Cataclysm

I've gotten some e-mails that I haven't really responded to, so I thought I'd just do a quick update with answers for you.

I do plan on raiding again come Cataclysm, and that means I'll probably start up the blog again with frequent posts.

I've only done the Lower Spire in ICC10, and I plan on going further be it with pugs, or guildies.

You're not seeing a lot of activity on my warlock mostly because I've been levelling a paladin.

I think that answers the general questions in the few e-mails I've gotten. It's nice to know that there are still have some people interested in this blog!

It wasn't Belfip this time

Apologies and such. The guild has stopped raiding over the past month and has gone casual, meaning I play much less. I've also started school again so that's some more things on my mind to get organised with.

This pretty much sums up why the last two weeks had no new posts.

I'll get back to updating frequently again eventually.

Life Tap > Mages

Life Tap Rank 8

Instant

Converts [1490 + SPI * 3] health into [1490 + SPI * 3] mana. Spirit increases quantity of health converted.

Life Tap is the core spell in a warlock's arsenal. I'd even go as far as saying that Life Tap is the spell that defines all that warlocks are about. So when I saw a mage say 'oom' four minutes into a boss fight the other day, I couldn't help let loose a little grin.

A new warlocks gets this spell at level six, which doesn't take too long to get to. After this, you should aim to get to level fourteen as fast as possible so you could get Drain Life. What this spell does is obvious from its name. In conjunction with Life Tap, leveling as affliction becomes a real breeze. Sacrificing some health for mana, and then getting that health back from anything you kill is what makes a warlock so awesome while leveling. You never need to stop and drink. You're an unstoppable force in those early levels, and just wait till you get Siphon Life.

From those early stages all the way to your first raid, Life Tap's gonna be on your bars. With my somewhat decent raiding gear, Life Tap gives me 2498 mana at the cost of that same amount of health. Something mages could only dream about. For a raiding warlock, it gets even better. Through Glyph of Life Tap, 20% of your spirit gets converted to spellpower which for myself means a 67 spellpower boost. Mind that that's completely unbuffed, the number goes higher with spirit buffs and kings!

One more great application for Life Tap, off the top of my head, is to kill yourself. While the spell on its own can't kill you, it fizzles out when you're too low on health to tap, you can use it with Hellfire to get some warlock dying action. That's how awesome we are, we can kill ourselves. Yes, Paladins can do it too but they need someone else to help them do it, so they suck anyway.

You may be wondering why a warlock would want to do this. Back in the day I used it to get past the Dire Maul entrance without needing a key for my doomguard quest, dying next to the door and spirit walking through to the other side. The same could be done for Scholomance. A more modern use is to do it when your raidleader calls for a wipe during a boss. Killing yourself gives no durability loss; so it's a neat trick to reduce repair costs.

To summarize, Life Tap is awesome, and mages suck for not having it.

No Dun Morogh critters were harmed in the making of this post. Actually that's a lie, I killed at least thirty rabbits trying to get the perfect Drain Life shot.

How will people control the beast now?

So Blizzard's released some PTR notes for 3.3. Among note for warlocks is that they removed the quest for your imp and instead you just learn it from your trainer at level one.

WAIT WHAT?!

Do they honestly trust an amateur warlock to instantly know how to control their imp? Are they insane? Do they not know the havoc Belfip could've wreaked if it wasn't for that quest? He'd be the 3.3 raid boss, not Arthas, if he were to be set loose.

All aboard the failtrain

I've recently been looking around other blogs and checking with their authors on some advice on how to get a blog going, and their experiences in the first few weeks. Most have been in about the same position I'm in - a small case of writer's block. Having admitted that, a lot have led me to some blog communities such as the Twisted Nether Wiki and Blog Azeroth.

They both seem to be sites that want to help bloggers like myself get past the first couple of months, especially in those weeks where content just doesn't seem to be flowing. Blog Azeroth, however has a special little thing called 'Shared Topics'. I'm not too sure if I'm doing it properly, but from what I understood someone puts forward an idea, or a question, and everyone makes a blog about post about it!

Here's my shot at it then!

I am sure this topic has been covered, but among all my other fails I fail at searching.

I have noticed a string of my recent posts covered how I fail, often epically. I would like to see how others fail.

I think it is very good for newer players to see how those of us make dumb mistakes, even though we have been at this for quite a while.

I know what you're all thinking. How could a warlock as awesome as myself possibly fail at anything? Well sadly I've had my fair share. Most are barely worth mentioning such as that one time I decided to turn my motes into primals while flying very very high up. I've heard some people talk about Gnome pancakes before, but this was taking it to the next level.. of.. flatness?

However my most recent and probably most embarrassing was when a bunch of guildies failed at frogger. The boss after Patchwerk but before Grobbulus. You know the one, the boss that truly separates the raiders and the people with 'bad connections'. So I decided to stop one time and just add some salt to the wound. I put up a train set right on the corpse of a poor raider, only to get hit by an oncoming blob myself.

I'll have you know that my GM went on about it for the next hour, and made sure to remind me about it every time I decided to put a train set down.

Now that I've told you this, you'll do your best to forget about it as soon as possible and never mention it to anyone, ever.

It's pinker than I thought

Brewfest is upon us, and with it come all the things we love and cherish. Ram racing, dark iron dwarves, killing Coren repeatedly.. and the list goes on. More importantly though, is that I get a new mount! Some of of you might already know, but I've been hunting for the Violet Proto-Drake since it was announced. Doing all the festive.. festivities and whatnot. Twelves months have now passed and it's finally mine!

It looks awesome, it matches with all the purple gear a warlock is prone to get and more importantly it's fast. It's not faster than my last mount, but it's not slower.

While we're on the beer topic, I have a little cask of wine in my bank that improves with age. It has a one year duration, and nobody has any idea what's going to happen once it's ready.

I won't get my hopes up, but I've been speculating that maybe a little Panderan Monk is hiding inside. Now I know Panderan are beer lovers, and not wine, but a little gnome could only dream right?