A Strange Reason for Abandoning My Warlock

So Cynwise recently wrote a fantastic post and follow up questioning where all of the warlocks have gone and why.

Where Did All the Warlocks Go In Cataclysm

Leveling Data on Warlocks is Worse Than I Thought

I'd encourage everyone to click through and read these, but the initial conclusion seems to be that warlocks are doing just fine in PvE and actually doing really well in PvP, but that for some reason there is a very significant drop off in people that are leveling their warlocks to 85, or playing them once they get to 85.

The posts made me think of my own situation. My warlock was my very first max level character in WoW, way back in Burning Crusade. I hit level 70 out in Netherstorm. It was also the very first toon that I raided on, running Kara and ZA and it was also my first toon to 80 in Wrath and the first toon that I raided on in Wrath.

There are two things that changed though. Over the course of Wrath, I leveled 8 more toons to max level (every class but warrior) and began to raid more on my druid rather than my warlock. It was just easier to get a raid spot with a healer than it was as dps.

So in the early days of Cata, my original main, my warlock, was actually not the first character that I pushed through to max level - he was actually the third - after my paladin and my druid. Despite that, I found healing in the early days of Cataclysm to be very frustrating and went back to playing on my warlock until something very interesting happened.

As part of leveling my death knight, I started to run more instances on the Death Knight and found that I was getting significantly better results on the Death Knight than I was on the warlock. There were two things causing that. First, the return of crowd control required me to spend a lot of time recasting fear on various mobs. Being the shortest duration crowd control out there (relative to sheep, or ice trap) it requires a lot of time to focus and refresh so the mobs don't run wild in your group. And time spent refreshing fear is time that you're not spending nuking bad guys.

The other thing that I noticed was something very specific to me and my play style. I tend to travel a lot for work, so I'm very often playing on a laptop on somewhat questionable hotel internet. The thing that I immediately found with a class like the Death Knight is that the lack of a cast time for any of my abilities significantly improved my dps.

Particularly playing my warlock as destro, I've got three of my key abilities - Immolate, Chaos Bolt and Incinerate, that have fairly significant cast times. And that's going to be the case no matter what spec you are playing. What I found was that any lag or low framerates that I was experiencing because of my travel situation had a fairly large impact on my dps because of those cast times, but those issues went away almost completely on the Death Knight.

So I set the warlock aside and started running more on the Death Knight and eventually on the rogue as well. Because abilities with no cast time is a lot more forgiving when you're not playing in the perfect environment.

Ding! Level 85 #11

So I finally managed to get my first alliance toon to level 85. My little gnome Death Knight just hit level 85 this morning.

Next up is the hunter!

Almost There!

So I am about 10 bars away from having my first alliance toon to level 85! That'll bring me to a grand total of 11, and I think the hunter won't be far behind.

It's been somewhat disappointing that essentially after Grizzly Hills, there's been absolutely no difference in content that I've been able to tell between Horde and Alliance. That is, until Twilight Highlands. It almost feels like Blizzard got to the very last portion of Cataclysm and someone said - Oh Shit. We haven't done a thing to differentiate Horde and Alliance this whole expansion. Or half of the last expansion for that matter.

So far, I'm enjoying Twilight Highlands a lot though. Maybe it's because it's probably the last piece of content in the game that I haven't seen at this point, but I've been enjoying it a lot. I was doing a lot of dungeon finder through Deepholm and Uldum, just because there wasn't much to get my juices flowing for the 11th time through those zones. But I've been enjoying the quest sequence through Twilight Highlands a lot.

Should hit 85 either today or tomorrow and then will start working on the Hunter who is parked at an Inn in Hellfire Peninsula. After that, who knows?

Driving a Few Alliance Toons to 85

So I can only do so much PvP before I start to get tired of it, and with the dungeon / LFR side of the game not really holding my attention either at this point, I've returned to my great love of leveling alts. I'm going to work on pushing a few of my alliance toons to 85 before MoP hits so we'll see how that goes.

The Death Knight is getting pretty close at this point. I've managed to get him to 82 and so he's starting to work his way through Deepholm. I've been doing some PvP while leveling, just because there's really no difference in the content for Alliance once you get past Grizzly Hills in Northrend - at least up until Twilight Highlands. So I'm adding some battleground love just to keep it interesting.

Once the Death Knight is done, I'll likely turn my attention to the hunter next who is sitting at level 60 and just entered Outland. I'm not sure who it will be after that, although I'm leaning towards someone that starts on the Eastern Kingdoms side since I already ran the alliance side of Kalimdor on the hunter.

It was a really strong weekend from a PvP standpoint, managing to rack up 3,000 HK's over the weekend. It's got my total on the Horde side sitting at 64,955.

Eew. Alliance. Weird.

