Since it seems to be a fairly common destination, I moved my guide to hitting the spell hit cap at 80 using only rep and heroic gear to its own static page. Now you can find it easily!
I’d like to move my guide about titles available to get, or get started on, in Echoes of Doom to its own page… but
1) the formatting goes all wonky when I try to just copy & paste it, and
2) it’s only relevant for a couple more weeks anyway.
Now I’m related to Breana!
Sunday night I logged on to find 4 guildies pummeling LBRS out of existence; I asked if I could hop into their instances so I didn’t have to deal with the (admittedly) two pulls before Vaelen so that I could finish up the Seal of Ascension; they said yes. I revealed this would let us into UBRS and up we went!
And then I reminded them this is where we could get Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!, which we did handily. The Jenkins Clan continue to grow! We also went up and killed Rend Blackhand for good measure (I even did the thing with the seal and summoned Vaelastrasz) as well as General Drakkisath, at which point I picked up his brand.
Imbecile,
I hold very little faith in your ability to prevent outsiders from accessing the master’s lair. In the very likely event of your death, this orb has its own failsafe built in to prevent outsiders from teleporting directly into Blackwing.
Only those with the Mark of Drakkisath branded upon their hand may make use of this orb. Thankfully, Drakkisath is not nearly as incompetent as you, Quartermaster. He guards the brand himself!
-Warchief Rend Blackhand
P.S. Destroy this letter, idiot.
That is one stupid orc.
The new-old Scourge Plague is all the talk on the web and in-game. I’d like to give a shout out to Rav, for getting it right. It’s eerie how close she was, actually.
Also, I’d like to take this moment to ask ZomBre Jenkins to not eat my brains. All you’ll end up doing is gumming my (newly hair-equipped) skull, girl, and that’s if you can even reach it.
First off, did we learn nothing from the first time around? It’s like Lich King just went, “screw being sneaky, I’m just going to mail them boxes of grain marked with evil runes and see if it works. It worked last time, right?”
Kind of interesting to me that Arthas, or someone like him, came back for his horse. I sort of wonder if it’s the Lich King after all, or his agents in the other continents (and you know they’re there).
As long as we’re on agents, I’m not 100% sure I trust these Argent Healers: if you wander over to Light’s Hope Chapel, you can see all sorts of races helping the Argent Dawn, but at least Hordeside, every single healer is undead. All of them. And is it just me, or did they show up a little early? Healers, then crates? Just seems a little too convenient for me. That, and the apothecaries have been working on a new plague for ages now (heck, I’ve even helped), and the zombies aren’t as mindless as they’d seem… hmmmm.
And last but not least, speaking of horses, this might be a good time to go punch Baron a few times and see what he knows… or at least take his horse from him. If you can’t get the Horseman’s magic flying horse, the Deathcharger would be a good alternative.
Alright, that’s all my thoughts on the new plague. Get out there and chew some brains!
WTS [Picture], 1000 words, pst:
(I should clarify: Vixinn is not in my party, that’s simply a guild notice; in fact, no one is in my party. Demonology spec is fantastic for plowing through old-world instances seven and eight elites at a time.)
The shared topic for the week (“Well, now what?”) deals with how you’re adjusting to your new spec in the Brave New World of 3.0.2 (soon to be 3.0.3). And in line with that, I have a little confession to make:
I’m one of these now.
I’m sure a lot of Warlocks are curious about how Metamorphosis functions, as well as how deep Demonology (the black sheep of end-game specs) works out - and so I’m here to answer your questions, but first, the general answer: I am enjoying playing my warlock (a lot), but I am unsure about the direction in which Blizzard is taking Demonology. Now, let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we?
Pros:
Taking Metamorphosis is a lot like having a very powerful trinket on a 3-minute cooldown. While it’s up, you can definitely watch those numbers jump up - so much so in fact, that I created a Power Aura to notify anytime I can use it. It is definitely a boost to my personal DPS; while it remains a touch lower than my affliction DPS, my demonology DPS - almost completely unbuffed (only Fel Armor and passive Demonology buffs), I’m hitting 1000-1100 dps. Quaffing a Flask of Pure Death and getting a good food buff (which is so amusing now - spellpower gives me spellpower, and spirit gives me spellpower, and since I’m demonology stamina gives me spellpower, so pretty much all food is +spellpower food) can make that go even higher.
