Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.

There's been a chorus from my dark brethren calling for the return of Blood Pact. As a career Warlock player - with a /played of 105 hours days (oops!) since May '05, you can say that I've been afflicted by the demonic embrace of this fascinating class. Observant readers will notice that I'm also the Blood Sport columnist - bloody coincidence? There may be more sinister forces at work here ...

With quicker 20-60 leveling in patch 2.3, this is the best opportunity for you to start on brand new alts, and what better class to invest in than the solo powerhouse class of magic-users gone all dark and emo (no other class takes chunks out of their own health bar voluntarily ...).

This 1-20 leveling guide assumes you're not new to WoW. I will focus on abilities that become available as you level, and how to maximize their effectiveness, rather than a zone-by-zone laundry list of quests.

When I rolled my baby UD lock (now 52 and lost somewhere in Feralas), my warlock friends told me that my first five talent points MUST be spent making Corruption instant cast. "Everyone does that," they said.

Well, apparently not everyone. There's a 22-page thread on the General Forums arguing for a trainable instant Corruption. A lot of endgame locks spec 0-21-40, and don't have the talent points to spend in Affliction. But Corruption's spell damage coefficients treat it as an instant DOT, even though it's a two-second cast without talents. Most locks don't consider Corruption worth it without the talents because of this.

The thread quickly degenerates into mage vs. warlock fighting, but it does raise an interesting point. A lot of other "essential" talents have become trainable -- Innervate, Evocation, instant Arcane Explosion. Should the locks get the same benefit, or are their dots already powerful enough?

Amongst all the candy corn on the warlock forums a post arose today dealing with a topic close to every lock's heart, despite how cold and twisted they might be inside. We're talking about pet scaling here, or rather the lack thereof. Pets are far too squishy at higher levels, locks say, and the chief cause of this is the fact that they simply don't scale properly as a lock's gear improves.

This is largely a PvP concern, although I would love to be able to bring my Felguard into a raid instance and have him last more than 3.5 seconds. Every piece of armor my lock adds to her kit should buff her pet as well as her own locky self, it only makes sense. Well, that's the way it should be, but it's not working properly, and the locks are looking for some love. And before you go there, no this isn't a call for a buff, this is an example of a bug that needs to be addressed, and has nothing to do with whether or not locks are overpowered.

The good news is that the devs are interested in hearing what you locks have to say on this issue. This is one case where they are asking for feedback and suggestions on how to improve the situation. Of course we're talking about constructive feedback, so Neth asks that you keep the complaining to a minimum if you want to have your voice heard.

At BlizzCon, every time someone mentioned Warlocks during the panels, the crowd would boo. On the forums, the cries of "Nerf Warlocks!" were loud and frequent. Now, in patch 2.3, some Warlocks are saying that Blizzard has listened and nerfed them.

Danakha posted a breakdown on the forums of the Warlock changes and his analysis of them, stating that Blizzard listened to all the complaints and acted on them. His main problem with 2.3 is this change:

Drain Life and Siphon Life now reduce the amount healed when the warlock is affected by healing reducing effects (e.g. Mortal Strike, Wounding Poison).

Blue poster Eyonix responded with:

I'm sorry to say that though this may feel like a "nerf" it is in-fact a fix.

If you're the type of player who finds cauldrons useful, then you probably already know about them – and if you have no idea what they're for, you probably have no use for them. But Insider Trader is the Martha Stewart of WoW Insider – we happen to think that any tool that helps other players take responsibility for their vitals is, as Martha would say, a Good Thing. So let's talk about the so-called pot o' pots.

Cauldrons are the alchemical, resistance-pot equivalent of a warlock's soulwell. The alchemist creates a bubbling cauldron that other raid members can click on to receive a major resistance potion from one of the various schools of magic – there are cauldrons for each type of magic except for Holy. Cauldrons can turn out 25 potions over a five-minute duration, a decided improvement over creating, carrying and handing out that many individual pots (and quite a bit cheaper than making even less than half the number of normal major protection pots).

Read more about cauldrons, as well as a handy tip about how to use multiple healthstones (yes, that's more than one at a time), after the jump.

