Warlocks in WOTLK – Our Future – Part 2

My original blog indicated that this would be a series of three installments regarding the future of Warlocks in WOTLK. I expressed some major concerns about demonology, demon form, and the overall state of Warlock competiveness. As I mentioned in the previous blog demon form is just not worth putting 51 points into demonology to get. I don’t intend on blogging about warlocks very often after this series is complete. Warlocks aren’t looking good for the future and you’ll more than likely see me beginning to blog about different classes that I intend on playing in the future such as paladin and priest. We can’t fully predict what Blizzard has in store for the warlock class in 2009 but unless something drastic occurs I won’t continue playing a warlock for either Got Game West or online play, but that’s all for another blog. For the time being, let’s take a look at what we have and what we should have as far as destruction goes.

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Since before the announcement and release of the WotLK talents, many people speculated about how and if Blizzard was going to make rogues return to the “glory” days. By this I mean of course every rogue returning to a backstab orientated build, because as of right now it is effectively to the point of mashing your hemorrhage bind while staying at 25 energy. Now there is the occasional mutilate rogue, but really they are only effective in a few certain compositions and even then, if you understand how to play mutilate its only requires a little more attention to your abilities.

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Season 4 of arenas was beyond boring, I don’t care what battle group you were on whether it was BG9/BG1, The competition was awful.

If we want a good battlegroup the PvP community has to stick together and make one mainstream server where you can not only get ques against other good teams, but also be able to duel. I myself have actually found myself logging into WoW again, not because arenas are fun or exciting but because I can improve my own personal game just by dueling other people that aren’t completely oblivious to one on one play.

Since my arrival to Cho’gall 5 days ago, there has been a total of 9 gladiators and 3 brutal gladiators that have also staggered along, and these are just the ones I know of. This server is growing, and rapidly. If you want to make season 5 any good and be part of a server/bg that’s going to be anything like BG9 once was season 2, to start transferring now.

You wont regret it!

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you enjoy playing or watching WoW arena matches, particularly LAN tournaments with prize money. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t more of you, but Blizzard could very easily change this in two painless strokes of their magic administrative wands.

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Recently –Especially prior to the Hunger for Blood nerf – players have been going nuts for assassination because of Deadly Brew. For those of you who do not know, the new talent Deadly Brew will make all poisons apply crippling in addition to their normal poison. This being the case, when one procs wound or mind numbing poison crippling will also be applied. This makes it easy to cover wound by almost always having Wound + Crip + Mind Numbing on the target. Moreover, poison proc rates for wound, mind numbing, and crippling have been increased to 50% per hit. This being the case any target a rogue is on should permanently be wounded, have mind numbing, and crippling on it. This is a great and very advantageous buff to rogues.

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I’m quite hesitant to speculate on Wrath of the Lich King with lots of tweaks still to be implemented, but right now I have a good idea of what things are looking like in general. Druids appear to be going the way of the dodo in the sense that we know them now. With class power fluctuating so massively throughout the game, it’s not surprising. I’m going to take a broader look at druids having played one since release, and inform you of what I think Druids will be able to excel in, even facing our massive nerfs seen in beta.

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Part 1 of 3

Tab dot tab dot tab dot. Something all warlocks are familiar with. We’ve all grown accustom to our current state in arenas, unable to kite, unable to cast, relying almost entirely on our high hit points and resilience, praying to whomever that our healer doesn’t run out of juice or fall asleep before our dots slowly whittle the opposing team away. So what exactly do we gain in wotlk and what do we expect to get nerfed? Lets take a look at the demonology tree to start.

Demonology: Turning into Illidan for 45 seconds has to be the purest form of ownage known to man right? WRONG. While I wouldn’t say the demonology tree is awful, it certainly is going to need some major fine tuning in order to compete with Haunt/SL or even be a viable spec in the arena. Blizzard put way to much emphasis on crit. 10% more spell damage when my pet crits, 3% more damage when either my pet or myself crits, my pets gain 30% of my crit, or 5% crit to both my pet and I. Wow. That’s 16 worthless talent points in my tier 8+ talent choices. Crit does 100% nothing for a warlock. When we do get a chance to cast its almost always a fear and there is no possible way we are going to be turreting shadowbolts except maybe in 5’s.

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As classic druid play gets stale and warrior warlock druid matchups become more common, I’ve been trying to think of a way to switch things up. I run the classic Druid Mage Rogue composition both on the ESL realm and on Shadowburn, and what with its versatility we can change our strategy entirely if necessary. Recently I’ve tried a new talent build: 24 / 0 / 37. Shios has dubbed it “reverse dreamstate,” others call it the “grace-growth build.” In essence you are dropping your feral talents for balance talents. Why? There are many reasons.

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