I wanted to mention some significant achievements for myself and my guild that happened past weekend. We finally cleared the Military quarter and completed all the others to unlock the Sapphirion on 25 man raid. I got the beatiful Damnation from the 4 horsemen. I have to admit that it was just a bit selfish for me to roll on it since it was a small upgrade from the Staff of Restraint. But it was the only piece I got from that run, and I had my eye on that staff for a long time and only two other people rolled on it.

The Damnation is a really cool staff, and presently is the second best two handler for a warlock in the game. Now there are a lot of people who will argue that one hander and an off hand is better then the two hander. And I agree with them foolheartedly. Unfortunately I still don't have a better combination for the one hand/off hand that is better then this staff. Presently my best combo is Blade of Dormant Memories and Ward of the Violet Citadel. Which I do use when I switch gear for the Sapphirion fight and need more hit. For now just run around with this awesome staff. Pics coming soon by the way.

I've always loved theorizing with gear and dps options on my lock. I spent countless hours comparing gear and stat choices. And the best tool for that is a Warlock DPS Spreadsheet developed by Leulier. The link to his site is - http://www.leulier.com. This amazing spreadsheet along with the Lootrank.com and the ElitistJerks forums are the best tools for maximizing your DPS and gear choices.

But I digress. The reason I love to play wit this spreadsheet so much is because it is so convenient and comprehensive. You can input you gear and talent builds and then you can play around with all the different option as far as buffs, changing talents changing gear etc. And as soon as you make a change you get a DPS number update. So it is an amazing tool to see how much dps you will get if you make a gear or talent choice. For example, on the ElitistJerks forum there is a great post for Affliction Warlocks - Dots and You. And it has great high level gear upgrades. However, how do these upgrades relate to you?

When it comes to upgrades that drop in the raid and few others want, there is no brainer, you take them and you use them. But what if you decide if you should get some piece of gear with your hard earned badges or PVP honor points. Will the upgrade be worth it? It seems that the item you going to get is better then the one you have now, but how much DPS will you get out of it. Well use the spreadsheet, and boom if it's only 10 points of extra dps them maybe you should save badges and wait for a better drop, but if it's 60 or 80 dps upgrade, then maybe you should buy that piece.

You can also keep a lot of the higher level gear and then compare different combination. Maybe a piece that before only gave you a small upgrade because you needed more hit, and another piece gave you a lot of hit in that place. Well now you got plenty of hit, and this piece you saved can actually give you more dps. This is also a great tool to see how re-gemming will change your dps and stats. So use and abuse this spreadsheet!

One more quick note, the spreadsheet now has amazing feature to pull your talent build and gear right from armory. This is a recent update that makes this spreadsheet better then ever!

Well, 3.08 patch is upon us.  Besides some of the tweaks in the patch that's going to make my warlock life more enjoyable (can someone say a summoning stone for those lazy guildies?),  and make my tailoring a bit cheaper, there was waiting for the WIntergrasp Gear. Sad part is that Wintergrasp itself got a bug in the patch :(

You see, I've spotted this gear on www.lootrank.com a long time ago.  There was a helm and boots that were really nice.  It's just they were not available in the game yet.  The data was from the Test realms.  Meanwhile I've been saving my marks from Wintergrasp and crossing my fingers.

The two pieces that caught my eye, the boots and the head pieces come in two varieties - one has hit  and the other has haste.  Here are the Cloth pieces:

Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance

Titan-forged Slippers of Salvation

Titan-forged Hood of Salvation

Titan-forged Hood of Dominance

The head piece costs 40 winterspring marks, which is pricey.  On the other hand boots are only 15 marks.  And I badly needed to upgrade my Leiah's Footpads.

I took the boots with the hit Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance, put a nice hit gem into them and I'm now happy about my boot gear.  My next prize is the head piece.

I really like these pieces and the fact that you get them with just the Marks from Wintergrasp.  I always try to participate in the battle because i find it fun.  This reward, which I picked up for my raiding gear, will stay for a while with me as my PVP pices even when I get better boots in raids.  So it's something that will go a long way.

Here is a link to the all of the Titan-Forged gear on wowhead:

http://www.wowhead.com/?search=titan+forged#items:0+12+1

Well continuing my previous post Getting My Lock ready to Raid at 80 an lets cover some of the other pieces of gear and weaponry.

Just a quick note.  You may have items from BC that you got from heroics/dungeons/pvp.  Those items may be superior to these if they have lots of sockets and you can gem them right.  So always compare and shot around.  And don't vendor gear until you are certain that it is inferior to something else.

Well I've hit level 80 over Christmas.  It was a great achievement.  Now I can begin raiding and doing heroics.  Some of my favorite things to do in WoW, especially with my guild.

First and the most important thing though is gear.  The guild may be ready to do Nax, but I may not be. My philosophy on gear is:

• Get things that are not too valuable, since they will be replaced. Don't overspend on gear that may be replaced on the first drop in that heroic/first raid run.


