Slow Down

I bet you read the title of this post in that male Pandaren voice didn't you?

No?

Well, eat poo!

The very first time I heard this utterance in Jade Forest while I was rushing my way to 90, I knew exactly what he meant. This statement does not provide any lexical hints or subtleties to the Pandaren culture, but it's an early hint of MoP's new gating system. It's not a suggestion to slow down, it's saying "you are going to slow down, whether you like it or not!"

Think about it, VP is now acquired at a snail's pace. To max VP you would have to do 200 dailies, or 2 LFRs and dozens of dailies and a dozen heroics. Apparently all you have to do is just stroll into Challenge Mode and clear everything a few times to cap VP. Easy peasy cause Challenge Modes are just so easy. *Cough* Or if you're not heroic world first raiders, no one even cares about what your gearing strat is because you're not even going to get the world/realm first so you are non-important anyways. (I agree with this point, yet also disagree)

Reputation is now based on dailies and the few basic quests, but you can pretty much calculate the exact day that you will hit revered/exalted with any given faction.

I am not stating any opinion on this gating (yet), but that's how it is. To appease us, the ones who said there was "nothing to do" at end-game, now there's LOTS to do, however, it's also a lot to do spread out over time whether we like it or not.

Think of how it was, we would equip our tabards, grind out reputations and do dailies until exalted and then never pay attention to that faction again once we've bought our ware (many many wares). As with VP, 2LFR halves would net you half of your weekly total and a few easy heroics could finish that up in ONE day. Then you would never run heroics or do LFR again for the rest of the week.

It's a fine delicate balance, a balance that might have been tipped awry due to everything being tied to VP. We are used to capping our weekly VP in a couple hours, not slowly drip feeding it over the course of an entire week. Heck I usually hit 800/1000 every Monday and fail to even cap. But that's fine. Cata VP items turned out to have lots of BiS items (right?) and actually just a LOT of items that we could buy since they would never ever ever drop in real raids. Perhaps my hunter is a special case, having only received 2/3 pieces of "real" gear while raiding T11 and 12.

On a side note, why does LFR reward more VP than the actual raid on a per-boss-capita? 25 VP for a boss kill...really? Has that been ninja-changed, I don't even pay attention anymore.

See, the issue with collecting ALL the VP in one day so we won't have to do anything, only to complain about having nothing to do. See the deadly evil cycle? Let's say dailies rewarded 20 VP each, we would still do them, and cap out much faster. Would we be compelled to do dailies for any excess factions? Maybe. Perhaps less. We would probably find it redundant and tedious to do Klaxxi after we've valor capped and again go back to the "we are forced to do this for rep" argument.

I use that phrase with heavy irony, but it seems some people find this to be true. No one is forcing you to do anything. Did they hold you at gun point? No. Is an upgrade going to help you stay out of fire faster? No. Do you have absolutely no way of obtaining a similar piece of gear? Aha. There's always LFR? No, too tedious? Well, you can uhhh...hmm.

See, I still think we should utilize a secondary currency to purchase random things for those who don't raid- oh wait, those who don't raid don't "need" gear. Bah. You see the dilemma?

With the release of Heart of Fear, valor gear is starting to look rather unattractive and actually slowly grinding out VP to fill any missing pieces is a much more enjoyable experience than facerolling LFR for a chance of loot.

Ideally, what everyone wants is probably for their VP to slowly accumulate at 100 per hour, and their rep with all factions to accumulate at 1000 per hour..while they are offline so they can log in, be "done", then complain about having nothing to do. The end. (I gotta get back to work)

Turny the Slow Tree

Longing for the Lock

Yesterday during our regularly scheduled raid, I realized something very very scary.

As I am the only healer in the group with an "acceptable" dps "set" (Aka switching to Boomkin and equipping one of the DPS weapons I"ve collected in heroics), I have been boomkin'ing a lot of MV lately and I have to say...it sucks.

Considering I am slightly over-hit and have nothing reforged to benefit my dps, I guess you get what you can get right? I don't do piss poor, but the thing is, I'm not top damage. Ever.

So what? Well, when we first stepped foot into MV I had from the get-go began my strategizing for how my WARLOCK can maximize her damage on the different encounters. This can be done being a healer since all you do is push "rejuv" and people live.

So my scary revelation was that "oh my god, I am what my warlock is to what my hunter was to my warlock back in Cata!"

In other words "I can dish out two times more damage five times more effectively and enjoy the game all at the same time!"

I don't like dots. This coming from a warlock sounds strainge. Dots that don't do anything. Well, boomkin dots DO proc starsurge but I have no crit to push this. And I don't really care, we got the bosses down with me being the measley 5th or 6th and perhaps I should just accept this. The Healer That DPS'd.

Perhaps I am just being a whiny non-advanced boomkin, but when you think of it, I have a warlock with ONE dot and no crazy mechanic of waiting for eclipses and managing the best time to cast a certain kind of spell, and a good time to refresh which dot and which dot to refresh first. I just...kill things and Chaos Bolt eats everything up! Perhaps it's the 100% crit that I longed for.

