Kara's Rusty Lock

Evidently, the months and months of people using their keys to get into Karazhan has weakened the lock and now if you've got an old coat hanger, you are as good as in and stealing the prince's CD player with the sweet flip face.

It seems as though in 2.4, Blizz is going to continue their trend of opening up access to raid content by weakening the attunement process for Kara. In patches previous, when Blizz opened SSC and TK to guilds without needing to attune, I wonder why it was that the barrier was still in place for the intro level raid. It always seemed to me that if you want to make it so that more people can raid, then you need to let them in the door in the first place.

Lot's of comments about this are flying in WoWinsider land, and sure there are some people who say, "Well, the quests weren't hard in the first place... so why bother removing them. They make it so that you have at least run some 5-man's before you are allowed to set foot in Kara, which is a good thing to protect you from bad groups." There doesn't really seem to be a need for this concern in my opinion. I doubt most people are going to LFG PUG a Kara run, so you are going to be running this with at least a core of people you know, (even if you have to pull in a couple people to fill slots). People "QQed" about heroic requirements lessening to honored instead of exalted, though I'd imagine most are not PUGing heroics without at least a friend or two along for the ride.

For the casual player/guild like me and my guildies, this is a great thing. We have been growing our guild mainly by bringing new players to the game. This means a lot of fresh 70's who we are excited to have and who will want to experience content with us. There is a core group of us that are appropriately geared for Heroics/Kara, but then a number of the newies aren't there yet. This gives us more incentive to gear up these new players so that we could at least try to see some of the raid content in a casual way.

Allowing people to access Kara is a great way to be sure that players are more likely to see some of the end game TBC content before WotLK hits... and I'm excited!

Spec post soon

So, I've been playing with my lock and am going to tweak my talents. Still affliction, but I'm eager to pick up a little bonus to my burst damage through some points in the destruction tree. I've got some pretty pictures to go along with it, so that'll be up soon.

Sorry it's been a week. Musical theater has taken over my life.

In updates though, Rahr is now one step closer to Kara attunement at last. He ran through SL with another lock, priest, warrior and mage and we pwned the murmur, got the fragment and all were happy. Off to SV and the Arc next. Gotta get those runs in.

Nar is looking around for better gear. She's going to be starting up the quest chain w/ gorefiend for the second sight helm. Nice socketed piece that'll be a nice upgrade for her. I've yet to get through and instance with her recently though where a D3 set piece has dropped. Hopefully it'll happen soon.

I ran a pretty successful run of Shattered Halls with a couple of guildies on Nar. Our party was a well-geared mage, my not well geared mage, warrior, boomkin, and priestipoo. Our balance druid got a great idol drop off the big bad warlock dude, so that was really exciting. I believe that put the collective count of our group of times we've seen balance druid gear drop to two. Not sure what the other piece was... but probably cloth. No good narz-lootz but I'm sure something will drop for her soon. She did get some quests turned in, and that's gold... so no complaints there. At some point I'm sure she'll want an epic flying, (as will rahr), and I believe that there is a cost involved there. Some say it's expensive.

So, look for a spec update post soon. Woot!

Which is worse, really?

Ever regret a decision you made? My biggest point of saddness with my main, Rahr, is that I made him ugly as hell. I don't no exactly what I was thinking. Maybe I thought... oooh... Warlocks. Scary! And that caused my ugly face choice... or maybe I just didn't quite look closely enough. Either way... I think you'll see after a quick comparison, why it is that even though I have the s3 helm... in all its winged and horned craziness... I still show helm. See what you think.

Here's Rahr in his s3 helm of winged and horned craziness +70:


Okay... that looks suficiently painful to wear and keep aloft. Let's see that face only a mother could love:


Alright, my mom hasn't seen that face, but I'm sure she'd hate it. May rahr always be blessed with a helm that conceals the blemishes of warlocky butt-ugliness. Sorry Rahr... the truth hurts. And come to think of it, so does your face.

More QQ, less Pew Pew

Killing time in the middle of the day brought be this find on a comment on some post on WoW Insider.


Mages function in it's purest. What would the warlock keyboard look like? Half 'O' and Half 'P'? Ha.

61 Points, seriously?!?

Yeah. I know. I'm 61 points in frost with Nar, and that's the crazy talk. No, I didn't invest a single one of those points in arcane or fire. I don't even have any of the talents in one of those trees than help every mage. Is it just the purist in me? Is it just the crazy in me? Is is just my desire to be different than the other 70 frost mage in my guild who just dinged and did take points in fire? (okay, maybe a little of that).

I think it's mainly that I wanted to learn what one tree had to offer. So... with all those points invested in frost, what didn't I take then?

