Dynamic Duo!

I got that achievement last night.

That means I have two level 90s of two different classes.

Now before you get all up in my junk about what the hell was I doing leveling another character before I got all my reps complete etc; let me tell you that it was for a good reason!

I wanted to fly and herb at the same time >.>

I told you it was a good reason!

Just kidding. 😀

PPP was leveled to 90 so we would have an extra healer should we need one.  So far it hasn’t been the case since Zari and Bocat so graciously stepped up to the plate to be the flex healers.  Now I honestly don’t know how much play time she will actually have in end game because outside of Lyssi, we don’t have a brez.  Also, the raiders apparently really love my cookies.

Who knew?

This post is mostly because Navi has nagged at me for not posting more.  She scolded me and told me that I was a very lazy blogger.

Now when Navi scolds you you best get off your duff! 😉

Love you Navi!

In all honesty I really needed to post more.  As I have mentioned in the past I just don’t have the time during the day that I used to have.  The only reason I am writing this now is because my boss is out of the office on vacation and no one has come over to bug me for something this morning.  Have I mentioned how I run the office here?  Yeah I don’t think I did.  On top of being my boss’ assistant I also have his other assistant as MY assistant AND I have to act as the assistant for the Jr. partner.  So I have two people coming to me with tasks that I either do myself or assign to my assistant.  This is on top of all the “emergency” fires that are created because my boss has to do everything as soon as he hears about it regardless of what is going on or what needs done.  But hey, it is a job that pays well and I am appreciated so it works out.

In the game front I’ve been busy busy busy.  After many painful wipes (seriously, painful) we FINALLY got the first boss down.  I am proud to say that I was not the cause for any of the wipes, save one and that one wasn’t REALLY my fault, I just added to it because I am a tard.  We had like 3 people dead but for some reason I thought there were 5 people dead so I just assumed it was a wipe and ran into some bad and just stayed there until I died.  Slice then looks at me and was all “Did you seriously just go stand in bad and die?!?!?”  That was when I realized that I had looked at the screen wrong and we in fact were NOT wiping.  Turns out that was our best attempt prior to killing the boss.

Yeah fayle lock!

Speaking of Fayle, his newest thing, which Adoe has picked up on, is that I cannot read because I am a warlock.  Forget everything else, I cannot read because I am a warlock.

He isn’t even a mage!

Stupid stinky rogues & hunters.

I dunno maybe it is justified.  I did pull a complete fayle too.

I have always been an affliction warlock.

I have always aimed for haste, crit then mastery.

I play destro now.

Destro is Mastery, crit then haste.

I was um, gearing wrong.

I was also enchanting, gemming and reforging wrong.

It gets better.

I was not only using the wrong pet BUT I was also using the wrong grimoire!  20% vs 25%, yeah, no brainer >.<

Prior to my realizing I was fayling I was doing about 30k, which was pretty bad.  I was the lowest dps in the pack.  Upon realizing my fayle I fixed things and jumped up to about 47k and moved into 3rd – 4th place which is where I usually reside since Fayle, Zug and Adoe rule supreme in damage dealing.  Now I just need to work out my rotation a bit more.  I keep wanting to save my embers, which from everything I read I am not supposed to.  From what I understand I should be popping a CB every time I have an ember.  I will admit I haven’t gotten into the hang of that.  I am getting better though! 😀

The other part that is funny is not actually raiding with a pet.  I am so used to having a pet out that using Grimoire of Sacrifice is odd.  I will say that I love the control demon ability part.  It puts the special ability of your demon as a spell for you.  During the Dog fight I would sac my voidwalker because then I get his ability to increase my health.  For non warlocks: Frenzied Enrage.  It is on a pretty short cooldown so that was nice to have!

Speaking of cooldowns, I took Mortal Coil as my talent and let me tell you it has been a LIFE SAVER during raids.  I hit that sucker and I get about 62k health back.  The best part is it is on a 45 second cooldown.  My healthstone is a 90 second cooldown.  I would pop a blue trap then hit my MC button and BOOM! full health!

Oh and remember to place your portal.  It has helped get me out of the bad on the floor more times than I can count.  It will also break the root that the blue traps leave on the ground.

So yeah, things are starting to move along in game.  I think once we get the rust off we will beat out the scrubs on our server that think they are hot shit.  I understand they beat Heroic DS and we didn’t.  But they also beat it at the 30% buff and we quit raiding.  When the top guilds on the server leave or stop raiding the scrub guilds try to fill the void.  To be honest I think some of them are even pugging a few spots.  I know one of the guilds tried to get Slice to come heal a raid for them.  We’ll see how things go and if our guildies pull their heads out of pet battles. 😉

So there is my update for a while.  Hopefully this tides Navi over for a little bit. 😀

Lockapalouza!

This is just to let you know that unless you are playing a warlock with the name starting with a Z you are not welcome as an alt in SR.

 

Exceptions can be made if you are a max level warlock.

 

But only on a person to person basis.

 

This is all.

 

Thank you.

I’m doing it right!

