It started as a PvP post against another Blood Pact. Then it was a post about Blood Fear. Then it was a post about how Blood Fear fits in with the flavor of affliction. Then it was about how Blood Fear fits in with the fluidity of the health bar of an affliction warlock. Then it was about how Soul Leech maybe won’t be as bad as people are saying. Then it was how and why the passive healing of an affliction warlock switched from the Corruption spread to the Malefic Grasp focus and how that was all related to multidotting.

I came back again and again, trying to beat some logic into this tangled mess of “OH MY GAWD” thoughts, and kept, I think failing.

I paused before I wrote this draft, just staring at my closest attempt at logic, which was an outline covering Soul Leech, Blood Fear, and Malefic Grasp and how they’re all related.

And then I just wrote.  And later I added some screenshots that should have no connection to this post, but I fudged it through metaphor anyway.

It turns out that all along, I just wanted to talk about the impact of multidotting.

The mammoth in the room is also really fun to run with on air bridges.

The Glory and Problem of Multidotting

There’s a glory to being a DoT damage spec, and it’s called multidotting. It’s glorious because when done correctly, multidotting results in an AoE application of high single-target damage, which ends up dominating the meters.

One problem with multidotting is that it’s hard to balance damage specs and multiple target encounters around it. Plus, PvP is a multitarget festival. Too strong multidotting results in an overpowered PvP spec; too little multidotting results in a boring and less effective PvE spec than others.

Another problem with multidotting in a raiding situation is it’s still possible, even expected, to have two targets running with single-target strength of damage dealing. Affliction warlocks (& moonkin & shadow priests) dominate DPS meters in dual-target encounters like Valiona & Theralion or Nefarion & Onyxia.

There are two viable ways to control multidotting. Nerfing the spells’ damage isn’t a viable choice, because then those specs become inferior on normal single-target encounters. There have to be factors outside the actual damage spells to control multidotting’s reach on the meters.

One is through how strong the DoTs on each target are. This can done through a debuff applied to the target by the warlock (usually through the nuke or filler) that increases the effectiveness of the DoTs. This control method is dependent on how the filler spell is cast and how its cast works with the debuff’s duration. That is, can you stack it quickly?, do you have to stay focused on one?, can you switch targets quickly with continued strong pressure?, etc.

Another control is through movement. This depends on frequency of movement and range. Close dual-target encounters are possible for the raiding warlock because she is practically unimpeded in her casting and can therefore optimize her target debuffing. High frequency of movement will certainly decrease the effectiveness of her multidotting, but not being able to be in range of both targets simultaneously has a higher drop off in overall damage than having to stagger-cast.

If you imagine each pillar like a mob and each moonkin like 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace, this is how affliction warlocks currently roll on dual-target encounters. (Except there's 5 pillars. Damn. >.<)

“Nuke & Buff” Filler

In Cataclysm warlockery, the balancing problem of multidotting is because there are actually two debuffs at work. There’s Shadow Embrace and there’s Haunt.

The pros for Haunt are it’s greater than a 3-stack of SE and it’s applied in one cast. The con is it has a cooldown with a comparable duration that prevents it from being reliably spread across more than one target simulatenously.

The pro for Shadow Embrace is that you can spread it across any targets you want since you can apply it with your filler Shadow Bolt and also your Haunt spell. The cons for Shadow’s Embrace are that it stacks slowly and it’s dependent on how fast & well you can keep up with casting all your DoTs and multiple Shadow Bolts for every target.

The thing with Cataclysm debuffs to control multidotting means that it’s hard for an affliction warlock to switch quickly with hard pressure. Our debuffs are meant keep us busy in building up the strength of a pre-application of DoTs while those who are just getting to the other target are moving to the target and starting up their own damage patterns.

As affliction, I can crest the meters on Ultraxion or hit every mob on Blackhorn’s boat, but I still struggle on bringing a significant portion of DPS to the Tendon on Spine. I have to prepare and pop my cooldowns just before the Tendon appears to even feel like I’m being adequate on damage.

So this control on multidotting results in my affliction warlockery being generally awesome or pretty good on most single-target encounters, still pretty cool on multi-target encounters, but pretty crappy on quick-switch burst target encounters.

It also makes it hard in PvP to switch pressures abruptly. I almost have to blanket my DoTs everywhere (i.e., not actually focusing on a needed focus target) or telegraph my moves with preparatory cooldown usage in order to burst something on someone.

In Mists, the DoT party is everywhere, but only one dance circle at a time can be graced with my funky moves.

“Nuke is the Buff” Filler

In Mists warlockery, Haunt doesn’t exist and neither does Shadow Embrace. We will have one debuff application in Malefic Grasp (MG). Malefic Grasp is a channeled single-target spell and so long as we channel it, our DoTs on that target will tick 100% faster.

Our nuke is the buff, in Mists. This changes a lot. It changes our focus from everywhere to a particular target. As MG isn’t an AoE spell and the debuff disappears as soon as we stop channeling, you can’t multidot the debuff. We can still multidot our two main DoTs, UA & Corr (Bane of Agony is becoming limited to 1 target), but now our heavy pressure is focused to one target and one target alone.

On the flip side, switching targets with heavy pressure now becomes as simple as choosing the other target and pressing a button. Our initial spread of DoTs isn’t as strong as a Cataclysm spread could be, but we can switch up the pressure more easily, becoming a deadlier threat as a damage dealer. A blanket of DoTs won’t mean that you specifically are about to be focused, it just means you could be focused at any time.

But multidotting isn’t totally dead in Mists. It’s still an important strength for the affliction warlock: it just provides a different strength. In Cataclysm, multidotting serves to effectively pad the meters for us. It’s not that you’re doing extra damage on Theralion, it’s that you’re doing the damage you’d eventually do now instead of later, making the fight last shorter. In Mists, multidotting will serve to make our purposes — damage dealing and self-healing — stronger.

Nightfall is like bringing a glaive thrower : I'm breaking down your walls while punching you in the face.

Nightfall

In Mists, Nightfall (aka the Shadow Trance proc) becomes a passive for affliction. I originally passed over Nightfall in my initial squeeing over what’s new in Mists warlock spells and talents, because it reads the same as the talent does now, just add Malefic Grasp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, chance of free filler damage every time Corruption ticks, woohoo.

It wasn’t until I realized that Malefic Grasp has our powerful debuff in its application that I had that oh-shit epiphany. I had to read it again, that second part about how it applies MG’s effect for 9 sec.

So wait, every time Corruption ticks, I have a change to apply MG’s effect without having to spend time channeling MG? So, let’s say I multidot UA & Corr around, and I get a Nightfall proc, I can apply MG to a secondary target? I can switch targets on the fly briefly without feeling like I’m wasting half a DoT?

*mild squee* & face.

So for a precious 9 seconds, you can have old-school Shadow Embrace powerful multidotting. If you have Corruption everywhere — through Seed maybe — and you get Nightfall rains? Delicious.

Or you can choose to smack your Nightfall proc on your primary target to keep the MG love going so you can set up something else. Fearing, maybe, or setting your DoTs up elsewhere. Fantastic.

It’s transforming multidotting from just “more damage elsewhere” to power in my hands to do other things, and that makes me so excited. It changes the game from being skilled at being at the best DoTimer addon you can mentally be to knowing how to manipulate a fight to your advantage. It takes the skill of being an affliction warlock out of the pure spread of skills and more into the hands of the person on the keys.

It’s less how many targets can I do damage on and more how I can use these adds to do more damage on the boss. It’s less I need to give the opposing team a choice between their flag carrier and their healer. It’s more, oh screw the choice of who to heal, I will just use the healers to damage the flag carrier harder or to put instant pressure on a target for diverting attention.

Multidotting isn’t just an end in Mists like it is in Cataclysm and has been. Multidotting becomes a means to a focused end.

This just smells like corruption. Mmmmm delicious.

That Old Affliction Flavor

That’s just so warlocky, that means to an end way of thinking.

Kil’jaeden didn’t introduce shadow magics to the orc shaman so that maybe he could be Best Friends Forever with the orcs. Kil’jaeden introduced the orcs to warlockery so he could use them as a weapon of the Burning Legion.

Sure, the demonology warlock is an Effing Demon For Fel’s Sake, and the destruction warlock is just drunk with the power of fel fire, but the affliction warlock works with the twisted corruption of her foes into actually helping her. Multidotting is a delicious, game-mechanical part of that warlock flavor, and it makes me cackle with glee.

