Healer’s meme revisited February 9, 2010

 
Miss Medicinia called out for those of us who filled out the healer meme thing a while back to go back and revisit what we had posted before.  So without further adieu:

The New Questions:

1. Reread your original answers to the questions. With the benefit of hindsight, score your own work in terms of its cringeworthiness.

Wow I was a nub.  I got my stats wrong and was completely ignorant about tank healing as a tree.  At the time I wrote that I was still fairly new to tree healing, now I feel like I have the hang of it.  The majority of that post was cringeworthy.  So yeah, don’t go back and read it for info guys, I fail. >.>

2. Has your class’s healing improved in the area you identified as its weakest?

I mentioned that I sucked as a tank healer and that I was all about raid healing.  Yeah sooo very wrong.  We are still working out the kinks in our healing strat for ICC, but it looks like I will be healing the OT and back up raid healing.  I have figured out how to lifebloom correctly and now use Regrowth when tank healing.  I still have my “oh shit” NS + HT macro, but I use swiftmend more often with better results.  I am currently working on using that whenever it is off cooldown.

3. Have you changed your “least favoured class to heal with”?

At the time I answered this question I had only just started playing with Heleva and her Disc priest.  I was used to just working with Vel and his resto shammy.  Now that I have done several raids with her I feel like I can understand her a bit better.  I use my HoTs with her bubbles to the full effect that I can.  I think once we get the new tank healing situation under control and work with it enough we will be an unstoppable healing machine.

I no longer have an least favorite.  There is just my jealousy of Vel’s 14-18k crits on his heals.  I’m thrilled when I see an 11k crit.

4. Did you read the entries from others in the webring, especially your class?

I have to admit that I did not.  The only ones I remember that I read were from Ilikebubbles and Miss Medicinia.  I think I might have read a few others, but I honestly cannot remember.  I know that since then I have found other tree blogs and priest blogs.  My blog roll exploded after that meme.

5. If Yes to #4, did you learn anything that made you a better healer?

Actually yes.  I learned what I actually needed to gear for.  What the raiding rotation should be and how to fulfill roles I previously thought I couldn’t.

6. What tools/resources or information do you think you would need to improve as a healer and how could that help the community at large?

I need to push myself more and learn where I can truly excel.  Up until we started raiding ICC, I didn’t have that much to do.  Healing raids was actually kind of boring.  Now I am being challenged and actually have to pay attention to what I am doing.  I went oom!  Several times!  I am a tree!  We aren’t supposed to go oom!  I have since fixed the issue, but now I find I am actually thinking about which spell to use and how often to use it.

I think most healers just need to be able to practice in something that will provide a challenge.  Most of the time healing in raids turns into the boring whack-a-mole that we all know and love and we get lazy.  I am very happy to see that ICC is bringing the healing challenges we need.

Most new trees were like me and confused to what we need.  Something like Lissanna’s blog with her awesome guides, but more leaning towards raiding.  Her guide is fantastic for beginning trees, but something that leans towards making sure the trees have a challenge.  Let’s face it, trees are OP, we need something to keep us on our toes.

7. What did you identify as your worst habit as a healer? Have you improved in this area?

I said overhealing.  This is still an issue, but it is something that I am actively working on.  Trees should never go oom .  I don’t know how much I have actually improved since it is a work in progress, but I think there might actually be some improvement.  I am still horrible about clipping and overhealing over my HoTs.  I put them up just to get a bigger Nourish; which is pretty bad.  I am working on it though!

8. What did you list as your favorite healing spell and your least used healing spell for your class? Are these answers still true? If they have changed, what caused the change (i.e. patch fix, different healing environment, etc)?

My favorite spell is still Rejuv.  I think I have finally gotten used to the quicker ticks thanks to the glyph, but I still find myself wanting to spam Nourish.  It has gotten better in 5 mans though.  99% of the time I pop one Rejuv on the tank and then go make a sammich.  It heals for ridiculous amounts of healing.

The least used healing spell I listed was Regrowth.  Since I have started healing the tanks I have found I use it a lot more.  It is usually one of the first spells I put on them.  Yes Lifebloom goes on faster but Regrowth lasts longer.

