The Ultimate Warlock Guide

Things To Do Before Patch 2.4 Hits

Monday, February 25, 2008

New patch notes are always a great source of useful info. Each patch, besides screwing most of your addons and nerfing your class has its impact on economy and it's always good to prepare yourself. Here's a list of what you should be buying.

Void Crystals
Currently, the price for Void Crystals is 15-20g per piece, and you can expect the prices to double as soon as 2.4 hits live realms. Large Prismatic Shards sell for 25-30g.
A new enchanting recipe will be introduced, which will enable you to shatter a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards, once every 23 hours.
Be sure to stack up on those Void Crystals soon, because I'm sure there are many others who expect to make a profit from this and the price will rise even before patch. You should be able to make a decent profit just by selling Void Crystals also. Large Prismatic Shards' price will probably drop a bit over couple of weeks after patch, so don't expect this to go on forever, but there's no reason not to earn a few hundred easy gold with this.


Primal Nether
It will no longer be Bind on Pickup, which means you will be able to sell it. If you're doing heroic dungeons often and have no profession that can use Nethers, I'm sure you can snag a lot of them before 2.4. Even if you can't use them, the hell with it - just need when they drop. For the first few weeks I'm sure the prices will be around 50g or more, so it's worth it. Grab the daily heroic quest and that's another 25g extra, plus some Badges of Justice, which you will need for the new gear. If you have too many Badges (I like to call it Badgers), you can even buy Primal Nether for 10 of them.


Jewelcrafting
There are some new recipes to cut Talasite, Dawnstone and Noble Topaz into spell haste gems. With the change to spell haste (decreased global cooldown) these gems might become more valuable, but not much.


Arcanite Bar
Get rid of them, pronto. The transmute will no longer have a cooldown after 2.4 and they will be next to worthless. They can go for up to 10g on auction house, depending on demand, but the prices will most likely drastically decrease.


Fishing
With new daily quests, many players will start fishing... daily. Additionaly, feltail fishing nodes have been changed to Brackish Mixed Schools and they now produce mostly Golden Darters and some Feltail. Golden Fish Sticks price may decrease.


Fel Lotus
Sell it while it's hot. It's over 30g a piece now on my realm, which is way too much. There's a few changes which will affect Fel Lotus' price: Ancient Lichen will now drop Fel Lotus instead a random piece of worthless green jewelry. Herbing creatures in Outlands will now yield Fel Lotus, and no longer Black Lotus. Also, the chance that Felweed, Dreaming Glory, Ragveil, and Flame Caps will contain a Fel Lotus has been increased..


Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker
The loot they drop will no longer be bind on pickup, so if you have the chance to get a few items from them, you should be able to sell it for decent prices. I know, it's a long shot, but a lot of guilds are just doing these bosses for fun and disenchant the items later. Come up with some reason to /need it, for the looks or whatever.


Enchanting
There's a bunch of new items, including new Badge of Justice rewards, new Tier 6 items, additional PvP items for reputation, season 4... Enchanters will again be extremely busy; most wanted enchants would be:
Gloves - Superior Agility, Major Healing, Major Spellpower,
Bracers - Spellpower, Superior Healing, Enchant Bracer - Fortitude
Boots - Fortitude, Surefooted, Boar's Speed
Chest - Exceptional Stats, Major Resilience
Weapon - Mongoose, Soulfrost, Savagery, Deathfrost, Executioner, Major Healing, Major Spellpower
Check out the required mats for those enchants and try to stock up on shards and primals.
Don't forget various leg enchants, as well as Arcane Tomes and Fel Armaments for shoulder enchants.


Marks of Honor
This one won't make you any gold, but will instead save you some time farming honor. The new For Great Honor quest requires you to bring 1 mark from each bg, therefore 100 marks will yield 31,400 honor, which is a great boost. If you're missing some marks, now is the time to get them.


PTR Patch notes can change before it goes live, so be sure to check up on them from time to time to see if there's any new additions.

> Things to do before patch 2.4 hits

Posted by H at 3:36 PM

New Class Changes in 2.4

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

It looks like those fake 2.4 patch notes weren't completely fake after all.
Here's the recent class changes from mmo-champion:

Druid

  • Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
  • Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
  • Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.