So I did a faction change and server change on my Shadow Priest last week to move him over to Alliance to get a look at what PvP is like from the Alliance point of view. I'd been reading on the forums and hearing frustration in trade chat the Horde wasn't winning any Battlegrounds any more. I'd done some very rough calculations myself over about a two week period of time, and my winning percentage did seem to be running below 50% (although it tended to go in streaks at different times of the day).

So I thought switching to Alliance would be a nice change of pace. Besides, if things were really bad over on the Horde side, it must be non-stop joy, terrific communication and coordination and reveling in the dominance on the Alliance side, right?

So I log on to my new Human Shadow Priest and find myself in the middle of the Trade District in Stormwind. Oh Shit! Run! Hide! Oh wait.

So there are a few things that I notice right off the bat. First, that I don't know where anything is. And why are there no guards in the Trade District. Why are there guards everywhere when I'm trying to stealth in on a Horde toon, but there's not a damn guard to be found when I need directions.

So, after spending a few minutes trying to find the Hall of Legends (no, Champions...) and the various portals, and my trainer, and the reforger, I'm ready to go. On a side note, you Alliance guys probably would have been better off if Deathwing had actually leveled the place. Nothing is conveniently located, especially compared to Orgrimmar. Just saying.

I then queue for my first battleground and immediately zone into the Alliance area of Warsong Gulch. Sweet! Grab the flag and run! Oh wait. Nevermind.

So I start to wonder if there's some truth to the rumors as I win my first three battlegrounds in a row - Warsong Gulch, Isle of Conquest (yep - Horde still doesn't kill the glaives if you're playing Alliance) and Arathi Basin (woo hoo! zerg Lumber Mill!)

Then, the tide starts to turn, and my groups get rocked in Gilneas and a nasty 4 cap loss in Eye of the Storm. The another nasty Eye of the Storm loss.

So after several days of playing on the Alliance side and the Horde side, I've come to another surprising and secret conclusion. There is a mysterious third faction at play in these battlegrounds that is actually winning the majority of the battlegrounds out there!

So with that little experiment ended, I got a little tired of the PvP, so went back to leveling my actual Alliance toons. I've now managed to get my Gnome Death Knight to 77 and will be leaving Zul'Drak for Sholazar soon.

Casual Gold Making

So I've still mostly been focused on PvP for the last week or so, and almost exclusively on my warlock. He's up to 26,217 HK's, which brings my total across all ten of my toons to 61,646.

When I haven't been queueing for battlegrounds, I've mostly been spending a little bit of time focused on gold making. For me, at least so far in Cataclysm, my biggest money makers have been enchanting and jewelcrafting. I'll start my day scanning the Auction House and using TradeSkillMaster to figure out which scrolls are selling profitably. I'll then craft any that I don't already have posted, focusing primarily on those that are used on 300 level gear and better as I find those sell more dependably.

I then hop over to my Jewelcrafter and use the spreadsheet from Consortium.net to do the Ore shuffle for the day, which usually involves buying a bunch of stacks of various ore, prospecting it all, cutting rare gems, making jewelry with the uncommon or transmuting or selling some of them depending on prices. The jewelry then goes back to my warlock for disenchanting, which feeds his scroll making business.

I've also got two transmute spec'd alchemists, so every day on both of them, I'll do a quick living elements transmute. It's usually good for around 150-200g profit per day each for just a couple of minutes of work.

It's not a huge enterprise and it's never going to get me gold capped, but it keeps me at a very comfortable level of gold.

I might do a bit of PvP on the rogue as well as those seem to be wrecking things on the battlegrounds at this point.

Back to PvP

So the downside of accomplishing most of your goals far in advance of a patch is it tends to make you run out of things to do. So I'm back to PvP! I did a few battlegrounds yesterday on my warlock for the first time since 4.3 dropped in September.

I still need to do that one last Dragon Soul run on my warrior, but it's probably a couple weeks away before I really have time to get that done. He's at least geared for it now, so it shouldn't be too much trouble once I actually focus on it.

I'd capped my honor on the warlock before the end of the last season, so he was able to get a couple of pieces of the new season's gear right away.

We'll see how long it takes before I get totally frustrated with battlegrounds again.

Some SWTOR leveling thoughts

I've finally managed to tweak things to the point that SWTOR is now playable on my laptop, which opens up a lot more time for me to work on leveling while traveling. I've got very mixed feelings about the game after my initial attempts and starting and leveling new toons. Right now, I've leveled an Imperial Agent and a Republic Trooper out of the starting area and have gotten pretty far on a Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor as well.

I still don't have any particular character that I'm feeling very attached to unfortunately. I find myself finishing up the early stages on these characters and feeling more depressed or sad than energized to keep going. Unlike some of the other MMO's that I've played, SWTOR really brings home the feeling that you're just a minor cog and that there are things going on that you're not even aware of that may completely screw with your gameplay sometime down the road.

I haven't gotten any distance on a single character without feeling bad either about something I had done, or feeling like I had somehow been betrayed. While I've enjoyed the game itself, it has really left me not feeling particularly motivated about continuing.

