'locktomist

Hell Froze Over...

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:31:00 +0000

...because finally, after what seems like endless discussion and countless, fruitless patches, Blizzard has finally relented.

As of the next Beta build, people, Corruption is going to be instant-cast as a base ability.

Oh, and Ruin is going to be accessible for 20 talent points (!!!), switching places with Devastation and going from 1 to 5 talent points. This means that talent specs will be able to revel in Ruinous glee without giving up their 51pt talents.

This is huge. This is more than huge, this is amazing. Sure we give up 5% crit, but every talent tree will have access to Ruin!!

Oh, and Metamorphosis is getting seriously buffed. The warlock love is layered on thick with this patch.

What Fel Dealings This?

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:48:00 +0000

So unless you've been living under the proverbial rock, or simply have more sense than 99.99% of the WoW population, you have probably been salivating over the promises of the new expansion. Wrath of the Lich King is like a frightening, undead pinata - vaguely threatening, but loaded with delicious candy. Talent candy! Skill candy! Candy that helps you remember how many murlocs you've killed!

But no self-respecting gamer would be satisfied with the 'Official' list of changes, and this warlock is certainly no exception! While I'm very excited at the prospects of Haunting things and transforming into a Demon, I've got my own little list of 'lock-related changes that I'd love to see in-game.

In no particular order:

Firestone:Physical Effects as Spellstone:Magic Effects

So hear me out, this one takes a bit of logic. Spellstone works by periodically purging all magic effects from your person. It's a great way of dispelling multiple DoTs from rival warlocks, shadow priests, or even Ignite procs from Mages. Now that Fel Armor is a physical buff, warlocks can self-purge with impunity. The added buff to spell crit is always a plus, and helps this otherwise mediocre conjured item get some more traction. But what of Spellstone's neglected step-brother, Firestone?

Oh what a maligned spell that is! All other budding warlocks who were thoroughly confused by Firestone when they first trained it, raise your hand.

::raises hand::

There are two benefits to Firestone presently. First, it boosts your fire spell damage, which is a cute bonus that is somewhat useful as you level because its not till much later that you can find a wand with comparable +spell damage. The melee proc is supposed to make daggers, a staple warlock weapon, a useful means of finishing something off as you level.

But lets be honest, most of the time you'd be much better off with a wand that you could use to blast something mana-free as it's running in Fear-induced hysteria than going toe-to-toe with a mob while wearing CLOTH. Anyone else see the problem?

Firestone is mediocre, but here's a way to buff it that seems to make sense: give it the ability, on use, to purge all physical maladies on the warlock, just like how Spellstone purges magic effects.

Imagine the warlock using the captured flame to cauterize and cleanse his wounds, and you'll get a flavor for the logic behind the change.

This would give locks choice of conjured item for use in pvp, one for use versus magic users, and one that would give us a little more breathing room vs. Mortal Strike, Rogue stuns, Bleed effects, and the like. With a cooldown similar to Spellstone it wouldn't be overpowered, since most melee can re-apply their effects within the next few swings. It would however provide a tactical power that, if used correctly, could give us a better chance against our worst matchups without being a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Oh, and give it the ability to shoot, like a wand. That would be awesome.

EDIT: lol I didn't even notice, they are relics now. Whee!

Health Funnel Friendly Targets

This one is going to be a little more controversial, but what if you could channel Health Funnel onto any friendly unit, not just your demons? I know that lore-wise, warlocks can heal their pets because they are bound to them, so to preserve that, give us a spell that costs a soul shard to mark a friendly target for 30 minutes, making them a viable target for Health Funnel.

ZOMG Feren warlocks can't heal, they is DPS!

I know, I know, which is why, as a heal, this is about as terrible as you can get. It's a channeled spell, meaning it is hugely open to interruption. There's a big laser beam that tips people off to our location. But most importantly, while we're channeling WE CANNOT CAST ANYTHING ELSE. Sure our DoTs are going to be working hard, but no nuke spam is a huge hit to our DPS. What this does do is allow warlocks to do some last-ditch tactical healing, at the cost of their own HP bar and damage potential. Seems like a fair trade to me.

Maybe augment the Demonic Circle spell such that warlocks can Health Funnel any friendly target within the circle? That might be a viable alternative to a whole new spell with such narrow applications.

Danger: Summoning Zone

Demonic Circle has so much potential from a thematic perspective it isn't even funny. Magic like this isn't to be trifled with, and to reflect that, I think Demonic Circle should augment more than just summoning speed and be more than just a teleport anchor. What if, kind of like hunter traps, Demonic Circle had an offensive component as well?

Say, a 30% slow effect on enemy targets that enter the circle? Decreased hit rating due to the babble of demonic voices? Or, ideally, make any enemy target standing within demonic circle succeptible to Banish. There should be a risk in breaching a warlock's rituatlistic field, enough that it acts as a deterrent to stabby melee and pernicious pets.

Of course, if I really could have my way I'd have the circle act as a beacon to some Elder God and watch in glee as my enemies are torn assunder by unspeakable, madness-inducing horrors.

Reviewing the Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:46:00 +0000

((First posted as a comment on a post over at Player vs Developer))

Having not yet seen the WAR trailer, I can't really do any comparisons, but I can speak to the Wrath trailer.

The biggest issue with the trailer is that you have to have played WC3 for the real gravitas of the video to make sense. If you played through Arthas' campaign, the voice-over by his father is poignant, prescient, and chilling.

Close your eyes (or bring up another window) and listen to the trailer; it's easy to imagine this older King just beaming to his promising son. The juxtaposition with the horror of Northrend makes for good cinema.

You are left wondering if that voice is in Arthas' head, like a memory even the Crown of Nerzhul can't keep away. As the Lich King Arthas exhudes silent menace. Whereas Illidan seemed brooding and smoldering with barely controlled rage, Arthas is cold, aloof, and utterly disinterested in the 'threat' posed by the players.

I loved how the trailer drew a direct parallel with Arthas as the former human king, now ruling over a vast kingdom of undead. Though the forsaken are supposed to have the market cornered when it comes to being Undead with Feelings, those Scourge we see shouting their fealty to Arthas sure mustered up some serious GAR.

All in all, I think the trailer was amazing for a three minute story. It captured the fearful potency of the Lich King, the imminent threat of his VAST army (love the shot with all the tiny blue Scourge flames ignited in the valley below), and the reminder of all the loss that led to Arthas'
present role. I've always thought that Arthas' story was the best part of Warcraft's recent history, and the trailer doesn't disappoint.

It differs from TBC's trailer in that there isn't a direct challenge to the player (no, 'You are NOT prepared!' moment). Instead, the viewer is left with this huge sinking feeling, this sense of being utterly beneath the attention of the Lich King. This seems to contradict Blizzard's voiced intent of making Arthas a bigger part of the individual player's stories.

5 stars if you played WC3. 3 stars if you didn't. The uninitiated will be unmoved by the real driver of this trailer - the tragedy of loss.

Seasons Change

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:25:00 +0000

Well everyone, summer has come and gone, and this one in particular has been absolutely amazing. My son was born late in May, and he's been keeping my wife and I really REALLY busy, so much so that WoW got shelved for a while.

I managed to earn my epic flying mount before the little guy was born, so my last real achievement in TBC was complete (I never really bought into the whole Shattered Sun thing). I have however been keeping a very close eye on the news out of Wrath of the Lich King, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't totally stoked. I'm working on a theoretical Affliction build that has me very excited, which I should have up in the next week or so. I've got a few posts that I've jotted down that I'll be putting up before then, so bear with me.

The air is getting chillier; you can feel the seasons starting to shift. I love the fall (not just because it's marked by two of my favorite holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving!). Summer is no time to be a warlock. Sunlight isn't exactly our best friend. Nay, bring on the rolling fog, rapid dusks and whirling leaves!

Entry 18: Lean Theory Applied to Leveling - The Grind

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:04:00 +0000

Being a hybrid is odd. It seems to me, at least at this stage of the leveling game, that enchancement is about head and shoulders above either restoration or elemental in terms of efficiency. Why? Gear availability, and the stats that go with that.

As a melee dpser there are two stats that interest me the most: strength and agility. Strength makes every melee strike hit for more and agility increase my chances to crit (thus enabling all my talent-related melee buffs). Applying a bit of the logic behind gear I learned on Ferenczys, I am actively pursuing both Str and Agi to the complete exclusion of Stam, Int, and Spi. Why? For the exact same reason warlocks are told to stack as much +dmg as they can: stamina does not matter when your fights only last 15 seconds.

My first run through the game, I clung unquestioningly to the stats of survival and longevity. Stamina and Intellect (and yes, spirit too) were everywhere on my gear because I was under the impression that a longer life/mana bar meant I would survive more. While this is true, it's a paradigm worth investigating a little further. Let me use both Feren and Shatterhoof for comparison.

Leveling with Ferenczy was an exercise in patience. I didn't master Drain Tanking until late in my warlock career, and Demonology (at the time) was a grossly underpowered talent tree, so I went the way of Destruction. My fights consisted of blowing the bejeezus out of things, and usually ending fights with 70-60% hp and mana. My threat was through the roof, so I couldn't use my pets to tank like other lock builds. I NEEDED Stam and Int because the more of those I had, the more fights I could go before needing to eat/drink. Or so I thought.

The flipside, which I hadn't learned till much later, was that stacking +dmg made much MORE sense because you could kill the same number of mobs with fewer spells. Fights are much shorter, and consequently your mana pool is taxed much less. There is obviously a tradeoff, as even highly efficient spells are limited by a smaller mana pool, but by and large you are increasing something more useful to a leveling character: SPEED. The faster you kill, the faster you earn xp, and thus the faster you level.

What +dmg is to locks, +agi/+str is to an Enhancement shaman. I usually have to settle for gear options that are one or the other with a stam component, but by and large everything on Shatterhoof is focused on melee damage. The fact that he's in mail armor (well, mostly; I still have a few leather pieces that I'm using because the stats are more in line with the above reasoning) helps considerably, as I'm penalized less for having a smaller health pool. This has allowed me to grind a hell of a lot faster than I would have thought. Last night for instance I cleared out an entire camp of Grimtotem tauren in under ten minutes, drinking/eating once. Shamans have a distinct advantage when it comes to closely spaced mobs in PVE, because it allows us to maximize the use of our totems. If I know I will be able to pull from a single spot for a good while, I will generate my little field of totems and pull with rank 1 Lighting Bolt. The range is ridiculous, and the cost is minimal.

If a full complement of totems is inefficient but I want a good boost, I have found that Grace of Air is by far more useful than Strength of Earth. The totem increases my crit chance by a good amount, and that just makes everything else gel better. Though Strenght of Earth is very powerful when coupled with Windfury, the proc chance of WF makes it an unsure thing. I would rather have the guarantee of more Flurry/Unleashed Rage/Shamanistic Focus uptime more crit brings to the table. This has led me to consider Agi a more important stat for Enhancement shamans than Str. Apart from being a talent enabler through crit %, it enables Dodge too, which only serves to reduce my downtime between pulls even further.

I don't see how Elemental, the other shaman DPS tree, could possibly compare to the sheer killing speed of Enhancement at this point. The availability of +nature/+spell damage on mail pieces at this level seems to be pretty sparse. Sure, I could go into some cloth pieces the same way I now dip into Leather, but shamans lack the ability to CC a mob that other casters enjoy. Pure casters like Mages, Locks and Priests can root, fear, and stun long enough for their spells to cast and kill the target. Druids, like shamans, have more limited ways of keeping something under control, but whereas they can Root a target outside, the best a shaman can do is Frost Shock when the target is in range and kite the target. Running means not casting, and not casting means you aren't killing things, which, to borrow a term from lean manufacturing, is muda.

So here I am, deep into Enhancement and up to my eyeballs in melee stats. What use have I of my other tree abilities? I might use Healing Wave a couple of times, but by and large bandaging is more efficient because it doesn't cut into my mana pool. Lighting bolt is better suited towards poking a target to get it's attention, since the only time I ever do that is when I've got my forest of totems up, and at that point I don't want to waste the mana on the full-rank spell because the almost-guaranteed Shamanistic Focus buff makes shocks so much more efficient.

In the spirit of true lean principle, I will now state what should be common sense to anyone leveling a toon in WoW:

1. Gear to your strengths, and find the most efficient method of killing your target.
2. Stamina/Intellect/Spirit are not imporant while you level. Damage output is.
3. Downtime is bad (lean: Non-value added); travel time is downtime, so the faster you get from A to B (or the less times you have to span the gap), the more time you'll spend doing something productive. See number 4.
4. Install QuestHelper. It modifies your map to show you the location of every one of your quest objectives, letting you work out a logical path from one to the other to maximize your grinding efficiency.
5. Gathering professions are more efficient than crafting professions for two reasons:
5a. You are already out in the wilderness, so you aren't 'wasting time' endlessly crafting in a major city
5b. You don't need to spend gold to increase your proficiency (beyond ranking up that is)
6. As soon as possible, set your Hearthstone to Shattrath City. While you lose the ability to instantly port to the nearby inn while you are leveling, the capability of near-instant travel across continents is huge.

I am now 4 days /played on Shatterhoof and nearing level 50. I'm not sure what a 'good' rate of leveling is, but this seems pretty damn quick compared to all the time I seemed to have spent putzing around with Ferenczys, and a good part of those 4 days was spent pre-30 gearing up for some casual twink PVP. I can only really play in 30-40 minute increments, but each play session I average roughly half a bar of XP if I turn in all the quests I complete. Rested state is awesome. The 'slow' period between 30-40 seems to have gone by pretty quick, and if memory serves, things pick up again once I cross 50 and get access to more centralized quest hubs.

Not sure how much longer I'll be at this though. My family is expecting a new addition soon! It will soon be time for me to hang up the gamer hat and start being a daddy. :) Who knows, I may be back for Wrath of the Lich King, which is looking more and more casual friendly with every tidbit I hear. Thanks Blizz for making even a part-timer like myself feel welcome.

