Kind of a Big Deal

Today's patch introduces the following change:

The functionality of the Vote Kick feature in the Dungeon Finder will now behave differently according to a player's history with the system. Players using the Dungeon Finder who rarely vote to kick players from a group, or rarely abandon groups before a dungeon is complete, will find that the Vote Kick option will have no cooldown. For players who frequently abandon groups or vote to kick other players, the Vote Kick option will be kept on a cooldown. This functionality will adjust itself as a player's behavior while using the Dungeon Finder changes.

This looks like a small, if welcome change that doesn't matter too much outside of the world of farming heroics for badges. Dickheads get to be dickheads less often; dickheads trying the patience of a saint will get kicked faster.

Why is this a big deal? The Dungeon Finder tool and random daily rewards made forming random 5-mans simple and reliable, and added a new layer to the social interactions of WoW gameplay. Before the cross-realm tool was introduced, players relied on friend lists, guilds and trolling general to do a daily, and were socially constrained by the relatively small world of their single realm and their reputation within it. Now, groups are throw-away formations: You're unlikely to run into the same people twice unless you're back-to-back farming, and even then a repeat match is uncommon.

Forming a random group creates some behavioural constraints (tanks must hold threat, healers heal, DPS need to not suck, and not ass- or face-pull), and Vote Kick helps players enforce those constraints, but to date, there's very little feedback in this mechanism: you kick or don't kick, get kicked or don't get kicked, and the choice has been purely human.

Let's take an example: you're in a group with a DPS who's barely holding his own, not using interrupts or dispels, and generally failing. The group's going to make it, but this one DPS is essentially being carried. Do you:
A) Kick the fail DPS and get someone you won't be carrying, or just 4-man it.
B) Keep going, but berate the DPS in party chat. Maybe they'll leave, maybe they'll improve, but who cares: they're bad anyway.
C) Keep going, say nothing, suck it up, get your badges.
D) Keep carrying, offer suggestions in whispers of ways the DPS can improve.

(FWIW, I'll typically opt for C or D depending on the circumstances and how much I'm chatting in guild or on vent.)

Until now, there's no game difference between any of the options. Gameplay is identical whether you choose A, B, C or D. With the Vote Kick change, there's an obvious incentive to avoid A: if you over-use the kick when you don't really need it, you won't have it available when that shitty Retadin turns up as the tank and asks who has a tanking spec.

There's also, now, a more subtle incentive not to use option B: there may be a saint in your group who never uses the Vote Kick, but finds your carping irritating, and decides to shut you up. Real ID may end up making this even more of an incentive if you can form cross-realm groups with real life friends.

In other words, there's now a meta-game mechanic that penalizes behaving like a dick. In itself, this is kind of a big deal, but it's not a really big deal yet.

It gets to be a really big deal when there are game mechanics that penalize behaving like a dick, that reward 'desirable' behaviour, or that cause changes in the environment based on covert analysis of what you do beyond the trivial mechanics of quest phasing and faction reputation changes.

An example of how this might work is a new realm type: Pv?, where the indigenous response (think capital city guards) to PvP is algorithmically determined by the behaviour of people in that zone over time. Starter zones where lowbie-gankers are dealt swift high-level player justice become heavily game-world-reinforced zones where lowbie-ganking spawns hostile elites. Combat zones where heavy inter-faction fighting gets reinforced by matching (or balancing) numbers of faction-relevant NPCs.

Another example: Phased zones that only appear based on appropriate good (or bad) play: a complex, covert algorithm combining reputations, kill counts, recent kill counts, time spent in groups, time spent in raid zones, herbs gathered or recipes learnt.

I doubt WoW will be the game to implement adaptive game mechanics of this nature, but the Vote Kick change is definitely a step in that direction.

ICC encounter tips - The Plagueworks

Continuing the series. Most of these tips focus on rDPS Demonology, since I haven't got to raid Affliction in far too long.

For the Festergut and Rotface fights, pay attention to the ground textures. There's an outer circle at about 30 yards from the edge of the boss's hitbox. You can stand on that circle at the pull and get your rotation set up. Then, there's an inner circle, with spiky triangles and shit. If you drew lines E/W and N/S through the center of the room, they would intersect the inner circle at the same place as one of the triangle spiky bits every time. These points are good to know, as you will see.

Festergut

Regular Festergut is just a DPS race with a little movement for the spores and some DPS damage mitigation management. It's pretty fucking easy to DPS. The main trick in all cases is to use your Shadow Ward to mitigate the Pungent Blight and save yourself the bother of taking 3 stacks of Inoculated. <Insight> have one spore called to go to the tanks, ranged are left to figure out whether it's faster to run to a tank spore or a ranged spore and GTFO the middle a.s.a.p. Warlocks in general are good choices for staying out, thanks to the teleport circle, but also good choices for stacking on the tanks.

Affliction: Start your rotation from the outer circle. If pulled by a tank who isn't a halfwit, Festergut should start in the middle and stay there, and you can cast everything you need from the edge without having Grim Reach. Use the instant GCDs of your startup rotation to move towards the outer rim of the inner circle and drop your teleport there. Stay outside the inner circle, so you remain a target for vile gas. If you are ranged-heavy, an affliction warlock is an excellent choice to stand on the tanks and never, ever, ever move. Otherwise, get at most two stacks of Inoculated, teleport back to your casting spot, and use Shadow Ward before Festergut expels his Pungent Blight, and you'll be fine.

Demonology: Same deal as Affliction. Again, if you've got a ton of ranged, Demonology warlocks are excellent choices for stacking with the tanks, since immolation aura is a respectable DPS chunk. Again, Shadow Ward with two stacks, or Shadow Ward + Metamorphosis with one stack, and you'll be fine.

Festergut - Heroic

The added fun mechanic here is everyone's favourite: Malleable Goo, which Professor Putricide lobs from his balcony in the NW of the room. This makes standing towards the SE preferable, to give yourself more time to avoid the goo. Unlike the actual Putricide fight, in H-Festergut, the incoming goo puts a green circle under its landing point, which is convenient. The range on the explosion is 10 yards, though, so you do have to move quickly.