I used to never use Tranquility either, now I actively try to find a time when I can use it.  I like to think that I helped save us all by using it.  It might not be the case, but I can dream right?

Well those are my replies.  If you participated and now read my blog go post your answers!  You can post them here, in your own blog or over at Miss Medicinia’s place.   Happy healing!

Weekend recap February 8, 2010

EoF went back into ICC this weekend.  We got lucky and our fearless leader (note, not me) Misneach was able to come tank for us.  It was nice having him around to crack dirty jokes and take a beating for the team.  We miss you Mis!  Come back more often!

Last week we 2 shot Marrowgar; this week we wiped, then wiped, then wiped some more.  As Orange so nicely put it “that happens when you change strats.”  Well it also happens when you change tanks as well.  Last week we had Auralio on his pally tank and a pug DK (we did Ony with him and kind of “made” him tank ICC) and the two of them were really good together; This week we had Mis and Dily on his pally.  Andrew briefly made an appearance on his pally, but we decided that we needed his rogue’s dps more and he switched back.  Last week we wiped the first time due to positioning and people not knowing the fight yet, then managed to kill him on our second attempt.  This week we tried the “stack on him to avoid the coldflame” gimmick thing.  From what I am being told this is only something you can do in 10 man.  I will be the first to say I don’t like this strat.  Want to know why?  Because I ate half of the cleave thingy he does instead of one of the tanks.  They moved him around so much that frankly I am not surprised more people didn’t get wacked.  Yes it made it nice for the bone spikes, but only our melee seem to be taking them down.  That bothers me.  When it is announced “Get so-and-so off the bone spike” that means everyone, not just the rogue and shammy. *sigh*  We also had problems with the tanks being stuck together.  Many jokes were made.  I do have to laugh though.  They didn’t start sticking together until after the Brokeback Mountain jokes were made.  Guys is there something you aren’t telling us?   We finally manged to take him down after we said to hell with the strat and Andrew yelled at us to just have some situational awareness and stay out of the fire.

Vel has been dealing with a bunch of health related things so he had to leave after the first fight.  Luckily the PuG we had in the group was main specced for healing holy and just had shadow as an off spec.  Another guildie also happened to log online right at that time too.  He wanted to bring his warrior, but we made him bring his hunter.  He was pissed until the bow dropped off Lady D.  Silly Mat.

I was so very proud of the group in Lady D.  We managed to 2 shot her.  Last week we wiped so many times I lost count.  This week we had the first attempt where we hit her enrage.  We ended up taking too long to take down the adds and not enough DPS was focused on her shield.  The second time around we nailed it.  We had like 30 seconds left until her enrage.  In fact I was running around panicking that we were going to wipe when suddenly she was dead.  Go us!  I think on top of the bow she dropped the plate chest which Dily nabbed.  Mis got the weapon from Marrowgar.  I can’t remember what else dropped off the first boss, I think some kind of caster thingy.  I think the pug priest won it.

We went upwards to the airship only to be reminded of the raid weekly.  We picked it up and it was the frost giant.  That fucker is hard.  We wiped on the trash before him then on him before going to the gunship battle.  Of course we had to play with the rocket packs.  We had 2 people who had never been there before.  They had to experience the joy that is the rocket pack.  I am not quite sure why we wiped the first time.  I know it was because Mis died on the other ship, but I wasn’t sure why he died.  He might have just gotten out of range of Kate.  On our second attempt we didn’t have a single death.  In fact I think on each fight where we didn’t wipe we didn’t have any deaths.  At least none that I was aware of.  Andrew got a nifty axe for his rogue.  As soon as I linked it he had rolled.  LOL.  The other item was a caster leather belt.  I had the 264 badge one already but this one had more crit on it and I took it for off spec.  I have enough haste as a boomkin.  I just don’t have enough as a tree.  WTB more haste PST!  I think I am sitting at like 650 or so and I need 856 *cries*

After the gunship we went back down to tackle the frost giant again.  It was a general consensus that 5 badges was better than a possible 2 badges and gear from Saurfang.  We spent the rest of the night wiping on the frost giant.  That disease thing is a bitch.  We had a “plan” on how to deal with the disease, just to have people get confused with what they needed to do and the stupid giant infect more than one person at a time.  We called the raid at midnight my time (3 am EST) and there were some ramblings about possibly coming back in tonight.  As much as I would love to see that happen, I am not exactly keeping my hopes up.  By the time the west coasters get online it is too late for most of the east coasters.