Entry 17: U heal Mara?

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:03:00 +0000

That was the whisper Shatterhoof got as I was unloading his bags at the AH in Ogrimmar last night. For a moment I was overcome by a wave of surrealness (surreality?). Instantly it seemed that every time I'd ever blindly whispered for a healing spot in an instance run flashed across my mind's eye. I recalled the vacant, blind depression associated with a blind tell, with the knowledge that the person will more than likely tell you no. I recalled the terrible sinking feeling as the clock ticks to the ten, twenty, thirty minute mark in LFG. I remembered the increasingly ambivalent party messages from the other group members, the sight of their little map icons shuffling off to the daily quest areas, or worse, to the battlemasters. I was acutely reminded of the sick feeling of knowing a run is dead before it even started.

Then the person whispered me again, 'U heal mara??'

To which I calmly replied, 'I'm spec'd for enhancement, but I can try.'

The party invitation popped up so fast I hardly had time to blink.

Now, I'm no expert at healing, and by this point Shatter is pretty deep into Enhancement, with absolutely zero investment in either elemental or restoration talents. He's a melee dps'er, and his gear is not meant for sustained heals. So, since I had a nice cushion of gold from dual gathering professions (yay!), I hopped on the AH and picked up some cheap 'of the Eagle' gear and a nice +healing staff. Whatever right, if I'm going to heal I'm going to at least make an effort of it.

Alas, my eagerness proved unnecessary. Five minutes later our tank dropped because of work related issues, and then I get another tell from the guy who recruited me.

'U tank in bear form??'

LOL.

/p Thanks for the invite everyone! Good luck!

/leave party

Entry 16: How much is your time worth?

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:02:00 +0000

I'm crunching along merrily on my shaman, and at the moment I am perfectly content to follow the leveling guide and just sort of cruise through the game in melee mode. Just got into the first few ranks of Unleashed Rage, so now that little shudder of glee I get whenever I crit has evolved into more of a sick cackle. The thing I can't stand about my shaman at this level is the unpredictability of fights, since everything is predicated on getting off a crit. Sometimes I run in, get crits/windfury procs like crazy and the target is dead before I can blink. Other times, I'll stand there for what seems like forever just dual swinging away, getting increasingly frustated as the white numbers continually get broken up by MISS, MISS, DODGE, etc, with nary a crit in sight. I hardly ever drop totems unless I know I can reliably pull multiple mobs in sequence. I've found that using Lighting Bolt Rank 1 is a great way of getting something's attention without having to leave my little bubble of awesomeness.

But that's kind of besides the main point to this article.

See, I think I've finally gotten up enough courage to blow away Ferenczy's Enchanting profession to take up a new one. I've long had an antagonistic view of my enchanting skills because I just don't find it all that useful. I disenchant more than I enchant, and it's getting really old. I've turned to guildmates with more time/less common sense for all my high level enchanting needs, and I haven't missed it at all. I've decided to drop Enchanting (sitting at 301 skill now) for Alchemy.

My reasons for this are manifold. First of all, I love thinking systemically. Having Feren as an alchemist seems to gel really well with his primary-primary profession, Tailoring, because of the high demand for elemental reagents in tailoring recipes. Transmutes could come in really handy, I think. Thinking cross-character, I could have Shatterhoof supply quite a lot of Feren's herb needs once he gets up to speed, further alleviating the costs of leveling a profession from scratch.

A quick Google search will turn up a plethora of various profession power leveling guides that walk you through exactly what you need to make at the various skill levels in order to progress. This sure beats having to figure things out for yourself and potentially wasting valuable resources, the most critical of which is time.

You see, most casual players are lack not the want, ambition, or skill to do well in the game, they simply lack time. Between my responsibilities at work and the time I want to spend with my family, my time in-game is significantly less than that of most of the population. This means that I have to plan ahead for what I want to do and prepare as much as possible outside of the game in order to fully utilize the time I do have. This means reading up on boss strategies, searching for the quests or bosses I'll need to overcome for the loot I want, or, in this case, brushing up on a leveling guide so that I can set up the necessary milestones I'll need to hit every play session.

In a roundabout way this has led me to my current situation, and it's given me some insight into how the free market within WoW really works. Every player, casual or not, has to determine for him/herself just how valuable their game time really is. Take the epic crafting recipes for instance. If you don't have a lot of time, it's probably more efficient for you to do dailies in small blocks of time and just buy your mats on the AH. Grinding can yield the materials far more cheaply in terms of gold expenses, but you end up having to rely on the randomized loot of every mob you kill for the stuff you want, whereas completing a daily will ALWAYS give you the monetary reward you set out to acquire.

If you need, like I did, more than 25 Primal Fires for all the Shadoweave I needed for my Frozen Shadoweave Set, you're looking at over 625g in Primal Fires alone. That's the equivalent of 250 Motes of Fire, which, at BEST, would take you 150 Fire Elemental kills to accomplish if every elemental dropped 2 Motes. We all know they do not, that the drop rate is probably closer to 20% for every Mote, so those 250 Motes are more realistically going to take you around 1250 elemental kills to achieve. On my best days I could take three elementals at a time in roughly the duration of a single Corruption spell, or 24 seconds. Add in travel time to and from mobs, global cooldowns and the like and you raise that to roughly one minute per elemental pack. That equates to roughly 7 hours of game time just killing elementals, assuming I can get three pulls per minute and don't have any competition.

Can you say bloody unlikely?

On the flip side, assuming you can earn 40g an hour doing dailies (some people put this as high as 100g, but I'll be conservative, and assume you have a non-epic flying mount), that's about 16 days worth of dailies to purchase all those mats. Sure it might take longer, but if you're strapped for time, a slow, gradual build up towards your final reward is less stressful than the randomness of the loot generation system and open competition on the mobs.

So what am I getting at? Time is valuable. Time is worth gold. Those seven hours spent grinding could just as easily be spent running two or three instances (or at least two heroics), or clearing Karazhan once a week. If you want to maximize your play experience, you need to figure out what kind of returns your likely to see for your time investment and choose the optimal path. How you define 'returns' is entirely up to you. For some people it means improving gear, or earning gold. Others might define it a little more abstractly by simply calling it 'fun'. If grinding on elementals is your idea of fun, more power to you. After all, someone needs to fill in the supply side of supply-demand. I'll be more than happy to reward your hard work with the gold I earn running dailies, if it means I get more time to do what I consider 'fun'.

In case I wasn't clear, that does NOT involve farming.

Entry 15: A Walk on the Shaman Side

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Thu, 01 May 2008 02:19:00 +0000

Recently, I've toned down the amount of lockage on my account to break things up a little. I've run into something of a wall of Feren. I've purchased my epic flight mount, so money holds no sway over me anymore. I have little to no desire to level enchanting any more, since I'm probably going to lose it in favor of Inscription when Wrath gets released. My guild continues to stumble trying to re-establish a routine Kara group thanks to some painful desertions earlier in the year, so raiding in on hiatus. Magister's Terrace is still mildly entertaining, but everyone seems entirely afraid of heroic mode, so much so that most of my heroic attempts, assuming I even get a full group together, end up falling apart half a dozen pulls into the instance. Most of the time it doesn't even seem like we're doing that badly! We'll run in, start fighting a few groups, down them in (at least, to me) reasonable time, when usually the healer will pipe up that the tank is simply not geared enough for the run. Someone else will nod sagely, and suddenly we're done. Yours truly ends up scratching his head in confusion, but having never tanked/healed a major instance before, I defer to the knowledge and experience of those more familiar with the concepts. It's happened so often that I'm pretty much ambivalent about it.

Though Timbal's Focusing Crystal sure would be sweet.

So, glancing through my character screen, I decided that I'd rather spend my scant WoW hours doing something productive rather than farming Shattered Sun rep. Who needs a title anyway, right? I dusted off Shatterhoof, my trusty Shaman, and set about relearning the basics of shamanism.

It's been a very interesting experience, to be sure. Remember, Feren has been my main for over three years, and I've rarely deviated, if at all. In fact, the last time I started alting it up was about three or four months before Burning Crusade got released...

Hm. This seems to be turning into a trend.

In any case, I've been slowly working on Shatterhoof, plugging my way up the level grind and having a right good time of things. I decided early on that I was going to do this as an enhancement shaman, only because I wasn't all that interested in doing ANOTHER caster, and healers are notoriously bad at leveling. Before shelving him the first time I'd leveled him to 31, a Corpsemaker strapped proudly to his back, so I was in good shape to start things up again.

Leveling as a melee hybrid is worlds away from what it was like leveling Feren. For one, I've learned a lot about general game practices that I just didn't have when I first started playing. He's got two gathering professions as opposed to my original halacious choice of tailoring/enchanting. He's staying on top of his first aid instead of letting it languish. He's selling most of his green drops on the AH.

I've noticed quite a few things about leveling this time around that have changed since my days pre-BC.

For one, the reduced XP requirement is really nice. I breezed through the thirties without too much difficulty at all, at roughly an hour per level. It definitely helps that I grabbed QuestHelper and a coordinate AddOn to guide my travels, but even then, Ghost Wolf is a luxury my warlock never had.

If there's a downside to the faster leveling experience, it's the reduced amount of gold potential characters seem to have now as they level up. Whereas before you could reasonably expect to have enough saved for your first mount by the time you hit 40, even through studious use of the AH and selling all the vendor trash I could get my grubby hooves on, I was barely scratching 50Gs by the time Shatter reached 40. Feren had to subsidize his first mount with a nice gold donation, which I should easily be able to recoup thanks to my awesome awesome Nether Ray.

The counterbalance to this shorter accumulation period however is the massive amount of gold on the open market. Prices for even low level materials like herbs and leather are MUCH higher now than I remember them to be before TBC. Just yesterday I sold off a bags worth of heavy and medium leather for a tidy profit. I was amazed by how high the buyouts were on the AH when I checked for average prices. I really need to update Auctioneer.

So even though I'm raking in more gold per auction, I just don't spend as much time actually gathering in one spot before I've exhausted the leveling potential and moved on. Getting the money for an epic mount is going to be just as much of a headache. Feren won't be retiring his bomber jacket anytime soon, I don't think.

Beyond the 'incidentals' of the WoW experience though, shamans are a blast to play. I readily admit that I am probably the worst shaman you'll ever meet. I'm no good with much outside of my happy little enhancement sphere. Totems confuse me; I can never remember which totems I have access to or when I should be using them. For a while, I was using Strength of Earth routinely to beef up my Two-hander swings, but I was taking heaps of damage. I couldn't go more than two or three mobs at a time before having to eat or bandage. When I switched to Stoneskin and Healing Stream though, my endurance went through the roof. But once I got Dual Wield, I've found that I'm simply moving too much to warrant dropping totems of any kind. Between Stormstrike, Flurry and Windfury procs, I'm just tearing through stuff. I used to think that my warrior was quick!

My noobness as a shaman was painfully apparent when I did my first non-boosted instance run the other day. We hit the Cathedral side of SM, our party consisting of a two-hander warrior, a rogue, a warlock, priest, and myself. Since we were all above 40, everyone was pretty comfortable. Let me tell you, I haven't been in an instance run so chaotic in my life! People were pulling every which way, only mild focusing going on, no one was waiting for drinks between pulls, and even the rogue stopped trying to CC when he noticed the warrior's favorite button seemed to be Whirlwind.

We wiped once, right at the doors to the cathedral, when we simply got overwhelmed by a stream of elites as runners chained groups one after another. Our priest dropped, but we stayed up for quite some time before the warrior went down. It was only then that I realized, to my embarassment, that I have HEALING SPELLS on my toolbar.

Oh yeah. I'm a shaman. Silly me.

So instead of keeping Mr. Fury alive, I kept on blidly whacking away. He died. Warlock died. I soon died. Rogue vanished and the mobs reset. I popped back up (yay Resurrection!), began ressing people, and we were back at it. The whole run was over in about 30 minutes. I dropped all of two totems the entire time, right at Mograine. No one had a DPS meter, but I was definitely smashing face. It was chaotic, but a very welcome change of pace from the ridiculous amount of attention I normall pay to an instance run. MgT has indeed raised the bar for situational awareness.

But Feren, if you're so used to watching multiple mobs, fear juggling, seduce macro'ing, DPSing and watching your threat, why in the world are you such a bad shaman? I'll admit, my situational awareness as a shaman is NOTHING like it is on my lock, and I think I know why. I just don't have shaman in my blood yet. I don't know or remember, instinctively, what I can or cannot do in any given situation. That kind of familiarity can only come from years of experience on the same toon. Besides that, though I'm still in the DPS corner of the party triad, the spheres of responsibility my shaman has is far different from that of a warlock.

As a lock, I've got two jobs: CC and DPS intelligently. As a shaman, it's more like: DPS (single target w/ melee or multi target with chain lighting, still not sure when to switch), incidental healing as necessary, party buffs via totems, removing poisons and diseases, and locking down casters and runners with Earth/Frost Shock as necessary.

That's a lot of stuff to stay on top of, and I haven't even hit the point where I should be thinking about totem twisting yet.

In my defense, no single shaman can be expected to do ALL of that. There's still a priority to things. As enhancement, my primary responsibilities seem to be DPS and party buffs, followed closely by caster/runner control. I should only think or worry about healing if our primary healer bites it, or if the party needs a quick boost, and poison/disease cleansing can just as easily be handled by their respective totems than by me spamming spells.

Oh, that's right. Purge. I also keep mobs purged. Add that to the mixing pot.

I've been told that as I specialize further into the Enhancement tree, some of those responsibilities will likely drop off. Without spell damage gear my Chain Lightnings will be underwhelming at best, and the inability to switch out gear besides weapons during combat pretty much ensures I won't be expected to spot heal if a healer drops. Still, I want to be sure I know HOW to do those things, because doing otherwise is like disabling features of your computer just because you never plan on using them.

You may not PLAN on doing so, but it can't hurt to know how, if the situation ever calls for it.

