The Online Equivalent of a Major Life Decision

As I mentioned in my last post, I was forced to disband my raid group recently, largely due to scheduling problems. And since then, I haven't logged in much. I didn't even participate in Noblegarden--so that's at least another year until I can get my hands on the violet-proto drake. It's actually kinda funny; I always get into a slump this time of year. This is the third Children's Week since I started playing the game, but I've never actually participated before. Though, since there's no Children's Week achievements directly related to finding a new raid group, I guess I'm pretty off topic right now.

Raiding with friends is great. Sitting down with 10 of my pals and trying to take out 'Count Monsterton, the Evilest of the Bridge Trolls,' is part of why this game still holds any appeal to me at all. Unfortunately, schedules don't reconcile with one another just because people are friends, not unless everybody thinks it's important enough to plan their lives around. I've spent the last 18 months, off and on, trying to schedule raids with tanks who quit the game or have to spend every other weekend obliging their family, DPS whose work schedules fluctuate so much that it's impossible to raid with them unless you're willing to change the time of the raid every week, and healers who have to get up at 7 in the morning to make it to our 3pm raids, due to time differences. It doesn't work. I've tried every reasonable course of action I can think of, but half the time or more I end up sitting in /2 recruiting DPS who have deluded themselves into thinking that their 900 DPS is actually 4k DPS.

The worst part of it is that these players are not just my friends, they're the best damn tanks, healers, and DPS I know. I wish I could have them there on every run, because when I can actually get them into the same raid with one another, things are amazing. This is a group that full cleared Naxx in two attempts, even with some of our best players missing. But without consistency, it becomes difficult to maintain the level of knowledge I feel Blood Pact deserves.

So I'm faced with a simple question: how do I get the raiding I need? There are really only two answers. The first is most obvious: join a raid group. Or, failing that, start my own raid group. Of course, I could just wait around in trade every week for somebody to starting shouting "LFG DPS," but I don't think I need to waste my weekly wordcount on explaining why that's a bad idea. So, we come to the meat of the article. Join a raid group, or start one?

Join a Raiding Group

Pros:

1) A lot less work for me than the alternative. Which is good, because I'm a rather busy fellow.

2) Easier to shop around. If I join a raid group, run with them a couple times, and discover they suck, then it's no big deal. I tell them thanks, but it's not for me, and I shop around a bit more.

3) Experienced players. I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the best. Hardly, there is a lot I could learn about how to raid and how to play. Not every group is going to have much of substance to teach me, but thanks to point #2, I could make such a quality one of my search criteria.

4) A ready-made raid group would be proven. Unless I do a terrible job of selecting who to run with, then I can be relatively sure I'll be able to clear significant amounts of content right off of the bat.

Cons:

1) Loot distribution isn't up to me. I'm quite used to, what I consider, the perfect loot system. I've never actually run into another guild that used it, though I know at least some other people do. Finding those people might be difficult though.

2) If something is going horribly wrong, then all I can do is make a suggestion. If the raid leader doesn't like it, I have to deal with mounting repair bills while he fumbles to find a solution.

3) Availability. Most good raid groups have spots that open and close as applicants join, and groups that accept anybody anytime are usually absolutely atrocious. This might make Pro-point #2 a bit difficult.

4) I'm a leader. That's not to say that I'm the best leader, but being in charge of a project causes the project to bring me an immeasurably larger amount of pleasure (or pain) than simply being a component part of the project does. That's not to say I can't handle being subordinate, nor that I can't enjoy being a subordinate. It's just not my strong suit.


Screenshots haven't worked so well since 3.1, but here's a picture of me, as the only member of my potential new guild, rocking the DPS meter in Kara!

Start a Raiding Group

Pros:

1) I like being the guy in charge. And sure, it sucks balls when I fail to do things right, I've demonstrated in the past that I can do things right.

2) Any success is something I can feel much more proud of than I would be able to if I joined a raid group rather than formed my own.

3) Loot distribution will be up to me, so I'll be able to stick with the system I'm most comfortable with.

4) I can continue raiding with those members of my old raiding group who are able to commit to the raiding times I set.

Cons:

1) Mistakes are my mistakes. Obviously I can't know everything, and sometimes things just...go wrong. But if a group is bad, then it's the raid leader's fault for putting together a bad group.

2) I would need to do somewhere between a shit ton and a fuck ton of work to keep everything running smoothly.

3) It would take a lot of time to actually get a group together.

4) Even if I force everybody in the raid to go through an interview process that includes a few heroics, I can't be sure of how well they'll work together in a larger group.

I've been wrestling with this decision for a week now, and I'm still no closer to a real decision. At first, I was determined to find a raid group I liked, and try to join it. It would be fast, and I would finally be relieved of all the stress that had built up over the last few weeks. But at the same time, I knew I was coming off of a string of failures, and wasn't in the best emotional state to make that decision. It didn't take much time for me to realize how much I would hate dealing with being some other raid leader's subordinate. It's a weakness of mine, but it's not one I can simply wish away.

Over the last week, I've been talking with friends who have known me and raided with me for a long time about what they think I should do. One of my friends told me that I should join another raiding group, at least for awhile. His rationale was that I could learn a lot about how other people manage their groups, and it would help me progress more quickly than starting my own group would. Another friend finds the idea of me playing any part in a raid other than leading--or at least assistant leading--almost laughable. Talking to her, I'm surprised my pals haven't organized an intervention for my power addiction.

Even without input from my friends, I've had a tough time settling on a decision. For the last seven months or so, I've had a lot of ideas I wanted to implement in a new raiding group, and this is a golden opportunity to put those ideas into practice. But the process of finding people interested in joining the group, making sure they're fit to be part of the group, and getting started on clearing content will take time. A lot of time. A problem I wouldn't have if I joined another person's group.

Whatever I choose, it needs to be soon. I haven't killed KT in almost a month, and that's just silly. Haven't even seen Ulduar yet.

Any suggestions would be keen.

Old Man Sentai's Pedigree

When I started Curse of Senility, I had a mission statement of sorts. It wasn't particularly detailed or anything, nothing like the mission statements they tell you to write in those worthless business classes. Really, it was just a short list of things I did not like about my past attempts at self expression, which I wanted to avoid in writing Curse of Senility. One of the things at the top of that list was that I wanted to be more open about my flaws. Which isn't to say I feel my previous writings were too arrogant, or that they were deceitful. Self deprecating humor has long been a fundamental element of my style. None the less, there was a time when I would not have written about how I caused a wipe on my first Naxx run by killing the Grand Widow's add before she enraged.

As part of that openness, I'd like to disclose an uncensored history of my raiding experience. I want to do this for several reasons.

1) I don't know how well I've actually done with this whole 'openness' thing. And while it shouldn't be, the brevity of my raiding history is something which makes me feel somewhat inadequate sometimes.

2) A large part of what I do, here at CoS, is offer advice. And now that I work for WoW Insider, I do so from a position of relative authority. It's only appropriate that I hang my degree on the wall, so that everybody can see I got it from a Russian correspondence school.

3) Many people, most people even, assume I've got a hell of a lot more experience than I do. I blame this on the authority I tend to inject into my speech, and the compulsion I've always had to get into the history of a thing before actually getting into the thing itself. I'm that guy who gets nostalgic for things he wasn't even around for.

So here goes;

I was born in a log cabin in Illinois...wait, wrong one.

I rolled my very first character sometime during spring quarter, my sophomore year attending college. So that would have been sometime in March 2007 or so, after Burning Crusade shipped. My primary interest in the game, at that point, was just to see what all the fuss was about. I wasn't terribly interested in participating in the group content, but doing some role playing really appealed to me. I wasn't the speediest leveler, and the fact that I had to re-start my character once he hit level 32 or so (he should still be on the armory; Sentaigresk of Silver Hand) didn't help. Still, I managed to get to 70 by...September I think it was.

But the day I ding'd 70 isn't exactly the day the story of my raiding began. The roots of that can be found somewhere in Sentai's late 40s, early 50s, when I started < Entelechy >. Originally it was an RP guild, but as time went by and our membership grew, I became more and more interested in instances. There were some people in the guild, mostly those who could never level a character past 30, who weren't so fond of this shift in interest. But instance after instance, the core members of the guild really seemed to catch on to the idea. And by the time we were all level 70, we were calling Entelechy an RP / Raiding guild.