Hunter
  • Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Mage
  • Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
  • Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
  • Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
  • Improved Fire Ward has become Molten Shields.
  • New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Paladin
  • Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
  • Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
  • Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
  • Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Priest
  • Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
  • Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
  • Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.

Rogue
  • Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
  • Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
  • Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.

Shaman
  • Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
  • Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
  • Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.

Warlock
  • Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
  • Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
  • Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.


It will be interesting to see how some of these changes will affect smaller arena brackets, especially 2v2. Paladins should finally be able to do something against warlocks, since their Holy Shock is buffed moderately, and Turn Evil working on pets should give them a chance to drink also.

I'm sure a lot of shaman will easily find 2 talent points to get improved Ghost Wolf in enhancement tree, which will then make it instant cast. Tremor Totem changes will mostly benefit versus warlocks, but we'll destroy them anyway.

Rogues are getting buffed again (what a surprise!), Improved Backstab talent will improve Mutilate damage, in addition to Backstab. I guess too many of them specced Shadowstep as Blizzard wanted.

As for priests, with Power Infusion's spell haste they will spam Mana Burns like mad; I would lie if I said I like it.

Feral druids are getting a nice buff, but it won't help them one bit. There's still not much utility they can bring as restoration druids, especially in 2v2. Restoration set's 4-piece bonus will be changed to a bonus to Regrowth. I was just getting used to the run speed increase, but the nerf is necesarry so I can live with it. I'm not too happy about Lifebloom nerf either; yes, druids are strong healers in 2v2, but I'm afraid this will have huge impact in PvE where I don't feel as strong as some other classes.

There's no word about warlock's pets not scaling, so the change is either delayed or indeed a bug.

Here's something non-class related.
A few new neck pieces dropped from Twin Eredar on PTR, which have resilience. Sin'Dorei Pendant of Conquest, Salvation and Triumph.
If you missed my rant about such items check it out here, but I'll say it again, get PvP items away from PvE!

> New class changes in 2.4

Posted by H at 3:38 PM

Warlock's Pet No Longer Scales

Monday, February 18, 2008

It seems warlock and hunter pets are currently not scaling with their master's stats anymore. The only stats which they get are spell damage, intellect and armor, but no stamina or attack power.
What this means, other than being the biggest warlock nerf ever, is that your Felhunter will have about 3000 health, which will make it completely useless in PvP.

There's a few threads about it already (here, here, here and here) so it seems it's not an isolated issue.
Someone did the math in one of those threads, and here's what Felguards look like now:

Example: Felguard
Pre and Post current 2.4 fix.

Pre:
6200ish hp base
1247 attack power base.

Post:
3600 hp base.
343 attack power (no modification from gear)

There's dozens of threads on official forums for a few months now about hunter and warlock pets, all asking for buffs and more scaling, especially getting a part of master's resilience. Our pets are too squishy each passing day, while other classes get more and more damage. It seems Blizzard is doing exactly the opposite.

This issue is not yet confirmed by blues, so it's unknown if this is a bug or an intended change, but I certainly hope it's a bug. This change alone is enough to bring SL/SL and Demonology warlocks to extinction.

Posted by H at 4:13 PM

Sorry Mate, You Have to PvE

Saturday, February 16, 2008

First, they added PvP cloaks which you can buy for 60 Badges of Justice (BoJ). Then there's items like Hex Shrunken Head, Warglaives of Azzinoth, Berserkers Call and many more which are far better for PvP then some Shankers or Slicers. Tidewalker in SSC drops this ring which is pretty good actually; here's one from Hydross. I wish I could get Seal of Danzalar for my warlock, the armor bonus would be awesome.

Battlemaster's Cruelty (and other versions) can be bought for BoJ as well as honor. Karazhan and Zul'Aman bosses are now dropping Badges of Justice, and after patch 2.4 you'll get them in 25-mans as well. In fact, all the new PvP stuff in 2.4 can be obtained via PvE, even the welfare epics.

I got Jewelcrafting on my lock, and there's no way to get the best gems without going to Hyjal, except buying them for hundreds of gold a piece from the auction house.
I unlearned herbalism on my druid recently and leveled up enchanting. Having extra 40 healing on rings feels good, and in PvP every bit helps. I can't earn much money with it since I don't have access to most of the formulas people need, like Mongoose, Sunfire, Executioner and many others.