I've also gained newfound respect for self-res abilities. On my warlock, I rarely run with an SS up simply because I'm either in an instance (and thus someone else gets the SS) and I don't play on a PVP server. Still, in hindsight I can see why it is so important for leveling locks to make sure they keep that buff up at all times, especially while running quest chains. The amount of time you save from being able to pop back up instead of doing the old graveyard shuffle is significant. Travel time notwhitstanding, you will also avoid having to deal with respawns. To all you aspiring warlocks out there reading this blog, take heed: ALWAYS have your SS up and ALWAYS have your Healthstone conjured. We warlocks may be close to invincible, but it's always good to be prepared.

Just pretend that you're Dracula. Stake through the heart, exposure to sunlight, head chopped off and body burned....POP, not dead anymore! Vengeance! Blood! Suffering on all mine enemies!

Ahem. Anyway, you get the point. Ahnks are so cheap that I am now shocked when I think about all the instance wipes I've experienced wherein the shaman sheepishly confesses to not having any on hand. WHAT? Any time I'm in a capital city I'm loading up on the damn things. Not that I find myself dying frequently, but I'd feel really dumb if I didn't have one on hand when I needed it. Same goes for the other reagents Shamans tend to go through, like Fish Oil and Shiny Scales. Never know when water breathing or water walking might come in handy. Just don't use water walking if you intend on jumping into a pool from a high elevation.

Do you suppose a water-walking enchanted corpse leaves water-walking blood and gore all over the place after a splat? There's an image for you.

It's also painfully evident that some classes are just better at leveling than others. Even among DPS classes, some are more equal than others. As a lock, you must be sure to spec in such a way that you take advantage of one of two of our most efficient grinding trees. Demonology and Affliction both have a lot to offer warlocks as they level, presenting two different paths that cater to drastically different playstyles. Affliction is more self-sustaining and is (in my opinion) more efficient at farming multiple mobs, but Demonology has more burst potential and is probably better suited to a PVP server.

And while gear dependency is certainly higher on a melee character like a rogue or shaman, having a high level toon that can bankroll periodic gear upgrades makes for very fast, very efficient leveling. It's gotten me wondering about just what the optimal account leveling process might be. That though is material for a later post.

I'm level 44 now, only a scant 14 more till I'm through the Dark Portal. Until then, depending on whether the guild needs my warlocking prowess, it seems as though Shatterhoof is going to be getting the majority of the spotlight, with his undead benefactor dutifully watching his progress. Very gothic, really. I may have to write a more definitive story about how those two interact one of these days.

Lightning Cows FTW.

Entry 13: That's Borne. With an 'E'.

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:25:00 +0000

Guilds are an interesting mechanism in MMOs. When I first started playing WoW, I had no idea what a guild was or had any inclination to join one. I was perfectly content and happy to solo myself through the first few zones, oblivious to much else. I think the concept of a guild is rather intimidating to new MMO players because it equally conjures images of intense servitude and enjoyable camaraderie. I know I was hesitant to join at first because I feared the drama that must inevitably come from interacting with players sitting behind avatars. Thankfully my negative experiences have been relatively limited, and my present guild has been a very good fit for me.

But great twisting nether, has there been drama lately.

It all started about a month and a half ago. You see, the Shadows of the Nethrezim was a guild mostly built around a circle of real life friends in WoW. Many of us were 70, with quite a few alts running here and there, but as far as mains go we were pretty well represented.

We had members who frequented the raids of other guilds, at least two who were pretty far along in SSC, and had great relations with a family of other, small guilds. Foremost an RP guild, SotN was getting to the point where guild Kara raids seemed like a real possibility. I had personally organized a half-dozen incursions into that cursed Tower by networking with other guilds and assembling what appeared to be a workable team.

Well, as the Kara raids progressed and we stopped dying to the trash, word spread through the guild and more people wanted in. We had people signing in on raid day expecting invites. The only trouble was that only a few ever bothered to sign up via the guild forums, which is where the roster was. The drama began to kick in when older, established guild members were being turned away from the Raid in favor of brother-guild members because they never bothered to sign up.

People were angry, annoyed that they were being denied their place in a "guild raid", and seemed to forget that without these other players there'd be no Kara raid at all.

Anyway, long story short, the next time Blizzard opened up free server transfers out of Argent Dawn, we lost a good half-dozen of our 70s. Without a word, the whole lot of them just jumped ship, and suddenly the guild was a whole lot smaller. We put the Kara raids on hold while we sorted out the mess.

After lots of discussions between guild officers and the rest of the crew, it was decided that the guild would have to move on. We decided to start fresh, taking what lessons we could from our previous experience and breaking away from the bad. Just as important was the RP side of things; the Shadows were bound to service under Varimathras, and it was becoming difficult for players, both old and new, to gel with the idea of serving a Dreadlord. They're not the nicest people in the world, you understand. To be able to really move on story-wise, we'd needed to adopt a new name.

Well, last night, after logging in with my shaman alt to do some mindless leveling, I got a raid invitation from our mage-king Anstar. He told me they needed my signature on the new guild charter, and that I'd need to /gquit. Surprised (happy circumstance dropped me into the game at just the right moment, it seemed), I did so, and not ten minutes later we had enough signatures to form the new guild:

From the Shadows of the Nethrezim to Netherborne. Seems like a good switch, no?

There was a lot of discussion during the switch whether it should be Netherborne or Netherbourne. Curious, I did a dictionary search for "bourne" and discovered that it is an archaic term for goal or destination. Our guild leader Skold seemed to like that (I believe he phrased it as, "That's sexy."), but the majority didn't like how closely it tied to the whole Bourne Identity series. We settled on borne because we all felt that one more unnecessary vowel would be way too pompous. A few more letters and we might as well be French.

So Netherborne it is! I managed to get my main and my brother's mage switched over as well, which means I'll be all set the next time I log in. This still doesn't resolve the main issue of the guild, a lack of out-of-game communication, but there's a lot to be said about having a fresh start. I personally think it helped clear the air of a lot of the bad feelings from the split, and it will be really interesting to see how many people switch over the next couple of days. At the very least this should weed out the more innactive players of the guild, though our numbers will still be somewhat inflated due to the pressence of alts.

Oh well. Here's to a new chapter in the storied history of the Nethers. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve player use of the guild forums, I'd appreciate the insight.

Wish us luck!

Entry 12: Futurecrafting

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Minor tangent. I'm presently working on my MBA, grinding away all sorts of hours during the week on reading up for class and writing papers. One of our current books is the business theory Wikinomics. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, but familiar with Wikipedia, the concepts are easy to explain.

Wikinomics proposes that a new world order is emerging, whereby the line separating consumers from producers becomes increasingly vague. The internet has revolutionized communication, allowing people to gather together and network with each other much faster than before. The author believes that the most successful of companies will be the ones who embrace this new open framework of public discourse, forming close alliances with their consumers, suppliers, and even their competition, in order to widen the field and encourage innovation. One of the keys to this is allowing your customers a major hand in the development of your product.

It's a compelling argument, though obviously rife with complicated issues, such as the role of intellectual property in a world of open sourcing, but there are better venues than a Warcraft blog to discuss them. No, this post has to do with applying that concept to that oft-maligned aspect of World of Warcraft - the crafting professions.

Every character can specialize in two major professions, beyond the secondary ones like First Aid, Cooking and Fishing. The primary professions are further broken down into two subsets, the gathering professions (Mining, Skinning and Herbalism) and the crafting professions (Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Enchanting, Alchemy, Engineering, and Jewel Crafting). Alchemy, Enchanting and Engineering are kind of the odd ones out of this post, for reasons I'll get into towards the end. Let's begin by analyzing just how the crafting professions work right now, and identity some of the problems that plague most crafters.

Crafters start out by learning predetermined patterns from their profession trainers. As they make items, their skill level goes up incrementally, proportionate to the difficulty of the pattern relative to their skill level. This just means that a pattern that is green to you will yield far fewer skill-ups than one that is orange, regardless of the quantity of materials required for either pattern.

Enter the world of endless material grinds. Crafters end up consuming vast quantities of raw materials to reach the skill levels necessary to make the truly useful items. Burning Crusade set the tone by allowing crafters access to some truly epic armor/weapons, many of which are Bind on Pickup and serve as the primary driver for maxing out a crafting skill. Because, let's face it, hardly anyone expects to get rich off of crafting items. Tailors can make decent coin by selling their cloth transmute cooldowns, but leatherworkers and blacksmiths are often better served by just putting their raw materials up for sale in lieu of any of their finished products. Jewel Crafting is perhaps one of the few crafting professions that can bring in reliable gold because their goods can be freely traded on the auction house, and the barrier for entry (the relative high-cost of their pattern drops) helps keep competition down. For the most part, however, crafters aren't in the market to make money. If you want to do that, take up two gathering professions and sell everything else.

Why is this so? There are many reasons, but the primary one is that so terribly few of the crafting patterns are worth buying. Apart from some quest-specific items, or the ridiculous top-tier patterns requiring Primal Nethers, crafters rarely get to offer truly unique items with which to carve out niche markets for themselves. Blizzard has done this for numerous reasons, but for the most part, any item you can craft during the normal progression of the game (read: sans powerleveling the skill) will be worse than any quest drop or random green found from killing mobs of your level. Until you get to the last point bracket, your are sinking cash into a deficient system.

It doesn't help that, for the most part, a tailor is a tailor is a tailor. There are serious blocks to some of the epic BOE items (basically in the form of highly expensive pattern drops), but if you meet one tailor at 375, it's almost certain that he'll have 95% of the patterns that any other tailor at 375 will have. There is no diversity, no room for innovation, and thus the market levels out. Using data-mining sites like wowhead or thottbot will tell you which profession can craft the items that tend to sell best on the AH.

This is the watermark for any and all profits you can expect to make over the course of your crafting career, should you choose that profession. Generally speaking, the margins are razor thin.

I once did an estimate, comparing the required levels of production necessary to hit 5000 gold using two relatively well-selling tailoring items: Netherweave Bags and Imbued Netherweave Bags. Taking the mean cost of production for each bag, based off of the price averages pulled from the aforementioned websites, I was shocked to discover that the Netherweave Bag actually had a much higher contribution margin than the more costly Imbued Netherweave Bag, almost by a margin of 2 to 1. In theory, one Netherweave Bag had a margin of 42% of my investment, while the Imbued Netherweave Bag only has a return of 17%. I can make Netherweave Bags for about half what I can make selling them, assuming a perfect world where I'm the only person selling them on the AH.

This is not bloody likely.

The Imbued bags have a better chance of selling, if only because of their comparative scarcity, but the margin is much worse, and that was with me grinding all of the Netherweb Spidersilk; otherwise, the Imbued bags cost more to make than they sell for. Because of the way the crafting recipes are designed, I have no ability to apply personal innovation to any of my products with which to distinguish them from the competition. I cannot expect to sell anything I make for more than the average price for any long period of time; another tailor will just come along and undercut me, stealing my customers and costing me time. Crafters are basically stuck in a world where every other crafter can produce all of their products at exactly the same cost. Even availing of unique "advantages" such as a guild bank will only work for so long. You can grossly undercut the competition by using the resources of the guild, but unless you are selling the items at cost (meaning, at exactly the aggregate cost of its component materials), you are costing your guild money. Your are a cash deficit, and you should lose your Gbank privileges.

Now would be a good time to note that this post will in no way tackle the sticky practice of market monolopies, whereby a huge bankroll is used to corner a section of the AH that constitutes a commodity item. There's a lot more theory to that than I'd care to get into. I'm still of the mind that this practice takes real skill and foresight to ensure the would-be monopolizer doesn't get stuck with a ton of immovable inventory.

In the world of competition by scale, the only way to break the pattern is to allow crafters to innovate.

I may be alone in this sentiment, but when I first embarked down the path of tailoring, I had glorious visions of being able to subsist entirely on my crafted gear. I thought I'd be able to make stuff that would be really useful to me, to give me some kind of competitive advantage over the hostile world. I was rather let down when I realized the only useful things I could really make were bags, and the Robe of the Void I crafted when I got to skill level 300. I love my Frozen Shadoweave Set, but now I hardly ever use tailoring at all.

What would really get the markets cooking, in my opinion, would be to really let players go nuts with the item creation engine. This is what I envision:

At each of the skill bracket caps, crafters would unlock the ability to create a new tier of their own items by playing around with the item budget limits built into the game. The interface would require the crafter to select the item slot they are creating an item for, and select the ilevel they want to work with. The ilevel would be restricted by your overall skill, to a max of, say, an instance drop green for BoE items, and a Normal instance drop blue for BoP.

After the item slot and item budget have been determined, the crafter can then play around with the various point allotments for each stat, from the more basic character stats to the more exotic ones, such as resilience, spell damage, and spell hit. It seems as though there's already inherent limits on how each of these stats interact on the normal item randomizer, so allowing players to engage actively in the same activity doesn't appear to be a difficult feat.

The key aspect to this system would have to be in the realm of dynamic cost scaling. The material requirements for this customized item would have to depend on the types, not just the quantities, of the stat enhancements on the item. For instance, a cloth bracer with nothing but +stam and +res on it might require Motes of Earth, while another with nothing but +spell damage would require lots of Arcane Dust. Allow players to 'save' item configurations for use later would turn it into a sort of mini-game, something players could spend as much or as little time on as possible.

Players would be limited to creating green-equivalent items for trade this way, but they would have the unique ability to tailor their wares to suit specific niche needs. Allowing players to create items with unique properties such as copious amounts of +mp5 and +spi, or +spell damage and +res, to give their peers a chance at filling in awkward gear slots would be really cool.

In addition, the game could use something akin to token drops off of bosses in order to craft personalized BoP items, comparable to the item drops off of similar bosses in the game. It may take an appropriately large number of "tokens" to ensure that gear doesn't become too commonplace, but the system wouldn't be too different from how heroic badges work now. This would also give the 5mans a little more mileage, as no boss kill would be totally useless, or relegated to DE fodder. Higher ilevel blues would require more tokens, similar to how the new BT/Hyjal-level badge rewards can cost a staggering 100 badges.

