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

Legendary woes

Last night I finished the first part of the quest chain to get my awesome staff of awesomeness (see yesterday’s post if you have questions) and during the end of the raid I went to go complete the next step.  I was unaware of what I was going to be facing (I did want to be surprised) so I was surprised at how long it was taking me.  I actually had to tell the raid to go forward without me because it was going to take a LOT longer than I originally thought.

 

WARNING!  AHEAD ARE SPOILERS FOR THE LEGENDARY QUEST CHAIN.  IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THEN DON’T KEEP LOOKING!!!  ALSO!  DO NOT CLICK THE VIDEO LINKS!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this far enough down?  Ok!

So I zone into the “Nexus” (it has the Oculus loading screen so it threw me off) and start off.  After the 5th death I had to find a video to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong.

I found this one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQxVOSBR0HY of a mage completing the chain.  I found where I was doing things wrong and changed up my strats.  I was able to make it through the first hurdles then after some more dying (seriously I died like 10 or 12 times by this point) I figured out how to finish clearing to the final boss.

Now this is where I was having serious problems.  I saw how the cheating mage was handling the boss (spell stealing is cheating ok :-p) and I had to figure out how to compensate for it.  Everything that I was reading for warlocks was telling me to make sure I keep my dots up (well duh) and to drain life as much as possible to stay alive.  I also saw the tip to kite the flame down the ramp so that I could get a head start on the adds.  The adds seem to spawn a hell of a lot faster than the “every 60 seconds” BS that I keep hearing but whatever.  The nice thing with the adds is they won’t attack you until they reach the top of the platform.  If you are at the bottom of the ramp then you can dot up the add while it runs past you then drain life it dead as it is coming back to you.  This was working for me for about every other add.  I don’t know if my instance was just bugged or what but the adds kept coming pretty quickly.

Another issue I kept having was my puppy kept bugging out.  Since I need my pet to interrupt and dispell it was kind of important for him to NOT bug out.  On one attempt I didn’t have a pet bar!  I’ve been getting that error quite a lot lately.  Since I don’t use any UI modifying addons I don’t know why I’m having that issue.  The easiest way to fix it is to re-summon my pet.  Unfortunately sometimes doing that will bug out the pet to where he doesn’t move and doesn’t do any of his abilities.  From what others are reading (and telling me) this is a known issue and just something I have to deal with.

/sigh

Zarm was awesome and found a forum topic for me that is giving me some ideas – http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2973018600.  I had already thought about changing my spec a bit so now I have even more of a reason to adjust it.  I think I will also get my T12 gloves.  They aren’t part of my full 4 piece that I want but they are the only piece I can get without losing my 2 piece T11 bonus (which is rather nice).  From everything I am reading it is a long fight of attrition and every little thing I can do to ensure my survival needs to be done.

Slice sent me this video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEVAMZMCxw&feature=related.  It is from an affliction warlock point of view (it is only the 2nd half of the place).  Found out what I was doing wrong on the ramp.  I was running down the middle because it didn’t occur to me to just kite along one edge then run up the other side until I could use my portal (yes I had my portal down).  So I will try that tonight.  I am hoping that will cut down on the time spent NOT draining life from the boss.

Once this part is complete then I get to move on to the NEXT part of the chain.  This part will require me doing stuff during the first four (Shannox, Beth, Rhyolith & Alysrazor) fights to charge some items.  Once I have four charged items I get to open a way to ANOTHER boss that luckily the entire raid gets to help me kill.  Once that guy is dead I will get the first staff.  I can’t wait for this staff as it is a nice upgrade from my current staff.  The one I have drops off Beth and has crit and mastery on it.  The branch has hit and haste.  Om nom nom nom!

Anyway, if anyone else has any tips or suggestions please feel free to leave them in the comments section!  Thanks in advance!

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!

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 🙂

And so it came to pass . . .

That I will be getting a non-affliction off spec.

YES I KNOW!

Trust me I have been depressed ever since it was decided.

Now begins the research.

I almost didn’t even know where to start.  Yes I know EJ is the *place* to go for information on raiding specs.  Trust me I know all about it.  The problem is I can’t stand EJ.  The posts are FILLED with their math proofs.  While I like math and enjoy it, I don’t even come close to liking it enough to be able to read those posts without wanting to gouge my eyes out.  So I avoided going there immediately.

The other problem I have with EJ is it is tough to find the basics.  For example, if you just want to know what the standard rotation is, you would have to wade through pages upon pages of math and top tier gear choices to maybe find the rotation you are supposed to use.

I already know where to get the specs (there are awesome raiders in Slice’s guild that have a demo raiding spec I can check out), I just needed the rotation.

Several months back (before I left SR) I had been told to start looking into a demo spec for the fights that needed more burst.  I went to twitter and asked there.  I got a TON of info and I was so very grateful for it.  I didn’t copy and paste it all into an email or anything because you can always go back and get your old tweets.

