Lessons in Being Facerolled 101

Roll up a Lock, they said.

It'll be fun, they said.

Hey, you've got a built-in tank, they said.

It'll be facerolling, they said.

Such was my state of mind after puttering around a bit in Redridge the other night.

Unlike a Hunter, however, a Warlock is still a cloth armor wearer, and that does have an impact. Additionally, after questing in Westfall and Elwynn, my cloth wearing gear isn't all that Warlock friendly.* I've heard it said that Westfall and Elwynn are great zones for Rogues, and I believe it. Unlike Darkshore, a lot of the random drops that I've picked up are rogue friendly, and Deadmines itself is famous for having some good rogue gear there.

I was about to perform the Wetlands Fun Run and relocate to Darkshore when I figured that I should at least try Redridge Mountains and see what happens. Besides, getting to L20-22 means that he Wetlands should be easier than at, say, L18.**

So off to Redridge I went, to kill gnolls, Orcs, and spiders.

Or rather, to be killed by them.

Spiders aren't so much of a problem, since you can pick them off one by one, but Orcs and Gnolls love to congregate in packs around campfires, so the good ol' Voidwalker would have to stay upright while having 2 or 3 enemies wailing on them at once.

And, I discovered, the DOTs don't DPS down enemies fast enough to compensate for my liberal usage of Health Funnel, trying to keep my Voidwalker upright, and the corresponding loss of mana.

And using direct attacks such as Drain Soul and Shadow Bolt take what seems like forever to work.

So I became used to the corpse run back to Gnoll areas while I debated what to do.

Grouping is the most obvious answer, but when there isn't a group around (at, say, 5 AM), then you just have to pick off the Gnolls around the edges. And hope that when the Gnoll tries to run, they die quickly enough that they don't aggro another pack of Gnolls.

Oh, and one critical thing: run.

Run a lot, and use the Voidwalker's Sacrifice ability as much as possible.

This is the old WoW I remember, trying to level as a Clothie in early Wrath, not really knowing what I was doing, and deciding that running was a very viable option.

Do I mind? Well... It's not facerolling by any stretch of the imagination, but no, I don't mind. I just have to tailor my expectations to match reality.

And besides, I'll remember those Gnolls, when I need some fresh souls....




*When I've grouped, I've frequently lost the rolls on caster gear. I see my D&D rolling capabilities followed me to WoW Classic.

**I did make Wetlands Fun Run at L18 after all, and in spite of being chased by a Dragonmaw Orc who came from over the hills and chased me and my Voidwalker until I detonated the Voidwalker, giving me enough extra time to escape.

Don't Interrupt a Warlock Making a Fashion Statement

After what felt like the upteenth time of running through Tirisfal to reach the Scarlet Monastery, Az stands at L39.

And nowhere near having enough money for a mount when she dings L40.

Still, I've decided to take a break from the Rogue Life and try something new, so that I can appreciate more of what Classic has to offer. And in honor of the lack of summons' for all of those SM runs, I created a Warlock.

Compared to Launch Day, Northshire Abbey was
really quiet. Well, except for all these Kobolds.
And yes, I got that cloak as my very first drop.

I'd created a previous Warlock, a Worgen named Adelwulf, back on Ysera in Cataclysm and leveled him via Battlegrounds. To say that Cataclysm wasn't kind to Warlocks in BGs is a bit of an understatement. After being jealous of them in Wrath, I decided to create one just as they were nerfed heavily in Cata. Yes, that meant that the BG route was a real slog to get through, and when I reached somewhere around L82 or so I gave it up. I liked that ol' Wolfie, but constantly being targeted at the beginning of Warsong Gulch became a bit much.*

Since Adelwulf was born in a post-Cata world, I never got to see the original class quests, and being a Worgen meant I never got to hang in Northshire Abbey and work my way through the mostly Human oriented quests. Therefore, I decided I was not going the Gnome route that many of the Warlocks I've grouped with went, but instead decided to create a Human with a name in honor of the late MMO Wildstar, Dominius.**

Since the enormous wave at launch has long since passed, the crowd in Northshire and Elwynn Forest has diminished, but there was little trouble in grouping up when necessary, such as with those @#$&-ing Murlocs east of Crystal Lake's more tame version. I re-discovered that without a Voidwalker, I was a bit of a sitting duck if more than one Murloc decided to attack me, so grouping up became imperative if I didn't want an endless series of corpse runs.***

Still, for me the main attraction was to see the Warlock class quests, and they did not disappoint.