Heroics were our thing at first. Actual raids seemed like an impossibility for us, something hardcore players did. So we 5-manned, and we 5-manned, and we 5-manned. It was somewhere around here, in September of 2007 that I realized I was terrible. I had discovered DPS meters, and I wasn't happy with consistently being ranked third or even fourth. So, my own instincts having failed me, I did research. Mountains of it. I read everything I could get my hands on, and when I was done with that, I posted a thread in the warlock forums titled "I suck at this class." and asked for people to tear into me. They did, though with one exception it was surprisingly civil. I improved, I was even pretty good. We started Kara -- it was late 2007.

We had an eclectic bunch in Entelechy, and there was something of an unofficial code of honor about how we did Kara. We didn't want easy victories, we didn't want to group up with a bunch of BT raiders and clear the place in four hours. If they had offered we would have said no. We didn't just want to clear Kara or get geared up, we wanted to make Karazahn ours. And we did. We scratched and clawed our way through bosses, week after week. First time in, we one-shot Attunemen and got Moroes on our second try (would have one-shot him if our pugged priest knew where his shackle button was.) By our third or fourth week, we were knocking on Shade's door. But the guild was becoming strained--the RPers weren't happy with the raiders, and aside from our core group of six or so people the raid was never really capable of getting anybody to commit. People started to drop off. And shortly after my first, or maybe second, Prince kill, I left the game.



I don't really want to talk about what happened to Entelechy after I quit the game -- largely because there's no reason to open old wounds. Suffice to say that it doesn't exist anymore.

When I returned to the game in late summer of last year, I did so with a new sense of clarity. The time away from the game had allowed me to distance myself from my warlock playing habits, and I was able to approach the class from an objective perspective -- while still pulling on my experience and research. My style and overall damage output improved dramatically, and when 3.0 hit I was able to out-perform every other DPSer who was willing to compete with me against test dummies.

When Wrath hit, and my girlfriend bought it for me (sweet girl that she is) I decided that I would use it fresh start to approach raiding from a more object-oriented standpoint. I want to be a the best warlock I can be, and I want to clear as much content as I am able. And those are the principles I've been operating on since then.

With almost all of my raiding buddies scattered to the wind, I had to start from scratch. I made that part particularly difficult on myself, because I can get really anal about what kind of raid groups I'm willing to raid with. I'm not willing to kiss some guild's ass for the privileged of rolling on loot dropped by a boss I topped damage on. I'm kind of an asshole that way.

I've raided with several groups since Wrath hit. Originally I ran with a guild on my server called . That didn't last terribly long, unfortunately. Great guild, but they had a "guild-first" policy for raid signups, which isn't at all unreasonable. But, once there was a larger pool of level 80 characters for them choose from (I leveled to 80 quicker than most people did) I was faced with the decision to either join their guild or look for another group. And if I ever leave the guild I'm currently in, it will be because I want to take another crack at running my own guild.

It took me a little bit of time to find another group after that, but the one I found was a gem. My healer buddy, Sidrea, introduced me to a Death Knight named Jyssana. Jyss was a master at putting together functional PuG groups -- I think there were only 2, maybe 3 people I saw at all (or almost all) of his raids. He ran both 10 and 25 man Naxx, and while we never got a full clear out of either, we did have a lot of good times and gained a lot of experience. I know that I personally learned a lot from Jyssana. His style of raid leadership was very unique to my experience, and I incorporated much of his style into my own.



I don't rightly know what happened to Jyssana. One day, Sid and I noticed he wasn't on our friends list anymore. Nor on the lists of any of the contacts we had made while attending his raids. Armory searches revealed nothing either, until a few days later when he started showing up. Turns out he and two of his R/L buddies had transferred to an Oceanic server. I can't really blame him, dude lived in Japan.

Round about this time, two of my old buddies from back in the day got their characters to level 80, and based on my now slightly more well-rounded group of possible raiding contacts, I decided it was time to take matters back into my own hands. I set up a calendar event for Naxx-10, carefully selected PuGs for the empty slots, and in our first attempt we cleared 3 wings. By our second attempt, we had full cleared. We continue to run the instance weekly, with a few exceptions, and now that Ulduar is out, we're looking forward to seeing if the group coordination we've been building will pay off.

And that's it. I'm not the most experienced raiding warlock out there. Hell, I've never full-cleared anything save the easiest max level raids available to me. At least, so far. I'm just a guy who likes warlocks, and tries to get the best performance out of the class that he can.

Cool story, huh bro?

Be quiet you damn kids! I was trying to sleep!

Well, that was a lovely, restful, and entirely unannounced vacation. Actually, the only one of those adjectives which applies is 'unannounced.' But whatever happened yesterday is in the past, and now it's time to get back to waving my cane and casting my dots. As something of a rejoinder, I guess I'll talk about stuff that has changed in my personal game-life lately. This post won't be long or terribly interesting, but is intended as a quick stretch before I start posting more regularly again.

I've been running Naxx10 and fully clearing it weekly for over a month now, and our group has managed to get our time down to about 4 hours, give or take 15 minutes. I'm exceedingly happy with our progress. Deaths are uncommon due to our fantastic healers -- though Heigan still drops a few people each time around. We've had a bit of difficulty maintaining a regular set of tanks, but I'm relatively assured at this point that the two MT ready tanks, the the one OT ready tank we have will be reliably available for most of our runs. The only thing really left to improve at this point is the overall output of the DPS, which is getting higher and higher every week. An unfortunate number of them have even started to out DPS me on most fights!

The group has also made an attempt at Malygos, which was long overdue. It took us a little while to get the Death Gripping down, but once we did our Death Knights were able to do it almost without fail. Those times when Malygos managed to chomp on a spark probably fell more on the shoulders of the tank than the Death Knights. We only got to phase 2 once, but I think we'll be able to do better if we get more members of our regular group in there. That attempt was almost half friends-of-friends.


Phase 2 kinda threw us for a loop...

I'm also trying to get used to casting Drain Soul instead of Shadow Bolt once a boss is below 25% health. I'm having an atrocious time remembering to do it, though. Near the end of a boss fight I'm usually so deep into the rhythm of my casting rotation that changing it around just slips my mind. Still, below 25% Drain Soul ticks for roughly the size of a small Shadow Bolt crit (5-6k) so it's certainly worth using, even if the damage takes an extra .5 seconds or so of casting time.

I've also taken a stab at using the Doomguard in fights where it is appropriate. The extra ~500 DPS is certainly welcome, but a little frivolous in my opinion. At this point I've little doubt that my group could lose 2 of our DPS, and still kill Patchwerk before he enraged. So I don't see why everybody seems so gung-ho about the Doomguard. I certainly liked breaking my personal best DPS record (without situational buffs, such as on Loatheb or Malygos) but the Doomguard feels like a fun little gimmick that can be pulled out now and again for extra DPS, rather than a useful class mechanic. Maybe in Ulduar, if there is a boss similar to Patchwerk with more HP and a shorter enrage timer, it'll feel more useful.


Never broke 4k on my own merits before. Very cool.

The only other news that comes to mind is the I finally replaced my last blue. Sentaigrehsk is now in full epics, which feels like such a hallow achievement in light of how easy some of those epics were to get, but meh. Interesting thing is that my newest epic is the Tier 7 shoulders, which, when combined with my Tier 7 chest piece, gives me the 2-piece set bonus. Now, it's not the first set bonus I've had by a long shot -- but it's the first one I've had that actually feels as though it will have a positive impact on my DPS. Every tick of Corruption or Immolate (both of which I'm casting now, though, after 3.1 I'll only be casting Corruption) has a chance to increase my critical strike rating with my next Shadow Bolt by 10%. Additionally, each Shadow Bolt crit in turn increases my shadow damage via the Improved Shadow Bolt talent. I haven't had a chance to do any good tests since I got the set bonus, but it seems like the proc is going off nigh-constantly when I'm casting corruption, so I have little doubt that this set bonus is going to cause at least a moderate jump in my DPS.


Not a huge fan of the Tier 3/7 look, but it's good to see Sentai looking epic again.

