dungeon crawls, love raiding (when I have time), and generally enjoy the dynamics of a group encounter more than the solo stuff. Because let's be honest, locks DESTROY solo PVE. It's nice to have a real challenge once in a while, and group battles are some of the surefire ways of getting your fix of ragnarok-inducing mayhem.
There's one problem with group combat though, one tiny, nagging little detail that annoys me more than a paladin on his third health bar: trash pulls. In any group situation, you will most likely be asked to perform some kind of CC function (and if you're any good at it, you may actually volunteer to do so rather than trust the shifty-eyed rogue who hasn't said a damn thing since group invites went out) in addition to simply blowing stuff up good. That's fine, you have your trusty Seduce macro that tells your pocket hottie to keep one of the bad things occupied, no sweat. This article isn't about managing Seduce. It's about smashing face.
So you're grouped up, everyone is buffed and ready to go, the healer's soul blissfully stored inside the phylactery---er, soul stone in your pocket, and the tank has dutifully marked up all the targets. Kill order is skull-x-diamond-square, or using more evocative imagery, main tank'd baddie 1, baddie 2, then the sap'd baddie, and finally the ice-trapped one.
Your party consists of a feral tank, a resto shaman, a rogue of ill repute, a hunter who feeds his pet with dead gnomes, and you, spectacular avatar of darkness that you are. How do you intend on dishing out the pain?
In most solo situations, the correct answer would be to load up as many targets in sight with everything in your arsenal (an over-dramatization, of course; warlocks are so powerful that a mere three DOTS is usually sufficient), and laugh as they crumble to dust at your feet. That's not going to fly in this situation.
As an Affliction warlock whose greatest joy (and power) is his DOTs, this can be a bitter pill to swallow, but the truth of the matter is that you are less effective when you are loading up your group targets with tons of damage over time spells, simply for the reason that they will not live long enough for those spells to run their full duration.
Bear in mind, this is generally only true in the 5-mans, normal or heroic, but heroics less so. There are still a few mobs that deserve the full assortment of your pain clocks, such as the fungal giants in Steamvaults, or the Fel Annihilators in Shadow Labyrinth. But most pulls are going to be multi-target pulls, and you can thank your lucky stars that those pulls don't consist of multiple Fel Annihilators. Most mobs under focus fire will not last longer than ten to fifteen seconds.
The most effective solution, I've found, is simply to bite the bullet and revert to a more direct-damage role, as a shadowbolt spammer. There are other blogs than this where more talented writers than I have dissected the numbers associated with this rotation, but let me summarize it for you: the 2.5 second cast time of shadowbolt will deliver nearly the same total damage as a full run of Unstable Affliction, in about a tenth of the time. Spamming shadowbolts will help your group take down focus fire'd mobs faster than a full rotation of DOTs will.
That does not mean all you are supposed to do is stand there spamming though. Oh no. There are at least TWO other things you should be doing while keeping the black pain flowing. First off, you need to manage the proper debuff on your intended target, and second is to maintain CC on whatever mob has been marked for you. In the group composition above, with you being the only offensive spellcaster in the group, you don't have to think about the cumulative effects of either Curse of Shadows or Curse of Elements. There's just you, so the obvious choice is Curse of Shadows. There are some Locks I've run with who attest that even dropping Curse of Shadows on your target is a waste of a global cooldown, and in some cases (e.g. when your group absolutely outgears the instance) that is true. But in most situations, Curse of Shadows is a great opener for several reasons.
First of all, the threat produced by landing a CoS on a target is low, low enough that you won't take aggro from the tank on the pull. Because it does nothing until your first shadowbolt lands, you are effectively delaying 10% additional damage until the tank has had time to build up a threat buffer. That, my friends, is what helps keep happy locks alive. Maybe even more important than CoS on the main target is having CoS on your Seduce target. There is nothing more annoying than having Seduce resisted multiple times, and a single application of CoS as your pet is finishing up the cast can mean all the difference between a Happy Pull and a Sad Pull.
If you'll allow me to theorycraft for a bit, let's imagine the time line of a typical 5-mob encounter. All targets have been marked accordingly, and you've been left with a single humanoid to CC with your succubus. At this point I've selected the CC mob and am simply waiting for the tank to do his thing.
Tank fires off his shot. I quickly hit my seduce macro key, and the succubus, since she was likely out of range, begins running towards the CC target to set up the seduce channel. I am running forward as well, because I want to get in range to cast CoS. The succubus stops and begins casting, I drop CoS, and half a second later the mob has those lovely hearts fluttering out of their soon-to-be-detached head.
I grab the tank's target (/assist Mr. Tank macros work great for this), drop CoS, and then, depending on my sentiments, I may drop Corruption on him too before laying on the Shadowbolts.
But wait, you exclaim, why bother with Corruption? Didn't we establish that the sea-monkey-esque lifespans of these mobs makes DOTs a moot point? Well, yes, for the most part, but Corruption does something that the other DOTs don't: it enables Nightfall, and Nightfall = more Shadowbolts.
Rank 1 Corruption works just as well as the highest rank Corruption in your arsenal for this purpose. Every tick has a chance at sending you into Shadow Trance, which means something is going to eat an instant-cast shadowbolt. Rank 1 is also more mana efficient, and can be dropped on off-tanked targets with almost zero risk of drawing aggro. The tank should be outputting at least enough threat to keep the OT'ed targets off your healer, who will be outputting more global threat than the pitiful damage from rank 1 Corruption.