Unless you know, Twitter decides to crap out on you.

Twitter no longer shows when people have replied to me.  In fact I have exactly 5 replies on twitter.  3 of which are from September of last year, and the other 2 are from July of this year.  All 5 of them are completely worthless.

All of the lovely Demo lock info that I was given is now gone.  Because I had already asked once, I didn’t want to even go there and ask again.  Mostly because twitter doesn’t show any replies to me.  This means even if people gave me the information a second time, I wouldn’t be able to see it.

Fucking Twitter.

So yesterday when my boss left I started searching.

I started over at Killing Em Slowly because I know Ful has given me great advice in the past and he has put up a sidebar with the basic info on all the different specs.  I checked out his demo post.  While it was awesome (as per usual with his posts) it wasn’t what I needed.  He says that he doesn’t raid Demo.  He just uses it for BGs and 5 mans.

Ok, so no good, need to find something else.

I decided to brave EJ.

I know, I know >.>

So after about 20 mins of searching I finally found the *new* thread.  Where I got a ton of info that wasn’t fully bogged down with math.  Here is the link just on the off chance that someone else facing my situation wants to see where I got my info from.  The guy who wrote this post did an excellent job.  Mad props to him!

EJ says this about what spec to use:

META / RUIN
Spec: 00/56/15
Utility: Target 5% crit debuff, Raid spell power Buff
Other: 30 yards range, No spell pushback reduction, No threat reduction
This is the most common and best performing Demonology talent spec. It provides more utility than any of the other Warlock specs any higher DPS than any of the other demonology specs. In addition, the spell power buff provided by this talentspec is far more powerful then any of the alternatives. Through seed of corruption and sometimes immolation aura, this spec also does more AoE DPS than either affliction or destruction. This thread and it’s data is primarily focused on this talent spec, it produces significantly higher DPS than the others and is the only truly valid talent spec in end-game raiding.

This is what he says about glyphs:

Miscellaneous: Glyphs
In this section I will list the DPS value of each glyph for each talent spec. The 3 best glyphs will be highlighted. Simulationcraft was used to determine these numbers, high end ICC Heroic gear was used as a base.

	00/56/15	00/41/30	00/40/31
Conflagrate	0	0	844
Corruption	47	24	15
Felguard	302	237	0
Immolate	93	81	186
Imp	0	0	211
Incinerate	59	227	195
Life Tap *	333	127	133
Metamorphosis	65	0	0
Quick Decay	159	171	142
Shadow Bolt	27	0	0

Note on Glyph of Life Tap: The value of this glyph greatly depends on the amount of spirit on your gear, all specs scale slightly better (regardless of glyphs) with crit than spirit, however due to demonic pact; the meta/ruin profile prioritizes spirit as the raid DPS gain is far more significant than the personal DPS lost (Roughly 10 times more significant). If you do have very high spirit, then glyph of life tap may be viable for the other talent specs as well.

So ok those are the basics down.  Easy enough.  Now to find the rotation . . .

Meta Ruin, 00/56/15

Life Tap	If the Glyph of Life Tap buff is not active
Shadow Bolt	If the target is not currently afflicted by the Shadow Mastery debuff
Immolate	If your target does not have immolate active or the duration of your immolate on the target is shorter than the cast time of immolate.
Curse of Doom	If this spell is off cooldown and your target will not die within the next 60 seconds
Soul Fire	If Decimation and Molten core are both active.
Corruption	If this debuff is not currently active on your target
Soul Fire	If Decimation is active
Incinerate	If Molten Core is active
Life Tap	If your mana is low or the time remaining on your glyph of Life Tap buff is low.
Shadow Bolt	If none of the above

 

Extra tips:

Cooldowns

1. Demonic Empowerment, Use it on cooldown, do not wait for your Felguard’s demonic frenzy to stack or such.
2. Metamorphosis, Use this ability as frequently as possible, thus if you can use it 3 times in a particular fight- use it 3 times in that fight. So long as you’re using it as many times as you can, it can be helpful to synchronize this with other events; for example if there’s about 2 minutes left in a fight and your target is currently at 40%, then wait for your target to drop to 35% before using metamorphosis. Using Metamorphosis well requires good knowledge of an encounter, if you do not have that simply use it on cooldown.
3. Immolation Aura, You can use this ability once per Metamorphosis, it can be worth while to try fish for procs to go along with this high damage ability- for example you could try wait until the 4pc Tier 10 bonus procs for 10% more damage, or you could wait a few seconds until adds spawn- so long as you use immolation aura before there’s less time remaining on metamorphosis than the duration of immolation aura you’re not missing out on any damage. Note that if Metamorphosis runs out while immolation aura is still active, immolation aura will also cancel itself.
4. Trinkets, If you have use trinkets, it’s generally a good idea to use them on cooldown. You may however want to consider synchronizing your trinkets with metamorphosis for 20% extra damage while you use your trinket.
5. Potion, Since you can only use 1 potion during combat (and 1 pre-potion before combat starts), you should try use your potion during either heroism/bloodlust or if you pre-potted and your guild uses early heroism/bloodlust, use your in-combat potion during metamorphosis+decimation

 

Ok so yeah, lots and lots of stuff to absorb.

