Shastarian. Not quite as evil as a Murloc. But close.

Gah! I hate Drama. Kinda thought that I had left it behind when I left school, you know, but mustn’t be just a kid-thing. I totally wish I could set images as my /afk or /dnd message for when WoW-drama affects my gametime. I’d use this one:

Image courtesy of http://www.cyclonefanatic.com/forum/cf-archive-bin/5193-emus-kangaroos-cannot-walk-backwards.html/

Bonus points if you get the funny.

Friday night saw yet another Karazhan run for us Void-ies, but a little differently this time. Instead of going with our usual group makeup that consists of Group 2 having alot of the people who need gear from Kara and only a few who don’t, we decided to run one scheduled group of all ‘Kara Vets’: people who know the place, know the fights.

There’s nothing more annoying than running from one fight to another and having people demanding warlock summons because they are lost. We have asked everyone to go in after a full clear and get to know the place. Most of the running around that you do for the quests in there will have you finding out how to get to point B from point A, so I don’t understand why people still don’t know which way to turn once they get out from behind the bookcase that leads to Illhoof, or after Aran.

So we made our “Veterans” group, some of whom I hadn’t run with in awhile, but who’s skills and abilities I didn’t question one bit. First pull was on time (for once) at 7:30pm, and we were off!

No Paladins at all, so we didn’t have Blessing of Salvation at all. Bummer, must remember to watch the aggro carefully. As it turned out, that aspect wasn’t a problem at all, since our tanks are totally awesome and can build up enough threat to let us DPSers let loose.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bosses fell left, right and center. We got Curator down totally before he finished his first Evocation, which we were all excited about. An accidental pull of Aran before we were all ready saw a wipe, but we regrouped and knocked that sucka down! And at 11:30pm, a mere 3 hours4 hours (thanks Moz) after our first pull, we saw Nightbane hit the dust and yield up his loot. All bosses down (we don’t count the animal bosses), spirits high!

If it wasn’t for the fact that we had a scheduled run of Zul Aman on Saturday night, we would have powered on through that. But it was all good. Someone suggested Heroic MgT, and when I confessed that I hadn’t finished that instance on Normal, we powered through that, too! We ran out of time to do it on Heroic, but no matter; I finally got that quest finished and attuned.

Saturday night, I had bought my flasks/consumables/etc and was ready to go, but was skipped over in favour of the organiser’s friends who wanted to come along. I was, to put it midly, pissed off. I ended up doing my dailies and them bumming around on my shaman and rogue while I calmed down.

Seriously thinking of respeccing to Felguard and not letting myself spec back to Aff for a few weeks. Everytime I give him a go, I get bored, he feels clunky, so I go back to Aff. Depending on what kind of mood I’m in this evening, I think I might end up bringing Haaghun out from retirement.

Funny note: I have made myself a Runecloth Robe, that suits my SSO Tabard really well. I saw out that my robe (minus Tabard) matches the Clerics in the Chess event exactly, and all I am missing to look just like them is a white chapeau. Any ideas on where I can pick on of those up? (The one from SM is red *cry*)
Edit: image below:

As I was RSS Reader-hopping this afternoon at work to make the day go by faster, I noticed a post on WoW Insider about the WotLK beta Patch Notes.
I have made an effort to wipe up the drool and copy for you here the part that pertains to Warlockery (any emphasis is mine):