More Corruption ticks mean more potential Nightfall procs, which makes you a happy warlock, but be warned: even the weakest corruption tick is still enough to break all forms of CC except Fear/Cyclone/Mind Control, so be absolutely sure that your group can handle having one mob immune to most crowd control for the duration of the DOT. If you're not certain, ignore the OT'ed target until it's time to lay into it. You never know when you may need to lock it down.
Beyond the 5-mans, I think you'll find that most mobs can survive long enough to make a heavier DOT commitment more worthwhile. The Skeletal horses in the Karazhan stables, for instance, have a good chunk of hit points that are far more conducive to some serious DOTing, in addition to your shadowbolt spam. Just feel things out; the whole point of this post was to try and show less seasoned Warlocks that, sometimes, it's better to think beyond the basic DOT.
Aren't we splitting hairs a little here though? We're talking 5-man dungeon trash, why would you care about optimal single-target DPS?
Because you're a warlock. For God's sake start acting like the power-crazed shadow caster you're supposed to be and rock that DPS chart.
Seriously though, it's important to understand this because wasting time on a full cadre of DOTs not only kills your mana efficiency, but you are actually gimping your DPS. The whole point here is speed, and as an Affliction lock that isn't exactly your strong suit. Better tailored to burst damage are Felguard talent specs, or the intimidating 0/21/40. That last one in particular can be absolutely crazy, since you basically spam shadowbolts all the time, trash mobs or boss fights, and I hear the damage is disgusting.
When it comes to Boss fights, Affliction really shines. The combination of multiple, powerful DOTs (one of which returns a nice chunk of HP every couple of seconds), Dark Pact/Lifetap, and a steady stream of shadowbolts usually means you'll be threat-capped more often than not. I've actually found that, as my spell damage bonus rose closer to the 1000 point mark, I actually had to start dropping spells from my rotation because I was building threat too fast. Work with your tank, get a good threat meter, and watch it carefully. If you outgear your tank (either with sheer firepower, or more +spell hit than he has +hit), you will be climbing that threat list far more consistently than he can keep up with.
If you do find yourself dangerously close to pulling aggro (Omen's lovely red alarm glow really helps), you've got a decision to make. First, check the timers on the DOTs you have up on the boss. You have to decide whether simply stopping Shadowbolt casts is going to be enough to let the tank pull ahead. Most of the time, especially if you've specced into Improved Drain Soul or you've got a Blessing of Sanctuary on you, you'll be hard pressed to pull aggro from DOTs alone. But in some cases, certainly if your amplified Curse of Doom is about to go off, you're much better off just hitting Soul Shatter and playing it safe.
On exceptionally long fights, it can make sense to preemptively Soul Shatter because it allows you to crank out the DPS faster than you would normally, but the three minute cooldown is highly prohibitive in this regard. It's very likely that if you are putting out enough damage to warrant Soul Shattering early in the fight, you vastly outgear the threat generation capabilities of your tank, and you will definitely need it again before those three minutes are up. In that case, it's probably better to tone down your spell rotation and try to work within the limits of your tank's TPS, leaving Soul Shatter for that moment where you get two unlucky crits in a row, or CoD blows just as you approach 100% of the tank's threat.
On most boss fights, the best opener is almost always an Amplified Curse of Doom, right after you hit your trinkets and have maxed out your +spell damage. The problem with Curse of Doom is that its threat is an absolute spike, versus the more gradual curve of Curse of Agony. On some fights, such as against Blackheart the Inciter or anyone else who resets their aggro table periodically, Curse of Doom can get you in a lot of trouble if it blows right after a threat wipe. Very few tanks are going to be able to crank out enough threat to save your sorry behind if your CoD crit, and you run the risk of getting the healers in trouble as they struggle to keep you alive. In fights of that nature, it's almost better to run with Curse of Agony and take a more gradual approach to damage.
Of course, there's also those few times, those oh so rare but oh so memorable times, when you will delight your group by spawning a Doomguard right after your CoD kills the boss. Yes, this has happened to me before. On Omor the Unscarred in Heroic Hellfire Ramparts, our group had been struggling with the boss through two wipes. On our third attempt, we managed to beat him down fast enough that he was below 10% before our tank finally bit it, and he started taking us out one by one. He dropped me sitting at 2%, leaving just the hunter up, when all of a sudden Curse of Doom detonated, dealing that last 2% of damage. Our cheers where quickly replaced by cries of "WTF IS THAT?!" as a Doomguard came charging out of Omor's smoking corpse and proceeded to crush the lone remaining hunter.
Hilarity ensued. By the time we'd all rezzed and run back, the Doomguard was gone, and we were free to loot. Remember, that caveat on the tooltip isn't just there for looks. Make sure you're group is ready for the potential surprise.
