Profile: aurick
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• • World of Warcraft: Class Overview: Rolling a Warlock

  • Playing a Warlock to level 10 is a challenge because your imp does nothing for aggro management.  You have to kill, and kill fast.  Which is difficult when most of your spells are Damage over Time.

    As soon as you get your voidwalker, the whole game changes.  A smart warlock will typically only use other pets for group play.  If you're solo, you should always have your voidwalker out unless you have a damned good reason to do otherwise or you get the felguard.  A trap to avoid (except with the voidwalker) is switching to whatever demon is the newest one you've learned.  Remember:  your demons get abilities slowly, and are weakest when you first learn them.  The extra demons are meant to round out your class in special situations rather than being used non-stop.

    The voidwalker does an excellent job at holding aggro from the moment you get it, and this only gets better with time.  But you have to completely change the way you play once you get this pet.

    The reason many warlocks have difficulty is because they don't understand aggro management.  They start cutting loose with spells like they're a mage, and end up doing so much damage that the mob gets pulled off their voidwalker.  Warlocks need to remember that they're deadly in a "sneak up on you" kind of way.  Cast your DoT's, then sit back and relax for several seconds.  This prevents the spell damage from outstripping the pet's ability to generate threat.  You should only typically use Shadowbolt once when your first DoT's are getting ready to run out, and maybe a second time when the mob is almost dead and you just want to end the fight quick.

    If you try to solo with anything other than the voidwalker/felguard, you're asking for big trouble.  None of the other pets hold aggro.  This means that you put yourself in the position of any other clothie, having to kill the mob before it can get to you.  An extremely skilled warlock can manage this with some good kiting, but it's rare to see anyone who can do it well.  Honestly, the imp is best for dungeons when you're in a group that doesn't need the voidwalker to serve as an off tank.  The succubus and felhunter are best for PvP, or if you're grouped in a dungeon.  In this latter case, the succubus adds more dps to the fight while the felhunter is magic for making life miserable for healers and casters.

    Another thing about your demons is that with the exception of the imp you very rarely want to leave all the pet abilities on auto-cast.  For example, the voidwalker has both a single-target and an AoE taunt.  The voidwalker will by default cast them one right after the other.  If you get an add, then the second taunt isn't available because it's still on its long cooldown.  Turn off that second taunt, and use it only when necessary.  The succubus and felhunter have similar situations where you need to micromanage your pet rather than let it do its thing.

    My final recommendation is to spec very heavy in Affliction for most of your career.  Only respec if you decide to go with the felguard, and then only when you are high enough level to get that demon AND all of its abilities.  If I remember right, that means something like level 50 or 55.  Affliction is an amazing leveling spec, maximizing your DoT's while also improving your life and mana drain abilities. 

    Ultimately, the secret to playing a warlock well is to have already killed your enemies before they realize it.  Use those DoT's to best effect!  By the time the enemy realizes it's actually in trouble, there's nothing that it can do to survive.

    In conclusion, warlocks are an exceptionally versatile class.  They can solo extremely well, and they can also round out any party by choosing the pet that does what the group is weakest at.

  • Posted: 10/21/08 11:53 AM
    General Discussion
• • beta to be fnished by early december

  • You know, it just blows my mind that a company is seriously planning to release an MMO with about 2-3 months of beta testing, including the closed beta.

    How can the game possibly launch without tons of broken content?  What happens when testers come back saying a specific system just isn't fun? 

    Sorry, but the more I see, the more inclined I am to take a "wait and see" approach with this game.  It's one that's going to have to be on the market for about six months before I even think about buying it.  I didn't enjoy paying to beta test Age of Conan, and I'm certainly not about to put myself in that position again with Darkfall.

  • Posted: 10/16/08 8:36 PM
    Darkfall
• • Richard Garriott Got Lots of Press today--but TR didn't get a plug

  • By the way, during the launch he held up a sign for people watching via YouTube or wherever to see.  The sign is written in Logos, so only Tabula Rasa players (or those familiar with it) would be able to figure out that it says, "Earth is the Cradle of Mankind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever."  -- a quote from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who was one of Russia's fathers of spaceflight.

    So yeah, even during the launch he plugged TR.  Just in a subtle way.

  • Posted: 10/13/08 3:45 PM
    Tabula Rasa
• • EAX???

  • I'm running Vista and was able to get EAX to work via Alchemy.  I had to manually browse from within Alchemy to add WAR to its list.  Then when I logged into the game I was able to turn on the EAX check box.

    It sounded awesome as I ran around and heard sounds from all directions.  Cannon fire off to my left, for example.

    Then I got into combat, and quickly realized that I was hearing every sound twice, with about a half-second in between.  NPC voices are the same.  Listening closer, so were the rest of the world's sounds.

    In short, the cool factor vanished pretty darned quick, and I disabled EAX again until the devs fix it.

  • Posted: 9/29/08 9:53 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • Game freezes, monitor powers off. Pls help

  • Monitor losing its signal and going black while still being able to hear the game sounds is exactly what was happening to me not too long ago with a couple other games.  It was driving me nuts because I have a GTX 280 OC, a case with exceptional cooling, and a more than sufficient power supply.

    Guess what?  My card was overheating.

    Get a program called RivaTuner.  The first thing you want to do is turn on its monitor and leave that running with a graph of the GPU core temperature.  Also find a review of your card online that includes temperature performance so that you'll know what is considered normal for your card.  (The GTX 280 for example runs a good 20 degrees hotter under load than any other card I've ever seen, but that's normal for it.)  You'll be able to see very quickly just how hot your card is getting, and it can be set to keep a log file.

    If you are indeed having a heat problem, you can use RivaTuner to set up profiles such as "FanSpeed 80%" and "FanSpeed 100%".  Then you can schedule those events to occur within specific temperature ranges.  When I'm playing my games, my card gets hotter and RivaTuner starts speeding the fan up to compensate.  Now when I play WAR or other games the card stays comfortably in the high 60's (which is the fan 80% range for me) and only occasionally spikes to over 70 (which is when the fan jumps to 100%).  I've never had a problem since.

    nVidia's drivers with the performance monitor are supposed to control fan speed.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work worth a damn.  RivaTuner works well. 

  • Posted: 9/26/08 9:27 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)