The rest of my weekend was spent leveling the baby lock.  On Sunday I managed to get her from 55 to 59.  Not bad at all considering she has no heirlooms and no rested xp.  Friday night I got in a random for BRD.  I fucking hate that place now.  I wish the dungeon finder would tell you which one you were in when you zone in and not make you guess what you need to do.  Especially in this instance.  I got in a decent group, for the most part.  They wanted to do the key quest so we cleared all the lower bosses.  This is how we found out that the we had upper city and not the jail.  We lost one of the dps halfway through the lower level.  The tank DCd as soon as we cleared out the bar.  We had kicked him and were waiting for a replacement (after about 10 mins or so) when he was able to log back in.  We nabbed him, warlock summon and away we went.  We finished the entire place just to not get a satchel (I just realized I have been spelling that wrong all weekend >.> go me!).  We spent 3 hours in that place just to not get credit.  I was pissed.  I did put in a ticket and was nice and listed the people in the group with me.  On Sunday I got a GM response telling me that they went through the dungeon for us and look what they found!  It was definitely corny.  I did get my satchel though.  It was even an upgrade from what I had.  It was a very nice belt.  While I lost a few spellpower, I gained so many other stats that it was worth it.

The rest of the weekend I got BRD Upper City three more times.  Two of which I actually completed.  The one that I didn’t had the biggest tool of a healer that I have ever met.  The bear tank we started out with pulled rooms like he was 80.  He also didn’t wait for the healer to be in range.  That was my first tip.  Then as soon as we wiped the healer went ballistic on the tank.  The tank of course left as did one of the dps.  The healer then panicked and begged me and the other dps to stay.  I said “I’m staying.  I’ll just get this instance again when I queue up.”  To which they laughed.  As we were running back to the instance he started berating us that we should “take the shortcut FFS” and to “hurry up” despite us not having a full group.  We were queued up but it was just the three of us.  I immediately pointed this out to him and told him to chill the fuck out.  He apologized and said he was trying to.  Not 30 seconds later he was doing it again.  I zoned in, teleported back to Org and dropped group.  While I was doing this he was ranting about something else.  Yeah I think I will wait out the 3 mins left on my debuff.

I requeued and got Dire Maul East.  Now the only time I had EVER been here was on the warlock mount quest way back when on Millea.  Even then we didn’t exactly do the instance.  We just kind of went where we needed to go.  I zoned in, told the group I had never been there before and was met with silence as I noticed the tank had already started pulling.  The pally tank and the mage were both decked out in heirlooms and twinked.  You would have thought the two of them knew each other.  They were so far ahead of the rest of us, who you know actually looted and stayed with the healer, that you would have thought they were in vent together.  The healer was pretty good and was awesome and gave me renews.  I thanked her .  At one point the rogue had to go AFK, they just left him there and moved forward.  After one boss fight the priest DCd and I died.  The pally rezzed me and instead of waiting to see if the healer was coming back, ran into the next room to 3 man the boss.  I almost died, but I am sure neither of them would have cared. 

The tank was running through the place so fast I could have sworn he thought he was in a level 80 heroic.  We barely got the mobs close to death before he was pulling another pack.  Mind you the healer is still DCd.  When the rogue came back they vote kicked the healer and queued in another one.  They were all for pushing forward and making the healer find their way to us.  I chimed in and said I can make a portal.  I’d hate to see that group without a warlock.  They would have never seen that healer.  The shaman we got was just like the pally and the mage.  Twinked out and had the “go-go-go-go” mentality that I just hate.  The only good thing that came out of the run was I got a neck upgrade and the Crescent Key.  I don’t have that key on any of my other toons.