Or maybe I should just work on a dedicated boomkin set. But that would mean I'd have to play my druid. NO!

Anyways I said I'd post pics, but what pics? Uh of course, Battle Pets! No no I'm not going to start talking about that anytime soon, but pics of battle pets that are perfect for the warlock class. Unless you are a cute cuddly creature loving warlock...then just choose one of the many rats/rabbits/squirrels that they added to the game and be happy with that.

Truny the Not A Boomkin

Dailies Suck, But Not Really

As my hunter dinged 90, I decided that he would not join in on the daily race. His new purpose on Pandaria is to fly around and mine and mine and mine and mine. I am considering slowly levelling up my second tauren druid to fly around and herb and herb and herb. Maybe.

The Boring Story

My druid was the first to hit 90 for "professional" reasons, that is to raid immediately. This was a painful process as I had never actually "played" my druid from 1-85 out in the world. I either tanked or healed all the way to max level, then healed at end game. Since doing dungeons wasn't cost-effective I had to indulge in the traditional method of leveling: questing. What? What do I even?

Playing a boomkin is....nice, but annoying. It kills SO slowly. On one hand I can multi-dot and kite many mobs indefinitely with my self heals, but on the other hand, it just takes so goddamn long. By the time I hit 90 I had to gear up slightly so I started doing dailies and building rep. It would be two more weeks until I even touched my warlock.

Since my druid had such a huge lead on rep, I couldn't just abandon everything and let my warlock finish everything. I hit revered with Klaxxi, Cloud People, and exalted with Golden Lotus on the druid and I by the time I had revered with GL my warlock was 90 and ready to go. This was the darkest time, as I was sometimes doing GL on two characters.

Dailies suck. This is no news to anyone. But they sucked especially because I was a boomkin that killed very slow. The Boomkin That Killed Very Slow. Sure, moonfire is a great tool to tag mobs before all the other assholes that are questing can get to them, but once again, very very slow.

The moment I hit exalted with Golden Lotus I completely stopped playing my druid and assigned him to finish up the Tiller dailies, since they are easy and require less killing.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, a destruction warlock is the perfect killing machine when coupled with a voidwalker. It feels like being a hunter back in their prime where you just land in any hub, then completely decimate said hub within 30 seconds without taking any damage at all.

Where it used to take my boomkin about a full 30 minutes to do the full Golden Lotus hub hopping cycle it would take my warlock about 8-10. Hop in, havoc, tag everything and mow them down then hop to the next  zone.

Dailies now do not suck. My warlock has taken over doing Shado Pan and August Celestials, and is now doing the Tillers for sport (and fish?). Kill 10 Chiji Students? No problem, 4 dead within 10 seconds of me landing in the area.

Now with my hunter, he doesn't feel as "strong" as he used to be. Perhaps I got too used to end-game, wielding a Vishanka for most of the end half of Cata, but now my attacks feel rather insubstantial. Or perhaps I'm just irked that I can't do back to back 200,000 hits with my pet?

Anyways, the irk with dailies now, is that some of them are horribly designed.

That ONE Horribly Designed Daily

Now we were promised changes to one especially excruciating daily, "The Bigger They Come". Or what I like to call it: "The Fly Around Looking For Non-Existant Elites That Other Assholes Are Looking For Quest".

This quest, which would otherwise take about 2 minutes to complete turns into a 20 minute mad dash to tag and kill. Really? What happened to the share tag? Why can't we work together? This just harvests anger and rage. Perhaps the Sha designed this quest.

What happens is you either find the elite and kill it and be happy, or...

You find a mob, fail to tag it but end up facepulling extra mobs, then get hit by a fear and run into even MORE mobs, then DIE, which gives you a ton of down-time. Not very efficient. And kind of sad too.

Otherwise, I need to start posting some PICTURES!

Truny the Efficient

The Greatest Apology to Warlocks Ever?

As I love doing so every now and again, come with me my dear reader who may or may not still be that warlock from many years ago, and travel with me back to late 2010 when Cataclysm launched.

/cast Reverse Time

It was an exciting time, the first time in fact that we could do anything relevant such as...earn exp in the newly shattered world. There were many new zones and dungeons to be explored and we leveled our merry way to 85. Then something happened. Class changes were put through, raiding got more serious and everyone got a lot more competitive. Warlocks still held their own as formidable dealers of chaotic damage but something just felt wrong. Our spells were awkward, and the felguard was no longer the optimal pet.

I thought I was burnt out, or that I was doing something completely wrong, or that I had to just accept the fact that either Demonology was ultra clunky feeling with disjointed mechanics, or that I HAD TO KEEP ISF UP AND CHAOS BOLT HIT LIKE A WET TOWEL. Fun and enjoyment in the class itself had been lost. I defaulted to my hunter who could dish out just as much damage with a great feel to their class and had a great bond with his pet. I tried to keep my warlock relevant up till T13, running the occasional LFR until she was FULL 384 and pretty much abandoned her by the inscription trainer until further notice.