So last night we went into Dragon Soul to test out our abilities.  Some of us were having issues but they got sorted out by the time we got the 2nd boss down.  The only real issue I had was the fact that I hadn’t downloaded the DBM addon for Cata raids.  This didn’t become an issue until Ultraxion.  I will say that I didn’t mess up my button pushing (I watch my cast bars and debuffs TYVM) but I also noticed I wasn’t getting any warnings or updates.

Other than some grumpiness that killed the Non-Red Slice buff I had cast earlier, things went pretty well.  By the end of the night Red Slice was gone and even Red Lyssi went away.

Want to know why?

 

The big crits.

 

I am a closet meter whore.  Well I might not be that in the closet about it, but I am no where near as bad as you think when the phase “meter whore” pops in your mind.  I LOVE seeing BIG numbers pop up on the screen.  Playing affliction didn’t start giving me those numbers until late in the expansion when I had lots of gear to inflate my numbers.  Even then I would only see like 30-40k crits on my shadow bolts.  Sometimes I would get a really nice 15-20k crit on my corruption ticks, but nothing like what I would hear other classes getting.  Affliction’s damage is slow and steady with a spike at the end.  Destro, not so much.

I think the smallest crit I got with a chaos bolt last night was 86k.  The highest I got was with shadowburn for 190k.

Yes, 190k crit.

 

EXCITEMENT!

 

When I talk about being a meter whore I don’t mean HAVING to be at the top.  I like being in the top 3 (if possible).  If I hit #1 or #2 I get really excited.  Mostly because I play with such good players.  Adoe, Sorak and Zug all usually wipe the floor with the rest of us dps.  It is like the only contest is between those 3.  So when I manage to sneak in there and top one of those 3 guys I am just over the moon.  I don’t usually get too bad about it publicly (sometimes yes I do, but not ALL THE TIME).  To Slice, yeah I am usually all pumped up and crow about beating someone.  He usually just rolls his eyes at me and ignores me.  Which is fine, I made myself happy, it works.

I think the best part of last night for me was beating Adoe on Deathwing.  I would say beating Sorak but he died halfway through the fight (he managed to kill himself by shadowstepping, it was quite hilarious I might add) and even though he was kicking everyone’s ass throughout the rest of the raid, it wouldn’t be fair to compare myself to him that fight.  While Sorak and Adoe were neck and neck all night (one fight they were like 20 dps points off from each other and the equivalent damage was less than 1000 difference) I was battling with Shadey.  I was so busy focusing on the top dogs that I completely overlooked the mage in the raid that manged to kick my ass on several fights.  I had gotten used to her healing on her shaman and not keeping tabs on her dps (cause there wasn’t any!) which was a critical mistake.  One that I will not continue to overlook.  This means I can’t come in and half-ass fights anymore.  I need to stay on my game so I’m not on the bottom like I was for most of Wrath.

Anyway!  Back to the story!

The excitement wasn’t from beating Adoe, I usually am #1 or #2 on the Deathwing fight, it was from beating Adoe in a spec I had never played before prior to that night.

THAT is what got me excited.

I had done NO research on my “new” spec.  I wasn’t even 100% sure on my rotation.  I used the tab Blizz supplied in my spellbook and went to town.  Yes I fat fingered a lot of stuff, and I wasn’t awful on a lot of my dot uptime ( I was bad, but not awful.)  So when I finally did do some research to find out I was doing things right was pretty awesome.

http://spellbound.nu/?p=2002

Saga is an awesome warlock blogger.  If you aren’t already reading her you totally need to.  She does a great job with explaining things.  Far better than my rambly non-existent how-to posts.

So yeah, go read her. 😀

I’m now getting excited about leveling and raiding again.  I don’t know how I will level in MoP, I might switch back to Aff, but I am not sure.  It almost feels like Destro is doing a great job with the self healing.  I could even glyph or spec in for more.  With a 625% mana regen (Destro locks CANNOT life tap, we don’t have the spell anymore) I really feel like I am unstoppable.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

*CACKLE*

Revealing

I have a confession to make,

 

I

 

*deep breath*

 

WENT DESTRO!

 

*GASP*

 

I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW!

 

As an “Aff for life!” warlock this feels almost like a betrayal to all I have ever known and loved.

For a while the dirty secret was kept on my baby warlock that I was leveling for the classy trolls guild cheeve.  I decided that I was going to learn to destro because I was so unhappy with the new aff rotation.  It ended up being so much fun that I thought about changing my PvP off spec on Lyssi to destro to play around but I never went through with it.

I mean, I wrote posts rhapsodizing over affliction and my love for it.  I said I would NEVER play destro.  It was just a mage with a pet.  Etc, etc, etc.

Now I’ve switched and love it.

When I was testing things out on the Beta I spent quite a long time at the dummies just trying to get my fingers into the swing of a new rotation while trying to keep the basic buttons that I had grown accustomed to.  I moved all of the spells around until I had a flow going.  It was starting to look up for me and affliction for MoP.  I won’t lie.  For a while I was honestly looking at my stable of alts and wondering which one I could happily switch to and raid on for MoP.  Before the Beta changes to affliction went through it was looking as though I would be playing my Priest or Druid, as a healer.

That’s right.