Unlike normal mode, where lurking near the middle, but in range for Vile Gas is good, on Heroic, being as spread out as possible towards the edge is preferable. Drop your teleport circle, before the pull, on the outer circle on the floor, and then move 10 yards to the side of it. The Circle masks the goo puddle, which would be a huge pain in the balls if you weren't going to just use the 'port to get out of it. Make sure no mouth-breathers in your raid are standing on your circle. Leave the inner circle rim for healers.

You can survive with 2 stacks of Inoculation, Shadow Ward, and a quick Death Coil right after Pungent Blight to help make up the health deficit. Whether you should or not, is up to you. If you die, you're the moron, not your healers. Remember that Vile Gas can come just before Pungent Blight, so you might want to make sure you're human and have EMFH on CD for that conjunction.

Rotface

Normal-mode Rotface, <Insight> puts everyone just outside his hitbox, we soak the slime spray, let a Big Ooze form first in the middle and then run little oozes to it until it explodes. Rinse, repeat. You might as well drop the port for getting back to the middle after running an ooze, or moving out of the ooze explosion.

Affliction: The main thing here is not to neglect the ability of an interrupted Drain Life / Drain Soul to refresh your corruption while you're on the move. This is especially important if you're using the NMIC ab initio, and rolling crit.

Demonology: Yay, you get to be in melee range. Don't forget Immolation Aura, and don't forget that you have Demon Charge if you need it to get to or from the boss, as well as your circle.

Rotface - Heroic

Heroic Rotface adds Vile Gas to the mix. Unlike Festergut's gas, Rotface won't disorient you, but it will chain, and it hurts a lot, so you can't stack all the ranged in the middle (or everyone will die in a hurry). This makes the floor pattern very important.

You remember I mentioned those spots on the outer rim of the inner circle at the cardinal directions? Those four points are the points of least movement. Although graphically the slime that comes from the walls looks like it is lapping at your feet, on those four magic points, you are just outside the border of two pools, and you're eligible for ranged vile gas. Drop your circle on one of those points, and let no man, dwarf, gnome, goat or night fairy take it from you.

Edit: I added a picture! Click for legible version.


Shadow Ward is again useful because the Big Ooze's aura deals shadow damage and will get kited past your jealously-guarded spot. Either move (sacrilege!) or use Shadow Ward and Death Coil.

Professor Putricide

Depending on how your raid handles this fight, your teleport can be a great tool here, because you can use it while targeted by the Volatile Ooze, giving the raid more DPS time on the ooze. Use it as late as possible.

Affliction: This fight is kind of balls for Affliction. It's almost impossible to roll corruption on the Professor, so replace NMIC with your back-up trinket (which you have right? right?) and deal. Each ooze/cloud should get a full cycle of dots on it. Make sure to put full dots up on PP before the Tear Gas transition. Overwrite if you have to, it will be a DPS gain.

If your raid DPS is high enough, dot up the add, then switch back to PP. You'll be doing respectable damage to both. Avoid getting yelled at by the raid leader.

Demonology: Do your damnedest to trigger Decimation from the ooze/cloud and use it on the Professor. Don't forget immolation aura for damaging the adds as they pass by, and Demon Charge to stay in range.

Professor Putricide - Heroic

Heroic mode adds Unbound Plague to the encounter and replaces the Tear Gas phase transition with a sly two girls, one cup reference. Nasty. The sheer RNG of Phase 2 with the plague, malleable goo, flasks and beefier adds makes this fight… unpleasant. Like many guilds, we nominate the 4th tank to take the plague and die with it during this phase, so you will most likely need to have a soulstone ready at all times and be prepared to apply it to the sacrificial scapegoat.

Demonology: Metamorphosis on the pull, and it should be ready towards the end of the phase transition. Stand in melee range, saving immolation aura for the end of your time as Lollidan. Because you're constantly switching off PP to take out adds, use CoDoom over CoA until P3 (but you should have time for one full CoA in demon form before applying the stronger CoD - clip if you have to). Otherwise, good fucking luck. This fight's a bitch.

Pets: Your pet does not get the target-specific debuff for the phase transitions. It should always be on the volatile ooze, regardless of your debuff, to help soak the explosions.

ICC encounter tips - Storming the Citadel

Herewith a summary of warlock-specific tips for each encounter, regular and heroic. Naturally, this is from the perspective of the strategies used by <Insight> [US-Medivh], but you're a warlock. You're smart. You will adapt. I'm also concentrating on Affliction and Meta/Ruin (raid buff) Demonology, since that's how I raid. Advice for non-heroic still holds for heroic, except where noted.

Lord Marrowgar

Affliction: you can pretty much ignore the Bone Storm: self-heals have the extra damage covered, especially if you're using a quick Drain Life to refresh NMIC-ed Corruption during the storm. Move out of fire, win. If your raid likes to have Marrowgar tanked in a specific spot, place your circle accordingly, but you shouldn't be moving much. If there's a convenient Bonespike Graveyard at the 35% transition point, then use Seed of Corruption twice (at most) then refresh your trinketed Corruption.

Demonology: you can ignore the Bone Storm, too, thanks to Soul Link and your handy Felguard. Time your Metamorphosis and Immolation Aura for the Bonespike Graveyard. Even if it's Not Your Job™ to nuke the Bone Spikes, use one to trigger Decimation.

Lord Marrowgar - Heroic

Neither spec can ignore the Bone Storm on heroic, the incoming damage is too high. Run.

Affliction: if 3 spikes are ever clumped, tab-spam Seed of Corruption on them. Again, drain to keep your trinketed Corruption up on Marrowgar, although you're more likely to be tap-draining for the refresh only, while you take care of the spikes. If your raid DPS is high enough that you can stay on the boss full time, lucky you.

