WoW Moviewatch: What are Warlock's Demons Thinking?

Many threads of influence lead to the style of Misty the Troll's video. Obviously, we start with Wowcrendor, who's the grandfather of dialogue-driven WoW comedy like this. I feel like Wowcrendor's style influenced SlightlyImpressive, though obviously Griff has grown into his own ensemble-featuring thing. And now we end up with Misty the Troll's.

The video feels like a Wowcrendor-style video, which isn't really a bad thing. The comedy's basically effective and the in-game graphics get the job done. But I'd encourage Misty to keep going and grow his own voice, which is where you'll really find success. For now, though, What are Warlock's Demons Thinking? is a fun video with which to kill a few minutes. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com. Tags: featured, guide-to-machinima, machinima, movies, ow-machinima, slightlyimpressive, what-are-warlocks-demons-thinking, world-of-warcraft-movies, world-of-warcraft-videos, wow-created-movies, wow-fan-movies, wow-guide, wow-machinima-guide, wow-movie-guide, wow-movies, wow-video-guide, wow-videos

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

View the original article here

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

View the original article here

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

View the original article here

Monks ganking warlocks

Hello, I am new here. I am leveling a new alt, a WW monk, currently lvl 46. Last night I was camped by an Undead Warlock Horde and I struggled to kill him. Does anyone have a good sequence to get rid of Fear and other spells, in order to get in close and kill a warlock?
Thanks guys. Great site. Edited by Madcircle, Yesterday, 06:47 PM.

View the original article here

Patch 5.2 spell changes and tier 15 for warlocks

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill thought the druid T15 was the warlock tier originally, and she thinks that the Season 13 warlock gear looks like a cross between Shannox and a Faceless mob.

My apologies, fel-slingers and fiendish friends. I stepped through the Dark Portal to visit family and when I returned, my hard drive had dead clusters, almost as if someone came by and Frost Nova'd the lot of it. Maybe dropped a few Nether Tempests while he was at it.

I blame the mages. I've already had my flu shot, so they must've realized they had to get at the latest Defender of the Dark Arts electronically. Silly mages -- I'm a warlock, so of course I backed up my stuff.

But Patch 5.2 wasn't going to wait for my new hard drive, so let's look at the changes so far.

Trimming the obvious

The aim of the new Mists of Pandaria talents and glyphs were to get away from cookie-cutter arrangements and to provide more personal choice and meaning. Everyone it seems was taking Glyph of Soul Shards or Glyph of Burning Embers, so those glyphs are becoming baseline and familiar glyphs that went away are taking their places.

I don't think the new glyphs are particularly exciting. Glyph of Soul Shards is becoming Glyph of Drain Life, which increases the healing gained from Drain Life. It might make a difference in Harvest Life use when I try out demonology, but I'm not particularly excited about the glyph.

Glyph of Burning Embers is becoming Glyph of Ember Tap, which significantly increases the healing from Ember Tap. That one would make a difference in PvP, possibly introducing the choice of letting your destro lock opponent fire off a Chaos Bolt or forcing him to heal himself to near-full. The datamined glyph, however, is not increased healing, but converting Ember Tap to a long HoT, much like the Glyph of Healthstone does to a healthstone.

Finally, everyone and their dog uses Kil'jaeden's Cunning passively, it appears. I really only kept the ability on my bars for Garalon, since triggering the movement penalty makes it difficult to move between legs in that DPS race. Every once in a while, I would fatfinger the ability and then later not understand when I couldn't cast while moving. So, Kil'jaeden's Cunning will be only a passive talent in patch 5.2.

Tier 15's resourceful bonuses

The tier 15 bonuses are different, but I'm not bouncing off the walls excited about them. Typically our set bonuses have been either buffing the filler spell or buffing the primary DoT (Corruption, etc.), and then maybe we get a burning imp posse or a cooldown reduction. This time, it's a little odd.

Tier 15 2-piece is Black Friday for warlocks. (Get it? It's Dark Soul + a decreased resource requirement?) Both demonology and destruction get a shopping markdown on their resources while affliction just gets a chance to gain more shards. I'd be more excited about Haunt not consuming a soul shard, since when I pop Dark Soul and do my normal malefic thing, I get more shards anyway due to the nature of haste on Corruption ticks. I don't want to end up in Dark Soul with more shards than I can burn.

Tier 15 4-piece is Pay Day for warlocks. The filler spells (including crits for Incinerate) for both demonology and destruction grant more of the secondary resource, but affliction just gets more damage done (both by Grasp and by the DoTs). I can't even think of what I would do in the place of more damage for affliction -- what would it be, Nightfall procs two shards instead of one? Nightfall has a slightly higher chance to proc?

Tier 15 just highlights the problem of Cataclysm warlocks, I think: soul shards are just a really awkward mechanic to do cool & different things with.

Balancing into tier 15

Of course, there's the usual nerfs and buffs to individual spells, as well as some quality of life changes. They wouldn't be patch notes without some, right?

