Random Asides

Yahtzee! I left notes for this post from last week. I'd forgotten about that. It's always nice to log in and have prompts for a post. This is going to adopt the format of Random Asides

One.

I learned how to discern which bosses I'd downed in the LFR. This was a source of consternation for me, as I could never remember what I'd actually accomplished. In the LFR screen, there's a little icon that appears next to the name of the wing. Hovering over it will list the bosses you've looted.

I know for many of you this is not a new trick. For derps like me, I'd been trying to find the old raid lock screen (despite knowing we don't have locks anymore). I figured there had to be someone that would indicate what you've done during the current reset period.

The only downside to the mouseover? It doesn't tell you how many total bosses there are. It just lists the names. I had to look up things to make sure I knew what each wing contained (3 in each of the first two). Perhaps it seems silly to you, but in LFR I generally don't know the name of what I'm fighting. It's more like, "this is that one fight where the floor randomly disappears." Such is how my brain works when I'm not "really" raiding.

Two.

Apart from that, I actually didn't get much done. I had been doing a good job of running dailies from two zones. The problem is that the Golden Lotus dailies keep expanding. So where before I'd be done in 10-15 minutes, now it pushes a half hour. Tricksy Hobbitses.

I should be taking a well-reasoned approach, like prioritizing one faction and making sure I at least finish that each day. Instead, it generally depends on where I logged off and what is on TV in the background. A poor plan, indeed.
  
Three.

I've been playing around with the Ask Mr. Robot premium edition. Of particular note for me is the upgrade-question-asker-thingy. (I'm being profoundly specific, I know.) It's the big spy glass that lets you ask a question such as "How best should I spend my valor points?" Then, it generates a list of items that would benefit you most. Totally worth it's weight in shards. I've been gleefully abusing this feature to tell me what to buy and where to shop. It would also help immensely with my problem in section two, but only if I can force myself into focus.

I think it was another blogger that mentioned to me the find-stuff-in-your-bags-feature had discovered an overlooked item. I've not installed the required addon to use this, but I can see where it would be helpful. When you're running LFR with the TV in the background, items have the tendency to sneak into the inner folds of your backpack. Or maybe you also left your fishing outfit enabled. Oops.

Four.

Because my brain isn't focusing in WoW, I played a decent amount of League of Legends over the weekend. Also, I downloaded some new songs for Rock Band. Yep, I still play that occasionally. Having not explored the DLC in many years (handle it!), I was pleasantly surprised by the offerings. I need to upgrade my drum set.

I'm ashamed to admit I have not gotten very far in ACIII yet. I love the game, it just requires a high level of focus. It's a hard game to pick up and not play for 27 hours straight. I find if I don't have sufficient time allotted for it, then I end up just running around climbing things and picking fights with guards. Totally worth it and fun, mind you, but not all that conducive to progressing.

Ah well, such is a gamer's life. Better too many games than too few, amirite?

From Zero to Gear-o

Terrible pun. I know. Deal with it. It reflects how I feel I've geared... very much in giant, terribly pun-y, leaps. Or something.

This past weekend, I finally got over the LFR hump. Immediately, I won a belt (and then nothing else for several runs). I also hit honored with Golden Lotus. As a tailor, that meant two more purples. I purchased a trinket and OH on the AH. I sold a purple robe to make the money back. I think I went from about 30k DPS to 60K DPS in a matter of hours. Pretty crazy.

I spoke a little about a rep path for Warlocks in my last post. If you're a tailor, getting honored with GL is huge. I also snagged a ring from the Operation: Shieldwall quartermaster for VP. I was nearing the cap after the last few weeks of dailies/heroics/LFR. I figured a ring was a good choice, since there's a second slot, so if I immediately get a drop, my purchase was not wasted.

