Blood Pact: Flow like a shaman, sting like a hunter

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill wants to look into a popular counterargument to the nerfing of Kil'jaeden's Cunning.

Or not, as I'll argue we warlocks have our own style of play.

The damage dealing game isn't just about turning a mob down to 0 points at the end of the night, but about using the mob's health bar to vault over cooldown or resource barriers. Turning a warlock into a sitting duck in PvE requires either getting rid of all the mob health bars or getting rid of the warlock, which is usually accomplished by movement or threat of certain death. This struggle against being useless is what makes choices in a damage dealer's arsenal meaningful.

Life can't be boring with all instants

The most popular counterargument to the nerfing of Kil'jaeden's Cunning is that hunters can do everything on the move, so why not warlocks. It's actually true -- the cast-time abilities of a hunter are either by default or glyphed for moving while casting and everything else is instant.

But is movement really the meaningful choice for hunters?

Standing still or on the run, Auto Shot is going to contribute for approximately 10-20% of the damage done, depending on spec. The hunter is literally standing there with his bow or gun firing plain ammunition for no special reason. Why doesn't the hunter just use the focus generator ability? You know, that one he can cast while moving?

Probably because it's actually a temporary minor DPS loss to do so. Cobra Shot does 70% weapon damage in return for 15 focus generated. Auto Shot will give a hunter 100% weapon damage going out in return for whatever amount of focus their passive generation (increased by haste) gives them.

Beastmasters and survivalists still assure me that Cobra Shot still sees action to prevent the focus bar from drying up too much, but it's clear from ranked logs that letting the bow or gun autofire is the more frequent choice. As all the regularly used abilities are instant, movement doesn't really have any effect on a beastmastery or survival hunter's personal DPS (outside of pets or traps, anyway). But Aimed Shot is a cast-time! ... or is it?

The two main focus-spending shots for marksmanship hunters, Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot, cost 50 and 45 focus each, which amounts to half the resource bar. Chimera Shot is instant but on a cooldown and Aimed Shot is that well-known glyphed for moving while casting ability.

Steady Shot, that other casting while moving ability, is not actually used for that much for focus generation. Well, it is, but it also isn't. Marksmanship hunters want to decrease either the cast time or the focus cost of their abilities, and Steady Shot helps them do both.

Steady Shot deals 60% weapon damage in return for normally 14 focus. When Steady Shot is cast twice back-to-back, the marksman gains a substantial buff to his ranged attack speed and also to his focus generation. Furthermore, Steady Shot can help stack another buff to reduce Aimed Shot's painful cast time and cost. Steady Shot is by default able to be cast while moving.

In fact, according to the Icy Veins marksmanship guide, regular cast-time Aimed Shot is labeled as a focus dump, and it's the procced instant version that sits higher up as a major ability priority. Later on, the guide specifies that it's not worth it to use cast-time, cost-heavy Aimed Shot unless the hunter is under significant attack speed or haste buffs.

There's more icing on the cake: Auto Shot is still going to contribute for approximately 10-15% of the damage done. The hunter is still impeded from using special abilities by cooldowns or focus generation, rather than aided by casting essential spells on the run.

Ability management adds complexity, meaning

Elemental shaman work better as a casting while moving comparison than hunters do. After all, the hunter resource works more like the melee-friendly energy bar, which does not work very well with caster ABCs (Always Be Casting). Melee and hunters are rather meant to be occasionally sitting on their duff with white attack damage floating by rather than being limited periodically by movement.

Shaman have a DoT just like warlocks do, but their DoT isn't for damage. Well, Flame Shock does deal damage, but they don't keep it rolling for the damage done like we do. Flame Shock's presence on a target will buff Lava Burst's damage and its ticks have a chance not only to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst, but make the nuke instant-cast. Flame Shock and Lava Burst are a rather contained set of mechanics -- that is, you can't really mess it up unless for some reason you can't cast Flame Shock.

But elemental shaman do have a shock complexity going on. Triggering Earth Shock will set its sister spell Flame Shock on mutual cooldown. Why would you want to hit Earth Shock? Elemental shaman have two passives at work with Lightning Shield: one that allows Lightning Bolts, chained or single, to regenerate mana and charge the shield, and one that buffs the damage to Earth Shock using the charges on the shield. So it turns out that Lightning Bolt isn't just another thing to cast when bored. In between the shock dancing, elemental shaman also often throw another cast-time spell into the mix: Elemental Blast. It has a 12-second cooldown, and Lava Surge will only serve for about half the Lava Burst casts. Shaman get a bit of a damage boost through their mastery, which can copy a Burst or a Bolt for a portion of the damage dealt.

So even with a movable filler cast-time spell, elemental shaman are still stuck with short cooldown management and stagger-casting for a portion of a moving fight. Spiritwalker's Grace is there to sometimes aid shaman when procs are missing to help them during movement.

Why don't warlocks get to keep a "Felwalker's Grace" cooldown, too? We have the instant Fel Flame as an option where shaman don't. The idea behind Patch 5.4's buffs to Fel Flame is that the spell can actually start filling this movement substitute role rather then continuing to collect dust in our spellbooks.

Warlocks: all your health are belong to us

I said in a podcast recently that as a warlock, "you're not really dead, until you're dead." Warlocks aren't truly finite in the resource department the way other casters are. Resource gain and spending is going on all the time as a warlock -- in fact, it's what we do. The various bars on a warlock's unit frame are very mutable during combat. We use our mana to generate our shards, our fury, our embers, and our overall damage, and then we use those secondary resources to regain mana or health again in addition to dealing more damage.

An essential part of being a warlock is realizing that all of the attackable health bars in the field are eventually going to be part of your resource bars for damage purposes, one way or another. DoTs have "cooldowns" baked in with their punch. We aren't limited by hard cooldowns because our DoTs are often high sources of damage themselves -- we would much prefer to let them run as long as possible when applied with significant stat buffs. DoTs can also generate resources or provide additional perks. We already have importance in when to cast a DoT, without movement interfering.

So we're building up this secondary resource all the time -- what makes it meaningful?

Affliction spends shards primarily on Haunt, which is a target debuff that buffs all our damage done to the target. Haunt is a fast cast, but Malefic Grasp is a channel. Haunt trades a limited resource for power, while Malefic Grasp demands safety from interruption in exchange for power. Without Malefic Grasp, affliction would be bored waiting for DoTs to tick on, so it would be quite the bummer for playstyle to interrupt the channel with movement.

Demonology spends demonic fury through abilities in Metamorphosis stance, which is already pretty powerfully mobile through the instant nuke Touch of Chaos. However, the best default gain of fury outside of a proc is to spam the cast-time Shadow Bolt. Moving all the time would result in too much fury spent and not enough gained, so demonology needs some help in the gain department. Soul Fire already has meaning, for it gets a hasty proc; Shadow Bolt needs a similar concession.

Destruction spends a whole burning ember on a hugely awesome nuke, whether that is a cast-time Chaos Bolt or the execute-limited Shadowburn. Embers are readily generated through Immolate or Rain of Fire, though less so through the latter in patch 5.4. This will place more emphasis on the gain of embers through the casts of Incinerate, which places more weight on those casts. Sure, you can't cast a Chaos Bolt on the run, but you won't be casting a Chaos Bolt at all if you can't get the embers to do so. When movement restricts spell casting, it puts pressure on spell priority, for you need to cast the best spell at the right time to make up for less damage on the run. In turn, this makes the spell rotation abstractly interesting, complex, and skill-oriented rather than gear-oriented. Total casting while moving Kil'jaeden's Cunning is overpowered and generally a boring idea -- it weakens our rotation and eventually the meaning of a well-played warlock.

The latest Kil'jaeden's Cunning change passively allows the three main fillers -- all of which have their own inherent importance to keep our rotation going -- to be cast while moving. Warlocks need movement as an challenge to casting to make life more interesting, but this recent change is a good compromise to keep movement from tipping too far into the domain of "not fun." Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: affliction, chaos-bolt, destruction, elemental-shaman, featured, fel-flame, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, hunter, hutner-q-and-a, incinerate, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, malefic-grasp, meaningful-rotation, shadow-bolt, spell-complexity, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Blood Pact: Patch 5.4 has a few ups but mostly downs

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill's raid sadly realized that the changes to KJC mean there will be no more air-bound soulwells.

Well. It's been a hell of a week on the PTR for warlocks, hasn't it? A few of the original patch notes have been changed for the better again in response to player feedback on the forums.

Don't get me wrong, Patch 5.4 is still largely a depressing bunch of nerfs for warlocks. But let's go over the changes and make sure we have everything straight. The usual disclaimer of "things can and may change" still applies to all of these patch notes.

Kil'jaeden's Cunning: Reverted, but still nerfed

Kil'jaeden's Cunning (KJC) is going back to being a passive! There is no movement penalty, but the talent only allows casting while moving for the cast-time filler spells of each spec: Malefic Grasp, Shadow Bolt, and Incinerate.