One thing that I am happy about is I really won’t have to change my gear all that much.  I do lose out on the 3% hit that affliction gets so I need to get a bunch more hit.  I managed to snag some bracers on Tuesday that have haste and hit on them verses the crit ones I have equipped.  I lose a bunch of spellpower by switching them out so I haven’t changed over.  I need to go through my options and see what I can do about getting me some more hit.  I do have the hit trinket, but it might just be smarter to re-gem.

Here is my armory link if anyone wants to check her out and give me some ideas.

Looks like I wont be rocking out to Dragon Age this weekend 😦

PS – I totally flaked out on my 1 year blog anniversary.  My first post was 09/14/09.  Wow I fail.  Oh well , happy anniversary to me! 😀

*crickets* Don’t mind me I am just rambling here

I started playing WoW more this week.  I had been playing off and on for the past several weeks.  Other than my raid I did a bit ago or a random weekly run, I am not raiding anymore.  I was raiding with Slopoke on Bloodhoof for a bit.  While that was fun, rushing home on a Friday night just felt off to me.  Plus playing on Millea just felt weird.  I have gotten used to playing on Lyssi.  I have the keys set up the way I like them, I have my add-ons set up just so and I can’t quite set up Millea the same.  I also never really raided with Millea.  Tatia was the one I raided on.  It almost feels wrong raiding on Millea.

I’ve also been thinking about my abilities as a warlock lately.  I have come to the conclusion that I am just not that great of a warlock.  I like to think that I am a good raider.  I stay out of the bad, do my job and don’t cause wipes.  Most of the time I am one of the last ones standing.  To me, that is a good raider.  What I continuously fail to bring is top notch dps.

I don’t think it is necessarily the spec.  There are other affliction warlocks that just cream the charts.  It isn’t my computer because I have a pretty nice gaming computer.  I have great internet connection with low latency even though I am west coast and the server is central.  This all points back to me as a player.

I have said in the past that I am not a hardcore player.  When I first joined SR I got a taste of “casual hardcore” and while I was gearing up I was thriving on it.  Once I got to where I really cannot get more gear (outside of heroic modes) my damage should have improved, only it didn’t.  Where is it that I am going wrong?

Andrew has repeatedly said that playing an affliction warlock well is really difficult.  I truly believe this.

It isn’t so much the tracking of your dots, or the high ramp up time, as it is your ability to do EVERYTHING correctly.

“Oh I think I can squeeze off one more Shadow Bolt before I have to reapply Haunt”

“Damn Haunt fell off and I haven’t gotten the cast completed yet”

“Damn it now I need to reapply Corruption”

“Shit I didn’t Life Tap in time”

Etc

And that is just a boss fight where I don’t have to move constantly.

Well you might say that I just need to do some more practice at the training dummy until I get it down pat.  You might be right.  I personally CANNOT stand sitting at the training dummy for hours.  I get bored and end up doing worse than if I was actually raiding.

What makes this worse is I am kind of a raiding snob now.  If you are new to the fight, I will give you a ton of slack.  If you know the fight then I expect you to do your job and do it well.  I get so frustrated with people when they fail on the simple things in raid when I know that they know better.

Now add this attitude in with me failing.

This does NOT go over well.

Definitely NOT in my mind.

Since I stopped raiding what game time I have had has been spent leveling my alts.  Either the mage in the caster duo or my roguelette.  This has not helped with keeping the correct muscle memory on my lock.

Slice and I have been running heroic Magister’s Terrace in the hopes of getting me the pet and the mount.  I have been going in my offspec of aff/demo quasi pvp and have been having issues remembering which button is CoA and which is Corr.  Yes fail warlock is fail.

The funny thing is I still have a blast playing a warlock.  I still cackle when I kill something that is somewhat difficult.  Or when I completely clear out a room or area of the mobs without any “real” loss of health.  I never had this kind of fun when I played Millea.  I think that is why I was able to easily switch “mains” to Tatia for raiding.  Now that I have Lyssi, I rarely want to play Tatia.  Tatia is there for the times I need an instant queue for a friend, or if a healer is needed when there are too many dps.  I actually took her out the other day and did some dailies (I wanted to farm the worm scale for drums) and I just couldn’t get back into the swing of being a boomkin.  I guess Tatia is just a tree and will remain a tree.