FIVE
attempts

FOUR
wipes

THREE
Gurthalaks
1 offspec, 1 for PvP, 1 DE’d

TWO
days a week for 25mans

ONE
Big Bad Boss Is Dead

WoW Insider is regarded as a news source and a general starting point for players playing new classes.  The articles are shorter than your average blogger’s novel, and it looks meant to convey concepts either briefly or in terms that players unfamiliar with whatever the column’s topic is can understand and implement.

While his math and theorycrafting assumptions are generally correct, I feel he presents those concepts in a disastrous way.  Caraway applies the advanced maths to newer players who are not into as advanced activities as heroic raiding.  It leads to newer warlocks trying to pick up Demo because the highly visible WoW Insider guy says you should and then being turned off from playing a warlock by the steeper learning curve that is Demo finesse.

I’m sure Caraway is a fantastic moonkin, but from his warlock column writing, I wouldn’t know that he even plays his warlock that often, if at all.

I know WoW Insider column articles won’t ever be as long as this post is, but I feel like this Blood Pact post needs a little help. 

How To Make Pon Go Cold to Livid in Two Seconds

Want to play affliction or destruction? Too bad — if demonology is the reigning champion of damage, then that is the spec you will be expected to play. It’s a sad situation and one I really wish we could gravitate away from, but such as it is.

6 ways to increase your warlock’s DPS, Caraway
23 Jan 2012
WoW Insider

That is a whopper of generalized bullshit right there.

I’m a solid DPSer in my guild, which is 7/8 N in 25man on a 2-day schedule.  We’re pushing Madness this week.  Tell me I’m a bad player for not playing the top simmed spec.  I’m sorry, I can’t quite hear you over the sound of how awesome I am as an affliction player.

This does not mean that Caraway is wrong about the highest simming spec.  Demonology is technically the reigning champion on the sims, but let me show you the heroic raid gear sims.

Click on the picture for the source SimC Warlocks thread in EJ.

In the best possible heroic gear from Dragon Soul, Demo beats Destro by 1506 DPS and it beats Aff by 1631 DPS.  The gap is bigger if you look at the Tier 12 Heroic gear 4.3 sims.  What does this mean?  It means as you get better gear in Dragon Soul, the specs actually become closer in performance to almost being equal.

How much of a difference is it?  In non-mathy speak, 1-2k is lag’s difference.  It’s “I sneezed and had to wipe snot off my computer screen for 5 seconds.”  It’s “I forgot my flask” difference.  And that’s just the gear performance.  Add in player skill and a spectacular affliction player will beat an average demonology player.

So how do you become a better warlock player?  Let’s start with Caraway’s list and expand it beyond a generic How To DPS guide into something a little more specifically Warlock.

1. Know Your Spec.

Want to play affliction or destruction?  Go ahead and play it.  That’s the real advice.

I don’t go to the WoW general forums.  About the only time I go to the official WoW warlock forums is to find Dusk’s old How to BG.  I go to warlock blogs and I use my own smarts to figure things out.  I have a list of warlock resources I use and follow, and I’ve started to write up an affliction cheatsheet sort of guide on my own blog.

I particularly cross-class and am now cross-speccing to get the perspective lessons.  I’ve learned things from playing my bear tank that have made me a better warlock.  I have healers and melee DPS and other casters to learn from.  You can always be learning new things.  It doesn’t have to be hours of research, every day, every week.  You just have to pay attention and be open.

2. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Perfect practice makes for zombies who don’t know when something goes wrong or how to fix it.  But that’s just that particular version of the saying.  Caraway’s right about going to the training dummy to get your rotation out of your head and into your muscle memory.

How to practice as a warlock?  Don’t jump into the whole rotation at once.  Start small and build up.  As a warlock, when I hit up the dummy, I work my “reps” in terms of a Curse timer.  CoW/Weakness (2 minutes) for short reps and CoE/Elements (5 minutes) for long reps.

Remember to put your Dark Intent on your pet if there’s no practicing caster nearby who wants it.  I don’t like to mess with other people’s buffs without asking in case they are testing something specific.

Let’s do the affliction single-target rotation for example (have your felhunter out):

Set up Weakness.  Start with Haunt and hit Shadow Bolt as filler.  Keep Haunt up on the dummy as much as possible.  Start with casting Haunt as soon as it comes off CD, then work to find the spot where you can refresh Haunt at the last moment.

Set up Weakness.  Start with Haunt.  Add in a Bane, Corruption, and UA, then fill with Shadow Bolt. Bane of Doom if you are practicing boss DPS; Bane of Agony if you want to practice target switching.  These are your core DoTs that you want to keep as close to 100% uptime as you can.  Continue keeping Haunt up.  You’ll start to notice a casting pattern of SB –> Haunt –> SBs –> Haunt + UA –> SBs; that’s because Haunt refreshes Corruption and Banes are rather long-lasting.  Weave in a Life Tap if you go oom.

Set up Elements.  Start with Haunt, then hit Demon Soul, then put up Bane, Corruption, UA.  Fill with Shadow Bolt.  If you have an on-use trinket, use it with Demon Soul.  You’ll need to refresh Elements to do the exercise longer than 5 minutes.  Make sure to refresh your DoTs during the Demon Soul buff effect, and refresh them properly (just before the last tick / just before they expire) to keep the effect going.

P.S. At this point, Weakness + Weakness + Elements = 9 minutes of practice.  Let’s call it 10 minutes to account for adjusting during reps.  Practice doesn’t mean forever!

You can use Drain Soul instead of Shadow Bolt filler to practice execute phase; just make sure to keep up 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace through Haunt and Shadow Bolt (Nightfall) casts.  Interrupt your Drain Soul after ticks.

When’s the last tick?  The last tick depends on your haste. Here’s the approximate time in between ticks for particular haste points (25m raid buffed) for our main DoTs:

• UA / Drain Soul: 2.7s (218 rating), 2.3s (2589), 2s (4951)
• Corruption: 2.7s (21rating ), 2.4s (1993), 2.1s (3970)
• Bane of Agony: 1.9 (0 rating) 1.7s (518), 1.6 (1499), 1.5 (2488), 1.4 (3476)
• Bane of Doom is not affected in its tick timing by haste.

At this point, you can start paying attention to your procs.  Spellpower & Intellect procs affect all your spells.  Haste procs affect your casting speed (& casting rhythm) and certain DoTs (UA, Corr, Agony).  Crit and Mastery procs are not as important to affliction warlocks to worry about.  Use your Nightfall procs!

When it comes to Life Taps, there’s a few ways of doing it.  You can Tap only once you go oom, or you can Tap as soon as you have used 20% mana, or you can do a combination of both.  I try to keep my mana bar around 30%, because that’s about enough mana to do damage during a heavy healing phase and only need to Tap after the phase is over.  If it’s above 50% I don’t bother Tapping most times.

Now, when you feel solid in keeping the those basics up, you can add in movement (Fel Flame!), your Doomguard, Shadowflame in melee range, Soulburn+Soul Fire if you have the 4pc t13 set bonus, etc.  You can Soul Swap to another dummy for multi-target practice.

Rotation finger memory isn’t the only practice you need.  Once you’ve raided for a while, adapting to boss mechanics just becomes easier and easier, and why the bosses have been more and more complex since the early raids.  To learn those things that can’t be listed off on a class guide, you have to go and do them in an environment with at least some semblance of AI to fight against.

PvP is a great place to practice, even if your spec’s PvP rotation is different.  Old content is also great practice is you solo it or otherwise group up with as few people as possible.  Forcing yourself to adapt to the situations in front of you without a DPS or healing buffer will help you in the end.

3. Look in the mirror once in a while.

Caraway listed “reforge for optimal performance” as his #3.  It can be expanded beyond just reforging.  Remember to pull your head out of the loot chests every once in a while and look at yourself.  You can check your afflocks against my cheatsheet.  Enchants, gems, glyphs & talents, consumables, raid buffs are all important and easy to fix.

On Stat Weights

Some people swear by addons or sites like Ask Mr. Robot.  I don’t like computer optimizers as much because they depend on a stat weight set up, and most people use the generic warlock setup provided, which isn’t as great as using one tailored to you through a simulation.

It’s also depending on others doing the research for you, rather knowing what stat breakpoints you need in your gear and reforging accordingly.

And Rawr?  Warlocks use Simulation Craft more than Rawr.  Sheesh.

