Smores over Felfire

WoW has gone through a lot of trouble to make demons more versatile for warlocks, but unfortunately there really isn’t much that can be done outside of a complete demon revamp. Destro locks will always use imps, demon locks will always use felguards, and aff locks will always use felhunters. Occasionally, when remembered, infernals will be used for last-second burst DPS on bosses, but that leaves doomguards (which in my mind should be used more often, but the numbers don’t back it up) and voidwalkers (which are only useful of you’re leveling an aff or destro lock) out in the cold.

Let’s go over this spec-by-spec. Destro locks use the imp simply because they get so many buffs in the destro tree. On top of that, whenever the imp crits, the warlock gets a free crit for him/herself, so why would they go with any other demon? Voidwalkers are a joke, as they do negligible dps, succubi and doomguards do moderate dps, but don’t benefit the warlock’s dps, and the felhunter would only be useful for spell lock. Infernals would be, of course, useful for last-second jumps to dps, but that would result in losing the empowered imp bonus (and therefore a few crits) on last-second boss burnouts.

Demonology is the only spec that has a trainable demon, so it’s a given that said demon, felguard, would be the best choice. Intercepts, cleaves, and auto attacks all are capable of criting, thus procing demon pact, which is one of the best talents available to the demonology tree (for both the warlock and the raid). I suppose there’s a chance that the doomguard could spam rain of fire and get at least one crit every time (thus ensuring demon pact is constantly up) for trash, but that’s trash, not boss fights. And if you do use the doomguard, then the buff for master demonologist (normally 5% extra damage) is forgone in the name of an AoE damaging spell. Not very useful during a boss. As before voidwalkers, felhunters, succubi, and imps are sub-par compared to the felguard. The only demon that comes close to the dps the felguard churns out is the infernal, but that is a 1-minute demon, best for bosses at 15% or less.

Now for my favorite, affliction. imps are a joke, only useful as a mana battery (thanks to dark pact) but their role as a glorified water cooler got the shaft when life tap got a glyph that jumps spell power whenever it is used. Voidwalkers, as always, are completely useless. Succubi used to be the aff-lock’s drug of choice, but thanks to the buffs shadow bite recieved, felhunters got pushed to the front of the aff-lock’s list of useful demons. Doomguards, like before, are sub-par and infernals are still 1-minute summons.

the only time where I can see some use for a number of demons is PvP, which is something I now avoid at all costs. Imps would be useful for soul link (as you gain a practical 20% damage mitigation, possibly higher with a glyph), voidwalkers are useful for consume shadows and the voidwalker bubble (I pissed off so many rogues by guarding the flag with a voidwalker) succubi have invisibility and sedduce (another WSG favorite of mine) felhunters’ spell lock is a great way to shut up a healer while you burn their friend to the ground, and felguards are… well.. really annoying when they’re cleaving your face off.

Bottom line, it seems to me that demon choice is only a “choice” for PvP, and that is primarily based on your PvP style. For PvE, there is no choice if you want to do the most dps. Pick your spec, then you are assigned a demon to go with that spec, pure and simple. While I’m not necessarily against the idea, I do find WoW’s claim of multi-purpose-ing the demons to be somewhat counter-intuitive.

Especially with the buffs mah fel-puppy picked up.

Love the fel-puppy.

After a month-long unannounced hiatus, I’m ready to start posting again.

<explanation>

Most of the December lapse was due to a combination of travel, work, and a general lack of interest in blogging about WoW. January was just the lack of interest. The team I led was constantly down at least one healer, usually a dps or two, and as a result was running very little outside of ToC, Ony, and the occasional jaunt into ICC (which ended with 4 or 5 wipes before we got disgusted and left). I do try to remain positive, but stalling progression + unstable team + other in-guild team having similar problems caused more than a bit of frustration. Regardless, I’ve got my second wind and will be doing my best to post once a weekday

</explanation>

My favorite kitteh druid found us a pally healer who knew how to stay out of the fire and we’ve been making up for lost time. Yesterday blitzed through Marrowgar, stalled a bit on Deathwhisper (fixed the problem when I assisted with the physical-immune adds, but primarily attacked the boss), but eventually dropped her (we actually killed her 1 second into her hard-enrage). Gunship was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, and it wasn’t because we 2-shot it. It was because I saw the group as a whole finally firing on all cylinders.

The first attempt we had ended when our ship exploded, due to me being a little lax on telling our “away team” when to jump and the other dps on the “home team” to use the cannon. We got their ship down to about 25%, but, as mentioned, we failed. This was fine in my opinion, because it was getting late and at least two of our team were sleepy/tired (ie: me and the disc priest). I said we’d give it one more go with a few changes.

First: the away team would jump as soon as the cannons froze.
Second: after the mage was dead, they were to come back quick, fast, and in a hurry.
Third: myself and the other home-team dps were to use the cannons up until they froze, then and only then should we attack the reavers on our ship
Fourth: when the reavers were dead, we were to dps the axe hurlers until the cannons were free.

What happened next was a beautiful string of chaos. First, the disc healer died (soulstoned immediately), then the away-team tank died (the kitteh druid beared up), then the kitteh-bear died, and just as the enemy mage froze the cannons, the cannoneers were able to get one last volley off.

Which killed their ship.

Which won the fight.

Huzzah.

We gave one “why the hell not” shot at Deathbringer, but lost due to the tanks neglecting to taunt off each other when one got the blood debuff. Not a huge deal, since we now know what to look for. I’m very much looking forward to Monday, as I anticipate at least one more guild-first boss-drop in our near future.

Damn it feels good to be progressing again.

I know I’ve been harping on the LFG changes for a few days now, but this’ll be the last one directly about it, I promise.