Warlock

* Aftermath (Destruction) - Now a 2-point talent, down from 5.
* All demon abilities and spells will automatically be learned as pets gain levels. Demon Master trainers will be removed.
* Blood Pact now works raid-wide (not just in party).
* Cataclysm (Destruction) - Now also increases your chance to hit with Destruction spells by 1% per point.
* Curse of Recklessness will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).[Shastarian: boo! No more Fear-kiting in Instances!]
* Dark Pact: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
* Demon Armor - Now increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%, but no longer has in-combat health regeneration.
* Demon Skin, Demon Armor and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
* Fel Armor - Now increases your spell damage equal to 30% of your total Spirit, but no longer increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%.
* Fel Stamina (Demonology) has been merged with Fel Intellect into Fel Vitality.
* Howl of Terror now costs 15% of base mana.
* Improved Curse of Weakness (Affliction) is now “Frailty” - Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness spell by 10/20%, and increases the amount of armor reduced by your Curse of Recklessness by 10/20%.
* Improved Enslave Demon (Demonology) is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4.
* Improved Lash of Pain (Destruction) and Improved Firebolt (Destruction) have been merged into one talent, Demonic Power.
* Improved Shadow Bolt (Destruction) - Now increases damage by your next Shadow damage spells by 3/6/9/12/15%, down from 4/8/12/16/20%.
* Mana Feed: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
* Master Demonologist – Felguard (Demonology) - Now increases all damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and reduces all damage done to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Master Demonologist – Imp (Demonology) - Now increases Fire damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Fire spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Master Demonologist – Succubus (Demonology) - Now increases Shadow damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Shadow spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Master Demonologist (Demonology) - Most effects have been altered.
* New Talent: Demonic Empowerment (Demonology) - Grants your Summoned Demon power for a short time.
* New Talent: Eradication (Affliction) - Your Corruption, Siphon Life and Curse of Agony ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to increase your spell haste by 20% for 8 sec. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.
* New Talent: Molten Core (Destruction) - Your Shadow spells and damage over time effects have a 5/10/15% chance to increase the damage of your Fire spells by 10% for 6 sec.
* Pyroclasm (Destruction) - Now also includes Conflagrate.
* Shadowfury (Destruction) - Can now be cast while moving. Stun duration increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.
* Soul Link (Demonology) is now an 11-point talent (used to be a 31-point talent), but the 5% bonus damage from this talent has been removed. In addition, the damage absorbed by Soul Link is now 15%, down from 20%.
* Soul Siphon (Affliction): Now also increases the damage of your Drain Soul.
* Suppression (Affliction) is now a 3-point talent, down from 5. Now increases your chance to hit with Affliction spells by 1/2/3%, down from 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Unstable Affliction (Affliction): Silence effect reduced to 3 seconds, down from 5.

And also:

The combat log now differentiates between a spell failure due to resistance and spell failure due to missing the target. Where once both events reported as a resist; a spell missing the target is now reported as a miss.

I really, really, REALLY want to get in on this beta!

On the Warlocks Den forums, I found an interesting post the other day that got me thinking. The forum post is found here: http://wowmb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26423&highlight=Affliction. Essentially, CanadianPimp talks about using WWS to work out where you are lacking in a fight, what you missed out on doing, etc. I wanted to focus on one point that he made, and that is: DoT Uptime.

(Using my WWS Report thats found here http://wowwebstats.com/qe1yqf4ls4zdk) as a working example.

Looking at the above image, we can see that my DPS time was 4 minutes and 45 seconds. This translates into 285 seconds.
All DoTs tick every 3 seconds, so we divide the number of seconds by 3 to see how many ticks we should have.

285 / 3 = 95

Now we look at the actual amount of DoT ticks I had, per DoT:

Corruption: 89 [93.6%]
Siphon Life: 92 [96.8%]
Unstable Affliction: 87 [91.5%]

In a perfect world, all these DoTs would have had 95 ticks, however, circumstances do change. Two Dots might finish at the same time, one might finish in the middle of a ShadowBolt cast, or during a GCD. I am happy enough with these results, even though I do understand that they are not a real world example. I will be recording all Boss Fights from here out, and will attempt to analyse them in the same way.

What is a good number to aim for? I can’t really answer that, since I haven’t collected any actual boss-fight data, and I dont want to use just my Dr Boom test. Currently, I am going to be aiming for a 90% DoT Uptime, since that’s my bread and butter as Affliction. I won’t cancel a current SB cast to refresh a DoT, nor will I refresh a DoT that hasn’t expired yet. I was fortunate in this test in that I rarely got two DoTs finishing at the same time. I will see tonight before shutdown what happens when I introduce Immolate into the equation.

Something wrong with my math? Did I assume and make an ass of myself? Let me know!

As you may have read around the internets, the biggest DPS spec for raiding warlocks is the DS/SnF spec. This goes into the Demonology tree far enough to get Demonic Sacrifice, and takes the other 40 points in the Destruction tree, ending up with 5/5 in Shadow and Flame. The basis behind this spec is to sacrifice your Succubus for the 15% Shadow damage boost, and spam Shadowbolts all day long (with the obligatory Curse of Shadows). I have been an Aff-lock for a long time now, occasionally flirting with a Felguard spec, but I haven’t had the guts to try the DS/SnF spec, fearing my crit chance wasn’t high enough (at a self-buffed afflock spec of 11.39%, I am right).

Last night, I had nothing important to do after dailies, so I headed out to Dr. Boom and proceeded to wail away.

