I nearly slept in way too late today due to the sheer darkness of my lair… Iv’e gotten really good at keeping the light out. I woke to my dismay however, learning that Blizzard intended to just string us along with false hope until cataclysm, where they plan on pulling the rug out from under us; I happen to like my rug! This build is full of surprises, and I am too drowsy to accurately comprehend them… so I’m sure I’ll be raging sometime later today. Check them out for yourself, and remember, you can send your Blizzard hate mail to: Blizzard Entertainment. P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623. Be sure to imbue it with a nasty curse.

Usually I start my day with a bowl of Soul Flakes,  sprawl out on my easy chair, and throw in a dirty DvD… I’m think “Saucy Succubi” Whatdya think?

*Spits out mouth full of soul flakes* SHADOWWFLAME??! NOOOOOOO!

Losing Shadowflames horror effect is what hit me the most. That was going to be an awesome ability in pvp, which would especially be fun for tormenting mages… Sadly Blizzard must have though it was too strong, or intended to save that effect for a glyph, which I severely hope is the case.

Lifetap is way too huge now. Great thing for PvE, bad…BAD thing for PvP. We might have to see how this pans out, it’s possible blizzard wan’ts us to actually PAY for all that mana, and even possibly make more use of health gaining abilities that were normally left to the wayside for some specs.

Nemesis being gone isn’t that big of a deal. It was to me at first, then I realized that the impending doom talent should essentially do the same thing, just in a funner way.

I’m really glad they updated the range to some of those spells, I was starting to worry. Additionally the damage increase on our aoes is a very welcome change.

Unending breath coming back is actually a bad thing to me. I was hoping for them to merge it with detect invisibility and rename it to better fit with our collection of spells. Though I guess something is better than nothing.

I’m still not impressed with Hand of Gul’Dan honestly, both with it’s mechanic nor it’s graphic. It’s very underwhelming is both respects. I am glad however that it’s not responsible for refreshing immolate anymore.

I am very happy with the way they are taking demonology Warlocks in general.

Our Felguard is going to be our pocket fury arms warrior! Here is a video of his new abilities in action, as well as the new Hellfire, Soul Burn, and Hand of Gul’Dan.

*UPDATED* Cataclysm Warlock Hand of Gul’dan, NEW Felguard abilites, NEW Hellfire, and more

New Imp Abilities!

Demonology Warlocks are going to have such an explosive presence in both PvE and PvP. Felguard charges in and starts felstorming, a dark shadowy aura appears on the ground which looms as bad news for any enemy that lingers, an infernal rains down from the sky smashing into the ground, stunning everyone in the area, then the warlock himself transforms into a demon, charging into the fray, setting himself ablaze only to begin charring the area with Hellfire… it’s gonna be a blood bath.

Melee get all the fun! Shadowmourne… Deathbringers Will… where is the caster love? DPS casters haven’t had a legendary since Atiesh, but it could basically have not even existed, in regards to how many people were able to obtain it and not to mention how many classes it was available for. A full game and two expansions later, warlocks are still left on the wayside while melee add yet another package of unique weapons to their arsenal.

With the very focus of this expansion, to defeat Arthas, it was abundantly clear that the legendary of the instance would be revolving around Frostmourne and Deathknights, but does it not strike anyone else that legendaries always seem to be melee-oriented (excluding the healer mace)?

Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros: http://www.wowhead.com/item=17182

Available to: Any class that can wield a two-handed mace, but melee-oriented stats

Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker: http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019

Available to: Any class that can wield a one-handed sword, but melee-oriented stats

Twin Blades of  Azzinoth: http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=699

Available to: Warrior, Rogue

Shadowmourne: http://www.wowhead.com/item=49623

Available to: Warrior, Paladin, Deathknight

In this regard, I wish more legendaries were obtained similar to Shadowmourne and Val’anyr, where items must be looted and the item must be crafted. However, instead of having a role-specific item, have multiple items to choose from. Different weapons forged from the same material and essence. This would allow a raid to decide for themselves who to award. A long valued raider? The highest DPS? Best healer? The possibilities are endless. However, this also increases the possibility of raid/guild drama.