As a Demonologist, I’ve got some huge stat boosts I don’t get from any other tree. My spellpower jumps up about 200-300 points with a demon out (again, all numbers taken assuming all I have is a felguard out and Fel Armor applied). I also gained a fairly high amount of crit from what amounted to just a simple respec - something like 9%. It shows, too!
I get to use the Felguard again, who has always been my favorite pet (if you refresh and look at the random headers long enough, you’ll even see he was the one to accompany me into the Dark Portal). Skelli, one of our guild’s other ‘locks, respecced the same as me and has said the same thing - he loves having the Felguard out again. And, maybe it’s just me, but the Felguard seems to have taken a big boost in survivability and damage as well. Demonic Empowerment helps, as do all the +damage and +crit talents in deep demonology builds.
I definitely solo a lot faster than I can as an Affliction lock. I imagine this is what it feels like to be a full-time destruction warlock, only in miniature.
Immolation Aura is crazy powerful - it really is a lot like having a boss ability. I’ve also found Demon Charge to be super-useful for getting into range to use the aforementioned aura. It’s possible that my DPS appears slightly low to me because as I discovered, Recount does not count Immolation Aura in determining dps or damage dealt, it seems.
And, perhaps the most important point, turning into a demon is completely badass.
Cons:
There’s no nice way to say it, so I’m just gonna come out and say it plainly: Shadow Cleave is fairly stupid, and Challenging Howl is only slightly less stupid. Neither one even made it onto my Metamorphosis bar. Anytime that I could use Shadow Cleave, I could instead pop an Immolation Aura and spam Incinerates and actually do some damage - Shadow Cleave does not appear, in my tests, to be scaling with spellpower but instead with attack power. (I’ll go hit a dummy and find out, just for you.) Challenging Howl turns out to be useful for peeling things off healers, but it’s extremely situational - I’ve used it once and only once, to do just that. In previous builds we at least had Shadow Bolt Volley; I’d love to see this return. I’d also heard a rumor that Cripple was being considered at one time. That seems far more useful to me than an AOE time-limited taunt.
As a Demonology spec warlock, I may have more health and mana, but I am a lot less mana-efficient. With Destruction - well, I don’t ever recall running out of mana, but when I did Life Tap, I was able to get it back pretty often by spamming Shadow Bolts (Soul Leech and Improved Soul Leech). With Affliction, there’s any number of ways to get back mana (Improved Life Tap, Dark Pact [a talent I’d love to have in Demonology just so I can rob my Felguard of his oft-untouched mana pool], and Improved Drain Soul, just to name a few). With Demonology? Life Tapping is it. And since doing damage is now spamming a direct damage instead of monitoring a rotation of dots, I end up Life Tapping fairly often. Solo it’s not a big deal - I life tap after a fight, during the time I go to kill something Fel Armor heals me back up; if it doesn’t, I throw in a Drain Life or two.
My spell rotation completely and utterly changed. I’ve been playing affliction, to some degree, for most of my warlockin’ career. I was a warlock from 1-50, when I switched to a combination aff/demo build to get the Felguard, who took me to 70. I was destruction for a while until I realized I had neither the crit, nor the spellpower, nor the hit to support it, so I went affliction. Affliction is what I’ve been soloing as, raiding as, grouping as, you name it, probably for the last 5 or 6 months. But changing to demonology - well, most of my affliction spells just went away. Poof! No UA, no SL. Just Corruption and Curses, to be honest. I actually (again, personal experience; it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on paper unless coefficients have changed) have settled on a rotation of Curse of the Elements, Corruption, Immolate, spam Incinerates until Immolate is gone (again, thank you Power Auras for letting me know), repeat till dead, Life Tap if necessary, Drain Life if low. I was pushing 600-800 dps using my old method of Shadow Bolt Spam, but I’m hitting 1000-1100 dps with just this simple rotation and popping Metamorphosis when necessary. I know it’s viable, and honestly I’m only coming in behind hunters on our dps meters, but it feels low. This may just be a perception issue.
I wish Metamorphosis didn’t feel quite so much like an OP trinket. As I was saying to Skelli last night, I’d even take a nerf to any aspect of Metamorphosis if I could stay in it. Words cannot express how much I wish Demon Form was permanent.