I don't think I'm able to reliably juggle more than two hubs at a time, so GL and O:S are where I'm starting and would suggest other 'locks start there as well. O:S has the best rewards if you consider the eventual ilevel. GL is pretty much required to get started, but the tailoring really sells it if you're a tailor. Klaxxi is another option, but that's sitting in the 3-hole for me.

When 5.2 drops, it will shake this list up. I'm sure the new rep they come up with will take precedence. I'm hoping to have capped one of my first few before it does, but that may not be in the cards. I'm slow.

If you're looking for solid items to purchase on the AH. There's an OH purple that I snagged for 4k. There's also a trinket (Dragonling something) that can be filled with cogs to be pretty solid. With cogs, I don't think it was a whole lot more than 3k. If you're curious, I'm the Fulguralis on Alexstrasza. Check me out on Mr. Robot. I've only started reforging/properly enchanting/gemming the purple items. Until very recently, I was replacing things too quickly to be mess with it.

On an unrelated side note: I actually really enjoy trash now. With SS+SB, I feel like I actually contribute. Especially when I can time my DS so I'm constantly full of shards, and spreading DoTs like a madman. When I got to a stand and sling boss, it was almost boring. At least until I realized I really need to manage my shards better. For long fights, it's hard to keep Haunt up, and I think I want to be sure not to clip it, so-as to maximize the use of each shard. Mana has not been a huge issue as long as I remember to tap once every minute or so. Sometimes I forget and end up low.

I need to throw stats and spec into the primer, but I've not had the chance to snag any screenies yet. Maybe this week. I'm sort of counting on a talent reset with 5.2, so I can take the pet sacrifice talent instead of the super-pet talent that I have now. Nibs tells us that sacrificing the pup is actually pretty warlockerly of us, plus there's a very low danger of g- gui- guilt? Is that how it's pronounced? I guess if you're specced Destro you should be more concerned.

Primer Updated and Rep Grinding Plan

Just a quick FYI post today, I slapped the glyph information into my primer, complete with links. Feel free to let me know if I booger-ed anything. I've got spec and stats left. Both should be relatively short, but I want some links/screenshots to better explain them. For stats, I'm just basically using Ask Mr. Robot anyway, and doing the "non hit cap" version. It's tough getting used to misses, but I figured I may as well start. It's not as bad as I thought. Speccing is pretty simple these days, as well.

I'm also going to ramble a bit about the dailies I've been doing. The short version from my quick and dirty holiday research is to start with Operation: Shieldwall (for Alliance). It's going to have the best gear upgrades. Also, I want to get some stuff from Shado-pan soon, and that requires completion of the Golden Lotus reputation. So I do the Shieldwall and Lotus dailies, basically. Throw in a scenario/heroic if I can. I'm one point away from LFR eligibility, so that's exciting.

I topped off Tillers pretty quick, just because it's simple to do. I like to log off there, as it's a quick flight down to Lion's Landing or up to the Golden Lotus hub. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I throw in the Klaxxi dailies. I was really close to capping my Valor last week. Go me.

Now that I've finally started Assassin's Creed III, though, I see a distinct lack of dailies in my future. I'll probably still try to knock out an hour's worth, but that probably won't get me capped. Oh well...

Happy 2013!

2013 marks the start of the 6th year for this blog. This is also post 884. That's not a special number or anything, but boy is it a lot. 2012 was a bit of a rough year for yours truly, and my writing definitely suffered as a result. Still, I'm incredibly glad I took the plunge and opened my doors 6 years ago. I may not be as useful these days, but I'm thankful for all of you readers that have stuck with me, commented, and otherwise shared this space. I can't begin to express how much it means, especially when you're having a crappy year. One of the greatest things about the Internet (and our gaming community in particular) is the assurance that even when you feel alone... you're not.