The feeling of being caught up in politics is also one that has turned me off a bit. It's bad enough that I've got to be immersed in political bullshit in real life, I don't need Democrats versus Republicans translated into Republic versus Empire when I'm trying to play a game.

So, I'm going to keep trying and see if I find a character that seems to click. The ones that I haven't tried at all yet are Smuggler, Bounty Hunter and Jedi Knight. I'm thinking Smuggler and Bounty Hunter might at least eliminate the feeling of being caught up in a larger machine, since those folks tend to operate on their own anyway. Jedi Knight has potential too in that I really liked the way my class operated as a Sith Warrior - just wasn't a huge fan of the story line. I started a Jedi Consular but very quickly decided I wasn't that big on a character who attacked by throwing dirt at people. Felt a little bit like playing my 3 year old.

Deathwing Down on Toons #7, 8 and 9!

So this past weekend was an extremely productive one for Raid Finder for me and I managed to get Deathwing Down on my rogue, priest and shaman, making it characters 7, 8 and 9. It'll be about two more weeks before I can really dedicate a lot of time to raid finder again, so I've got two weeks to get the last member of the Joar family - my goblin warrior, Joarmama - geared for LFR.

I've started off by having my blacksmith make him a 365 weapon and also PvP shoulders, belt and boots, because those are the areas where he had the lowest iLvl. Those four items managed to get him geared enough to start running the new Hour of Twilight dungeons, so now's it is really just a matter of running those enough to get him to 372.

After one End Time run, he managed to get the head piece off of Muruzond already (who my poor Death Knight never did get!), and quest gloves and a quest ranged item. Those have already boosted his average iLvL to 366, so I'm hopeful that those last 6 points will be pretty doable over the next 2 weeks.

I also managed to get the last piece of T13 on my Death Knight, so he's now happily sporting a 4 pc set bonus. It's the first time that I've ever had that on any toon on the current tier, so I'm pretty happy about that. It's not the shoulders that I wanted, so I'll still be trying for those so I can go back to the valor headpiece, but it's a nice thing to have.

I've also been working on finishing leveling professions on the goblin warrior and he's into Cata zones on both his mining and skinning. Gives me something to do while I wait for my queue's to pop!

Strategies for LFR Gearing

So now I'm on to the harder toons to gear for LFR. My priest isn't quite there, but he's close enough that just a few drops, or a enough runs to buy some valor or jp gear should push him over the edge. The shaman and the warrior are going to be quite a bit harder though.

For the enhancement shaman, purchasing a set of 378 bracers for him was actually enough to get him to the point that he could run the new Hour of Twilight 5 mans. From there, it's a matter of putting together a list of the drops that I need, and also what my biggest upgrades are from Justice Points.

Interestingly enough, the shaman needs the same two weapons that I can't seem to get to drop on my rogue - either the Trickster's Edge off of Perotharn, or the Clattering Claw off of Benedictus.

Beyond that, the upgrades that I'm working towards from the Hour of Twilight 5 mans are:

Helm - Dawnslayer Helm - Asira Dawnslayer
Shoulders - Betrayer's Pauldrons - Benedictus
Feet - Dead End Boots - can drop off of any of the Echo's in End Time
Waist - Cinch of the World Shaman - actually a quest reward from Hour of Twilight
Ring - Mannoroth's Signet - Mannoroth
Trinket - Arrow of Time - Muruzond

For legs, I went with the justice point variety and grabbed a set of Erupting Volcanic Leggings for 2200 JP's. I think my next justice point upgrade may actually be my relic since I'm still using a 346 Sandshift Relic there. If I don't get Arrow of Time to drop off of Muruzond, I may also use JP's to pick up Fluid Death.

For Valor Points, I'm thinking my first upgrade might actually be the Kiroptyric Sigil, especially given that there are decent drops available in every other slot, and an extra 2200 agility on a 90 second cooldown is just too good to pass up. After that, it will likely be waist, unless I can't get the helm to drop, in which case I might grab the valor helm.

For my shadow priest, his next big upgrade is going to be his chest piece - where I either need the Whisperwind Cloak off of the Echo of Tyrande in End Time, or I'll take the Firelands Tier piece for justice points. Other Hour of Twilight upgrades still to go on the priest include the Horned Band off of Perotharn and the Slippers of Wizardry off of Aszhara.

Happy New Year!

I've managed to get two more toons fully geared for the Raid Finder and have gotten Deathwing down on one of them - the paladin. The rogue has done the Siege of Wrymrest portion of the raid, but not that last half. I should be able to knock that out in the next few days.

I've also started working on gearing the priest a little bit, so he's up to a 370 ilvl already, so will quite clearly be the next one to run through - hopefully by next weekend. And that after that, it'll be the final two - shaman and warrior - which will both without a doubt be my most difficult two to get fully geared.

I've also continued to run Raid Finder regularly on the warlock, death knight and druid, but have gotten no interesting drops the last few weeks. At least it's valor points.