I spent a decent portion of the weekend on WoW, specifically on my paladin tank, because I learned something crucial to this toon’s development. There is a mighty MIGHTY shortage of tanks in the Whirlwind battlegroup. I mean, I sit in the LFG queue for 5 seconds tops before I’m tossed into a group. No, I’m not exaggerating, I had someone sitting no more than 4 feet away from me and she heard me, repeatedly, never get beyond 5 seconds before WoW popped the “you’ve found a group” window. Furthermore, most of the dps I pug with are so very sick of waiting that they’ll happily run at my breakneck speed through the heroic (I think the median run-time for anything not scripted, like VH or CoS, is around 20 minutes per instance) and we’ll leave the healer sobbing in the corner ’cause I’m agging everything my shiny-ground-agg-maker will let me. This strategy is so effective, by the way, that I’m currently sitting on 3 pieces of t9 gear and I’m within 3 badges of a 4th. I clock in at around 12-15 badges an hour and by this time next week I’ll very likely be more geared on my paladin than I am on my warlock, which frightens me on a number of levels (But I don’t WANNA tank! I wanna deeps!).

The primary reason I got so much gear for the paladin is actually rather simple:

1) I run the paladin when my S.O., a bubble-priest, is around, and when you have a tank AND healer pre-grouped, the median wait-time for LFG is around 3 seconds. She knows how quickly I pull and compensates accordingly (read: If I’m within healing range, I likely need heals ’cause I agged the room… again…). When the healer AND the tank are both on the same page, the DPS can blow through their mana/rage/energy/runic power and before you know it, we’re standing over Loken saying “Um… what just happened? I remember buffing at the entrance, then there’s this 20 minute panic-and-pain filled blur… now I have 6 more badges and I don’t know how- Oh hey! Loken’s dead!”

2) I hate waiting for a group. As the warlock, the median wait-time is around 10 minutes, which is enough time to do 2, maybe 3 dailies, get stuck in a group where the other 4 run into walls most of the time, get 6 badges after about an hour, then repeat. Given a similar amount of time on my paladin, I’d probably pick up a piece of t9 in the same span of time.

So how do you, someone who loves their DPSer, get the same turnaround time as the tanks and healers (median healer-LFG-time is just under a minute, by the way)? The answer, as you could probably guess, is to group with a healer/tank. You get to piggyback on their preferential treatment and THEY get a dps who knows which end of a dagger/wand to hold. Assuming you don’t have a favored tank/healer to roll with, the alternative may make you a little quezy: dual spec as a tank/healer (assuming you’re not a warlock/mage/rogue/hunter. If you are, see the “piggyback” option). You don’t have to be amazing, you just have to be good enough to keep the tank alive. If the dps acts stupid, let ‘em die, your job is to keep those who passed the “is it your ass or a hole in the ground ” test. Why roll a healer/tank on your beloved meat-grinder? Because badges don’t care if you use them for that dps trinket when you earned them as a healer.

Also: no waiting.

I hate waiting.

I’m going to be very frank here: I love the new LFG system. Maybe it’s because our server is full of people who really don’t know what they’re doing, but I’ve run a lot of pugs and I can count the number of bad pugs thus far with just one hand.

The problem: I never get to run a pug group with my warlock.

I’ve got a handful more triumph badges I need and then I will be running the priest for all my heroics because, frankly, the priest is still running around in lvl 200 gear. Yeah, I know, it made me cringe too. But on the other side, every time I upgrade from, say, moonshroud robe to Velen’s  Robe of Conquest, I get a noticeable increase in effectiveness. And due to the immense amount of dailies I can run as the priest (because no one heals in whirlwind… apparently), I’ve picked up 2 t9 tokens in as many days. At this rate, I’ll be geared out in about 2 weeks without USING the priest for raids. And therein lies the curse.

Currently, I have a guild that is rather short on healers, so the best thing for me, as a guild master, to do is gear out the priest and raid with it. The course of action I WANT to take is sending my priest on the sidelines and burn some face off with the lock. If the two raid’s days were staggered, I could take the best of both words (as the one I’m leading is short on heals and the one I subbed in for the other day was short on dps), but alas, I can’t as they… well… aren’t.

Damn… I’m sounding a bit more emo these days than usual. Next week, upbeat crap, I promise.

I’m willing to work with the game on a number of issues, like continuity for raids (ie: how can I go back into ToC and kill the Twins again after I did it the first time) and the inability for players to learn how to repair their own gear (WoW has to find some way to make a decent money drain to keep the economy stable). But one thing really bugs me in the WoW world… death. I know, I know, it’s a tired argument, but I promise I’m going to take it in at least a different direction than it’s been taken in before. I’m not going to moan about how death for players is senseless, I’m going to talk about death for NPCs.

And not just any NPCs, but the nameless NPCs.

Wait… I guess that makes them “any NPCs.” So… disregard that last sentence.

ANYway, in the Pit of Saron, there are 2 scenes that end with large amounts of NPC-death. Both are done in a non-soul-sucking manner, so it stands to reason that they are not dead-dead, but just mostly-dead (ie: without outside intervention, they will remain dead). Jaina makes a big deal about how she is not pleased, at all, with the soldiers’ deaths, but presses on anyway.

Rewind with me to your mid-to-high 30s. Remember Scarlet Monastery? Remember how annoyed you were when Whitemane stunned the party and undid all your work on Morgraine?

You know… that guy you just stabbed in the face… probably a hundred or so times?

Why wouldn’t Jaina have a priest on hand that did nothing but rez the dead? Teleport them in, mass resurrection, teleport out. It would cut down training new recruits to.. um… nearly nothing.

I know this seems kind of like a cheating post… but it’s always bothered me…