Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a…Warlock?

Muhammid Ali was reknown for his speed.  It wasn’t about the big one punch knockout.

Wait, what the heck does boxing have to do with playing a warlock?  Well, adopt this mindset and you’ll go far kid.

The two mindsets that I think young destruction warlocks fall into are either “Crit Big” or “Crit Often.”  And these are perfectly acceptable, until it comes time to do some real raiding.  There aren’t many fights in this game that allow you to just sit in one spot and cast continually until he’s dead.  You have to move out of fire, dodge fire, run away from fire…(the guy at Blizz in charge of designing boss mechanics must be a pyromaniac)  You get the idea, there are lots of things in this game that require you to stop casting.

So you need to make as much use of this limited casting as possible, and Spell Haste makes this possible.  The key to doing top end damage is consistency.  The reason that spell hit is so valued is that it makes all your casts consistent.  You know they’re going to land.  They may not crit, nor hit exceptionally hard, but it’s going to land.  And when you’re in a situation where you may only get 2-3 casts off before you need to move again, having one of those resisted will be devastating. 

Let’s compare 2 warlocks, one geared for spell haste, the other geared for crit.  Then let’s say we have a window of 30 seconds before we gotta move.  The crit lock is going to land 12 shadowbolts, whereas I’m going to land 14 in my haste set.  Sure, the other guy MIGHT crit (and I MIGHT crit too), but I know that I’m all but guarunteed to land 2 more shadowbolts than the other guy.  Gearing for crit is simply just praying that you get lucky, whereas with haste, you know exactly what you’re bringing to the table.

So if you’re looking to start pushing to the next level, you need to adopt an Ali-like mentality – “Hit Quick, Hit Often.”

Tanking with a Warlock Mentality

Through the expansion, my warlock has been my main.  And then I turned my warrior into a tank who became my “main” alt.  I feel like I’ve taken my warlock mentality and applied it to how I tank.  Allow me to elaborate:

Trash Mobs:  When doing trash mobs on my warlock, I have one thing in mind – Crit big, and crit often.  Trash mobs usually die in 30 seconds or less, so you need to get as much damage out as quickly as humanly possible.  This usually means that I don’t cast any DoTs and stick solely to shadowbolt spam.  I’m more than willing to drop my hit rating down below the hit cap for the mobs if it allows me to increase my crit.

So then it came time for me to start tanking those very same trash mobs.  And I realized that the damage-meters-obsessed DPSers behind me probably have the same exactly mentalility that I do on my warlock: “Threat is of no concern to me while I DPS!”  So threat has to become my #1 concern when I’m tanking trash.  So how do I maximize my trash mob threat generation?  Shield Slam big, and shield slam often…err just make sure you don’t miss.  Dodge and Parry rating?  No thanks.  I’ll take whatever Block Value, Hit, and Expertise Rating I can find.  I’ll take more consistent damage (to provide that constant stream of rage I so dastardly desire), but my threat is going to be through the roof.

Boss Fights:  The keyword here is Efficiency.  I max out my spell hit rating, then the next priority becomes maximizing spell damage.  When I cast a spell, I want to make sure it’s doing damage.  I make sure that my dots are up from the moment the fight starts to the moment it dies.  But also, I need to be pumping out as much damage as possible.  The only difference here is the fights are much much longer, and it’s important to make every action count.  Having a spell resisted is just like throwing away mana.

The same thing goes for tanking as well, except I’m not worrying about MY efficiency so much as I’m worrying about my healers’ efficiency.  I want to reduce the amount of damage I take and try to limit how much it spikes.  The best way to do this is maximizing my armor and HP.  Threat is no longer my #1 concern, but for many fights it still is a major concern.  So how do you find balance between survival and threat generation?  Again, the keyword here is efficiency.  The goal is to max out expertise and hit rating (albeit this is something that requires an intense amount of gear) so that your attacks are no longer dodged/parried/missed.  A majority of the enemies in this game have a mechanic called parry haste, in that when they parry your attack it greatly speeds up their next attack.  Stacking your expertise through the roof is essentially a double-edged sword of awesomeness.  It greatly boosts your threat generation because now all your attacks are landing, and you also reduce the damage you take from the enemy’s parry haste mechanic.  The idea is basically the same as playing my warlock, I don’t ever want to miss.

So those are just a few of the smililarities I noticed between playing my warlock and playing my warrior.  Now if only Bloodrage didn’t have a cooldown…