I should also perhaps note that at the moment, Curse of Senility is in something of a limbo in my mind. While I greatly enjoy writing for this blog, I find it somewhat difficult to write two separate warlock blogs at once. Not only do I need to worry about overlapping content, but my WoW Insider blog, Blood Pact, and Curse of Senility require significantly different frames of mind, which I'm obviously having a bit of a difficult time switching between.

What I'm considering at this point, and it's still only a possibility in my mind, is sticking with Blood Pact for most of my writing. Meanwhile, I'll start a new blog with a new subject matter, and I'll focus on writing there regularly. When I'm struck with the desire to write about World of Warcraft, those posts will still be put here, but I wouldn't hold myself to any sort of schedule. I wouldn't be entirely happy with this arrangement, but Curse of Senility was never meant to be a permanent thing. I will of course make note of it in future posts if I decide for or against this idea.

How you too can be a mediocre warlock like me!

Applying all necessary scientific standards and rigor, I have come to a most startling of inductions: switching from making posts a big deal, to making them quick little things is not as easy as it sounds. There's this whole mental battle involved, where my brain is like "NO, WE MUST TRY HARD TO BE AWESOME, IT'S WHAT WE DO," and then my other brain is like "STFU NAB, IT TIEM WRITE NAO" but the first brain is quick to reply "NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU." And then I usually go cross-eyed and pass out. I am losing SO much time to these frequent blackouts. Fortunately there is less than 24 hours left in finals week, so for better or for worse I'll have more time on my hands soon.

But you didn't read this far just to hear me bitch.

I've been thinking a lot about gear lately. More specifically, I've been thinking about gear that can be acquired relatively painlessly after hitting 80. This thinking really started after the criticisms I received after my first post at WoW Insider; Gearing your Warlock for Naxx-10. But more recently it has been fueled by the fact that my good buddy Kolrawn is fast approaching 80, and I'd like to get him geared up as fast as I can so I have somebody to compare myself against.


Hey, that's not warlock gear!

With that in mind, I took a look at my armory page to see how much of my gear I could get into his hands ASAP. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I'll be able to get him geared up, and was hit by a fresh wave of disappointment over how easy it is to get geared up in this expac. So without further ado: my gear, and how to get it.

The Mantle of Deceit, Azure Cloth Bindings, Rod of the Fallen Monarch, and Woven Brace Leggings all have an extremely high chance (25%-50% according to armory) off of the end-bosses in heroics. Which I can easily drag my buddy through.

The Plush Sash of Guzbah, Ward of the Violet Citadel, Sundial of the Exiled and Band of Channeled Magic are all purchasable from badge vendors (the last one is the only one which requires 25-man badges) for a decently small number of badges.

Both the Ebonweave Gloves and the Deathchill Cloak can be crafted by yours truly, or purchased off the auction house. And speaking of purchased off the AH, my Chain of Latent Energies was a BoE drop in 25-man Naxx, so it's probably on the AH every now and again as well.

And lastly, the Sandals of Crimson Fury I have come from exalted reputation with Wyrmrest Accord.

When all is said and done, you need to do a surprisingly small amount of work to get all of that gear, and if you do get it all, you're more than ready to be a valued participant in full-clears of Naxx-10 or 25. But of course, there are a few pieces of gear I have that can't be acquired quite so easily.

My main hand weapon, the Grieving Spellblade was an extremely lucky drop the first time I was in Naxx-10, but the Flameheart Spell Scalpel from being revered with the Kirin Tor is an excellent hold over until you get similarly lucky.

Just over the weekend, I got two new pieces of gear in Naxx-10; the Heros' Plagueheart Robes and the Cowl of Winged Fear But before I had those I wore the easily craftable Ebonweave Robe, and the Argent Skullcap -- which is a reward of one of the easiest quests ever.

All that leaves of mine that isn't easy to get is my second ring, the Ring of the Fated from Naxx 10, and Dying Curse from Naxx 25. But there are more trinkets and rings in the game for warlocks right now than I could possibly count. Mark of the War Prisoner and the Signet of Hopeful Light both come to mind, but there are tons more out there.


Muuuuch better...

So yeah, that's what's been on my mind as of late. I'm actually glad I took the time to write this down too. This will serve as a check-list for when my buddy Kolrawn finally makes it to 80. And who knows? Maybe if you thought the list I made for WoW Insider was too easymode, this will be more to your liking. Though I don't know if any of my readership actually overlaps.

...DAMNIT. This was supposed to be a short post. I really suck at this.

Repo man, here for your dread citadel!

It took me awhile after Lich King hit to really get back into the swing of raiding. My guild had largely fallen apart in the last few months of Burning Crusade, and many of my raiding contacts from those days have yet to actually hit level 80. So Lich King was almost a fresh start for me, save for the few close friends of mine who stuck by me. My raiding progression was further pushed back when the raid leader of a group I was starting to raid with semi-regularly decided to uproot and transfer over to another server -- taking several other members of the group with him.

So a few weeks ago, quoting Godfather III the whole time, I decided it was time to start raid leading again.


Bigglesworth didn't like my post about Addons. He thinks Necrosis is awesome.

Between the group that actually stuck around, a few friend-of-a-friends that have started running with us, and even a pick-up-player or two, we've actually assembled a relatively reliable group. It's not perfect of course; I maintain my proud tradition of never being able to find a fucking mage, and our group has such variable schedules that getting us all together can be hell. That said, the two runs of Naxx-10 we've done so far have gone remarkably well. The first time we got together, I scheduled 4 hours of time, and considering that many of the group members had yet to see Naxx at all (some were still in level 70 raiding gear) I predicted to the tank beforehand that in that time we'd clear spider wing, and possibly plague wing. I figured we'd pop over and kill Patchwerk at the end of the night, as a nice easy note to go out on. As it turned out we absolutely tore through Spider, Plague, and Military wings in the allotted time, and took out Patchwerk as well.

We had some difficulty with the schedule, but this Saturday just past we went to Naxx for the second time. This time I scheduled 5 hours of time, figuring that given our previous success, it would be wise to give the group some more leeway to really see if we could clear the content.

The group managed to clear the first 3 wings in only 3 hours total, edging out our best time from the previous week by an hour. (Though I DID die on Heigan, ending my perfect record of dance-survival) With two hours to spare, the abomination wing was about to become our bitch. I think there were two wipes in all; one on Grobbulus and one on Gluth. Thaddius went down like a chump; one-shot by the kickass peeps it is my privileged to raid with.



Abom wing was new content for the group though, so it took us a bit of time to clear it. By the time we were done, we were only fifteen or twenty minutes away from the eight o' clock end time for the raid. But we were running high on the adrenalin that comes from clearing content smoothly, and decided to extend the raid time a bit to try our hands at frost quarter.



Saph was easily one-shot, despite only two or three of our people actually possessing prior experience with the fight. Kel'Thuzzad took a tad bit longer, but after four or five attempts, Naxxramas was ours. Full cleared after two weeks.





I think I'm going to stick with the skull theme, as I rather like the aesthetic. But I'm going to do some serious cleaning in the plague and spider wings. Get those wall fixed up, and remove the giant mushrooms. Maybe turn them into guest quarters and a dining hall respectively.

slash roll 100 >.>

Gee willickers, midterms can sure have a way of showing you when you've bitten off more than you can chew. Turns out updating a blog 3ish times a week through thick and then, while also attending university full time isn't a walk in the park. This round of midterms is done with now, however, and I'd like to get back in the swing of things by adding to my ever-so-slowly-growing collection of posts that might actually be helpful to somebody. So, in the spirit of being helpful, lets talk about gear.

Gear selection is a contentious issue for many warlocks. Hell, if you've ever debased yourself by visiting the official forums you should know that for many people, gear selection is tantamount to one's worth as a person. Rubes of the official forums aside, though, there is more than one school of thought about how to select gear. Some of them are absolutely terrible (we call these "Stamina Stackers") while some of them have a legitimate case to make. Since my goal with this blog has absolutely nothing to do with objectivity, what follows is an approximation of how I select my own gear. It seems to have worked pretty well so far.


*Cough* >.>

As a forward to my discussion on gear selection, I want to reiterate--for those who have never read my blog before, or those with a poor memory--that I'm talking about PvE affliction gear here. Usually I go ahead and leave that unstated, since it's implicit in the way I talk about things. However, when discussing gear that distinction is nowhere near as clear--and far more important. PVP warlocks, PvE demonology warlocks, and PvE destruction warlocks have different priorities for each of their stats--even if we all use the same ones.