4. Gear Your UI Toward Awareness

DoT Timers: Warlocks are known for their DoTs, and even non-Afflocks care about DoTs.  There are a variety of DoT timers out there and in any format you want.  Icons, timer bars, just notifications, whatever you want.  Feel free to mix & match.  ForteXorcist started as a warlock mod and is now used widely as an any-class DoT & CD timer.  There’s the old-time DoTimer, which I used in Wrath.  Some people have their DoTs put on top of nameplates through Tidy Plates.

I use a combination of a buff mod that shows debuffs I placed on my target, Power Auras for important item and spell cooldowns.  When I tried Destro recently, I used IceHUD to track the Improved Soul Fire buff in conjunction with my Power Auras.

Cast Bars: Cast bar mods often show a latency bar at the end of your cast so you can chain casts together as much as possible.  It adapts to your latency fairly well unless you are having wild spikes.  Cast bars are also important for channeling spells, like Drain Soul, to see where your ticks are to interrupt to keep your debuffs up.  Quartz was a solid cast bar for a long time, but I use Gnosis now.

Boss Mods: It’s not as important what brand of boss mod you swear by.  It’s more important that you know what boss events are coming up.  Put the timers where expiring timers are easy to see.  Put the notifications in your face if you have to, not off to the side or in tiny text.

Open up your boss mod and tinker with the options.  If you don’t care about what swing Baleroc is about to do, you can turn that timer off.  If you care about when the crystal spawns, then make sure that timer is checked.

Pay attention to your boss mod.  You should be able to play without your raid lead reading off his boss mod to you, because, in guild raids, it’s likely the same mod you’re using.

Threat Meters: These are starting to lose priority with the threat changes to tanks, but some fights pick targets based on 2nd place threat (as usually 1st & 2nd place are the tanks), so you should still pick one up (like Omen, but Skada also has one built in).  Threat meters are also useful for seeing who is just below you on threat, so you don’t Shatter all over a healer if you pull early aggro.

Damage Meters: Ahhhh, the epeen meter.  Let me sum up the damage meter to you:

Anyone who cares about who has the Biggest Baddest DPS In Town,

1. Already has a meter mod,
2. Has it open and is staring at it, and
3. Doesn’t need you to broadcast it to party/raid for redundancy.

That said, meter mods and logs can be useful when trying to fix your DPS.  Target choice, DoT & de/buff uptimes, and number of which casts are more important than what your specific DPS or Damage Done number was.  Recount has fancy graphs and pie charts, but I prefer Skada’s modular approach.  Meter mods versus logs are more useful when determining in between pulls the splitting of DPS for execution of specific boss mechanics.

Use the DPS number as a ballpark indicator, not an exacting judgment on your skill.

5. Learn the Encounters…in Terms of Rotation

Caraway spent three paragraphs saying “read up on the fight,” and that learning about an encounter before you pull it helps.  But what helps you?  What should you be looking for and aware of during a fight?  Things I watch for in boss videos:

The Bloodlust point: The Bloodlust (Heroism/Time Warp) point is where everyone likes to pop Bloodlust and, usually accompanying with this all their major long CDs and potions.

By default, the Bloodlust is around the soft enrage, usually about 35-20% boss health.  Sometimes it’s at the beginning of the fight, and sometimes it coincides with a certain phase. It differs by boss fight, and even by raid strat.

Bloodlust for a raid represents the best possible 40s (its duration) of pure DPS burn time.   In rare cases it can be a boost primarily to AoE healing, but it’s often done for the benefit of the DPS.  The Bloodlust point is the point where you can be ready to do almost next to nothing, if not already nothing, but DPS.  It’s important to look for the Bloodlust point so you have a reference point to time your CDs to be up for that.

When it comes to short-term cooldowns, like Demon Soul and trinkets, you want to use these on cooldown starting on the pull.  You may have to adjust your activation times during the fight by 1-10 seconds depending on phase transitions and procs, but the general idea is to keep these on cooldown as much as possible.

Position & Movement patterns: Are there specific stack-up moments?  Are there specific spread-out moments?  If there are adds, where do they come from?  Where does your raid want the adds to be tanked/killed?  Where is the best place to put yourself for this situation?  Are there any positional dances you need to perform?

Mobs & Kill Orders: Is it an add management fight?  Can you multidot effectively or is there a determined kill order?

Damage patterns: Are there moments of heavy raid damage?  What is the avoidable damage and what is the unavoidable damage?  Are there “safe” locations where healing circles will likely be? Get your bum in a healing circle if you see one and can get in it reasonably, even if it’s shifting two steps into the edge of the circle.

6. Don’t Be Stupid

Caraway said “Relearn your ABCs” referring mainly to the Always Be Casting rule.  But there are more of generic (& warlock-specific) DPS rules that sound way too simple, but people often screw them up.

It’s not Always Be DPSing (ABD).  It’s okay to not DPS sometimes in order to time phase transitions in the raid’s favor.  It’s okay to let a mob get to where you want it to die instead of killing it in the wrong place.  It’s okay to spend the 3-second transition roleplay event to bandage yourself.

A dead DPS does zero DPS.

Don’t kill yourself with Life Tap, aka, be aware of your health bar. (Warlock corollary to Dead DPS)

Eat your cookies.  Use your bandages.  Stand in healing circles.

Don’t stand in the fire.

Control your pet.  Include a /petattack macro in your main cast DoT (UA for Aff, Immol for Demo/Destro) if needed.  If asked to pull off DPS, put your pet on Passive.

Click the lightwell.

Especially if you want to Life Tap, click the lightwell.  (My corollary to Click the Lightwell.)

Gear is what you should be able to do.  Skill is what you are capable of doing.

———————————————————————————————————————-

And…that’s it for now.

I used to walk my felhunter through Scarlet Monastery’s Cathderal by putting him on Aggressive and strolling the grounds, but now that the Aggressive pet stance is gone and Assist took its place, it’s just not the same anymore.

I have to actually go run old raids and kill things with him.  Bummer.

#3 City Hide and Seek with Friends

This started with a guildmate of mine, whom I haven’t seen in a while, so I don’t know where he went. He’d turn into a furbolg and /lick me when I was doing other things in Stormwind (banking, AH, standing around looking pretty, etc.) and fly off.

If you emote me in game, I almost always have to emote back.  It’s just a thing I do.  While it’s easy and more expected to say hello through the various chat channels, I find it utterly cool and it makes me giggly when someone just emotes me randomly.

So I had to find him.

I went looking everywhere, and it’s harder if you’re not in group and don’t get hints other than “in Stormwind.”  When we’d do several hunts, one would sit in his/her “hiding spot” outside with the Romantic Picnic Basket, waiting for the other to find them.  One of the harder ones I remember was him sitting on top of one of the towers at the front gate that Deathwing clawed.  I’d been so limited to looking at the ground or popular rooftops that I forgot to go check the gates.

You can also do this on your own by picking guild members who are already in Stormwind and looking for them.

P.S. Target macros are cheating.

P.P.S. It doesn’t have to be the capital city; I sometimes do it when I spy guildmates in my zone, and I fly around just looking to say hi or /wave at them.

Friends are also fun for BGs, so have my 100th mount.

#2 Mammoth Mushroom Jumping

Another suggestion by a guildmate after I got my Ice and Grand Ice Mammoths and commented how bouncy and happy mammoth riding feels to me.  I love bouncing and jumping everywhere, and she mentioned to try jumping off the tops of the mushrooms in Zangarmarsh.  Without a Slowfall and combined with my somewhat fear of heights/falling, it’s exhilarating and fun to see how far I can go, just off the tops of mushrooms.

BOUNCE.  BOUNCE.  BOUNCE.  BOUNCE.

*giggle*

#1 Grizzly Hills Log Flume

I touched on this at the end of Elder Poneria, and I revisited it for After the Raids.

1. Land at the FP of your faction closest to the river in Grizzly Hills.  For Alliance, it’s Amberpine Lodge.
2. Fly upstream.  (You can take any number of paths by land.)
3. Find the wooden aqueducts, specifically the west/left one for Alliance.
4. Talk to Gordun at the top of the spiral stairs and choose the Venture Bay option he gives you.
5. Ride log flume all the way down to Venture Bay, while LOLing uncontrollably.
6. Land at Venture Bay, mount up your flyer.
7. Repeat steps 2-6.

Do you have any “games” you do in Azeroth for when you just need a happy kick to the soul?

The outfit is my Shadow Sorceress transmog, which is on my raiding affliction gear.  

I go just about everywhere with my felhunter, Bheezhem.  He’s been my constant companion for years, so I can’t really go anywhere alone without feeling strange or almost naked.

While Pon’s title changes by what I’m currently doing, her “default” title is Poneria the Seeker, as she’s out exploring more often than not.