Depending on the length of the fight, it may be in your interests to refresh Curse of Doom once it's gone off the first time, or it may be a better plan to put up Curse of Shadows/Curse of Agony/Curse of Elements, depending on the party make-up. With multiple warlocks, it's always best to let whoever has invested in the improved curse to keep it up, so communicate that amongst yourselves and maximize your cross-functionality. Since it's often impossible to gauge the effectiveness of having Curse of Shadows/Elements up accurately in a PUG, I go by this simple rule of thumb: if two or more party members can benefit from the bonus to either Shadow/Arcane or Fire/Ice, go with the debuff. If it's just you, CoA is probably a better choice.
Why CoD over CoA? I've asked myself this question, and though the damage is actually pretty similar, CoD has a few intangibles going for it that tip the scales in its favor. First of all, it can crit, and whooboy will you know if it does. The screen lights up with huge yellow numbers and the boss, if you didn't pull aggro right then, starts eyeing you with increased vitriol. Second, CoD ticks away for a full minute, versus the 24 seconds of CoA. This means you don't have to refresh it, which means you have at least one more GCD that can be dedicated to Shadowbolts.
Warlocks share some of the same spell theory that shadow priests do; Affliction locks even more so. The key to maximizing DPS on a boss fight is properly refreshing your DOTs, making sure not to overwrite one before it's finished its damage sequence. The reason behind that is the "ticks" of damage; each DOT deals damage periodically, divided along the length of the spell. The last tick always occurs on the last second of the spell. If you refresh the DOT before that last tick has occurred, you are increasing the gap between the previous tick of the old DOT, and the first tick of the new one. The gap can be as long as six seconds in some cases, and that's terrible for your DPS.
It's better to let a DOT expire completely before one gets refreshed. With some of our DOTs, like Unstable Affliction, the cast time should be taken into account when watching the last few seconds of the spell tick away. I try to time it so that my UA finishes casting just as the current UA wears off, catching it just after the debuff actually vanishes. This assures me that I am not overwriting the last tick and getting the most for my mana investment. The instant-cast DOTs are a little easier to manage, as you can throw one back up as soon as you see it drop off. The rest of your time between refreshing DOTs should be spent Shadowbolting if you can stand still long enough to finish the cast. Take advantage of your instant cast DOTs by refreshing them as you reposition, since they can all be cast while running.
One nuance of Affliction that is sometimes hard to get a handle on is our mana management. Everyone is familiar with the longevity granted by Dark Pact when used in conjunction with the other staple, Lifetap. No Affliction warlock should ever find themselves out of mana for very long. My preference is almost always to DP back to full once I've finished two or three DOT rotations; it only takes two Pacts to drain my Imp down to the triple digits. I recommend Pacting early because it gives your Imp time to regenerate his mana, and bless the little bugger, he's usually ready to go again within twenty to thirty seconds. Remember to bring your imp out of phase shift during group buffs so that he can benefit from an Arcane Brilliance or Blessing of Wisdom. If you have any spare Scrolls of Spirit, they aren't a bad buff to throw up yourself if your group is short a paladin.
Lifetap is a little trickier, as it demands more micromanagement than Dark Pact does. Fire off a premature Dark Pact, and the worst thing that happens is you waste a global cooldown. With Lifetap, you are putting additional stress on your healers, or causing yourself excess damage by lifetapping when your mana hasn't drained sufficiently low enough to benefit from the full transfer. For the sake of your group, I recommend something like:
/y Lifetapping. Keep healing the other guy.
/cast Lifetap
This ensures your healers know that the drops in your HP aren't due to some wayward mob, and can respond accordingly with a HoT, or wait until there's a lull on the tank to fire off a proper heal. Affliction warlocks are mostly self-sustaining; between Siphon Life and Drain Life, we can usually recoup all the life lost to lifetap quickly and without any assistance from the party healer. Keeping up a full cadre of Affliction effects on the target helps ensure your Drain Life is receiving the full bonus from Soul Siphon.
The last bit of advice I will try cramming into this entry has to do with trinket use. Any caster worth his or her salt will almost certainly have a spell damage on-use trinket, which provides a temporary boost in firepower (usually on a 2 min cooldown, sometimes sharing a CD with your other trinket). This can be wonderful during boss fights because it provides an appreciative boost to DPS. You could argue that it tends to help Warlocks more than Mages simply because we can stack so many damage over time spells, each of which gets a significant boost out of the bonus. It certainly doesn't hurt shadowbolt either, and it makes Curse of Doom (especially amplified) a really BIG ticking time bomb. You have to be cautious, however. If, like most players, you pop your trinket at the beginning of a fight so that you can stack an amplified CoD on the target right at the start, you also run the risk of shooting right by your tank's threat level. CoD won't do it (yet...), but the rest of your empowered spells just might. Even though most of our spells are level-loaded when it comes to threat (meaning they generate threat evenly over time), it's always a good idea to let the tank get a few good hits in before you start casting. Let the threat build, pop your trinket, then unleash holy hell. You'll be able to toe the line on the threat much better, and it's less risky overall.
Popping a trinket early is still better than holding off though, as during long fights you'll usually be able to get double the mileage out of them, and on shorter fights your group is clearly geared enough for the encounter, making the bonus redundant. Continue reading 'Entry 3 - Grouping as Affliction'
There's one problem with group combat though, one tiny, nagging little detail that annoys me more than a paladin on his third health bar: trash pulls. In any group situation, you will most likely be asked to perform some kind of CC function (and if you're any good at it, you may actually volunteer to do so rather than trust the shifty-eyed rogue who hasn't said a damn thing since group invites went out) in addition to simply blowing stuff up good. That's fine, you have your trusty Seduce macro that tells your pocket hottie to keep one of the bad things occupied, no sweat. This article isn't about managing Seduce. It's about smashing face.