Demonology: Metamorphosis is more useful during Bone Storm, both for reducing the damage you take, and for increasing your burst on the spikes. If you get a convenient clump charge/immolation aura will be win.

Lady Deathwhisper

Position your circle before engaging at the 30-yard range limit from Lady Bugfucknuts at a roughly 70° angle to her, so you can cast at her and at the left side adds without having to move much. Shadow Ward her Death and Decay in Phase 1, save it for shade explosions in Phase 2. Set up a Howl of Terror rotation with any other warlocks for the mind controls. Have fear hot-keyed (I use Grid and Clique to fear MC-ed raid members.)

Affliction: Your raid leader should leave you on the crazy cult lady full-time, or get a stern talking-to. Be careful on the phase transition; you may want to hold off Shadow Bolt spam for a rotation or two.

Demonology: If you're not getting to spam Soul Fire on two out of three adds on your side and at least three Soul Fires on Lady Barking-mad with every wave, you're doing it wrong. Be very careful on the phase transition.

Lady Deathwhisper - Heroic

Save Soulshatter for as late as possible into Phase 2. Good luck. We position the Loopy Lady at the bottom of the entrance stairs for P2 (avoiding LoS issues from her pillars, more room to avoid ghosts, melee on the P2 adds, ranged on the boss). It's even more important to avoid ghosts in P2; I find that dropping my circle on the stairs is best, since it's often less populated.

Affliction: Turn off Spell Lock if it's going to screw up your raid's Frostbolt interrupt rotation. Have it hot-keyed so it's ready if they need an external interrupt.

Demonology: Turn off Cleave, and turn off Charge in P2. A passive Felguard will charge/stun to interrupt opportunistically, and while that's great for interrupting the Adherents, it can screw with your tanks' interrupt rotation, which is bad. Very bad. Shadow Ward and Fear are essential hear - redundant CC on the MC targets is good.

Gunship

Dot the shit out of the axe-throwers, don't rip aggro on the boat, try to get in a cannon, go nuts.

Demonology: You should totally be in a cannon. Metamorphosis prevents use of the rocket pack and the cannon. Have your hearthstone hotkeyed and stop-cast hearth to break out of Metamorphosis early if you have to jump or blow the boat up.

Gunship - Heroic

Ditto. Enjoy your free 277 loots.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Affliction: If your raid leader doesn't have you on the boss full-time, s/he's doing it wrong. Preferably in melee range. If you do get to be in melee range, as usual you should save Soulshatter for as late as possible, and don't be shy about calling for Salv if you need it.

Demonology: Every round of Blood Beasts is a Decimation proc on Saurfang. Go nuts.

Deathbringer Saurfang - Heroic

Same deal. Adds are more troublesome. Don't get hit. Drop your circle during the RP lead-in, positioned such that any beast that's coming for you will have to change direction to reach you, and by the edge of the balcony.

Cataclysm Warlock preview - line by line

Wherein a formerly Affliction, now Demonology warlock goes over the warlock preview and is underwhelmed.

New Warlock Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Instant DD: This is great. An instant UA/Immo-refreshing DD spell is 100% win, provided it lasts past beta arena testing. Mixing up the SB spam will be good.
Green fire: Shadowfire gets to be green? Or all flame? My money's on just this one spell. Cosmetics matter, Blizzard, you know that. Make all warlock fire spells green, and be done with it. This is not a difficult change to make for the art department. Seriously.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

Focus Magic: this adds warlocks into the FM rotation. I'm going to bet that FM will now stack up to 3 times as well. Not a very exciting spell, but good bread-and-butter.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

Demonic Sacrifice makes a comeback without the sacrifice. There's too little detail here to really analyze this. I hope the art is awesome. I want to shudder when I fuse with my felpuppy.

Soul Shard Overhaul

This major change regarding Soul Shards was previously announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Shards will not be required outside of combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells. Soul Burn has no mana or health costs and is off the global cooldown. Planned secondary effects are outlined here.

Added later: On regenerating shards in combat, we will add a mechanic to regen shards if we find that we need to in order to handle variable combat length. We haven’t added one yet because we really want to emphasize locks using shards at the right time and not as fast as they can with then an Evocation-like spell to bring them back again. These are supposed to be special moments in a fight -- think Bloodlust perhaps -- and not used every 20 seconds on cooldown (or whatever the cooldown ends up being).

Shard regeneration will return. 15 minute encounters with a core mechanic locked out after 3 button-presses is not going to scale to end-game raiding when warlocks go up against other pure damage classes for DPS spots. Apart from that, I welcome the return of 32 bag spaces.

Sadly, I think this direction is ultimately doomed, because it falls into the PvP vs. PvE trap: Either the Soul Burn effects are worthless in PvE or they're overpowered in PvP, and never the twain shall meet. Shit, instant Soul Fire is already close to overpowered.

Let's see the Soul Burn examples:

Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.

Good for PvE combat where the pet gets killed for some stupid reason, and for PvP, too. The trick is going to be smushing critters to get the instant summon out of combat.

Drain Life + Soul Burn = Reduces cast speed by 60%.

Cast speed? What? On a channel? I guess that makes it Slurp Life, but who fucking cares. If you're having to drain life in a raid encounter, your healers are failing (see last night's shitty raid). Worthless

Demonic Circle + Soul Burn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.

Yawn. OK. Whatever. Worthless.

Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect.

30% buff on one dot. Big fucking whoop.

Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant cast.

This is nice. But over the course of a 5 or 15 minute raid encounter, so what?

Healthstone + Soul Burn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds.

Whatever. Worthless.

Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds.

Who fucking uses this spell? We don't even ranged tank any more. Worthless.

Next you will find a list of some of the warlock spell and talent changes for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.

The haste change is good. At high haste right now, it's possible to have Corruption fall off in the Affliction rotation, even with all the Everlasting effects. Removing clipping lobotomizes Affliction. Maybe there will be some complexity added later, but without it, the heart and stolen soul of Affliction is dead.

Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.

All positive. It will be worth throwing CotE up, regardless, as a persistent back-up for Earth and Moon and Ebon Plague. The other curses are worthless, though, unless they start to apply to raid bosses, which will never happen. The days of putting Curse of Tongues on unruly caster trash are long over, never to return.

Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock.

Added later: The intent for Hellfire is for it to be a specialty of Demonology warlocks. Affliction would use Seed of Corruption and Destruction would use Rain of Fire.

This does the wrong thing, IMO. We don't avoid Hellfire because it hurts us too much (that's what healers and Fel Armor are for); we avoid it because its mana-to-damage ratio is much worse than Rain of Fire and Seed of Corruption just wins right now. I would take a wholly different tack: make it burn the warlock some, the warlock's pet a lot, remove the AoE capping, and do a ton of damage. Make it a new heal/damage mechanic for trash: can you keep your demonologist alive long enough for the huge trash to die before he does?

Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.

OK. Fine. Mostly-worthless spell replaced by a damage spell. Does the felhunter still get devour magic?

The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.

Added later: Whiplash works similar to Freeze on the mage’s Water Elemental. It requires a targeting reticule. It isn’t just a melee ability that the succubus uses at-will.

As a clarification, we are removing Soothing Kiss, not Seduction. Soothing Kiss increased the chance the target would attack something else. Seduction is the crowd control more commonly associated with the Succubus, and it’s not going anywhere. ;)

Yeah, nobody cares. Maybe in PvP. Whatever. The direction of "removing worthless shit" is good, though, because Soothing Kiss was worth even less than Fire shield.

Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

Levelling. Whatever.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Pandemic will now cause Drain Soul to refresh Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony on targets below 25% health.

Affliction: now comes in retard, too. One of the things I absolutely fucking loved about raiding Affliction was that it was hard to do it well. It took a lot of concentration to juggle a mobile fight with spike damage and positioning priorities while juggling DoTs and rolling crit on Corruption. The below-25% Drain Soul tick management was harder, still, and that's where Affliction's biggest numbers came from.

This direction is into the short bus, and I do not like it.

The ability Fel Domination will be removed (because Soul Burn accomplishes the same effect).

Makes sense. Giving that capability to all warlocks in raid combat is a good thing. We're often fucked without a pet.

Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, Demon Bolt. Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target.

Good. Name's a bit lame, but filler nukes that match the different trees are necessary.

We plan to add a new talent, Impending Doom, which will give certain spells a chance to reduce the cooldown on Metamorphosis and Curse of Doom.

Dear Warlock developers. Please go talk to the guys who are fixing Eclipse, and make sure you don't make the same mistake with Impending Doom (which sounds neat, at least), as they did. Reducing the cooldown on CoD is pretty worthless, though—it's the 60s duration that needs a reduction.

Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock's own spells.

This is the biggest missed opportunity ever. Just make Metamorphosis a permanent change to the warlock. You are now, always, metamorphosed in combat. Same code as worgen. Balance the new tree-specific nukes and mastery around the purple pantsuit. While your at it, take the effect that happens when a priest levitates Lollidan, and apply that to be the Demonology-tree's flight form.

Shadowburn will now do additional damage to targets below 25% health.

Presumably no longer using a soul shard? Putting it in a rotation? There's so little context to this change it seems worthless. I'm guessing it's all about the PvP

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Affliction
Spell Damage
Spell Crit
Shadow DoTs

Demonology
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Demon Damage

Destruction
Spell Damage
Spell Critical Damage
Fire Direct Damage

Shadow DoTs: The damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells is increased.
Demon Damage: The damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis is increased.
Fire Direct Damage: The damage caused by Fire direct damage spells is increased.

Nothing surprising here.

Well that concludes this Cataclysm preview for the warlock class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.

I know this will change over the next few months, but I have to say that I'm disappointed. I'd also say that there's one thing they could do to make 99% of the tweakable mechanical changes entirely palatable: demonic flight form. Fuck it, go for three of them: Affliction—an eyeball demon grabs you in its tentacles and carries you around; Demonology—Lollidan's wings work; Destruction—you turn into the Infernal ball.

Added later:

Demon lovers, we haven’t ruled out adding a new demon, but we want to be very careful here. We’ve had a hard enough time finding niches for some of the current ones. So we first want to make sure existing demons are cool before we’re faced with Q&A several months from now asking why the new demon either isn’t cool enough, or why warlocks no longer use, say, their felhunter because of the new demon.

We did mean to cover doomguards and infernals, but they didn't make it into our preview. Our plan is that you can summon a doomguard or infernal as a cooldown-based pet, much like the shaman elementals, without having to give up your current, permanent demon. If we add a new demon it will likely be one of these cooldown-based ones, and not a permanent pet like the imp, voidwalker, succubus, felguard or felhunter. We’re just not convinced there is a niche for a new permanent demon (and perhaps not even a temporary one).

This makes sense. 2/5 pets are inevitably unused at end-game. I would still like to call up an eyeball demon that shot lazer beemz.

Flying mounts and female Metamorphosis forms are great ideas and something we’ve had on the wish list for a long time. We can only create so many new creatures during a single expansion, and getting one of these might mean fewer new creatures in outdoor worlds or dungeons. It’s just a trade-off and sometimes you have to make hard calls. We’ll keep them on the list though.

Honestly, I don't buy it. Lollidan already flies when levitated. The wings don't flap when he moves... but I don't buy that it's a comparable level of art development.

We do like the idea of allowing warlocks to re-skin their demons and have been talking about possible ways to implement this. I have no concrete information for you at this time beyond that.

Let druids re-skin boomkin and trees first, IMO. Then again, how hard can it be to switch the texture?

When it comes to naming demons, this has always been one of those sacred cows, where the hunter gets to name their pet because he loves his pet bear, but the warlock considers the demon to be something disposable -- a tool.

Yup. This warlock agrees.