I was thinking of switching my role COMPLETELY!

Which is kind of odd considering I hadn’t healed full time since Wrath.  This was also the time in which resto druid healing was spamming wild growth and rejuv on any person taking any tiny amount of damage.  Hell, I was still angry tree at that time.  The most I had healed since then was in 5 mans or alt runs with the guild.  I even did LFR on my priest a time or two.  Other than that, no real raiding.

What was I thinking in becoming a healer again?

Yes I am insane, if you didn’t believe me (or Slice for that matter) prior to this then you should have no doubts left.

So when the changes came down that helped the aff rotation I was happy again.  I could keep my main, I could keep playing the spec I loved so much.

Fast forward to last night and the 5.0.04 patch.

I hopped online on Lyssi and first hit the trainer to change my off spec from aff (aff pvp prior to the changes) to destro then I flew up to the dummies.

I was dumb at first because I hadn’t put the glyphs in.  So after some toon swapping I got my glyphs I needed for both specs and went back to testing my rotation.

Yeah I had problems.

I already knew from the Beta that I would have to re-organize my keys and bars, even if I hadn’t read the reminder from Cynwise.  Even after switching my buttons around and practicing for quite a while as aff, I just couldn’t get back into the flow I had found on the Beta.

Then I switched my spec . . .

 

The rotation flowed.

 

I can’t explain it any other way.

 

I was just hitting the buttons with the same ease that I had from years of playing affliction, only I wasn’t playing affliction.  It was a scary thought that I could so easily transition to something I had never played before.

 

After I messed around with the rotation for a little while longer I decided that I needed to reforge my gear to better optimize destro.  Affliction loves haste, Demo loves mastery and Destro loves crit.  Since I lost my stat stick in my wand and the hit cap was lowered I thought I would go reforge and see how much more crit I could squeeze out of my haste heavy gear.  Off to Mr. Robot!

First of all, when did AskMrRobot become such shit?  I loved that site when it first came out.  I haven’t used it since it updated to the new format, which was around Firelands.  I stopped using it then because it kept putting the wrong stat levels on my gear.  Which meant that it wasn’t optimized.  I went there last night to see if they had fixed it, and no.  It told me to take my haste enchant off and put on an expertise enchant.

Excuse me?

Why the hell would a caster need expertise?

Ok fine I checked the stat weights.  Expertise was at ZERO and yet 4 different pieces of gear were being told to be enchanted or reforged to expertise.

I just gave up at that point.

I can hear Sorak chiming in with “Why are you relying on some silly website?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I logged back in and just did the reforging myself.  I am slightly over hit cap but I don’t know what else I could do with what I had.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to raise my crit any higher since I didn’t have anything to reforge away other than haste.  I don’t know about you but I still love haste way too much to want to get rid of it.  Especially now that DI has been changed.  Lots of haste is awesome!

 

Anyway I logged off pretty happy with what I had set up.  New keybinds, new spec, new pet.  It is golden!

 

Tonight we are going to raid to see how everyone handles their new rotations, etc.  I am eagerly anticipating it!  Hopefully I will get a chance tomorrow to make an update on how things went.  If not, I am sure Arv or Rep or Slice will post something.

 

Sorry for being so quiet for so long!  I miss you guys!

Firelands raiding tips for the casual Aff lock

I was reading fellow Warlock blogger Fulguralis when I got to thinking that there might be some other warlocks out there (for some ungodly reason) who happen to check out my blog for warlock info.  I know the newbie guide still gets a bunch of hits so SOME people are reading me for real info.

Yes crazy I know.

Anyway, I thought I would go boss by boss and give some helpful tips to the warlocks out there who might be having issues.  Again, there is the usual disclaimer that I am by NO MEANS a fantastic raider, nor do I claim that I know everything there is to know about aff locks or the Firelands fights, HOWEVER, the tips I am going to give might just give you ideas of your own to help down that pesky boss that is causing problems.

 

Shannox

 

This boss is fairly straightforward.  Kill Rageface, bring Riplimb to around 30% then burn the boss to just around 35%, kill Riplimb then kill the boss.  Having 3 targets makes this a FUN fight for Affliction.  We shine when there are 2 main targets (Yes I know there are 3 but you should be able to keep your dots up on 2 of the 3 easily.)  Since Rageface doesn’t have an aggro table you can just unleash hell right off the bat.  Pre-pot and charge up your Haunt.  I then pop Demon Soul and put all of my dots up on him.  Then I Soul Swap and load up Riplimb with a full set.  From then on out I focus on Rageface and add dots back up on Riplimb each time my Soul Swap is off cooldown.  Watch for traps and use Drain Life as needed during the unavoidable damage if your healers are struggling.  Depending on when your raid team blows lust is when you will want to pop your Doomguard.  Our RL likes to wait until the last min to blow lust (which drives me nuts) so I tend to pop my Doomguard when Riplimb is almost dead.  Make sure you pop your Demon Soul each time it is off cooldown.  I save my potion for the under 25%.  If the fight lasts long enough to try to pop your Demon Soul for when you Drain Soul.