So you're grouped up, everyone is buffed and ready to go, the healer's soul blissfully stored inside the phylactery---er, soul stone in your pocket, and the tank has dutifully marked up all the targets. Kill order is skull-x-diamond-square, or using more evocative imagery, main tank'd baddie 1, baddie 2, then the sap'd baddie, and finally the ice-trapped one.
Your party consists of a feral tank, a resto shaman, a rogue of ill repute, a hunter who feeds his pet with dead gnomes, and you, spectacular avatar of darkness that you are. How do you intend on dishing out the pain?
In most solo situations, the correct answer would be to load up as many targets in sight with everything in your arsenal (an over-dramatization, of course; warlocks are so powerful that a mere three DOTS is usually sufficient), and laugh as they crumble to dust at your feet. That's not going to fly in this situation.
As an Affliction warlock whose greatest joy (and power) is his DOTs, this can be a bitter pill to swallow, but the truth of the matter is that you are less effective when you are loading up your group targets with tons of damage over time spells, simply for the reason that they will not live long enough for those spells to run their full duration.
Bear in mind, this is generally only true in the 5-mans, normal or heroic, but heroics less so. There are still a few mobs that deserve the full assortment of your pain clocks, such as the fungal giants in Steamvaults, or the Fel Annihilators in Shadow Labyrinth. But most pulls are going to be multi-target pulls, and you can thank your lucky stars that those pulls don't consist of multiple Fel Annihilators. Most mobs under focus fire will not last longer than ten to fifteen seconds.
The most effective solution, I've found, is simply to bite the bullet and revert to a more direct-damage role, as a shadowbolt spammer. There are other blogs than this where more talented writers than I have dissected the numbers associated with this rotation, but let me summarize it for you: the 2.5 second cast time of shadowbolt will deliver nearly the same total damage as a full run of Unstable Affliction, in about a tenth of the time. Spamming shadowbolts will help your group take down focus fire'd mobs faster than a full rotation of DOTs will.
That does not mean all you are supposed to do is stand there spamming though. Oh no. There are at least TWO other things you should be doing while keeping the black pain flowing. First off, you need to manage the proper debuff on your intended target, and second is to maintain CC on whatever mob has been marked for you. In the group composition above, with you being the only offensive spellcaster in the group, you don't have to think about the cumulative effects of either Curse of Shadows or Curse of Elements. There's just you, so the obvious choice is Curse of Shadows. There are some Locks I've run with who attest that even dropping Curse of Shadows on your target is a waste of a global cooldown, and in some cases (e.g. when your group absolutely outgears the instance) that is true. But in most situations, Curse of Shadows is a great opener for several reasons.
First of all, the threat produced by landing a CoS on a target is low, low enough that you won't take aggro from the tank on the pull. Because it does nothing until your first shadowbolt lands, you are effectively delaying 10% additional damage until the tank has had time to build up a threat buffer. That, my friends, is what helps keep happy locks alive. Maybe even more important than CoS on the main target is having CoS on your Seduce target. There is nothing more annoying than having Seduce resisted multiple times, and a single application of CoS as your pet is finishing up the cast can mean all the difference between a Happy Pull and a Sad Pull.
If you'll allow me to theorycraft for a bit, let's imagine the time line of a typical 5-mob encounter. All targets have been marked accordingly, and you've been left with a single humanoid to CC with your succubus. At this point I've selected the CC mob and am simply waiting for the tank to do his thing.
Tank fires off his shot. I quickly hit my seduce macro key, and the succubus, since she was likely out of range, begins running towards the CC target to set up the seduce channel. I am running forward as well, because I want to get in range to cast CoS. The succubus stops and begins casting, I drop CoS, and half a second later the mob has those lovely hearts fluttering out of their soon-to-be-detached head.
I grab the tank's target (/assist Mr. Tank macros work great for this), drop CoS, and then, depending on my sentiments, I may drop Corruption on him too before laying on the Shadowbolts.
But wait, you exclaim, why bother with Corruption? Didn't we establish that the sea-monkey-esque lifespans of these mobs makes DOTs a moot point? Well, yes, for the most part, but Corruption does something that the other DOTs don't: it enables Nightfall, and Nightfall = more Shadowbolts.
Rank 1 Corruption works just as well as the highest rank Corruption in your arsenal for this purpose. Every tick has a chance at sending you into Shadow Trance, which means something is going to eat an instant-cast shadowbolt. Rank 1 is also more mana efficient, and can be dropped on off-tanked targets with almost zero risk of drawing aggro. The tank should be outputting at least enough threat to keep the OT'ed targets off your healer, who will be outputting more global threat than the pitiful damage from rank 1 Corruption.
More Corruption ticks mean more potential Nightfall procs, which makes you a happy warlock, but be warned: even the weakest corruption tick is still enough to break all forms of CC except Fear/Cyclone/Mind Control, so be absolutely sure that your group can handle having one mob immune to most crowd control for the duration of the DOT. If you're not certain, ignore the OT'ed target until it's time to lay into it. You never know when you may need to lock it down.