After the Dire Maul run I stayed out of instances and just did holiday stuff and quests.  The XP from the holiday quests is quite nice.  I was getting 8400 xp for each bracelet turn in.  I ended up with so many of them that I popped them over to the AH to sell.  I listed them right before I crashed out.  All 11 sold before I made it back to the mailbox.  I love holidays.  People are so lazy .  I now have enough gold to get my flying and mount without having to borrow money from Orange.    I just wish the flying mounts for the horde weren’t so butt ugly.  I think I am going to get the blue one.  It at least isn’t as obviously ugly as the tawny one.  Ugh.  I can’t wait until I get my tailoring high enough to use the carpet.

Hellfire is only slightly different for the Horde.  It is essentially the same quests but with just a slightly different flavor.  The quest hubs are in different spots (obviously) but so far things are fairly on par with Alliance.

Last night reiterated to me why PvP servers can suck.

I was questing over near Zeth’Gor (or however it is spelled) and as soon as I finished killing some mobs I am suddenly sapped and insta-gibbed.  I tried to bubble and run, but I was kept incapacitated and couldn’t click on a damn thing.  I am level 58, a level 63 human rogue killed me and got an acheivement.  After she killed me she mounted up and rode off.  I waited a bit to make sure she didn’t double back then used my soul stone and got myself back up.  After about 10 mins she was back.  This time my VW was fighting.  I was able to bubble myself, hit Howl of Terror and run like hell.  This did me no good.  She got out of the fear almost instantly and was stabbing me.  I of course died.  Orange came over on his healy priest, because what else strikes fear into the hearts of rogues but a Disc priest?  I don’t know if she was just done with ganking me or if the fact that my level 80 guildie had shown up deterred her, but I was left alone.   Orange stayed with me until I finished my quests and dinged 59.  Thanks again hun!

I hate rogues.

Screenshot Friday February 5, 2010

I like big BUTTS and I cannot lie. You other brothers can't deny. When a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face you get SPRUNG!

Shoot me please February 4, 2010

Work kicked my ass this morning.  My boss gets on these kicks where his mind goes in 20 million places at once and so instead of letting me finish what I had originally set out to do, he has me stop and do something else RIGHT THAT SECOND.  If I complain, he yells at me.  On top of this I am not in the office for the full day because I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon so I have even less time to finish everything I need to get done.  Now that he left (gone until Tuesday! *arm pump*) I can finally eat something for lunch and finish up all the crap he left for me to do.

Oh and I can post ^_^

First I want to say that the new peanut butter I bought at the store is the best fucking peanut butter I have ever had.  Roasted Peanuts & Honey: CREAMY.  I swear it is like I am eating candy.  Sooooooooooo good. *drool*

ahem onward with the WoW talk

Wednesday is normally our weekly raid quest night.  We try to get 2 runs in at the minimum, more if the fight is really easy.  Our healing team is awesome cause we can totally solo heal Naxx & OS

Since our raid was Razorscale we needed 2 healers.  Vel & Heleva knocked out the first round and I healed with our hunter friend’s not quite geared holy priest.  Yeah that went over somewhat ok.  The wipe was the tank’s fault.  I had 3 mobs chewing on me and I died.  The tank wasn’t near me.  Yes Dily I am talking about you! :-p  When I gave him shit over vent he sent me a raspberry.  Brat.  The 2nd attempt only went slightly better in that I lived.  The mage died to adds (*sigh*) to which I b-rezzed him, just to see him die a moment later to different adds. >.>  Other than the mage, no one else died in the 2nd fight and several people got the achievement for a quick shave.  Go us!

I got the go-ahead from most of the raiding team to start ICC on Wednesdays and move the weekly to Thursday.  Wednesday’s raiding will be from 10:15 pm to 12 am midnight EST.  We will go in, take down as many bosses as we can in the time allotted then pick up on Saturday what is left over.  Thursday we will do the weekly raid first thing, then pop over to Ony or ToC (it alternates each week).  Man Thursday is going to be a looooong night. >.<

Sorry for the short post.  I have to get back to work, I have like 45 mins left before I have to leave for my doctor’s appointment and I have a shitton of stuff to finish before that.  I can promise you that tomorrow’s Screenshot Friday is particularly awesome. 