For land mounts, I love the bounciness of mammoths, though my quick-go-places mounts are smaller so I can dismount through doorways.  The Fossilized Raptor and AQ bug mounts are the closest I can get to small and bouncy.

And the setting?  My favorite happy kick to the soul is the Grizzly Hills log flume.  The roleplay timeline for Pon is after Firelands but before Dragon Soul raiding.

The gryphon touched down at Amberpine Lodge, just a few steps from the blacksmith’s anvil.  The warm embrace of Tarecgosa encircled Poneria, and the gryphon stirred as it felt the warmth rustle through its wings.  It gave a soft goodbye caw as the warlock dismounted and she gave it a goodbye pet through its feathers.

“There’s something different about you, Seeker,” Hierophant Thayreen said.

Poneria turned at the voice; Thayreen had been almost a shell of a person since Vordrassil was cleansed.  She always stood at the edge of Amberpine, gazing at the Hills across the river that flowed from the north.  It was the first time the druid had spoken to Poneria since the furbolgs’ corruption was stopped.

“It’s nice to see you feeling better, Hierophant,” Poneria replied.  The druid smiled and, for a moment, the warmth spread to her eyes, before she returned to gazing across the river.

Poneria called up a simple travel spell, and her Ice Mammoth, Snorri, came bounding out of thin air to meet her.  The mammoth let out a trumpet and reared back on his hind legs as a greeting, and she patted his trunk in a hello.  She whispered another travel spell that put a second saddle on the mammoth, one with two extra seats for friends.

“Up, Bheez,” the warlock commanded her felhunter, holding her arms out to help the felhunter into the left seat.  The felhunter slobbered and butt-wriggled back a few steps.  He took a running leap and jumped into the saddle with footing off the warlock.  He was far too big a felhound to be entirely caught by the human.  He settled into the seat, hanging his antennae out the sides to smell all the smells.

“No protodrake?  Not flying today?” Vana Grey, the gryphonmaster, said.

“Nope,” said Poneria.  ”Today we’ll hoof it through the scenery.”  She climbed onto the mammoth and slid herself into the center seat.  ”To the logging lake, Snorri!”

The mammoth galloped off, bouncy as ever, up the northeast road towards Grizzlemaw.  They rode under the great tree trunk remains, and turned left when Vordrassil’s Heart was to the right.

Now they’d arrived at the Blue Sky Logging Grounds.  The logging grounds were a sudden and desolate break from the peaceful forest, but the Alliance and Horde had been fighting over the wood supply for years now.  Poneria didn’t plan to stay here long, so she tipped a salute to the Valiance Expedition’s Sergeant Hartsman as the trio continued past the Alliance camp.

Snorri jumped over logs on the ground and headed for the sawmill up the hill.  Poneria smiled at the wooden aqueduct over her head as they passed under it, but this wasn’t the correct aqueduct for her purposes.  The Grand Ice Mammoth forded the river just past the saw mill, and threw off his passengers onto the logs on the water.  Poneria jumped logs over to the left aqueduct while Bheezhem swam around the logs, and Snorri took off for more swimming in the lake.

Poneria smiled; they’d be back later, and Snorri loved swimming sessions while his master was out riding the flume.  She walked up the spiral staircase to the beginning of the aqueduct.  A portly, bald dwarf with a fiery orange beard stood at the top.  He wore the blue and gold lion’s head tabard of Stormwind.

“Ahhhhhahaha, another day of riding, my valiant friend?” he said to the warlock, letting out the laughter that dwarves do.

Poneria grinned at the dwarf.  ”Yes, please find me a suitable log, Gordun.”

“Ye haven’t been out here much lately, lass,” the dwarf said, working the pumps to move the logs.

She patted Bheezhem and the felhunter took off in a spectacular belly flop into the aqueduct’s water, sliding down until he disappeared off the edge into the logging grounds’ man-made river.

“Our expedition into the Firelands took a long while.”  The warlock was exhausted from her guild’s battles in Firelands.

It had taken months to beat back Ragnaros’s lieutenants, until finally they’d faced and conquered Ragnaros himself.  Guildmates came and guildmates went, not least of all one of Poneria’s solid friends in the dark arts.  That warlock had had enough of the expedition life, she thought.  She didn’t know exactly, for he had just not come to battle one day.

Alongside the fight for the druids of Hyjal, Poneria had been chosen to help the Blue Dragonflight pick a good leader to take Malygos’s place.  While her heart was in it completely to help out, it was long and hard to keep her own morale up to see Tarecgosa’s life to the end, or not-quite-end as it turned out.  Poneria nearly broke at the last steps of binding Tarecgosa to her.

Now, though she was fearful of letting it show, she sometimes leaned back on the dragon’s strength.  She wanted to be prepared for the new battles at the Future Wyrmrest Temple, but she wasn’t quite sure how much of her prowess was hers alone.

She was almost more afraid now than before.

The log flume rides were one of the ways she could find her morale in times of tough battles.

“Here’s one now!”  The dwarf worked some controls at the pumps to pick a log up from the lake using a no doubt gnome invented claw, and dropped the log lengthwise into the aqueduct’s channel.  The warlock climbed on, straddled the log, and grabbed at a cut limb’s stump to secure her seat.

She could still spot Bheezhem’s tail and antennae as he disappeared over the rocks into the river proper.  She didn’t worry; she’d still beat him down to the southern face of Grizzly Hills via the log flume.

“See ye in a wee bit!” the dwarf shouted as the warlock took off down the river on her log.

The log fell her face-first into the man-made lake, and she came up while leaning the log to the right to turn for the river.  The log flew threw the water with gaining speed and launched off the tall waterfall at the end of the logging grounds.

The log fully almost submerged but buoyantly bounced up to the surface again.  She leaned again, this time to the left, and guided the log off the other tall waterfall on the river.

This time the log fully submerged, and Poneria looked up as she always did on this part to see the bubbles float up above her head.  The log zoomed back up in a slight leap out of the water before passing under a wooden log-panel bridge.  To the left was the road to Amberpine Lodge; to the right, the road to Granite Springs.  The bridge behind her, she passed a couple fishing bears on either side and went over another rocky waterfall.

She leaned left, a big jump, right, left, right, left, right through the land rapids, among more bears that were fishing in the river.  One bear smacked at a leaping fish as the log flew through the air off a rapids launch.  Another bear was chasing a certain felhunter down the left side of the rapids, a pearly salmon wriggling in the felhound’s firm jaws.  Poneria laughed out loud at the sight.  The felhound made his almost-caught escape over the left side of the rocky waterfall just as his master crested the right side into the Blackriver Logging Camp.

She skirted the Horde and went around the right side of the camp, beside the sawmill and ducking under a load of logs that dangled over the rived.  A glance to the left and she caught two antennae winding slowly around to the left side of the mill island.  She chuckled and sped on down.  Alliance and Horde were fighting on both sides of the river and even on the islands.  A duty bristled at her, but the ride wasn’t done yet.

She rode under the tree trunk bridge, where the road led to the Horde’s Conquest Hold on the right and Voldrune on the left.  Though she avoided the Horde outposts alone, the tree bridge was a great place to go when she needed to think.  She’d sit in one of the notches on the side and listen to the water rushing below her.  The birds were chirping here, and the river drowned out the sounds of fighting.  She could be at peace amid the chaos for a while.

The log crested another waterfall, and floated down the river towards the final waterfall.  It gained speed off the falls, but the river was widening into the Frozen Sea now, and the current was slowing down.  The river curved smoothly to the left and she landed the log onto the shore of Venture Bay.

The elite horsemen of the Westfall Brigade saluted her at their watch over the Alliance’s stand at the Bay.  As she squeezed water out of her robe, one walked his horse up to her.

“Sarge’s been wondering when ye’d show,” he said to her.  Sergeant Downey was in charge of  the expedition on the island while Commander Howser tood for the Alliance at the Bay proper.  The horseman looked around and said, “Where’s yer pup at?”

“Oh, I’m not sure,” Poneria looked back up the river and shook the water out of her hair.  ”About the tree bridge, maybe?”

“Och, ‘e di’n't ride with ye?”

“Nope, he wanted to fish, and stole a bear’s catch.”  The warlock giggled with the horsemen.  ”When he floats down, send him to me in the Bay, will you?”

“Aye, lass.”  The horseman saluted her again as she headed to the central part of the island where honor and duty began.

When he saw Poneria approach, the sergeant turned to her in half-surprise and said, “You’re stopping in between runs?!”