On a separate note, why don’t casters get ‘cool’ items such as Deathbringers Will, an item that transforms the character into various NPC models when it procs? I know we have very powerful trinkets like Dislodged Foreign Object and Phylactery of the Nameless Lich, but it would be nice to receive some form of unique vanity effect in our items as well.

Hopefully in the expansion there will be an opportunity for warlocks and ranged casters in general to receive some love in the legendary department. Is there any lore in Cataclysm to allow for such a thing? I’ll admit I am not familiar with the lore surrounding the Cataclysm and the raids with which it will bring.

Additionally, I’d like to introduce a project I have started called Headset Hair. Aphroditi has been generous enough to provide me with a banner and logo design, and I am greatly appreciative of that!

Click to see my latest video!

Basically, the videos are just chronicles of my adventures raiding in the World of Warcraft. My guild has a very niche raiding style (two nights a week, for a total of six hours) and as such we experience a wide variety of problems differently than most other raiding guilds that raid for upwards of three to five nights a week. Despite our disadvantaged schedule, we have been able to achieve much success, claiming ninth spot on our server for the course of Icecrown Citadel 25-man. We are currently making progress on heroic Sindragosa and afterward we will be finishing the rest of the meta achievements for our Frostbrood drakes.

Due to the difference in our raiding schedule with most other guilds, not only do we evaluate ourselves based on wow-progress.com rankings, but we also analyze ourselves based on ‘Time-In-Instance’, a simple tabulation of progress per hour, instead of progress per calendar date.

Our situation is unlike any other, and I hope by watching my videos not only can one be entertained, but players may realize that hard-core progression may be achieved on a casual schedule, with only a different mindset to the way the raid approaches every night of raiding. If you like the videos, please give them a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

I will be posting the above banner to the bottom of every article, but due to the lack of content specific for the audience of Felfire, I will not be creating a new article for the sole purpose of discussing my videos. Simply click the banners and you will be brought to my youtube channel, where you can find my latest video.

Email: xzilend@gmail.com

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The first change that jumps of the page is the nerf to fear. Don’t fret however, most CC’s across multiple classes had their CC changed to 2 seconds. Maybe because Blizzard wans to encourage more PvP interupting, or they just want most CCs to be even across the board. Either way it isnt a very big deal, and the range in my opinion makes up for the cast time.

The change to Demonic Aegis makes it more of a pvp talent vs a PvE talent. This all coincides with the “Warlocks won’t use spirit” mentality that I very much agree with, so no complaints form me here.

Master summoner now makes pet summoning completely free which is really cool, and is easily accessible by all specs.

Demonic Rebirth will be really useful in pet death situations, and seems to be added as to not force you to burn a shard for instant summons in combat, instead saving Soulburn – Summon for switching pets on the fly. It seems wildly overpowered at the moment with no apparent Cooldown, and kinda of makes pet management less important over all. Expect some modifications to this one.

Glad to see blizzard’s brain wheels cranking, and I eagerly anticipate the new Metamorphosis spells, as well as see how much of a nerf Soul Link receives when it becomes baseline…

I have bad news for you.
Mages have a use.

Ever since the start of Wrath, Warlocks have been treated to the simply fantastic talent called Everlasting Affliction. This, combined with the equally rad Pandemic, means that in a standard “Stand-and-Deliver” fight, we should only need to cast Corruption once. While both talents have been changed substantially since release, the basic idea is that Corruption just… stays. But that raises some important questions, doesn’t it? How much spellpower does it have? How much crit? Since the Glyph of Quick Decay came into play, when does it calculate haste, and when does it lose it? And more importantly… why are there so many newly-minted 80 warlocks in Pit of Saron!? And why would we -ever- want to talk to a mage?!

Corruption Mechanics

Corruption, one of our base spells, is modified by… well, damn close to everything worth taking in the Affliction tree. Point aside, the main points that make up the corruption of today are (a) The talent “Everlasting Affliction”, the Talent “Pandemic” and the glyph “Glyph of Quick Decay”. What these three combine to form is a DoT that is refreshed pretty regularly, can crit, and can be hastened.