It was sad, yet there was nothing I could do.

--Begin: Rave on Destruction Warlocks--

Then MoP Beta was released, and having read of the complete overhaul for the warlock class, the first character I copied over was Truny. I tried out all the specs and found that:

1. Demonology: OMG teh demonz!
2. Destruction: Chaos Bolt just EATS everything up!
3. Affliction: Nice! Malefic Grasp!

The potential was HUGE, and having had a taste of this delicious malefic fruit I would at least log into my warlock once a week (we still sucked) to make a glyph or whatever, in the spirit of looking forward to the changes to come. I also embarked on a journey across Azeroth to collect ALL the shiny 2-handers that my future Wrathguard could wield. I believe he has a heroic Kiril, Fury of the Beasts that nobody wanted.

After the talent change revamp hit near the very end of DS, I gave my warlock a spin in Dragon Soul and just as I had predicted, the potential in the new changes was amazing. No longer did we have to spend MORE time juggling dots and managing buffs than we did paying attention to the fight and maximizing our "rotation", but instead we were just destructive powerhouses. Once again in my full 384 gear I was performing at and beyond what everyone else who was in full regular to heroic DS gear. (I know, this isn't Diablo where gear matters but that's a lot of missing stats).

What Changed

First and most importantly was that Chaos Bolt was actually WORTH casting. At level 85, if anyone even remembers, or if they had even cast this spell...what did it hit for? 30k crit? How much did incinerates crit for? 40k? Yeah. Now it is a GURANTEED crit, with even more damage based on how high your crit chance is and hits for over 100k, and sometimes 300k.

We are once again pretty useful when it comes to trash mobs. You gotta love this:

1. Spread immolate on EVERYTHING.
2. Rain of Fire - Which is now cast it and does not require channeling
3. Havoc 2 mobs, you can either incinerate or DOUBLE chaos bolt them.
4. Pick off weak mobs using Soulburn, which hits ALMOST as hard as chaos bolt, but can be cast indefinitely as long as you have embers, which you get back if you land a killing blow.

Oh, another note on Havoc. This spell actually duplicates the next spell you cast to another target rather than just apply the damage done. In otherwords, you get TWO physical chaos bolts, or six incinerates while this buff is up. DOUBLE DRAGON!

Essentially, even with trash we have a very powerful "execute" that can be used on EVERY SINGLE mob as long as you catch the killing blow. Go try it out and giggle with glee as you chain cast 150-300k on 7 mobs. GO do it now.

Though when I first tested out destruction, the "rotation" felt kinda....non-existent. I would put on my curse, use my one dot, use conflagrate up and spam incinerates until my ember meter filled up. That's it. The rest is managing how to spend those embers throughout a fight by maintaining a balance of chaos bolt usage vs saving up for execute. There isn't much going on, which one may find that the class has become too over-simplified. This could be the cast for single target fights where you really can't do anything else, and your old brain is just twitching to keep some buff up or looking for some other complication.

My thought was to add just a SLIGHT tiny smidgen of RNG into our nukes, perhaps we have a chance to proc 3 mini-chaos bolts. Maybe? Perhaps we auto-cackle when we cast chaos bolt?

I am definitely not complaining, we've got it all. A flaming mount that can cross water, a VERY powerful execute, a very satisfying nuke, NO mana management, and we set ourselves on fire as each fight goes on.

On dailies, my warlock does not worry about doing dailies because she is so efficient at doing them. Since I  had levelled my druid to 90 first, and he had such a huge head-start on rep, I felt obliged to get him to revered/exalted just because all this rep would have gone to waste if I abandoned my druid. Being a boomkin sucks. Well, not really. Having multiple dots and self heals is nice, but.......it's very slow. As a warlock with very solid voidwalker tank, I could pull multiple mobs and kill them withing 3 globals all the while continuing to pull multiple mobs. So much more efficient.

Now we have news that we can embark on a quest for green fire, and can cast Cataclysm....what else is missing? Are we not allowed to ask for more? I say we stop complaining....

What about Warlock demon flying mounts?

Truny the Warlock

Blood and Thunder

I had discovered an interesting little shrine in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and couple weeks ago, which detailed the origins of our beloved rare Thundering Cloud Serpent Alani. This got me thinking to the popular Horde phase of "Blood and Thunder". Is there some intricate web of history and lore that ties the origins of the horde and the burning legion straight to the land of Pandaria?

Alani was born out of warfare. Well, moreso exploded out of a bloody lake after it was struck by lightning.

Is there some scandal brewing here? Or perhaps the ideal of blood and thunder is just a common theme for Blizzard designers? Or is this ANOTHER cultural reference that I am not getting? Wrathion did hint at fel meteors striking Azeroth, but how does this relate to events that have happened in the past that could tie Pandaria to the burning legion.

I thought Emperor Shaohao had shrouded the lands in mist before the well of eternity exploded?

I think the only way for me to find an answer to this riddle is to continue to eviscerate every living creature other than the Pandarens in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, collect 7 more Skyshards and ask Alani myself!

Turny