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.