Corruption scales with Crit, Haste, Spellpower, and +% Damage Modifiers. It scales with other stats too, of course, but those are the ones we’ll be focusing on. Spellpower resets each time the spell refreshes – essentially recasting the spellpower value each time. As of the start of patch 3.3, when Quick Decay was added, haste was a static value; you could stack as much haste as you wanted, and then let rip a corruption that ticked incredibly fast. This was… unintended, and in response, haste was hotfixed to refresh in the same method as spellpower; on each refresh, corruption will re-evaluate your spellpower and haste values and reapply at the new values.

However, crit and %damage modifiers are NOT replaced on each refresh. This means that upon the first cast of Corruption, it will take a snapshot of your crit and any %damage modifiers – Tricks of the Trade on you, Shadow Embrace on your target, 4pcT10 on you – will persist through the entire duration of Corruption on your target.

The Plan

So we have a spell that can theoretically roll the whole fight with a single crit value and a single +% damage modifier. How do we maximize that?

Right off the bat, before the pull, chug a Potion of Wild Magic. Pre-potting is something all raiders should be familiar with – it gives you the benefit of a potion going into the fight, without locking yourself out of another one later in the fight. For us, the benefits are twofold – because we’ll be casting Corruption within the first 15s of the fight, we’ll get an extra 9% crit from the potion.

Also, and this is the most painful part usually – get a mage to cast Focus Magic on you. It doesn’t even need to stay on you – just long enough for you to get Corruption up on the target. After that, they can go back to their little Focus Magic circle party. That’s another 3% crit.

While you’re talking your mage(s) into our plan, give a heads-up to a rogue – Tricks of the Trade is a dangerous spell that will blow our threat way up, but it also gives us a 15% damage boost for 6 seconds. Timing that one is going to be tough, since you won’t want it for the first few seconds of the fight – but you will want it to roll a cool 15% more damage on Corruption the rest of the fight.

So now the fight’s underway, and you’re going through your rotation – opening with a Shadowbolt (ideally while your Tank is throwing himself at the boss and flailing around), then tossing up Haunt, and casting Curse of Agony and Unstable Affliction while Haunt is slowly making it’s lumbering way towards the boss. (I hate Haunt. Is that obvious?)

Now we get to the most unintentionally awesome trinket ever – the (ironically named) Nevermelting Ice Crystal. NMIC grants 920 crit rating – about 20% – which drops for each non-periodic crit. Remember how we have a spell that takes a snapshot of our crit and then rolls with it the whole fight? Remember how it’s already 12% above our base crit, and doing 15% extra damage? With NMIC, your Corruption is rolling with 32% extra crit, 15% more damage, and if you have 4pcT10 proc in time, another 10% bonus damage. (If it hasn’t procced by the time Haunt hits, it might be worth tossing out another Shadowbolt to give it time to proc – and to get another stack of Shadow Embrace. Just watch that you don’t run out of ToTT or WM Pot time.) On a warlock in T10 gear, this is a Corruption that’s going to be rolling with upwards of 60% crit.

At 35%, Death’s Embrace gives our Shadow spells a free 12% buff. Oh, recast Corruption? Don’t mind if I do. Toss back a WM pot, whack your mages and rogues in the head for a buff, pop NMIC, hope for a T10 proc, and “accidentally” call out for Heroism/Bloodlust (“What? who called for Hero? Gosh, I have no idea…”) and toss that death machine back up there. Keep that Corruption rolling and at 25% ride it and Drain Soul all the way home.

The Cataclysm

So what happens in Cata? How does this all change? Well, to start, our crit values are all going in the toilet come cata. Sorry folks – the days of anyone being critcapped in end-game gear are pretty much going away. On the other hand, tricks like this won’t work anyway – DoTs and HoTs will scale natively with haste and crit, and will reset on each reapply. On the upside, clipping DoTs is gone? So, that’s something.