Okay, so the two talents that I didn't invest any points in and why:

Frost Warding: Increases the armor and resistances given by your Frost armor and Ice Armor spells by 15%. In addition, gives your Frost Ward a 10% chance to reflect Frost spells and effects while active.

Okay, so while the reflecting might be cool, you've got to be kidding me. One, I'm always runing with Mage Armor up any way. Mana Regen FTW! So, I totally skipped over the, "Oooh, I'm like a water elemental... Your frost spells don't hurt me... boogie boogie boo!"

Frozen Core: Reduces the damage taken by Frost and Fire effects by 2%.

So, resists are nice, but I could totally pop a frost or fire ward at a key moment if I need to... (and if I remember to do so... yeah, really bad at that). But, the resistance doesn't really help me do much of my main function... DPS.

Neither one of these talents are going to positively effect my DPS... so I didn't take them. Maxing out crit and spell damage as much as possible through gear and giving myself the talents that make my frost spells as powerful as they can be was my aim, and neither one of these talents positively effect my spells. Sure, I might be more difficult to hurt from a few schools of magic... but I don't think that would have been worth losing a talent point in something else more beneficial.

So there... 0/0/61.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

So, in my real life, I'm a choir teacher of middle school and high school students, and I try to be pretty open and honest with them. Now, I've heard my eighth graders talk about their exploits in WoW and I've definitely heard a number of my high schoolers say things like "w00t" and "blank + blank = win", which doesn't necessarily make it clear that they are WoW players, but I'd assume it's pretty likely.

So, I've never mentioned anything about playing to any of them, but I've also never been asked directly... until today.

One of my eighth grade men asked me flat out, "Have you ever played World of Warcraft?"

To which I responded, "Yep."

"Really?!?"

"Yeah, I have two level 70s, but we can talk about that later. Tenors, measure 36..."

This is a sure-fire way to freak out your middle school students. They see: "Teacher... hmmm, what do I do." Then they hear: "WoW player, w00t." What they do... Not sure, I think their brains explode.

The best part was when they were talking to each other at one point in the rehearsal and someone said, "Can a night elf get a dragon flying mount?"

"Yeah, it's not race based, it's a rep grind... but you have to have your epic flying skill already trained before you can start the quests."

/middle school head explosion

Be afraid...

...Being mean and/or useful with FEAR.

Is there any other way really? Carnos posts on Warlock's Den with a really intersting strategy to attack the other faction, without actually attacking this person. Go check out the post here.

Basically to summarize this particularly good strategy for being mean to the opposing faction on PvE servers, you find an opposing faction player in an area that is densely populated with mobs grinding away on a single target. Just step in, fear that target, and run. If you're lucky, the feared mob wanders off into a group of other mobs of the same type, aggros them all back to our opp. faction friend and presto! Insta-death for your good buddy. As long as you've cleared the combat radius, you should be safe from the resulting aggro from the feared mob. Just make sure you're far enough away.

An interesting way to add a pvp element to PvE without actually flagging yourself. It makes me think about what some of the further applications of fear on PvE servers are.

Fear as save my tail!

Obviously, we can use fear to control a single mob that has started hacking us to bits. As an Afflic. lock with instant cast Howl of Terror, I can get an offending mob off of me pretty quickly. (Though be careful about using this if there are other mobs nearby as you'll pull them into combat when the fear breaks).

Here's a scenario: You're minion dies, so you have aggro now. You wish you didn't, and would really like to get that mob off of you and summon another demon. Howl of Terror or if the cooldown is up, Death Coil your mob away from you. (if this is a safe idea, obviously. Whenever you are fearing, you need to be really careful of the additional adds you might pull). Then slap down your regular old fear while the mob is fleeing. (You might throw in a Siphon Life right before this just to keep rebuilding your health). Then, as soon as you re-fear the mob, start your summon. Hopefully, you'll be almost done with the summon when the fear breaks and the mob will be far enough away that your minion can pop out and grab agro back since you've done minimal damage in the mean time. Lay off for a couple of seconds of throwing on the DOTs and you'll be sitting off in the distance, Dotting and Direct Damaging your safe, cloth-wearing heart out.

If you are demo spec, your Fel Domination ability probably makes the second fear unnecessary, as long as your cooldown is up. Either way, this can be a really effective strategy for keeping that damage off or yourself in your time of need.

Fear as Kite!