• Get gemmed and enchanted, but once again don't go overboard, you will replace things.  Go for the cheaper versions for starting gear.


• Get as close to your Hit Cap as possible - with three points into talents into destro and affliction hit talents you need 365 Hit to be hitcapped.  Who cares how much spell power you have if your Dots are not landing where they supposed to and your shadowbolts are flying off to the side.


• Balance your gear.  I don't believe glass cannon locks.  You're mana should be OK to cast a few things, your stamina should give you enough points to life tap occasionally and also to survive a tough fight or pull where healer may be overtaxed.  A lock is not a mage, and thus should not be bust damage then dead (no offense to our mage counterparts I hope).

Well my warlock is almost 80.  Can't wait to get there.  Not because I want to rush to 80 but simply most of my guild mates are at 80 and are constantly running heroics and beginning to raid.  I really enjoy running instances with my guild and thus feel left out.  So I will focus on doing quests and focusing on leveling that last level ASAP.  Then i can slow down and continue doing quests to get more lore and help my reputations.

I really enjoy questing in Northrend.  The quests are beautifully tied into the lore that you get to explore.  Plus the mechanics of operating machines, guns, flying dragons etc are really cool.  My next toon to get into Northrend will start off in the other entry level zone so I can do all the quests there.

As far as my other two favorite alts, my AOE mage and paladin, I also want to get back to play them.  I think my goal is to get my mage to 50 so that I can level my enchanting for DE purposes.  Then I will work on the paladin.  I do want to havea  healer class in end game.  However, I did get tired oh my druid, who is now 49.  Druid healer was my original goal, but I think i might go with a paladin instead.  I love AOE grinding and questing.  It's just too much fun to pass up.

The wrath of the Leach King is only a week away (I'm very exited).  Meanwhile, since all the raid bosses got really nerfed in the patch 3.02 my guild has been running ZA in the way we've ran Kara before - like all the time :D.  I've so far completed ZA 3 times.  Here are some tips I can give to others in regards to things I've learned.  Most of these things are beyond the basic strategy, and will be more specific to warlocks and perhaps other spell ranged DPS:

I have not blogged lateley.  Mainly because of not palying as much, as well as playing Warhammer Online.  I'll write about Warhammer in anouther post.

Playing Beta, I'm beggining to really enjoy PVP with a premaid level 80 Restro Druid.  Resto Druids are a lot of fun.  It's almost like playing an afliction warlock only in reverse.  Hot Hot Hot.

I've began to level my druid, who has been my bank, and I'm actually enjoing it.  Druids are weared.  Either you love them or you hate them.  I'm starting to love mine.  Maybe my next alt.  But hey, they never survive past 45. LOL

Well see.

I've been leveling my Paladin a bit, and I'm quite enjoying him. He's already at level 28, and I can't wait to get my mount at 30. However, in this post I'd like to mention why I love pallys when I group with them.

Salvation - Can you say shoot without worrying about threat? As a decently T4 geared warlock I get spoiled with this pally buff. If I'm in a 5 man, or god forbid Kara without a pally, not having this buff really rally gimps my DPS because just by casting all my DoTs my threat jumps a lot. You should see me begging for this buff all the time.

My life as a lock is full of ups and downs.  I though that  I finally found a cool guild I can raid with, only for the guild mates to be nonexistent online as soon as summer began.  :(

Out of boredom and desperation and also because I've been enjoying my fire specked mage I resepecked my warlock destro (20/0/41).  I have to say that the play style becomes very similar to a mage.  But it did not feel like a lock anymore.

From my personal opinion Warlocks have their biggest and unique strengths in the demonology and affliction trees.  Destruction is fun, but it's very short lived.  You cannot do tings with destro you can do with demonology or affliction, such as non stop grinding or taking down an elite mob by your self.  Plus if you want to blast things, you can always go mage, but only lock can have a unique DoTs and or pet/blast.  I'm back to affliction and I love it!

I've once heard a quote that said - Success is gradual progress towards a worthy ideal, or goal. In World of Warcraft, when you level you character, you leveling is that measured gradual progress to a goal. The goal can be the next level, level 58 to go hit Outland, or even level 70. Either way with every quest and every Mob you are progressing. Once you hit level 70, that stops, at least for now. So what measures your success now?

Last night I played with my new guild and we cleared almost the entire Karazhan, including NightBane, but excluding the Netherspite and I've got my Helm of the Falen Champion and 20 Badges of justice.  Although I've ran the top portion of this raid before, this was my first full one.  Pictures to come.

Kara was fun.  I think what also made it fun was a great group.  My new guild is very cool.

There was a really cool change in the 2.4 Patch that totally went over my head until about last week. Since it is becoming harder and harder for newly minted level 70 to compete with people who went through three seasons of Arena, something had to be done.