Beyond the 5-mans, I think you'll find that most mobs can survive long enough to make a heavier DOT commitment more worthwhile. The Skeletal horses in the Karazhan stables, for instance, have a good chunk of hit points that are far more conducive to some serious DOTing, in addition to your shadowbolt spam. Just feel things out; the whole point of this post was to try and show less seasoned Warlocks that, sometimes, it's better to think beyond the basic DOT.
Aren't we splitting hairs a little here though? We're talking 5-man dungeon trash, why would you care about optimal single-target DPS?
Because you're a warlock. For God's sake start acting like the power-crazed shadow caster you're supposed to be and rock that DPS chart.
Seriously though, it's important to understand this because wasting time on a full cadre of DOTs not only kills your mana efficiency, but you are actually gimping your DPS. The whole point here is speed, and as an Affliction lock that isn't exactly your strong suit. Better tailored to burst damage are Felguard talent specs, or the intimidating 0/21/40. That last one in particular can be absolutely crazy, since you basically spam shadowbolts all the time, trash mobs or boss fights, and I hear the damage is disgusting.
When it comes to Boss fights, Affliction really shines. The combination of multiple, powerful DOTs (one of which returns a nice chunk of HP every couple of seconds), Dark Pact/Lifetap, and a steady stream of shadowbolts usually means you'll be threat-capped more often than not. I've actually found that, as my spell damage bonus rose closer to the 1000 point mark, I actually had to start dropping spells from my rotation because I was building threat too fast. Work with your tank, get a good threat meter, and watch it carefully. If you outgear your tank (either with sheer firepower, or more +spell hit than he has +hit), you will be climbing that threat list far more consistently than he can keep up with.
If you do find yourself dangerously close to pulling aggro (Omen's lovely red alarm glow really helps), you've got a decision to make. First, check the timers on the DOTs you have up on the boss. You have to decide whether simply stopping Shadowbolt casts is going to be enough to let the tank pull ahead. Most of the time, especially if you've specced into Improved Drain Soul or you've got a Blessing of Sanctuary on you, you'll be hard pressed to pull aggro from DOTs alone. But in some cases, certainly if your amplified Curse of Doom is about to go off, you're much better off just hitting Soul Shatter and playing it safe.
On exceptionally long fights, it can make sense to preemptively Soul Shatter because it allows you to crank out the DPS faster than you would normally, but the three minute cooldown is highly prohibitive in this regard. It's very likely that if you are putting out enough damage to warrant Soul Shattering early in the fight, you vastly outgear the threat generation capabilities of your tank, and you will definitely need it again before those three minutes are up. In that case, it's probably better to tone down your spell rotation and try to work within the limits of your tank's TPS, leaving Soul Shatter for that moment where you get two unlucky crits in a row, or CoD blows just as you approach 100% of the tank's threat.
On most boss fights, the best opener is almost always an Amplified Curse of Doom, right after you hit your trinkets and have maxed out your +spell damage. The problem with Curse of Doom is that its threat is an absolute spike, versus the more gradual curve of Curse of Agony. On some fights, such as against Blackheart the Inciter or anyone else who resets their aggro table periodically, Curse of Doom can get you in a lot of trouble if it blows right after a threat wipe. Very few tanks are going to be able to crank out enough threat to save your sorry behind if your CoD crit, and you run the risk of getting the healers in trouble as they struggle to keep you alive. In fights of that nature, it's almost better to run with Curse of Agony and take a more gradual approach to damage.
Of course, there's also those few times, those oh so rare but oh so memorable times, when you will delight your group by spawning a Doomguard right after your CoD kills the boss. Yes, this has happened to me before. On Omor the Unscarred in Heroic Hellfire Ramparts, our group had been struggling with the boss through two wipes. On our third attempt, we managed to beat him down fast enough that he was below 10% before our tank finally bit it, and he started taking us out one by one. He dropped me sitting at 2%, leaving just the hunter up, when all of a sudden Curse of Doom detonated, dealing that last 2% of damage. Our cheers where quickly replaced by cries of "WTF IS THAT?!" as a Doomguard came charging out of Omor's smoking corpse and proceeded to crush the lone remaining hunter.
Hilarity ensued. By the time we'd all rezzed and run back, the Doomguard was gone, and we were free to loot. Remember, that caveat on the tooltip isn't just there for looks. Make sure you're group is ready for the potential surprise.
Depending on the length of the fight, it may be in your interests to refresh Curse of Doom once it's gone off the first time, or it may be a better plan to put up Curse of Shadows/Curse of Agony/Curse of Elements, depending on the party make-up. With multiple warlocks, it's always best to let whoever has invested in the improved curse to keep it up, so communicate that amongst yourselves and maximize your cross-functionality. Since it's often impossible to gauge the effectiveness of having Curse of Shadows/Elements up accurately in a PUG, I go by this simple rule of thumb: if two or more party members can benefit from the bonus to either Shadow/Arcane or Fire/Ice, go with the debuff. If it's just you, CoA is probably a better choice.