I'd also like to say, before I start, that I could have simply written about specific pieces of gear I think a person should get, but that wouldn't really be helpful in the long run. You might say that rather than giving you a gear-fish, I'd like to teach you how to catch a gear-fish. Gear-fishing, however, is no simple matter; there's MATHZ involved. And while a good WoW player should never be too lazy to play with the numbers, I think there's a threshold where it becomes acceptable to approximate and move on. I call that threshold the "damn, where the fuck is my old calculus textbook" line.

Having said all of that, lets start to break this down. Selecting gear is, essentially, a choice between various stats. There are seven stats a warlock should care about, and every other stat is absolutely and utterly pointless for a PvE affliction warlock, and should be completely ignored. Each of those seven stats serves a specific purpose, and should be weighted according to the importance of that purpose.

Spell Hit is of paramount importance--at least until you get 446 of it. This is a pretty standard requisite for all the DPS classes but frequently I hear some young warlock proclaim something akin to "I never miss anyway, so I don't need spell hit." To which I must respond that anybody who thinks they never miss isn't watching their combat log closely enough (May I recomend Scrolling Combat Text Damage?)

Consider this: haunt is the groundwork for any affliction rotation, and it has a nice big 8 second cooldown on it. If haunt were to miss, then that's at least 8 full seconds of unbuffed dot ticks--a massive blow to any warlock's standing on the DPS meter.

Stacking hit isn't very fun, though. In fact, it's pretty boring to stack compared to things like crit. Fortunately, there is relief if you spec correctly. While it is true that without talents, you must get 446 hit rating to be hit-capped, if you put even 1 point each into Suppression and Cataclysm (in the affliction and destruction trees respectively) that will bring your requisite hit rating down to 420 to be hit capped for all of your spells. If you put TWO points in each, the hit-cap is lowered still further to 394! And if you're able to put a total of six points aside for putting 3 in each of the two talents, then the hit cap goes all the way down to 368. Obviously those talent points might be better spent elsewhere, but they are a nice cushion that can allow you to play a bit above your gear level.

Spell Power is a warlock's bread and butter. There really isn't too much more that can be said about it. Gearing up is largely the quest to make this number higher and higher without getting un-hit capped.

Spirit was, until very recently, utterly useless. However, in patch 3.0.2, things changed! Not only does Life Tap scale with this stat, but (far more importantly) 30% of our spirit is turned into Spell Power by our Fel Armor! This isn't horribly significant, but it is worth keeping in mind if you're ever faced with a tough decision. Lets say, for example, that you're trying to choose between two pieces of gear. One has 30 spell power, and the other has 100 spirit and 10 crit rating. Now, spell power is always preferable to crit rating for an affliction warlock, but, that 100 spirit will be turned into 30 spell power by fel armor, meaning that the second piece of gear effectively has 30 spell power and 10 crit--a clear winner when compared against the first piece, which has only 30 spell power.

Crit Rating is everybody's favorite stat, and thanks to Pandemic, now affliction warlocks can play with it too! That doesn't mean we're allowed go go wild, however. But thankfully, most pieces of endgame gear have at least two green stats (Spell Power, Hit Rating, Haste Rating, or Crit Rating) and once one has gathered enough hit rating, it's a perfectly legitimate strategy to use mostly Spell Power / Crit Rating gear. In fact, that's precisely what I do.

Intellect is to crit rating what spirit is to spell power...sort of. Intellect has two primary uses. First, more intellect means deeper mana pools, which means less life tapping and more pew-pewing. More relevant to the aforementioned relationship however is that intellect raises crit rating. To be precise about it, 167 intellect translates into 46 crit rating at level 80. 46 crit rating being the requisite amount for a full 1% crit chance. So, much like the example I used with spirit above, enough intellect can make up for losing some crit rating on a new piece of gear--and in fact, it's preferable to get your crit chance off of intellect, since intellect also increases your mana pool.

Haste, I will be honest, is a bit of an enigma to me. Rather than try to sound like I know what I'm talking about when I don't, I'll say this: it makes your spells go faster, this is awesome. However, in most cases it seems like you must choose between gear with spellpower/haste, or spellpower/crit. Which either means accepting a very low crit chance, or balancing out the two stats and having them both be mediocre. Personally, I stack crit rating. This may well not be the best choice, as I have seen spreadsheets that imply haste to be the superior stat. I am slowly building up my haste, and hope to get a better idea of just how much it helps my DPS in the future.

Stamina happens. That's really all there is to say. Yes, stamina is an important stat for warlocks, it keeps us alive and it allows us to do mad life-tapz...but it doesn't need to be considered. Sentai's unbuffed HP has fluctuated from 14,000 to 18,000 and back again, and it doesn't matter. All gear has loads of stamina on it these days, and a piece of gear would have to be an absolutely titanic loss of stamina in order to warrant even a passing consideration in the decision making process. In honesty, the only reason I even included it in this list is because there are PVE affliction warlocks out there, the bad ones who showed up to Kara in Gladiator gear, who think stamina is the absolute most important stat for warlocks. It is not. At all.

And that's the four-one-one on warlock gear selection. The most important thing, of course, is balance. 446 hit rating is worthless if you've got 100 spell power, and by the time you've got 1800 spell power you should probably have at least 15% crit, or a nice bit of haste if you decided to go that rout. I'd like to thank my warlock-buddy Kolrawn for helping me work out the best way to break this all down, and I hope that it ended up being helpful.

A closing note on spell penetration: It's essentially useless. Here's what WoW Wiki says on the matter:

PvE, targets of a higher level than the caster have a base resistance (2% of mitigation per level difference) which cannot be overcome by spell penetration nor by any other stat. Otherwise, very few mobs and raid-level bosses have a substantial amount of resistance to overcome.

Time To Talk Talents (Totally Titanic Tirade!)

I don't think I can rightly have a blog about a class in World of Warcraft without taking a moment, at some point, to talk about my spec. To talk about why I think it's the best spec for me, why I made some of the controversial decisions that I did, and some alternative ways to spend points that I'm looking at using in the future. So rather than wait for later, how about I go over it now!

This is a broad topic, so I'm going to try to narrow it down as much as I can. I've talked about why I spec the way I do in a more general sense, so I'll not do that again here. I've also dedicated two posts already to the tactics that I use with this spec, so I'll not waste my reader's valuable time with recitations of that either. What I am going to do is list every single talent in the affliction tree, and why I did or why I did not put points into it. I'll also briefly mention at the end of this post why I decided to put my extra points into destruction rather than demonology, and why I decided to place them in the places that I put them. Hopefully by the end, I'll have a comprehensive guide for locks looking to spec affliction for the first time--even if they don't make the same choices I made.

I'll warn you right now that this post is going to be rather long, though I'll do my best to keep it from becoming dry. So, without further arbitrary addition to the already sizable length of this post, here's my spec:

54 / 0 / 17
I call it 'Affliction Mach 3' (seriously, it's my third major variation on affliction since 3.0

Affliction Tree

Tier 1

Improved Curse of Agony (0/2): Right off the bat is perhaps my most controversial decision. Almost all affliction warlocks these days--and even many demonology and destruction warlocks as well--put two points in here for the improved damage. I, too, would join them, save for the unfortunate fact that I don't have any boomkin or deathknights to run with reliably. This means I'm still casting Curse of Elements frequently enough that it doesn't seem worth it to spend two points on something I would only get to use very occasionally.
Suppression(3/3): Three points here makes getting myself up to the all-important hit cap much easier. However, if I ever reach the point where my gear easily gets me all the way up to the spell hit cap of 446 (which it almost has by now) then these three points will very likely start going elsewhere, since the mana-cost reduction to my affliction spells is insignificant. Two of them will probably go into Imp'd CoA, if I haven't already moved points into there by then.
Improved Corruption(5/5): This is an absolute, and obvious, must for all affliction warlocks. Corruption one of the most important spells to any affliction rotation--and in fact as of late I've noticed that it has become my single highest damaging spell, beating out shadow bolt by 1% of my damage dealing pie. As such, improving it whenever possible is crucial. Any affliction lock who doesn't r lyke ttly skrub. Also ghey, lawl.