So you need to attack two mobs, huh? Sweet... use fear! Here's a good soloing strategy for the two mob task. Send your minion into the frey and let it grab aggro for both mobs. Drop fear on the one that your minion is not focused on, (otherwise they'll go chasing after it, which wouldn't be too good for your staying within range, etc). As soon as the 2nd mob is feared, drop your DOTs on mob number 1. Tap up, drain your life back, whatever your normal strategy of tanking down a single mob is, do it - but keep an eye on your feared mob.

If you don't have something like DOTimer, and you are a lock, you really should get it so that you can stay aware of what the exact times remaining on all your DOTs are on all the mobs you cast them on. Go get it!

As the fear gets ready to break on mob 2, re-fear if you aren't about to finish off your first target. If you are finding that your fears get resisted by the mobs you are fighting, drop a Curse Of Shadows on the mob to be feared first so that it has a better chance of sticking.

You can ramp this strategy up by putting multiple mobs in the air with fear to take on groups of three or more as well. If you've got a big open space, you can pull a group yourself, so that you have aggro, and then send your minion after one of the mobs. Drop CoS on the mobs as they approach and once they are by you and out of the range of your minion, Howl of Terror those mobs away. Quickly target the fleeing mobs and re-fear. As soon as all mobs are feared, throw up as many DOTs on your minions target as you can so that you can keep the DPS up and get the minion back so that it can help you as the fears break. As each mob goes down, let your minion take up another one and re-fear the remaining mobs.

It should also be noted that if you've spent the point to get Curse of Exhaustion, it can be good to throw that on feared mobs as then they won't go quite as far and you can manage them a little bit better, and have less chance of pulling a group of friends that feel like helping your feared mobs.

One final comment about a fear gone awry. If your feared target is about to go visit a bunch of friends, call him back by throwing down a curse of recklessness. This will bring the mob back to you. Put a different curse on it and if the fear is still active, it'll refear. I'd suggest switching between CoS and CoR and re-fearing as you need to and you can keep a mob within your control for a long time.

Scary, isn't it?

The PUG who lived!

Without even the event of a lightening scar. I got online yesterday afternoon after winter weather sent all of us home early so I figured I'd get in a little extra playtime. A few of the guildies were on but they were all getting off soon, so, here I was... logged in with Nar faced with a couple of choices.

(1) Battlegrounds. Eventually I want to get Nar in a 2v2 frost mage arena team with my buddy Loing, so I'll need to epic her out and honor grind seems a good way to me. So, I should probably get started with that.
(2) Farming motes of... everything. Stupid tailoring.
(3) PUG an instance? Really?

At this point, most of the other members in my guild would have disowned me if they had known I had considered doing a PUG. Okay, disown is too strong. Pitty me and wonder why I was so dumb might be more accurate. There is a heavy bias in our guild against PUGs for all the reasons that you would expect. However, when you see a tell like this, how can you resist when you are a mage:

"LF3M Sethekk Halls. Have tank and healer, need DPS and CC."

HOLY CRAP! That's me! And they have a tank! And a healer! How could I not do it. So I /who-ed them. They were level 69 and 70... I think. Okay why not.

"I'll come along. I'm 70-freezy mage."

Brrrrrrump - INVITE.

So, now the tells going out are:

"LF2M Sethekk Halls. Have tank, healer and dps/cc. Come and show Sethekk what you're made of."
"Come on, you know you want to!"

2 more join and here was our party:

Prot Warrior
Holy Pally
Elem Shammy (DPS)
Shadow Priest
and me as Freezy Mage

And the moral of the story is, with good marking and players who are on top of their class, you can totally pwn an instance in a PUG. I was shocked. I immediately clarified loot rules and asked who was marking to show I cared and the pally said, "Why don't you do it." So I did. We marked fast, we took down the trash with little problem. We only had one player die... though he did die twice. =) No wipes, mowed through the bosses and it really was an outstanding run. The magey pants [incanter's trousers] (link to be added later, when not behind firewall) dropped, but of course I already had them. We also got a hunter something... that's too bad. Got a few spirit shards though, so that's always a plus. I've got my eyes set on the minor run speed increase meta at allerian. (for when I have a head slot item with a meta that is).

So, hooray good PUG. I returned to guild chat proclaiming this news and was quickly met with a wave of "No way?!?! Gratz!" It was like I just got a rare pattern drop in Blade's Edge... and in some ways, probably about as likely.

How to seduce with a warlock

Some good warlock love lines? Sure... I've got some.