Yes, there are spoilers, even after all this time, because it's been since --2011, maybe?-- that we saw these class quests in all their glory?

Fear and Loathing in Hellfire

Well, the WoW-verse seems to have righted itself once more, as crowds in Org and Stormwind are back to pre-D3 release levels (roughly 50 or so on an average night in an evenly split server).  I suppose you could post a list on a wall and throw darts at which is the best explanation why the crowd is back and you'd have as good a guess as any pundit, but it wouldn't shock me if some folks burned through D3 and are simply back to their normal routine.

I've been avoiding roving bands of Rated BGers and have been back to leveling my Affliction Warlock, Adelwulf (thanks for the kick in the pants, Cynwise!), and as soon as I hit L60 I noticed a change in the ol' Furball.  There weren't any new spells to be learned, but suddenly attacks started having a bit more punch.  At first I thought it was due to the buying spree on heirlooms that I went on*, but when I swapped them out for Outland Clown Gear (tm) I discovered there wasn't much of a dropoff at all.

I guess the tuning for Locks has finally begun to kick in.

In a moment of weakness, I decided to queue up for a random Outland instance so I could spend the intervening time farming herbs and leveling Alchemy.  That kind of backfired, because I found myself in Hellfire Ramparts before I could make even one circuit of Hellfire Peninsula.**

One thing about a Lock --especially an Affliction Warlock-- is that you're used to bringing up the rear in the damage meters in a regular 5-man instance.  By the time those DoTs kick into gear, the mob is gone.  The bosses will at least stick around long enough for a Lock to update their DoTs a few times, but that's not a recipe for high overall DPS.  However, this time I was able to pull off damage that left me somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Not too bad.

Having run BGs almost exclusively as a Warlock, I had to consciously choose not to do some things while in an instance.  For example, during the pulls up to Watchkeeper Gargolmar, a second mob swept down on our Shammy.  I was closest to her, but my instinctual reaction --Howl of Terror-- would have been disastrous.  There were simply too many other mobs (plus Gargolmar) nearby to risk using it.  Instead, I spammed Hellfire to draw aggro then kite the mob back to the tank.

This, I grumbled, will have to take some getting used to.

Another strange thing about this Ramparts run was the complete and utter absence of DKs in the group: a Prot Warrior, a Ret Pally, a Resto Shaman, and a Fire Mage were my compatriots.  The cluelessness you get from DKs in these Outland instances was still present, however, in the form of the Ret Pally.  Almost immediately after he'd complimented the Shammy on the good job she'd been doing, he rolled Need on a healer neck drop, and beat out the Shammy in the ensuing roll.

"That's a healer item," the Shammy pointed out.

The Ret Pally was nonplussed.  "Yeah," he agreed.

"It's MS before OS, or so I thought."

"That's why there's Dual Talent Specialization."

My brain melted into a gibbering pile of goo.  Of all the... I began to type, but then bit it back.  "I'm embarrassed that my main shares a spec with that guy," I whispered the Shammy, who whispered a smile back.

There's just something in the water about the Hellfire Citadel instances that causes people to act like jerks.





*All of my cloth Heirlooms are back in Neve's bank on A-52, and I wasn't planning on spending money to move them.  Besides, I had all this Honor that I was racking up and had to blow it on something.


**But it does make for a PUG story, something I've not had in months.

Coming to Terms With My Outer Darkness

As has been well documented, I play several Paladins.  You know, the Goody Two Shoes of the WoW world.*  While the other ostensibly "good" class that draws power from Holy Light --the Priest-- has a Shadow Spec, the Paladin is free of any direct taint of Darkness.  They are the rigidly Lawful Good characters who embody what Roland, Saladin, and Perceval strove for.**  Not only pure of heart and mind, but able to kick some serious ass.

And they're also cloying.  The constant preaching of the Argent Crusade and from those who hang out in the Cathedral of Light can be grating on people.  Paladins have a reputation of being the sort of person that would stand side-by-side with you in a fight, but are too self-righteous to go hang with you at the World's End Tavern afterward.

So naturally it follows that I've started a Warlock toon.

If you thought that Paladins were on the uber-good end of the class listing, Warlocks have to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.  Whereas the Death Knight's intro story pretty much sets up their redemption at the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, there isn't anything so warm and fuzzy about a class that revels in wielding "true power" and "secret knowledge".