I really like where they are going with Glyphs, and I can’t wait to see what is coming, but… What is Blizzard’s issue with fear and cower? Do they really think that by giving us an optional cower to our fears that we will be too much like shadow priests?? They need to seriously drop their archaic philosophies and just give us what is so obviously an awesome mechanic for PvE. I always scratch my head when I sense Blizzard shying away from some proposed change that is just so obviously awesome just to hold on to some old ideal they had when they first designed the game…

I do agree with the direction they are taking drain life. Though life regeneration for any dps class requires that they be very careful with it’s scaling as to not create overpowered situations in PvP; Lets hope they ARE careful. For once though I disagree with all the QQing on the forums, in this case about Drain life and it not being the new filler for affliction. Drain life should in no way be a rotation spell, it would just be too strong and honestly quite boring.

Ah, I have yet to publicly declare my excitement for Soulburn : Seed of Corruption. When atrocity was taken out of the Wrath beta, I was a sad sad warlock. It seemed like such an essential spell with addition of Deathknights and their spreading diseases. Them bringing it back however with the new soulburn mechanic is an awesome return of an excellent ability, and shows that Blizzard is a company that can grow and listen to it’s customers. Mages will be crying everywhere…

The OP’s question is slightly odd to me. Why would they buff an already unbalanced spell even more so, making it baseline? Either way, Ghostcrawler gave a good answer.

Essentially Ghostcrawler is saying no. However I still don’t know what the benefits of being able to move while casting hellfire is. I guess it’s slightly more convenient than re-casting rain of fire when mobs move out of the aoe, but so far it isn’t doing it for me. Lets hope they realize this as well and spice it up a bit.

He expands on this further, so I’ll respond to it bellow.

Honestly, I kinda see his point on this one. In my head, anything NOT scaling with gear is a bad thing, however like he said, these minions being as situational as they are, don’t really need good scaling. I think they might be powerful enough as they are maybe with an additional mechanic or two. Future tests might help clear this up.

I believe Drain Soul as it is implemented in Cataclysm will suffice as our in combat shard regeneration. I see no reason that we can’t use it to get our shards back every time we need to use soulburn. Switch to a mob or a dying player and we will get all three back; instantly I might add. In my opinion, Drain Soul works better than channeling a non dps spell in combat to get our shards back, but that’s just me.

The phrase “Rebalance the entire game” scares me a bit. Cataclysm does bring in some huge changes, but I was hoping that the primary class mechanics will hold some of the balance together. Lets hope their isn’t any major shifts in power .

Regarding the changes to dots and refreshing, I really think it was a needed change, and will most definitely help out a majority of locks to push out great dps without having to spend hours learning about complex spell rotations or monitoring spell timers in order to keep a few spells refreshed as to avoid penalizing their dps.

“Quality of life” comes to mind.

It’s true, many of the Soulburn effects are utility or pvp oriented. Many players have commented on this on the forums, and I can’t help but agree. A simple solution is to make a few dps enhancing soulburn effects more typical of a boss fight or PvE encounter and less attractive to a PvPer.

Beta is beta. Hopefully they ramp it up to help it fulfill it’s purpose to allow for easier switching on targets when affliction specced. Honestly this is a cool as shit idea for a spell, and I think they are aware of it’s weakness atm. Time will tell on this one.

May I be one of the first to say PRAISE OUR MAKER GUL’DAN!!! It’s about bloody time they did this, I was starting to get worried. Soul Link is what makes us viable in PvP (Though many feel it is a crutch and should be removed, however I disagree), and having the freedom to put points anywhere we like for our PvP builds and not being forced into demonology makes this a long awaited change.

Demonic Soul costing a shard was a blatant contradiction to their previous statement that soul burn was meant to spice up our spells in combat, and that none of our spells would cost shards. I think it just took them until now to fully grasp the concept that shards are no longer a reagent for our spells… Let’s keep it that way.

It’s a pretty good time to be a warlock right now. More talent changes mean more opportunities for them to refine their already great design further, which is making Cataclysm feel like the “steamlined” expansion. I can’t wait for mages to QQ over locks in Cata, and every other class for that matter. I anticipate more updates like this from Ghostcrawler in the coming weeks, and I am excited to see more. Rock out with your lock out!