“Gotta find a felpuppy first before I go back up for another ride,” the warlock replied, grinning.  ”In the meantime, I can knock a couple of orcs about.”

“Aye, you can do that.  Let’s start with ten.  Your pup oughta be back by then.”

We did 6/8 on Wednesday night, which was fantastic considering we’re fresh off holidays and recruiting, and we haven’t done more than half the instance in one night in a while, I think. We also breeze through Blackhorn now; he’s not nearly as much the wall he was when we were still figuring it out.

And then we had some rough start to tonight’s Spine progression, but we kept it together and killed the jerkface! We even had two Tendons go down in one shot, and the 3rd just didn’t want to give up the last 100k.

That brings us to 7/8 in 25man!

Buff?  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbt.  We don’t need a stinkin’ buff.

And now, off to do things like eat the other half of my dinner and write some things.

P.S. While UR isn’t actively recruiting at the moment, you can still /cheer us on and look at my purdy kill pictures.

I was trucking along in my trial of Scrivener, writing essentially two posts on why I thought the latest Blood Pact just didn’t do it right on its topic.  I say two posts — it started as one, but as I typed more and more I felt like the topic was actually two things.  There’s survivability in PvP and the dynamics of healing, both self-healing and actual healer-heals, and how that all works with your team an objective.

Then there was a reprise of Cynwise’s DPS Pick, which I absolutely love to do, so I was going off on tangents on which Mists talents would make great warlock flag-carrying tanks and which would make great chaos-bringers & distracters.  Because, because, because random battlegrounds are just not ever about the pure one-on-one that a warlock might lose.  Not even Arenas are like that.  And I just felt like Caraway totally missed the point of not only affliction warlockery but the point even of PvP.

And even then, I’d had a page of just why I’d prefer to use Howl on resources BGs like Arathi and why I’d prefer to have a stun (Shadowfury) on CTF BGs like Twin Peaks.  I’m personally a fan of chaos-bringer playstyle — I don’t really care for Ironman but Not In My House would be SO COOL for me to have — and I was just on a speeding train about all the things Caraway missed in his 1500 word overview of the talent calculator.

And then I set it aside.  It’s in a draft status.  I’m not Cynwise; I tried to make a posterous to get me to write more, but the more I write, the more I want to post it on Fel Concentration.  It’s almost like my style of mains and alts are applied to my blog, too.  I love my bear druid, I’ll play her all day long, but there are some things I just don’t give a shit about except on my warlock.

Anyway?  The Point?  

The point is I took a break, because I hadn’t even separated out the two posts from each other — it’s just one giant long text file — and it’s full of my note-taking typing of not even full words forget full sentences.  It has to flow, I have to find pictures to break things up, mainly because I realize even I don’t like plowing into a blog article that is just nothing but text for ages.  It works for books, but not for really long articles unless you’re already quite into it.

That was a really long sentence, and rather an example of the kinds of “full” sentences I had in there.  My name is Poneria and I am long-winded.

Anyway?  The Point?

The point is I came back today to finish writing it, and I opened up my feedreader to start jogging my mind a little.  And there was Cyn’s Five Rules of Field Notes.

And I had to stop for a moment.

Rule the First is my posting resolution goal — 10 posts per month.  Resolutions make me feel guilty, so I’m going to flip the perspective and go for the word goal, because I’m less likely to beat myself up about it if I miss a month of goals (I’ll still be disappointed) than if I miss a month of resolutions.  But my goal, since I’ve been writing single-digit monthly posts for 2010 & 2011, is so I get my writing out there, even if it’s not “perfect” or “important.”  I saw that even after I’d cleaned it out once, my Drafts folder had as many files in it as my Published one did, and that felt wrong.

Fear is a big thing in my life whether online or off.  Anxiety is probably the closer term, because it’s less that I fear something and more that I’m agonizing over bothering to punch that fearful thing in the face and tell it to step aside because I’m walking this way.

So here we go, first draft.  Though, it’s much easier for me to talk about something that relates to me, to talk anecdotes, in a first draft and hit publish, than it is to construct a counterargument against what I thought was a poor post and make sure that I covered all my bases and am not about to make a complete fool and/or ass of myself.

Rule the Second probably won’t happen for me very often.  I am a constant rewriter — mid-sentence, mid-pararaph, mid-word, whatever.  In fact, that sentence just got typed for about 2 minutes before I decided on a satisfactory wording.  I am very much that person on the other end of and IM chat who sits there with the “Poneria is typing…” message across your screen for five minutes, only to have it end as “so, how was your day?”  If you’re in the room, I furiously type when I’m on a speeding train of thought, and the rewriting just hops on with me.

But I hardly ever do the whole rewriting thing after I finish.  Once I finish, it’s trash or drafts or publish.  It looks like I go back, because I’ll do a bare-bones outline half the time and then write it not-in-order, but once I finish a section, it’s fucking done.

Rule the Second also revealed a twinge of jealousy that I knew was there.  If those are Cynwise’s first drafts… My first drafts are terrible and discombobulated.  Where can I find zen like Cyn has for writing?

Rule the Third has already seen some action.  Last post, for example.  Completely silly thing to post about, a bank in Theramore and punching raptors, but there you go.  It’s the kind of things I find cool in WoW and why I love leveling among other exploration things.

Rule the Fourth, too, has seen a bit since I gave up around high school on writing to constraints of words.  It’s my blog, I post wordy things.  You can always bookmark it and come back later if you want.  Or you can just stop reading halfway through and never come back, in which case I should get a little better at writing because I clearly can’t keep you entertained for post, let alone a book or a column.

Rule the Fifth … I tell my inner editor to fuck off all the time, but I always come mentally and emotionally crawling back and sit under the menacing parental finger-pointer that is my inner editor telling me to fix this and fix that and “No child of mine would ever walk out of this house wearing that.”

Anyway? The Point?

This article was originally titled “PvP as an Exercise Against Anxiety,” as that’s what I set out to publish (by taking a cue from CFN), as it’s one of those blog posts that hangs around in my brain and pokes its head in everyday to play.

Anxiety is a thing I struggle with all the time.  It’s the reason why every month I disappear from Twitter for a day or two because I didn’t take my laptop with me when I went home for a 1-hour session with a counselor.

Where I talk about things that frustrate me, like not being able to leave my apartment because my roommate and her boyfriend are cuddling on the couch.  How it’s a great mental & emotional burden for me to dodge the awkwardness of passing an intimate session on our couch — our, mine & her’s & my other roommate’s — which my roommate is totally free to use for whatever she wants, just like me, and how I’m just awkward in normal social conversation, forget dodging the obvious interruption of cuddling by a third party… How all that battles me in my mind to create an almost physical-feeling barrier between myself and my apartment door than I just don’t let my apartment until they go out to dinner or end up falling asleep.

Or, how Twitter knows, I’ll endure hours of somebody’s Charlie Brown Teacher Wahm Wahm Wahm voice through my bedroom wall in the wee hours of the morning before I finally dig out my Benadryl which puts me to sleep in a matter of minutes…rather than get up and tell the guy to take a hike because I’d like to sleep in the space I pay to sleep in.

Anxiety is a thing I have and do.  Offline it’s fairly more obvious, because I’ve been online for half my years now, and I’m far more comfortable in the land of text than I am in the land of spoken words and body language.  It’s far more obvious when I’m in a new online place than when I’m in a place I’m comfortable being, like my guild.  Online you can also hide more easily than you can offline.  It’s far easier to become someone else for a day online.

Writing is cathartic for me.  I really ought to do it more often, but I’m so lazy at bothering to keep an actual journal for longer than a raid lockout.  I think in monologues to myself all the time, especially those moments in which Anxiety is beating Myself up for something or other, why be redundant and keep it in a journal?  But the truth is, I’m pretty sure I’m just terrified of admitting things to myself that I don’t want to admit.  The few times I’ve written in a journal, I’ve either started crying at conclusions I drew or have thought I come off as a whiny little girl who belongs better with a bedtime and worksheet homework.

Writing gets my thoughts together.  I have pens and pencils everywhere and index cards wherever I don’t have my actual spiral notebooks laying about.  Most things, when I have a problem, I write and draw them to death, until I’m done letting it all out, and then I usually leave it to collect dust in a folder or actual physical dust in my room.

As I was typing about Cyn’s five rules I figured writing is a sort of Offline PvP.  Constructing arguments about whatever topic is at hand is certainly my thoughts and reasoning versus this other guy’s thoughts and reasons.  It’s also a personal struggle for me, the obvious and cliched inner editor versus the quiet and frankly terrified self esteem.