We've had our honeymoon of the redesigned warlock, and now it's time to nerf Grimoire of Sacrifice by 5%. The devs have also finally realized that no one would want to sacrifice a succubus just so they can stand around all day seducing someone, so sacrificing a succubus will grant the small AoE knockback Whiplash, instead.

Sacrificial Pact has been adjusted. It appears like a double buff, but it's really just math magic. The datamined shield goes for 400% of the sacrificed health (up from 200%), but the pet's health sacrificed is 25%, down from 50%. You're still shielded for just your pet's health pool.

During Burning Rush, you won't run slower than 100%. I find it a bit of a relief considering the time continuum problem that is Burning Rush while slowed by Kil'jaeden's Cunning. I tested on the PTR that Burning Rush won't break a root, but if you are slowed, turning on Burning Rush will negate the slow enough so you run at 100% movement speed.

The question of why mages get crit in their 10% spellpower buff but warlocks do not came up and was answered with that stamina buff we can have. Now, the devs are realizing that the stamina buff doesn't happen if you aren't using an imp, so it's not really a second buff. Thus, Dark Intent with Fortitude packed into it may or may not be happening later.

Lastly, the minor spell changes are Fel Armor and the felhunter's Spell Lock. Fel Armor reduces damage taken by 10% instead of an armor increase, which makes more sense since the danger of melee isn't the fact that we're wearing cloth, it's more the interrupts and stuns that get us in the end. Speaking of interrupts, Spell Lock is the latest victim in the silencing of blanket silences, so it's just an interrupt now.

That's a pity. I guess I'll just have to kill those pesky healers now.

Mechanical changes

Fine, so Unstable Affliction isn't changing much, but the dispel damage is not only buffed but it will always critically strike. Sounds like the glyph, right? The most popular PvP spec choice by far is destruction, so I don't know if there was really a trend in PvP with the Unstable Affliction glyph. In patch 5.2, Unstable Affliction's dispel keeps its 4-second silence AND will always critically strike.

The glyph then changes back to the old fast cast Unstable Affliction, which left me puzzled. In my PvE raiding gear of average ilvl 490, I already have an Unstable Affliction cast time of ~1.2 sec when standing around with the 5% haste buff in raid. I had a clear WTF face on at reading the glyph change -- why would I even want that glyph? I'm not going to go into whether you would be hardcasting versus simply soulburning a Soul Swap. However, Ghostcrawler clarified that the glyph will not affect the GCD, just allowing the cast time to be faster against interrupts.

Blood Fear is the other PvP point being redesigned. Ghostcrawler mentioned that Blood Fear was meant to be a defensive ability, but was instead being used offensively too much. So the spell has been redesigned to a more passive shielding ability, keeping in line with the defensive intent. Now, melee striking the warlock while the Blood Fear shield is up will send the attacker running off in fear.

Blood Fear mentions 1 charge when cast, but when I tested a two-fold Blood Fear, the buff disappeared after one hit (disappointing!). So I imagine the change to 5% health was to compensate since stacking charges isn't going to be a deal.

The other shield ability we're getting is from Soul Leech. I first made a wonderfully confused face at this, because thematically Soul Leech providing a shield ability is weird. Soul Leech has always been a trickle heal, and typically the only things providing shields were through sacrificing. Of course, I realize that now we have things like Dark Apotheosis's Fury Ward and Dark Bargain. Cynwise queried Ghostcrawler about it, but I've yet to see a reply.

Typically the argument is that a lot of Soul Leech's trickle healing is overhealing. Turning Soul Leech into a shield would turn that previously wasted healing into possibly useful healing. Over a 6-minute fight like Garalon, I amassed about 1.1M healing through Soul Leech. That means it took me approximately a minute of constant PvE-style damage dealing to obtain 200k of Soul Leech healing. I doubt I could amass as big a shield in PvP with the many distractions like CC going on.

My other counterargument is the same as Cynwise's in the above linked tweet: Life Taps typically ignore absorbs or healing shields. In turn, I'd be curious to see how this Soul Leech shield interacts or possibly screws with the Life Tap glyph, which absorbs heals done instead of taking life away. The final question regarding "Shield Leech" is the obivous one: what's the cap on the shield, and is it fairly reachable?
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: 2-piece-bonus, 2-piece-tier-15, 2pc-tier-15, 4-piece-bonus, 4-piece-tier-15, 4pc-tier-15, blood-fear, burning-embers, burning-rush, demonic-fury, featured, fel-armor, glyph-of-burning-embers, glyph-of-drain-life, glyph-of-ember-tap, glyph-of-soul-shards, glyph-of-unstable-affliction, grimoire-of-sacrifice, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, sacrificial-pact, set-bonuses, soul-leech, soul-shards, spell-lock, tier-15, tier-set-bonus, unstable-affliction, 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

View the original article here