So there you have it. A couple of personal issues aside, Demonology seems like a perfectly viable spec for low-end raiding. It helps that we now have a talent that duplicates the effects of two pieces of T5, making it viable for those of us who will probably never see anything farther than Mags and Gruul. I’ve changed how I do damage, but I’m still doing damage, and at the end of the day, I have the most badass pet, and the most badass alternate form. I guess you could say I’m settling in pretty well in my new spec. :)
This is just a collection of responses to blue posts, pretty much all by Ghostcrawler, on warlock damage (specifically demonology, and yes, this is leading into a shared topic post about my new spec). I don’t want this to be interpreted as QQ, but I can’t help but feel that some of what is said and what is done - or maybe what is intended and what actually happens - has a fundamental disconnect that leaves me tentative about continuing to play my warlock. Anyway, on we go.
Come with us and you will see,
this our town of Halloween~
Happy Hallows’ End, everyone! No doubt by now, you’ve been beating the Horseman silly like the loot piñata he truly is this year, trick-or-treating your little hind ends off, and PvPing under the effect of the G.N.E.R.D.S. buff (it’s a slap in the face, apparently!). Here’s your ol’ pal Quek with a few protips for you, if you’re going for Hallowed be Thy Name (and one even if you’re not):
Don’t finish the Tricks and Treats achievements before you finish G.N.E.R.D. Rage! As far as I can tell, the Candy Buckets are the only source of G.N.E.R.D.S., and those delicious little defense boosts expire in 24 hours 14 days (see note). However, if you do accidentally run out of them, no fear - G.N.E.R.D.S. aren’t soulbound, so all you need to do is either run the quest with an alt, or make a new alt that can easily get to the closest candy bucket, and mail them to yourself. On the Horde side this would probably be a blood elf (the trip to Falconwing Square is trivially easy), while the Alliance would probably find it easiest with humans. (Alliance players, feel free to chime in in the comments if there’s anywhere easier for a level 1 to reach besides Goldshire.) Edit: They last 14 days now! So just make sure you do some BGs before Hallows’ End … ends.
Do Tricks and Treats of Azeroth, even if you don’t want the title. There’s no reason not to: it’s free money. 3g 75s a stop, to be exact. That’s 176g 25s for the Horde, 165g for the Alliance, for just a couple hours of flying around.
While we’re on it, do Tricks and Treats of Azeroth with your non-70 alts, or at least as many as you can! They’re definitely a good amount of XP (3000-4000 XP per bucket - per bucket!), and even more if you’ve got a Recruit-a-Friend bonus. Saddle up and get some candy! Yeehaw!
You know those little candies you get? I’m talking Chewy Fel Taffy, Soothing Spearmint Candy, and Pyroblast Cinnamon Balls. Casters, you may want to do your candy bucket raiding the day of a raid, because not only do these buffs stack with food buffs, but they give a stackable buff. You can get up to 20 hit (which I guess works for other classes too) and 68 spellpower on top of whatever boosts you might already be getting, simply by munching 4 taffies, 4 spearmints, and 4 cinnamon balls. If you’ve got any G.N.E.R.D.S. left after doing G.N.E.R.D. rage, those stack too, so tanks might be interested in an extra 20 defense rating.
Don’t despair about A Mask for All Occasions, as it’s going away in patch 3.0.3. Also, go farm that Horseman, as the Squashling and Hallowed Helm are definitely way up this year; I’ve seen at least 4 Squashlings (and won one!), and have seen 3 Helms (and lost all three…), in just 3 days.
If you’re fighting fires in the towns, (1) be sure and pick up the quest from the Matron while you do it - there’s technically two dailies per firefight - and (2) fight the bigger fires first. The fires this year seem to spread really, really quickly, and if you put out the small ‘parts’ of the fire before the bigger ‘parts’, they’ll spread back in about the time it takes you to go get a bucket.
Now get out there, and have yourself a fruitful holiday!