But that’s not all! I’ll also be covering the latest news (as best I can) from within the Cataclysm beta – I recently got into the beta itself, and will be reporting from the front lines, as it were. (I’m on the Lost Isles server – feel free to look me up if you’re in too!)

Lastly, I’ll also be touching on some of the addons that make our game better. In the spirit of that, I thought I’d open by talking about what I consider to be the most vital addon…

Forte Xorcist was originally known as Forte Warlock, which ought to give you some indication on the origins of what amounts to my freakish devotion to the addon. Since then, the compilation has expanded to cover all sorts of class specific buffs, debuffs, and special abilities.

But we don’t care about them, do we.

Forte Xorcist is a suite of tools, many of which are invaluable to both raiding and PvP warlocking. To start, let’s look at three of the warlock-specific modules, and the cooldown bar.

In my UI setup, we have the Soulstone/Ressurection timer in the upper left, the Healthstone/Soulwell tracker to the bottom left, The cooldown bar, and then the shardtracker to the right of that. Not pictured is the summoning assistant.

It’s important to note that all of these are completely mutable to your setup. I’ve been tweaking my setup lately towards a dark/techno set of fonts and colors, which you’ll see reflected here. All of the font, color choices, and sizes are yours to modify at will – and will become important when we talk about the dot timer.

At any rate, to the top left is the Soulstone/Ressurection tracker. This will show you who your current soulstone is on, as well as the status of any Druid Rebirth, Paladin DI, Shaman self-res or other warlock soulstones – provided that it is in range to pick that info up, or that the other people in your raid are also running Forte. You can click on the soulstone icon to create a stone, and then again while you have a raidmember targetted to apply it. I keep it retracted – showing me only what’s on cooldown. This gives me the awareness of people’s used cooldowns, while keeping my screen from becoming too cluttered.

To the bottom left is the Healthstone tracker. One button consumes whatever HS you’ve got on you, and the other drops a soulwell. Much more useful when you could carry two differently-sized stones, but hey, it gets Ritual of Souls off the bars.

Skipping over the cooldown bar for a moment, we have the shard tracker. This tracks all of your shards at the moment – as well as the shards of any other warlock in the raid who has this mod installed. Tired of being the Healthstone vending machine? Yell at the lock who has 30 shards to your six.

Not visible is the summon assistant, another relic of the days before we had the ability to drop a stone. One click targets players that are outside of range. (Which you can define.) Additionally, when someone asks you for a summon, it will highlight their name in the list for you to safely ignore.

Lastly, we have the cooldown bar. This tracks all of your abilities, buffs, or whatever else you’d like it to track. By default, I think it maxes out at 5 minutes? I’ve pushed mine up to 15m, and it will automatically adjust the scale. Very convenient to look down and see how close to ready a given spell or proc is. (Yes, it tracks internal cooldowns of trinkets and procs as well.)

While all that stuff is cool, the real shine of FX is in the incredibly customizable DoT timer.

Right front and center in my UI are the timer bars, and since I’ve modified them, they’ve been a godsend. By default, these bars will show you damn near everything that could theoretically affect your class – including buffs that, honestly, don’t really matter. My strongest recommendation is that when you download Forte, you spend some time picking out the debuffs you’ll want to track specifically – and slap the damn thing somewhere you’ll see it!

Above, you can see my load of dots ticking away. I’ve set it to show me my own spells on a target as black – with “shared type”, in this case Curse of Agony, purple. Aside from that, I have everything else turned off – with only Misery, Ebon Plague, Earth and Moon, Lifetap, and the Muradin’s Spyglass buff coming up as these are things I need to maintain or make sure are present on a target. The rest of the buffs and debuffs I allow Satrina Buff Frames (which we’ll cover another time, also a great mod) to cover, and in large part, don’t effect how I play during a given fight.

By default, FX is going to throw a ton of Spell Timers at you – and, especially as Affli, it’ll take up half the screen. I find it vital to have my DoT cooldowns right in my face; cutting out a lot of the excess means that the FX spelltimer doesn’t take up much room. And even better, it shows you when to recast based on your haste! The brighter white portion at the end of the cooldown bar indicates that it is safe to recast – that your DoT will hit after the existing debuff has run off.