All specs still have major spells that we would really like to keep moving while casting for. Affliction appreciates being able to cast Malefic Grasp while moving, but would like the same for Drain Soul, since Drain Soul is basically just the execute version of Malefic Grasp. Demonology appreciates the ability to cast Shadow Bolt while moving, but casting Soul Fire below 20% they might like as well, for the same reasons affliction wants Drain Soul movement back. Destruction is lucky Shadowburn is instant, but that doesn't blind them from the fact that Chaos Bolt is rendered standstill.

PvP-oriented warlocks are also concerned about no more Fear on the move, but the changes to level 30 talents will help that. Howl of Terror is no longer a talent, but baseline for all warlocks and still learned at level 30. PvP warlocks will rejoice, as they can now choose an ability like Shadowfury without missing a melee peel like Howl of Terror, and either a tier-2 talent or Howl itself can act as an interrupt cover for our main CC. In Howl's place, our familiar conal snare is back under the name Demonic Breath.

However, the most recent change to KJC is only a compromise. Being able to cast a filler on the move alleviates some of the damage nerf from the talent change, but Blizzard still wants to encourage smart positioning and smart movement for casters. As Xelnath has pointed out on his game design blog, movement is the most basic counter for all DPS. Melee are limited by range to the target while casters are limited to only some abilities on the move. Being able to fire off enough abilities at ranged for melee or being able to cast everything all the time for casters just leads to too many encounters becoming tank-and-spank or reduced to a "many adds, handle it" style rather than interesting movement obstacles.

Fel Flame: Reverted, but still buffed

While PvE players were not enthused by a non-instant Fel Flame but similarly not really bummed, PvP warlocks were screaming about the crappiness of a cast-time Fel Flame. Fel Flame is a dual-spell school, which means if it got spell-locked via an interrupt, it would lock warlocks out of absolutely everything, except for a PvP trinket. That's a really bad idea for what was at the time the only movement option outside of activating Kil'jaeden's Cunning.

So Fel Flame is back to being instant -- hooray! Fel Flame is retaining its damage buff (up by 13%), however, to help again with the limited moving spells. The base mana cost was reduced by 2%, to help with frequent green fire jabs at the enemy. Fel Flame is also back to its Cataclysmic plain direct damage life: it will not refresh or extend any DoTs.

Ghostcrawler provided some developer aims on Twitter regarding Fel Flame:

As long as locks don't become backpedaling FF spamming machines, we think this change should work.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 18, 2013

We're going to try keeping Fel Flame as an instant, slightly buffed, with no dot refeshing. Intent wasn't to nerf FF on top of nerfing KJC.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 18, 2013

This is a buff or a nerf depending on what a warlock is trying to do. For destruction, this is an all-around buff. Affliction PvE likes this change, but affliction PvP will miss the ability to shardlessly keep DoTs up on a target while moving. Demonology is mostly OK with this change until they realize that this means Void Ray will not refresh Corruption anymore.

But overall, between Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Fel Flame, this is a victory for player feedback in the forums.

What about the other level 90 talents?

Mannoroth's Fury (MF) is still an activated talent for Patch 5.4. The only change is now that the ability will also buff the main AoEs of each spec by 100% in addition to area coverage for 10 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown.

This still isn't that much of a nerf, except possibly a minor nerf to PvP. Destro 'locks like to place Rain of Fire as stealth detection but also as a slight counter to pillar-humping enemies. The bigger the area, the more the stealth detection or area of the pillar backside that the 'lock can cover. The warlock can still do this, just not cover as much area as often as she could previously. Archimonde's Vengeance (AV) is next on the list for changes, according to an update by CM Lore. This is important because most warlocks feel that the talent is super weak. The damage done by the talent is negligible, even if the warlock times the ability during a major burst of unavoidable incoming damage. For example, if I tried to time AV for the Quills ability on 25-man heroic Ji-Kun, it would only give me about 440k damage done over 6 minutes. That is utterly pathetic for a 2-minute cooldown, of the final talent tier no less. My doomguard does almost twice that amount of damage in only the minute that he's out.

The other problem for Archimonde's Vengeance is that it shares the current problem of tanky-type Vengeance, where it encourages players to intentionally stand in really unpleasant floor effects in order to get more oomph out of the ability. Ghostcrawler tweeted that this method of boosting damage will not work for both tanky and warlock Vengeances in Patch 5.4. However, warlocks remain skeptical of the talent's usefulness until we see some major damage buffs to it. Almost no one takes the talent in endgame content anymore because it's very weak compared to the other two choices.

It goes downhill from here

Unfortunately, the warlock section of the Patch 5.4 PTR notes is full of nerfs. It's not shaping up to be a very fun patch for warlocks.

Demonic Gateway has been nerfed heavily in its group use. The debuff one receives after stepping through a gate on live realms is 15-seconds long, but Patch 5.4 wants to extend the debuff to a full minute. This would definitely impede Gateway's use on some encounters like Iron Qon that allow a portion of the raid to skip a phase's mechanic. Personally, I would rather a compromise of 30 seconds; that' s the cooldown for Demonic Circle: Teleport, so it would put Gateway at the level of merely a party-only teleport option for others and only a threat reduction for warlocks. However, warlocks are about the self-gain, and we're worried about what this will do to the usual strategy for the Kanrethad green fire fight, where Demonic Gateway is used very prominently to drop threat. Fortunately, the threat drop is part of the the Demonic Gateway debuff, so a warlock will remain threat-debuffed for the full 60 seconds. It's unclear whether this just affects the threat lost at the time of moving through the Gateway or also ongoing threat as the warlock continues to deal damage.

We already know that Rain of Fire received a nerf to ember generation, but we weren't sure how exactly. The patch notes say that Rain of Fire will have a reduced chance to generate embers, specifically. This might be like the chance-on-a-chance tweak to the tier 16 2-piece set bonus where it's a chance on a crit for Conflagrate, when a critical strike itself is a chance. (By the way, the 4-piece set bonus was nerfed for affliction and demonology where the percent chances were reduced to 8% instead of 20%.)

On the survivability front, Fel Armor is losing its 10% damage reduction in line with the similar moonkin and shadow priest stance nerfs. On the other hand, that's nothing compared to the Soul Leech nerf, which took the tier 1 talent down from a shield the size of 100% of a warlock's health to a maximum of 15%. I don't really care if it activates off a Shadowburn now; that is one sick nerf.

What is on the PTR right now?

Mannoroth's Fury has the AoE damage boost and Fel Flame is instant. The Demonic Gateway gives you a minute-long debuff, Fel Armor lost its flat damage reduction, and Soul Leech caps out at 15% of my health.

However -- Kil'jaeden's Cunning is still a 10-second duration on a 1-minute cooldown. Perhaps "soon" the newest changes to Kil'jaeden's Cunning will be available on the PTR for testing. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: archimondes-vengeance, chaos-bolt, demonic-gateway, drain-soul, featured, fel-armor, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, haunt, incinerate, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, malefic-grasp, mannoroths-fury, patch-5.4, ptr, rain-of-fire, shadow-bolt, shadowburn, soul-fire, soul-leech, unstable-affliction, void-ray, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Blood Pact: Inner demons in our talent selection

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thinks it's too difficult to convey moving while casting in a static screenshot, so, instead, have the Scholomance potion guy in front of a Demonic Gateway.

We covered Karazhan's pets, mounts, and fun last week, so this week, we'll cover Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep in the continuing quest to colle--

No. Sorry. If you really thought I was going to skip this past week's bombshell of warlock PTR patch notes for collecting pets from retro raids, I will scold you later for having no faith in me. Let's talk level 90 talent problems.

The changes so far Kil'jaeden's Cunning (KJC) is no longer passive at all, but purely an active button-pressing ability.Using KJC no longer snares the warlock, but provides regular cast-time casting unimpeded while moving.It activates for 15 seconds.It's a 1.5 minute cooldown.Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted on some changes to the original PTR patch notes concerning KJC nerf backlash: KJC is off the GCD.KJC can be used mid-cast.Haunt can be cast while moving without KJC.However, when I let my copy of the PTR fully update on Sunday, I could not replicate any of Lore's additions to KJC. Movement interrupted my Haunt and KJC was on the GCD. KJC interrupted a Malefic Grasp channel.

It's entirely possible the build Lore is talking about hasn't been pushed to the PTR yet, so relax, guys. We can brainstorm about the changes in the meantime while we wait for the opportunity to test them.

Should casters be able to cast everything while moving?

I may be immolated for this, but I think that no, casters should not be able to cast everything while moving. Target range impedes melee DPS, as should movement impede caster or ranged DPS. I think casters should be penalized for lazy or unnecessary movement.

Will not having KJC dip our DPS a little? Sure, but it's not going to be the end of the world. If you want an experience without KJC, trying using affliction on Primordius with Mannoroth's Fury. I began to pick my standing spots more carefully, and I would let other players get the killing blow on oozes so I could continue running to pick the dead ooze debuff up. I began to use the old practice of stagger casting, where I move a little then cast a little then move a little more.

It isn't the most optimal thing in the world, but then again...movement is supposed to impede casting. It's not supposed to be optimal.

Even with other caster specializations like elemental shaman having the ability to cast a certain spell 100% on the run, I think KJC can be balanced in active time and cooldown such that movement is an important thing to casters but we're not completely gutted in our DPS by movement. Currently, the shaman Spiritwalker's Grace is 15 seconds with a 2-minute cooldown, so clearly the current PTR KJC iteration is the base test before number tweaking. Warlocks should get on the PTR to properly test the spell in various PvE and PvP situations if they think the numbers should be different.

