Emberstorm - Latest Comments

Re: New home!

velidra — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:01:41 -0000

This is a test

Re: The problem with cataclysm healing

Fluxflashor — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:01:16 -0000

First. Also testing comments ^^

Re: insert horrible pun here about moping up cataclysm here

Paul — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:16:00 -0000

PvE scenarios are there as a response to the well-received dynamic content of Rift. And they serve a very useful purpose: allowing PvE casuals to practice their rotations and basic combat skills in a low stress environment outside of dungeons or raids. Anything that lets bad players improve their muscle memory is going to be a good thing for the game.

Re: DS 10 Normal: In review

velidra — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:23:15 -0000

In short, yes.

In long, you either need to have good dps to kill the mutated corruption before the second impale, or well stacked cooldowns to survive the second impale.

Things can also get interesting in phase 2 (or 5 I guess?) when he spawns the 2 elementium terrors spawn.

Re: DS 10 Normal: In review

silou — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:23:02 -0000

Is Madness of Deathwing doable with 1 tank ?

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

velidra — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:36:08 -0000

I didn't say it wasn't complicated enough. I mentioned it was a overly simplistic and long rotation. This is to say that there are a lot of steps, and in my opinion (and that of many others) there are simply to many steps. Its adding things into the rotation for the sake of it.

Granted this is still just my opinion, but you could make a 1 button rotation and people would find that "fun".

While you may now be at the stage of there being enough in the rotation to overwhelm you during a boss fight, or at least keep you entertained, I feel (again, along with others) that the rotation simply doesn't keep you interested and engaged after the 300th boss.

I guess what I'm saying is that destro feels like a rotation thats designed for the first few boss kills not the 300th (hey thats a cool way to put it).

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

Jen — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:56:16 -0000

Destro not complicated enough?..I'd say it's quite satisfying if I do say so myself. It would appear it's not overly complicated for me and not too easy.. I hit 85 very recently and found the rotation to be exactly what it should be for the most part. Comparatively to other classes Destruction has more complexity in many cases (my point, they're not all that easy, esp during boss fights when you've got to pay more attention to what the boss does and less to vital dots). Those who do not play Warlocks play Shadow Priests if I'm not mistaken to get away from this difficult (to them) rotation. Destruction out of the three Warlock specs is the easyiest, but.. I tend to have more fun this way and apparently the Warlock next to me fighting a training dummy agrees with me. This player had an immense amount of exp as a destro lock and being a warlock in general, and found Destro to be his fav aswell. He chose it not for the dps, but rather the rotation, you either like the rotation or you don't, and if you don't then you'll want something to be wrong with it so blizz will fix it and satisfy your want. In other words, this is your opinion. You say there is something wrong with Destro but.. it's just that you don't enjoy the rotation, and not everyone does... I come acrossed little to no problems during fights, idk what you're talking about honestly the problems don't exist for me..

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

octatch-wyrmrest accord — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:39:58 -0000

Good post man, haven't touched my Warlock since 4.1 hit as i was rather sad at how the class played in all specs. Be interesting to start that toon up again and see what has changed since i left the game. Once again nice article, if you could id like to see another post by you on your thoughts of the tier 12 benefits and what this new tier has done to change warlocks usefulness/uselessness in more encounters.

Re: Warlock PVE spec cheat sheets for 4.3

Rhevon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:09:03 -0000

I'm in a semi-hardcore raiding guild with ilevel 366 gear and I run a destruction spec. I've always been destruction as at least my main spec since 2004. I love the play-style and I'm considered one of our best DPSers easily topping 20k on all Firelands bosses (Except on Rhyolith I run demo/affliction) and capping out at 24k on Baleroc and Staghelm at this time - i'm certain with 375+ gear that I can obtain between 26-30k in these same boss scenarios - 2-4k less than the affliction ceiling. It is my nature to do a lot of research and of course one can't help but notice the widely accepted fact that affliction and demo are the best specs to play right now based solely on number parses.

I feel this being held over my head b/c my raid leader sees what I do as destro and has frequently talked to me about affliction/demo b/c he's under the assumption that if I can do what I do as destro then my affliction/demo dps would be exponentially even better. The fact of the matter though is that destro/affliction/demo are all very distinctly different play-styles and as of 4.2 demo focuses on mastery while affliction/destro still warrants haste - so there's an itemization conflict in running affliction or destro primary with a demo secondary. Plus I will concede the fact that affliction/demo AoE are superior to destro at this time.

One thing I have brought up with our raid leader is that destruction warlocks like myself should really be used for what they are and not be used to address what an affliction or demo lock would be used for - I'm primary target DPS and can be a support AoE, not primary AoE and multi-target dots. I'm still one of our top 3 primary DPSers so how can I get him to think of me that way and if he wants some more AoE or 3+ multitarget dots in the group to bring a demo/affliction warlock. They'd be a great complement frankly. Ragnaros is a perfect example - destro lock great for Sons of Flame and primary damage on Rag and very survivable due to Nether Ward and mobility which is about 75% of the fight.

I'm a bit on the fence as to what to do for a secondary spec and how to satisfy the various roles I'm expected to fill in a raid. What should I do?

Re: Warlock PVE spec cheat sheets for 4.3

velidra — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:09:58 -0000

Its typically considered a DPS gain to not clip the ISF buff and instead get a extra incinerate/conflag/chaos bolt in there. If you can keep the gab small enough then the cast you start without the ISF buff will end with it up, and will benefit from it. I would caution from casting DoTs during that period though, losing 8% on immolate (and hence conflag)/corruption/bane of doom would be a rather large loss.