Tier 2

Frailty(0/2): Despite being improved since Burning Crusade, this talent is still absolutely terrible, and should never be taken. Evers. Double ever.
Improved Drain Soul(0/2): This talent is something of a tossup. It's a soloing/PVP talent, so in a raid or instancing environment it helps only a very little bit. However, the rather lackluster talents of tier 2 make this an acceptable choice, if only to give you enough total points in the tree to make your way to the next tier. It's certainly a fine alternative to putting any points in Frailty.
Improved Life Tap(2/2): Life tap is fundamental to a warlock's ability to do damage. Our spells are mana inefficient, we can't regen mana the way priests or magi do, and the only way we're going to be able to keep casting is if we're able to life tap or dark pact to keep our mana up. I would go so far as to say that this is a must-have talent (though more due to the poor choices on this tier than to how awesome an extra 20% mana is I think.)
Soul Siphon(2/2): Much to my embarrassment, I only recently noticed that this talent was changed in the Echoes of Doom patch. You can tell I'm smart because it only takes me three months to notice a fundamental change in a talent that I've put points into after several respecs. Having now noticed it, I am tempted to move these points either to Improved Curse of Agony, or to Improved Drain Soul. However, Drain Life is very helpful when soloing Onyxia--which is fun even though they recently halved the gold you get from doing it. So I may keep it here. Regardless, I don't view it as important enough an error to deal with immediately. After all, it's not like I put the points in frailty. (Which you should never do. Ever.)

Tier 3

Improved Fear (0/2): I imagine that this is a kickass PVP talent. It's probably also sexcellent for soloing. However, I do not PVP, nor do I use fear much when I'm soloing things. I'm weird that way. As such, I've never put points here, and doubt I ever will. Cool talent though.
Fel Concentration (3/3): Another great soloing talent that ends up being completely useless in a raiding or instancing scenario; provided the healer is doing his or her job. However, since there really isn't much else to put points into at this tier, I think it's a good choice, since without this talent, drain-tanking is effectively impossible.
Amplify Curse (0/1): I'm bouncing back and forth on this talent. It was initially very appealing to me, so I took it to try it out. After leveling up with it, and using it in my first raid or so, I concluded that it was a bad talent for me. My conclusion was based on the fact that I always used Curse of Elements, and my typical tactic for using that spell was to cast it while the tank was gaining aggro. As such, a faster cooldown didn't mean I got to start DPSing faster, because I was waiting for the tank to build aggro anyway. I even went so far as to sugguest on the warlock forums that this talent be changed so that it reduced the global cooldown of lifetap and dark pact--spells that often need to be cast in the heat of casting rotations, which has a tendency to throw off a person's sense of timing. However, due to how much easier threat generation has become, and due to the increased use of Curse of Agony in modern raids, I am beginning to reconsider whether or not this talent would be useful. My personal jury is still out on this decision.

Tier 4

Grim Reach (0/2): The equation with this talent seems very simple in my mind. Any affliction casting rotation I've ever seen contains shadow bolt. Most good ones also contain Immolate. Immolate and Shadow Bolt are destruction spells, and will not get the increased range from this talent. So, unless you're willing--and able--to put points into the destruction talent which also increases range, Grim Reach is silly, because you'll still have to stand just as close as you would have without it in order to cast your destro spells. Furthermore, I've noticed a distinct lack of fights in Wrath of the Lich King which really require you to stay as far away from the boss as you can. In fact, there are a surprising number of fights where you actually have to stand on top of the boss in order to be successful. Perhaps things will change in Ulduar. If so, I shall reconsider.
Nightfall (2/2): I'm a bit dubious about the amount that this talent actually helps, but again, poor alternatives leave me with only a few equally dubious alternatives. I've heard that the benefits of this talent are much better now than they were in BC, which is good, because I have points here. It should be noted that Glyph of Corruption DOES stack with this talent, so it's probably a decently good idea to get both--given the lackluster quality of warlock glyphs. (A subject I should probably write on sometime soon as well.)
Empowered Corruption (3/3): Woot, another chance to improve my corruption. If I didn't take this, I'd be a moron!

Tier 5

Shadow Embrace (5/5): This talent is an absolute requirement for any affliction spec. In general, things that make ALL your dots do extra damage are a very, very good thing. This is also the reason why, in my boss rotation, I open up with a shadow bolt before I cast haunt, followed by all my dots. That way, this effect is stacked to the maximum of height of two before my first dot ticks.
Siphon Life (1/1): Siphon Life, even after being Glyphed, will probably end up being your lowest damage-dealing DoT. However, without it your overall damage would still be significantly lower. What's more, the healing effect (combined with your Fel Armor's heal, combined with the healing effect of Haunt, combined with a Death Coil now and again) help you keep yourself healed through all that life-tapping you'll be doing during boss fights. The healing effects mentioned are enough, in fact, that it allows affliction warlocks to solo some rather tough elites with ease. Not only is this talent useful enough that you should get it for instances and raids, but it's also an utterly fantastic talent for both soloing and PVP.
Curse of Exhaustion (0/1): A dubiously useful talent, that requires you to take another dubiously useful talent. Curse of Exhaustion is great for PVP, and a very useful tool when soloing, but for a spec geared toward group-content, you really can't allow yourself to waste the point most of the time. (Not to self: find a thesaurus that has terms such as 'PVP' and 'soloing.')

That's a lot of text...Random screenshot time!

Tier 6

Improved Fel Hunter (0/2): This is a decision I may have to seriously reconsider. The primary benefit of this talent is that it allows your fel hunter's main attack to return mana to it--which in turn allows you to dark-pact mana from your pet more frequently. (it also improves the Fel Intellect buff, but I did the math on it once, the improvement is utterly negligible. Not even worth considering the the decision making process.) Now previously, I rejected this talent because on 98% of bosses in the game, if I sent my fel hunter in to attack them they would one-shot him with some kind of AoE or whatever. However, due to the recent change (which raised my fel hunter's health from 7k to something like 17k unbuffed) the fel hunter may be significantly more capable of surviving, making this talent much more viable. I will do testing on this over the next few weeks--though my initial concern is that the fel hunter will only last slightly longer than he did before with this new HP buff, since I refuse to waste valuable casting time using a channeled heal on my pet. We will see, however.
Shadow Mastery (5/5): RAWR, Shadow Damage! Even if Siphon Life were the most useless spell in the game, it would be worth getting it just to get your hands on this talent. The only spell in my rotation that this talent doesn't improve by 15% is Immolate.

Tier 7

Eradication (1/3): Eradication is an interesting little talent. I, like many other affliction warlocks, once had it topped out at 3/3, until I saw the math. See, the way the internal cooldown for this proc works (it's unusually long) means that if you increase the probability of it happening, as you would by putting two or three talents into it instead of just one, all you really do is cause the ability to proc during the cooldown--meaning essentially that one point in here has almost exactly the same benefit as having three! Do yourself a favor and put those two points somewhere more useful. (I put them in Cataclysm, which made me hit-capped.)
Contagion (5/5): 5% isn't all that impressive for a 5-point talent, and the dispelling effect is really just for PVP, so it's not really a viable reason for taking this talent in a PVE spec. However, a buff to corruption is a buff to corruption. I've never seen a good affliction warlock without this talent, and I doubt I ever will.
Dark Pact (1/1): Dark Pact has gotten a lot of heat lately. Many warlocks feel that it scales poorly compared to lifetap, and has been rendered useless. Now, one or two people complaining about that and I would disregard it as poppycock spouted by morons who can't play their class. However, it is a complaint that is gaining a great deal of purchase in the warlock community, so I decided to do some tests myself. I won't bore you with all my numbers, but what it comes down to is that Life Tap returns roughly 2800 mana, and Dark Pact returns about 2800 mana. There are variances as my stats change, but all in all they usually return within 200 mana of one another. Pet mana and personal health regen are such that I'll likely only be able to get 2 Dark Pacts off before the pet is empty, but if I'm wise enough to dark pact early on in my rotation, rather than when I'm out of mana, I should be able to get away with going 50/50 between life tap and dark pact, which will be a great help to the healers. Now, it should be noted that these numbers may be vastly different for different people, because Dark Pact scales depending on a warlock's spell power, and Life Tap scales--as of 3.0--depending on how much spirit a warlock has. However, I don't see any reason why my spirit / spellpower ratio wouldn't be at least roughly representative of most level 80 warlocks. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking this, I don't know. That said, pets COULD use a larger mana pool. This is something I'd really like to see from blizz in the near future. (They do seem to be reconsidering the dark pact mechanics, given the various PTR changelogs I've seen over the last 6 months.)