 

Beth’tilac

 

Depending on your raid make up you might be on adds or sent up top.  Personally I think Affliction is IDEAL for going up top.  We lack the burst to kill the adds fast enough BUT we have lots of DoTs to keep on the boss that continue to damage her while we have to jump down.  On the first web phase I pop my Demon Soul.  On the second web phase I pop my potion.  On the third web phase I pop my Demon Soul (it should be off cooldown).  Before I jump down I make sure that ALL of my DoTs are refreshed so that damage continues on Beth while I am stuck on the ground.  I can usually get her under 80% by the time she drops.  During the ground phase rock out with everything you’ve got.  Pop your Demon Soul once it comes off cooldown (unless she is close to 25% then save it for then), pop your Doomguard when lust is blown.  Drain Life as needed during the massive AoE damage to help the healers.

 

Rhyolith

 

This fight is all about staying out of the bad and add control.  Avoid the fire.  Seed of corruption the little adds (soul burn as it is off cooldown) and full out rotation on the big adds.  I generally don’t mess with the legs in our raid unless the driver specifically calls for everyone to switch to help with a turn.  Our DoTs on the legs *may* cause problems if they have to switch quickly, so I just play it safe.  Where we shine in this fight is our self healing.  There is a TON of damage so any time you can Drain Life helps out the healers.  With your Soul Burn: Seed putting Corruption up on multiple targets you will end up with a nice chunk o’ healing happening.  Once his armor shatters then you get to go to town.  Pop your Doomguard, Demon Soul and potion and just rock out.

 

Alysrazor

 

Ah the firebird.  I actually enjoy this fight.  I know, I know.  I am a sick, sick person.  I think the main reason I like this fight is we are actually useful!  Now I don’t normally get to fly because we have an amazing mage (go go Zuggie!) who switches to fire for this fight.  When we don’t have Zug (it does happen from time to time) THEN I get to fly.  The hardest part about flying is dealing with the change to your cast times.  You have near instant shadow bolts (assuming you keep your buff up and high) and it kind of throws your rhythm so it takes a few to get used to it.  Dodge the bad clouds and fly through the rings.  Drain Life as needed to spare your healers.  99% of the time I am on the ground.  When we two heal (almost always) I am the one who gets the extra feather in the first round.  Getting at least one feather as soon as you can is VERY IMPORTANT!  Don’t take one over your tanks or healers though.  On the rare times that we three heal this fight I don’t get my  feathers until the 2nd pass.  Depending on your raid make up you may or may not be interrupting.  Make sure that your Felpuppy’s interrupt is not set to auto.  Either macro it or key bind it (or if you are like me, click it) and watch for your turn on the interrupts.  We have a 24 second cool down on our interrupt.  You CANNOT get them all.  At the most I can get off one interrupt per add.  Make sure you use the cooldown correctly.  I still screw this up from time to time.  My partner will miss an interrupt and I quickly get it just to be without one when my turn comes.  So you need to make sure that you are communicating with whomever you are paired up with.  DoT up the Hatchlings and pew pew on them when you don’t have a flame druid to kill.  When the boss swoops down, DoT her up too.  I save my Demon Soul for the burn phase in phase 3.  We usually lust in this phase, but in the 2nd round of it.  Pop your Doomguard during lust.  I pop my potion in the burn phase where we don’t have lust.  This fight is more about staying alive and taking care of your job vs actually killing the boss.  So unless you are flying, just make sure you do what you have been assigned.

 

Baleroc

 

Crystal tanking time!  Sometimes you can get lucky and be counted out of the crystal rotation, other times you have to suck it up and use what you can to soak up more stacks.  When we three heal this fight I can get up to 15 or so stacks, when we two heal I have to bow out at 12.  Use your Shadow Ward every time it is off cooldown (when you are on the crystal), Shadowburn: Healthstone if you need help with your life getting low and of course Drain Life as needed.  We have a Frost DK soak up most of the first crystal and he uses the Tol Barad trinket.  Personally I can’t switch out my trinkets because it messes with my hit cap.  If you can swing using the TB trinket then by all means rock out that sucker.  I pop the Doomguard with lust and hit Demon Soul on cooldown.  You can pre-pot on this fight and should.  I don’t use my teleport during this fight because of the randomness of the crystal placement, but you could easily reposition it once a crystal spawns.

 

Majordomo Staghelm

 

This fight is PERFECT for your teleporter.  Before we pull the boss I make sure I place my teleport and reposition it each time we transition to a cat phase.  Pop your Doomguard during lust.  I use my Demon Soul on cooldown.  During the scorpion phase I pop my Shadowflame every time it is up along with my Death Coil.  I use Drain Life towards the end of each transition and whenever I need to as well.  I try to only Life Tap during the cat phases if possible.  There isn’t much damage going out during that phase that isn’t avoidable so I don’t feel like I am taxing my healers.  While the kitties that spawn during the cat phase should be taken care of by the melee, you should put at least your two instants on them then switch back to Domo.  They don’t have enough health to be worrying too much about them.  During the fire spore cat phase use Drain Life as much as you need to help counter the damage coming in from soaking.  We try to switch at 4 stacks.