Why CoD over CoA? I've asked myself this question, and though the damage is actually pretty similar, CoD has a few intangibles going for it that tip the scales in its favor. First of all, it can crit, and whooboy will you know if it does. The screen lights up with huge yellow numbers and the boss, if you didn't pull aggro right then, starts eyeing you with increased vitriol. Second, CoD ticks away for a full minute, versus the 24 seconds of CoA. This means you don't have to refresh it, which means you have at least one more GCD that can be dedicated to Shadowbolts.
Warlocks share some of the same spell theory that shadow priests do; Affliction locks even more so. The key to maximizing DPS on a boss fight is properly refreshing your DOTs, making sure not to overwrite one before it's finished its damage sequence. The reason behind that is the "ticks" of damage; each DOT deals damage periodically, divided along the length of the spell. The last tick always occurs on the last second of the spell. If you refresh the DOT before that last tick has occurred, you are increasing the gap between the previous tick of the old DOT, and the first tick of the new one. The gap can be as long as six seconds in some cases, and that's terrible for your DPS.
It's better to let a DOT expire completely before one gets refreshed. With some of our DOTs, like Unstable Affliction, the cast time should be taken into account when watching the last few seconds of the spell tick away. I try to time it so that my UA finishes casting just as the current UA wears off, catching it just after the debuff actually vanishes. This assures me that I am not overwriting the last tick and getting the most for my mana investment. The instant-cast DOTs are a little easier to manage, as you can throw one back up as soon as you see it drop off. The rest of your time between refreshing DOTs should be spent Shadowbolting if you can stand still long enough to finish the cast. Take advantage of your instant cast DOTs by refreshing them as you reposition, since they can all be cast while running.
One nuance of Affliction that is sometimes hard to get a handle on is our mana management. Everyone is familiar with the longevity granted by Dark Pact when used in conjunction with the other staple, Lifetap. No Affliction warlock should ever find themselves out of mana for very long. My preference is almost always to DP back to full once I've finished two or three DOT rotations; it only takes two Pacts to drain my Imp down to the triple digits. I recommend Pacting early because it gives your Imp time to regenerate his mana, and bless the little bugger, he's usually ready to go again within twenty to thirty seconds. Remember to bring your imp out of phase shift during group buffs so that he can benefit from an Arcane Brilliance or Blessing of Wisdom. If you have any spare Scrolls of Spirit, they aren't a bad buff to throw up yourself if your group is short a paladin.
Lifetap is a little trickier, as it demands more micromanagement than Dark Pact does. Fire off a premature Dark Pact, and the worst thing that happens is you waste a global cooldown. With Lifetap, you are putting additional stress on your healers, or causing yourself excess damage by lifetapping when your mana hasn't drained sufficiently low enough to benefit from the full transfer. For the sake of your group, I recommend something like:
/y Lifetapping. Keep healing the other guy.
/cast Lifetap
This ensures your healers know that the drops in your HP aren't due to some wayward mob, and can respond accordingly with a HoT, or wait until there's a lull on the tank to fire off a proper heal. Affliction warlocks are mostly self-sustaining; between Siphon Life and Drain Life, we can usually recoup all the life lost to lifetap quickly and without any assistance from the party healer. Keeping up a full cadre of Affliction effects on the target helps ensure your Drain Life is receiving the full bonus from Soul Siphon.
The last bit of advice I will try cramming into this entry has to do with trinket use. Any caster worth his or her salt will almost certainly have a spell damage on-use trinket, which provides a temporary boost in firepower (usually on a 2 min cooldown, sometimes sharing a CD with your other trinket). This can be wonderful during boss fights because it provides an appreciative boost to DPS. You could argue that it tends to help Warlocks more than Mages simply because we can stack so many damage over time spells, each of which gets a significant boost out of the bonus. It certainly doesn't hurt shadowbolt either, and it makes Curse of Doom (especially amplified) a really BIG ticking time bomb. You have to be cautious, however. If, like most players, you pop your trinket at the beginning of a fight so that you can stack an amplified CoD on the target right at the start, you also run the risk of shooting right by your tank's threat level. CoD won't do it (yet...), but the rest of your empowered spells just might. Even though most of our spells are level-loaded when it comes to threat (meaning they generate threat evenly over time), it's always a good idea to let the tank get a few good hits in before you start casting. Let the threat build, pop your trinket, then unleash holy hell. You'll be able to toe the line on the threat much better, and it's less risky overall.
Popping a trinket early is still better than holding off though, as during long fights you'll usually be able to get double the mileage out of them, and on shorter fights your group is clearly geared enough for the encounter, making the bonus redundant. Continue reading 'Entry 3 - Grouping as Affliction'
Entry 2 - The Early Years
It's been so very, very long since I've contemplated those first few seasons after I undertook the calling of the Warlock, so bear with me if I stumble along.
The decision to be a warlock was a simple one. Of all the classes I could have chosen, this one appealed to me from a pure ascetic sense. Having known no other worlds besides Azeroth, I was not swayed by the notions of role or mechanism that some of my contemporaries were. I just wanted to jump as far into the dark as I could. Good, justice, all that is fine and dandy, but we all know that evil has more fun.