When would you use the PTR KJC versus stagger casting? Stagger casting obviously works in short distances with slower voidzones where you have time to stop and get 1-3 seconds of a cast off before you need to move again. KJC will help warlocks when we need to be constantly moving for a long distance or period of time. 15 seconds is the short end of a trinket proc's length of active time, so if you don't think you'll be able to stop and get that Chaos Bolt off before your proc fades, then you might want to use KJC. Losing DPS during movement

Lore mentioned Haunt as a spell we could cast while moving without the aid of KJC.

Ehhhhh, that's not really good news there. Haunt already is a short cast time; in fact, standing in my current raid gear of 14399 haste, Haunt is a 1.22-second cast time according to my tooltip. Unless I'm in a 100% running streak, I can definitely pause and stagger cast a Haunt off during a run.

We don't care about casting Haunt while moving; we care about casting Malefic Grasp (or Drain Soul) while moving. If we get our 2-piece T16 to proc, but then we have to move for a while, the proc is wasted. We also don't really care how hard the base Malefic Grasp channel is doing -- we care about that duplicate DoT damage we get off the channel ticks. Having to interrupt the channel and recast the entire channel due to movement is, frankly, going to suck, not to mention if you have to interrupt Drain Soul on an odd tick instead of a shard-granting even tick.

Fel Flame keeps getting mentioned as that band-aid to warlock DPS during movement. In previous expansions, yes, Fel Flame was the solution to DPS on the move. It was at the absolute bottom of our spell priority, even below Life Tap, because it's so mana-expensive and GCD-expensive for the damage it does. But now in Mists of Pandaria, Fel Flame has an additional problem: it extends DoTs. Affliction can get a little of the previous DoT on the target with proper use of Pandemic, but otherwise Fel Flame will refresh your DoT's stats.

So, with the new KJC change, if you have a very powerful DoT on the target and you need to move immediately, you're stuck either blowing KJC to continue DPS or not doing anything but running, because while Fel Flame will give you some direct damage, it will likely overwrite your powerful DoT with a weaker one. That's not cool. Improving moving DPS

How can we make Fel Flame useful again? Fel Flame is sometimes useful as a spell to refresh or extend a DoT when you can't get the normal DoT cast time off, but I think many warlocks use it more for the instant and moveable damage rather than the DoT extension. I'd like to see Fel Flame reverted back to its normal direct damage form.

Destruction will want to bargain for a spell to be cast while moving, so as a last resort they might appeal to using Fire and Brimstone to empower Fel Flame as a DoT extender if they're stuck using Fel Flame while moving. Demonology can easily cast either of the two instant-cast DoTs, or it can refresh or extend Corruption through a couple of abilities. Affliction already has the habit of reapplying DoTs with Soulburn: Soul Swap, so empowering a Fel Flame through Soulburn is just duplicating an ability we already have.

I think affliction won't give a crap about Haunt being cast while moving, but destruction might want the ability to cast Incinerate while moving. Destruction would absolutely love Chaos Bolt to be cast while moving, but I don't know that the developers will bend that way. Incinerate, on the other hand, is comparable to the elemental shaman's Lightning Bolt filler, and I think we can make an argument for destruction to be able to generate embers on the fly, just not necessarily spend them. Fel Flame is incredibly mana-expensive for destruction as it's not meant to be the filler spell, so spamming Fel Flame on the move for a long run is likely staying a poor decision.

For solving affliction's problems, it gets a little tricky. The obvious solution to not having as much filler Grasp going on is to put more damage on the DoTs. The problem is that it's been made clear multiple times that the developers don't want affliction to go back to being multidotting maniacs on any and every add fight. So a possible solution is to grant Haunt more of a damage bonus. This would promote smarter use of shards, but if you get screwed by RNG shard regeneration, you could possibly get really screwed on the DPS meter. Demonology and our level 90 talents

Does demonology care about the Kil'jaeden's Cunning nerf? Not really. Demonologists typically shift into Metamorphosis when they really need to move and spam Touch of Chaos for a bit. Demo's DoTs are all instant-cast as well, so movement might become an issue only during execute range when demo would prefer to cast Soul Fire instead.

Demonology might care about Mannoroth's Fury, though. Everyone appears to agree that having a gigantic Hellfire all the time is not necessarily useful, as in PvE at least mobs tend to get tanked and grouped up in a matter of seconds. Besides, Hellfire is already castable while moving, and Immolation Aura is an aura not a channel. You can maneuver your warlock with around the add pack like a weedwacker around a pole -- the extended range of the AoE doesn't really matter.

But maybe you're fond of bigger Hand of Gul'dan, like I am. A bigger Hand radius means more mobs affected with the Shadowflame DoT that generates fury, and the Mannoroth's Fury-less Hand of Gul'dan just looks puny after so much play under the talent. I foresee many macros of Mannoroth bound to Gul'dan, which might devalue the 4-piece T16 proc for demo a little.

But overall, demonology will be OK. It's destruction and affliction who are worried about the future of our level 90 talents. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: affliction, casting-while-moving, chaos-bolt, demonology, destruction, drain-soul, featured, fel-flame, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, hand-of-guldan, haunt, hellfire, immolation-aura, incinerate, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, malefic-grasp, mannoroths-fury, movement, soul-fire, touch-of-chaos, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Blood Pact: Karazhan and its abyssal depths of fun

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill .

Karazhan: the most beloved of retro raids. Players may put on the rose-colored glasses when they talk of how limited raiding was back in the Vanilla days, but Karazhan is often talked of with fondness. Going back is a pleasure, not a painful memory. It's with good reason -- the place is built like a castle tower, going up and up forever, and it's full of memorable mobs and scenery.

Karazhan also has some of the tier 4 Voidheart Raiment for warlocks, as well as a mount and now pets for everyone, so it's a weekly favorite of mine to visit.

Best spec to solo

Raids from The Burning Crusade expansion are still pretty easy to solo, whether you're in raid gear or greens. Any of the warlock specs can walk into Karazhan to solo, but I've found demonology to be the most useful. Dark Apotheosis might help you if your gear or skill is lacking and you find yourself dying. Demonic Leap is more fun than flat running -- especially in Karazhan's Opera and Guardian Library areas -- and the Falling Meteor glyph will save you from stupid leaps off ramps.

BC was also an expansion of spell resistance and spell immunities by various creatures, and some of those mechanics still linger in old instances despite their disappearance from modern raiding. While every warlock spec can get fire or shadow with Fel Flame, demonology also offers both physical damage with the felguard and spell damage by the player, which is useful if you butt-pull a wyrm in the Guardian's Library. Finally, Hellfire/Immolation Aura is an easy, run-around AoE toggle rather than trying to set up mana-sucking Seeds or Rains of Fire.

So, in the end, play how you want, but my fastest Karazhan times have been done as a purple demon. Pull as much trash as you want to; I personally like to pull entire rooms at once. I would recommend big bags, because even though Karazhan has a couple of vendors in the instance and a place to stop outside for a vendor mount, there's still a lot of ghosts and creatures with loot inside. Finally, don't forget to turn up your game sound and music -- it's worth it! Mythical trivia in the Gatehouse

Karazhan certainly has trivia as most of us know the word, both in the expansion itself and before. Greek Hecate's equivalent, Trivia was the Roman goddess of witchcraft, the harvest moon, and three-way roads. The atmosphere already has the witchcraft vibe down pat with creepy organ music alternating with a whistling wind, ghostly servants still wandering about, and the eerie bell tolls if you stick around past the hour.

But if you talk to Berthold the doorman, he'll tell you there's it a literal three-way dungeon route in the beginning of the raid. To start, you can go any one of three ways: left to Attumen the Huntsman,up the center behind Berthold the doorman to Moroes, orthrough the Servant's Quarters to the right.Eventually all three routes will meet up at the Opera Hall. You'll end up killing at least six of the eleven set encounters to finish out the raid, plus a bonus random rare in the Servant's Quarters if you like.

The random rare elite in the Servant's Quarters spawns with an emote after you kill all of the trash in each of the three rooms. The elite resembles one of the trash species and sits in an appropriate room: Rokad the Ravager is a darkhound; Hyakiss the Lurker is a stealthy spider; Shadikith the Glider is the bat boss. Once you finish looting, taking the west ramp from the bat room will lead you up to Maiden's quarters. The concubines in Maiden's hallway will turn into succubi to charm and seduce you if you're not quick to kill them. Maiden herself will silence you every other second if you stand in melee, so pull out a tanking blueberry to easily kill her.

If you turn right, instead of continuing down Maiden's hallway after the servant's access ramp, you'll be in the top area of the Grand Ballroom. To your right again would be the Opera Hall, but you have to kill Moroes first before the stage manager will let you in. If you continue around the balcony, you'll find a ghostly nobleman at one of the balcony seats overlooking the Banquet Hall. He's actually related to the Ebonlockes of Darkshire, though who knows if our own Kanrethad was, too.