Here you can see my Spell Power, Spirit, and an example of both a Life Tap and a Dark Pact, with the mana returns scrolling to the right of my character. Don't ask why Life Tap has such a random icon.

Tier 8

Improved Howl of Terror (0/2): I wish this talent was viable for PvE ;_; It's just so bloody awesome. An instant cast fear? Holy crap is that cool! Unfortunately, a warlock should only rarely use fear in an instance, and this deep into the tree you have to start being very frugal with your points, because almost everything is necessary to take.
Malediction (3/3): While the 3% bonus to spell damage that they added makes these three points worth it all by itself; I largely took this talent for the improvement to Curse of Elements. By this point in reading this post / my blog you should be more than familiar with why.

Tier 9

Death's Embrace (3/3): While the bonus to draining is a boon for soloing and PVP, the improved crit chance is really what makes this talent worth taking. Warlocks have a notable lack of 'cooldowns' to 'bust out' when the raid leader starts shouting "ALRIGHT, SHE ENRAGED, BUST ALL YOUR COOLDOWNS!" So this talent is really very helpful in giving affliction damage a little extra 'umf' in the home stretch. (I actually covered exactly what that umf amounts to very recently.)
Unstable Affliction (1/1): Must have. Period. Second best warlock DoT there is.
Pandemic (3/3): This is an astoundingly interesting and innovative mechanic, and it's one of the biggest reasons that affliction is able to remain competitive in Wrath of the Lich King. See, in Burning Crusade, warlock raiding went like this: first, you spec affliction. You get to about SSC / TK level, you get the magical stats (202 hit, 20% crit, 1200 spell damage if I recall correctly) and then you respec 0/21/40. Why? Because affliction didn't get much of a benefit from all that crit, and since your gear ended up having crit rating on it anyway, destruction was indisputably more powerful than affliction at this level of gear, by several orders of magnitude. The size of a destruction warlock's crits in BT gear are seriously something I didn't start to see on Sentai until he was Naxx-geared at level 80. So anyway, in response to this, blizz created Pandemic, which (essentially) allows dots to crit, allowing affliction to scale with gear in a way that it was unable to do previously. It's really quite ingenious. That said, I'd like to see the effect altered somewhat to include all periodic effects, rather than just corruption and unstable affliction, because based on what I've seen on my damage meter's pie charts, pandemic isn't doing quite enough damage to really keep affliction competitive with destruction in T9. However, we will see as time goes on! (I should also note that blizz recently said that they had managed to re-code the way dots work in such a way that they could--if they wanted to--allow dots to crit on their own. They also said that they have no plans to do that at this time; but it could be an interesting mechanic in the future.)

Tier 10

Everlasting Affliction (5/5): As if the additional spell damage wasn't enough to make this talent worth taking, the fact that it allows Haunt to re-apply corruption is a beautiful thing. You see, with Haunt re-applying corruption, a whole spell--and its 1.5 second global cooldown--are removed from the extremely complicated affliction rotation. As much as I love the depth of affliction DPSing, I welcome this bit of simplification with open arms. I would like to see the talent modified in the future, however, so that Drain Life does NOT renew corruption. Drain life has a rather short duration--particularly if the warlock is getting hit. And most of the time when you're casting Drain Life, you're casting it over and over again--meaning that your corruption spell often doesn't even last long enough to get a single tick off before drain life re-applies it. [EDIT: I stand corrected on this! Apparently the re-application of corruption caused by this talent does not break the flow of damage ticks. My bad!]

Tier 11

Haunt (1/1): Haunt is living proof that blizz is full of smart people. This is exactly the kind of innovative mechanic that I love to see. All at once, it both plays to the already established strengths of this spec, while also bringing something completely new and unfamiliar to the table. Bravo, warlock dev team. Bravo.



Poor Sentugrehsk is so hungry! But what does he have to do with affliction specs?

Destruction Tree

With 54 points spent in affliction, that leaves me with 17 points. There are a multitude of interesting things that could be done with those points. For example, 13 points in the demonology tree to grab Demonic Aegis would not only increase the amount of healing Fel Armor does by 30%, as well as turning the 180 base spell power from that spell into 234, but it would also convert 40% of my spirit into spell power, instead of the default 30%! However, as you can see I haven't done that in this spec, as tempting as it is. Instead I've put those 17 points into the destruction tree, due to the fact that the low-tier talents in that tree are more useful for straight DPS than the low tier talents in demonology. At least, that is, on average. As stated above, I'll only go over the talents I actually took in the destruction tree, for brevity's sake.


Improved Shadow Bolt (5/5) This is an astoundingly good talent, particularly for affliction warlocks, and particularly since the recent change made to it in 3.0. With five points here, every single time your shadow bolt crits against a target ALL OF YOUR DOTS (except immolate) do 15% more damage for the next 12 seconds. And let me tell you, even as an affliction warlock, I crit quite frequently. What's more, as of 3.0 the effect is now a buff for the warlock, rather than a debuff for the target--meaning the bonus damage will hurt all of your targets, rather than just the one which you crit against. I can't imagine going without this talent.

Bane (5/5) Back in Burning Crusade, when I was hanging out on the warlock forums trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing, I heard a warlock say 'there's no such thing as a raiding spec without bane.' And as far as I can determine, this has only become more true for affliction warlocks since Immolate is part of our rotation now.

Cataclysm (2/3) This is a recent addition to the Mach 3 version of my affliction spec, and wasn't here in Mach 2. Much like suppression, I have this talent to shore-up my hit rating numbers. With the combination of those 5 talent points spread throughout the 2 trees, I am far above the hit cap for all my offensive spells. When my gear eventually reaches the point where I'm easily maintaining the 446 hit, I may decide to move these talents into something more useful, since the mana-cost reduction is (as mentioned) negligible.

Ruin (5/5) Sexy, sexy ruin. There isn't a warlock in the world who doesn't want to have the five talent points to spare so they can put them here, thanks to the way Blizzard rearranged the destruction tree in 3.0, I now do. This makes my shadow bolt crits very big. They're like..."BOOM!" and seeing numbers like "9538" on my screen causes some of the bloodflow in my body to be diverted elsewhere, if you know what I mean. *wink wink*

So there you have it, the grand spec post. Kind of daunting, now that I look back on it. I hope I didn't get anything massively wrong, since this post is likely to be one that a lot of people find my blog from. But hey, couldn't put it off forever right?

Anyway, despite the fact that I can't quite think of a way to end this post, anybody who read this far is doubtless hoping that this post is going to end soon, so I'll grant their wish without any further delay.

Affliction DPS on Trash Mobs

NOTE: A lot of people are getting to this post after searching 'affliction dps 80' or something of that sort. And while I think this post is helpful, it's probable that you're looking for something a little more like this.

"Woe to you, affliction warlock! For your dualistic lot in life is one both of glory and of shame; for while you may top the meters on Patchwerk, never will your name be seen above rank the tenth when there is trash to clear. And so will you remain in obscurity, your true skill remaining hidden due to the lies told by 'overall damage' reports."

~Anonymous Raid Leader

I'm not one to complain about the weaknesses of my class, or the strengths of other classes. I may have suggestions for improving things, but I really do hate to bitch. That said, affliction warlocks have it bad right now as far as trash DPS goes, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Trash mobs are just what their name proclaims them to be--trash. If a group can't manage to tear through trash mobs with relative ease, then they really have no business attempting the bosses that come after said trash.

The problem with affliction's low trash-mob-damage comes not from any actual problems with the in-game situation, but rather, from the damage meter, and the perception it creates in peoples minds. Now don't get me wrong--damage meters are wonderful, amazing tools. If not for damage meters, I never would have found out that I was consistently one of the worst damage dealers in any group, which means I never would have sought help and never would have become the symbol of mediocrity that I have become today. Furthermore, without damage meters I would have no way to test my new rotations and specs. And hell, without damage meters, I wouldn't be able to playfully compete with my fellow DPSers for the top DPS spot.