The Demon Bolt debuff will only affect the warlock's demon, not other demons. We wanted a Demo-themed nuke that made it feel like the pet was part of the damage.

Good.

For Soul Shard bags, we will probably do something like remove all the shards, reduce the bag size (a little) and convert it to a normal bag. This would be a one-time conversion. We'll probably get rid of the recipes, as we wouldn't want other classes to go out and get shard bags just to get a free bag.

Don't care. Bags are cheap.

Switched to Demonology

ZOMG, Why?

For an affliction blog, this is a strange turn. But it's happened. Why?

Demonology's Demonic Pact is now a required raiding buff. Period. On average at my current gear level, I'm providing 100% uptime on a 540 spellpower buff to the raid. By my measurement*, that buff never dips below 400 spellpower, and peaks at over 700. Bringing me in as Demonology is like adding four more flasks to every caster—healer or DPS—in the raid. Totem of Wrath is history until Cataclysm, when its buff will be identical to—and exclusive with—Demonic Pact. Maybe I'll get to raid Affliction again then**.

Then, we have 3 warlocks in our roster right now, and there's a lot of similarity between Demonology gear and Affliction gear—they're not quite interchangeable (stat weights vary a bit), but I'm the only real candidate to go Demonology without having to reacquire a ton of gear.

On top of that, many of the heroic ICC encounters are much better suited to Demonology: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Putricide, Valithria, Sindragosa, Arthas. Nobody cares about the Lolboat Lootship, of course. Rotface, Festergut, the Princes and the Blood Queen would probably favour Affliction, but 3/12 isn't enough to make do with an Elemental Shaman instead of a Demonology warlock. In practice, I was switching to the spec I rolled for making heroics less boring in over half of the encounters in Icecrown Citadel. So I made the change permanent and sucked it up.

Pros

• Demonic Pact—the raid loves you. Woohoo.


• Purple Pajama Suit—"form of: Lollidan" is goofy, but fun.


• Survivability—I have more of it now. That's good, right? It's nice for some of the damage aura fights.


• Soul Fire Spam—big crits are better than big tits (for this 'mo warlock anyway).


• Trash—is my bitch. I tanked the two trap-spawned geist packs in the plague wing in an ICC-10 while doing over 30k DPS to them as Lollidan.

Cons

• Weak personal single-target DPS—going from top 5 to bottom 5 is not fun. It's also pointless from a design perspective. I don't get what Blizzard's doing here.


• Demonic Pact—you've buffed everyone else, so they're relatively even better than your lacklustre purple ass.


• Demonic Pact—you don't really think the other DPS isn't wondering what's up with your crappy personal DPS do you?


• Survivability—you lose some of it outside of the pantsuit of power. On nights of shite (like last night) your healers won't notice. I had to fucking Drain Life on Festergut.


• Soul Fire Spam—shards are a pain again. Drain Soul on a wipe instead of speed-wiping, to avoid running out of shards. This is particularly bad on fights like Saurfang, where you want to use every last Decimation Soul Fire you can on Saurfang, once the beasts are dead.


• Trash—nobody cares.

My biggest beef is with the weak single-target DPS. Perhaps it's because last night was a night of not seeing the Decimation execute phase, when our numbers take off again, perhaps I'm just not very good at the Demonology rotation (to be vain, here, I don't think so), or perhaps my latency and nuke spam don't play well together. I just don't get Blizzard's design decision here, though—or for ToW shamans—they've made the buff required for serious raiding anyway. Why penalize the player who brings it?

* I wrote a little mod to figure this out. Haven't published it yet. Too lazy.
** But see my upcoming post on the Cataclysm preview of much meh.

Anatomy of an Affliction UI - Part II: Macros and Deathbringer Saurfang

In Part I, I gave an overview of my UI, with the most obvious add-ons labeled. There are a few invisible ones (TipTac, DST, ArkInventory, FreeRefills, XLoot and my own HazFish and HazNuke), which I'll get to eventually, but before I start on the first add-on — which will be Bartenders — I'm going to look at something to put on my bars: macros.

For the completely uninitiated, go read the Macro HOWTO on WoWWiki. It's not half bad. I'm going to assume you've either read that article, or are at least comfortable making simple target and assist macros from here on. One quick refresher: stuff in [square brackets] is a conditional clause, an if this… then… that must be true for the macro engine to run the command it's modifying.

Also, I'm assuming you know what your focus target is: If you're currently raiding and you don't know what your focus target is, you are doing it wrong. Go away and find out.

Two nice macro features introduced in patch 3.whatever made the macro language more terse. If you're using old macros that you copied and pasted at the dawn of time, you should replace every instance of modifier with mod, and replace every instance of target= with @.

Focus

One of the skills every warlock should acquire is that of chain banish, chain fear and chain enslave: keeping a mob locked out of combat until your raid is good and ready to lay the smack down upon it, classroom style. The process is identical for fear and banish, I'll use banish. In plain terms you need to:

1. Banish something, say, a Hardened Iron Golem in the Antechamber of Ulduar.


2. Keep it banished indefinitely.


3. Still nuke the (un)living fuck out of your primary kill target.


4. Cast Banish prematurely to release the mob and kerb-stomp it.

To do this without wasting GCDs, because you're a warlock and every GCD is damage done — if only to yourself for mana — I use a focus macro, bound to my "B" (for Banish!) key:

#showtooltip Banish
/focus [@focus, noexists][@focus, dead] target
/cast [nomod, @focus] Banish
/stopmacro [nomod]
/clearfocus [mod:ctrl]

Line-by-line, what's going on:

• #showtooltip Banish — show the icon for Banish. The first slash command isn't /cast Banish, or a variation thereon, so if I want it to look right, I have to be specific.


• /focus [@focus, noexists][@focus, dead] target — Sets my focus to my current target if I don't have a focus target set, or if my current focus is already dead. Since I use this macro to set focus all the time on tanks, unbanishable targets, Draenei with particularly hot tentacles, I don't care whether the target is [harm] or [help].