Stroke of Midnight

But many more a player has visited Karazhan in the past not for two optional bosses but to slaughter Attumen the Huntsman for his fiery mount. You can pull his trash on your way around to his stable, or you dance around the trash to pull him and thus all of the trash leading up to him through the walls. Just beyond him is Koren the blacksmith who will act as a vendor if you're Honored or higher with the raid's reputation Violet Eye.

The broken wooden staircase in the Stables leads up to the the Guardhouse, where once there was a boss behind the Blood-Drenched Door who dropped a bat pet -- but now nevermore, since he was part of the Wrath of the Lich King launch event. So instead, just skip through the Scullery (because careful of the occasional stun) and on to Moroes in the Banquet Hall. When you're done with Moroes and have picked up the old Mongoose enchant off his cold, twice-dead body, if you brought friends, you can have a game of musical chairs on your favorite voice chat program.

Leave the Banquet Hall to find yourself in the Grand Ballroom, which is where you'd end up if you came up the stairs behind Berthold. Going up the stairs to the north brings us back to the balconies where Maiden's hallway connects. Now, we can finally do Opera for the chance at our first Karazhan battle pet. Remember to look up at the ceiling as you cross the house seating to Demonic Leap over the pit and railing. If the door doesn't open (I haven't tried), drop down into the pit and back up again to talk to Barnes, the stage manager, about performing a play.

It's random whether you'll actually get Red Riding Hood which might drop the Lil' Bad Wolf battle pet. The other two plays are Romulo and Julianne or the Wizard of Oz event. Hunters cannot tame Tito, Dorothee's summoned dog in the Oz event, but now with the Raiding with Leashes II: Attunement Edition, you can finally bring Tito home. Finally, if you do get the Big Bad Wolf, you'll find the original source of the Deadly Boss Mods "Run away, little girl! Run away!" warning sound.

Heading off-stage from Opera leads around and up, around and up, until finally you come to the Broken Stair, which is the broken part of the tower. The Side Entrance door once required a key, but now opens to anyone for the side door; you can mount up outside on the bridge. Continuing down, the doorway opposite the broken stone ramp leads both to Nightbane and to the Servant's access to the Grand Ballroom. If you wish to summon Nightbane, you won't need the urn anymore, but you still have to do the questline to unlock the dragon.

Instead of killing Nightbane, we'll wind our way around ghosts up and around until we get to the Menagerie, where we'll find the Curator. Hopefully we'll also find some tier gloves and a battle pet, but sometimes the old robot is stubborn. In the Guardian's Library, you'll find some of the NPCs involved in Nightbane's questline, but on a quick visit for battle pets, you can just Leap off the end to skirt around the mana wyrms and Curator-like sentinels. Be careful with leaping on the ramps: you can actually go over the railing! When you get to a library landing with orc warlocks and white imps called Homunculi, find the hidden bookcase door. That'll lead you down to the satyr boss who will drop an imp battle pet along with the original squid staff.

The next landing has two ramps leading off and up. Going left goes to the Shade of Aran, where I like to gleefully move out of Flame Wreath on purpose. After the landing with Ethereal trash, there'll be another set of two ramps leading off. The ramp going up leads to the Ghostbusters dragon, though I often kill him before the beams appear. Going down brings us to an Ethereal vendor and the much-awaited Gamesman's Hall.

I'd actually been using Tikari's strat before Kristin Marshall wrote on it, and it has worked very well for me. Of course, everybody who does Chess knows to move pawns out in front of the king to move in the case of fire. The strength of Tikari's strat lies in bringing the rooks out, for their damage will help protect your other pieces. The thing most people forget is how to get out of a piece: the piece becomes your pet, so just right-click on your pet frame and dismiss it. When you beat Chess, you can come back later with a friend and play as either side. Finally, the warlock pet we've all been waiting for: the Netherspace Abyssal. As your guardian minions tower over you in-game, the Supremacied Infernal lookalike Netherspace Abyssal towers over other battle pets, and can reach the height of a human character with a pet biscuit! Prince Malchezzar can make you think you're nearly dead, but you'll likely kill him before he gets that ability off. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: chess-event, curator, demonic-leap, featured, fiendish-imp, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, hellfire, immolation-aura, karazhan, lil-bad-wolf, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, menagerie-custodian, moroes, netherspace-abyssal, opera, prince-malchezzar, raiding-with-leashes-attunement, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Blood Pact: Using CompareBot to see differences in logs

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill didn't waste time getting a Whole Body Shrinka' so she could re-enact the Genie describing his living arrangments.

Originally, the last part of this column's series on World of Logs (WoL) would be talking about the other parts of RaidBots (EpeenBot and DPSBot) with WoL rankings, but as time went on, I realized I wanted to look at that data over a patch or tier rather than over just a week. Besides, I believe it's time next week for a break in these serious warlock matters.

The previous four posts went over a very basic introduction to WoL, the graphs of WoL important to warlocks, looking at buffs and debuffs on a timeline, and digging deep into the combat log. This final post will look at comparing two logs more easily than flipping between browser tabs.

What is CompareBot and what can it do for me?

RaidBots (also know as DPSBot) is a site that pulls data from public logs in World Logs and compiles information about overall damage done (or healing done) across all the specs, classes, and fights. In the end, it's a good tool for looking at trends in the overall raiding population from scrub to pro, at least according to what's publicly available on World of Logs. (It's well known that many top guilds log privately; on the flip side, casual players who aren't fully involved with reading up on WoW blogs generally don't even log at all.)

However, DPSBot's graphs are not necessarily great at determining how well a spec is performing its intended job, despite what QQers might want to claim. There are a lot of caveats about generalizing or minimalizing the differences between raid groups in spec stacking and strategizing. RaidBots doesn't measure utility or even target-specific DPS, so padded damage also needs to be taken into account. CompareBot, however, uses very specific parses; you must choose a specific boss fight or time frame AND a player's detail page.

Who should you compare? You can compare yourself one week to yourself another week. You can compare yourself on a fight to a top warlock parse of the same fight. The most often comparison I make is myself with another guilded or applicant warlock after we've played in the same raid. The more you keep the same about the compared parses -- spec, gear, fight length, fight type, particular raid parse -- the more direct your comparison can be. Example: Demonology on Lei Shen

Demonology is literally the middle spec: it is listed between affliction and destruction. But it also is a good hybrid of DoTs and direct damage -- affliction is an extreme of DoTs and destruction is an extreme of direct damage -- and it have plenty of AoE and pet options to boot. So it makes a pretty good spec to chose when you're learning how to look at various types of warlock damage by the numbers.

When I put parses into CompareBot, I like to note which is which in the optional note box. CompareBot's tables will always use "1" and "2" unfortunately, but it provides a table at the top with the details of the parse numbers should you forget which is which. If you are comparing two distinct raid nights, try to pick either two kills or two similarly timed attempts. If you'll remember from talking about the WoL graphs, comparing an attempt to a kill is often ill-advised, since an attempt will likely be missing one or two phases from a kill. Comparing two similar attempts helps you figure out how the two parses dealt with that particular phase mechanic, but comparing two kills will help show the entire toolkit at play.

As you can see, my demonology spec would prefer my affliction gear had far more mastery on it, and I am definitely not a superb demonology player, but it helps get the AoE job done on Lei Shen. To combine all the lessons at once, I did a comparison on Lei Shen 25N between myself (Ponerya / Parse 1), the other demo 'lock in my raid (Gv / Parse 2), and a ranked demo 'lock parse -- specifically #60 of demonology warlocks on 25N Lei Shen US & EU -- of similar time frame (Rayelle / Parse 3).

Tabs by the numbers

I'm actually going to go a little bit backwards on the tabs today. The tabs are fairly straightforward in what information they provide, but we can talk a little bit more in detail about what tables provide what kinds of insight for warlocks.

Buffs and Debuffs: Uptime is typically the set of columns that does the job for you. Having a buff overwrite itself is not very good, so sometimes the Amount or Amount per Minute can be misleading as to how well buffs were handled. The buffs page also unfortunately lists every buff, including all the static raid buffs that last for 60 minutes, so you'll have to dig through the list to find your trinket and potion specific buffs.

Healing and Damage Taken: Typically this would be a healer-oriented table, but you can use the bottom table on the Healing Targets tab to judge either how well you avoid damage by looking at how much healing you took from whom or how trigger-happy your healers are to heal your Life Tap.

You can use the Healing tab to dig into the numbers of self-heals or the massive tables of the Healing Taken tab to dig into what the raid's healers did on you by specific spell. There is a note at the bottom that absorbs are guessed at, which is the usual problem of trying to parse healing absorbs.

Finally, you can dig into the numbers of what specifically was damaging you with the Damage Taken tab. You'll notice that Rayelle took a quarter of the damage Gv and I took from Ball Lightning. This might be because my guild's strategy is to stack up with Ball Lightning and power our way through with AoE damage and heals. Targets: This is an important tab for DPS. A high damage done overall could be because the warlock is fantastic at single-target or it could involve damage done on multiple targets through AoE or multidotting.

Amount is the raw damage done number. On targets that would be focus-fired down (as opposed to AoE), typically higher damage is reflective of better buff and cooldown usage. This means either cooldowns were used during focusing on that target or when appropriate procs happened outside of primary DPS done, DoTs and other affects were refreshed on the target.