Re: Warlock PVE spec cheat sheets for 4.3

Drew Mac — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:29:26 -0000

Thanks for the great guide! I have a question,
[q]Soul fire to keep up the improved soul fire buff, attempt to time it so it will drop of, but only briefly (think of it as a old school dot, get as close to 100% uptime, without hitting 100% uptime)[/q]
Would it not be wise to let Soulfire hit just inside of the buff going off for that extra 8% damage on it?
Thanks,
Drew Mac

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

velidra — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:24:35 -0000

Don't let this all throw you of, I'm being very (if not overly so) critical of the class. >.>

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

velidra — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:24:11 -0000

For AE I typically try to sit in melee and stay there, unless there's some reason not to. (which is most AE encounters...). But its still good to use shadowfury, it does (last I checked) more damage than RoF for the GCD you use to cast it.

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

Dave Gregory — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:38:21 -0000

In regards to using Shadowflame.. If you are a Destro Lock, it's a good idea to hit Shadowfury on the mob(s) while approaching for Shadowflame. That way, the are stunned when you are up close, thus allowing you to dot all of them up and get back out of melee range. The downside to this technice (as I use it often) is that the time you took moving around, could have been used for more dps possibly. Then again, there's always your Demonic Teleport. :)

Re: State of warlocks 4.2

Nastiest — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:25:07 -0000

I've been leveling a Lock for a week or so. She's at 62 atm. I like reading this type of stuff on classes I'm leveling. I main a resto Shaman and Primary alt on a Protadin. Good write up!

Re: As the dust settles, a retrospective on heroics in 4.1 and CTA

velidra — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:25:14 -0000

I think its also a case of, people want to put in the least effort possible, and when you say "ok, you can put in X effort and still get the reward if you say your doing Y", then people will start to do Y while playing wow (or even just saying they are to get away with less work).

I think this explains the now so common that you would think half the population of wow sits on 6k MS excuse of "sorry I was lagging". Lagging happens, its a fact of the internet. It doesn't happen often enough to explain every mistake some people make.

Re: As the dust settles, a retrospective on heroics in 4.1 and CTA

Horavus — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:44:02 -0000

The average dps in heroics has always been low, but not quite as low as it is commonly now. Mostly I would attribute this to the dps that would stick around for a 40-1h queue were overall more dedicated to their spec/class and as a result were generally better. The half-hearted dps that can get a queue in 10-15 minutes though have started to filter back into heroics and without the time invested are more willing to try to multi-task as well. Just tanked a stonecore the other day all the dps but a hunter ignored me totally with the excuse that one was eating at the time and that the other was watching a movie. This would have been unthinkable with most dps that has the attention span to watch a queue timer for the longer queues, mostly because they were expecting to have to carry their own weight.

Re: My take on hybrids vs pures

Horavus — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:34:04 -0000

Hm interesting take on that situation. I used to do that back in Wrath on my lock, rogue, and hunter.

Re: As the dust settles, a retrospective on heroics in 4.1 and CTA

Vivian Burchette — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:43:29 -0000

Hello, I found this website from mixx. It is not an article I would typically read, but I loved your spin on it. Thanx for creating something worth reading!

Re: Hit, avoidance, mitagation and healer mana regen in Firelands

velidra — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:57:08 -0000

While yes, it may solve it for hit, thats a small part of the problem. We also have the problem of tank avoidance getting too high, which is a even bigger issue now that tanks are actually gemming for mitagation and avoidance.

But your right, we haven't seen anything on it yet. Hopefully if they don't plan on implementing it for firelands we will get some notification as opposed to just... nothing.

Re: Hit, avoidance, mitagation and healer mana regen in Firelands

Xayíde — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:33:39 -0000

The blue post you linked is actually from September 2010, more than 7 months old.
Although there have been other mentions to this hit/crit depression idea after that, I haven't seen any in the last few months, which leaves us kind of in the dark regarding the subject.
If you think about it, nowadays most DPS classes favor their primary stats (strength, agility and intellect) way more than hit anyway, leading to BiS profiles being indeed under the hit cap by a fair amount (at least for Warlocks). This is different from Wrath's mentality when hit was king, now intellect is king for us.
Thus I wonder if they will actually go through with the hit depression idea. In the very blue post you mentioned GC says the xxx Radiance concept is awkward to say the least, so I wouldn't be so quick to think they'll do that again.
An let's face it, reforging alone solves most of the hit problem. If you have too much, you can always reforge hit away, which you couldn't do in Wrath.

Re: As the dust settles, a retrospective on heroics in 4.1 and CTA

Top Rosters — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:37:27 -0000

I agree that the dps queue times have dropped. They used to be about 30 mins on my server and now sit between 10-25 mins depending on when you queue. I also don't think there has been a huge number of new tanks/healers to contend with which is a good thing short term I guess but perhaps not so great for the long term balancing act.

Re: Warlocks in 4.1, the cliff notes edition

velidra — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:07:28 -0000

In single target situations your going to be using bane of doom, rendering the bane of agony glyph somewhat defunct, this leaves you with 1 other choice as far as I can see for a prime glyph, which is the silly UA glyph.

Up until now I'd sort of been assuming that agony should be used on the other target for multi-dot situations (as doom can only be on one target), but tbqh I'm not to sure, agony seems very weak atm. Its something to look into, if when agony is used occasionally the agony glyph is worth more than the UA glyph.

Re: Warlocks in 4.1, the cliff notes edition

Rickb — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:59:25 -0000

Nice recap. I'm not too sure I agree with you on Bane of Agony - why emphasize the UA glyph in place of it (not sure about that, it was never a very useful glyph before IMHO). Also, why the question around even using BoA in Multi-DOT situations? More DOTs would seem to (almost) always be a good thing.

Re: Game balance, how does it work?

velidra — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:34:47 -0000

Evil warlock teammates? Plural? You have other evil warlocks you miss? :( I'm hurt cass