All in all, I can’t say enough great things about Forte. If you play a warlock, you owe it to yourself to download it. If you play Affli, you should have it already. Get it at curse.

Download it Here: Forte Xorcist

That’s it for today; you crazy kids keep on murdering mages out there. Got a question about Forte, or something you’d like to see from the beta? Let me know in the comments.

5. Dwarf warlocks

When I first created my warlock, I was shocked to see that dwarves could not become warlocks, as there are several dwarf factions in lore that do so. Not to mention that dwarves are easily the best looking alliance race, by far. The day they open race transfers to dwarves, my human warlock will run awkwardly no longer.

4. Demon Guardians & Target-To-Move

The changes to the Infernal and Doomguard abilities look very promising. In PVP I use my Infernal all the time and would love to be able to use both the Infernal and my Felguard at the same time. Here’s hoping the Infernal’s damage stays relatively scaled with the current damage output, but this is unlikely due to having multiple pets at the same time.

In addition to Demon Guardians, the new ability to control where your pet moves will prove to be very useful in all areas of gameplay.

3. Fel Flame

Finally an ability that can be cast on the move that is not Life Tap or refreshing corruption! Not to mention, GREEN FIRE!

2. Redesigned Talent Trees

When Blizzard first announced that the talent trees would be undergoing massive changes, I was anxious to see what all would be affected. It has always been a concern of mine that there really were no customizable trees, but only cookie cutter builds with two or three additional points to spend that really had no impact on gameplay regardless of where they were put. So far, I am excited about the new talent tree designs along with the new talents put in them. The new abilities seem to have many creative and fun uses.

1. New Soulshard System and Newfound Creativity in Play

This change is the sole reason as to why I am excited about playing Cataclysm. Although I love the warlock class, lately I’ve been more concerned with the lack of creativity the class has in its playstyle, mostly concerned around PVP. People often respond to my concerns with the notion that we have a variety of pets all with their own situational use. While this is true, it is incredibly difficult to switch minions for specific situations without blowing a long cooldown and risk your pet being killed, therefore losing soul link and crowd control, and being an easy target to kill. With the new Soulburn ability, a warlock has the ability (shard count willing) to summon a new pet every thirty seconds, making it much easier to adapt to new situations.

Additionally, the creativity which Soulburn will allow will be an incredible step to creating a more diverse pool of playstyles within the warlock class. Some players will be loyal to the instant Soulfire, while some may be more interested in using the spell with various abilities to gain the advantage in battle, whether that is being able to more easily kite a melee character or avoid line of sight after using a teleport, or creating pressure with Searing Pain.

What changes are you most looking forward to in Cataclysm?

Email: xzilend@gmail.com

Twitter: @Xzilend

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Keybindings are often overlooked as one of the most effective methods for increasing performance in all areas of WoW, including both PVE and PVP content. I have prepared a video-guide describing the process of creating personalized keybindings, but first let me explain the reasoning behind even having them in the first place.

There are three different areas of character gameplay that are affected by keybindings. The first, movement, is commonly the single most important aspect of any raid boss, and one of the determining factors in the success of an arena team. With the removal of the need to click your spells in order to cast them, keybindings open up the possibility of turning with the mouse instead of the keyboard, a much more efficient method of movement in World of Warcraft. For instance, turning with the mouse allows for instant rotation in any direction, within milliseconds. Turning with the keyboard, even the slightest directional shift, takes much longer and is less precise. For a single concrete example, imagine any of the following scenarios, depending on which aspect of WoW is most familiar:

Raiding: While kiting a mob, one finds themself with a fair amount of distance from the creature, but is losing aggro. With mouse movement, one must simply turn around instantly, and cast a few Searing Pain onto the target. Attempting to do this with keyboard turning, one would find themselves taking too long to turn around, and would be unable to cast before having to turn around again. This would result in other members of the raid having to refrain from damaging the add due to the threat of pulling aggro.