Percent is the percent of damage on that target of that player's overall damage dealt, and it's useful for figuring out how much time a player spent on a particular target. Because of DoTs, warlocks can have a higher percentage of damage done on a boss when not actively targeting the boss, so a high boss percentage in a multi-bodied fight is typically the beginning of a sign that the warlock multidotted well.

Damage: Finally, the big daddy of all tables. This breaks up by spell and column category your damage done to anything. I like to check off all the boxes at first and then turn on specific columns rather than trying to scroll through the entire table. Here's a summary: Missed / Immune: Hopefully this is all dashes all the way down. Your warlock should be hit-capped, even if affliction can fudge it a little under. If your warlock is dodging or parrying, maybe ask the question "Why is the warlock tanking?"Damage/DPS: Damage from Hits and Damage from DoTs might be easier to read than the Total Damage column. The caveat here is that the Ability DPS number comes from the Total Damage divided by the parse length in seconds, rather than representing the DPET or Damage Per Execute Time (DPET helps us measure efficiency of abilities in a rotation).Crit %: This is usually where you'll find your RNG argument if there is one. It's also super-easy to tell if a warlock used the Lei Shen trinket correctly (as Rayelle did).# Hits/DoT Ticks: This is not as useful as the Per Minute version.Hits/Ticks per Minute: This speaks to the activity (or haste levels for DoTs) of the warlock. A warlock who dies mid-fight might have a lower overall hit count, but if she has a high per-minute rate of hits of the right spells, she's likely a skilled damage dealer (despite having floor problems).Context and caveats

The first tab CompareBot presents you with is the Summary tab. This tab shows the obvious reasons why one player did better than another: major cooldowns.

You'll see from the comparison that Gv and I played similarly when it came to major cooldowns. We actually both potted as well, as you can see in my parse, but for some reason it's not showing up in CompareBot. Rayelle, on the other hand, is currently a troll, but she had to have been an orc at the time of the parse to make use of that wonderful racial 4 times.

Rayelle also has something weird going on with her Bloodlust count. Normally this box is either 1 or 0, and sometimes you'll see a 2 if the fight lasts longer than 10 minutes. But Rayelle has three Bloodlust counts in a 9-minute fight. How does the even work without dying?

It's actually a simple and nonmalicious answer: three shaman cast Bloodlust within milliseconds of each other. When you look at the buffs and debuffs graph for Rayelle's parse, it's clear she only got Bloodlust's effect once. Since each shaman's Bloodlust applies one Sated debuff to the player, the combat log saw three Sated debuffs applied in total (even if they overwrote each other!), and therefore CompareBot figured that three Bloodlusts were cast.

In summary, pack your salt shakers and beware of what one specific resource for spying into raid parses will tell you. Context is key when evaluating raid parses, so using multiple sources and analyses of the data will help you form a more complete picture of what happened. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: compare, comparebot, comparison, damage-done, demonology-warlock, featured, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, hits-minute, hits-per-minute, lei-shen, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, raid-parse, raidbots, ticks-minute, ticks-per-minute, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, world-of-logs, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Hordebloods miniatures customizer has WoW in his blood

When we first spotted the evocative Hordeblood series of custom miniatures by Dave from Wargaming Tradecraft (thanks, Joe!), we were suitably impressed. And then we wandered into the wilderness of Dave's seemingly endless how-to resources for miniatures hobbyists. And then we heard about Headshots from the Heart, his online gaming charity event benefiting Child's Play.

And then I was like, "Heeey, wait a minute. So who is this Dave guy? And how come he does so much cool stuff?"
WoW Insider: Dave, your Hordeblood series rules! How long have you been a miniatures hobbyist? I'm guessing it was quite possibly Warhammer that sucked you in?

Dave: Epic-scale Warhammer 40,000 was fun, and it's what I'd attribute to getting me into wargaming but certainly not painting. We're talking about figures the height of the "I" on your keyboard (just the "I," not the button) and tanks between dime- and quarter-sized -- as both a new painter and kid, there isn't really much opportunity to be artistic. I would like to return to Epic at some point, just to see what I can do with minis that scale with the skills I have now.

I make a point of signing and dating all my figures, so I have some idea when I started. The earliest go back to 1996, when I'd've been 13. It started as a small painting kit of Heroes Quest fantasy models that my parents bought me before going up to our cottage one summer. I enjoyed painting but as a kid, there was no game associated, so I wanted more.

At what point did you realize that it was the miniatures rather than the game that had really captured your imagination?

Eventually I got into Warhammer 40k, painting and gaming with figures a few inches tall and tanks the size of pop cans. I would pick up fantasy miniatures occasionally because it was enjoyable to paint something different from all the science fiction troops in my army. (To this day, I still suggest that if you're getting a little burned out painting one particular style, shift gears briefly.) That's when I recall starting to really enjoy painting but not over the game. Maybe I just prefer painting fantasy miniatures?

Eventually we got older and as school began taking up more time, we may stopped playing as often but I didn't stop painting. Life got busier, but painting provided a way to relax. As more of the army became painted, there's a real sense of accomplishment seeing something you've worked on come together. ... That's when I started experimenting with other miniatures to hone my skills and yearned to tackle a larger project that would become my "Art Army."

... Looking over what everyone was playing, I saw the Trollbloods and had this mental flash like "They kinda look like Horde." ... I wanted an army I could play too. But first an foremost, I was inspired. Sounds like you fell in love pretty hard.

I was even able to get some professional validation a few years back when my wife and I took a vacation to Baltimore, partly to partake in GW's Games Day event and Golden Demon painting competition. I didn't win, but both the miniatures I entered made it through to the first cut and were put on display as such. I was disappointed, sure, but in retrospect it's pretty awesome to get recognized like that.

For readers who might not be familiar with the miniatures hobby, tell us a little bit about getting into conversions. What's that all about?

Well, there are a couple reasons why miniature artists get into conversions. All of them allow the artist to get really creative.. or maybe more accurately, differently creative. Personally, I prefer painting to conversions.

I've been converting my Hordebloods out of necessity because I'm looking at the army as a whole art project and a way to learn something new. I've even seen entire armies that look like xenomorphs from the Aliens movies or the droid armies from Star Wars. Plenty of artists also come up with their own original designs and will do whatever sculpting and modifications it takes to bring their vision to life.

When you buy a miniature, they're designed to stand in one pose, sometimes more. Think about buying an action figure -- if you can even pose it, you're limited to the way the joints move. Miniatures are the same way, which means to give your army some personality, they sometimes need to be chopped up and repositioned. Not only will they stand out from people fielding the exact same models, but you can re-sculpt figures so they look really dynamic.

Other times, conversions are to satisfy an in-game requirement. Game designers often release rules for figures that don't exist yet, so you might have these awesome troops for your army, but it'll be months (or years) before you can actually use them. Rather than wait, people will find a way to build figures or vehicles that look like their descriptions in the rules. That must have been a fascinating process for the Hordeblood series.

For the Hordebloods, I played with a lot of different things like carving stone into a hammer and using shark teeth as spear heads. Embracing Green Stuff for the first time was the really daunting task, however. Now, I'd used it before, but only for simple things like filling in elbow gaps or cleaning the lines where two parts were glued together.

Actually sculpting a head for my tauren had me really conflicted. The first attempt looked nothing like a tauren but looked like a surprisingly good gorilla. It took two more revisions before I had the head how I wanted. Making the pandaren head took a few more tries than that, but a bunch of those were just getting the size right. As someone with zero artistic schooling, I was ecstatic.

When did you decide to start sharing your experience and advice with others on the web? Is that something you've added on to your existing hobby work, or has it eaten into your production time?

When I'd been just getting into the hobby during the mid- to late '90s, the internet had very little in the way of hobby resources. People didn't have digital cameras, and images took too long to download anyway.

I began commenting a little on the forum and started creating some tutorials that I shared on my DeviantArt account, but neither felt like I could share well enough. That's when I decided to build a blog and see where things take me.

Has it eaten into time I could be painting? Absolutely -- but sometimes the interaction with people or just the fact I'm sharing what I've created is just the motivation I've needed to push through a rough patch when I'm feeling unmotivated. It's also helped me analyse how I can improve.

But it definitely messes with my "flow." I like to allow a miniature to speak to me as I paint, switching brushes, pulling out whatever paints seem right and allowing paint to flow from one area to another. Sometimes documenting how I paint a miniature too closely will completely derail that natural process, and I have to work harder. That's why I have some incredibly detailed tutorials like my Dungeoneer, while others are just photos taken as I pause the process. I've even caught myself while working on a detailed tutorial, realizing that I meant to take pictures much earlier. You're a longtime Warcraft fan from the days of Warcraft 2, isn't that right?

I am indeed -- ruined my first keyboard when knocking over a pop as I threw my arms up in victory after beating a friend in Warcraft 2 over the modem. (That's like telephone LAN gaming, for you kids these days.) ... After trying games like The Realm and Ultima Online, I swore I'd never pay a monthly fee for a video game, but open beta changed all that and hooked some friends and I on World of Warcraft.

