Site Name

I understand the need to put demons into spec niches.  I respect it, and to be completely candid, I actually love it.  I like the idea that when I walk around with my cute little felpuppy everyone knows I am affliction without having to inspect me.  I wear my affliction spec like a badge of honor, and my felpuppy is my most recognizable badge.  I love the demonology locks who stroll around with their felguard, and the destro boys who have their little imps are just as proud of their mastery of fire as I am of shadow magic.

The problem has become the 2 factions of locks in WoW.  There are some, who like me, don’t really see a need for more demons because some of them are wasted as it is, and then there are some who feel like we deserve more demons to play with because we are locks and, you know, that’s what we do.  Sadly, I can’t really argue much with the other camp when Blizzard is pulling the shit they are pulling with one of our new learnable abilities.

The New Abilities

Fel Flame, the lvl 81 ability, is pure win even if it is a replica of frostfire bolt.  Anything that is instant cast and will allow me to refresh UA while on the go is without a doubt a boost to my overall DPS.  It’s green fire, it’s instant cast, and it refreshes a dot with a 1.5 second cast.  Hmm, they really delivered here except they had to manipulate a mage ability and give it to us like we are the red headed step children of caster DPS.  “Oooh, my big brother mage has been playing with a similar spell for a while now and really liked it.  I’m so glad the developers decided to give me a similar ability so I could have some fun too.”

Even the lvl 85 ability Demon Soul is amazing.  It will allow us to have a burst cooldown tied to the demon we are using.  Having played a lock for so long when I first started to play WoW, I really had no idea about burst cooldowns.  They were something I only really had to learn about later as I started playing with the other classes.  Whether it was Icy Veins, Nature’s Swiftness, Dancing Rune Weapon, Elemental Mastery, of Divine Protection, I just never really understood how fun having cooldowns could be.  Now I love them, and if there’s one thing that will make my lock more fun, it will be a burst cooldown that I could, potentially, macro to a trinket.

Now, the lvl 83 ability has me ready to drain the soul out of the entire development team and keep them in pretty little stones on my desk at the office.  I know this joke has been made before, but is it Dark Intent, Dark Magic, Focus Intent…oh wait, that’s right, it’s just a lock appropriate copy of the T3 mage talent Focus Magic sitting quietly in the arcane tree.  Of course, to add insult to injury, mages are getting heroism/bloodlust (herolust from here on out to provide equal representation to both factions) and we are getting an ability they can learn as early as lvl 20.  In the words of my inner Paris Hilton, “that’s not hot.”

On the subject of sharing herolust, it also disheartens me that it’s being given to mages as a “magical” ability.  This is purely personal, but herolust has always felt like a battle cry ability.  One triggered at the behest of a great commander urging his troops onward.  It would have been better placed with the paladins as “Crusaders Call” or with warriors as “Unrelenting Assault.”  They could have easily given it to one of those classes with more of a military feel even if they would have had to change the arms warrior talent with the same name.  Hell, given the pack nature of wolves, I would have been impressed with a “Pride of the Pack” given to hunters.  For some reason the ability just feels cheapened when it becomes a magical effect orchestrated by the Kirin Tor and not one created by the very essence of battle, but I’m digressing.

The Talent Masteries

Let me go get a 5 hour energy before I look back over these BORING talent masteries.  So, our mastery bonuses will be Shadow DoTs for increased damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells, Demon Damage for increased damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis, and Fire Direct Damage for increased damage caused by Fire direct damage spells.  Well, yippie yi yo ki yay!  Are they practical?  Of course they are.  Are they fun or exciting?  Not in the least.  Do I have any suggestions?  Did you have any doubts?