The Point

The original post was PvP vs. Anxiety.  You might say I’ve strayed far from that so far.  I’d say I never left it.  PvP in World of Warcraft is you and your toolkit versus other people and their toolkits.

PvP for me is also an exercise against anxiety.  Leveling & exploring are pleasures for me.  Raiding can be a pleasure and it can be a struggle, depending on what side of the raid leading or DPS-standard-holding I’m on.

PvP is a struggle for me.  Obviously, it’s a struggle in pure finger mechanics, as I’m not a top PvP player by a long shot.  I am that very C swear word “casual” of a PvP player.  But finger mechanics can be learned.  PvP is an emotional struggle for me and some days it boosts me  and some days it’s completely draining.  One of my prideful faults is being right or being good at the things I do, because ever since being a kid I was always just magically great at what I did.  It’s a classic fault, but there you go.

Dying is a thing that doesn’t happen in PvE unless You Done Fucked Up, and it took a while for me to accept dying lots in PvP.  I’d sit an angry ball of frustration at the GY and would already start tripping over my anger when I finally rezzed, which led to more stupid mistakes and more dying.  Snowball.

So I have to tell myself to chill.  At first it was guildmates who knew that when I’m happy I’m fun to play with, so I just needed to chill and they told me so.  Now it’s more internal. The GY visit isn’t a punishment anymore.  It’s 10-45 seconds for me to take a solid breath, like the ones in band class, and to calm myself for the next storm of finger mechanics.  It’s the time I can have to myself, the introverted break I get for just me, before I have to dive back into the crowd and do social mechanics like following or breaking away from the crowd.

There’s also the BG chat thing.  Maybe it’s part of social anxiety or maybe I’m just actually paranoid half the time — I’m not a psych expert at all — but I always feel like I’m being watched, particularly for when I’m about to fall pretty damn hard on my face.  It’s like tiptoeing everywhere, frantically making sure I’m 100% right about what I’m doing, and even then, when I am great and good, it’s not satisfying, because the performance fatigue almost always kicks in immediately.  Pon’s good, but she’s always good, so pulling ridiculous DPS is nothing to write home about.  Megan’s good at math, but she’s always good at math, so acing a test is nothing to write home about.

BG chat is the cesspool of epeen and people pointing out your every mistake.  Everyone points out the people fighting on the road, or the guy who’s wearing mostly raid gear with no resilience.  BG chat is an exercise for me to not get upset over what people think of me.  Previously I had to either turn it off or PvP with friends, because I couldn’t handle being yelled at when I was alone.  Even if I wasn’t the reason they were yelling, it felt directed at me.

I can queue solo and play with BG chat on and finish feeling like I did my part with the calling incomings and thanking healers and like I did something useful rather than feeling like I was a scrub failure.  Maybe it’s trivial for you, but that’s a big triumph for me.  It doesn’t happen as consistently as I’d like it to eventually — I still refuse to PvP during the evenings without guildies, because that seems to be when the Alliance really digs into the bullying and self-attacking.

I still need to work on my smack talking, though.  Typically, when I start talking smack about the teams, that’s my anxiety showing.  And by smack, I mean posturing smack, not legitimate pluses and minuses of the teams.  That smack talking is me in defensive mode trying to shift the failure off my shoulders rather than owning up to it.

The Point?

The point is, I don’t think PvP is ever really about will I survive the rogue’s stun because I have five million Corruptions streaming Siphon Life heals to me.  I don’t think it’s about whether I have the ability to peel off melee at any time I want because I now have all the CC that Mists is forcing me to choose between.  I agree that it’s about the 1v1 encounters, but I have a different sense of the person I’m fighting against.

I’m fighting against me.

So I didn’t like the Blood Pact this week because it felt like Caraway is saying be OP or go home in the land of PvP.  It felt like he was giving up because he feels affliction’s healing is being nerfed and our CC is being nerfed, so clearly our survivability is being nerfed.  I feel like he thinks finger mechanics are all that matters in PvP, when I believe that finger mechanics are a very small part in the PvP land.

So there, I’v had my say about what I think the purpose of PvP is.  It might take my arguments in a different direction than Blood Pact was aiming or even able to go in, but there we are.

I’m going to take a break, log in and play a bit (maybe PvP!), and then visit those posts I was writing about yesterday.  Maybe finish them, but I feel like I need to explore each a bit more before that happens.

I don’t remember this guy being a bank before, so maybe it’s a Cataclysm thing.   I almost feel like he used to be a quest giver?

Well, anyway, he’s now a bank, and the chest beside him is a guild bank.  He’s up with Captain Vimes in the Foothold Citadel.

Edit: brilliant thinking by a guildmate of mine:

@slowpoker Wait, so they put a bank in Theramore, just so they can blow it up? :P

—
Jamie (@Effraeti) January 15, 2012

I’ve also been beating up raptors by hand to capture them, since Dragonwrath and my Mastercraft Kaluak Fishing Pole both one- or two-shot the raptors.

This post is brought to you by the letters L & Z for Loremastering Zones while the nonexistent warlock posts are brought to you by the letters P & E for Procrastinator Extraordinaire.

Recently, the guild chat conversation turned to beginning a warlock.  One of my guildmates started a new warlock, and had said earlier in raid that she could never get one above 20, to which I jokingly said I’d teach her.

So now we spent the next 20 minutes or so talking warlock stuff in guild chat.

She’s only 12 or so right now, but we got into what exactly soul shards and soulburn are and do.  She had a warlock back in Wrath, but it’s different now in Cataclysm, especially the whole soulburn mechanic.  As she put it, you have to relearn it all over again.

So I hit “Save Draft” on my glyphs post, and put it aside as I pulled up a fresh blank post.  Let’s talk about soul shards and soulburn.  Hold onto your cowls!

Shard History

I’m told that soul shards were basically the same until the changes in Wrath.  Soul Shards were actual items that took up bag space. They did not stack at all, so I was a tad sympathetic to jewelcrafters who rejoiced when gems became stackable.

In Patch 1.9 (Gates of AQ), shard bags became available.  Shard bags worked like any other profession-specific bag: only soul shards could be kept in them.  Otherwise your shards went into any old bag slot.  Addons crept up (I even used one!) that would maintain a certain number of shards (presumably, the size of your shard bag) in a certain bag and would delete any extra shards for you.  This allowed affliction locks to continue using their execute phase spell, Drain Soul, without having to micromanage shards on top of it.

In Wrath, some things like summoning and soulwells still cost shards, and you had to farm for them when doing things — like summoning — that used up mass amounts of shards.  Eight levels below is the lowest you can go before you grey out of experience or honor.  I remember in Naxx 2.0 hopping down to the ground where level 72 mobs were to drain some souls so I could resummon the lazy raid members who couldn’t take the first summons I handed out.  (Now my guildy readers will know why Pon is a Grumpy about summoning people after break.)  The hilarious part was when my guildmates didn’t understand that I had to be channeling a spell while the mob died in order to get a shard, so they ran around just flat-out killing things, with the whole-hearted intention of helping me out, but before I could get the channel going.

Soon after, in Patch 3.0.3 (Wrath), the Glyph of Souls (minor glyph) was changed to reduce the mana cost instead of the shard requirement of Ritual of Souls (soulwell / cookie jar).  Thus started the movement away from requiring shards for spells.

In Patch 3.1 (Ulduar), there was a maximum applied to shards in your bags: 32.  That was the size of the largest shard bag size, the Abyssal Bag, made by tailors.  You betcha I made one.

Drain Soul also got an addition that you got a chance to generate a shard on the tick rather than at the end of the cast.  This is important because we no longer had to go farm for shards in the middle of raid.  You could start casting Drain Soul mid-combat on anything (this is why trash was important to me) and get some shards off the ticks.  It wasn’t the best DPS plan, since Drain Soul then did more damage in the sub-25% health than above that mark, but we had a quality-of-life change for the better regarding shard generation.  (You could also drain off target dummies in this manner.)

Demonology got the shard cost removed from Soul Fire upon proccing their new talent Decimation.  (Demonology got a talent tree revamp in 3.1.)  Yeah, Soul Fire used to cost a shard! Now you know why I’ve never liked the stupid spell!

Everything changed in Patch 4.0 (Cataclysm).  We went from common spells requiring soul shards to operate to the system with Soulburn, which adds an effect if you use a soul shard, and you can’t use this ability all the time.  We went from a bag of shards to counting your maximum shards on one hand, literally overnight.