• /cast [nomod, @focus] Banish — cast Banish on my focus target if I don't have any modifier key (shift, ctrl, alt) pressed.


• /stopmacro [nomod] — If I'm not holding a modifier key, the macro ends here.


• /clearfocus [mod:ctrl] — If I'm holding down <ctrl>, clear my focus.

Spell Ranks: Life Tap

It's still worth having the Glyph of Life Tap, but there are some fights you won't want to do a full-health Life Tap every time, because you'll die. For the record until Dark Pact's range is increased from 30 yards, it's often useless. But not completely. Especially given the amount of dead wood in the affliction tree. I vacillate between Dark Pact and 1/2 Fel Synergy. Anyway, this little macro casts max rank Life Tap, unless you're holding down <ctrl>, when it casts Rank 1 Life Tap, which costs negligible health, but refreshes the buff:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl]Life Tap(Rank 1);[]Life Tap

A syntax note: the semicolon separates alternative commands for a single cast. When you run the macro (by pressing the button or bind) they're assessed from left to right until one works. So, here, I've said if I'm holding <ctrl> then use Rank 1 Life Tap; otherwise just Life Tap. Spells without a rank are cast at max rank. The empty modifier [] is a fail-safe: it says if… fuck, no ifs about it, just cast.

To check that your conditionals work, drag your macro to a button bar and hover over it. The tooltip (and icon) will change according to your modifiers. If it doesn't, you have a typo. Or you should get someone else to write macros for you. That's what the unmodified #showtooltip is doing for you.

Targeting

Since we're using focus, and we have a target selected, we can nuke two things at once with a simple macro: /cast [mod:shift,@focus] Shadow Bolt; [] Shadow Bolt, but that's of limited use in a fight when multiple adds spawn and they must be focus-fired down — like the Deathbringer Saurfang fight.

Fortunately, the @ syntax extends to target-of-target: @target is your target, @targettarget is your target's target (so you could target the MT and blast his target), @focus you know, but surprise, surprise, @focustarget works, too. So you can set your focus to whoever you're supposed to be assisting, keep Saurfang as your target, and use a macro like this to nuke the correct add:

/cast [mod:shift,@focustarget]Shadow Bolt;[]Shadow Bolt

In practice, if your raid DPS is high enough, or your tanks butch enough, as an affliction warlock you shouldn't be doing too much add-nuking on Saurfang, but this macro allows you to help out without breaking your primary rotation on Saurfang. Just hold <shift> down every time you're casting a filler shadow bolt, and you're contributing to the cause.

But that's not all. The general syntax of the @ operator is @<UnitId>[[-]target]*, which for those who don't speak the geek means "@ followed by any valid <UnitId>, followed by an zero or more instances of 'target' (maybe with a '-' in front). e.g.: @target, @pet-target, @pettarget, @focustarget-target-target, @ralimenua-target. Note that in the last example, where I'm using a player name, the player must be in your raid or party, and you have to prefix the first target with a hyphen.

Did you see what I snuck into the examples there? @pettarget. Hmmm. I wonder if we can use that? Of course we fucking can. In fact it's the simplest way to have three active targets at once.

Pet Target and Control

Your pet should be on static. Srsly. There are a limited number of fights when you want a pet on aggressive or passive, but as a grown-up raiding affliction warlock, your pet is part of your arsenal, and you want to be in control of your arsenal, not apologizing for friendly fire. You are not a hunter. Put your pet on static.

Now that your pet is by your side, doing sweet FA without orders, you want that cute little demon dog from the arse end of the twisting nether to be gleefully nomming something. Enter /petattack, /petfollow and /petstay. Guess what they do.

I typically have my felpuppy behave in one of two ways: set and forget or kill what I'm killing, by modifying the first cast in my rotation. Since commands to your pet are not on your GCD, you can execute a pet instruction and a cast simultaneously in a macro like so:

/petattack
/cast Shadow Bolt

That's pretty simple. Every time you shadow bolt something, your pet will switch target. It gets a bit more fancy for set-and-forget:

#showtooltip
/petattack [mod:shift,mod:ctrl]
/cast [mod:shift,mod:ctrl]Shadow Bolt;[mod:shift,@pettarget]Shadow Bolt;[mod:ctrl,@focustarget]Shadow Bolt;[]Shadow Bolt


That's a lot of Shadow Bolts. Remember that the macro is executed from left to right, so when you've got a string of conditionals, you want to go from most specific to least. In this case, if I'm pressing <shift+ctrl>, I'm just casting Shadow Bolt, and sending my pet after my target. He's on static, so he's going to stay on that target. If I'm just pressing <shift>, my Shadow Bolt will go for my pet's target. With <ctrl>, I'll be nuking my focus target. With no modifiers, I'm just nuking my current target.

Setting my pet on something (like a boss), and having him stay there lets me use focus for assisting, cast on the boss at will (with @pettarget), and switch my target at will to adapt to a burn. Very useful for ripping soul shards from mind-controlled fellow raid-members, for example. Affliction's ramp-up time means you need to be adaptable, and the more freedom you have manipulating targets, the better.

A nice side-effect of the UI is that, if your current target is dead, casting something with @ will switch your target when it lands. Very useful for re-acquiring your pet's target without clicking a thing.

Note that these macros are easy to test (and get used to) with the test dummies. Focus one, put your pet on a second and target a third. Now practise keeping a full rotation up on your pet's target, while keeping corruption up on your current and focus target and refreshing both with Shadow Bolt.