If you REALLY wanted to spice things up, you would integrate some kind of item design system into the game, very similar to the character design screen. You could select from a slew of item designs, and tweak things like colors, patterns, and various glows to create truly unique gear looks. I can almost hear the RP'ers swooning.

The catch, of course, is that the most exotic designs would require really exotic items not usually related to the profession. Feathers, eyes, crystal fragments, dyes, or even blood could all be requirements for your unique look. It would give new value to gray drops beyond simple vendor trash. Perhaps it would be helpful if the item generator could manufacture a bill of materials, kind of like those quest scrolls we all experienced that listed down the requirements for a gathering spree. Heck, you could mail the things to people and tell them exactly what they need to get in order for you to build their item.

Imagine the potential requirements of an item with good stats AND a catchy look. The possibilities are endless.

Mixing and matching stats like this would take crafting from the grind it is currently into a dynamic and, more importantly, fun system. Further rewarding the truly dedicated, perhaps some stats or stat combinations (or even the limits you can raise those stats to) should be linked to quest chains and profession tasks. In addition to the canned pattern drops, bosses could drop patterns to unlock really esoteric abilities like Stun Resist or the various Chance On modifiers.

Crafted items like this would have a different color to them, like Bronze, and would have either a randomized name, or one designated by the crafter (obviously with some attention paid to propriety). Perhaps the relation of the item stats would help determine the name of the item, much like the present stam/int properties are all Of the Eagle, while anything with str/agi is Of the Tiger. Any crafter BoP should be open for custom naming though. Naturally, everything would have the brand of the crafter on the item (e.g. made by such-and-such).

Some items might be of sufficient complexity that they would require a specific location to be crafted. We see this implemented already with the need for Anvils, Forges, the Altar of Shadow, or even the unpredictable magic energies of Netherstorm. How cool would it be to have to trek out to four different volcanoes in order to craft a unique weapon?

Now, in my mind this system, or a similar system, would be applicable to almost all of the crafting professions, with some tweaking here and there to account for the variables in use. Engineering would be a very interesting profession to apply a "workshop" environment to, but I'm no engineer (and am only a mediocre enchanter), so I'll leave that to the more experienced to figure out.

Enchanting is an odd duck because of the way the system seems to restrict certain stats from being placed on certain pieces, not to mention the lack of player enchantments for the head, waist, leg and shoulder slots. Though TBC introduced enchanter-specific bonuses to rings, the system of enchanting is inherently flawed because of one glaring issue: the inability of selling enchantments outside of direct meetings.

As an enchanter, I know full well the terrible agony of spamming the trade channel with a list of your enchantments, hoping for potential buyers. Then, even if you did find a buyer, you had to hope that they were in the same capital city you were, or at least be willing to travel. Margins on enchantments may have changed since I hawked my wares, but in my day you hoped for just a few gold over the cost of materials, or just tip money.

It's an awful way to make a living, to be sure.

Lots of players have advocated using scrolls or some other medium to allow enchantments to be sold or traded on the AH. I support the concept, but Blizzard seems very hesitant to allow this to happen. The only reason I can think of is that it would allow enchanters to modify gear on their alts as well as the main, effectively giving each of their other characters a fully leveled enchanting profession on top of the other two.

If you ask me though, any enchanter who has spent the gold to max out the profession deserves SOME perk over and above a happy spell/stat bonus to rings. Come on people, throw them a bone or something.

The workshop concept could theoretically help out the situation by allowing enchanters to sell generic bonuses applicable to selected slots. For instance, a Wanderer's Blessing might allow a player to apply a set number of bonus points divided up between stamina, agility or spirit to their boots. Allowing the player to allocate the points would be even better, as you'd be moving the whole workshop concept one further tier down. Some of the more powerful enchantment scrolls might need to be Unique, such that an enchanter could only have one for sale at any given time, or have a cooldown before they could craft another.

Let's be clear though, whatever solution presents itself (if at all) in Wrath of the Lich King: the only money enchanters will ever be able to count on is the income they generate from selling their enchanting mats. They do not have a listing fee on the AH, and thus are far more readily tradeable than other commodities. In fact, enchanting mats are about the only reason I'd ever want to keep enchanting as one of my main professions. Being able to disenchant BOP quest blues or greens for significant profit over what I'd get selling the item to an NPC is a huge plus. Until Blizzard lets disenchanting work in the Non-tradeable window like picking lockboxes does, being able to DE is still a huge plus.

In any case, he benefits of the workshop system to Blizzard, in my opinion, would be numerous. First, it would put more of the itemization in the hands of the players, freeing the developers from having to build and design every single drop in the game (randomizer notwithstanding). You would kick start a huge change in the economy, allowing player innovation to propel market forces and eliminating stagnation of prices. It would help get rid of the complaints that all items look alike, and that the gear skins are endlessly recycled. If people are complaining about something, give them the ability to fix it themselves, I say. The system would complement the gearing system inherent to the game already, not by competing with normal drops, but by providing an alternative to them. Let's be honest here, the majority of green drops in the game either get disenchanted or sold. The percentage of them that go up on the AH and are actually sold that way are probably less than 50%.

Most importantly, it would make crafting fun, and give players a chance at exercising some real creativity. That, in my opinion, could never be a bad thing.

Crawlers of the Void 01

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:25:00 +0000

In the pursuit of knowledge, great care must be taken to ensure that the eye does not catch sight of the unreadable, the ear word of the unspeakable, the mind thought of the unknowable; for while wounds earned in battle may be healed, the mind is a devious thing: that which is learned may never be unlearned. ~ A Hymn of Shade and Sorrow

-----------

The Depths of the Undercity shimmered with the sickly green glow of its noxious river. In the larger chambers vaulted ceilings, though cloaked forever in oppressive dim, helped alleviate some of the closeness and claustrophobia the catacombs inspired. Here though, in the bowels of the Undead citadel, there was no such comfort. The rough-cut tunnel walls dripped with something foul and glistened with far worse than deep rock niter in the sputtering, oily torchlight. The tunnels were an afterthought, carved hastily into the very walls after the main causeways were excavated above, and were resoundly ignored by most of the Forsaken. It was in these prime estates that the most reviled of Undercity's prisoners found residence; the final resting places of things that death had long forsworn. The cells were reserved for traitors, deserters, and conspirators of the Scourge, and for any such prisoner to have a visitor was nigh unheard of.

That's what made Lucius Morgov, keeper of these jails, so uneasy: the man that stood beside him in the harsh torchlight had made not one, but several trips into this very cell, and with each departure left behind a fog of palpable malaise in the already sullen corridors.

The brief silence was broken an instant later as the screaming resumed. It reverberated off the walls, piercing in its intensity and completely incomprehensible in meaning, but Lucius knew it well; the screams had begun three days ago, barely ceasing, and always repeating the same blasphemous, unintelligible gibberish in a screeching, gnawing rhythm. When the stranger had returned with yet another sealed parchment granting him access to this prisoner, Lucius was almost relieved. The screaming was starting to get to him; just that morning he had been rudely interrupted from his daily chores when, to his complete shock, he had found himself standing in the mouth of this very tunnel, swaying to that accursed screaming, with no recollection of how or when he had gotten there. All he could remember was that maddening voice, and the overwhelming fury that gnawed at his senses. Lucius had stood at the mouth of that tunnel, shaking with rage at the intolerable screaming, as thoughts of murderous intent had danced on the red-hazed surface of his minds eye. Rage had turned to sudden dread when he had noticed the set of keys clutched firmly in his mottled hand, at which point Lucius had swiftly drawn as far away from the mad keening as he could manage. An hour or so later, the stranger had returned.

A cloak was drawn across his emaciated, unnaturally lean frame, clasped at his breastbone with an insignia that seemed to shift if one gazed too long at it. A wide-brimmed hat was perched low on his pale head, leaving most of his face in shadow. What little was left to be seen lay hidden beneath the ebony sash of cloth that was blindfolded across the undead's eyes. Like many of the Forsaken, this one sported signs of extended, though halted, decay; most pronounced was the lack of flesh about his lower face, where nothing so much as an unyielding, skeletal grin was left.

At their first meeting, Lucius had been unnerved to learn that, despite the blindfold, the stranger was inexplicably capable of moving about the darkened catacombs with nary a stumble, and with next to no hesitation. The faintly glowing staff he held in his right hand did not sweep the ground searchingly ahead of him, but tapped resolutely with each stride. How the undead navigated, Lucius had no idea...but if the rumors he'd heard about this one were true, it was the work of a particularly dark kind of magic.

"You say he's been screaming like this for the last three days?" the stranger asked upon their arrival at the heavy, chained prison door.

Lucius nodded in assent. "Aye," he muttered, "almost non-stop. I were about ready to go in there myself and shut him up permanently just before you arrived."

At this, the stranger seemed to regard Lucius with a strange tilt of his head, and the jailer felt his undead flesh prickle. "Been a little eager with your keys lately, Morgov?"

To this, Lucius grunted vaguely, swallowed hard, and led the stranger to the cell door. His hands rolled back the keys with practiced efficiency, and with a swift turn the massive lock on the door was snapped open. The portal opened with groaning protest, and all at once the screaming was piercingly louder. Before he could enter, the stranger grabbed Lucius's shoulder with surprising force and pulled him aside.

"Today you will stay outside," the stranger said, to which Lucius felt his anger rising, only to be quelled a second later by the sudden change from within the cell; all at once, the screaming stopped, and was followed moments later as low, insane laughter gurgled forth from the darkness. Then, words Lucius finally could understand crawled across his skin.

"You would deny him the wrath I have so lovingly stoked in his dead heart, would you, warlock?" the thing in the cell cackled, "Had you taken a moment or two longer, I could have been free of your loathsome questioning!"

Lucius made to spit a curse at the wretch in the cell, but his companion rapped him hard on the shoulder with the head of his staff. "Leave him to me," Ferenzys rasped, "I will require some isolation with the prisoner this time."

"Can't do that!" Lucius snapped, shifting his anger at the grinning visage of his strange charge, "Against the rules, can't leave prisoners alone with visitors, not s'posed to HAVE visitors, just who do you think ye're--"

Lucius was cut short as Ferenczys muttered something incomprehensible in the dark that made his jaw suddenly snap shut, his limbs seizing. Torrents of old, shunned memories cascaded uncontrollably from Lucius' fevered mind. Fear, concentrated and gibbering, bubbled up from his quaking throat in a halting scream. The last thing Lucius Morgov saw before his feet carried him blindly back into the depths of Undercity was the memory of seeing his father torn apart by the spider-thing that had destroyed their home.

Ferenczys waited until the man's screams had faded into the gloom before turning to his quarry, who sat cross-legged and cackling in the dark. The only illumination came from the sewer grate in the low, domed ceiling. The bands of green light revealed that the prisoner had recently been gnawing at his wrists, just below the thick shackles holding him to the ground. Stepping inside, Ferenczys shut the door to the cell, and gazed at the prisoner in what might have been pity, had any remained in his still heart.

The creature had been human, and if the tattered remains of its clothing were any indication, it had once belonged to the order of the Scarlet Crusade. Ferenczys did not know his name, and did not care to. Provisioned to him by an old friend in the Apothecarium, the human was little more than an experimental tool. The experiment had proceeded quickly though, and now scant little humanity remained in the creature's visage. Taking a heavy tome out of his satchel, Ferenczys withdrew a long quill and began taking preliminary notes.

'The flesh has taken on a mottled, sickly appearance, spattered with boils, growths, and tufts of thin hair; bone protrusions along the spine and arms have grown at least another half-inch. The stench...more pronounced, but at least the leprosy seems to have halted its progression. The eyes remain cloudy, faintly luminous, and appear to have developed an infection of sorts. Limbs continue to twist and gnarl.'

Having completed the note, Ferenczys placed the book on a small wooden pedestal in the corner of the room. Then, ignoring the curses and insults the creature spat in his direction, Ferenczys stepped behind the shackled prisoner and unceremoniously drove the end of his staff into the thing's back. It snarled in pain, but submitted and bent forward. Ferenczys waited expectantly, head cocked curiously to one side. At first nothing seemed to be amiss, but a moment later, something stirred beneath the parchment-thin skin.

'A closer look if you'd please, Grim,' Ferenczys said, more forcefully pushing the staff between the struggling thing's shoulder blades to still a new surge of struggling. The air beside the warlock's left leg suddenly began to shimmer as if in a heat-haze just before a single, disembodied flame flickered into existence. Suddenly illuminated by the otherworldly fire smoldering on the tip of its tail, Ferenczy's imp, Grimdoom, scampered across the grimy floor to leap up and grab hold of the warlock's staff. Spinning itself about the runed rod, the fel creature lowered its toothy face to the squirming mass. Its luminous eyes stared intently, wide and white, and through the dark magic binding the creature to his will, Ferenczys watched through the imp's eyes the unnatural gyrations occurring just beneath the thing's skin with cold, clinical intensity.

Had Lucius been capable, Ferenczys would have had him secure the prisoner while he conducted the examination, leaving him free to record his observations, but the jailer's behavior had been most troubling. It confirmed that the parasite, as Ferenczys had come to perceive the entity even now undulating along the prisoner's spine, was steadily growing stronger, and in more ways than expected. The physical deformities, the rapid onset of mutative decay, these were more common 'symptoms', but in recent visits the warlock had made discoveries of a more disturbing nature.

Even now, in the imp's peripheral vision, Ferenczys could make out the charred corpses of bloated, malformed sewer rats the thing had somehow incited into frenzy. During his last visit, while Ferenczys and Lucius had been occupied with the prisoner's flailings, three of the twisted things had come surging out of a drain pipe, clawing and biting rabidly at their legs. Though fierce, whatever influence of the parasite's that had granted them their unnatural size and vitriol had also made them frail of form. One had split open like an overripe fruit as Lucius kicked it away, and the other two had quite literally exploded at the first ignition of the warlock's fire magic.