We were never hardcore raiders, mostly puttering in our guild the Great Foul Dead, though joining a larger guild did give me time to polish up my StarCraft skills while raiding. (Hey, I survived the longest and clocked some of the highest DPS -- what else was I going to do while waiting to regroup after a wipe?) The raiding days were interesting; people thought the "More Dots" video was a recording of one of our runs. (It wasn't.) And we once pulled Onyxia while the MT was still wearing his pink dress. (Not our worst Ony run.)

Around level 70, we became casual again and began Grave Song, raiding old dungeons like ZG and MC. My main was an undead warlock Nagash on the PvP server Skullcrusher. You could find me in battlegrounds (worked up to Legionnaire) raiding Alliance towns before level 60 was common. I was part of many BB / GZ protection runs .(There didn't used to be goblin guards. A faction on a PvP server often had to work together to fend off campers so allies could get quests done.) And I defended capital cities from some of the first server raids. And you met your wife in WoW!

Indeed! It was pretty awesome, really -- I guess it's more common these days, but how many people can say their dates involved crawling through dungeons and defeating evil? We'd spend time outside of WoW too, but we were separated by 14 hours of road and the Canadian/U.S. border. Warcraft and voice chat provided ways for us to spend time together and grow closer. Since so many of my friends played WoW at the time, it also meant she got to know everyone really well too. When we would spend time in person, there were no uncomfortable moments.

The plan is she'll be moving to Canada with me, and while she's able to stay here for now, our lives are still in that wonderful limbo that is immigration. (Advice to anyone else in our situation? Keep records of everything. Chat and phone logs, travel logs, receipts, etc.)

Now that WoW is in the past, how much time do you manage to spend on weekly basis on painting and conversions?

Well, there's plenty of other distractions. We live in a small town now and don't really know many people, so we've been playing some games again as a means of being social, mostly League of Legends.

But the hobby continues to call to me. Generally I alternate between painting and writing, as all these tutorials can take quite a while to write up. When I'm just casually working on things, I might put in three hours or so to wind down at the end of the night during the week and maybe an afternoon or evening on the weekend. If I'm in my groove and/or my wife's also occupied on hobby projects of her own, then I can easily spend most of an evening and all weekend painting. In that time, I can do between two to three miniatures in a two-week period. Apparently, that hasn't satiated your gaming appetite! Tell us about Headshots From the Heart.

Headshots from the Heart was an event we started last year to raise money for Childs Play, a charity launched by the guys at Penny Arcade that helps sick kids around the world. The basic premise is that a group of gamers play Borderlands for 24 hours straight, and people pledge to sponsor them on a per-headshot-kill basis. It's a great way to take the action gaming genre and show that these violent games can be used for a good cause.

In addition to pledges, we get straight donations, run auctions for awesome loot provided by fantastic sponsors and even ran a LAN this year. The entire event is streamed live online and money gets donated through ChipIn or eBay Giving Works, so we don't handle any cash.

We've had two incredibly successful years of it now. Last year we raised nearly $3,000, and this year we're still waiting for all the pledges to come in but we're approaching $5,000. A lot of work went into the last few months to make this happen and we're already talking about what we're do to make next year even better! "I never thought of playing WoW like that!" -- and neither did we, until we talked with Game of Thrones' Hodor (Kristian Nairn) ... a blind ex-serviceman and the guildmates who keep him raiding as a regular ... and a 70-year-old grandma who tops her raid's DPS charts as its legendary-wielding GM. Send your nominations to lisa@wowinsider.com. Tags: customizing, facebookfeed, featured, Hordebloods, miniatures, Warhammer-40K, world-of-warcraft-interviews, wow-community, wow-interviews, wow-people

Filed under: Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

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Blood Pact: Combat log kung fu for warlocks

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is finishing out the World of Logs posts while she hunts for BC-era battle pets.

Have you ever tried to read the combat log? Maybe you're on the PTR testing a spell change or you want to know how often a new trinket procs, so you open the combat log chat window and start reading.

You get twenty-something lines down before you realize something horrifying -- that's only one second of combat. Your jaw slowly falls to the floor and you reach up to pull your hair out as you contemplate reading a combat log for an entire raid fight -- that can sometimes last more than six hundred seconds and includes far more actors than just you and the training dummy.

Luckily for us, when events are printed in a specified format without too much variety, computers can read and process --or parse -- these lines magnitudes faster than we humans can. World of Logs has graphs and charts to help us understand our performance, but it also includes what is basically Google for your combat log. Just like there are tips to speed up and pinpoint your browser searches, there are tricks you can use to query events better in the World of Logs expression editor.

Combat log queries 101

Compiler errors -- where you typoed a constant name or you put a number where the program expects a word or string -- are easy to make and easy to fix. When it comes to knowing the "words" or spelling of a query expression, there's really no substitute for having a dictionary open nearby. Like real-life vocabularies, you'll eventually learn expressions through either memorization or simply by using them all the time. Here's the expression editor list of constants and identifiers, and you can acquire a dictionary of spells by simply using a good database like Wowhead.

On the other hand, logic errors -- e.g., where you put an 'and' when you meant an 'or' -- will still give you results, just not the ones you wanted. The order of operations is really simple: anything within parentheses goes together and then the editor goes in order left to right.

sourceName="Ponerya" and spell="Incinerate"

AND: Using 'and' will tie together attributes and focus down your query results to specific events. This example returns all the times I cast Incinerate.

sourceName="Ponerya" or spell="Incinerate"

OR: Using 'or' means you're including a different item or attribute than the previous item. This example returns all the actions I did as well as all the times Incinerate was cast, whether it was mine or another warlock's.

(sourceName="Ponerya" or sourceName="Rekviem") and spell="Incinerate"

sourceName="Ponerya" and (spell="Incinerate" or spell="Conflagrate")

PARENTHESES: Much like math, you can write parentheses to group similar chunks together. In the first example, I grouped together warlock names to show all the times either of us cast Incinerate (but it would leave out all the times a third destruction warlock cast Incinerate). In the second example, I grouped together the spells to show all the times I cast either Incinerate or Conflagrate.

Tip: You can write the code all in one line, but entering a chunk of code on a new line can help you visually separate conceptual components and see if your logic will work as intended.

Now that we have the linguistic basics down, let's see a couple of warlock queries in action.
Wreak Havoc with a bouncing Shadowburn

Much like affliction has a glyphed Soul Swap to copy DoTs to two different targets, destruction has Havoc to duplicate a filler or Immolate to two different targets.

While Havoc is the reason for many awesome pictures of double dragons, a sweet trick with Havoc is to "bounce" Shadowburn onto a healthier target using a second target who is about to die. Since Shadowburn consumes an ember and is only available during the execute range of health (below 20%), it's a powerful hit, often hitting as hard as Chaos Bolt normally does.

This trick is applicable in both PvP and PvE, as both often have multiple targets: there's almost always a group of enemy players or the raid boss and his/her minions. All you need are two targets with at least one below 20% health. Since the Havoc target will be different from the Shadowburn target, and moving mobs or players can cause difficulties in selecting targets quickly, warlocks often use focus, mouseover, or specific target macros for Havoc.

/cast [@focus] Havoc

/cast [@mouseover] Havoc

/cast [tar="Tortos"] Havoc

But let's say you and I already have our Havoc macros ready and used. We stepped into Throne of Thunder and realized that the fourth encounter of turtle air hockey would give us plenty of Havoc-bouncing practice.

First, let's find out when I cast Shadowburn.

sourceName="Ponerya" and spell="Shadowburn"

Shadowburn is actually a complex spell: it deals damage and applies a debuff, and then 5 seconds later when the debuff falls off, it returns one of my class resources depending on whether the target died or not. This query result shows when I cast it, what got hit by it, how much damage it dealt, and how much mana I received from it. (Since the Whirl Turtles don't technically die but sit at 1 health point, you'll sadly never get embers from Shadowburning a Whirl Turtle.)

This query also shows all the times Shadowburn damaged the boss, but you won't see a line of me casting Shadowburn specifically on Tortos until the end (when Tortos fell under 20% health). Since I really only care about the Shadowburn and Havoc applications on Tortos, I'm going to focus the query a little more.

sourceName="Ponerya" and targetName="Tortos"
and (spell="Havoc" or spell="Shadowburn")

Havoc has 3 stacks and a 25-second cooldown. If you use Chaos Bolt with Havoc, you consume all three stacks with one Bolt. Everything else you can use with Havoc -- including Shadowburn -- consumes only one stack. So, assuming you time it correctly and have three full embers ready, you can hit Tortos three times with Shadowburn per Havoc application.

The times I remembered to hit Tortos with a Havoc, I never did so three times. Maybe I didn't have the embers? Maybe I wanted to refresh the Immolate on Tortos with Havoc? Maybe I forgot I had Havoc up and I cast Incinerate out of habit? We can expand the query if we want to.

sourceName="Ponerya" and targetName="Tortos"
and (
spell="Havoc" or spell="Shadowburn"
or spell="Incinerate"
or spell="Conflagrate"
or (fullType=SPELL_AURA_REFRESH and spell="Immolate")
)

Let's write it in English:

I want things only I cast, but only when the spells hit Tortos, and only these spells -- Shadowburn and also Havoc and also Incinerate and also Conflagrate and also whenever I reapplied Immolate.