You don't need any attunement to enter battlegrounds, thus every scrub can go PvP anytime they want. Sooner or later, you will get some good items even if you only play an hour or two daily. All those hunters with season 1 gear in battlegrounds are pissing me off; most of them aren't capable of doing anything except autoshot, yet still they manage to do insane amounts of damage and kills. I don't remember the last time alliance had less than 4 hunters in EoTS.

I always thought of battlegrounds as some sort of training grounds, where you learn stuff, where dying doesn't matter much like in raids, a place not just for farming honor to get better items but also to better yourself and gain some skill. If you farmed your Season 1 items mostly AFK, and you wonder why you can't pass 1500 rating in arenas, that's why. You suck, stick to your PvE.

You can AFK in battlegrounds and get honor. You can't AFK in raids and get items. Until Blizzard decides to kick players out, it won't be any different. I didn't hear about anyone getting banned for AFK-ing yet, and even if it's happening, I don't care. I'm in the battleground NOW, and I want those three or ten who are AFK kicked out because we're outnumbered and I want to win.

Now, MMO-Champion reports you will be able to buy Season 1 gladiator items for Tier 4 tokens, Season 2 for Tier 5 and 6 tokens. With T6 tokens from Sunwell you will be able to buy Season 3 gear. How cool is that! No, it's not fucking cool, it's sad.

I like doing battlegrounds and arenas. Sure, it can be frustrating sometimes, but raiding can be as well. Where's my PvE gear for honor? Why can't I buy those damn enchanting recipes with honor?
I don't know about you, but in Wrath of the PvE King I'll be raiding.

> Sorry mate, you have to PvE

Posted by H at 6:48 PM

PvP Tips From a Dwarf? Never

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Mind Vision druids if you know they are about to stealth as you will then be able to still see them when they do.

I didn't know that.

There's a bunch of cool tips about fighting certain classes on Dwarf Priest. Although it's from a priest perspective, it doesn't make it less useful and you should check it out.

Thanks to Kestrel's Aerie for pointing it out!

> PvP tips from a dwarf? Never

Posted by H at 7:30 PM

Patch 2.4 - PvP Additions

Monday, February 11, 2008

It doesn't look like patch 2.4 will change much about class (im)balance, but there are some interesting changes so far. Looks like we'll be doing the same thing again: farm reputation, Badges of Justice, and honor.
Here's what awaits those of us on the frontlines.

New PvP cloaks, this time with spell haste:


Battlemaster's Alacrity is a new BM trinket, again with spell haste:



This head enchant might be useful for those with poor PvP gear and lack of stamina and resilience:


New battleground repeatable quest (you can complete this as many times you want per day, but you'll get the gold only once):




And here's some new welfare gear for you scrubs:

Druid
Dragonhide Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Increases your movement speed by 15% while in Bear, Cat, or Travel Form. Only active outdoors.

Kodohide Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Increases your movement speed by 15% while in Bear, Cat, or Travel Form. Only active outdoors.

Wyrmhide Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Increases your movement speed by 15% while in Bear, Cat, or Travel Form. Only active outdoors.

Hunter
Stalker’s Chain Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Concussive Shot by 1 sec.

Mage
Evoker’s Silk Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Blink spell by 2 sec.

Paladin
Crusader’s Ornamented Battledgear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 sec.

Crusader’s Scaled Battledgear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 sec.

Priest
Mooncloth Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the duration of the Weakened Soul effect caused by your Power Word: Shield by 2 sec.

Satin Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the duration of the Weakened Soul effect caused by your Power Word: Shield by 2 sec.

Rogue
Opportunist’s Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Gouge ability by 1 sec.

Shaman
Seer’s Linked Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Stormstrike ability by 1 sec.

Seer’s Mail Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Improves your chance to get a critical strike with all Shock spells by 2%.

Seer’s Ringmail Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Nature’s Swiftness ability by 24 sec.

Warlock
Dreadweave Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the casting time of your Fear spell by 0.2 sec.

Warrior
Savage Plate Battlegear
- 2 pieces: +35 Resilience Rating.
- 4 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.


New enchant, Deathfrost. I'll leave the math to others but it looks interesting for PvP:


Credits to Mmo-champion and WoR.