And Ferenczys was certain, after examining the corpses, that the same magic twisting the prisoner into the monstrosity he was becoming had also perverted the rats, but apparently with a recklessness beyond the seemingly careful prodding of its host's body. The way the prisoner had cackled during the attack only emphasized the point; they were created out of pure spite, an expression of its growing rancor for its captors. This latest episode with Lucius, however, went beyond mere nuisance. It belied the cunning intellect that was even now burgeoning in the gibbering shell of the prisoner, an intellect Ferenczys now felt confident had thoroughly consumed what little remained of the Scarlet Acolyte's mind.

Whatever magics at this creatures disposal, Ferenczys had immediately recognized the influence on Lucius as being very similar to that generated by a Curse of Recklessness, but one administered not by sight, but by some other, unknown medium. A mental command sent Grimdoom climbing up the warlock's staff to perch expectantly on his left shoulder. Releasing the pressure of the staff, Ferenczys bent forward and hauled the man to his gangrenous feet. "It took three days for your spell to find its mark, which tells me you were not focusing on the jailer specifically. Why?"

The abomination grinned. "An evil word always finds an ear, warlock. Someone was bound to hear Us."

Ferenczys snarled the words to a spell, and the prisoner's laugh was immediately broken by a renewed scream as the flesh of his neck started to blister and smoke. It was the screaming, then, Ferenczys noted, that had delivered the spell, and all at once the wretched scenario unveiled itself in his mind. The seemingly random gibberish would somehow incrementally weave the curse upon anyone within earshot, gradually forming into the supernatural rage not unlike that seen in the rats. Lucius, as the only one of Undercity's jailers charged with this wing, would have been the one most frequently exposed. The enraged victim would then have followed the maddening screams into the bowels of Undercity, to this very cell...to do what? The only thing the spell seemed to induce was violence towards the spellcaster, which suggested...

"You wish to die," Ferenczys spat, smoke still coiling away from where his hand gripped the prisoner's neck. The cloudy eyes swiveled onto him, and slowly the pain-wracked rictus twisted back into that empty smile.

"We wished for freedom," it responded, "but if that was not possible, We wished to hasten your return." The grin widened, splitting the skin at the edges of the froth-caked maw, "And return you did!"

"You knew I would be back," Ferenczys responded dryly, unimpressed, "My studies require periodic observations. Why so impatient?"

Though the warlock did not bear the physical strength of Undercity's more militant denizens, the wretched prisoner was so emaciatedly thin that he had no trouble hoisting him yet higher, until it seemed that the man's neck might snap from the angle. Came the strangled response, "W-we wish to deliver a message."

"Speak quickly," Ferenczys replied, "For I am of the mind to rip out your tongue and see how well you shriek your spells then."

Suddenly, from beneath the tattered garments clinging to the withered frame there came a sickening ripping sound, followed by a shriek as a long, toothy tendril erupted from the man's abdomen and lashed out at the warlock's face. Hurling the prisoner away, Ferenczys barely snapped his head back in time to dodge the whipping appendage as it tried to latch a lamprey-like mouth to his skull.

On his shoulder, Grimdoom began chattering in a panic, spouting off demonic curses at the vile thing that had almost knocked him from his perch. Ferenczys backpedaled, quickly distancing himself from the thrashing corpse and the three-foot long worm that rose like a stalk from its flower bed. The vertical slit along its belly was filled with razor-sharp teeth, and its skin bore a diseased, mottled look to it. In contrast to the dessicated husk of the man it inhabited, this creature appeared bloated, ripe with the fluids of decay, and gleaming with foul secretions. Ferenczys was snapped out of his disgust when the prisoner spoke again, only this time, Ferenczys saw that the worm's mouth undulated in time to the agonized words.

"Heed Us, lest your soul be defiled by the maggots of the void," it hissed, "You who carved the hollow and invited Us in, the eyes of the infinite are upon you! Go now and gnash your teeth in despair, for quickly We come to cover the land in Our tread!

"You who carved the hollow, you are known to Us, and no temple will give you shelter, no sacrifice will appease Us, save the last dregs of sorrow We will wring from your bones! You who--"

But the creature never finished its sentence; Ferenczys, no longer interested in mere interrogation, unleashed the full strength of a shadow bolt into the prisoner's corpse, immediately engulfing it in spiraling black fire. Noxious gasses began to billow from the burning flesh, and now the voice of the thing was intermixed with the feral screams of the prisoner's body, mindless, but still capable of expressing pain. Grimdoom lashed his tail about in warning, barring his fangs at the dying thing as it twisted in its death throes.

The tendril's maw gaped as it lashed blindly about, its tether, its lifeline now severed. It screamed and hissed, reaching spitefully for the warlock as he silently stormed to his heavy ledger and stuffed it in his backpack. Wordlessly, Ferenczys threw the cell door wide and stepped out, before turning to regard the smoking thing in the center of the floor.

The fire had found the thing's bloated body, which began to blister and crackle, blood boiling. Death, Ferenczys noted with some finality, was certain. He would find someone from the Apothecarium to dispose of the remains. Jaw clenched in disgust, the fel-sighted spellcaster began striding away from the chamber. He had gotten less than ten feet away when he heard the thing hiss something that made his still blood turn to ice.

"...know your...name....FERENCZYS...of the Neth..re...ziim...."

Ferenczys spun about, another shadow bolt at the ready, but the thing was dead. The flames had died to a smoldering crackle, and the corpse of the prisoner and his vile parasite were already falling to ash. The catacombs echoed faintly with the sounds of the Undercity above, but from the prison cell, nothing further was heard. Very soon, Ferenczys would be stepping through a mage portal to return to Shattrath city, but it would be several hours before those last words would fade from his memory, and the chill would leave his undead veins.

Entry 11: Something Wicked This Way Comes

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Well fellow players, with Patch 2.4 imminent we can happily cross off another milestone between TBC and Wrath of the Lich King. I have no idea when the expansion is coming out, but as always, expectations are running high. While the prospects of assailing Northrend and battling Arthas' minions is certainly intriguing (alas, my inability to fit into any kind of raid schedule all but guarantees that I will be merely a foot soldier in the campaign against the Scourge), I know that many people are much more curious about WoW's first Hero Class, the Death Knight.

Rather than waste my breath championing or denouncing the new class, I'm going to go into full RP-geek mode. What follows, my friends, is my personal list of favorite, Death Knight-inspiring characters from fiction! I don't know about you all, but when I go to create a character, I usually have an image in my head of what his/her personality is going to be, and how I'd RP if ever given the opportunity. Frequently, I'll draw on some favorite character from popular culture and hope that the Blizzard name system doesn't smack me with the infringement stick.

Since I'm probably not going to get away with the more recognizable Death Knight references (good luck, for instance, getting very far named Nazghul), I decided to go really far into left field.

Let's see the name police catch these!

Cadet 1: Guts (or GATSU, for you kanji maniacs)

The lead character from Berserk is practically the poster boy for the Death Knight class. First of all, he walks around carrying a seven foot long, demon-slaying sword, goes by the ominous title of "Black Swordsman", and wears a cursed set of armor that shoves metal spines into him to force broken bones back together and ignore pain.

He is, how do you say, badass?

At the risk of spoiling the excellent series for those of my readers who haven't seen it, Guts didn't start out this way. Once upon a time, he was just a highly talented swordsman fighting alongside his ambitious and charismatic friend Griffith, in love with a strong woman, and happily kicking ass. But when said buddy decided that personal ambition superseded everything else and sacrificed his entire battalion (Guts and girl included) to ascend to demon-god status, he and Guts had a 'falling out'.

Oh, and he raped Guts' girl. Right in front of him. While Guts' arm was being chewed on by some outer-worldly demon thing. That, my friends, makes it personal.

At the end of it all, Guts' girl is comatose, he's lost a hand and an eye, they've both been branded for life in a way that makes them living targets for every spirit or demon in the vicinity, AND the bastard Griffith got away. Them's what you call 'life changing events'.

Now he's the Black Swordsman, all he wants is revenge, and heaven help anyone/anything that gets in his way. Did I mention the cursed armor?

DK-o-Meter:

Cadet 2: Wodan Ymir

The self-proclaimed Sword of Magus, Wodan is the alternate-universe version of Super Robot Taisen protagonist Zengar Zombolt, and gets the nod over his alter-ego by virtue of his blacker persona. Wodan is the guardian of the Earth Cradle, the sword of Magus, and will cleave whoever or whatever challenges the safety of the Cradle. Created from the reconstituted corpse of Zengar by the Shadow-Mirror, Wodan is a killing machine with little regard for anyone or any thing. When he is confronted by his double in a conflict at the Earth Cradle, Wodan declares that he, and only he, will be the one to defeat Zengar, and the two engage in a bitter rivalry till the very end.

Wodan's tale bears similarities to the fate of many who fall to the Scourge. Their ruined bodies are reanimated and instilled with sinister new purpose, often pitting them against their former friends and loved ones. Those that break free join the Forsaken, but are still plagued by the memories of their former lives and the horrors they may have wrought while under the control of the Lich King.

Imagine for a moment that you, one of the Forsaken, are suddenly confronted by your former, living self. Suddenly, the shroud of death you have grown accustomed to is ripped away, and in comparison to the vibrant figure of your alternate you are nothing but a rotting, dessicated husk. You are hollow, while he pulses with life. Every moment you are in his presence brings back countless memories of your former life, each cutting with the sting of glass shards and salt. He is a testament to all you have lost. You are a mockery, a caricature, a shadow, a blight on nature.

Compared to him you will never be more than a corpse.

You know what? I'd probably want to kill him too.

DK-o-meter:

Cadet 3: Battousai (aka Kenshin Himura, when he's not slaughtering things)

This I'm afraid falls under the "what if a belf became a DK?" category. Or a gnome with red hair. Kenshin might look a little (*cough*) effeminate, but we're not so much interested in his looks than his personality. Specifically, Battousai's personality.

You see, Kenshin was a poor orphaned child who was traveling with some total strangers who had taken pity on him. Their party was ambushed by bandits, and poor Kenshin (then called Shinta) had to watch as all his new friends were slaughtered right in front of him. Before he himself could be introduced to the working end of a katana, Hiko Seijuro shows up and turns the bandits into a Meiji-era version of a Jackson Pollock painting.

Hiko tells the young boy that he should be grateful to be alive, swigs some sake, and moves on. That would have been the end of the story, had Hiko not happened back through the area the next morning.

To his shock, Shinta had dragged and buried every one of the bodies, including those of the bandits. The three girls who had taken care of him he found headstones for; old rocks, decorated with handfuls of wild flowers.

Hiko was touched by the boy's resolve and compassion and decided to take him as his successor, to school him in the ancient sword art of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. Finding his name 'Shinta' too soft, he renamed him 'Kenshin'.

Years passed. Kenshin grew up, learned the art of sword fighting from the master, and was set to become Hiko's true successor when civil war broke out. The Meiji restoration was at hand, and Kenshin felt the need to help. Hiko disapproved, saying that the sword was purely a killing weapon no matter how it was used. When Kenshin insisted, Hiko disowned his pupil, and Kenshin left to help the revolution.

Kenshin's skill was unmatched, and with his help the revolution was successful. The endless fighting and killing extracted a heavy toll on the young Kenshin, and he became cold, heartless, and merciless in his efficiency. He became a legend, the feared Battousai, and the bodies he piled up numbered in the hundreds.

If there's any way of illustrating how good intentions can lead to damnation, Kenshin's story is as good as any. His youth and naiveté quickly gave way to the harsh reality of war. His master was right; the sword always would be a weapon for killing. If a Death Knight is to represent the moral degradation of a hero, Kenshin is a great fit. What's more, the DK aspect of redemption is here as well, because after the turmoil ended, Kenshin vowed to pay penance for his sins. Taking up a reverse-edged sword, he set out to wander the country and do as much good as he could -- swearing never again to take a human life.

And yet, in his darker moments, in those moments of desperation, the Battousai would rear his head. The blade would reverse, people would again be put at risk because of his sword, and Kenshin would be left struggling in the aftermath. What must it be like to know that there's a bloodthirsty monster lurking inside you? Kenshin certainly does, and for that reason he'd make an excellent Death Knight.

DK-o-meter:

Cadet 4: Kenshiro

YOU wa SHOCK! Kenshiro is a master of Hokuto Shin Ken (God Fist of the North Star), that iconic assassination technique from Hokuto no Ken (translation: Fist of the North Star). It involves striking an opponent's pressure points in such a way as to cause lethal damage, usually involving exploding body parts. One particularly large individual was in fact struck such that his entire upper half exploded in a geyser of blood. Ah the 80s.

Ok. This one, I will admit, is just a bit of a stretch, for two reasons:

The concept of the Death Knight seems to revolve around damnation and redemption; it's about the climb after the fall. Kenshiro doesn't so much fall as simply gets defeated. He loses his girl to Shin, an erstwhile friend who is also in love with Yuria, and for his troubles gets seven scars drilled into his chest care of the same a-hole. So Kenshiro picks himself up, having survived the attack, and decides he's going to find Shin and make his head explode, in true Hokuto Shin Ken fashion. I suppose you could call this a 'fall', but there was no real moral degredation here. Ken just lost, and now he's after revenge. Unlike Guts whose entire outlook began revolving around killing Griffith, Kenshiro retains his sense of honor, and even shows his enemies mercy.

That is, if you define mercy as killing someone in a such a way that they experience no pain.

Second, Kenshiro doesn't use a sword. Who needs a freakin' sword when you can punch someone and make them explode? I'm banking on the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Death Knights will be able to use some kind of fist weapon. As I said, it's a stretch.

So why did I pick Kenshiro? I'll admit, here I'm leaning on sheer badass factor. I'd name my Death Knight Kenshiro just to be able to taunt, 'You're already dead,', right before a duel. There's something about his total disregard for his opponents that makes it clear he's a master of an ASSASSINATION technique, not some pretty self-defense nonsense. If you fight Kenshiro, you'd better be ready to die, because he's not letting you off. At all. That's kind of how I imagine Death Knights entering into combat.

