Warlock Leveling: 1-30 Affliction

I’ve done a lot of playing around on low level Warlocks over the last couple of months, and it’s been hard to find one that really felt right in all the ways that low level alts need to in order for me to keep playing them rather than simply deleting them before I really have a chance to see what they have to offer. Having played a Warlock off and on over the last couple of expansions, I was surprised by how much things felt…off at low levels across the different specs. We’ll get into that a bit later on in the article. I did eventually find a spec that really felt right to me, and we’ll discus that as well.

For now, let’s take a look at the Affliction Warlock, what makes them (and their DoT’s) tick, and how you can become a successful soul-sucking, DoT’chucking overlord of death.

 

Heirloom Guide: Trial Accounts

[Update 09/17/13: Conversion rates between Honor and Justice Points has been increased from 375>250 to 500>250, causing a significant increase in the amount of farming required.]

With F2P Twinks on the rise right now I’ve been asked a lot about writing an heirloom guide just for them, and this is that guide. For those of you who are F2P players, realize that twinking is about optimization which means you’re aiming for the best, even if the best only comes after days or even weeks worth of farming for only a single piece of gear. That means I’m not only looking at the heirlooms that you purchase with honor points, I’m looking at all of them. I am suggesting PvP heirlooms, but they aren’t the sole focus of this guide.

If you only want to know which PvP heirlooms to get for your class then there’s really no reason for me to bother writing a guide because there’s almost no overlap at all withing the PvP heirloom sets. If you need shoulders, you pick the ones with the stats for your class and spec. If you need a weapon, you pick the one with the stats for your class and spec. It’s really that simple if you’re only going to look at PvP heirlooms.

If you’re serious about twinking, though, then this is the guide for you.

 

MoP’ing up the Twinks

Today we’re going to take a look at the talent trees that are proposed for being in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, and how those talent trees might impact twink brackets. As we continue on, keep in mind the fact that this stuff was just announced at BlizzCon 2011 and this expansion isn’t scheduled to come out for who knows how long yet so any and all information here could potentially change.

I’m not going to look at every bracket in this post because there are just too many talents to smash them all into a single post. Instead I’m going to break in into two parts; one for the 10-14 bracket, and one for the 15-19 and 20-24 brackets as the impact on the two should be roughly the same.

I did not attend or in any way participate in this year’s BlizzCon, so I’m only going off of what the MoP Talent Calculator from Wowhead has to tell me, and what I heard people say on Twitter or on other blogs. If any of this information is incorrect, incomplete, or false please notify me of such in the comments so that I can get it updated with the correct information.

Right now we don’t know much of anything about the Monk class, so they won’t be included in this particular post. It is safe to say you better be careful around those pandas with their racial sleep attack though.

 

New Heirlooms in 4.3

In Patch 4.3 the Darkmoon Faire is going to get a nice little revamp (details here). I’ve never been too big on the faire beyond abusing the vendors there to get high selling mats for cheap vendor prices that I could toss on the AH for a quick, easy profit. My lack of interest almost made me ignore the information regarding the faire, but I was bored anyway (and about to leave work for the day) so I figured I might as well take a look.

Most of what the notes mentioned weren’t bad, but nothing that would get me otherwise interested in the DMF, until I stumbled onto this:

“We have adorable companion pets inludin’ a fez-wearing monkey, a plethora of profession recipes, toys, balloons, souvenirs, delectable carnival snacks and beverages, heirlooms for the little ones, and even replicas of long-lost suits of armor that we’re offering for your Transmogrification needs.”

Unfortunately for us, there’s no more mention of heirlooms in the article, so we don’t know for sure what it refers to. It could be new heirlooms, it could be existing heirlooms, or it could be other items all together that they simply used the word to describe. Without the details, one can only hope and imagine.

But wait… we do have details!

 

Guide to Heirlooms: Patch 6.1

NOTE: This guide is currently in the process of being upgraded for Patch 6.1. I’m going to save the updates I make as I make them, so be aware that at this time there are portions of this guide that have been updated and other portions that have not. Once all updates have been made I will remove this notification.

You can take a look at this Wowhead Link for a full list of heirloom gear.

With my interest in WoW renewed, thanks almost entirely to people asking me to update this guide and me in turn looking into the game again, it’s time to get this puppy updated with the most recent changes to heirlooms in Warlords of Draenor.

The table below provides links for you to jump straight to your class and spec to find out which heirlooms you should be using in order to optimize your performance. Once you go to the section for your class and spec you will find a table that lists all of the heirloom items for each slot, at the bottom of that table you will find another link to see which enchants you should use on those heirlooms while you level.

That’s your new intro, now let’s get to the good stuff!