Monday, July 25, 2011

84 to 364 in just over 24 hours of /played

Just over a week ago now I was faced with a difficult quandary - stop playing, find a new home for my Paladin, or find someone to take a chance on my Warlock.  Of course, this was me taking a chance as well.  I mean, I've spent the last few years healing, and the years before that tanking, with only some side jaunts into the realm of ICC ranged DPS (after the 30% nerf) or as a fury/slam warrior.  Could I do it?  Could I find that guild to take a chance?  Would it really be all that I hoped for?

It was certainly time to find out.

So after an application and an interview, I transferred servers and started getting raid ready.  Let me set the stage and timeline for you here.  First, I was installing new floors (finishing them actually, and damn do they look good) and so tensions were high in the house.  Then I'm juggling qutting or taking a lock spot.  Fortunately my wife is awesome, and while I'm sure she'd like it if I played WoW (or other games) less, she knows it's better than me joining a bowling league.  

So there I am on Friday night (the 15th), taking a quick hour to push my lock to 85.  As soon as I hit, I get him some VP bracers, JP boots, and some relatively inexpensive BoEs off the AH.  I grab the tabards I needed, and started hitting the heroics.  I thought about hitting the Firelands quest areas, but I'm not keen on suicide.  I was a fresh 85 lock on a PvP server.  Nothing screams "I taste delicious" like someone wearing magic-toilet paper (thanks for that phrase Cyn!) that isn't even heroic level, but just some greens.

Instead, I take stock of what pieces I need first, and what I can get my hands on in a hurry.  The first thing I noticed was that in my original leveling (since I stopped him at like 83 to go back to the Paladin - raid needs come first) I completely skipped Deepholm.  Now, I don't mean I did part of Deepholm and stopped just short of the Therazane folks.  I mean I somehow skipped the entire zone. I think I was just a little tired of it by the time I was leveling the lock, and did I mention I was on a PvP server?  So I started the zone while queueing for heroics.  I'd slapped on the Dragonmaw/Wildhammer tabard, figuring the neck would be a good holdover (I didn't know about the neck from Firelands questing), and off I went.

24 hours of /played later

I'd server transferred, faction changed (human was the only race I could stomach as a lock), hit exalted with Therazane, capped my VP twice, nabbed two epics from Firelands T12 raids (MH BoE dagger and OH), and am now sitting at a 364 iLvl.  While it took a fairly intensive week to do it, I'm so far ahead of where I was, it's not even funny.  I certainly wouldn't want to do it again any time soon (that was a LOT of PuG Zulroics), but I will admit that it took a lot less time than I'd anticipated.  Of course a lot of it I owe to the guild that I'm trialing with.  They took me into T12 content when I was pretty undergeared, hooked me up with a BoE dagger, and have been pretty awesome all around.  

I don't think I'll get to raid tonight, but that's ok.  I'm on standby while they go for a repeat on Domo and try to get Rag for the first time, and I can use the time to work on my PvP gear.  I don't know if I like PvPing as DPS as much as I did on my pally - it's a lot different.  I think in a random, where I don't have my wingman Wombcrusher looking out for me, the Lock is better.  I've noticed that healers in PvP that don't have a good peeler with them just get crushed.  Because I know this however, I can keep a good eye out on any healers in my area and save my fears/deathcoil for helping them.  

Wrap-up

I've thoroughly enjoyed the last 10 days of warlockery.  It's pretty impressive to watch my DPS get better every day, and not just because I'm adding epics.  I know my rotations are getting tighter, and I'm building that internal timer that I need to keep my DoTs rolling.  I had the same timer with my Paladin, where I could just feel when things were coming up.  I used to joke that my healing was done on a metronome in Wrath, you just knew that a heal was landing every second (hello haste cap).  Now I'm working on that for the lock.

The hardest part I'm having is, is it worth hard casting a 2nd Shadowbolt to get the 3rd stack of Shadow Embrace up (DoTs tick 5% harder), or is it better to get the DoTs up and ticking, and let the 3rd stack land when it can.  

I guess the other issue is what to do with that last little bit of time between the 2nd and 3rd Haunt.  With an 8sec CD and a 12 sec buff, there's a little wiggle room, but not much.  I'm guesing add in another SB, and maybe a lifetap.  I've certainly discovered that tapping early and often is better, since I don't have Mana Feed in my Affliction build.

CoE, SB, Haunt, UA, Cor, BoD, SB, SB, Haunt, UA, SB, SB, SB - I'll get my metronome set yet.

4 comments:

  1. i have no clue what the rotations are now but, way back when it was get non refreshing dots up, stack whatever stacks, then dots that autorefresh on other spellcasts. the other rule was always be casting, losing a dot tick is generally a lot less than losing a shadow bolt. of course everything could be wildly different now too, it's been a couple xpacs since i've played one seriously.

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  2. That's kind of where I am, even if it means casting an instant or something. Refreshing DoTs, while not as criminal as it was in say BC, isn't 'as' big a DPS loss as it once was.

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  3. Keeping your dots as close to 100% uptime will always be your best dps up... assuming the dots will tick to completion

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  4. It IS metronomic, and that's what I find boring about dpsing. Having said that, playing Affliction is 100% more interesting than playing Retadin.

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