Blizzard made some basic PVP gear set available for purchase from the Outland faction vendors. So, all that grinding for Thrallmar or Cenarion Expedition you have done can now pay off. You have to be honored with the faction, which is the same reputation you need to buy a heroic key. The cost of each piece is also quite minor, on average 10 gold for each piece. At level 70 that's a few daily quests that can be done in 20 mins. There is a set for every class.

I've been thinking about this topic a lot. When does life begin in WoW? Does it begin when you create your new character or does it begin when that character reaches level 70, or at least 60? Why am I thinking all of this now? Well because I finally got my main Warlock to 70 a few months ago, and now it has been almost like a midlife crisis for me in WoW.

I remember when I just started to play World of Warcraft a few years ago I leveled my character slowly, taking time to run and do all the quests. Sometimes I would run to other zones just to explore them. Needless to say, it took me forever to level. I also made tons of mistakes along the way, and would learn from those mistakes. This was before I discovered how to look up quests on Thottbot or effectively make gold in the game. But I was pretty exited to sit down and explore the WoW universe.

So I got the set. I pushed really hard for a few days, and sacrificed a bit to push my tailoring to 375, and finally created my robe. The set is pretty cool. All of my curses and shadow bolts return a bit of life back to me. I've also re-socketed all of my pieces to add +hit bonuses for raiding and instance runs.



I will say one thing. It was a lot of work and resources to push my tailoring to 375. Tons and tons of mats. There are many people who say that it for a clothie it is almost a required choice to have tailoring to make one of the epic tailoring sets. I don't know if I agree though. Yes, the set allows you to have great gear without doing much instances or raiding. However, it is not a cheap set, and is very time and effort consuming.

Here is my main dilemma with the set. I've invested so much time and resources into it. What did I get it for? It's not a PVP set, so it's not really for PVPing. It's a PVE and Raiding set. But I am not big on doing instances and raiding. It is so time consuming, and frustrating to get a good group and for everything to go smoothly. Add to that the fact that my family members want immediate attention while I'm in a dungeon, and it equals pretty frustrating experience. So, for regular questing, I would have been fine with stuff I got as quest rewards and stuff tailors desperately sell in AH to help level their tailoring. It now seems almost like a waste to me. Maybe I've been better with an epic flyer? :(

I've been trying really hard to tailor my Frozen Shadoweave set for my Warlock. However, after spending tons and tons of money and time to either farm the primals or to buy them, I start questioning myself - is it worth the effort? It seems that I can probably find a lot of nice upgrades just doing the instances.

So far I got the shoulders and the boots, which are pretty nice. But they cost me a lot! I also made a huge mistake of making the shoulders twice ( i wanted to make the boots the second time). Finally the robe is not only very material intensive, but requires 375 tailoring. My tailoring is about 367. The only decent way to get up to 375 is to make imbued netherweave robe or tunic, which will be expensive to make and don't really sell that well.

So where am I going with all of this money talk? Don't I get enough money from questing? Well yes. However, I've set my eyes on the epic flyer, and I'm on NO BUYING policy until I get it! :( Let's hope that's soon. Until then, robe can wait, and I'll far the cloth to get my tailoring up.

Well, this is official, today I've got my warlock epic mount. Up to now I gave up on the idea of getting the Warlock epic mount and bought a regular epic skeleton horse. But then came my membership in my new guild, which now goes by the name The Forsaken. I got some very nice guildies and the other day another level 60 Warlock wanted to run thorough the Dire Maul and get his mount. I offered to "help", since I already have all the mats for the quest. Well the Guild Master, a level 70 Shaman and a recently hit 70 healing priest came along, and they also had the key, which is very important.

It took us no time to clear the pieces we needed and whack the boss at the spot for the summoning. Then came a challenge, I usually care a full soulbag full of soulshards. Unfortunately right before we went to Dire Maul, I came out of PVP and was short on Shards. Now, at level 70 I could not get more shards in DM because the Mob is too low for my level. Well my guildmates had to wait for 10 mins while I hearthed back to Terrokar forest and get some shads. They then summoned me back in and we went though the quest.

The summoning of the dreadsteed was very messy. Tons of demons running around, and you've got to keep up the three pieces flowing for the ritual. The shards I needed are for keeping up the three pieces floating in the air, making the summoning circle, and you need about 10 or more shards to keep it going. Thank God my guild mates were experienced, and have done this rituals before. It went like a charm. And now I've got my horse. :D very happy

Picture coming soon ...

I've finally hit level 70 on my main toon - Moramor. This is a tremendous and exiting point in my WoW career. I've got my basic flying mount and all!

However, now comes the question of what to do after level 70. One of the obvious things is to do endgame dungeons and raids. This will be a change for me since I usually prefer to quest alone. Another one would be to get tons of reputation, another would be to get cool gear. Maybe even do some serious PVP? One thing is certain, I've got to get my warlock epic mount! :)