If you don't like it, say so in the comments. And be ready to eat Hyakkuretsu Ken.

DK-o-meter:

And there you have it. Just a handful of Death Knight concepts to play around with. I'm sure my readers can think of many more, so lets here them! I may do a continuation of this series at some point in the future, as we get closer to Wrath. Get those runeblades ready!

Entry 10 - Who imba? U imba!

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:17:00 +0000

Alright, I've been a little strapped for WoW time lately, but I have managed to make some progress here and there. For one, I finally got my epic flier! Let me tell you what, the 280% increased travel speed is STUPID. I've never managed to do anything so freaking quick in my gaming life, it's changed the way I think about any task in the game. The bombing run missions are trivial, and I'm usually forced to float around waiting for the bomb cool-down to wrap up. The Ogri'la quest took me just about two minutes, maybe a little over if you count accepting and turning in the quest. TWO MINUTES.

But enough ranting on the super mount (that I shall leave for a later post!), I'm here to talk about a quick little search that can yield some cool results. Just how imba is your character? Be ready to find out.

First, head over to be.imba.hu; if you're on a US server, be aware that the site has had problems accessing the US armory, but those issues seem to have been resolved. Enter your realm and your toon's name, and hit that search key. What you end up with is something like this:

Feren, who is just-sort-of-imba.

What happens is that your character is assessed based on their gear and major stats as to where in the end game PVE you might best fit in. It even ranks you based on your efficiency in regard to grinding, PVP, PVE. Keep in mind, it is just assessing your current armory profile, so if you happen to log out wearing a pretty purple dress, no matter how OP your warrior/priest/rogue/brewmaster is, it will still think you're geared primarily in a frilly dress.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's what gets your rage flowing.

Just sayin'.

Anyway, take my assessment for instance. I happened to be logged out in my grinding gear, or what I take as my grinding gear. All my spell-hit gear is sitting happily in my bags. So when they check my stats, they are seeing a relative deficiency in spell hit, and a focus on my spell damage; perfect grinding setup.

Even then, it's telling me I'm more or less geared to start Zul'aman. That's refreshing, and I'd be excited to try it...if they're right.

You have to take all this with a grain of salt. This in no way checks for the talents of the PLAYER. Skill cannot be tracked, except perhaps by gear, assuming that you earned all of it and didn't just ride on the coat-tails of an established guild. Ultimately the deciding factor will be the skills of yourself and your group.

I say group because I think this would be an interesting way to gauge potential raid members. Most guilds, if not all guilds, check armory profiles as part of the recruitment process. This kind of does some of that work for you, albeit in a very superficial manner. Good GMs and raid leaders should still take the time to parse this info out for themselves, as they are the real experts on what their particular group needs and how certain players might fit.

Still, it's kind of an ego boost (or humbling experience!) to see how you fit into the end-game. So, readers, just how imba are you?

Entry 9 - blah blah blah formatting stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:34:00 +0000

Just a short post today. To spare my readers from my propensity to hurl walls of text around like they were Insta-Corruptions in a BG, I've applied some of the awesome principles from Blog Azeroth. All of my posts should now be divided into nice little introductory text blocks and the handy link to the full article. Now you cannot complain that I a forcing you to read endlessly; you choose your own personal hell!

On a WoW note, I finally broke down and bought my Gladiator's Spellblade. My spell damage in shadow now exceeds 1000 with Fel Armor. Mages beware.

Entry 8: Sketches of the Afflicted

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 04:07:00 +0000

Here's a quick sample of a pic I'm working on for the site. This is the straight pencil sketch, freshly scanned and shrunk for your viewing pleasure. Next step will be to throw it into Painter and do some inking, then to play around with the paints. Still trying to decide if I'll use watercolors or oils, or go for a more anime approach with some cel coloration.

We'll see, I guess. Yes, in case you're wondering, that's supposed to be the Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders and Mana-Etched Crown he's wearing.

Entry 7: A Tale of Two Warcrafts

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:17:00 +0000

It wasn't so long ago that the idea of gearing yourself through PVP was at best a fool's errand, and at worst a massive time sink that led not a few High Warlords to outright quit as soon as they reached the top. The changes to the honor system and the introduction of Battlegroups made group PVP - gasp - fun again. This post isn't about the BGs, though. It's about the relatively sudden shift I've felt in the way the game is being managed, most notably, by the seeming reversal on the way the developers seem to be handling class balancing issues.

All of this, of course, stems from the introduction of the Arena system.

For those of you who have never attempted it, the Arena system allows players to organize themselves into teams of 2, 3, or 5 and engage in gladiatorial matches against other such teams. Players earn arena points, rank, and require both to purchase the Seasonal gear (or S1 for Arena Season 1, S2 for Season 2, etc). The Arena gear is a PVP mirror of equivalent Tiers in the PVE gear sets. S3 is roughly equivalent to T6, for example. Blizzard has tried to time the releases of new Seasons to coincide with new PVE sets becoming more frequently distributed throughout the game population, and in this way maintain a balance in itemization between PVE and PVP. They are trying, it seems, to avoid the problem that was so prevalent during classic WoW PVP where guilds who had the end-game instances on farm could, at a whim, enter into the battlegrounds and obliterate the opposing side. Now that the PVPers have gear on-par with the Raiders, that doesn't happen quite as often.

Let me go on-record saying that, as a player, I have no problem with the gear that people can get through PVP. I think it's a great way to let players earn their equipment on their own terms. There is enough of a difference in both the way PVP is played versus PVE, and in the critical stat values specific to the two sides. Eveyrone in PVP needs a healthy amount of damage mitigation, for instance, while in PVE the non-tanks (barring the odd resistance-skewed fight) don't have to worry about it as much. In some cases there is an overlap in gearing objectives, such as with PVE tanks using Resilience to help improve their survivability against raid bosses, but for the most part they are separate animals. A fully-geared PVP-er will not do as well as a fully geared PVE-er in PVE, and vice versa. Fair enough.

The problem seems to run much deeper than that. Up until just recently, Blizzard has maintained that it does not try to balance classes against each other, but rather against the game as a whole. That's why we have the rock-paper-warlock, er, scissors, relationship between the different classes. A warlock has an advantage against a mage who has an advantage against a warrior, and on and on. As a warlock, I recognize that some classes will just beat me into the ground more often than not (*cough*Rogues*cough*), and try to work with that limitation.

Now take a look at what Kalgan just posted on the official forums, in regards to the revoked Life Tap changes. Take your time, I'll continue when you're done.

Did you see the switch?

The developers are using the relative representation of the classes in the top tiers of the Arena ladder to determine class balancing issues. Any class that is 'over performing' might be due for a nerf, and one that is grossly under-represented due for a buff.

That is what sparked the whole Life Tap incident, it seems. They were starting to see too many Warlocks in the top tiers. Apparently though this data was more of a flux than they originally thought, because new numbers indicate that the Warlock Trend was receding. No problem = no nerf...at least for now.

Anyone else find this really disturbing? They were ready to implement a class-sweeping change over what ended up being a spike in PVP numbers, and it certainly doesn't seem like anything the community brought up swayed their opinions at all. That, in my opinion, is the whole problem with using the PVP world to manage how classes interact with one another: the information is too volatile to support any concrete conclusions on class imbalance.

PVP, more so than most other aspects of Warcraft, is the aspect of the game that is most intensely affected by human performance. Sure, the skill of raiders is instrumental in the completion of a new encounter, but bosses are predictable (to an extent). They can be learned, tested, mastered. It's not like Attumen has three talent trees that he can play around with to "surprise" raiders the next time they come a'calling.

Players discover new interactions, new synergies, all the time. Some of these synergies provide them with tactical advantages over other teams. These synergies are not limited to in-class interactions (let's face it, talent trees have been analyzed to death), but more importantly to cross-class interactions. The SL/SL spec would not nearly be so effective if the pairing was sub-optimal, say (forgive me if I offend), with a prot-spec warrior. Of all the talents and abilities of all the classes, it does not surprise me that some combinations prove to be more effective than others. But these trends, at best, should be transitory. Players learn and adapt, they ferret out the weaknesses of the reigning strategy and depose it. Engaging a sweeping change because of a spike in a particular strategy is poor game management because it's so short-sighted. If Blizz keeps this up, they'll be playing whack-a-class forever.

If the new Tournament Server is any indication, Blizzard seems very determined to springboard the Arena game into the spotlight of competitive, legitimate sport gaming. Excuse me, but Warcraft will never be Halo, or Unreal Tournament. The key to any digital sport is the emphasis that it's player skill, not class design, that determines victory. Every character in Halo is the same, with the same access to weapons and defenses that everyone else has. It's a level field. Warcraft, by the admission of the developers themselves, is NOT a level field when it comes to PVP. Forcing the game to be such not only flies in the face of its basic premise and design (that of a cooperative environment where every class has a distinct role to play), but seeks conform the majority of game play to suit a perceived discrepancy in a comparatively minor field.

To be fair, we are likely only seeing the tip of the iceberg that is the reasoning of the developers when it comes to class balancing issues, but let me reiterate: it's a pretty ugly tip. How do you resolve the problem of having a class be perfectly suited to PVE, yet grossly unrepresented in PVP? Do you buff it to the point where you break the PVE game? Do you leave alone the class that is doing well in PVP, yet has horrible representation in the end-game of raiding? How is one metric more important than the other?

There now seem to be two Worlds of Warcraft, one firmly entrenched in PVE, and the other fighting it out in PVP. The abilities critical to successful PVE are deemed overpowered and un-fun for PVP, and the specs necessary to survive in PVP are sub-optimal for PVE. Just how much further is this schism going to grow before Blizzard bites the bullet and either implements totally different mechanics for problem abilities, or just makes a whole new game entirely?

Postlude

It just occurred to me. Perhaps this is all just a smokescreen? Perhaps Kalgan made that comment about class representation in the top tier as some elaborate distraction. Perhaps, in reality, the developers are just trying to avoid coming outright and saying that, yes, they really screwed up and were very sorry for the whole misunderstanding.

...how compelling. I loves me a good conspiracy theory.

Entry 6 - Planning for the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:45:00 +0000

As of this writing, humble visitor, your host is sitting on the largest pile of Gold he's ever had in his entire gaming career. 4420 gold, to be precise, within spitting distance of that coveted 5000 that will finally get me my epic flyer. Having long-since earned my exalted rank with the Sha'tari Skyguard, once I finally clock in those last hundred gold I will likely be cruising around on one of those slick Nether rays.

At least, that had been my plan. Then the PTR went and threw a very shiny fly into the ointment.

There are two new tailoring recipes that drop from the Sunwell Plateau raid instance, and neither of them are BoP. That means, conceivably -I-, your humble host, could get his hands on one through the AH, and soon afterwards be utterly decked out in some of the sickest robes I've ever seen. My Frozen Shadoweave Robes are already shuddering at the thought of being donated to Goodwill (read: Disenchanted), but hey, one day you're in, and the next it's some-german-word-for-goodbye.

Here they are. Try not to drool on your keyboard.

Sunfire Robe
Sunfire Handwraps

Between the ludicrous stats and gem slots, I could have that thing rocking like nobody's business in no time, and I'd look snazzy to boot. I wholly expect that, should the item even end up on the AH (more on that later), it will clock in easily at at LEAST 3000 G, just for the pattern. Add another 1K gold for the mats, and you'll see why I'm sweating. If I waited, I could watch the AH manically until the pattern went for sale, and snatch it up as soon as it did, but then I'd be broke. Almost totally and utterly broke.

But I'd look great.

This is a common problem often mirrored in real life too. You have a stash of money you've been saving for something important, like the down payment for a new car or house, or for the renovation of something like your kitchen. These are what we like to call 'long term investments' (well, except for your car, which is basically a four-wheeled black hole of depreciation). The epic flyer is a long term investment, while the robe is most definitely a perfect example of instant gratification.

Unlike the flyer, the robe would convey a sense of instant power. They are on par with T6 and would definitely contribute to the whole "power overwhelming" thing we warlocks apparently enjoy. The problem is that they are so terribly transient. With Wrath probably just a few months away, it's almost certain that these robes would get replaced by whatever junk drops in the starting areas of Northrend, as Blizz has already confirmed it will once again reset all equipment so that everyone is on-par.

The lifespan of that item is at best about a year long.

The epic flyer on the other hand, while in no way contributing directly to my power level, is an investment I can be comfortable making because I know I'm not just blowing my money. Even if Northrend ends up disallowing flyers until we're closer to the level cap again (kind of like how Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm), I will nearly double my travel speed in Outland and in any other areas flying becomes permissible. A faster flyer means swifter completion of any task I could conceive of performing, be it gathering or otherwise.

With absolutely no idea what WotLK will hold, I hate to speculate on what Blizz is or is not working on, but I'd like to think that we'll see continued growth in the realm of mounts. The natural progression, in my mind, is mounted combat, limited to specific abilities like bombing or jousting. I don't know about you, but I'd love to be able to get on my dreadsteed and drive headlong into a mob, maybe knocking them back and stunning them for a second, and dealing a nice chunk of damage. Will siege weapons require a specific riding skill to use? No idea, but it makes investing in 375 riding seem like a pretty good bet.

The real question, of course, is whether I'd be better off buying the skill and then starting on the Netherwing Ledge reputation grind to 'earn' my epic mount rather than just shelling out the 180g for the Nether ray I can get through the Skyguard. Honestly, at this point I'm pretty burned out on rep grinds, so it looks as though the Nether ray will be it for me. Well, at least until the aesthetics of the situation become unbearable and I simply HAVE to have a dragon mount.

After all, Warlocks + Dragon Mount = ALMOST Nazgul, and Nazgul are teh shiz.

Entry 5 - Regarding Lifetap

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:43:00 +0000

((Copied from a post I made on another blog forum. The blogger was asking for an explanation as to why warlocks were freaking out over the proposed change to lifetap on the PTR.))