While you may not be getting quite so many changes as some other classes out there, your changes beat theirs in...sheer unexpectedness? I dunno. Here's what's slated for patch 2.3 for light-swingers, gunslingers, and masters of the dark:

• [Hunter] We are planning to change Wyvern Sting so that it will be instant cast. (Drysc)
• [Hunter] Arcane Shot (ranks 6+) will dispel 1 magic effect in addition to the normal damage. (Drysc)
• [Warlock] There is a change for Ritual of Souls which will significantly reduce the time to cast and complete it. (Nethaera)
• [Paladin] We're pretty much focused on Retribution with 2.3, but some more general changes are being made like lowering the mana cost for Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath.
• Another Ret change (just to keep the momentum going) will be an increase to the duration of Vengeance to 30 seconds. (Drysc)
• [Paladin] You're amazing, that's absolutely correct [referring to Crusader Strike cooldown being lowered to 6 seconds] (Drysc)
  

That's a lot to digest. That Arcane Shot is pretty crazy, huh? Kalgan says it'll work like "an offensive dispel", similar to Purge. I suppose that should get some more people using it again, at least in PvP. Will the rest of us have any buffs left, or will a fight with a hunter suddenly be like Garr? Either way, change is good. Bring it on.

Update: Since posting this, Drysc has announced another pleasant change:

• How about 20 and 24 slot ammo pouches and quivers?

My favorite class of the day is the Hunter, mainly because I get to control both my main character and my pet at the same time. I love the dynamic of how these two entities fit together and do damage together so nicely. I have also played a warlock up to 30, but so far the dynamic of doing multiple things at once with demon master doesn't seem as interactive to me, though I suspect it may get better later on.

I love the multitasking involved with controlling two game entities with cooperative abilities at the same time, but some people hate it. One friend of mine wishes that hunters didn't have pets at all -- it feels too much to him.

One thing that I can't see myself getting into though, is multiboxing: running multiple WoW accounts on different computers and linking them up so you can control them at the same time. The prohibitive cost is the main reason I'm not interested, but also I like the sense behind the hunter class that the hunter and the pet were designed to work together as a single entity. I feel like multiboxing would only leave me doing less than would be possible if we actually had one real person playing each character.

What's your opinion on doing multiple things at once? Do you love such complexity, or do you prefer a simpler playstyle? Which class do you think has the most things going on at the same time?

Keen and Graev have a good post up about why (according to them) players prefer playing DPS roles. Statistically, it appears to be more or less true-- according to Warcraft Realms, four of the five highest class percentages are traditionally DPS classes: Mage, Rogue, Warlock, and Hunter. Warriors also have a higher population, but it could be argued that only 1/3 of the Warrior specs (Prot, as opposed to Arms or Fury) out there are actually meant for anything other than DPS.

So why do players seemingly prefer to play DPS? K&G give three main reasons. They cite something they call "Big Number Syndrome," which is the idea that unless you're dealing big damage, your class is worthless. They say that doing DPS requires less responsibility-- tanks and healers have to pay attention to everything, but DPSers choose a target and kill it. And they say that DPS classes level faster, which seems anecdotally (at least) to be true-- more damage means a faster kill, which means XP more often.

In general (very generally, in fact), I tend to agree. For these reasons, some people are definitely drawn to the DPS lifestyle. But I don't think that these reasons are why people chose these classes in the first place. Hunters, for example, have pets, and I think that's a much bigger draw to the class than "big number syndrome" ever was. And let's not forget that these are more or less the most archetypal classes in the game-- someone who's never played the game probably would immediately know what a "Mage" or "Rogue" could do, whereas a Shaman (the lowest class population, according to the census) is a little harder to explain.

So I think K&G are putting the chicken before the egg-- these things may be true about DPS looking back (and they may in fact be reasons people choose DPSers as alts). But when people first choose a class to call their own, I think it's a little simpler than that.

[ via Hardcore Casual ]

Player Amithral of the Magtheridon server has a complaint about LoS (Line of Sight) spells. These are channeled spells like Mindflay, Drain Mana, Drain Life, etc. Pretty much anything where you see a particle animation of a continuous beam from the caster to the target.