Random picture day! February 3, 2010

First off I want to say that you are all brats. 

That’s all.

Brats.

Onward to pictures!!

Guess where I am

Brainss . . . .

He is so wittle and sad

I made him wait quite a while too

Wow, looks like we found the end of the game.

Please tell me I am not the only one who sees it

Isn't this just the cutest thing ever?

Look Ma! I'm on top of the world!

That’s all folks!

Busy February 3, 2010

Sorry, very busy day at work so I haven’t had time to make a post.  I will upload some pictures when I get home in a few hours.

We did what? February 2, 2010

Yes we did.  Echo of Fate went to Ice Crown Citadel for the first time and managed to take down the first 3 boss fights.  Other than the first fight, no one had been in there before.  I am so proud of us.

Our previous guild, Call of Fate, never really got out of raiding Kara in BC.  They did join up with another 10 man guild and pulled off a few runs in Gruul and a couple attempts in ZA.  I wasn’t max level at that time so I am not sure if they tried anywhere else or not.  When Wrath came out we hardly had anyone online, let alone any geared 80s to raid in Naxx.  By the time we did, Ulduar was rocking strong.  At that point we changed over guild names and priorities.

We were going to see end game content.  That was the goal.  When Arthas dies, we were going to be there to see it.  Maybe not in the first week, but we would do it.  We got a good group of us together and we started raiding Ulduar.  At this time everyone was in ToC.  We always seemed to be a step behind everyone else.  The holidays came and decimated the online attendance.  We were lucky if we had enough to run a 5 man heroic instance.  Things were not looking good for our raiding goals.

The other officers and I got together and decided that we were going to push forward and even if we didn’t have enough people, we were still going to raid.  Even if we had to pug half the raid, we were going to raid.  There were several raids where this was the case.  Our first full clear of ToC was half guildies half pug.  Not ideal, but we did gain a new member out of it and a couple of new friends.

The time finally came where we all decided that we were done with lower tier content.  We were ready for the big time.  It was time to take on Ice Crown Citadel.

Anticipation was built up, sign ups were made.  At the time of the raid we had 8 guildies.  Other than one Ulduar raid, we have never had that many guildies in our raids.  It was just the icing on top.

What this pile of bones is trouble? What trouble?

 

We walked in, the rogue died, the warlock died, things were progressing normally.  We 2 shot Morrowgar.  Considering only 4 people in the group had ever seen him, I don’t think that was too bad.  Time to go into see Lady Deathwhisper.  One of the pugs we had picked up (boomkin) was an old hand at ICC and helped us with the trash in her room.  I explained the fight and we took a shot at it.  Wipe.  Shit.  Ok let’s try this again.  Wipe.  Shit.  At this point the boomkin whispered me that he had to go cause he remembered that he had to get up early the next morning.  Uh huh, sure.  Luckily Dily showed up (he was waaay late) and we were good to go again.  Wipe.  Shit.  Ok guys what is going wrong here?  Our new warlock sent me a whisper suggesting that the special mobs each get a different raid icon so that the dps could figure out which ones to kill.  FANTASTIC IDEA!  I asked the MT to mark separate icons.  Our next attempt went MUCH better.  Each time we took her on we did a little bit better.  On our final attempt things went so smoothly you would never know we had spent the last hour struggling.  I love my guildies.

We slapped that bitch good.

 

All accomplished and filled full of adrenaline from the recent kill we marched up to the next encounter.  The trash before the ship gave us a bit of a fight, we lost the rogue and warlock again, but nothing too out of the ordinary.  Finally we reach the gunship.  Jet packs my friends, jet packs.

After about 20 mins of everyone playing with a jet pack, we got down to the business of the actual fight.  Let me be the first to say that this fight is a lot harder than you are led on to believe.  We wiped more on this fight then we did on Lady D.  After some tank switching and a change around on healing assignments we jumped back in.  Just like Lady D, each time we tackled this fight we did a little bit better.  Our 2nd to last attempt we got the other ship down to around 500k.  We were ecstatic when we saw the other ship move away.  Special props to Andrew on this fight.  He really jumped in and took charge.  As a result we were victorious!