You also need a way to say "go hit that" and "come back, now" without actually casting. I have this macro keybound for easy access:

/petattack [@target,exists,harm]
/petfollow [@pettarget,exists]

Your puppy's not just for nomming on bosses, though. He's also got a couple of useful spells: Spell Lock and Devour Magic. I confess, I'm a little lazy about both: I leave them active on his bar, and let him use them at will. He seems to have got a bit smarter about using both, and that's good enough for me. On a fight with a spell-stealable buff, I'll usually turn Devour Magic off until the mages have their buffs, but there's nothing wrong with a pet auto-interrupt. It's useful, however, to help out your magic dispellers when you can with clearing your own magic debuffs, though. So have this macro keybound to spam when you need it:

#showtooltip Devour Magic
/cast [pet:felhunter,@player] Devour Magic;

I'll leave devouring your focus' magic debuff or your pet's target's target (likely the tank) as an exercise for the reader. I've specified the tooltip to use in this macro because if you don't, the icon won't show up when your puppy's not summoned. Which I find irritating.

Adding Trinkets

Being a pro, you've collected your NMIC (or have better), and you know when to use it. Now you want to trigger it without an extra click, right? There's two ways to trigger a trinket: by name and by slot, so either /use Nevermelting Ice Crystal or /use 13 (for the top trinket slot) will do the trick. /use 14 for the bottom trinket slot. Put the /use immediately before the first spell you're going to cast with the buff; most likely Corruption, arguably UA.

An Aside About @mouseover

I haven't made mention of @mouseover, which I could just as easily use for target casting. It does what it sounds like... casts at the unit (or unit frame) that your mouse is hovering over. I find the performance of the WoW client so variable that there are times, particularly in fights with a lot of adds or AoE, or retards running GearScore and other verbose shit in a raid setting, when my UI is getting slow and I can't find my mouse cursor in the visual spam, or the cursor just lags. So I tend to avoid using @mouseover macros for the most part. YMMV.

Putting It All Together

For more than 2 targets (i.e. trash), I like to put up Haunt and spam Seed of Corruption, refreshing Haunt and using a Life Tap to keep mana up. I might throw up some UAs if it's heavy trash to proc the tier 10 4pc, too. For two big targets, like the two aboms guarding the entrance to Icecrown Citadel's Plagueworks, you should be able to keep most of your dots up on both targets and get some filler in on the primary target, too. I have all my rotation spells bound to extra buttons on my (sadly now discontinued) mouse, and use <shift> and <ctrl> to mess with the target. In fact, I have every spell in my rotation in a macro so I can set my pet on the burn target, dot it up, keep it dotted, and dot a second target and nuke a focus. Here's the whole set:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift,mod:ctrl]Shadow Bolt;[mod:shift,@pettarget]Shadow Bolt;[mod:ctrl,@focus]Shadow Bolt;[]Shadow Bolt
/petattack [mod:shift,mod:ctrl]

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift,@pettarget] Haunt; [mod:ctrl,@focustarget] Haunt; [] Haunt

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift,@pettarget] Curse of Agony;[mod:ctrl,@focus] Curse of Agony;[]Curse of Agony

#showtooltip
/use [mod:shift,mod:ctrl] Nevermelting Ice Crystal
/cast [mod:shift,@pettarget] Corruption;[mod:ctrl,@focus] Corruption;[]Corruption

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift,@pettarget] Curse of Agony;[mod:ctrl,@focus] Curse of Agony;[]Curse of Agony

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift,@pettarget,combat] Drain Soul; [mod:ctrl,@focus,combat] Drain Soul; [combat]Drain Soul;[mod:ctrl,nocombat]Disenchant; []Drain Soul

The keen of eye will notice something new in that last one. I have the last macro bound to the 'E' key; in combat, <ctrl-E> casts Drain Soul on my focus, out of combat it starts a Disenchant. Go figure.

Go crazy, Lollidan!

I moonlight as Demonology when we don't have an Elemental shaman handy. Last night, I clocked 6302 spellpower at maximum... that's 630 spellpower to every other fucker in the raid, bitches; but personal DPS is still not up to my affliction best <sadface>. This is my nuke macro for Lolllidan spec:

/petattack [mod:shift,mod:ctrl]
/use [mod:ctrl]13
/use [mod:ctrl]14
/cast [mod:ctrl,mod:shift] Demonic Empowerment
/cast [mod:ctrl,nomod:shift] Metamorphosis
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast [mod:shift,nomod:ctrl] Incinerate; []Shadow Bolt

Fuck Me, That's Enough

Yeah. I'm done. I'll answer questions, though.

Anatomy of an Affliction UI - Part I: The Lich King

The first in a series of posts about how I manage my UI. Affliction is not well served by the default UI. To master the spec, you need to be able to time dot reapplication with Drain Soul ticks, and Blizzard's basics aren't going to cut it.

As you can see from the picture below, I use quite a few mods. Configuring them all just right is a cumbersome process, and some of them can be just as finicky as their authors. So, I'll tackle them one or two at a time. For now, though, here's everything… or at least, everything that's visible.



The screenie was taken in Phase 1 of a Lich King attempt. I've got Arthas focused and targeted. Note that in the interests of saving your bandwidth, I've heavily compressed the image, so it looks pretty crappy.

Demonic Circle: not just for PvP

Once upon a (short, distant) time, Demonic Circle was thought to be a useless frill to appease PvP warlocks, but instead, it has turned out to be an excellent PvE raiding utility spell, particularly since a disproportionate part of raiding these days is "GTFO <shit>" where shit can be fire, ooze, defilement, frost patches, slime or whatever. To use DC to its maximum advantage you need to consider its three boons:

1. Mobility — it's a fucking teleport.


2. Facing — on arrival you always face in the direction you were standing when you cast the spell.


3. Graphic — it lasts for 6 minutes, giving your raid a durable, refreshable and consistent point of reference.

How you use it in a boss fight will depend on your raid's strategy, whether you need to run away fast, or get into position fast, and how much mobility the fight requires. To examine most of these aspects, I'll run through the Icecrown Citadel bosses in order, but first a recap of the spells involved:

Demonic Circle: Summon (DC) — summons the demonic circle at your feet, which lasts for six minutes. The DC effect is a bright green rune on the ground with a sparkly green shower-head above it. Cast this spell facing the direction you want to be when you arrive.