I've met a lot of amazing people on this journey and was just taking a moment for reflection this morning. I will be back in 2013, writing about random warlockery. Though I've been quiet over the holiday break, it is not for a lack of gaming. I'm one ilevel point away from being LFR geared and dipping my toes in a bit of raiding. It was somewhat of an accomplishment for me to get back on the horse, so to speak. I've been proud in the past to be the first in the guild to cap, to be the best geared, etc etc. This time I'm coming from a whole different angle, and in some ways its eye-opening. Can you still be proud when you're the absolute last person to the party? I suppose my pride surprises me.

If you're curious and looking for a warlockerly tidbit, I'm in the midst of the Golden Lotus daily throes. I'm also doing the Operation: Shieldwall stuff, as that seems to be the best way to get geared quickly. My first exalted rep in MoP was definitely the Tillers. Go figure. But more on that as things settle back into a somewhat normal schedule. Until then, happy holidays to you and yours, thanks for reading, and pleasant corrupting in 2013!

I shard all of you.

Affliction Warlock Glyphs

I promised a quick break down of my glyphs this week, so here we go. There's not nearly as much to say about this section as there was about the rotation, but feel free to chime in with any tips/corrections. I'll plop this draft into my on-going primer (with links!) sometime over the holiday break.

For major glyphs, I'm going with:

• Glyph of Dark Soul - Adds a passive haste component while sacrificing some of the active effect.
• Glyph of Siphon Life - Adds self-healing to Corruption.
• Glyph of Soul Shards - Adds and extra shard slot.

Soul Shard is the only "required" glyph on that list. Having the extra shard makes a huge difference. Siphon Life is perhaps the second most common choice, as the extra health is good juju. Dark Soul, however, is probably pretty questionable. Currently, I'm taking it because I don't do a good job of using my DaS buff whenever it is off cooldown. At some point in the future, if I improve, I will likely replace this with Soul Swap. Rumor has it that the DaS glyph results in a DPS loss, but I need to look into the conditions of that statement. Obviously, if you never use DaS, it would no longer represent a loss. I imagine there must be some tipping point between "constantly" and "never" where the DPS loss kicks in. 

I'm pretty ambivalent about Soul Swap. I wish we had another good major glyph. With SB+SS, I just generally don't see the need for the glyph. As long as you judiciously throw in your Drain Soul prior to the death of things, shards don't seem to be a problem. And when you're not dealing with quick dying adds, you're not swapping a whole lot. Still, there is some use for allowing you to essentially DPS more than one sustained target, when such a situation arises.

Down in the minors, we have:

• Soulwell - Cosmetic glow.
• Verdant Spheres - Cosmetic balls.
• Eye of Kilrogg - Lets your eye place your portal.

The first two are simple cosmetic effects. If I were doing a lot of underwater stuff, I'd plop Unending Breath in Soulwell's place. It seems as if every underwater questing area gives you a convenient buff these days, though, so I never ended up using it. The spheres are just because I wanted to look like a sparkly vampire.

The Eye glyph is pretty useful, especially prior to obtaining my MoP flight license. It can allow you to teleport to places where you wouldn't otherwise have been able to reach. It's not really an in-combat thing, but fun and useful when exploring which is more than I can say for those other glyphs. 

Does anyone else feel like Warlocks always get the most boring glyphs?

MoP Affliction Warlock Primer Started

I published the rough draft of my rotation post last week and got some great feedback. I've taken that, updated things as needed, and plugged it into what will become my MoP Affliction Warlock Primer Page. It is linked up there on the top left of the page where my old guides used to be.

The eventual goal is to have everything in there I need to be a competent Affliction Warlock. Right now, we just have the rotational discussion. I'm planning to publish a rough draft about glyphs before this week ends. Stats and spec will be covered eventually as well. If there are any other key topics I've missed, I'm definitely open to adding a section.

Again, the goal of these articles is not to be a hardcore raider, but simply to get Affliction Warlocks started. You may want to do things differently, and I encourage anyone and everyone to share these alternate methods along with the rationale behind them. As my old gaffer used to say: "There's more than one way to afflict an orc." He might have been a bit hordist.