From here, you'll get into complex combat logic like realizing that Incinerate has a travel time, so I would see me cast Incinerate twice before the first one even lands. And eventually you'll realize that sometimes the combat log goofs and puts events out of order, especially when multiple events happen within tenths of a second.

But I'm not here today to explain the intricacies of how the combat log interprets combat action. So let's move on to a proc and DoT example in the expression editor.

Tracking stacks with procs and DoTs

An important part of playing affliction is paying attention to gear and raid buff procs so DoT refreshes can be properly timed. But it's hard to tell with the buffs and debuffs graph exactly whether you applied a DoT when a trinket proc occurred, or if it was just holdover from before the proc. So let's explore with the expression editor how an Agony refresh is timed with that great stacking proc trinket, Wushoolay's Final Choice. (Since we often reapply DoTs with a Soulburn: Soul Swap, Unstable Affliction and Corruption should also be applied, but let's keep this simple.)

I don't care about when Agony ticked, so to borrow from the previous example, I'm only going to look at when I applied it, instead of also every time it dealt damage.

sourceName="Ponerya" and fullType=SPELL_AURA_REFRESH and spell="Agony"

Wushoolay's Final Choice actually has two effects going on: there's the duration of the buff and there's the stacking intellect buff (the tooltip has a placeholder number). The part we care about is the stacking intellect buff. In combat, the right overpowering number of stacks varies depending on what has been proccing so far for the player, but the general rule is to refresh DoTs with a Soulburn: Soul Swap on the fifth and tenth stacks of the buff. I also care when the stacking buff fell off, so the code becomes:

sourceName = "Ponerya" and spell = "Electrified"
and (amount >= 5 or fullType = SPELL_AURA_REMOVED)

Here's the combined query on a Patchwerk-like fight like Jin'rokh normal:

sourceName = "Ponerya"
and (
(spell="Agony" and fullType=SPELL_AURA_REFRESH)
or
(spell = "Electrified" and (amount >= 5 or fullType = SPELL_AURA_REMOVED) )
)

And...that's really it for looking at a DoT with the expression editor. If we care about overall or average damage done, we'll probably get more use out of one of the charts or graphs.

You forgot demonology AGAIN

In fact, I've been spending the past couple of weeks playing demonology in a variety of PvE environments, for my own betterment at playing that spec I rarely play, but also because the ungodly awesome AoE makes me feel useful on Lei Shen 25N. I spent this week's column using destruction and affliction examples so I could spend an entire column next week drilling down on two demonology warlocks with CompareBot.

See, I didn't forget at all.

Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: affliction, agony, buff, combat-log, debuff, destruction, DoT, expression-editor, featured, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, havoc, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, proc, shadowburn, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, world-of-logs, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks, wushoolays-final-choice

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Blood Pact: Catching up on Patch 5.3

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is free to pet battle all day, e'ry day.

I tried to gauge when Patch 5.3 would hit so that I'd end the series on World of Logs just in time, but unfortunately I overestimated and the new patch has cut me off. With my original plan of posts, I'd be a week short, but now...uhhhh it might be a halftime break.

In case you've missed the World of Logs posts so far, here's a recap: A brief overview of ranking and the combo of how to tell what warlock or pet you would or should be looking at,Looking closer at some of the graphs on World of Logs, andHow to use the buffs and debuffs graph to gauge proper cooldown or proc usage, as well as a basic understanding of what stats (for trinket procs) do for each spec.I intend to explore some warlock-specific examples using the expression editor to dive deep into the combat log, but I'm not sure I can fit it all into one post. I'll finish the series off with a deeper look at the damage done tables and how the spells spread for each spec in general raid encounter styles.

But this week? This week is a little shorter and lighter while we go over what Patch 5.3 means for warlocks.

Obligatory information caveat: The patch notes last I looked were updated May 14th, but they could be added to or changed in between writing and patch day.

Smarter smart heals and pet avoidance: Healers' smart heals are now preferring players over pets. However, warlocks apparently already had some pretty OP avoidance pet-wise, so we won't really notice this.

Guardian chain casts! Both versions of the Doomguard and demonology's Wild Imps will now chain cast instead of having that weird cast and then wait effect going on.

Dark Intent costs less mana to cast. I suppose this is cool if you just switched specs, but even if you're Life Tapless in destruction, who cares.

Fire and Brimstone loses its ember cost, gives to affected spells. I goofed last week by accidentally sticking this sentence in with the World of Logs stuff. That'll teach me to work on two posts at the same time. Fire and Brimstone has always let destruction warlocks cast an AoE curse, but in 5.3, warlocks won't be docked a full burning ember when they activate Fire and Brimstone. The next Immolate, Incinerate, Conflagrate, or Curse will drain a full burning ember, instead.

The wording is that the Fire and Brimstone "effect remains active as long as the Warlock has at least 1 Burning Ember remaining," so I'm not sure if this means pressing Fire and Brimstone once allows a warlock to chain together two to four AoE-amplified spells. We'll see on Tuesday.

Soulburn: Health Funnel helps healing, no longer heals: My soloing attempts are saddened by this. No more OP Soulburning back my voidlord's health? Ah, well. Maybe I'll have to switch from Soul Leech to Dark Regeneration now.

Glyph of Siphon Life healing stabilized: Glyph of Siphon Life in Mists of Pandaria has been a heal worth 20% damage dealt of the primary DoT -- Corruption for affliction and demonology and Immolate for destruction. In Patch 5.3, it's changing to a flat 0.5% maximum health heal when either Corruption or Immolate deals damage. Of course, the key phrase is maximum health which can increase with various raid abilities, talent combos, or personal cooldowns.

Currently, in near-all normal-mode Throne of the Thunder gear with Dark Intent up, my warlock sits at about 550k health, so this translates to roughly a 2.7k heal per Corruption tick. On average, my Siphon Life ticks have been giving me only 1k out of the usable healing (it overheals more than half the time). In PvP, on the one hand, I'm not sure if it's a buff because DoT damage is currently very weak.

On the other hand, PvP in Patch 5.3 is changing greatly. Demonic Gateway is harder, better?, faster, stronger: My guild currently jokes that we're recruiting two more warlocks so everyone gets a free ride out of the tornadoes on Iron Qon 25N. Many details are changing with our party-sized portal. The cast is 3 seconds, down from 5 seconds.The first charge generates after 5 seconds (down from 13), and every 10 seconds a new charge generates (down from 15).The gateway has 100% of the warlock's health and 100% of the warlock's resilience.The gateway can now be attacked and killed by enemy players.This change is clearly for PvP, but the PvPers are less enthused about it. The gateway is going to be easier to set up and use in a tight spot, but it's now killable and not just by the warlock being across the map. Unfortunately, gateways don't have the ability to pop cooldowns or heals like we warlocks do, so who knows how long the gateway will last in PvP to focused fire.

Blood Horror ignores pets: This is bad if you wanted to scare away that pesky hunter pet or this is good if you really wanted to save it for that rogue rushing up to you.

Haunt refunds a soul shard when dispelled. This is a good thing in PvP, should you try affliction instead of destruction. I still wish missing a Haunt in PvE (delayed Dead Zone, I'm looking at you) would give me back a shard.

Warlock PvP set bonuses change:

The previous 2-piece set bonus was a cooldown reduction of 20 seconds on Unending Resolve. That still left Unending Resolve at a roughly 2.5-minute cooldown, which is only somewhat helpful in PvP. The cooldown can't be short like Sacrificial Pact or Twilight Ward because Unending Resolve can be used offensively with its protection of spellcasting.

The new warlock PvP set bonuses start off with a strictly defensive 2-piece and an offensive 4-piece. The new 4-piece set bonus particularly harkens back to a comment about how affliction PvE damage is doing fine, but affliction PvP could see some more help, so perhaps this 4-piece is hinting toward that direction. With the base resilience of every player becoming 65%, fights are stretching out to be much longer, even with high gear disparities between participants. There is also a new effect called Battle Fatigue where damaging a player reduces the effectiveness of healing and absorb spells and abilities by 45%. While DoTs could stand to keep Battle Fatigue on a player constantly, watching some of Cobrak's Chaos Bolts hit for under 100k doesn't fill me with confidence for DoT damage prowess. Finally, we warlocks receive 40% bonus to healing from PvP Power, not that PvP Power is looking to be a good stat at all in patch 5.3.

Speaking of Cobrak, he tested out stat and gear changes for destruction warlocks in PvP on the PTR in a video here. Resilience is gone from PvP items, including the set bonuses and sockets. Sockets are PvP Power or Intellect, and the set bonuses increase PvP Power. Testing Chaos Bolt damage, intellect matched mastery, coming out on top of both PvP Power and critical strike. On regular Incinerate damage, mastery lagged a little behind intellect, but that should be obvious given that mastery only boosts ember-consuming spells. Interestingly, intellect gemming countered resilience gemming very well. Gemming defensively will mean gemming for resilience or mastery (since mastery will increase the heal on Ember Tap), and gemming offensively will mean gemming for intellect or mastery (since mastery increases the Chaos Bolt hit).