Player versus Player: While kiting a melee character, a warlock wishes to apply the glyphed Shadowflame slow-effect in an attempt to relieve the pressure. Using the mouse, one must simply jump, rotate one-eighty degrees instantly, cast Shadowflame and finish the rotation. This method is unachievable while turning with the keyboard, and would simply result in the melee character staying behind you at all times.

The second area of gameplay affected by keybindings, reaction time, is just as critical as the first. Clicking spells with the mouse is not only inaccurate but also incredibly slow in comparison to using keybindings. Emergency and/or ‘clutch’ spells are much more difficult to time correctly in conjunction with clicking spells. The only method to circumvent this issue, is to anticipate the need for the spell and sit there with the curser hovering over it, waiting for the call and/or signal. This method swiftly lowers your damage done, threat done, and healing done depending on your class. Warlocks are especially accustomed to the benefit of healthstones in emergency situations. If one’s only method to use the healthstone is by finding it on the actionbars, moving the curser over to the spell, and finally clicking it, they may find themselves unable to use it at the proper time. Having the healthstone on an accessable key for quick, efficient use will dramatically increase overall performance and survivability.

The third and most important component of gameplay affected by the use of keybindings, is situational awareness, one’s ability to be aware of their surroundings at all times. Through the use of keybindings, the player’s focus on the screen never has to leave the playing field. There are no actionbars that need to be viewed, and no curser that needs to be followed in order to maintain accuracy. Clicking one’s spells invokes tunnel vision, where the majority of the fight is spent focused on the movement of the curser instead of the more important aspects of the fight, such as boss abilities or the strategy of an opponent.

Now that I’ve explained the core beliefs behind the reason for preferring keybindings, the next step in the process to better performance is actually creating the keybinds. For this purpose, I have created several videos over the past few weeks discussing the theory and methodology behind creating personalized keybindings for one’s playstyle. These videos do not provide the viewer with a spell-by-spell guide to my keybind layout, but rather discuss the thought process and reasoning behind why I chose my layout.

For a full transcript of each part, please click here.

How To: Keybindings in WoW

How To: Keybindings in WoW (CONTINUED)

I hope this guide has been interesting and helpful. If there are any questions please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me at any of the following. I am also interested in what topics you would like me to discuss. I have several articles planned so far, but if a certain topic is of immediate interest to the community, I would be glad to oblige!

Email: xzilend@gmail.com

Twitter: @Xzilend

Youtube: Xzilend

Quote From: Warlock's Den

Affliction

• Bane of Doom – Curses the target with impending doom, causing 2213.37 Shadow damage every 30 sec. When Bane of Doom deals damage, it has a 25% chance to summon a Demon guardian. Only one Bane per Warlock can be active on any one target. / 15% of base mana, 30 yd range, Instant cast, 1 min cooldown
• Jinx (NEW) - Your Curse of the Elements also effects all nearby enemy targets within 20/40 yards of the cursed target, and your Curse of the Weakness also reduces the targets energy, rage, focus or runic power generation by 5/10 while active.

Demonology

• Ritual of Doom is now Summon Doomguard - Summons a Doomguard to fight beside you for 45 sec. The Doomguard will assist you by attacking the target which is afflicted by your Bane of Doom or Bane of Agony spell, and will sometimes dispel harmful magic effects from you. / 80% of base mana, Instant cast, 10 min cooldown, Reagents: Demonic Figurine
• Inferno is now Summon Infernal – Summons a meteor from the Twisting Nether, causing 28.87 Fire damage and stunning all enemy targets in the area for 2 sec. An Infernal rises from the crater, under the command of the caster for 1 min. The Infernal deals strong area of effect damage, and will be drawn to attack targets afflited by your Bane of Agony or Bane of Doom spells. / 80% of base mana, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast, 10 min cooldown, Reagents: Infernal Stone
• Create Firestone is gone.
• Create Spellstone is gone.
• Detect Invisibility is gone.
• Sense Demons is gone.
• Unending Breath is gone.
• Nemesis is now a Tier 5 Talent. Down from Tier 6. Now 2 ranks, down from 3.
• Molten Core is now a Tier 4 Talent. Down from Tier 5.
• Demonic Brutality is gone.
• Hand of Gul’dan cast time has been increased from 2.5 to 3 sec.
• Ancient Grimoire now increases the duration of your Infernal and Doomguard summons by 10/20 sec. (Up from 6/12 Sec)
• Improved Succubus is gone.
• Improved Healthstone is gone.
• Improved Imp is gone.
• Dark Arts (NEW) - Reduces the cast time of your Imp’s Firebolt spell by 0.25/0.5/0.75 sec, increases the attack power bonus of your Felguard’s Demonic Frenzy by 1/2/3% and increases the damage done by your Felguard’s Shadow Bite by 5/10/15%.