The shard bags that existed got turned into regular bags, including my beloved Abyssal Bag, the magnificent 32-slotter shard bag that I crafted for myself.  It also dropped 10 slots because that was the largest regular bag size (Glacial Bags) at the time of Cataclysm’s launch.

Soul Shards in Cataclysm

In Cataclysm, you can only have 3 Soul Shards at any one time. They are also now part of your health and mana bars on your character unit frames.  It’s a secondary resource for us alongside mana.  Paladins have Holy Power, Death Knights have Runes, Shaman sometimes have totems in custom unit frames, and so Warlocks have Soul Shards.

They actually look like the old shards did if you use the default UI, or they can be just three purple blocks if you use a custom unit frame.  You can also use addons like Power Auras to tell you when you’ve lost or retained a shard, like I do.  I have a set of Power Auras that light up with how many shards I’ve used.

Assuming you haven’t used nay shards yet upon logging in, you will start with three soul shards.  You can spend a shard by casting Soulburn.  You’ll get a purple swirly circling your feet for 15s, which is is how long you have to spend the shard before it’s lost without any benefit to you.

To get a benefit, you use a spell directly after Soulburn.  Some spells are affected by Soulburn, and some aren’t.  The most common by far is the instant pet summon effect.  I also use Soulburn regularly when I pop a Healthstone, which gives me a personal raid wall effect.  Soul Fire is also instant-cast if you burn a shard for it.

Shard Regeneration

There’s three ways to get a shard back.

There’s the obvious, which you get at level 12*, Soul Harvest. This is an out-of-combat channeled spell.  Harvest returns health (45% over the whole channel) and a shard every tick.  It’s almost universal practice for locks preparing for a fight to soulburn summon a demon (spending a shard), Life Tap down until they have full mana and then Harvest to both heal the Tap damage and generate new shards.

* I find it a bit odd that they don’t give it out at 10 with Soulburn itself.  It might be because they don’t want to overload the new player with spells (Level 10 is talent tree time), but considering Harvest is the complement to ‘Burn, wouldn’t it make more sense to introduce them together?  They could make it into another tutorial-like quest (e.g. Immolate) with info popups like when you learn a new spell.

The second way is through execution phase (sub 20-25% boss health) filler spells.  For affliction, there’s Drain Soul, which returns all your shards if the experience-/honor-giving target dies while you’re draining.  Demonology’s execution “phase” happens whenever they are in Meta form, but they can use Drain Soul if they need shards.  Destruction uses a destro-only talent, Shadowburn, which puts a debuff up on the mob, during which time the mob has to die in order to refund all 3 shards.

Soulburn’s Problem

The problem with Soulburn is that it can’t decide whether it wants to be pure utility (used every once in a while) or a Thing That Warlocks Do (used regularly with oomph).  Blizzard so far has not been able to find a balance between an overpowered shard use and piddly shard use.

Right now, I hardly use Soulburn outside of summoning my pet.  I use it for healthstone, sure, but we usually end up wiping anyway when I do that.

It doesn’t help that soul shards are obviously affliction flavored.  Drain Soul?  Affliction.  Pure shadow damage tree?  Affliction.  Corrupting people’s souls?  Affliction.  And yet, none of the current Soulburn effects do much for affliction.  I keep forgetting you can apply Soulburn to UA, but it’s not even really worth the shard and cooldown to do so.

One of the problems with PvE Soulburn, as we saw with the degradation to Soul Swap, is PvP.  In PvE, the original Soul Swap glyph was awesome to use.  It allowed affliction to catch up a bit on fast add swaps, to help with our slow ramp-up time on damage, and allowed us to multidot like never before.  It was glorious.

It was also overpowered as hell in PvP, which is the land of everlasting target swaps.  So they upped the glyph’s cooldown time until it became, in my opinion, rather stupid to use in PvE.  I ended up multidoting the old way — casting everything manually — more often than not, so I dropped the glyph from my setup.

Soulburn is the same way.  The actual damage abilities you can apply Soulburn to are mostly limited to one tree in terms of effectiveness, and even there, not amazingly desirable to use or are too situational to see much hard action.

Destruction loves instant Soul Fire, because they deal fire damage for the most part.  Their mastery buffs fire damage.  Their passive buffs fire damage.  Demonology also buffs fire damage with a passive, but not as much as destruction does.  Affliction’s passive buffs shadow damage, and our mastery — which we don’t like to begin with — buffs only periodic shadow damage.

Destro and Demo can’t even get to UA to use that Soulburn effect.  Not that affliction warlocks themselves use it anyway.  Demo & Destro also can’t get to the Seed effect, as that’s deep in the Aff talent tree.

Nobody uses Searing Pain anymore.  Except to play threat hockey with your pet on a daily’s elite mob or for the 4-8 seconds when somebody locks you out of all your shadow spells in PvP.

In PvP, though, using the Demonic Circle: Teleport (movement speed boost) is a boost to play, but I’ve yet to use that regularly as a casual BG-er.

So.  What’s the point of using Soulburn if it’s not useful?  The spell needs to give us some special oomph in some area of play in order for it to be a Thing That Warlocks Do.

Shard-Refunding Abilities

I said there was a third way of regenerating shards, didn’t I?

The third way to get a shard back is to use an ability that refunds it.  An example is affliction’s deep-tier Seed of Corruption talent, which allows Soulburn to affect Seed.

Normally, when you cast Seed onto a mob, it puts a DoT that does a wee bit of damage.  The DoT’s not the point; Seed is an AoE spell.  Once the Seed target either dies or takes enough damage — any damage, not necessarily from the Seed or the casting warlock — it explodes and hits all targets in 15yd radius.

Soulburn: Seed of Corruption applies Corruption to every target the Seed explosion hits.  Which is fun as fel to do!  Numbers, numbers, numbers, critting everywhere!

The other bonus to SB: Seed is that if that Seed explodes, then you get the shard back.  That is, if you recast a new Seed over top of the soulburned Seed, grats, you don’t get the shard back, and you don’t get the Corruption-applying explosion, either.  Occasionally on trash I have to wait a beat for all the raid’s damage to kick in to explode the Seed before I can continue spamming my Seed button.

By far, the most attractive incentive Blizzard can give us is the ability to get the shard back after soulburning an ability correctly.

Of course, to keep the ability from being too overpowered, there needs to be a balance between the trigger to refund the shard and the effectiveness of the soulburned effect, but it’s a powerful strategy to get us to use the soul shards more.  There also needs to be a balance with the cooldown on Soulburn.  If Blizzard wants us to use it more, we need to be able to use it frequently.  But using it too freely results in being overpowered.

It’s clear, too, that they want us to use Soulburn more often.  It’s the cool gimmick that came with Cataclysm’s major revamp of class mechanics, and it would be a shame if the ability died from not being used often.  The tier 13 4-piece set bonus for warlock involves Soulburn to give us a spell power boost for 10s after using Soulburn and SB: Soul Fire will refund the shard.

Originally, the tier bonus was just this buff with using Soulburn, no refund.  Demo warlocks rejoiced, as they use Soulburn in the pet-switching they do regularly.  Destro warlocks thought it was cool too, as now they have more incentive to use an instant Soul Fire, which refreshes a vital self-buff for Destro’s rotations.

Affliction warlocks sat there with faces thinking, “Oh, yeah, awesome, let me use a spell I almost never use for a buff I have to have to be competitive.  I’m soooo glad I killed the instance multiple times over to win enough pieces just to get this set bonus.  /golfclap.”

After much uproar in the PTR forums, Blizzard put in the refunding shard aspect.  Suddenly, warlocks calmed down, because, hey, maybe it’s not so bad if we have a net loss of zero in the shard department.  It’s not even a loss of GCDs, since Soulburn does not trigger the GCD cooldown, so you can macro it to Soul Fire and roll out.  Even the affliction warlocks, who still grumbled because Soul Fire, really, FIRE, are you kidding me, decided they’ll use it, because the buff is a DPS increase, and technically, you’re supposed to weave in 3 instant-cast Soul Fires anyway for Word of the Sims, Holy Best DPS.

Blizzard really wants Soulburn to be a Thing That Warlocks Do.

Soul Shards in Mists of Pandaria

Soul Shards are staying in Mists, if the talent calculator Blizzard released is any indication.

Remember how I said soul shards are an affliction-flavored thing? No accident, they will become affliction-only in Mists.  Demonology and Destruction are getting revamped and will use almost combo-point systems to boost their powers.   Affliction, on the other hand, looks largely the same.

We will still have shards.  We will still have Soulburn.  But…the mechanics have changed just a little.