Jet packs . . . jet packs

 

At this point we had been raiding for several hours.  It was close to 3 am for the east coasters.  We had several people about to pass out, but everyone decided to give Saurfang a try.  Just one, to see what the fight was like.  We quickly failed on that fight.  I am confident though that the next time we go to fight him that we will do so much better.  Now that we know what not to do, and what changes to make, I think we will be just fine.  We might have a few wipes as we get used to things, but I have full confidence that Saurfang’s number is up.

There has been talk between myself and some of the raiders about changing our raiding times around.  Making Wednesday our 1st night in ICC and Saturday the continuation.  Go in on Wednesday, clear as many bosses as we can in 2 hours and call it.  Then on Saturday pick up where we left off.  This will have us fresh for Saurfang and any of the bosses that come after him.  This would mean moving our weekly raid to Thursday and pushing back the regular ToC/Ony raids we normally do on that day.  I need to confer with more of the raiding team, but I think this might be what we should do.

When I get home tonight I will upload the boss kill shots from Saturday.  I ran out of time this morning and did not get to email them to myself to have access to them at work.  –EDIT– Pictures updated

Once again:  CONGRATS TO ECHO OF FATE!  YOU GUYS JUST KEEP PROVING HOW FANTASTIC OF A TEAM WE ARE!

Koalabear’s “So you want to level a warlock?” Guide February 1, 2010

**********DISCLAMER**********

 

This is how I level warlocks.  This is not the end all be all leveling guide.  This is how I play and is just another suggestion to throw into the pot.  I love playing a warlock.  I have, at last count, seven warlocks spread across several servers.  Many of them are under level 10 but three are at decent levels (at this time Maddielyn is 30, Lyssianna is 51 and Millea is 80).  This means that I have indeed leveled through and can give a fair recount of what you could do.  Again, please take this with a grain of salt.  The interwebs are full of awesome leveling guides; this is just one person’s preferred method.

Welcome!  Several of my guildies/friends have decided to roll a warlock and have asked me what they should do.  I love warlocks.  I love playing them, leveling them and telling people how much I love them. ^_^  With that being said, away we go!

First off pick your race.  Alliance gets to choose between Humans and Gnomes.  In Cataclysm they will obtain W0rgen.  Since this “guide” was written during Wrath, you don’t get them.  Too bad, so sad.  Horde gets to choose between Orc, Undead and Blood Elf.  In Cataclysm they will also be able to be Goblins.  I personally will be leveling a Worgen warlock and a Goblin one.  I have found that I can play any of the races without a problem, except for Orcs.  I just have an issue with there not being a single pretty female Orc hairstyle.  My characters have one rule, they have to be pretty.  Yes, there is 1 pretty Undead female face, so I am able to stand them.  The Orc females just aren’t pretty.  They all look like they are pissed off.  While that is AWESOME for a warlock, not so much for my personal play style.  There are perks to each race, but I am not going to go into that here.  That is all up to you and whether you are a min/maxer or not.

The first 10 levels before you get your void walker are pretty much the same as leveling another class.  You are a caster in a cloth robe.  You will have to drink constantly.  At least you did until Blizzard changed everything.  Now up to level 10 your mana and health regen are insane.  Enjoy this while it lasts.  As soon as it goes away, you might end up wishing you were a mage and could create water for yourself.

You used to have to complete a quest in order to get your imp.  Now you can train your imp for 95c at level 1.  Which, having leveled a human and belf warlock, is utter bullshit.  Those two quests were a pain in the ass.  Now all the mobs are yellow and you get your imp at level 1.  Crap, but true.  Get your imp as soon as you can because the added dps is quite a bit of help.  My favorite thing to do is to send out the imp, then dot up the mob, using shadow bolt only when necessary.  Ultimately, these 10 levels will go by so quickly, it really wont matter.