1. "I'm on fire for you... granted that's probably because I'm casting hellfire, but still..."
2. "Your soul has a place in my bag forever! Or, until I spend it to summon a demon... but that could be a long time from now, you never know."
3. "I'd summon you to me right now baby, but we'd need two other people. Do you like to PUG?"
4. "I'd swim to the depths of the ocean for you... but not before casting underwater breathing on myself, I'm not stupid."
5. "I'd swim to the depths of the ocean for you, with two other people, and summon you there, and watch you drown... in love?"
6. "If you think my neck is strong holding up this S3 Arena Helm, you should see the rest of me."
7. "When we cast ritual of doom, I really hope it's not you that dies."
8. "You know draining someone's life through a line of green energy is so much sexier than smacking them with a fireball, right?"
9. "I can do everything a mage can do, but with pets!"
10. "Do you mind if I keep my succubus out? She makes me feel more comfortable."

How can my warlock help my mage?

Now that I have two level 70s, I've been thinking about how the two characters are going to help each other. GOT IT! Farming motes of water. Rahr is going to be killing so many water elementals in the next few weeks it's going to be unbelievable. Nar, as Rahr probably should have been, is a tailor, and obviously because of her frost spec is specializing in Shadoweave Tailoring. That said... this means that she needs an inordinate amount of motes of water to turn into the many, many, oh so many primal water that she will need for her frozen shadoweave set.

I think blizz must think it's funny that there is such a high number of motes of water necessary for the crafted set that benefits frost mages the most. That is just ironic and sad. Nar is 61 points frost... nothing else. (which, believe me, will probably change at some point, but I'm kind of enjoying the purist nature of her talent spec). So, she has very few effective weapons against water elementals, who are immune to practically 150% of the things she does on a regular basis.

Given the choice between fireballing and fireblasting these elementals to the world's edge and drinking every fight because of my lack of mana efficiency, I've chosen the much more reasonable approach of having rahr farm these for her. It's the least that he could do for her. He takes down level 65 watery blobs so simply. Big blue blob of the void is happy to hold anywhere from one to 4 of these little buggers while rahr dots them up, smacks his siphon life on them and then can health funnel if need be to keep grinding for hours on end without ever needing to eat or drink. PLUS! (by which I mean triple PLUS PLUS PLUS!) he has underwater breathing. HOW PERFECT! It's so sweet, I can't believe how perfectly it works.

Is rahr going to farm motes of shadow though? Hell no... that'd take for freakin' ever. Which does lead me to one other question. Is it completely inappropriate to skip the farming entirely and just buy all the stuff to make it off the AH? I know it's pricey but.. come on... It'll take forever to farm, no?

I guess the choice is, farm the gold or farm the motes. Well, thanks Rahr! You're the best.

You want me to do what?!?!

...knowing your role in an instance.

Let's talk about some of the things that locks can do in a group and more importantly some of the things that people will expect you to do as a lock in an instance:

Soulstones: Your party will and should be able to expect that you will provide that purple ball of pop-back-upedness on an appropriate class, which means not on you. Now I know, "Yes, squishies do die easier. Yes you're awesome and you deserve to live. No, I think the priest deserves it more."

Healthstones: Especially at level 70, you have to provide these to your party. As mages can give people food and water, you can give people a yellow orb of health restoring goodness. If you are feeling really generous, you can give them multiple ranks of healthstone. I say that especially at level 70 it is a must because of the ritual you can perform to make a well of healthstone provided goodness.

Crowd Control: As we've already mentioned a couple of times, there are several types of crowd control available to a lock, and depending upon where you are heading, you might be asked to use any or all of them. You need to be familiar with your abilities and be equiped to use them to the best of your ability. Know where the spells live on your action bars for enslave demon, banish, and your three kinds of fears: death coil, howl of terror and fear proper. Also, be familiar with what demons can do what. Void or Felguard as a potential off tank, (depending on your spec. This is best with full demo). Succubus as a seducer obviously. (See our previous post). With all those options, it seems like you might be called upon to CC, don't you think?

Demons: You might be asked to pull certain demons for certain kinds of fights or scenarios. For instance, my guild loves the stam buff that my imp gives, so on a lot of fights, if I need extra dps and can keep the impy safe, I'll have it out for that beautiful blood pact. The void provides you personally an escape route through sacrifice that can be good for healers that aren't able to spread their damage around very easily in a particularly damage heavy fight. The succubus obviously has specific CC uses, and the felhunter or felguard can be very effective as well. Felhunter as a great anti caster pet, and the felguard as an excellent off tank. If you think your group is asking you to pull a minion that doesn't make sense... don't be afraid to tell them nicely. They may think they have a good concept of what demons do best, but may not actually know as well as you do, especially given your particular spec and therefore, these decisions are often best left up to you. With that said, try to choose intellegently for the situation at hand and be proactive about what kind of demon is going to be most beneficial to the group.