The problem with the damage meter is that most people don't know how to use it properly. Almost everyone keeps the thing stuck on 'overall damage,' which in my experience both as a DPSer and a raid leader, doesn't do anybody any good. Far too often this method of looking at the numbers allows a small group of people to climb to the top of the meter doing trivial things such as slaughtering the trash mobs or spamming AoE on nonelites, while their actual contribution in difficult situations is frighteningly lackluster.

Furthermore, as a motivating factor, damage meters become meaningless when only overall data is used. Invariably, in any instance, a small group of people quickly establish themselves as the 'top' DPS, while other players are left in the dust. Given a boss or two, the damage meters will settle into a rather stable arrangement, that won't be changed even if the people at the top stop trying, and the people at the bottom use every trick they've got in an attempt to pull ahead.


Damn hunters! >.>

Personally, I find the most accurate way to view the data is to set your damage meter to only show the numbers for the current fight. This way, everybody has a clean state at the start of every single pull. When I've been doing well throughout the instance thus far, this forces me to 'keep it up,' in order to maintain my lead. Similarly, when I've been doing poorly, I am less likely to get discouraged, and more likely to try harder to improve my standing on the next pull.

All of that aside, I am most firmly of the opinion that even though affliction warlocks can't be expected to do good DPS on trash, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. To that end, I've begun to play with a variety of alternate tactics for trash mobs, and while I've yet to achieve any truly great level of success, I have managed to put forth a decidedly respectable showing on individual trash pulls now and again. Once or twice even managing to get the top spot! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before you really begin to think about how to do good damage on trash mobs, you must try to understand why it is that affliction has so much trouble with them in the first place. Affliction Warlocks are sometimes called "DOT locks," after their primary form of attack. DOT, as everyone knows, is the acronym for Damage Over Time. And that, there, is the root of the problem. Time. Affliction warlocks require some measure of time before they can really begin to do damage.

I've done extensive testing of affliction damage using things like real time graphs, as well as friends who agreed to serve as a control group of sorts. What I've noticed is that even several seconds into my rotation, my damage output is altogether pitiful when I'm using my full casting sequence. Then, about 25-35 seconds into combat, my numbers suddenly shoot up at an astronomical speed, as all my dot ticks start going off in force. Before this, however, my numbers would shame a level 65 elemental shaman.

At this point, the issue should be clear. When fighting trash mobs, each target is only going to be alive for a scant few seconds, meaning that the 'shooting up' part of my damage never happens. Ergo, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the only way to really do damage against such mobs is to either significantly alter my rotation, or respec--something I'm not willing to do when my damage output in more important situations is phenomenal.

Altering the rotation, however, is a tricky business, because it either requires memorizing every trash mob in every instance, or it requires tactical senses good enough to analyse a target mob's life expectancy after a glance at it's HP, and formulate a viable tactic based on that. Given the near impossibility of the former, I fear I am stuck with attempting the latter, even given my lackluster tactical skills.

To make things simpler, I've devised a hand full of rotations for different situations. And, whenever I find myself faced with trash pulls, I try and approximate which one of these rotations might work best for that particular pull.

Boom Theory: Seed of Corruption, Rain of Fire, and a Shadowflame now and again for good measure. If you've got a good tank, then this is by far the easiest way to go about things in larger pulls. Not just pally tanks anymore either! I've used this tactic to great success with both warrior and death knight tanks*. Be careful though, if you pull aggro you're very likely to end up dead, and if you piss the tank off, you're very likely to end up looking at a window that says "You are not in the instance group, you will be ported to [Insert Hearth Location here] in X amount of seconds."

(*No offense is intended to my feral druid buddies--I just haven't run with one since Karazhan, so I can't speak from experience.)

The Resilient Trash Mob: Some trash pulls are almost like mini-bosses in terms of how much HP they have, but that still doesn't mean you're going to be able to get your full rotation off. So I abbreviate it: Curse of Elements, Haunt, Corruption, Followed by Shadow Bolt spam, and a re-cast of Haunt whenever it's up. After the first 7 seconds of combat or so, all your casting time will be spent on direct damage casting, so you won't be losing any global cooldowns on dots that won't finish. I sometimes modify this to include Unstable Affliction as well, if the mobs are particularly hearty.

Humanoids Got No HP Humanoid trash mobs last only barely longer than nonelites do in most instances. For these, the AoE approach is by far the preferable one, but if there's only one humanoid left, or if your tank isn't comfortable with the threat created by your AoE, then your best bet is to just sit there spamming the Shadow Bolt button. These mobs will likely go down so fast that even Curse of Elements will be a waste of valuable shadow bolting time. I've considered trying to use Searing Pain on these mobs, given its shorter cast time, but the significantly lower amount of damage it does, and the significantly higher amount of threat that it pulls, makes me dubious that it will be more successful than straight up SB spam.


An example of the 'Resilient Trash Mob' tactic

I've found that, in a general sense anyway, one of these three approaches will almost always serve well enough to get the job done, and keeping available tactics down to three also helps avoid confusion. I think it was Bruce Lee who said that a person shouldn't try and learn too many ways to react to a single situation, because if they do, then when they're in that situation they'll find themselves paralyzed with indecision about which way to react. Something to that affect anyway.

So that's how I deal with trash DPS as a level 80 affliction warlock. It's not great, it's not even 'very good' if I'm trying to out DPS a hunter, rogue, or kitty druid. However, the results I've got from it are certainly respectable enough that I can rest assured my performance on the boss will be noticed, and my actual skill--good, bad, or mediocre--can be judged at least somewhat accurately by the rest of the group.

Adventures in Scarlet Monostary

I'm often considered weird in my circle of friends for playing as many locks as I do. Not that I've got anywhere near the reputation that my girlfriend's Hunterington's Disease has, but still, I get more than a few strange stares over vent. I could go into some detail about why it is that I enjoy leveling a class that I already have a max level of, and I intend to do so in a later post. That's not what this post is about though, I just wanted to establish that I have a low level warlock in addition to my max level one.

And so, out of my interest in leveling a second warlock, Arnoux was born. She was named for the object of Frederich's passion in Flaubert's Sentimental Education which I was engrossed in at the time that I rolled her. That's not what this post is about though, I just wanted to establish that Arnoux is the character in question, and explain her unusual name.

What this post is about is an instance run. I like to run instances, it's my favorite thing to do in this game as a matter of fact. Grouping together with other people who all have vastly different abilities and specializations to surmount obstacles that they could not individually conquer is very appealing to me. Unfortunately, instance groups are hard to find when you're low enough level that even a level 50 could give you a run-through without breaking a sweat. As such, I'm left to take what I can find--though I did draw the line with the group who invited a hunter when we needed a tank for gnomer.

So on this particular day I was, as I often am, running around doing nothing of great importance while sitting in LFG with the note "Experienced Warlock LF any instance group." I figure that given the one hundred and thirty-three levels of warlock that I've gone through between my three highest level locks, I'm allowed to call myself experienced compared to the large majority of other players looking for a Scarlet Monostary group.

Anyway, I get a tell from a priest interested in doing Library. Apparently on the earlier run some warrior ninja'd the Robes of Doan and he was rather intent on reacquiring the misappropriated garment. Since I was already wearing the thing myself, I didn't have a problem agreeing to pass on it. So I get my summon, and we head in there.

Now, not to say these players weren't fine gents, but it quickly became apparent to me that at the very least, they were somewhat new to the game. Not really a bad thing though--Library could be three manned by a decently competent group at level 30, so a five man group of level 30+ players shouldn't have a problem. And it's not like they were stupid or anything; the tank tanked, the healer healed, and the DPS made sure things died. And, as a nice little bonus for me, I had to put Curse of Recklessness on all the humanoid mobs to prevent them from fleeing and pulling extra groups. It was nice to be in an instance where I was able to bring some utility to the table aside from just summons and healthstones. I don't get to do much of that kind of stuff in instances these days.

The instance started out well. We were clearing groups at a reasonable pace--save for when the tank and healer stopped to have a discussion about whether or not we should put the instance on heroic for better loot. After roughly ten or fifteen minutes of clearing, we got to the houndsmaster. The healer and group leader initially didn't want to do the fight, due to the apparently very high level of difficulty, but all three DPS insisted, and he rather easily assented to our request.