Once you complete the quest chain where you receive your void walker (level 10) you will continue along as you pretty much had already been doing, only now you have your own personal tank, who can’t hold aggro for shit.  He does get better, but in the beginning, he sucks.  The first two points you should spend your talent points on are Fel Synergy Rank 1 and Fel Synergy Rank 2.  This talent will help to keep your minion alive, assuming you are still dealing damage.  Even though it isn’t in the raiding spec for warlocks, I still keep 2 points in Millea’s tree for this talent.  Your minions do a large part of your overall damage, so it is just silly to let them die right away.

I am going to assume you are now around level 20.  You get a “free” mount from your trainer.  It is free in that you don’t have to pay for the riding training, but it will still cost you around 33s.  You will also begin a quest chain to get your succubus.  I have been told that hordeside there are 2 quest chains for this.  The “easy” one you get from the trainer in Org or the “hard” one from the trainer in UC.  I was a belf, I went to UC.  I didn’t know about the “easy” quest.  The quest chain I did was a pain in the ass, and had I known there was an easier one, I would have soooo been there.  So if you are horde, do yourself a favor and go to Org for this chain.  Alliance has only one quest (that I am aware of) and it isn’t too bad.  Mostly it is a lot of running.  At least with Alliance, you aren’t running through higher level zones like you are on the UC one.  Thottbot is great on this quest chain if you get stuck.

Now I am assuming you are going to keep with my method of leveling.  Since this is the case, you can put away your Succubus once you get her because you won’t be using her any time soon.

Your talent tree at level 20 should look something like this.  I picked drain soul because you should be finishing off all of the mobs with it.  With the talent, you get mana back; which at this level is most helpful.

The next minion quest you get is for your felhunter.  This happens around level 30.  The felhunter is the affliction warlock dungeon minion of choice.  His int and spirit buff is very helpful to lower level casters.  While the imp has the stam buff and does more damage, the felhunter is who you will most likely go with.  If you find yourself in a group where you and the healer are the only casters (and there isn’t a warrior) then you could use the imp, but I typically use the felpuppy, even in those cases. 

While leveling, you should only bring out the fel puppy when there is a tank.  This means that ol’ big blue will still be your minion of choice.  At level 30 the tree should look something like this.

At level 32 you can finally spec into Siphon Life.  This is where it starts to get fun.  Siphon life heals you from your corruption spells.  At the lower levels this is just Corruption, but later on this ability also works off of Seed of Corruption.  Since you don’t get SoC until level 70, you just have that one spell.  Once you get this talent you will become an unstoppable machine.

This is how you do it:

Step 1 – Send out your void walker, make sure he hits the mob.  Treat him like a warrior tank.

Step 2 – Hit the mob with Corruption then Curse of Agony.

Step 3 – Life tap.

Step 4 – Either tab target a new target, or click one, and send the void walker out and let him get aggro on the new mob.

Step 5 – Hit the mob with Cor & CoA.

Step 6 – Life Tap.

Rinse and Repeat.  Once all the mobs are dead, spend 10 mins looting. ^_^

Depending on the level of the mobs you are killing, you can take on anywhere from 5-7 yellow mobs up to 10-12 green mobs at once.  Make sure you are keeping track of your void walker’s health.  Use Health Funnel as much as you need to.  You will be getting so much health from Siphon Life, that the health you lose from using HF is quickly replaced.

This also helps in dungeons where the healer, out of misunderstanding of warlocks (and horrible ones), refuses to heal you after life tapping.  Assuming you haven’t life tapped yourself close to death (if you have, then I want nothing to do with you) hitting a few mobs with Corruption should replenish you enough so that you can life tap to get back the mana you used spamming rain of fire.  If you do get a healer who pops you with a HoT, send them a whisper and thank them.  The more healers who understand warlocks, the better we all are.

Since you are a warlock you will find that you can solo elite mobs without dying.  This is a wonderful perk.  I have even manged to pull off killing an elite that was 3 levels higher than me.  The quests in Dragonblight, that require 2-3 people; I soloed them on my affliction warlock.  You do not need to be demonology to be able to solo stuff.  Affliction has wonderful talents that make up for being stuck with the blueberry for 70 levels.  I personally love my big blue friend and use him whenever I am not doing heroics or raids.  If you have your void walker out in dungeons I will smack you.  The only time you should have him out there is when there isn’t a tank, they need a 2nd tank and no one else can do it, or you have a crazy group that wants to die.  Use your felpuppy, your imp or even your succubus.  Do not use the void walker.