 

Ragnaros

 

Ahh Rag, it is NOT too soon!  Now you might think that with our lack of burst that we might not want to be Aff for this fight.  Well you are WRONG!  During the transitions with the Sons of Flame you are AWESOME for helping to slow the far adds.  I get placed with the furthest adds.  We call them 7 & 8.  I Soul Swap DoTs from Rag and pop them onto #7 (the closer of the two) and then pop up my instants on #8.  Then I spam the shit out of Fel Fire between the two of them.  By the time either of them are close to the hammer they have very little health and are easily finished off.  The key to being a non burst spec in the transition is your placement.  Depending on where the hammer falls you should be on the far side of it.  When it falls in the middle it is a crapshoot and you need to pick a side.  I like to place my teleporter on the opposite of the room from where I stand and pew pew.  This way when I have to move there if the hammer falls near me then I can get there faster.  You *could* be the one picked to trigger the fire traps, but it is less than ideal.  You will need to make sure you set your portal each time.  I am lucky in our raid that we have a mage and he pops the traps.  It CAN be done, but you don’t want the job.  I pop my Demon Soul on cooldown and pre-pot.  We haven’t used lust yet on this fight because we have only gotten to phase 3 once.  I am assuming we will pop lust then and that is where I will use my Doomguard.  From what I’ve heard with the meteors your instant DoTs should work to pop them back, I will probably still use Fel Fire though.  The good news about this fight is you only have to get him to 10% so that is positive!

 

 

With the GINORMOUS nerfs put into play today (25% seriously?!?!) these fights shouldn’t continue to be super difficult for your raid group.  Hopefully these tips will help you out and if you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments section and I will do my best to help you answer them.

Screenshot Friday

badass warlock is badass

Newbie guide to Affliction in 4.1

Those of you that know me know that I am not exactly big on guides. I wrote one a long time ago about leveling up a warlock. For the most part it still works with the changed leveling from 4.0, but I should probably update it. A little back story on this post today!

Cynwise was on twitter yesterday asking if anyone knew of an Affliction guide for 4.1 for newbies.  He had gotten an email from a brand new warlock and since he isn’t big on PvE (he is the king of PvP though) he wanted to direct this person to someone who could help them.

After some research we found that there wasn’t a guide for newbies.  There are several that are more advanced, but those wouldn’t really work.  I asked Cyn to forward me the email and I sent a write up explaining how to Aff lock as it were.  I was quite proud of my reply and asked Cyn if he thought it would work for a newbie guide.  He told me yes and so I decided to share it with you all!

First of all here is my warlock – Lyssianna

What will help you is some kind of dot tracker. I personally use Need to Know. It is fairly simple to set up and can be used to track all sorts of things.

I am not big on macros, so I don’t have any tips on how to use those. What I will give you is the basics.

Boss fights:

Curse of the Elements
Demon Soul: Felhunter (this means you should be running with the felhunter aka the fel puppy)
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Corruption
Bane of Agony
Shadow bolt (spam this until you need to refresh your dots)

Ideally you want to have 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace up at all times (something to have on your tracker). Shadow bolt and haunt put this debuff up on your target. Each stack increases your shadow damage by 5% for a max of 15%. Since you will be spamming Shadow Bolt as a filler this is very easy to keep up.

When haunt reaches about 4-5 seconds left you will want to start recasting it. You want to have this spell up at all times. Haunt also refreshes Corruption.

The majority of the time will be spent refreshing your dots (don’t clip them!) and spamming shadow bolt.  Just in case you didn’t know, “clipping” means reapplying the DoT before the duration wears off.

You will want to use your Doomguard ideally when bloodlust (or heroism if you are Alliance) is cast. BUT you need to make sure you will have 45 seconds available for him to dps.  Until you learn the fights this might take a bit to get right, but you will eventually learn when the right time is each fight.  Since this has a 10 min cooldown you will want to make sure you use it each time it is available.

When the boss reaches under 25% health you will need to switch to drain soul. This spell will automatically refresh your Unstable Affliction and Corruption. You will continuously channel this spell until Haunt reaches about 4-5 seconds left or when Bane of Agony falls off. The Haunt application will keep up your Shadow Embrace. The under 25% damage is your largest source of dps/damage. I currently use a power aura (only that one) to pop up a warning whenever my targeted mob is at 25% or less health. You might want to set up something similar to help you. I don’t know about you but I have a hell of time figuring out when the mob has hit 25% so this has helped me immensely.  If you aren’t big on using add ons then changing the health bars to show percentages can make this MUCH easier.

Trash mobs:

I try to find the mob that will be killed last and stick Curse of the Elements on them. Then I load up all my dots on the first marked target (haunt, UA, Cor, BoA) then with a glyphed Soul Swap I pop UA, Cor and BoA to the next marked target. I then find the 3rd target and load that one up with dots. By that point haunt is off cooldown and you can reapply it. I essentially tab target through the mobs and refresh my dots as needed until they all die.

If you are in a place with non-elites and just need to AoE spam then use Soulburn: Seed of Corruption and start spamming Seed. The Soulburn will not only refresh your shard once it explodes, but it will also put Corruption up on every target in the area. It is a ton of fun!