The entire concept of the Warlock as a playable class kind of flies in the face of the current World of Warcraft setting.  With Guldan and the Shadow Council no longer in charge of the Horde, Warlocks would be persona-non-grata in official Horde circles.  Yes, there is still an undercurrent of approval and "those were the good old days" in the Horde, but all that time spent fighting against the Burning Legion in Outland would have driven that sentiment deeper underground.  The only official place --Cataclysm Era-- where the philosophy of "I don't care where it came from but I'm going to throw it all against you" would find a home is in Sylvanas' camp.

As for the Alliance, there's even less of a reason why a Warlock is a playable class.  The Alliance fought not only the Burning Legion but the old Horde, and if there's any class that the Alliance would despise more than the Warlock, I'm not sure what it would be.  Yes, I know that there are always people who are tempted by power, but when WoW tries to set your toon up as a hero, a Warlock is typically not what the general populace has in mind.

Considering all that, I felt distinctly uncomfortable when Genn Greymane and Co. would call my new toon an 'old friend' and a 'hero' during the Gilneas starting zone.  "Hello?  Can't you see the Imp following along behind me?  Doesn't that make you just a WEE bit uneasy, Your Majesty?"

Dominating members of the Burning Legion like a Warlock does is splitting hairs.  Really.  You can't look at the Warcraft universe and say "well, they may be demons, but they're on our side."  To paraphrase Azrael from the movie Dogma, "But they're f@$#-ing demons!"  Warlocks are playing with the worst kind of fire, WoW-verse speaking, and I am surprised that Blizz doesn't tweak things a bit so that they are more obviously shunned a bit more.***

In spite of all that, Warlocks are a bit refreshing.  Most people --virtual or real-- tend to hide their dark secrets.  Locks put their own Darkness right out on display.  Hell, they'd probably charge admission if they thought they could get away with it, in their own Ray Bradbury-esque dark circus.

So playing a Warlock --especially in an RP environment-- is all about power and domination.

***

Of course, that's not the reason why everybody plays a Lock.  Some of us are in it for the DoTs.

If you've ever been in a BG, you know what it's like to have someone out of melee range dump several DoTs on you, then sit back and laugh --or maybe cast a Fear-- while you bleed to death.  If you're lucky and you're playing a class that can dispel those DoTs, you'll end up wasting time dispelling them while there's a Warrior or Kitty Druid beating on you.  Having been on the receiving end of that tactic enough times, I finally decided that I'd had enough and I want some of that too.  After all, how hard could it be?

Um....

If you come from a melee or Hunter/Mage background, harder than you think.

The hardest thing I had to deal with during the Worgen intro zone was the waiting.  Your direct attacks aren't that powerful, so you have to wait for the accumulation of those DoTs to have the desired impact.  I suppose I could run around, kiting the enemy, but that could be disastrous if I ran in the wrong direction.  So there you are, clad in cloth armor, watching some enemy wail on you.  It's only when you finally get a Voidwalker minion that you have a viable mini-tank to take the pressure off.

But that leads into the second hardest thing as a Lock, and that's the accumulation of threat from all those DoTs.  Threat spikes have always been the bane of DPS, but you can mitigate some of the danger of threat spikes by slowing down your rotation.  With DoTs, however, you don't have any sort of control once you cast your spell; your only option is to determine whether or not to cast that DoT in the first place.  Finding a way to control threat in this back handed manner is probably where a lot of Locks fall down in instances.

So, what's up for the little furball of Evil now?

I'm going to keep him questing through Darkshore, and now that he's high enough level to queue for Ragefire Chasm, I'm going to find out how Warlock dynamics work in an instance setting.

Oh, and of course I'll queue up for Warsong Gulch.  I can't resist giving the old DoT/Fear trick a whirl!



*Blood Knights notwithstanding.  And Lady Liadrin, the Blood Knight Matriarch, has since corrected things during her audience with A'dal in Shattrath City.

**Yes, I know that Roland is the chief paladin of Charlemagne's court, that Perceval was a literary construct, and Saladin was more complex than his Medieval admirers believed.  Give a guy a break, will ya?

***Even though it's not in the WoW-verse, there ought to be a chance, however small, that the demon would break free from your control and turn on you.  I'd tweak it such that the likelihood of a demon breaking free from your control goes up when you get into a fight; after all, your toon is under increased pressure, so naturally something bound against its will would try to break free when you're distracted.


EtA:  Warlocks are a class, not race.   That'll teach me to not write and edit early in the morning.