In any case, thanks to everyone that commented. Hopefully the primer helps some of the other Warlocks out there that are looking for a simple discussion of (what I consider) the basics. If nothing else, it has helped me hone my own playing. I slapped on the shard glyph last night and, hoo boy, what a difference an extra shard makes. I ran a quick scenario and felt like I was slinging shadow errrrverywhere. It was glorious.

I have to say, I really enjoy where they've taken the class in MoP. Traditionally, I've always viewed changes from Blizz with a healthy skepticism, but I really feel they nailed it in this expansion. They updated and removed a lot of the unpleasant sides of Affliction Warlockery without sacrificing (what I feel to be) the identity of the class. Bravo!

Now I just need to work on those "Coming Soon" areas.

Slinging Shadow in Mists

Okay. So here is my attempt at organizing my somewhat disparate thoughts about the current method of Affliction Warlock Spellslinging. Eventually, I'm going to organize this information into a primer to replace the outdated articles that I have on the left. At that point, I'm sure it'll be too late to be of help to anyone. Still, I'm doing this as much for myself as any of the rest of you. Now that I'm level 90 and starting to gear up, I need to know how to play proper-like, if only so as not to embarrass myself in group settings.

Let me set one expectation straight here: My goal with this is not to become a top raider or anything like that. The idea is to capture a basic foundation of what I believe to be a respectable way to play the class I love. There are always things one could do better, but let's agree to discuss what we believe every "core" Aff'lock should do. With that being said, here we go...

A lot has changed in MoP. The Warlock class has been redesigned. I think they did a great job of keeping the old flavor that I loved about the class, and mixing it with some new niceties that fix long-endured issues.

Buffing was simplified. Dark Intent has become a buff that should always be up, and much simpler than the days where we used to need to choose which class to link with. When you've got an active pet, you should keep your Soul Link up as well. Outside of that, you have your normal choices of food and flask that generally aim to buff our major stats, and that will be important when raiding, but outside of competitive group environments, these are optional. A good Warlock will always keep goodies on hand that buff one of our top three stats. (I'll do a dive into stats later. For now, Int, Haste, and Mastery are all good choices.)

Once we're buffed, we should look to the spells we're going to keep up during a fight. There are two major phases of any combat situation for Affliction Warlocks. One is above 25% health, the second is under 25% health. There's a third option, and that is AoE fights. I'll cover all three.

Above 25% Health, Single Target
Haunt > Curse of the Elements > Soulburn+Soul Swap > Maelific Grasp Filler > Fel Fire Refresh

We want to lead off with our "buff" spells that improve DoT damage. I don't always do this (because of laziness), but this makes sure that every tick benefits from their application. I would advocate leading off with Haunt since it has a "fly time," applying only after it has traveled from your hand and hit the target. Thus, after the Global Cool Down, CotE and H can hit almost simultaneously.

I like to use SB+SS to pop all my DoTs once, but if you're shard starved, you can put them up manually. And when I say "DoTs," I'm talking about what I like to call the Big Three: Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Agony. The primary goal of Affliction DPS is going to be to keep those Big Three rolling as much as possible. Our DoT up time on any given fight should exceed 90%. If you're learning Affliction, focus your efforts here first.

I will use Fel Fire to refresh Corr and UA. It adds a direct damage component, and the GCD's wash out when you consider you only get half of the time you would get with a manual refresh (but would have to manually refresh two spells, so you get two for the price of one). The only caveat to FF usage is if there is a fight where we're mana starved, as it is not the most mana-efficient path. Manual refreshing would be better then. Agony is a manual refresh all the way, and try to keep it at 10 stacks (by not letting it fall off).