Greetings. As one of the angry mob, let me do my best to provide a concise and meaningful response to the changes proposed in patch 2.4.

The problem with the new lifetap is that it no longer fits into the design of the class as a whole. As many other players have pointed out, this change was designed to negate the bonus stacking stamina provided to warlocks, both in pvp and in pve. On Live, stamina falls into place as the third most critical stat for warlocks to focus on in PVE (Spell Hit > Spell Damage > Stamina), whereas in PVP it falls closer to second place, right behind Resilience.

Everything about the warlock focuses on stamina. We have two talents that provide a passive boost to stamina (Demonic Embrace and Fel Stamina), and one of our pets, the Imp, is designed as an unkillable party buff to stamina (Blood Pact). Much of the item budgets for warlock-centeric gear tends to stack stamina much more than it does intellect.

The change to Lifetap on the PTR flies in the face of all of that.

The class as a whole has a very precarious position as a caster; we lack the myriad defense and escape mechanisms of mages, and thus must rely almost solely on our often large stamina pools to allow us to survive under focus fire. The entire concept of "drain tanking" in pve requires a good chunk of stamina and spell damage, so that we can effectively take hits and still survive long enough to drain the life back.

We cannot Blink, Iceblock, Frost Nova, or use our mana as a damage buffer. We must spec for pvp survivability (Soul Link), and for our supplementary vampiric spell (Siphon Life). The only other method of effective mana regen available to warlocks is Dark Pact, and that is a 31 point talent in Affliction. There is no Evocate. We have little to no Spirit to speak of. For the majority of warlocks, Lifetap is an indispensable tool both in solo play and in group functions because it helps provide the class with the longevity necessary for our DoTs to be truly effective.

Put it simply, warlocks seem to be designed for the long haul, both in how we deal damage and how we recycle life into mana into life. This change seems very heavy handed, and goes against the grain of the entire class by making incremental gains in one of our primary stats WORSE the more we get.

The suggestions for adaptation have been maddening at best. Eyonix's own suggestion of stacking Int to somehow "exploit" the change seems to ignore that on all of our class-specific gear, Stamina grossly outweighs Intelligence. Our T6, for instance, supplies somewhere along the lines of 248 stamina and 145 intellect, nearly twice as much. Compared to our stamina buffs, we have one talent that increases intellect passively. How, then, are we supposed to "stack int"? Roll on mage gear? Have you ever met a warlock whose mana pool exceeded his health?

Other players have suggested removing party buffs like Fortitude. We would be the only class doing so. The fact of the matter is that warlocks with higher HP become a drain on the raid over time, as healers are forced to heal back a proportionate amount of HP. It just doesn't make sense.

Blizzard is implementing this to change the dynamic is Arena PVP. Fine. Clearly there is something wrong with the set up, as they're hitting Lifebloom pretty hard too. It may not seem like the biggest nerf ever, but the repercussions are many and far reaching. I only hope that Blizzard either takes the time to re-evaluate how they itemize for us, to reduce the gear focus on stamina and make it easier to keep the two bars level, or shelves the idea in favor of something a little less counter-intuitive.

Will it be back-breaking? Probably not; these things always tend to get blown out of proportion, and dedicated warlocks will find ways of adapting. Will it make me gnash my teeth at the profound dearth of consistency and logic for the sake of nerfing one PVP strategy (Siphon Life - Soul Link)? Absolutely.

I hope I didn't rant too much. Did that help frame the discussion at all?

Entry 4 - Tap That Trinket!

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:41:00 +0000

If you played anytime towards the end of Classic WoW but right before the Burning Crusade was released, I'm sure you remember all the whining that went on about mages using spelldamage trinkets to Pyroblast people into oblivion. It seemed you couldn't get ten posts down the official forums without someone else complaining that some mage (or enterprising warlock) had one or two shotted them in their last BG session. Granted, this was at a time when players with access to these trinkets usually also had access to significantly better gear too, meaning the divide between the one-shotter and the one-shotee was fairly large. At a time when over +400 spell damage was almost unheard of, and resilience had yet to rear its anti-crit head, using a trinket to boost your spell damage up over the threshhold of normalcy led to some fairly big numbers.

Then Hellfire Penninsula opened up, and all of a sudden almost every spell caster in the game had access to a powerful, easy to acquire trinket that did almost the same thing as the long-coveted Talisman of Ephemereal Power: Ancient Crystal Talisman. This lovely green item, obtained early in the 60-70 grind, stayed with me until I finally found a better trinket in Icon of the Silver Crescent. It's been only recently, however, that I've been getting real mileage out of my Use trinkets.

Oh sure, I knew how to pop a trinket before applying my DoTs in an instance to maximize my damage on bosses. I'd even made a nifty little button on my cast bar that set off my shiny bauble (applaud me, I am so brilliant). But when it came to the solo grind, however, I was woefully remiss in consistently maximizing my potential.

See, the problem with the trinkets is that they require you to keep track of the 2 minute cooldown, something that can get seriously annoying while grinding. What's the solution? It's not very elegant, but here is mine:

#showtooltip Unstable Affliction
/Use 14
/Cast Unstable Affliction

That's it. A two-line macro that a trained monkey could have strung together. Replace 14 with 13 if you happen to have your on-use spell damage trinket in the first instead of second slot, and replace Unstable Affliction with whatever spell you like to open with while soloing. I've tried it with Curse of Agony, and that works fine too. What the macro does is to simply activate your trinket every time you cast the spell in question. Most of the time it will be on cooldown, and your toon will often shout that he "can't do that", but it will guarantee that you will have the proc up as much as possible while grinding, at no extra effort to you.

There are a few issues with the macro that you'd have to do some digging to resolve. First of all, it does not go "red" when your target is out of range of the spell you have it set to. This is annoying more than anything, as you can usually glance at one of your similar spells to see if you're in range (most affliction spells, for instance, have the same spell range), but it's something you need to keep in mind. Also, you're going to see the gray spin timer over the icon when your trinket is on cooldown, which gives the misleading impression that the spell ITSELF is uncastable. This is not the case. You could sit there spamming the button and it would cast every chance it got, whether the trinket is on CD or not. It's just visually confusing.

The upside though is, as long as you are grinding, you will be maximizing the use of your trinket. In most cases, this means that, every two minutes, you will be rocking out with over 100 more spell damage than normal. I've found that it's changed the way I tackle grind sessions, as I'm constantly watching the little gray spin timer to see how much longer I have till my next kick, and saving a pack of mobs for just such occasions. Another option is just mapping the trinket activation to a handy key and spamming it periodically, but I'm one of those lazy players who would probably forget. This takes the guesswork out through sheer repetition.

Couple it with a cool conditional trinket (such as the drool-inducing DoT amplifier out of the 5-man Sunwell Dungeon) or the Exalted Shata'ri Skyguard one for some seriously ridiculous grinding. May every elemental you kill yield 2 motes, and every Blood Elf an Arcane Tome. Happy hunting.

Entry 3 - Grouping as Affliction

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:39:00 +0000

I'm a lock who absolutely loves grouping. I love doing dungeon crawls, love raiding (when I have time), and generally enjoy the dynamics of a group encounter more than the solo stuff. Because let's be honest, locks DESTROY solo PVE. It's nice to have a real challenge once in a while, and group battles are some of the surefire ways of getting your fix of ragnarok-inducing mayhem.

There's one problem with group combat though, one tiny, nagging little detail that annoys me more than a paladin on his third health bar: trash pulls. In any group situation, you will most likely be asked to perform some kind of CC function (and if you're any good at it, you may actually volunteer to do so rather than trust the shifty-eyed rogue who hasn't said a damn thing since group invites went out) in addition to simply blowing stuff up good. That's fine, you have your trusty Seduce macro that tells your pocket hottie to keep one of the bad things occupied, no sweat. This article isn't about managing Seduce. It's about smashing face.

So you're grouped up, everyone is buffed and ready to go, the healer's soul blissfully stored inside the phylactery---er, soul stone in your pocket, and the tank has dutifully marked up all the targets. Kill order is skull-x-diamond-square, or using more evocative imagery, main tank'd baddie 1, baddie 2, then the sap'd baddie, and finally the ice-trapped one.

Your party consists of a feral tank, a resto shaman, a rogue of ill repute, a hunter who feeds his pet with dead gnomes, and you, spectacular avatar of darkness that you are. How do you intend on dishing out the pain?

In most solo situations, the correct answer would be to load up as many targets in sight with everything in your arsenal (an over-dramatization, of course; warlocks are so powerful that a mere three DOTS is usually sufficient), and laugh as they crumble to dust at your feet. That's not going to fly in this situation.

As an Affliction warlock whose greatest joy (and power) is his DOTs, this can be a bitter pill to swallow, but the truth of the matter is that you are less effective when you are loading up your group targets with tons of damage over time spells, simply for the reason that they will not live long enough for those spells to run their full duration.

Bear in mind, this is generally only true in the 5-mans, normal or heroic, but heroics less so. There are still a few mobs that deserve the full assortment of your pain clocks, such as the fungal giants in Steamvaults, or the Fel Annihilators in Shadow Labyrinth. But most pulls are going to be multi-target pulls, and you can thank your lucky stars that those pulls don't consist of multiple Fel Annihilators. Most mobs under focus fire will not last longer than ten to fifteen seconds.

The most effective solution, I've found, is simply to bite the bullet and revert to a more direct-damage role, as a shadowbolt spammer. There are other blogs than this where more talented writers than I have dissected the numbers associated with this rotation, but let me summarize it for you: the 2.5 second cast time of shadowbolt will deliver nearly the same total damage as a full run of Unstable Affliction, in about a tenth of the time. Spamming shadowbolts will help your group take down focus fire'd mobs faster than a full rotation of DOTs will.

That does not mean all you are supposed to do is stand there spamming though. Oh no. There are at least TWO other things you should be doing while keeping the black pain flowing. First off, you need to manage the proper debuff on your intended target, and second is to maintain CC on whatever mob has been marked for you. In the group composition above, with you being the only offensive spellcaster in the group, you don't have to think about the cumulative effects of either Curse of Shadows or Curse of Elements. There's just you, so the obvious choice is Curse of Shadows. There are some Locks I've run with who attest that even dropping Curse of Shadows on your target is a waste of a global cooldown, and in some cases (e.g. when your group absolutely outgears the instance) that is true. But in most situations, Curse of Shadows is a great opener for several reasons.

First of all, the threat produced by landing a CoS on a target is low, low enough that you won't take aggro from the tank on the pull. Because it does nothing until your first shadowbolt lands, you are effectively delaying 10% additional damage until the tank has had time to build up a threat buffer. That, my friends, is what helps keep happy locks alive. Maybe even more important than CoS on the main target is having CoS on your Seduce target. There is nothing more annoying than having Seduce resisted multiple times, and a single application of CoS as your pet is finishing up the cast can mean all the difference between a Happy Pull and a Sad Pull.

If you'll allow me to theorycraft for a bit, let's imagine the time line of a typical 5-mob encounter. All targets have been marked accordingly, and you've been left with a single humanoid to CC with your succubus. At this point I've selected the CC mob and am simply waiting for the tank to do his thing.

Tank fires off his shot. I quickly hit my seduce macro key, and the succubus, since she was likely out of range, begins running towards the CC target to set up the seduce channel. I am running forward as well, because I want to get in range to cast CoS. The succubus stops and begins casting, I drop CoS, and half a second later the mob has those lovely hearts fluttering out of their soon-to-be-detached head.

I grab the tank's target (/assist Mr. Tank macros work great for this), drop CoS, and then, depending on my sentiments, I may drop Corruption on him too before laying on the Shadowbolts.

But wait, you exclaim, why bother with Corruption? Didn't we establish that the sea-monkey-esque lifespans of these mobs makes DOTs a moot point? Well, yes, for the most part, but Corruption does something that the other DOTs don't: it enables Nightfall, and Nightfall = more Shadowbolts.

Rank 1 Corruption works just as well as the highest rank Corruption in your arsenal for this purpose. Every tick has a chance at sending you into Shadow Trance, which means something is going to eat an instant-cast shadowbolt. Rank 1 is also more mana efficient, and can be dropped on off-tanked targets with almost zero risk of drawing aggro. The tank should be outputting at least enough threat to keep the OT'ed targets off your healer, who will be outputting more global threat than the pitiful damage from rank 1 Corruption.

More Corruption ticks mean more potential Nightfall procs, which makes you a happy warlock, but be warned: even the weakest corruption tick is still enough to break all forms of CC except Fear/Cyclone/Mind Control, so be absolutely sure that your group can handle having one mob immune to most crowd control for the duration of the DOT. If you're not certain, ignore the OT'ed target until it's time to lay into it. You never know when you may need to lock it down.

Beyond the 5-mans, I think you'll find that most mobs can survive long enough to make a heavier DOT commitment more worthwhile. The Skeletal horses in the Karazhan stables, for instance, have a good chunk of hit points that are far more conducive to some serious DOTing, in addition to your shadowbolt spam. Just feel things out; the whole point of this post was to try and show less seasoned Warlocks that, sometimes, it's better to think beyond the basic DOT.

Aren't we splitting hairs a little here though? We're talking 5-man dungeon trash, why would you care about optimal single-target DPS?

Because you're a warlock. For God's sake start acting like the power-crazed shadow caster you're supposed to be and rock that DPS chart.

Seriously though, it's important to understand this because wasting time on a full cadre of DOTs not only kills your mana efficiency, but you are actually gimping your DPS. The whole point here is speed, and as an Affliction lock that isn't exactly your strong suit. Better tailored to burst damage are Felguard talent specs, or the intimidating 0/21/40. That last one in particular can be absolutely crazy, since you basically spam shadowbolts all the time, trash mobs or boss fights, and I hear the damage is disgusting.