Going OOM:

This should NEVER happen with a warlock. Being that you are affliction you have the best passive healing out of almost every class. This is how I typically life tap.

Once I reach about 60-75% mana I life tap once or twice (I currently get 24k mana each tap unbuffed). I try to time this right before haunt comes back. This way I get healed by haunt and the healer doesn’t have to waste mana on me. Assuming you have corruption rolling on your target at all times, the healing from Siphon life will keep you with a steady stream of health.

If you are still having trouble with remembering to life tap, just put it into your rotation. After you put up a full stack of dots, life tap. That way you are constantly full for mana and your haunt will heal you each time.

Glyphs & Talents:

The spec that Lyssi has is pretty much the standard one.  There isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room if you are focusing primarily on PvE.

With Glyphs there are several options.  What you choose will largely depend on your playstyle and what you are planning on doing.

Must Haves:

• Primary – Glyph of Haunt
• Major – Glyph of Fear, Glyph of Soul Swap
• Minor – Glyph of Drain Soul

Options for other slots:

• Primary – Glyph of Bane of Agony, Glyph of Corruption, Glyph of Unstable Affliction
• Major – Glyph of Shadow Bolt, Glyph of Life Tap, Glyph of Felhunter
• Minor – Any ones you want.  There isn’t anything that will make or break for you on here. Although I am fond of Glyph of Unending Breath

 

Crowd Control aka CC:

Warlocks are Kings and Queens of CC.  Thanks to the lovely Glyph of Fear (EVERY warlock should have this glyph, there is no excuse!) we can now manage several types of mobs.

You have 4 types of CC – Fear, Banish, Enslave Demon and Seduction.

How I handle keeping track of my CC target is to make the mob my focus.  I know that several people have come up with nifty macros for CCing and changing your target and focus.  I keep it simple.  Right click the target’s frame, set focus.  Then I can easily watch the duration of my CC.

**BIG TIP!**

Keep your pet on passive if you are going to CC a target.  Once your target is CC’d then send your pet to the kill target.  This will stop you from accidentally breaking your own CC.

Here is a breakdown on each CC:

• Fear – This will be your staple CC.  It works on most mobs in Cata dungeons.  This better be glyphed or you will have mobs running everywhere and pulling their friends with them.  GLYPH THIS!  This can be broken by damage.  You do not have to wait for the timer to finish before you refresh this.  I usually refresh when the duration is about half gone.
• Banish – This works on elementals and demons.  The best part about this method is the mob becomes immune to all damage.  You cannot refresh this very easily.  This can be taken off by recasting it on the mob.  If you want the mob to stay CC’d then wait for this to fall off then recast it on them.
• Enslave Demon – This one will replace your current pet with whichever demon you enslave.  This cannot be broken by damage because they become your pet.  While that demon is under your control you can use their special abilities.  Once this wears off (or you dismiss it) you will have to fight the demon you enslaved.  I don’t use this method much.
• Seduction – Your Succubus channels this spell.  This means you have to run with her.  Since you should be running with your Felpuppy you won’t have this ability as readily as the others.  This can be broken by damage (very easily I might add) and takes a bit more of micro managing than the others.  I usually do not use this ability unless I need more than fear on humanoid targets.

 

Conclusion:

The only way to get good at affliction is to practice your rotation.  Affliction has one of the more difficult rotations to master.  The best tip I can give you is to spend a lot of time on the test dummies.  Once you can go through your rotation with ease (muscle memory for the win!) your dps/damage will go up big time.  Affliction’s main damage comes when the mob is under 25% and we are using drain soul.  Don’t get caught up in your rotation and forget to switch over.

Affliction has always been my favorite spec.  Please feel free to leave any questions you might have in the comments and I will do my best to help you.

Once you progress beyond the “newbie” stage there are LOTS of sites out there with advanced techniques and ideas.  Just think of this as a jumping off point.

Good luck and happy dotting!

Screenshot Friday

Not only did she look just like me, but she was a warlock too!

Cata & Thoughts

Lyssi dinged 85 on 12/11, she was the 7th 85 in the guild (we now have 15). Since then I have been grinding rep dailies and trying to get my professions up. One thing that drives me nuts is she is an enchanter, but she is a blood elf. This means she has 535 enchanting. This also means that she won’t get the achievement until she hits 535. 😦 The downside to trying to level professions at the start of an expansion is that everything is ASS expensive. Plus I am leveling tailoring/enchanting. You really can’t farm those mats with any kind of efficiency. Strike that, I guess you could run dungeons to farm, but that is about all I can come up with. I really want to get my tailoring up high enough so I can start making the new cloth. You know, the SUPER expensive soulbound cloth that is on a 7 day cool down.

Yeah that stuff. >.>

I think heroics might have come close to breaking me.

It isn’t the CC (which I love btw!) or even the mechanics, I think it is the sheer inability to complete the bosses.

It is one thing to wipe over and over again on a raid boss, that is expected, but on a heroic? Yeah that quickly gets old.

It is stupid things too! When a boss charges — MOVE! It is that simple.