Goal number 1 is maximizing Big Three up time. Goal number 2, then, would be to maximize the up time of our filler and thus minimize "non-damaging" down time. We will want to try to keep Haunt up as much as possible, but will likely be shard-limited to some extent, so we should simply do our best. More important, maybe, is weaving in as much MG as possible. MG is the spell that replaced our old Shadowbolt filler. MG is tied much more strongly to DoTs, increasing its importance as filler. The more we can keep MG rolling (without letting other things drop off), the better our DPS numbers are going to look.

And that's pretty much it for >25%. It's a lot simpler than in years past. If you feel like you are doing sub-par DPS, my first advice would be to check your up times. I've had a few discussions about that here, and I think we're looking at average up times of >90% on the Big Three, ~50% for Haunt (generally less), and ~40% for MG (fight/situation dependent, and 40 is probably a lofty goal). These are just rules of thumb, and your mileage may vary, but can provide you with a frame of reference and basis for improvement.

Below 25% Health, Single Target
We're pretty much doing the same stuff here. Keeping the Big Three rolling. Keeping Haunt up. The big switch is that instead of MG filler, we'll switch to using Drain Soul. DrS can have some pretty massive ticks under 25%, so it is totally worth using. Simply replace MG with DrS. Since DrS ticks a lot slower, this is where an addon that shows ticks (like Quartz) can be helpful. Try to weave your various refreshers right after ticks have occurred. (You could do the same with MG, but it does not have as much of an impact since the ticks are faster and the overall spell is shorter).

I try to make use of our Dark Soul buff just prior to entering this phase. I do not believe that DaS stacks with effects like Heroism, so you may want to use the buff differently depending on when the group buffs come out. For most fights, I could use DaS at the beginning, and probably somewhere in the middle as well. I believe it has a 2 min cooldown, so a studious 'lock would be able to get ~3 uses out of it per fight. I am not a studious 'lock. I routinely forget about it, so I just try to make sure I use it at least once per fight, and I want to make sure that when I want to use it, it is ready to go. This is a personal preference. No doubt many of you do much better than me.

Finally, I have my Doomguard macro'ed to my DaS key, so whenever I pop the buff, I also bring out my bonus pet. Make sure you use this guy once per fight. It has a longer cooldown, so you're not going to be able to generally weave him in any more. I save my punches for the end, but there may be circumstance where you want to blow this stuff earlier. Maybe a tricky part where some bonus DPS is needed. Your call.

Area of Effect, Multiple Targets
Previously, we've always tried to define a certain number of units where utilizing AoE spells becomes preferable to simply trying to keep up DoTs on multiple targets. I think it may fall between 3 and 4 mobs. With 3 or fewer, you want to do single target stuff (perhaps using SS to run your Big Three on multiple targets). With 4 or more, you'll want to switch to AoE spells. For the Affliction Warlock, this means a SB+CotE (so that Elements gets put on all of the enemies), then following with a SS+Seed of Corruption (this will apply Corruption to all targets hit by the exploding seed). Plant your seed on the target with the most health, and push it toward explosion (it has a damage done trigger). I like to throw out a Drain Life here (with the AoE talent). It's probably better (when health is of no concern), to channel RoF or just do direct damage to the target to get your seed to explode. An alternate method would be to spread more seeds around while waiting for the explosion to get a chain of explosions. While this is great fun, I don't think you should do it if you've spread Corruption out, as SoC and Corr don't mix. That is, one replaces the other (still, right?).

One of the major reason I like to use the Drain Life approach is that spamming your AoE abilities will drain your mana ridiculously fast. Drain Life is a lot more mana efficient, though it doesn't pack the wallop of the others. Just something to consider. This is how I like to AoE and I think it is a solid approach. I wouldn't worry too much about being the master of AoE. Aff'locks are kings of sustained, single target damage. Let the mages deal with pesky groups.

So this summarizes my approach to Affliction Warlockery. See any major goofs? How do you do things differently and why? Consider this my first draft, so I'd love to fix any errors you notice. Like I said, this is more for me than all of you, since you're all pros already, right?