It's a good thing that we insisted too, because upon entering his tiny chambers we discovered that he was already dead! Apparently, the leader had forgotten to reset the instance since last time (an understandable mistake really) and we had just been clearing respawns. Thank goodness we discovered this before wasting 40 or 50 minutes clearing our way to Doan! So we all popped out, reset the instance, lost our feral kitty druid to a never-ending AFK, and started clearing again.


*facepalm*

It is at this point--with only two DPS--that I shouold perhaps point out that the other guy was a resto-spec'd druid in cat form. I know it's silly of me to be all hardcore raider about Scarlet Monestary, but the guy was barely out-DPSing the healer, and half the time he seemed to just be AFKing while on follow. That honestly wouldn't have been such a problem, except for the fact that I *could not* get the healer to heal me during pulls. Being the only DPS in the group is terribly mana-intensive; particularly for a warlock at around my level, when mana efficiency is at its worst. As such I found myself furiously life tapping just to try and scrape together enough mana to batter down the zealous humans without resorting to going meleelock on them. Apparently DPS doesn't need heals, even when they're at about 15% health and the healer is spending 50% of his time idle. Remind me to make more bandaids next time I log in.

About the time we reach the courtyard, kaloo kalay, another DPS is found! A fellow warlock! A destruction warlock. What's more, he seems to be a rather experienced and capable player, which really helps to speed things along. Something I find really quite interesting about low-level instancing is that it is, in general, easy enough that the players don't need to do everything "the right way." And hell, even if the content was hard, most players just don't want to take the time to look up cookie cutter specs or casting rotations for their lowbies.


A Devious Scheme!

Anyway, what I'm driving at is that this lock was really interesting to me. I mean, first of all, he's level 32 and destruction. I'M the only other warlock I know who ever did something as stupid as leveling destruction, and I loved every minute of it. What's more, this fellow had his succubus out, of all things--and managed to do an excellent job picking up a stray mob with a seduce now and again throughout the instance. Not the easiest of feats, effectively CCing with your succubus.

The rest of the instance was relatively uneventful, save for the resto druid switching from cat form to bear form on the last boss. I assume it's some kickass strat that I've never read.

Good Group. Friendlist adds all around. (Seriously, it was fun.)

That's how I raid, whippersnappers!

Today I'd like to take a moment to talk about level 80 affliction instancing; be it in heroics or raids. In particular, I'd like to touch on what my rotation is, how I settled on it, and compare it against some of the stuff I've heard from other people. First though, I'd like to clarify that I am not talking about the way I do DPS on trash pulls here. Affliction warlocks are, very possibly, the worst DPSers when it comes to doing trash pulls. I do have methods I use on trash pulls to attempt to maximize my damage output on them, but that's a post for another day.

In Burning Crusade, affliction instancing wasn't actually very dot heavy. It was pretty funny actually, I was throwing up two dots--Unstable Affliction and Corruption--on any boss, and only had to worry about keeping them refreshed while I spammed the shadow bolt button. It's no surprise really that once you had decent enough gear, the poor scaling of dots made destruction absolutely mandatory.

In WotLK, things have changed significantly for affliction. Not only have the previously lackluster dots had their damage significantly buffed in comparison to Corruption and UA--but a multitude of new buffs in the affliction tree which affect 'all your periodic effects' has made dot-locks far more dot-heavy than they were in the BC days. Not to mention about three hundred times more confusing! What's more, the introduction of Pandemic means that your dots scale not only with your spell damage, but with your crit rating as well, making it far less likely that destruction will prove to be the definitive best spec in higher tier content.

When I was first coming in to LK, I took my knowledge of BC raiding, and modified my rotation to fit my new best friend: Haunt. First, I'd open with Curse of Elements, and probably hit one of my spell damage trinkets. Then I'd begin my rotation with Haunt, follow it with UA, followed by corruption, and finally shadow bolt until either UA or Haunt needed to be refreshed. This actually worked exceedingly well, and I don't believe I actually felt the need to improve it until I had been doing heroics for awhile.

On the suggestion of a friend, I decided to try out some of the dots which I once scorned other warlocks for using. Siphon Life was the first addition to my rotation, after I noticed that I could get upwards of 500 damage per tick on a dot that didn't need to be refreshed very frequently at all. This gave me a nice little chunk of bonus damage. My rotation was modified again only recently, after I read the excellent post by fallenman on the warlock class forum. After reading it, I did some DPS tests on my own, played around with the numbers, tried to guess what I could expect to see in actual instances, and finally added immolate back into my primary rotation--a position it hasn't enjoyed since shortly after I made it through the dark portal I think.

At present, my casting rotation goes something like this:

[IMPORTANT NOTE: This rotation has been updated.]

0) If at any time, either of my two spell damage trinkets are up, I use them. They don't even have a global cooldown, so it shouldn't interrupt the rotation.

1) Get Curse of Elements on the target while you give the tank a moment to build a bit of threat.

2) Cast one Shadow Bolt, causing the Shadow Embrace effect.

3) Cast Haunt, causing both that debuff, and a second stack of the Shadow Embrace effect.

4) Corruption

5) Siphon Life

6) Unstable Affliction

7) Immolate

8) Re-apply dots as necessary, avoiding clipping (re-casting the dot before it has 100% completed.) Cast haunt whenever it's up--don't worry about clipping it (or corruption, the dot which it re-applies.) If not otherwise occupied, be casting Shadow Bolt.


Bad warlock! Lrn2lifetap!

The logic behind my casting order is thus: First, I get the Shadow Embrace and Haunt debuffs on the boss first thing, so that *each and every tick* of my dots gains the benefits of those effects. Corruption comes next because it is by far the most powerful dot in an affliction lock's arsenal, with UA being the closest second. Unstable Affliction and Immolate go together because they have very similar durations (thus allowing them to be re-cast together) and they go at the end of my initial rotation because their durations are very short, giving me the maximum amount of time to shadow bolt before I need to re-apply my dots.

Now in general, this is relatively close to what a lot of endgame raiders who play affliction do--which kinda surprises me, given that only recently did I read anything approaching an authoritative 'how to.' And that only led me to make one major change to the way I was doing things. However, there are some differences between what I do and 'what is best,' that I feel can be reasonably justified. Furthermore, there are a few things I've heard a large number of people insist upon which are frankly just dumb.

Perhaps the biggest divergence from the norm is the fact that I don't use Curse of Agony. It's not even easily accessable on my casting bar. At first I didn't use it because back in BC, using CoA was enough to get you booted from the raid if the leader knew even a little bit about warlocks. Then I started seeing everybody insist that in LK, it should be in your affliction rotation. I was skeptical, so I did tests. Curse of Elements came out on top for pure damage--which is something that all of the better affliction locks seem to agree upon. The reason that none of THEM use CoE is because--apparently--both boomkins and death knights have some kind of debuff that doesn't stack wich Curse of Elements, and is perhaps even better. I say apparently because I haven't grouped with any boomkin that I remember since level 70, and while I do know a DK who I group with often, I've yet to recieve a message saying 'a more powerful spell is already active' or something like that. Perhaps this is something I'll have to look into soon.

Another thing I've heard a great deal of is warlocks demanding that haunt be the LAST spell cast during the first rotation, rather than the first. The logic of this positively baffles me. Supposedly the idea is that you start with corruption, cast all your other dots, then cast haunt, refreshing the corruption that you started with, and giving you some time to shadow bolt before you have to recast haunt. I can't understand, however, how this minor benefit is supposed to make up for the roughly 1-2k damage more that your dots would have done if haunt had been active earlier. Not to mention shadow embrace! No no, I really don't see it.

Well, this old man has rambled long enough I suppose. So there you have it. My method, my results, and my defense of my results. All of this is of course, liable to change, because like anybody I am always trying to learn and improve. Sometimes my stubborn pride has a tendancy to stunt my ability to learn, (like hell will you ever see me cast Curse of Agony on a boss! >.>) but eventually I do.

I should perhaps note that there are a variety of topics which I touched on briefly here that require a bit more justification than I gave them. Said justification was excluded in favor of doing an entire future post on those topics, rather than cluttering up this one any further.