I haven’t avoided spoilers for Cataclysm but neither have I gone out looking for them.  This means that I really don’t have a clue as to how my classes are faring so far.  I read enough blogs that cover the pertenent information that once something major happens I would be able to read about it.  I guess that is kind of shit for you if you come here for warlock and druid info.  But then again, if you are coming here for warlock and druid information then I guess I should feel sorry for you and make a comment to direct you to the list of blogs on the right hand side.  There are many other people who only blog about important game things.

I am definitely not one of those.

I still don’t have any answers to my musings from above.  The thoughts are still rolling around in my head as to what I could do to improve or simply just change the situation.  I know eventually I will figure it out.

I know that come Cataclysm I have plans.  I plan on leading my own raiding guild.  I finally admitted to myself that I am too much of a control freak to have it any other way.  Several other people across the blogosphere have also come to that conclusion.  This was my “secret project” I spoke of a while back.  Many of you guessed, or just noticed from seeing me in game so it seemed kind of silly to keep it a secret on my blog.

For those of you that are completely oblivious, or just don’t particularly care, I am no longer a member of Shadow Rising.  I have since founded a new guild.  At this time it is little more than alts, but as I mentioned above, once Cataclysm comes out I will be making it a raiding guild.  I want having fun to be paramount.  Downing shit will happen as a byproduct.  You do not need assholes to have a sucessful raiding guild.  I plan on proving that.

I will give you guys more information as the time gets closer to “opening the gates” as it were.  I am working on getting a website up and going.  I have a wonderful friend who graciously offered to create the site.  Thanks again hun!  I am also working with getting my own vent server.  I haven’t quite gotten the loot system fully situated yet.  I kind of want to see how the guild leveling thing will work out.  It will most likely be EPGP though.  I do like it and how it works.  I think I might tweek the way EP is earned though.

All in all I have high hopes for this project.

I want to say thanks again to the 30-40 people that still check this site daily.  I do love you guys for it!  I hope to be able to start putting more posts up.  My muse has kind of left me and I don’t want to just post “I’m sorry I didn’t post” posts up all the time.  Maybe now that the drama is over and things in my life are going well I will be able to post.

We shall see.

😀

Of Birthdays, Laps and Warlock Tears

As I am sure you are aware (because you read this blog and I made a post as it happened) Shadow Rising downed Sindragosa.  It really was an epic fight and I am so honored that I got to be a part of it.

After we downed the bitch we went to pay a visit to the good ol’ Lich King himself.

I want a pony and a puppy and a bright red ball!

He didn’t give me any of those.  It made me sad.

What did he give me?

Necrotic plague.  The fucker.

Remember kids, STD tests are a GOOD thing.

Moving on!

Today is Soth’s birthday!  He is one step closer to being an old man. 😉  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! 😀

I hope he likes the present I got for him.

*cackles*

I mean, umm yeah, I got him a gift card.

*innocent face*

What?

In other news, I might have to shed some Warlock tears.  No I am not talking about the sweet delicious QQ tears that mages look forward to, but the tears of a die hard affliction warlock becoming *gasp* DESTRUCTION!

*bursts into fulsome sobs*

It was made very clear that the Sindragosa fight hates affliction warlocks.  When I get the stupid instability debuff (which I swear I get every time it comes up) it is always when I have to refresh everything.  That means I get up to 6 stacks just from refreshing my DoTs.  No Shadow Bolt spam.  If Sindy is being a particularly evil bitch she will suck us all in and I will get another stack by using my teleport.  BTW if you are a warlock doing that fight and not using your demonic teleport then you are a fucking retard.  USE IT!!!  I get to start dps back up while everyone else is running for their lives.  It is a beautiful thing.

I don’t know the first thing about the other warlock specs.  I mean I know that there are slight gear differences.  For example, affliction loves haste, destruction loves crit (wannabe mages).  I would think that I would need to change my gear around to be able to switch effectively.

The biggest hurdle would be to actually figure out what the hell a destro lock does.  I know they supposedly have a “tough” rotation just like affliction, but I don’t have a clue as to what it is.

Now before anyone gets their panties in a twist, I am not being asked to change.  My GM and my RL both told me I don’t have to change my spec if I don’t want to.  It is completely up to me if I switch.  The problem is I know Tir (my RL) is right in that affliction is horrible for that fight.  I need burst dps.  I think he said that destro was doing like 14% or something better than affliction.  Even demo was doing like 7% or something better.  So I could “technically” go demo, but if I am going to switch to the max dps spec for the fight, I am going to go full tilt.

So any warlocks that read this, a little help please?

Since I am leaving tomorrow morning at the butt crack of dawn and won’t be home until Monday around midnight, you will have two lovely filler picture posts.  I don’t know how much internet availablity I will have so I might not reply right away to comments.  Please leave them though!  I will reply as soon as I am able.

❤