His complaint is that if the target breaks LoS, the ray spell continues. Hunters are plagued by LoS issues, but Priests and Warlocks seem to get a free pass as long as they have LoS when they first cast their spells.

Community Manager Tharfor responds that the ray-like spells are considered to be a "working feature and there are currently no plans to change it." However, he also went on state this game mechanic may need to be reevaluated and he will bring it up to the dev team to see if they want to address it.

What do you think? Is the lack of a LoS check after casting an unfair advantage (especially in PvP) or should it be considered an advantage of the classes that have it?

As we all know, warlocks are just so OP, it's very hard to beat one in a one-on-one PvP situation. Thankfully, however, Makale has discovered their secret weak spots, and is willing to share them with the world. The introduction in this video is a bit slow, but once you get to the meat of it, there's no denying that these tips are the best you can get.

Previously on WoW Moviewatch...

Syphonis is back. The poor young Warlock who got banned from WoW by his parents for the "oooh ooooh"ing succubus is back on the forums with another tale of woe.

It's still funny (he's now learned how to pronounce Succubus, though his mother is a little freaked out that she "seduces" people, and we learned the real reason why his parents want him out of WoW: because child predators play "mmogrpos"), but I'm more inclined to call "shenanigans" on this one-- the insight on how kids work seems too mature to me somehow.

Then again, as any parent will tell you, kids are insidious at convincing you to give them their way. Fortunately, he closes the epic story with an acknowledgment that school is just around the corner, and that WoW is going to take a back seat to that for a little while. Sounds like the best thing for everyone, buddy.

Is it just me, or did the process for obtaining my voidwalker get way too hard in the Burning Crusade? I now play a Blood Elf Warlock along with my alliance toons, and just last night I had to go into Ghostlands, to Goldenmist Village to summon a VW, defeat him and high-tail it out of there to get my big fluffy blue peep. No, I have done it before on other toons on other servers, but even with a friend I found this task to be all too difficult. ON the Alliance side, getting your VW in Stormwind can be done while eating IRL, giving the dog a bath, or watching reruns of <insert favorite show>. An ambitious imp can nearly solo it.

Generally, most starting area content in Burning Crusade has been easier. Early quests in both Eversong Woods and Azuremyst Isle give you bags to help you hold more right off the bat, and in both areas you can go from 0-12 in a matter of a few hours. Most quests are geographically close together, and the content is very well laid out to help you move on to the better stuff quickly.

This Warlock rite of passage is the hardest thing I have seen in the lower-level starting areas for a Blood Elf, and it is incredibly hard, especially if you are soloing it. The aggro, and respawn rate of all the ghosties in the area are cranked up much higher than they should be in my opinion, and I think many players would agree. You literally cannot stop running or 3-5 ghosts will be owning your imp in nothing flat, not to mention you. Try it yourself, roll a Blood Elf Warlock and get it to level ten, and try to get your VW, and you'll see what I mean.

Have you found the content in Burning Crusade to be too hard, starting areas or otherwise? Are there areas and problem spots that continually give you hassle that you Blizzard should maybe address, you know, after they put out the new expansion pack that is? Sure it is easy to complain, and says things aren't right, but in this case, I feel that some sort of tweaking is needed. I can't imagine someone who is just starting to play being able to complete this quest, and I have been playing for a while.

Draele just started a blog about being a Warlock called Rantings of the Afflicted, and today he's got a post up about that most heinous of Warlock abilites: yes, none other than fear. A touchy subject (to say the least), but he offers three different suggestions on how to make fear fun for everyone.

At its base, fear is actually Blizzard's way of trying to come up with another game mechanic. If you're a veteran MMORPG player, you know there are three archetype classes-- healer, DPS, and tank. All three of them are centered around damage-- either getting rid of it, doing it, or tanking it. Fear, however, plays with none of those rules-- it's a complete damage negator. The reason Warlocks have fear is so they can wear cloth and yet stay alive for a long time against one target-- long enough for their DoTs to come in.

The problem with fear, however, as even the developers have admitted, is that it's not fun for the person being feared-- getting feared leaves you with almost no option but to sit there and do nothing. It removes control from your character, and that's never fun.

So how can we fix it?