Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid.

Greeting again, darklings. It's that time of the week once more for us to talk about all that drives our purpose: bringing horrible pain to our enemies. There are multiple cogs in our wheel of destruction, but this week I want to focus in on two of those. To start, there's the small matter of the ever-constant debate on weaponry and trinkets, something that comes up with every new tier. Second, there's the issue of Dark Intent. While it's been relatively established on the priority of the buff, there are a few kinks to work out, as always. The prior settlements that were made were based upon data that was relevant back in tier 11. Although there isn't too much that has changed since this, Blizzard's adjustments and gearing does merit bringing up the issue once more.

There can be little doubt that shadow priests are the best recipients for Dark Intent. A significantly large portion of their damage come from DoTs; furthermore, Mind Flay has a unique interaction with the ability as well that results in an even higher return. As shadow priests gain gear, more of their damage does actually shift toward Mind Blast, plus their tier 13 increases more of their non-DoT based damage. Again, none of this changes that they are still the best target for Dark Intent, but it does slightly reduce the disparity between shadow priests and non-shadow priests when getting it.

Continue reading Blood Pact: Dark Intent update and T13 gearing

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: Dark Intent update and T13 gearing originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid.

Of all the things that I am, for all of the multitude of alts that I have, one things that I've never been all that good at is writing leveling guides. I have a hard enough time as it is following said guides; writing out my chaotic leveling process is a chore and a half. That all being said, the one thing I do have enormous amounts of experience in leveling. I've nearly reached the full limit on the amount of characters that I'm allowed to have. Allow me, then, to impart some of what I know about bringing your fledgling warlock up to speed into the endgame. After all, while the journey might be half the fun, the destination is all so glorious. We do need someone to stomp on those pesky mages.

The first order of business is to know your spec going into the game. While all warlocks focus on damage (so we don't have quite the same complications as hybrid classes), which spec you choose to go with is still important. Affliction has long been touted as the prime warlock leveling spec, and that is still somewhat true. Affliction offers the best multi-target, fast-paced farming that can't be matched by any of the others. The downside to this is that mob farming has fallen the way of the dinosaurs in WoW leveling; instead, questing and running dungeons is far more efficient, and affliction doesn't have its strength there.

Continue reading Blood Pact: Cataclysm-era leveling guide for warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: Cataclysm-era leveling guide for warlocks originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid.

Greetings, warlocks. It's that time of the week once again when we talk about all those dark arts and such that we do so love to practice. My original intention this week was to talk about many of the sweet items that you can pull out of the new dungeons coming out in 4.3. All of them are on the same ilevel as what you can get from regular Firelands, making them ideal for non-raiders or players who haven't gotten every drop that they've been looking for -- and in some cases, a few items are even better that what you could find from raiding. Alas, at the time of this writing, Wowhead's PTR servers aren't working for me and seem to be down -- a shame, but there's always next week!

In lieu of that, I'll take this opportunity to discuss a different matter that's be on my mind of late dealing with the changes coming in 5.0. Talents are undergoing a major overhaul, and we know that many of the current talents are going to be baked into the base class. While this works well for other classes, it's a bit awkward when it comes to warlocks. Join me as I show you and toss in a bit of speculation for affliction.

Continue reading Blood Pact: The cost of talent consolidation in Pandaria

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: The cost of talent consolidation in Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid.

I like to think that I've been a solid supporter of the warlocks in their struggles against the devil mages. I know that I do have some split loyalties with the druids, but let's be fair in saying that a druid is wicked awesome in comparison to a mage. With that in mind, know that it brings me no joy to say that I'm worried. We talked about the new talents coming in the next expansion last week, and while I love what talents warlocks had and I think the new system has some great potential, there's one facet about it that concerns me.

Destruction and fire are very closely linked in playstyle. Both are heavy nuking specs that also utilize DOT effects to boost their damage. They both make use of an otherwise unwieldy long spell, albeit in different methods, but one cannot deny that the two specs are fairly similar. One of the key differences right now to set destruction apart from fire is Conflagration and Backdraft -- destruction has a form of focus on speed that fire doesn't. With traditional specs going out the window, one has to worry about how Blizzard intends to distinguish destruction from fire.

Continue reading Blood Pact: Distinguishing destruction from fire

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: Distinguishing destruction from fire originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid.

I like to think that I've been a solid supporter of the warlocks in their struggles against the devil mages. I know that I do have some split loyalties with the druids, but let's be fair in saying that a druid is wicked awesome in comparison to a mage. With that in mind, know that it brings me no joy to say that I'm worried. We talked about the new talents coming in the next expansion last week, and while I love what talents warlocks had and I think the new system has some great potential, there's one facet about it that concerns me.

Destruction and fire are very closely linked in playstyle. Both are heavy nuking specs that also utilize DOT effects to boost their damage. They both make use of an otherwise unwieldy long spell, albeit in different methods, but one cannot deny that the two specs are fairly similar. One of the key differences right now to set destruction apart from fire is Conflagration and Backdraft -- destruction has a form of focus on speed that fire doesn't. With traditional specs going out the window, one has to worry about how Blizzard intends to distinguish destruction from fire.

Continue reading Blood Pact: Distinguishing destruction from fire

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: Distinguishing destruction from fire originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you.

BlizzCon has since come and passed, and I am quite sure that epic adventures were had by all who attended. Despite the event's being done and gone, I am in the unfortunate position of needing to write this nearly a week in advance, which can be killer when there's so much juicy news floating around there now. At the moment, I'm probably hovering somewhere over the midwest, or I've finally gotten home and have crashed into my long-missed bed. But don't worry -- not even death would prevent my ego from finding a way to get my self-important words to your screen.

If you happen to also follow my Shifting Perspectives column and read this past week's, then you would have gotten a nice brush of moonkin history. While I'm not generally the type to mix my colors with whites (at least, not after that bout of horrible pink underwear), I thought that the topic was rather appropriate, given the circumstances. I've spent much of the these past few weeks talking about the future of warlocks; it's only right that we now return to those things that have gotten us to where we are today.

Continue reading Blood Pact: A warlock history

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact

Blood Pact: A warlock history originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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