You will get a nifty temporary minion at 50; after you complete a quest chain.  The Infernal is great to use once your minion dies.  I usually only use it in raids or dungeons since it has such a high cool down.  This minion requires a reagent.  The lame part is you can only carry 5 of these reagents at one time.  So if you use them a lot, make sure you have a way to get more reagents easily.

Here are my suggested talents for level 40, level 50, level 60 and level 62.  62 is the earliest you can get Haunt.  You want to get that spell as soon as you can.  Feel free to put the other talent points you get after that spell anywhere you need them.  If you are going to PvP, get PvP talents like an instant Howl of Terror, or the improved Fear.  If you want to keep your minion alive, spec down into Demonology.  If you want to raid, then you will need to spec into Destruction and use a variation of this spec.  Millea right now is using a variation of the raiding spec.

I know that this did not cover all of the warlock leveling experience, but it should give you a good idea.  There are so many ways you can change the talents around and make leveling more fun for you.  Some people enjoy drain tanking, and thus will have their Succubus out or their imp and spec into Dark Pact.  That however isn’t fun for me, so that is why I didn’t tell you how to do it. 

If you have any other questions that I did not address please feel free to put them in the comments.  This was my first attempt at writing a how to guide, so I am open for feedback.  Thanks and happy warlock leveling!

Screenshot Friday January 29, 2010

No wonder I could never get to the boat in time. Look at the size of that dock!

I guess we are ninjas January 28, 2010

Yesterday EoF got together to go take down Maly in EoE.  We knew that we needed another guildie to get the key.  We all talked and decided that Vel would get the key on his Shaman.  I grouped us up and we headed to Naxx to kill Sapp.  Since we only had 6 people we nabbed a couple pugs.

There was a ret pally sitting in queue for Ulduar 10.  I whispered him and asked if he would be willing to come help us kill Sapp for the key for our guild.  He said sure and I nabbed him up.  After no responses from several other people in queue, I found a dps DK (have I mentioned how I HATE bringing in DKs from LFG?) and told him the same thing.  We were doing a guild run to kill Sapp to get the key, would he be willing to come help us do that.  Sure!  Ok let’s go.

We zone in, quick recap for those that hadn’t been there in a while and we go to town.  Boom! Boom! DEAD! Woot!  I loot the dragon and give Vel the key.  Immediately the DK pipes up “What we aren’t going to roll for it?!”  To which several of us replied back to him and said “No, this was a guild run specifically for the key.  We told you that.  Do you really think we were going to bring in a pug for a guild run and then give the pug the item?”  Apparently he did.  He started bitching at us.  Left the raid and went back to Dalaran where he immediately started talking shit about us in trade chat.

Since we are all obviously not quite right in the head, we jump into trade as well.  I say “It is not our fault you don’t have any reading comprehension.  Especially since we told you it was a guild run for the key.  It isn’t a ninja when we tell you what we are doing UP FRONT!”  Vel was a bit more vocal to him.  What I thought was HILARIOUS was the way trade chat was treating him.  They were calling him names and telling him to go bitch elsewhere.  Trade obviously did not see the importance of the key to Maly.  I mean it gives you a trinket!! O_o

The pally who came with us to kill Sapp was invited to the Maly kill.  As Dily pointed out, we would have invited the DK too, had he not been a tool.  After we finished the first Maly kill I switched back over to Millea (she was in the Naxx run) and I immediately got a whisper from the DK telling me that he had reported me and had sent screenshots to a GM.

All of this because the DK didn’t read what was said to him.

*sigh*

Because I like calling out retards for being retards, this is the moron DK and this is his buddy who joined in in the smearing of our guild.

The best part of the night was joking to all the new pugs, and our friends, how we are all ninjas.  Vel would pipe up each time we would get a new person and say “Don’t forget to tell them that we are ninjas!”  We even came up with variations on our guild name.

Oh yeah, we also killed Maly twice.  Tatia got her new title, among other people in guild and we are ninjas.

DON’T EVER FORGET IT!