I’ve taken to really using my portal. Especially in Heroic Grim Batol. The new warlock abilities are pretty awesome. We actually have cool downs now! 🙂 I think that once I get used to the new dungeons I will really be pumping out the dps. Right now I am pulling anywhere from 7600-8800 dps, which I know is low but it is still up there in the groups. A large part of my problem is lack of hit. I reforged and I am still sitting at like 11% which is ok for heroics, but damn if I don’t need a ton more of hit.

Other than heroics I have really been enjoying the expansion. Some people might be complaining about being “on the rails” with the direct questing, but I am really enjoying it. I don’t like having to run all over to find that one quest giver to move me forward in the story. The extensive phasing is interesting as well. I really like in Hyjal how the burned forest is changed (due to your efforts) into a flourishing one. The phasing did help out a lot on the first day of the expansion. I was actually quite surprised that I didn’t see more people around. I’m not complaining, but it was an interesting feel.

Since Tattia is one of the few leather workers in the guild I have been trying to get her leveled up as well. Up until this weekend I really haven’t had much time to devote to her. I started her out in Hyjal (druid, hello) then took her to Vashj’ir. I think between the two starter areas I prefer Hyjal, but the quest rewards are more caster friendly in Vashj’ir. After completing both these zones I am about 75% of the way to 84. She is headed into Deepholm tonight until she hits 84, then she will take a detour to the Twilight Highlands to open up the Dragonmaw Orcs, then back to Deepholm to finish it up. I leveled Lyssi through the Twilight Highlands with only a small detour into Uldum. Tattia will level to 85 in Uldum. I liked the Twilight Highlands, but damn do those mobs hit hard!

I have been slacking the last few days on Lyssi with her rep dailies. After a particularly bad heroic I had to log off in tears I was so upset. I know I am not as hardcore as Zug, Sorak and Slice, but damn when it is obvious a boss is not going down we need to cut our losses and let go. Come back when the gear is better so the dps and heals can do their jobs. Banging my head against a wall that doesn’t budge is not a lot of fun for me.

Ideally I’d like to get used to the dungeons on regular before I run them on heroic. So far I have completed Stonecore once on regular, Halls of Origination like 3 or 4 times on regular and Grim Batol on regular. I’ve gotten Deadmines twice on heroic (both times did not finish it) and Grim Batol twice on heroic (again not completed). I still have 4 more dungeons that I haven’t even SEEN on regular and SFK on heroic. I will say now that I have been “bad” in that I haven’t looked up any of the strats. Part of it is that I have been so busy at work then having the stress of making sure I got to 85, then gearing up and getting my professions up, etc. It is a wonder I haven’t gone completely grey.

After my stress quit on Thursday I said I wouldn’t be doing dungeons for a while. I have keep true to that and didn’t do a single one since then. I almost thought about queuing up Tattia and attempting to heal a regular, then I quickly killed that idea and settled in for a quiet weekend. I even made a goblin and on Sunday I worked on her for a while. I had gone through my roster on Drak and I realized that I didn’t have a warrior. So Verica the goblin warrior was born.

Get this, she is being leveled . . . prot.

I know! I know! Shoot me now. Sorak asked me why I always have to do things the hard way. I don’t know if this is really considered the hard way, but we’ll see. I have barely made it out of the Goblin starting area so I haven’t even attempted to do anything else. It is kind of funny because the victory rush that I get when I kill mobs almost makes me feel like I HAVE to find another mob to kill and get the heal, EVEN if I don’t need to have my health refreshed. I start to get annoyed if there isn’t anything around me to kill. I kind of feel that way about nightfall procs on my warlock too.

TL:DR the warrior is fun. 🙂 She is a nice little diversion from everything else I need to work on.

PPP will be next in line after Tattia. I want to prove to Slice that Disc healing CAN work even at lower gear levels. Plus I want a high level alchemist to transmute stuffs. I miss playing her too.

Tonight’s plans involve leveling Tattia & getting back into the swing of my rep dailies on Lyssi. Tomorrow is regular dungeon runs with Doz. Luckily I have a 4 day weekend. Hopefully by next week I will have 2 85s ready to raid.

And keep your fingers crossed that I don’t go nuts and kill everyone in the meantime 🙂

Get that nose to the grindstone!

Leveling is upon us yet again!

So far I am enjoying myself.  I wasn’t at first though.  I’ll tell you why.

Slice and I were going to level together, you know doing the whole cutesy couple thing, etc.  We have two very different styles when it comes to leveling.  I read the quest text, and then usually have to re-read it because I have been distracted by vent or gchat and didn’t comprehend anything I just read.  Slice grabs the quest and runs.  He also HATES questing where I enjoy it.

Now someone please explain why we were going to attempt to level together?

It started out ok.  I had wanted to go to Vashj’ir first but as Slice pointed out Hyjal has the caster head enchant.  So to Hyjal we went!  My brother had been up since midnight and had attempted to level with Zug (who has since been proven to be a robot) but quickly was left in the dust in the wee hours of the morning.  As it was, he was about a level ahead of us having completed Vashj’ir.  Regardless, he wanted to level with us so joined us in Hyjal.  The first few quests went fairly quickly.  We were pretty much on the same page for like the first 20 mins, then somehow I got behind.  When I was just getting to the quest giver they were done with the quest and wanted to know if I had gotten credit.  Um no guys, I don’t even have the fricken quest!