Affliction Mastery: Shadowed Soul

Each tick of your shadow damage-over-time spells give you a chance to send a shadow bolt flying at the enemy.  Ideally, it would do so automatically, and would require zero effort on the part of the lock.  Think back to the days of Timbal’s Focusing Crystal.  Shadow bolts flying from your very soul at whoever had the audacity to stand up to your dots.  No GCD used, no mana used, but high on the cool factor.  The interesting thing is the free shadow bolts could have easily replaced the extra shadow damage from our dots, but could have done so in a cool way without giving us a boring passive ability that just feels like a supped up version of Empowered Corrpution.  NOTE: I would have liked to call the ability shadow’s fury, but as any self respecting lock knows, that name is already tied into a destro ability.

Demonology Mastery: Enveloping Corruption

I was hoping for a bonus to the time spent in metamorphosis and the damage a demon does.  The whole feel of the demonology tree should be about becoming so entrenched in the dark shadow magic that it will eventually consume you.  More demon damage, and a longer time spent in metamorphosis could compliment the tree’s feel and the encompassing feel of those once proud mages and shaman who’s delving into shadow magic has now consumed them.  I don’t really know how the metamorphosis cooldown could be altered, or if at all, but mastery scaling could keep it within reason and scale unevenly and proportionally with the demon damage since they are likely to be active 100% of the time.

Destruction: Fel Embers

I will admit when I saw the mage masteries I wanted to cry.  The fire mage’s ignite was what I was hoping for destro locks.  Direct fire damage abilities leave behind a residue of fel embers causing the target to continue to burn with a fire dot.

The Demons

The Infernal(s)

The overhaul for the infernal I am still hoping to see is something similar to Army of the Dead.  The infernal would be on a longer cooldown with a reducing talent deep in the demon tree and you would summon them with a spell similar to rain of fire, but the landing green fires grow infernals which will attack random targets.  There is no need for a taunt, and as someone who tanks, I hate the army taunts when a player doesn’t know when it is an appropriate time to use army of the dead.  I just want all damaging infernals all the time from the spell.  Leave those silly DKs with their taunting ghouls.

Now as each of you locks consider this idea, I want you to think about your Kara days and contemplate just who fun it would be to have summoning macro?

#showtooltip Summon Inferno

/cast Summon Inferno

/y YOU FACE NOT ME ALONE, BUT THE LEGIONS I COMMAND!

Now, isn’t our DK copy cat spell now a million times cooler than summoning silly ghouls?

The Doomguard

The doomguard should function a little like the ghoul from the Raise Dead spell for DKs.  I’m not advocating a perma-Doom or anything, but I am hoping we see an ability with a cooldown that makes it appropriate for boss fights.  At this point, I am sure some of you are scratching your head and wondering why in the world I would be willing to pull from the DK toolkit, but so angry to pull from the mage one.

Well, the truth is, demon issues should have been addressed before Wrath launched, but they weren’t.  In fact, I would go so far as to say affliction wasn’t even made a competitive spec until 3.3.  Most of this entire expansion has been about coddling our meleeing shadow brothers, the deathknight.  They got the new pet spells.  They got what could/should have been our flying mount.

I know some of you have heard or even made the jokes about all the locks who shelved their mains to roll DKs.  The jokes are partly true because DKs do feel like melee locks.  If the developers are going to create classes with similar but distinct roles, wouldn’t it be better to mirror the lock and DK instead of the lock and mage who are already filling the exact same role, that of ranged caster DPS?

One of the things that stuck out to me the most in the DK class preview was what the developers said about DK abilities, “each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight’s attacks are weak.”

Can’t the same be said for one of our dots?  Or maybe how a felpuppy’s shadow bite synergizes with our dots?  The developers can say what they want, but they took the lock model and applied it to a melee class back when the DK was on the drawing board.

Launch isn’t Tomorrow

I know much of this post was based on the limited details we have from a single post on the class, and I know that Cataclysm isn’t hitting live servers anytime soon, but that doesn’t stop me from analyzing the changes and sharing my gut reaction to them.  I have put off my analysis in hopes that I would have cooled down and little, and the truth is I have.  Each time I try and tackle these Cataclysm changes, I will do my best to be as level-headed as possible, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fail miserably when the news touches any of the classes with which I have a personal connection.