Cobrak only did destruction warlock stats, but we can draw guesses from our knowledge of the other specs' stats. PvE affliction likes haste, but PvP gear won't grant that much delicious haste. Affliction might stick to mastery better, with hopes of making the DoTs feel worth it in longer combat. It's rare that I've seen a demonology warlock in PvP, to be honest, but the obviously answer is to go for mastery as it increases caster, pet, and Metamorphosis damage.

Will PvE trinkets once again top PvP gear lists? That's the fear, but before you go trinket-hunting in LFR or regular raids, know that there are already some PvP-special effects for certain trinkets listed in the patch notes. The typical Blizzard half-nerf is to nerf the potency but lengthen the duration of a buff. When in a battleground or arena: Wushoolay's Final Choice has its proc effect reduced by 33%, but has a 100% increase to duration. I did not get the chance to test whether the duration increase affects the tick rate or not, but I'm assuming the tick length will also double.Everything else above ilevel 502 has a 50% effect reduction and a 100% duration increase.Until next time...

Patch 5.3 may possibly earn its Escalation name through nerd rages over PvP changes. It's also the start of summer, and although I have pet battles and hoping for a Hearthstone beta to keep me content, I think I will try once again to kill some Horde in PvP. It'll give me something to write about, at the very least. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: chaos-bolt, demonic-gateway, DoT, DoT-damage, ember-tap, featured, fire-and-brimstone, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, health-funnel, intellect, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, mastery, player-versus-player, pvp, resilience, siphon-life, twilight-ward, unending-resolve, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Blood Pact: Buffs and debuffs for warlocks and logs

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is almost free for summer. Almost.

The last two weeks have been on simple topics like glancing at a raid parse on World of Logs (WoL) or looking at the various graphs WoL has. Before we dive into the actual combat log itself with the expression editor, I'm going to take a stop at what buffs and debuffs are going on in the fight. This information is still broad in scope and can apply to almost anyone, but it's still important foundation knowledge for warlocks and logs.

Buffs, debuffs, and how they affect you

Typically, we call applied beneficial effects "buffs" and applied adverse affects "debuffs." But when it comes to raid parses and damage output, we don't care about the positive or negative distinction. We care about the game mechanic difference.

In raids, players can have buffs, and these buffs are typically applied by the player herself, her allies, or various spell and gear procs. Enemy mobs can have buffs, and these buffs are typically applied by the mobs themselves through whatever boss mechanic is going on. Players can have debuffs, which are applied by non-NPCs like voidzones or by enemy NPCs. Enemies can have debuffs, which are typically applied by players or NPCs friendly to players.

The important distinction is that if a player receives an effect during a boss fight, there's a high chance it's mechanically a debuff. This is important because warlocks have both DoTs and pets.

Pets benefit from your stats and buffs, but not from your beneficial debuffs. Your demon isn't getting anything from you standing in Jin'rokh's water pool, unfortunately. Pets supposedly update dynamically instead of the old snapshot method, but you still want to pop your Doomguard along with your intellect potion.

DoTs, on the other hand, are affected by debuffs dynamically -- both the debuffs on the target AND the ones on the player. If you run the add-on AffDots, you'll notice during this. During Jin'rokh, if you step into the pool and get no other procs, AffDots doesn't suddenly turn green or blue to indicate a significant stat change. The downside to DoTs is that they snapshot buffs, which requires you to refresh them for a more powerful effect every time you get a proc that increases your priority stats enough.

Therefore, as a warlock you should be mindful of what buffs and debuffs are present during a boss fight. Favorable stat-buff composition for warlocks

Some of this might seem fairly obvious to veteran raiders, but the presence or absence of some buffs can affect a warlock's performance.

Intellect and spellpower: All warlocks will love intellect boosts, since it's our primary stat. We will never refuse a 5% Stats buff, which you can get from druids, monks, paladins, or shale spiders. We can provide spellpower ourselves with our Dark Intent buff, so who cares if a mage is there.

The typical intellect or spellpower procs come from enchants, consumables, or gear.

Critical strike and critical damage: Destruction warlocks will prefer these buffs, though demonology will like it to. Affliction might not care that much as crit is the lowest priority for them. The raid buff is 5% crit from a bear or cat druid, a mage, a monk, or various hunter pets.

Critical damage, however, is a boost to all specs. (Critical strike affects how often your spells crit; critical damage determines how hard they hit.) So be on the lookout for any Skull Banners from warriors that appear.

Mastery: All of the specs will like this buff, since mastery is either a first or second priority stat for the specs. Shaman and paladins primarily bring it, though a cat or a spirit beast can give it, too.

For affliction, mastery increases the damage done by the three DoTs, which helps in multiDoTing scenarios. Demonology's mastery gives a damage buff to both minions and master, and especially to master in Metamorphosis form. Mastery will buff the regular fire-spell rotation by a little bit for destruction but it mostly affects the shadowy ember consumers like Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn.

Haste: This is usually the make-or-break stat when it comes to a warlock's damage, even if it isn't the best stat ever for a particular spec. Haste simply makes you do more things, but for warlocks, it can also add an extra tick to every DoT in use. It's a big enough difference that the way a warlock gears can depend on whether or not the 5% haste buff is present in the warlock's raid. Destruction and demonology can typically live without the raid haste buff, but affliction will definitely feel a difference in damage. You can acquire 5% haste from an elemental shaman, a sporebat, a moonkin in form, or a shadow priest in shadowform.

Similarly, Heroism (or Bloodlust or Time Warp or Hysteria) is a big deal for warlocks. Optimally, we would know when Heroism is going off in a fight so we could plan hasty cooldown use better, but raids and fat fingers aren't always that nice.

Target debuffs: Though some demons will deal physical damage, warlocks are spellcasters by far. We can provide magic vulnerability ourselves, though we prefer to let the rogues spend the GCD for us in their rotation.

Both rogues and warlocks can provide an AoE version -- rogues with Fan of Knives plus the passive, affliction warlocks with Soulburn: Curse of the Elements, and demonology warlocks with the Metamorphosis: Cursed Auras passive -- but the warlock will guarantee the debuff will hit the first time. (Edit: Fire and Brimstone will allow destruction warlocks to achieve an AoE curse effect. It's been there since 5.0; I just goofed on writing.) Buffs and debuffs in WoL

Looking at buffs and debuffs in World of Logs is part table and part timeline. On the player details page on a particular fight section like a boss attempt, there are two tabs: buffs gained and buffs cast. Each tab has three tables that display number of times a buff or debuff was applied and how often it was present during the fight segment (uptime).

Unfortunately, the power gains table isn't very useful to warlocks -- I'm guessing it hasn't really been updated for the MoP 'lock. It will show soul shards procced by Shadow Trance for affliction, but it shows rather useless mana gains for destruction and demonology. Is that warlock using Rain of Fire as a legitimate AoE damage method or is it simply another way to get tons of burning embers? The world (of logs) may never know.

Under buffs on the buffs gained tab, we have everything you could possibly be buffed with: your trinket procs, potion effects, spell effects, raid buffs, and heals. For most of your buff-watching needs, you can use the buffs cast tab instead, which has a shorter and more personal list of buffs. These are the buffs that specifically came from your class or spec, or your gear. Just be warned that some buffs -- like the weapon enchant proc -- are only on the buffs-gained tab.

For watching debuffs, you'll have to use both tabs. Debuffs on you -- including the beneficial debuffs like Fully Mutated, et al. -- will be on the buffs gained tab. All of your DoTs and effects will be on the buffs cast tab. Some overlap will happen, but I like to think of the buffs gained tab as things that came from the boss and the buffs cast tab as things I did.

The fun visual part comes from the little pound or number sign (#) next to each tabulated line. Click it, and your buff or debuff will appear above under a graph of DPS. The light yellow line is raid DPS, which I haven't found much personal use for, but the bright yellow line is your personal damage done, so you can compare when buffs or DoTs applied or fell off to peaks or troughs in your performance. Under the graph will now be a series of green boxes -- these are the buffs or debuffs you've selected. They appear in the order you clicked them, and you can set up duplicates. You can remove bars The bars start out as dark green and increase in brightness as they overlap due to stacks of the effect. hovering over the green bar will give you a tooltip which will indicate stacks in parentheses and it'll tell you what target the debuff was on. (An oddity is the affliction DoT Agony, which will say (1) no matter if you stacked it to 10 or not. Again, I'm not sure that WoL fully updated to the MoP 'lock mechanics.)

An example of comparing when the green bars line up is when a destruction warlock uses Grimoire of Sacrifice. Chaos Bolt has a small DoT when a destro 'lock takes the Sacrifice pet talent. So while you wouldn't see a normal Chaos Bolt on this graph, you can see the DoT effect, and so you can guess whether a Chaos Bolt was properly cast under a good proc. Above, you can see one of my Primordius kills, where I take Grimoire of Sacrifice to buff Chaos Bolt. I did a good job spamming while disguised as a saurok, but I missed a couple of procs off my trinket.

Time to stop for now. Next week, we'll get into the gritty part of World of Logs with some hearty warlock examples: the expression editor and the combat log. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: buffs, crit, debuffs, featured, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, haste, intellect, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, magic-vulnerability, mastery, procs, spellpower, trinket, uptime, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, world-of-logs, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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