Destruction

• Empowered Imp now seems to gives your Imp’s Firebolt a 6/12% chance to cause your next Soulfire spell to be instant cast within 8 sec. (Rank 2 Not Yet Implemented … Could be a bug)
• Bane of Havoc now lasts 5 min. Up from 2 min.
• Nether Protection now reduces all damage by that spell school by 15%. (Down from 30%)
• Afterburn is now named Burning Embers, now lasts 7 sec (Down from 10). The damage done by your Burning Ember effect cannot exceed [ 1/2% of Spell Power + 167.45 ] total damage.
• Backlash now has a 13/26% chance to proc. (Up from 8/16%)
• Shadowburn base damage has been increased by 23%. Now only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health.
• Improved Soul Fire now has a flat chance to increases your spell haste by 7/15% after you Soul Fire a target above 80% health.
• Emberstorm now reduces the cast time of Soul Fire by 0.5/1 sec. (Down from 1/2 sec)
• Bane no longer reduces the casting time of Soul Fire.
• Improved Shadow Bolt is now Shadow and Flame - Increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt and Incinerate spells by 4%, and your Shadow Bolt has a 33/66/100% chance to cause the Improved Shadow Bolt effect to the target.
  The Improved Shadow Bolt effect causes the target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% for 30 sec.
• Shadowflame now also fears the enemies.

Upcoming Warlock Changes

Ghostcrawler also elaborated on what is yet to come:

FINALLY the Doomguard/Infernal changes are in. Since they won’t be un-summoning our minions and are baseline, you will be seeing a lot more warlocks busting these out fairly consistently. Remember though that they share a cooldown, which means you can either choose ranged spell damage (Doomguars) or melee damage with ae fire (Infernal)

My face when I saw the Shadowflame change ——> CLICK

no, seriously, Shadowflame is going to be an amazingly viable spell for PvP and arena, as well as an interesting tool for PvE.

If they leave the Shadowflame glyph as is, we will have a very competitive spell for PvP including arena.

Like I mentioned earlier, it appears that our spell stones will simply become directly enchant-able, like shaman weapon enchants.

The Nether Protection nerf in destruction was inevitable in my opinion, especially seeing as how much mitigation we have in combination with how big the health pools will be in Cataclysm. Tough love is tough.

The new spell in Demo, Dark Arts is a cool way example of how awesome the combined talents are. This will inevitebly lead to a wider range of demon use (In addition with like talents)

Jinx is insane… it’s going to drastically increase AE damage in raids, and is also going to make dispelling in PvP HELL for healers… It is most definitely a welcome change in the affliction tree.

Currently, Blizzard seems to be pushing a specific bane to a specific spec. Affliction – Bane of Agony. Demonology – Bane of Doom. Destruction – Bane of Havoc, Which is cool, and will be an interesting change to get used to.

The clarifications that Ghostcralwer provided regarding Aftermath really makes me happy. I was scared that it was substantially nerfed in the last build.

His comment regarding Dark Pact and Drain Soul though is a little confusing. Which one is cut or redesigned? I guess time will tell.

Drain Life doing more competitive damage is a rather interesting change, though I imagine they will somehow limit the amount of healing it returns, as to not make it overpowering. Still, this change intrigues me, and gets my brain gears moving… *Intriguing chin rub*

So far everything is looking good, some bad talents are being reworked as they should, some spells are getting revamped. I still think they hvae a long way to go with the talents, but I think they are starting to take shape and I am eagerly awaiting the next build!