/sigh

I finally got pissed and just said to hell with it and dropped group.  My brother did part with “Don’t get all butthurt.”  It wasn’t so much that I was butthurt, I just wasn’t having fun.  I enjoy questing.  I like reading the quests, especially new quests that I haven’t done 20 million times.  I am not all about flying through the levels.  Yes we have a time limit on getting to 85 and geared, but frankly I have time.  I don’t do anything else with my time but play WoW.  It isn’t like I have other things I have to do instead.  I have no doubt that I will be 85 by the end of this weekend.  Then I will begin to level up Tattia and gear out Lyssi.  Hopefully Tattia will go a bit faster than Lyssi did (now that I know what to expect) and I will be able to get back to PPP.

Once I left them and got to level on my own terms I started having fun again.  I ended up almost finishing Hyjal before crashing out for the night.  I think I had like 10 quests left.  I find it odd that you get the zone completed with 115 quests and yet you have a bunch more to do afterwards.  Considering everything is linear, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t get all of the quests in the zone.  It isn’t like Nagrand where you have to go to Shat to get a quest that takes you to Shadowmoon Valley that then takes you back to Nagrand in order to get Nagrand Slam.

Yes I am still pissed over that.

On Tuesday I got to 98% to level 82 before I crashed out.  When I logged in yesterday I completed the quests in Hyjal, dinging 82 in the process (all on rested xp too!) then got the quests that took me into Deepholm.  Again I had wanted to go back and do Vashj’ir but apparently the game had different ideas.

Slice made a comment about how Deepholm reminds him of Nagrand.  I didn’t understand it until I saw it.  Personally I think it looks more like Netherstorm.  All the rocks & crystals everywhere.  I particularly like the floating pieces of rock around you.  Little touches. 🙂

Oh!  Has anyone noticed that Thrall’s woman sounds like Sindragosa!?!?  I could just hear her telling me that my pathetic magic had betrayed me.  I am convinced that they are the same voice actor.  Now I am aware that I could be wrong and she could share the voice actor with Lady Deathwhisper, but I am pretty positive that her voice was used in ICC.  When I first heard it I was all “Oh no my pathetic magic HAS betrayed me!”

Or as my brother says “BUBBLES NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Yeah I know, inside joke, but I laughed and that is all that matters!

Now how do I feel about leveling as my lock.?  I posted yesterday on Ful’s post at Killing em Slowly about how my warlocking went.  If you aren’t reading them, you totally should.  I seriously ❤ that blog.

I started out as affliction when I was running around with Slice and my brother.  I had the blueberry out and I didn’t see any major problems with him surviving.  It wasn’t until I went solo that I noticed that he was dying pretty damn fast.  Also when the hell did they nerf health funnel?!!?  It now lasts like 2 seconds and hardly heals the damn minion.  I have to hit it like 5 or 6 times to keep my blueberry alive.  Insane I tell you.  Towards the end of the night I changed over to my demo spec just to see if that would help with minion survivability.  It did to an extent.  I think I know what the problem was though.

When I level as affliction I send the blueberry in, completely dot up the mob (previously I just hit corruption and CoA, can’t do that anymore) then send him off to another mob, rinse and repeat.  What I found myself doing was sending in the blueberry, loading up the mob with everything I had (haunt, UA, Cor, BoA & whichever curse is best) then moving on to the next target.  This usually has the mob come back and hit me when it is around 30-40% health.  Since affliction has so much passive healing, I wasn’t really taking all that much damage.  My poor blueberry was though.  In my hurry to level I completely forgot to adjust my spec from my raiding spec to a leveling spec.  Specifically the 2 points in Fel Synergy.  Last night I made it a point to respec and popped those two points in there.  It made a HUGE difference.  I still can’t quite chain pull like I used to, the mobs just have too much health.  But I can consistently pull 3-4 mobs at a time.

I think I just fail at Demo.  I have too many buttons that I don’t understand and just nowhere to put them.  Yes I am aware that I could get an addon to give me more bars, but frankly I try to avoid getting UI changing addons.  I don’t enjoy having a borked UI when patches hit.  I just need to seriously go through and delete from my bars everything and put them back up one at a time.  The problem is I have played so long as affliction that I don’t know if I could ever get used to Demo.  Even in the short time that I was demo for raiding I still floundered around.  There is a big difference in raiding and leveling.  I have never leveled as demo.  Add into that all the new spells that demo has (and warlocks have in general) and that just dovetails into my bars being full and me being confused.

Yeah I know, QQ moar noob.

Over my leveling I had pretty much picked up an entirely new set of gear.  I decided last night to switch out my purples for the greens and blues I had picked up.  Mostly to make a better decision on upgrades, but also because repairs are cheaper. 😀  I need to clean out my banks to find room for my gear.  I know I should probably shard it, but I am not sure if I should still use some of it.  I changed over without really looking at anything.  Was almost kind of liberating.

BTW I have over 50k health.

Lock tank!