The first spell at my disposal was shadowbolt. Oh the carnage I have wrecked with shadowbolt! As a young warlock I became completely focused on that one spell, to the point (and I am humbled to admit) of neglecting almost all of my militant skills. Where other warlocks might have bolted once to draw the enemy in before finishing them off with a dagger stab, I would attempt to obliterate things with shadowbolt until they were little more than black stains on the landscape, heedless of the pounding I was receiving and the strains it placed on my mana reserves.
Looking back, I think that I suffered under a painful misconception of the role of my class. Having been given shadowbolt to start with, I believed that a warlock killed things by hurling magic at them, like a mage. Even when I learned the later spells of Immolate, Curse of Agony and the like, still I failed to understand the mechanism of damage over time.
Gaining my voidwalker helped shift my perspective a little, after I realized that hurling shadowbolts endlessly at something was a surefire way of drawing its attention. Using the DOTs gave me more leeway, but the voiwalker always seemed to loose aggro anyway. At this time I was leading with Immolate because of the cast time and front-loaded damage, not realizing at the time the nature of threat, and actually working against my Voidwalker's attempts to keep my squishy self unharmed.
Around the same time, I got access to my first few talent points. Remember when I mentioned misconceptions about direct damage spells? I'll bet you can guess where this budding warlock put his talent points! I started speccing into destruction almost immediately, going for what I thought at the time was a more potent set of tools for taking down my enemies. And in many cases, that statement is true. Destruction is incredibly good at dealing damage quickly to a single target, but it leaves the warlock drained, and requires significantly more downtime between enemies than either Affliction or Demonology.
A small caveat, to help me save face; this was WELL before the revamp of the demonology tree, and the introduction of Master Demonologist and a constant Soul Link. Despite my inexperience, I believe I had guessed correctly, at the time, that Demonology was was least appealing of the three talent trees.
I'm not sure how many other warlocks made the same choice I made in their early years, but I'd be curious to know. I sincerely wonder if my shadowbolt-induced tunnel vision was unique to my experience, or something others can relate to. Has there ever been a class skill that has totally skewed your opinions of your class? Has this changed over time, or have you stuck to your first instincts?
I can say for certain that, over time, I realized that destruction just wasn't cutting it for me. I actually went as far as Conflagrate before I made the switch to Affliction though. if that gives you any indication of my mental state. I 'may' have had the foresight to put 5 points into Improved Corruption, but I can't be certain. More likely I just dumped every talent point into Destruction until I hit the max tier. I'm not sure exactly what sparked my desire to switch specs, but at the time I was becoming more and more involved in the forums, I was more interested in various aspects of Theorycrafting, and was starting to notice the disparity between my play experience and that reported by my peers.
With not a little hesitation, I unlearned all my talents (my, what an uncomfortably naked feeling that is the first time, coupled with some irrational fear that the game will glitch and you'll never get those points back) and respec'd into Affliction. I've been kicking myself for my initial decision ever since, as my grinding efficiency went through the roof (comparatively speaking). Since then I've switched talents numerous times, trying out the update to Demonology, going full into Felguard at the outset of the Burning Crusade, and then switching back into Affliction at 70. To date though, I have never gone back to Destruction beyond the arguably essential 11 point initial investment. I'm not sure I'm willing to call it an aversion, per se, but I think I'd miss the versatility of the other builds. Continue reading 'Entry 2 - The Early Years'
The decision to be a warlock was a simple one. Of all the classes I could have chosen, this one appealed to me from a pure ascetic sense. Having known no other worlds besides Azeroth, I was not swayed by the notions of role or mechanism that some of my contemporaries were. I just wanted to jump as far into the dark as I could. Good, justice, all that is fine and dandy, but we all know that evil has more fun.
The first spell at my disposal was shadowbolt. Oh the carnage I have wrecked with shadowbolt! As a young warlock I became completely focused on that one spell, to the point (and I am humbled to admit) of neglecting almost all of my militant skills. Where other warlocks might have bolted once to draw the enemy in before finishing them off with a dagger stab, I would attempt to obliterate things with shadowbolt until they were little more than black stains on the landscape, heedless of the pounding I was receiving and the strains it placed on my mana reserves.
Looking back, I think that I suffered under a painful misconception of the role of my class. Having been given shadowbolt to start with, I believed that a warlock killed things by hurling magic at them, like a mage. Even when I learned the later spells of Immolate, Curse of Agony and the like, still I failed to understand the mechanism of damage over time.
Gaining my voidwalker helped shift my perspective a little, after I realized that hurling shadowbolts endlessly at something was a surefire way of drawing its attention. Using the DOTs gave me more leeway, but the voiwalker always seemed to loose aggro anyway. At this time I was leading with Immolate because of the cast time and front-loaded damage, not realizing at the time the nature of threat, and actually working against my Voidwalker's attempts to keep my squishy self unharmed.
Around the same time, I got access to my first few talent points. Remember when I mentioned misconceptions about direct damage spells? I'll bet you can guess where this budding warlock put his talent points! I started speccing into destruction almost immediately, going for what I thought at the time was a more potent set of tools for taking down my enemies. And in many cases, that statement is true. Destruction is incredibly good at dealing damage quickly to a single target, but it leaves the warlock drained, and requires significantly more downtime between enemies than either Affliction or Demonology.
A small caveat, to help me save face; this was WELL before the revamp of the demonology tree, and the introduction of Master Demonologist and a constant Soul Link. Despite my inexperience, I believe I had guessed correctly, at the time, that Demonology was was least appealing of the three talent trees.