When it comes to Boss fights, Affliction really shines. The combination of multiple, powerful DOTs (one of which returns a nice chunk of HP every couple of seconds), Dark Pact/Lifetap, and a steady stream of shadowbolts usually means you'll be threat-capped more often than not. I've actually found that, as my spell damage bonus rose closer to the 1000 point mark, I actually had to start dropping spells from my rotation because I was building threat too fast. Work with your tank, get a good threat meter, and watch it carefully. If you outgear your tank (either with sheer firepower, or more +spell hit than he has +hit), you will be climbing that threat list far more consistently than he can keep up with.

If you do find yourself dangerously close to pulling aggro (Omen's lovely red alarm glow really helps), you've got a decision to make. First, check the timers on the DOTs you have up on the boss. You have to decide whether simply stopping Shadowbolt casts is going to be enough to let the tank pull ahead. Most of the time, especially if you've specced into Improved Drain Soul or you've got a Blessing of Sanctuary on you, you'll be hard pressed to pull aggro from DOTs alone. But in some cases, certainly if your amplified Curse of Doom is about to go off, you're much better off just hitting Soul Shatter and playing it safe.

On exceptionally long fights, it can make sense to preemptively Soul Shatter because it allows you to crank out the DPS faster than you would normally, but the three minute cooldown is highly prohibitive in this regard. It's very likely that if you are putting out enough damage to warrant Soul Shattering early in the fight, you vastly outgear the threat generation capabilities of your tank, and you will definitely need it again before those three minutes are up. In that case, it's probably better to tone down your spell rotation and try to work within the limits of your tank's TPS, leaving Soul Shatter for that moment where you get two unlucky crits in a row, or CoD blows just as you approach 100% of the tank's threat.

On most boss fights, the best opener is almost always an Amplified Curse of Doom, right after you hit your trinkets and have maxed out your +spell damage. The problem with Curse of Doom is that its threat is an absolute spike, versus the more gradual curve of Curse of Agony. On some fights, such as against Blackheart the Inciter or anyone else who resets their aggro table periodically, Curse of Doom can get you in a lot of trouble if it blows right after a threat wipe. Very few tanks are going to be able to crank out enough threat to save your sorry behind if your CoD crit, and you run the risk of getting the healers in trouble as they struggle to keep you alive. In fights of that nature, it's almost better to run with Curse of Agony and take a more gradual approach to damage.

Of course, there's also those few times, those oh so rare but oh so memorable times, when you will delight your group by spawning a Doomguard right after your CoD kills the boss. Yes, this has happened to me before. On Omor the Unscarred in Heroic Hellfire Ramparts, our group had been struggling with the boss through two wipes. On our third attempt, we managed to beat him down fast enough that he was below 10% before our tank finally bit it, and he started taking us out one by one. He dropped me sitting at 2%, leaving just the hunter up, when all of a sudden Curse of Doom detonated, dealing that last 2% of damage. Our cheers where quickly replaced by cries of "WTF IS THAT?!" as a Doomguard came charging out of Omor's smoking corpse and proceeded to crush the lone remaining hunter.

Hilarity ensued. By the time we'd all rezzed and run back, the Doomguard was gone, and we were free to loot. Remember, that caveat on the tooltip isn't just there for looks. Make sure you're group is ready for the potential surprise.

Depending on the length of the fight, it may be in your interests to refresh Curse of Doom once it's gone off the first time, or it may be a better plan to put up Curse of Shadows/Curse of Agony/Curse of Elements, depending on the party make-up. With multiple warlocks, it's always best to let whoever has invested in the improved curse to keep it up, so communicate that amongst yourselves and maximize your cross-functionality. Since it's often impossible to gauge the effectiveness of having Curse of Shadows/Elements up accurately in a PUG, I go by this simple rule of thumb: if two or more party members can benefit from the bonus to either Shadow/Arcane or Fire/Ice, go with the debuff. If it's just you, CoA is probably a better choice.

Why CoD over CoA? I've asked myself this question, and though the damage is actually pretty similar, CoD has a few intangibles going for it that tip the scales in its favor. First of all, it can crit, and whooboy will you know if it does. The screen lights up with huge yellow numbers and the boss, if you didn't pull aggro right then, starts eyeing you with increased vitriol. Second, CoD ticks away for a full minute, versus the 24 seconds of CoA. This means you don't have to refresh it, which means you have at least one more GCD that can be dedicated to Shadowbolts.

Warlocks share some of the same spell theory that shadow priests do; Affliction locks even more so. The key to maximizing DPS on a boss fight is properly refreshing your DOTs, making sure not to overwrite one before it's finished its damage sequence. The reason behind that is the "ticks" of damage; each DOT deals damage periodically, divided along the length of the spell. The last tick always occurs on the last second of the spell. If you refresh the DOT before that last tick has occurred, you are increasing the gap between the previous tick of the old DOT, and the first tick of the new one. The gap can be as long as six seconds in some cases, and that's terrible for your DPS.

It's better to let a DOT expire completely before one gets refreshed. With some of our DOTs, like Unstable Affliction, the cast time should be taken into account when watching the last few seconds of the spell tick away. I try to time it so that my UA finishes casting just as the current UA wears off, catching it just after the debuff actually vanishes. This assures me that I am not overwriting the last tick and getting the most for my mana investment. The instant-cast DOTs are a little easier to manage, as you can throw one back up as soon as you see it drop off. The rest of your time between refreshing DOTs should be spent Shadowbolting if you can stand still long enough to finish the cast. Take advantage of your instant cast DOTs by refreshing them as you reposition, since they can all be cast while running.

One nuance of Affliction that is sometimes hard to get a handle on is our mana management. Everyone is familiar with the longevity granted by Dark Pact when used in conjunction with the other staple, Lifetap. No Affliction warlock should ever find themselves out of mana for very long. My preference is almost always to DP back to full once I've finished two or three DOT rotations; it only takes two Pacts to drain my Imp down to the triple digits. I recommend Pacting early because it gives your Imp time to regenerate his mana, and bless the little bugger, he's usually ready to go again within twenty to thirty seconds. Remember to bring your imp out of phase shift during group buffs so that he can benefit from an Arcane Brilliance or Blessing of Wisdom. If you have any spare Scrolls of Spirit, they aren't a bad buff to throw up yourself if your group is short a paladin.

Lifetap is a little trickier, as it demands more micromanagement than Dark Pact does. Fire off a premature Dark Pact, and the worst thing that happens is you waste a global cooldown. With Lifetap, you are putting additional stress on your healers, or causing yourself excess damage by lifetapping when your mana hasn't drained sufficiently low enough to benefit from the full transfer. For the sake of your group, I recommend something like:

/y Lifetapping. Keep healing the other guy.
/cast Lifetap

This ensures your healers know that the drops in your HP aren't due to some wayward mob, and can respond accordingly with a HoT, or wait until there's a lull on the tank to fire off a proper heal. Affliction warlocks are mostly self-sustaining; between Siphon Life and Drain Life, we can usually recoup all the life lost to lifetap quickly and without any assistance from the party healer. Keeping up a full cadre of Affliction effects on the target helps ensure your Drain Life is receiving the full bonus from Soul Siphon.

The last bit of advice I will try cramming into this entry has to do with trinket use. Any caster worth his or her salt will almost certainly have a spell damage on-use trinket, which provides a temporary boost in firepower (usually on a 2 min cooldown, sometimes sharing a CD with your other trinket). This can be wonderful during boss fights because it provides an appreciative boost to DPS. You could argue that it tends to help Warlocks more than Mages simply because we can stack so many damage over time spells, each of which gets a significant boost out of the bonus. It certainly doesn't hurt shadowbolt either, and it makes Curse of Doom (especially amplified) a really BIG ticking time bomb. You have to be cautious, however. If, like most players, you pop your trinket at the beginning of a fight so that you can stack an amplified CoD on the target right at the start, you also run the risk of shooting right by your tank's threat level. CoD won't do it (yet...), but the rest of your empowered spells just might. Even though most of our spells are level-loaded when it comes to threat (meaning they generate threat evenly over time), it's always a good idea to let the tank get a few good hits in before you start casting. Let the threat build, pop your trinket, then unleash holy hell. You'll be able to toe the line on the threat much better, and it's less risky overall.

Popping a trinket early is still better than holding off though, as during long fights you'll usually be able to get double the mileage out of them, and on shorter fights your group is clearly geared enough for the encounter, making the bonus redundant.

Entry 2 - The Early Years

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:37:00 +0000

It's been so very, very long since I've contemplated those first few seasons after I undertook the calling of the Warlock, so bear with me if I stumble along.

The decision to be a warlock was a simple one. Of all the classes I could have chosen, this one appealed to me from a pure ascetic sense. Having known no other worlds besides Azeroth, I was not swayed by the notions of role or mechanism that some of my contemporaries were. I just wanted to jump as far into the dark as I could. Good, justice, all that is fine and dandy, but we all know that evil has more fun.

The first spell at my disposal was shadowbolt. Oh the carnage I have wrecked with shadowbolt! As a young warlock I became completely focused on that one spell, to the point (and I am humbled to admit) of neglecting almost all of my militant skills. Where other warlocks might have bolted once to draw the enemy in before finishing them off with a dagger stab, I would attempt to obliterate things with shadowbolt until they were little more than black stains on the landscape, heedless of the pounding I was receiving and the strains it placed on my mana reserves.

Looking back, I think that I suffered under a painful misconception of the role of my class. Having been given shadowbolt to start with, I believed that a warlock killed things by hurling magic at them, like a mage. Even when I learned the later spells of Immolate, Curse of Agony and the like, still I failed to understand the mechanism of damage over time.

Gaining my voidwalker helped shift my perspective a little, after I realized that hurling shadowbolts endlessly at something was a surefire way of drawing its attention. Using the DOTs gave me more leeway, but the voiwalker always seemed to loose aggro anyway. At this time I was leading with Immolate because of the cast time and front-loaded damage, not realizing at the time the nature of threat, and actually working against my Voidwalker's attempts to keep my squishy self unharmed.

Around the same time, I got access to my first few talent points. Remember when I mentioned misconceptions about direct damage spells? I'll bet you can guess where this budding warlock put his talent points! I started speccing into destruction almost immediately, going for what I thought at the time was a more potent set of tools for taking down my enemies. And in many cases, that statement is true. Destruction is incredibly good at dealing damage quickly to a single target, but it leaves the warlock drained, and requires significantly more downtime between enemies than either Affliction or Demonology.

A small caveat, to help me save face; this was WELL before the revamp of the demonology tree, and the introduction of Master Demonologist and a constant Soul Link. Despite my inexperience, I believe I had guessed correctly, at the time, that Demonology was was least appealing of the three talent trees.

I'm not sure how many other warlocks made the same choice I made in their early years, but I'd be curious to know. I sincerely wonder if my shadowbolt-induced tunnel vision was unique to my experience, or something others can relate to. Has there ever been a class skill that has totally skewed your opinions of your class? Has this changed over time, or have you stuck to your first instincts?

I can say for certain that, over time, I realized that destruction just wasn't cutting it for me. I actually went as far as Conflagrate before I made the switch to Affliction though. if that gives you any indication of my mental state. I 'may' have had the foresight to put 5 points into Improved Corruption, but I can't be certain. More likely I just dumped every talent point into Destruction until I hit the max tier. I'm not sure exactly what sparked my desire to switch specs, but at the time I was becoming more and more involved in the forums, I was more interested in various aspects of Theorycrafting, and was starting to notice the disparity between my play experience and that reported by my peers.

With not a little hesitation, I unlearned all my talents (my, what an uncomfortably naked feeling that is the first time, coupled with some irrational fear that the game will glitch and you'll never get those points back) and respec'd into Affliction. I've been kicking myself for my initial decision ever since, as my grinding efficiency went through the roof (comparatively speaking). Since then I've switched talents numerous times, trying out the update to Demonology, going full into Felguard at the outset of the Burning Crusade, and then switching back into Affliction at 70. To date though, I have never gone back to Destruction beyond the arguably essential 11 point initial investment. I'm not sure I'm willing to call it an aversion, per se, but I think I'd miss the versatility of the other builds.

Entry 1 - Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Ferenczys) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:08:00 +0000

Hello. Welcome to my hovel. It's rather small, I'll admit, but there's ample space for what I need here. I'm not as young as I used to be, you see, and I've found that my adventures leave me far more taxed than they used to. A corpse as old as mine needs its rest, and as luck would have it, I managed to persuade the old tenant of this mausoleum that it was time to move on.

Please be mindful of the bones on your way out. I wouldn't want my first guest to trip and hurt themselves on account of the loaf who let this place fall into such disrepair.

This is where I come to gather my thoughts after a long week in the services of my brethren, the Shadows of the Nethrezim. They are a likable lot, though they do tend to get a little carried away sometimes. I suppose having a Dreadlord's mandate hanging over your head will do that, but that's neither here nor there. We were talking about me.

I've been a warlock now for as long as I can remember. My memories of the time before my present...malady...set in are foggy at best, so please do not press me for those details. For over seventy seasons I have been studying the path of shadow and flame, to varying degrees of success, but recently I've begun to perceive the future with far more uncertainty than is my wont. I've already mentioned the fatigue, but there is more. The magic doesn't flow as easily as it once did. It seems to take more effort every day to get up and will this dead body of mine forward. I've begun to hear things, dark things...echoing in my head...

...but I digress. You didn't come here for my life story. You came here for a bit of knowledge, some scrap of lore, a glimpse of insight. Well. I'd hate to disappoint you, but I'm afraid it would be very unwise for you to put much faith in the prattling of this humble undead. I'm no guru, no prophet. The best I can do is tell you of the road I walked, and let you see where the largest stones and deepest potholes are. I pray you make better decisions than I did.

If that will suffice, then I will be happy to oblige you. Talking, it seems, remains one of the few things that does not wear me out too swiftly as of yet. So make camp, start up a fire if you are chilled, and we shall have palaver. Feel free to interrupt if I begin to stray, my attention span is not what it used to be.

By the way, my name is Ferenczys. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.