Demonic Circle: Teleport (DT) — teleports you to your demonic circle. DT has a 40-yard range and a 30s cooldown. This is plenty for most significant boss abilities that you're avoiding, but beware: some boss abilities will put you out of range - have a visual indicator in your UI for when it's castable. Note that DT is on the GCD.

Trash

This is more useful for Demonology, which is ridiculously fun for trash. First, set your demonic circle outside of melee range of the huge clusterfuck of The Damned that your tanks will surely pull. Second, put on your purple Lollidan suit, light yourself on fire, charge, and cast rain of fire. When you stop being purple (and stop being on fire) use Demonic Teleport to GTFO of melee range and spam Seed. Finally, rejoice in how uber-1337 your AoE DPS is every 2.1 minutes.

P.S. Nobody cares.

Lord Marrowgar

Meh. Not much use here. Just cross your fingers for the Frozen Bonespike and Crushing Coldwraith Belt.

Lady Deathwhisper

Drop a circle in the middle (within range of the crazy lady) before the pull, and then move away from it. If you get hit by Death and Decay, teleport out of it, and move to the other side when you're refreshing CoA or LT or casting a Nightfall Shadow Bolt.

This isn't the most exciting of uses for DC/DT, but it illustrates a theme: When there's going to be bad shit on the floor, drop a circle and move away from it. When you're in the bad shit, teleport. Use instant casts to move away from the circle again. Rinse, repeat.

Gunship Battle

WTF, Blizzard? Seriously? You've nerfed this trivial fight so it's impossible to die by missing the fucking boat with a rocket pack — a pointless fucking nerf if ever there was one — but we can't teleport back to the gunship? Wankers.

Deathbringer Saurfang

If your raid's burst DPS is low enough that you have to DPS the blood beasts, and you're terribad at assisting someone who should have more threat than you, then use this to get further away from a beast that you've aggroed. Otherwise, useless. Possibly useful for Demo charge/self-immolation/rotation and reset... but this fight is better as affliction, so bitch and moan until your raid leader lets you go affliction.

(In a later post, I'll write about macros and strategies that can help nuke the beasts while sustaining your DPS on Saurfang himself.)

Festergut

You should be at range for Festergut so you don't get Vile Gas in the melée (or on the tank; if you do that, please stop raiding). We have one spore stack on the tank, two spores stay away, and everyone else piles on the tank spore to pick up their stack of Inoculated. So you're going to be running in to the tank (or a nearby ranged that's staying out), and then teleporting out.

On the pull, ranged will be spread out around the ring, and you should start your rotation from there, moving closer to Festergut when you put your instants up, and getting as close as you can while staying out of melee range before casting your circle.

Why not stay at 30 yards? Further to run in, and longer travel time for haunt. Affliction is better closer to the boss.

Why not drop the circle on the tank? The Blighted Spores debuff ticks AoE shadow damage. The tick makes it more important to GTFO than GTFI: Run in, 'port out.

This, obviously, varies by strat: We use a single-clump strategy, other raids do it differently. Adapt.

Rotface

Drop it somewhere in the middle where you can DPS Rotface. Use it to return from running a Little Ooze or after a Big Ooze's Unstable Ooze Explosion.

Professor Putricide

Did I mention that DT removes all snare effects? No? Well, it doesn't on this fight, quite. The major snare in the PP fight is the Volatile Ooze Adhesive. DT doesn't actually remove the snare, but it does still 'port you. This allows you to move less when repositioning before the ooze spawns, and still give the raid maximum DPS time on the ooze if you're targeted.

Drop your circle as far to the South of the room (the left as you stand in the door looking at the table) as you can. When your raid positions for the volatile ooze, be sure to be within 40 yards of your circle, but beyond that, you can be as spread out as you like. DT if (and only if) you get targeted.

Blood Prince Council

Not hugely useful, unless you have a static position for Prince Taldaram, and get targeted by Conjure Empowered Flame, when you can use it to port further away. YMMV.

Blood Queen Lana'thel

Drop your circle in the center on the pull. When she gives you Pact of the Darkfallen teleport to the middle.

Valithria Dreamwalker

Only useful for switching sides to burn Blazing Skeletons etc.; i.e. not much.

Sindragosa, Queen of the Frostbrood

This is going to vary hugely by strategy for Phase 3, but for the first two (alternating) phases, you're going to be providing a point of reference for positioning ice tombs, and using the circle to GTFO of Blistering Cold. You'll also be a reference point for the other ranged who lack your teleport to know when to turn around and start up the pew pew again.

The Lich King

TBD.

Learn To Wipe

There comes a time in every progression raider's life, when the raid leader calls for a wipe. Or rather, there will come many, many times while your raid is still learning a fight when the leader calls for a wipe, often at short intervals. So, when that fateful moment comes, do you…

1. …try to do as much damage to the boss before he, she or it wanders over and smites you?


2. …try to do as much damage as possible to everything before either the adds gang-bang you, or the boss wanders over to smite you?


3. …try to outlive the tree and healadin as a point of professional pride?


4. …frantically try to unequip as much gear as possible to avoid a huge repair bill?


5. …none of the above?

If your answer was E, give yourself a pat on the back, if not then <Kologarn>YOU FAIL!</Kologarn>

The idea behind calling for a wipe on a progression fight is to get back up and running as soon as possible; the faster your wipe and recovery time, the more attempts you get in on your current nemesis, and the sooner you are pawing its corpse and poring over the loot therein.

Sometimes, it's worth persisting with a boss that you know you're not going to down, simply because there are aspects that can be grokked better by observation. Managing spores and inoculation on Festergut, or positioning Ice Tombs for Sindragosa's P2 for example.

Most of the time, though, just die already, remembering that you're a warlock and therefore uniquely equipped to die quickly, under your own steam, without taking durability loss:

• Life Tap, Life Tap, Life Tap, Hellfire, win.

Once a wipe is called, nothing else counts.