I'm not sure how many other warlocks made the same choice I made in their early years, but I'd be curious to know. I sincerely wonder if my shadowbolt-induced tunnel vision was unique to my experience, or something others can relate to. Has there ever been a class skill that has totally skewed your opinions of your class? Has this changed over time, or have you stuck to your first instincts?
I can say for certain that, over time, I realized that destruction just wasn't cutting it for me. I actually went as far as Conflagrate before I made the switch to Affliction though. if that gives you any indication of my mental state. I 'may' have had the foresight to put 5 points into Improved Corruption, but I can't be certain. More likely I just dumped every talent point into Destruction until I hit the max tier. I'm not sure exactly what sparked my desire to switch specs, but at the time I was becoming more and more involved in the forums, I was more interested in various aspects of Theorycrafting, and was starting to notice the disparity between my play experience and that reported by my peers.
With not a little hesitation, I unlearned all my talents (my, what an uncomfortably naked feeling that is the first time, coupled with some irrational fear that the game will glitch and you'll never get those points back) and respec'd into Affliction. I've been kicking myself for my initial decision ever since, as my grinding efficiency went through the roof (comparatively speaking). Since then I've switched talents numerous times, trying out the update to Demonology, going full into Felguard at the outset of the Burning Crusade, and then switching back into Affliction at 70. To date though, I have never gone back to Destruction beyond the arguably essential 11 point initial investment. I'm not sure I'm willing to call it an aversion, per se, but I think I'd miss the versatility of the other builds. Continue reading 'Entry 2 - The Early Years'
Entry 1 - Introduction
Hello. Welcome to my hovel. It's rather small, I'll admit, but there's ample space for what I need here. I'm not as young as I used to be, you see, and I've found that my adventures leave me far more taxed than they used to. A corpse as old as mine needs its rest, and as luck would have it, I managed to persuade the old tenant of this mausoleum that it was time to move on.
Please be mindful of the bones on your way out. I wouldn't want my first guest to trip and hurt themselves on account of the loaf who let this place fall into such disrepair.
This is where I come to gather my thoughts after a long week in the services of my brethren, the Shadows of the Nethrezim. They are a likable lot, though they do tend to get a little carried away sometimes. I suppose having a Dreadlord's mandate hanging over your head will do that, but that's neither here nor there. We were talking about me.
I've been a warlock now for as long as I can remember. My memories of the time before my present...malady...set in are foggy at best, so please do not press me for those details. For over seventy seasons I have been studying the path of shadow and flame, to varying degrees of success, but recently I've begun to perceive the future with far more uncertainty than is my wont. I've already mentioned the fatigue, but there is more. The magic doesn't flow as easily as it once did. It seems to take more effort every day to get up and will this dead body of mine forward. I've begun to hear things, dark things...echoing in my head...
...but I digress. You didn't come here for my life story. You came here for a bit of knowledge, some scrap of lore, a glimpse of insight. Well. I'd hate to disappoint you, but I'm afraid it would be very unwise for you to put much faith in the prattling of this humble undead. I'm no guru, no prophet. The best I can do is tell you of the road I walked, and let you see where the largest stones and deepest potholes are. I pray you make better decisions than I did.
If that will suffice, then I will be happy to oblige you. Talking, it seems, remains one of the few things that does not wear me out too swiftly as of yet. So make camp, start up a fire if you are chilled, and we shall have palaver. Feel free to interrupt if I begin to stray, my attention span is not what it used to be.
By the way, my name is Ferenczys. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Continue reading 'Entry 1 - Introduction'
Please be mindful of the bones on your way out. I wouldn't want my first guest to trip and hurt themselves on account of the loaf who let this place fall into such disrepair.
This is where I come to gather my thoughts after a long week in the services of my brethren, the Shadows of the Nethrezim. They are a likable lot, though they do tend to get a little carried away sometimes. I suppose having a Dreadlord's mandate hanging over your head will do that, but that's neither here nor there. We were talking about me.
I've been a warlock now for as long as I can remember. My memories of the time before my present...malady...set in are foggy at best, so please do not press me for those details. For over seventy seasons I have been studying the path of shadow and flame, to varying degrees of success, but recently I've begun to perceive the future with far more uncertainty than is my wont. I've already mentioned the fatigue, but there is more. The magic doesn't flow as easily as it once did. It seems to take more effort every day to get up and will this dead body of mine forward. I've begun to hear things, dark things...echoing in my head...
...but I digress. You didn't come here for my life story. You came here for a bit of knowledge, some scrap of lore, a glimpse of insight. Well. I'd hate to disappoint you, but I'm afraid it would be very unwise for you to put much faith in the prattling of this humble undead. I'm no guru, no prophet. The best I can do is tell you of the road I walked, and let you see where the largest stones and deepest potholes are. I pray you make better decisions than I did.
If that will suffice, then I will be happy to oblige you. Talking, it seems, remains one of the few things that does not wear me out too swiftly as of yet. So make camp, start up a fire if you are chilled, and we shall have palaver. Feel free to interrupt if I begin to stray, my attention span is not what it used to be.
By the way, my name is Ferenczys. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Continue reading 'Entry 1 - Introduction'
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