In Mists, Soulburn’s cooldown has been lowered to 15 seconds.  However, to balance out the ability use, you can only apply the Soulburn effect to a specific spell every 60 seconds.

So I can soulburn Seed of Corruption, and then I can only spam regular Seed for the next 60 seconds.  However, 15s seconds after I cast the burned Seed, I can use Soulburn again, maybe this time on my healthstone.  Blizzard is allowing us to use Soulburn specifically, more often, but limits our use of which spells we can apply it to in a short time period.

There are also new ‘burn effects to spells.

Summon X Pet is staying, which is great, because I hate it when my pet bugs out or dies in some encounter, and I’d hate to waste 10 seconds resummoning it.  Drain Life‘s faster cast is retained.  Soul Fire is still instant-cast with a shard.  Demonic Circle: Teleport still lets you move faster, but also grants immunity to snares & roots for a few seconds.

Health Funnel is getting a Soulburn effect: it restores 36% health and reduces damage taken for 10 seconds.  The wording is vague and does not specify whether you the player get the effect or your pet does, but considering HF is a you-to-your-pet experience, I’d assume it’s for the pet.

Fear is getting a Soulburn effect, which instantly horrifies your target for 4 seconds.  I don’t know whether this is supposed to be a half copy of Death Coil (which is being renamed to Mortal Coil as a talent), or if it’s a Death Coil horror effect on top of your normal Fear.

The fear-horror distinction is important as Horror effects (Psychic Horror & Death Coil) do not share diminishing returns with Fear effects (Fear, Howl of Terror, Psychic Scream etc.).  This is why a warlock will often Death Coil someone and then follow up with a Fear, as we know the Fear will get its full time since it’s technically a different effect.

I also don’t know if I would use an instant Fear effect in PvE if it would only last for a short period of time.  I might use it as an emergency interrupt, but as a crowd control ability, I’d much rather use the longer and hopefully-still-glyphed normal Fear.

Soulburn: Curse is a redux of the current talent Jinx.  It’s a shorter radius (10 yds, instead of 20/40 yds), but it applies to any curse in the affliction tree: Enfeeblement (Tongues & Weakness combined), Exhaustion, or Elements.  Currently, we use Jinx to spread the Elements effect — magic damage taken increased — but now we can have a mass slow (Exhaustion) or a mass damage done debuff (Enfeeblement).  I’m especially looking forward to using the mass slow in PvP and PvE alike.

The Future of Soulburn

All of these Mists additions are utility-based Soulburn effects.  None of them do higher damage than normal.  But each gives a bit of flavor and and interesting use.

If we get enough Soulburn effects, we might even use Soulburn on cooldown to do interesting things with our affliction rotation.  Let’s face it, putting up your DoTs and than channeling a spell is boring as fel, especially on the celebrated Patchwerk-style fights.  It’s all spam all the time.  I enjoyed my brief fling with Improved Soul Fire’s haste buff as affliction (before they fixed it deeper into the Destro tree), as it gave me something else to do during the fight.

Tying a damage boost through Soulburn into the PvE tier pieces may also work.  In PvE, especially raiding, we care more about damage than utility, and especially with Mists talents, the talents will take care of our utility well enough.  In PvP, however, affliction warlocks are great distracters with our Fears, so the PvPers will prefer more utility things like crowd control, small bursts of damage, and movement boosts.

Tying a damage boost through PvE gear in a large set bonus will let the PvErs have what they want without too much adverse effect on PvP.  If it were a 2pc set bonus, that would be too easy to stack other PvP gear and get a solid damage boost out of the select PvE gear.  However, tying a Soulburn damage boost in the 4pc set bonus requires, duh, four pieces of PvE gear, not to mention guaranteeing at least half of your major stat budget items (head, chest, legs, weapon) are the zero-resilience PvE pieces.  You also can’t benefit from a PvP set bonus at all, since you’d only have one tier slot left after four pieces, and the PvP tier bonuses (for warlocks) include a major resilience boost (valuable for irritating clothies!) and a profession bonus’s worth of Intellect boost.

I want Soulburn to become a Thing That (Affliction) Warlocks Do, but it has to be done right.  I don’t want the ability to twinkle out of use and existence because a balance can’t be found for it, whether it’s a PvE / PvP war or the PvE damage specs war that kills it.  But for now, I’ll have to wait to see how Blizzard plays it out.

First there’s the DoTs.  Lots of DoTs.  I like spreading them around.

I love multidotting.  I don’t really love multidotting for the damage — though, that’s great, too! — but for the activity you do.  It’s a common complaint of people leveling DoT specs for the first time that stuff takes too long to kill. You cast a DoT and then…you wait for it to die.

Well, if you pull one mob at a time, and you’re sitting around with a full health bar, you pulled too less.  Affliction is almost made for chain pulling.  Spread the love around town!  Affliction warlocks are like delusional, demented care bears.  Haunt Hug Everybody!

I love the fluidity of health and mana on the affliction warlock.  It’s even more so than shadow priests, who just return a tiny AoE bit for damage.  We can burn our health away and then get some back.  We can burn some mana away and then get some back.  My mana bar is my health bar is my mana bar.

It also provides a great tandem with healers for me, and I feel like I respect them a bit more than other damage specs.  Other damage specs are merely being kept alive; I’m being handed more fuel for my resource bar.

I love the Fears.  Especially in battlegrounds, oh man, I love the Fears.  I really don’t care about being an Ironman or being the lead demolisher.  I love being the chaos-bringer, the distracter, the assist in battlegrounds.  There’s nothing more satisfying than running into a horde of Horde and fear-bombing all of them off my FC.

I love the various curses, and will be sad when they all get combined into a few.  It makes sense, game-mechanic-wise, considering I have Exhaustion and Tongues in the same macro anyway, to make them into one Enfeeblement in Mists.  I love putting conditions on people and watching them squirm their way out of it.  It’s just “Not Fun” to watch a curse disappear off in a dispel.

I love using mobs to spread my DoTs.  It’s almost like Warlock Chain Heal.  Almost.  Soulburning a Seed and watching the mobs (or players) pulse in numbers as Corruption is now everywhere is supremely satisfying.  Jinxing one player and seeing the debuff elsewhere makes me smile.  Soulswapping immediately is almost like personal Pong.

I love the felhunter because I believe it fits most with the affliction warlock, roleplay-wise.  The imp shoots fire, the voidwalker protects, the succubus plays off someone’s lust and emotions, the felguard is a demonic brute, but the felhunter is a predator of magic.  They seek it out and they seek to consume it.  They use your own magics against you.

What’s the difference between a shadow priest and an affliction warlock?  Roleplay-wise?  I think shadow priests are focused on the mental self; they have so much Mind things, anyway.  Although faith for the Light (or whatever Light you have) is generally assumed from the heart, the defectors come from the mind, most often anyway.

Affliction, on the other hand, deals with corrupting your soul.  Affliction deals with fear and curses and…afflictions.  What’s an affliction?  What does it mean to afflict someone?  I think of afflictions as eating away at you.  They might start as something not very powerful, and they might not do much damage to you in a single instance, but over time, they wheedle you down until you can’t overcome them.

Afflictions eat you from the inside out.

It’s that satisfaction I get when I die in a boss fight but my DoTs are still going.  Or when I die in a battleground and get a Killing Blow notification while I’m a ghost.  Or when I’m doing Tol Barad dailies and have 5-6 mobs beating on me.  I don’t really care that I’m not dominating now.

I’ll just kill you later.

Affliction to me is playing with your food.  Oh, you’re going to die, there’s no doubt about that.  But I’m going to twist and torture you before I snuff you out with a DoT tick.

Why kill you now when I can have fun now?

You know you’re an affliction warlock at heart when there’s people (or mobs) screaming about you, but it’s an otherwise pleasant day, and you start giggling.  Not laughing — laughing is for destro.  Destruction warlocks also love chaos (it’s why we love them, too), but they end up ruining the view in the process.  Charred Forsaken is just not delectable.  (Okay, Charred Tauren is delicious.)

Your mirth is in proportion to your damage dealing.  Destro locks have great thundering laughter in spurts.  Aff locks giggle endlessly, and sooner or later end up rolling on the floor an hour later about it.  It’s good for the lock’s soul in the end.

There’s an almost childish levity to it.  Giggling, but also the playstyle of affliction.  Demonology feels bulky and RAWR SMASH.  Destruction feels fully loaded and firmly locked on the ground.  Affliction is frolicking among the fears.

I love affliction.