I’d been after Vandersloot for a while to run Stratholme with me - actually since before the patch, since while Seed of Corruption is great for clearing out rooms, the Voidwalker is not really made for clearing whole rooms of enemies and spell pushback was kind of a pain in my demonically powered neck. However, with 3.0.2 now active, spell pushback is not really a concern for me, and Van is a convert to the way of the Gorilladin. I didn’t have much to do last night after finishing up Tricks and Treats of Eastern Kingdoms (well, let me rephrase that: I didn’t feel like doing Outland), and the two of us winged off to Stratholme.
We actually didn’t know the dungeon at all; I was working off a map from Wowwiki, making educated guesses as to where we were going since Cartographer remains 75% borked. Still, we managed to wipe out everything in Live Strat and everything in UD Strat (including rare spawns); the only rough part was Baroness Anastari, who took control of Van, and to be honest I wasn’t sure if I should kill him or what. So he killed me, then she put him in Aspect of the Viper and made him fight his gorilla. He was losing for a while there. Before and after that, not bad.
Oh, and I died on the random bunch of undead after Ramstein because for some reason they all aggroed me from across the room. It was a conga line of carnage! … Luckily, I’d just soulstoned up.
And, as you can see, apparently two overgeared, overleveled, and overpowered characters who have no idea what they’re doing can make the Baron run with a little time to spare. Baron himself was actually kind of a joke. Still, it was hella fun - I got to see a dungeon I never saw before, and got a total of about 6000 more Argent Dawn rep than what’s in that screenshot, mostly from turn-ins and valor tokens. I think we’ll be heading back again.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: I got the best trinket ever. DANCE PARTY!
I see that, as Siha noted, 3.0.2 and the impending Wrath have brought a few people out of retirement.
A lot more than a few.
If you, like me, are stuck waiting, here’s a couple things you can read in the meantime.
Matticus has a post up on healing versus Anub’Rekhan, part of his Healing Your Way Through Naxxramas series (okay, it’s not the real title, but I like it). I feel obligated to plug it if only because I got Impaled for the post. (Read on, you’ll see.)
Mania’s got info on Shattered Hand Warhounds (now my favorite wolf skin) and a mysteriously exotic… bear?!
Nibuca covers a random vanity pet macro (possibly the only useful info to come out of the forums) and her new UI as of 3.0.2, which has been influencing my own UI in dangerous ways.
Grats to Totally Raids for adding three level 1 nubs to their crew!
I’m sure there’s more to read - check out my blogroll on the sidebar for more - but my wait position is finally up, and I have a horseman to farm.
Courtesy of The Anna Brigade, an RP Friday Five I think I can actually answer.
Welcome to the October 17 Edition of the RP Friday Five! Every Friday, you’ll find a list of five questions to spark your roleplaying curiosity and flesh out a character a little more - hopefully without any of the long, supposedly painful searching to figure them out. This week’s five questions are related to what everyone in my guild seems to be thinking about - achievements (personal, in game, titled, and otherwise).
What is your character most proud of?
What traits does he or she really respect in another person?
Does your character have any titles, and if so, does he or she actually use them?
Is your character looking to get any recognition through the new system of achievements?
What’s one silly, irrelevant, or otherwise not in character achievement that you think you’ll get, even if your character would NEVER do something like that?
Queklain is most proud of his steadily rising kill count. (It’s almost like a brochure for adventuring: go to new and exciting locales! Meet interesting and exciting people! Then kill them!) He’s also rather glad he’s gone this far without succumbing to the demonic forces he holds sway over, and is rather proud of his recent mastery of ghosts.
Queklain respects people with very dark senses of humor, patience, determination, and straightforward logical thinking. Even in a world where demons can be summoned at will, there are those who believe in the power of reason. Point A leads to Point B.
Thus far, Queklain is title-free. He has an idea, though.
One of the first assignments Queklain took on was an Ambassadorial role - summoned from his old haunt (pardon the pun) in Tirisfal Glades, he spent his formative seasons helping the newly-allied Blood Elves find a place in the Horde, then nearly singlehandedly rescuing the little village of Tranquillien. When the time came to cement the relationship between the elves and the Horde, Queklain served as an envoy (though even Sylvanas was surprised - “To tell the truth, I was expecting a blood elf,” she said). He’s worked on and off since then to cement his role with the Horde, and would like to be recognized soon as an Ambassador of the Horde.
He would also someday like to carry the title of Argent Champion, because he has a keen sense of irony.