DPS: You are a DPS class. You provide ranged DPS in contrast to rogues and warriors. Even if you are doing all of the above, you still have to help your group kill stuff. After all, you are a warlock, you like it when things die, right? "Mmmmm, souls!" You SHOULD have DOTs up at all times on the enemies you are fighting. You SHOULD NOT have DOTs up on any of the other mobs that might need to be crowd controlled or managed other ways. Please don't be the lock that puts CoA on the sheeped mob because you tab targeted something that everyone else wasn't focusing on. Assist of your tank or Main Assist and DOT up the bejeezus of that mob. Don't do it to the others. Your party members will be sad.

After you have DOTed up the enemy, you need to be smart about your spell rotation. Think about how long the mobs are living and what are the most mana efficient spells and highest damage dealing DOTs to be casting. How are you managing your life/mana through lifetap and drain life? Are you soul siphoning appropriately to keep your shard bag full? Are you dealing too much direct damage early that your tank is having a problem keeping agro. Are you dealing the appropriate amounts of direct damage you should be given the life span of the mobs? How about how often you pop those trinkets. These are all considerations that you need to be thinking about to do the basic jobs that the group expects of you well. For the most part, your party won't be telling you what spell rotation, when to direct damage, how often to drain soul, etc. You need to be aware of these concepts though to make sure that you are contributing to your best ability.

Keeping in mind what a party will expect and then tailoring those expectations to your playstyle and spec can create a great grouping experience for you and your party. Just because locks are supposedly evil, doesn't mean you have to be to your group. Be nice and helpful, while dealing death and destruction. It's the right thing to do.

Ding!

Well, we did it. With a guild run of underbog and turning in a quest in Netherstorm to kill what's his whosy in some cave somewhere, I now officially have two level 70s under my belt. Naranan, frost mage extraordinaire sits atop her snowy griffin and deals high quantities of sustained ranged dps.

So now, having completed the circle of blood quest chain and getting the battle mage's baton. And having run Sethekk Halls and getting the Incanter's Trousers. I am feeling more and more like a level 70 everyday. It's gonna be sweet tasty goodness to have two caster types that I can bring to the party, depending on what kind of damage options and CC options we need.

It should also be mentioned that my good budy Loingsech also dinged 70 with his frost mage at the same moment I did. (We both managed to go over the edge on the same quest turn in. Nice? Nice! Gratz to him as well.

Our guild has a few more up and coming level 63-66's so pretty soon, we're going to have a nice collection of endgame characters for our modest little freindly guild that will make instancing on a regular basis much easier for all. Hooray for progression. (See, there can be progression that doesn't involve raiding!)

Ding!

Blades Edge Headache

Again, I know that this is a primarily warlock blog, but again... I'm finally almost to 70 with my mage, so of course I have things to mention about her. I mean, come on, it only makes sense right. Forgive? Great, thanks.

Questing in blades edge earlier yesterday and some today, Most of today's levelathon happened in netherstorm, but prior to that, it was the spikey dirt that got my vote. Now, I hate blades edge. There are a couple of redeemable aspects of it, but for the most part, it's my least favorite zone in TBC.

Things I like about blades edge:

1) Toshley's station with the crazy device that shoots you into the air and lets you land places safely. Did you know that if you are mounted when you talk to mr. McDude about flying somewhere, your horse, (or whatever), gets brought up on the beaming platform too. It disappears once you go into flight, but it's still cool. The other neat thing as a mage is that you can blink out of the flight and land safely wherever you are in the air. Try it next time you are on with your level 65+ mage... it's fun.

2) The quest where you have to gather costume scraps to disguise yourself and get into the secret den of the whoever they are that like dragons. That paired with the "throw this net over that dragonwhelp" quest is fun.

3) And my favorite: Coven Bitches.

Approaching the finish line

My magelet is a magelet no longer as today I will, and am determined to ding 69. Neglected to the bottom of the pile in favor of my warlock for so long, she will at last reach her potential as a max level mage.

Of course, she'll be a max level mage with really crappy gear, no attunements, hardly any honor points to buy sweet S1 arena gear, and all in all, might kind of suck in comparison to the greatness of my warlock. But this is as it should be, since after all, how much more /played has he gotten from me... I don't even really want to think about that.


So, as I look at my experience bar and see that it only has less than a bar to go to ding, it makes me think about that obesession as you are close to the end of achieving something. It's like when you are in an instance and wipe on the last boss, but you come back to try it again and again because you know, even though it's late, you are almost finished. It's also the same obsession that will probably keep me playing this entire weekend, to a level that I will be ashamed of in hindsight, just to kit that magical completist number... 70

Two endgame characters and a sleepless weekend, here I come.