> Patch 2.4 - PvP additions

Posted by H at 12:14 AM

Addons: Afflicted

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Afflicted is a PvP timer mod, which shows you enemy silences, interrupts and buffs in a convenient way. Although the name of this mod might suggest it's for warlocks, rest assured it's not.


You can open the configuration window (image below) by typing /afflicted ui, and change where and how you want it to be displayed.
Afflicted also supports notification via party chat and raid warnings, so you can easily notify your (arena) teammates of important events, such as counterspell resists or similar. You can also configure it to show such events only to you so you don't spam other people's chat frames.

It supports the following buffs and spells (and more can be added manually):
Buffs: Divine Shield, Ice Block, Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Sacrifice, Blessing of Protection , Cloak of Shadows and Spell Reflection, Pain Suppression
Spells: Silencing Shot (Hunter), Silence (Shadow Priest), Feral Charge (Druid), Spell Lock (Felhunter), Counterspell - Silence (Mage - Imp CS), Kick (Rogue), Pummel (Warrior), Shield Bash (Warrior) and Earth Shock (Shaman).

Is the addon useful? You bet it is. Knowing your enemies cooldowns on counterspell/kick/pummel etc. is an invaluable asset in arenas, so if you're looking for a simple addon to help you track it, look no further.

ShardscoreYou can download Afflicted on wowinterface.com!

Other addons: Reslack, Afflicted, Proximo, Advanced Tradeskill Window, Posessions, Doublewide & Lightheaded, Auctioneer

> Addons: Afflicted

Posted by H at 7:35 PM

Making Gold: Farming Consortium Reputation

Saturday, February 2, 2008

If you did a few quests on your way to 70, you probably are at least friendly with The Consortium.
If not, check Stealing from Thieves and A Head Full of Ivory quests in Nagrand.

After that, you have a number of ways to obtain Exalted:

Repeatable quests:

If you reached friendly status, you can farm Obsidian Warbeads in Nagrand and turn 10 of them in Aeris Landing (31,57 in Nagrand) for 250 rep. A Heap of Ethereals quest in Netherstorm also gives 250 rep for ten Zaxxis Insignias, and is even better, since the mobs you will be farming also drop Ethereum Prison Keys.
Your best bet for farming Zaxxis Insignias are Zaxxis Raiders and Zaxxis Stalkers (check Wowhead for location; very close to Area 52).

Ethereum Prison Keys only drop at about 3% in Netherstorm, so you won't get many there, but when you do, visit Ethereum Staging Grounds and open one of those purple prisons: a random mob will spawn and drop green or sometimes blue BoP items (you might want to bring an enchanter with you), as well as Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Tag, which you can turn in for this quest, giving 250 rep.
Sometimes you won't have to kill anything, but a random mob will spawn and give you 500 rep with Cenarion Expedition, Sha'tar, Lower City, Sporeggar, or other factions. You won't get the I.D. Tag but it's better than nothing, especially if you're farming rep for other factions as well.


Daily instance quests

Non-heroic quests give 250 reputation with Consortium, while those for heroic difficulty dungeons give 350. You will probably be doing them anyway so it's a nice boost.
Non-heroic quest also gives you one Ethereum Prison Key, so that's an additional 250 reputation.


Instances

Currently, you can only gain Consortium rep in Mana Tombs. A rather unpopular instance, but pretty easy. Normal difficulty will only get you to honored - after that you will have to switch to heroic mode. One run should give over 2000 reputation, assuming you skip all trash mobs you can. Additionaly, mobs there have a good chance of dropping Ethereum Prison Keys as well (about 5 keys per run), but be prepared to roll with 4 other people for them.


Here comes the best part: each month, you can visit Aeris Landing in Nagrand (31,57) and collect your consortium wage. Depending on your reputation, you will get one of the following sacks:
Friendly - Gem-stuffed Envelope
Honored - Unmarked Bag of Gems
Revered - Bulging Sack of Gems
Exalted - Bag of Premium Gems

Bag of Premium Gems can contain 100 gold or more worth of gems. I once got 4 blue gems in it, but once I also got 8 green ones so it's rather random, but still worth it if you ask me.

Of course, I forgot to take screenshots of the loot yesterday, but I digged up some I've had for months now - you can check them out here.

Also, Consortium has one of the coolest looking tabards in game :)


> Making Gold: Farming Consortium Reputation

Posted by H at 10:36 PM