The parameters I had set for myself were:

1. Only curse with Curse of Shadows
2. Only Shadow spells to be used
3. Test will run for the duration of one (1) Curse of Shadows (5 minutes)
4. DS/SnF spec will be 0/21/40 - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZbxszIbzZEx0tr0khhi
5. Afflock spec will be 41/2/18 - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IVMrcRctVtcokZxx0tM [Edit: fixed]

DS/SnF

This test was probably the least Real-World in my eyes, as I didn’t move from my safe spot in the entire 5 minutes. In theory, it would also be the most boring, too, but the reality was I was squeaking over Vent about my 5600 Shadowbolt crits, especially when I crit two or even three times in a row. With the DS/SnF spec, my crit got up to just over 14%, which is still waaaaay too low.
Link to WWS Report
The problem with this test is that WWS shows the fight going for 9 minutes. I had a false start and ended up waiting for a long time for an Orc Hunter to kill him off, but after a few minutes I realised that it wouldn’t make any difference if he was attacking the good Doctor at the same time.
DPS: 870
SB%: 100%
Crit%: 17%
Miss: 3.8%

Afflock

Normally, I include Immolate in my rotation, but for this test, I wanted only to use Shadow spells. Affliction has the additional bonus to the Curse of Shadows, making it 13% instead of the normal 10% increase to shadow damage. In my Affliction spec, I have Dark Pact (less healing from Life Taps required) and I still have Improved Shadow Bolt.
Link to WWS Report
I have had the most experience with this style of fighting. Most of my DoTs are Instant cast, meaning I can cast them on the run, if I need to be.
DPS: 823
SB%: 53%
Crit%: 15%
Miss: 0

Conclusion

For an increase of 47DPS, I make myself more vunerable to lost DPS in mobile fights, lose alot of raid buffs/debuffs. At my current gear level, I will be staying Afflock specced (and to be honest, if I can raid in Tier 5/6 raids as Affliction, I will). Although, I will be recording data from boss fights as much as I can from now on, so I may find that DS/SnF is better in the long term.

PS: An interesting thing to note is that as DS/SnF, my tooltip crit chance is 14.56%, and WWS showed me critting 17% of the time. Whereas as Affliction, my tooltip crit is 11.39% and WWS said I critted 15% of the time (granted, I cast less SBs as Aff than DS/SnF).

Newly-minted level 70 Warlocks are generally wanting to run Karazhan and Heroics straight away, in order to get “teh phat purp lewtz”. But unless you have been doing your research and gearing for these events in your travels to hit the level cap, you aren’t ready.

It’s been explained in alot of places, by lots of people. WowWiki has a good write up on it, found here. In essence, though, Warlocks are going to want to have a +Spell Hit Rating of 202 to reach the ‘cap’ (Against a level 73 raid boss, you have a 17% chance to miss. 202 HR gives you +16% chance to hit, leaving the unavaiodable 1% to miss). Affliction Warlocks can put 5/5 into Suppression, a Tier-1 Affliction talent, but this only affects Affliction spells (Curses, Corruption, Drains, etc). Now, you can go into Kara without having hit this cap, but you should gear for spell hit first and foremost, because it does most definately improve your DPS; whatever spec you may be.

I have been striving to hit the cap, gemming everything I have that has a socket with +8 Spell hit gems, and slowly obtaining gear that brings me up. On Friday night, I got the last piece of gear that brings me to the lofty peaks of Spell Hit Rating.

Moroes was kind enough to drop Brooch of Unquenchable Fury, which has a healthy +spell hit rating of 15. Combined with my gems and my Jewel of Infinite Possibilities, I now have 206 spell hit rating (slightly over the cap).

I am not going to be re-gemming my gear anytime soon, because until I get more gear that has +spell hit, if I take out a +8 spell hit gem, then I go below the cap again, and I am worse of than I am now. However, my main focus is now changed to be +spell crit and +spell damage (and maybe +spell haste). My low, low crit rating of 11.30% is shocking, so I won’t be able to try out the Shadow Mage spec just yet, but soon, with some ZA, TK and SSC runs, I could be in a position to start killing off my Succubus.

Sorry for not writing much of late, have had things crop up both at work and at home that have prevented me from doing anything interesting enough to write about. Sure, I could describe how I do my dailies, since that’s about all I can commit to doing on WoW, but it wouldn’t be very interesting to most people.

I did get pulled into a Magtheridon attempt on Friday night, and was one of only two warlocks there. Both of us kept getting yelled at for not taking care of the Infernals, even though we tried to explain that we can only Banish one at a time, and Fear one at a time, and that doing this eats into our DPS considerably. As this was a guild/pug group, due to us not having the numbers on the night, we kept having difficulty taking down the last two warlocks, and the main tank wasn’t grabbing aggro from Mags fast enough, so he always went for a healer as soon as he released. Not a fun time, really. Hopefully, we can get a few more guildies to come with next time, who understand each others skills and limitations.

I have been levelling my baby shaman up, with the intent of having her as a raid healer at 70. Currently, she is Elemental spec, but at level 40 I want to take her to Enhancement with Duel Wield. Once I have done my dailies (or all the dailies I can stand to do) on Shastarian, I generally log onto her for an hour or so until RL intervenes.

Patch 2.4.3? I dunno, let’s see what the FINAL patch notes are. I will be holding off buying my shaman her mount, even if she hits 40 before the patch comes out, just for the chance of a reduction in mount training cost. That’s about all that interests me (I am unsure if the CoS/CoEl change will stay).

Thanks for sticking with me over this break. I promise you that I will try and do something interesting enough to write about in the future. Maybe even try my hand at some Pee Vee Pee!

Since hitting level 70 with Shastarian, I have been looking forwards to raiding. Having never had to opportunity to raid pre-Burning Crusade, I was very excited about seeing Karazhan: not so much for the loot, but for the chance to see content that some people wouldn’t see. Obviously, Karazhan is no Mount Hyjal or Sunwell Plateau, but still, it was exciting. I didn’t stop giggling from entering the gates for the first time, all the way through downing Attumen and getting my first piece of epic-quality loot, and even through the 4 or 5 wipes on Moroes before calling it, until about 3 days later.

Having been through Karazhan many times since then, and being able to confidently down every boss (save Nightbane) each week, I can still say that going to Kara is just as exciting as it was way back then.

Every gearing guide I have read says that the priority for stats for the raiding Warlock are something like the following (assuming Affliction spec):
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Last night, I went through Zul’Gurub on my level 64 rogue with his guild for a non-serious, fun raid. We had a few level 70’s, and a mish-mash of people from 62+. It was more focused on giving people who haven’t had a chance to raid yet a chance to see what it’s like. It was also my first experience with raiding on my rogue, as well as raiding with this guild. I was curious to see how it would go.

Zul’Gurub is a level 60+, 25-man raid instance in Stranglethorn Vale. It’s much like Zul’Farrak, in that it’s Troll based, and an outdoor instance, so mounting is available. It also has ties, lore-wise, to Sunken Temple, but that’s neither here nor there. For strategies, lore and other information, go check out wowwiki.com/ZG

Most of the mobs are level 60-62, as is the norm with a raid instance set for level 60’s. I had no issues with hitting these guys (being level 64 and having enough +Hit raiting), although some of them were able to resist my poisons pretty well. We didn’t have any troubles with our DPS or healing, although the tank was finding it difficult to hold aggro. We didn’t down every single boss, and alot of the raid died to Hakkar (deciding to DPS him down quick instead of getting poisoned and doing it the normal way). In any event, a fun time was had by all.

We had a level 70 warlock with us who was carrying some gear that made me scratch my head. I didn’t want to talk to him about it, since I haven’t been with this guild for very long and don’t want to come across as a know-it-all, but maybe I should.

This warlock has a mixture of quest greens and blues for gear. Their mainhand weapon is a sword, which is fair enough. Shastarian Herself ran with the Greatsword from Murmur for awhile before getting her Mindblade.
This sword, however, was this: Edge of the Cosmos. With an Icy enchant.

About the only time I ever melee since level 10 or so is during Kara, with those annoying mobs after Curator who you can’t cast spells on. Sometimes I’ll whale on a banished mob, just to be funny, but I won’t go out of my way to gear for melee. I don’t know of any warlock who does. If we wanted to be melee casters, we would have rolled shaman.

Now, to be fair, I haven’t spoken with this warlock about it. He may have a very nice caster weapon that he uses for important stuff, and just pulls this Edge out for silly occasions. I myself am planning on roll on the Suneater from Heroic Mechanar if I am ever there with a group who doesnt need it (one of our tanks has ground his way to Exalted by running through there, waiting for it to drop, so if I can get it, I will tease him with it) but I certainly wont be trying to raid with it, or even do my dailies.

What would you do in a situation like this? It doesn’t directly affect me, since I don’t raid with this guild (yet) on my warlock, but I do feel a responsibility to help this warlock learn abit more about his class. Im confused. Any ideas?

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, we have been kept quite busy on the home front, and when I get a chance to spend some time on the computer, I tend to actually play rather than blog. Hopefully, I can change that situation in the near future.

With the exception of the previously-mentioned Quagmirran’s Eye trinket, I am now fully epic’d out. I only had a few pieces of gear to obtain for me to get to this position, and I collected them in various ways over the weekend.

Friday Night - Karazhan

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