Upcoming Changes & Ozzy Osbourne Commercial
Seems like ages since we reported some good news concerning warlocks.
Soul Shards (src)
Soul Shards are fine, learn to play!
The first one is related to the notorious Soul Shard mechanic which we discussed previously. The change will go live in the next patch (the one before 3.1 Ulduar content patch).
When a warlock casts Ritual of Summoning, instead of creating a portal, they will summon a new creation similar to a dungeon meeting stone. It will cost one shard to create this item. Then, anyone in the warlock’s party or raid can use the “meeting stone” to summon other members of the group. For example, once the warlock summons the stone, then party members B and C could summon D without the warlock’s direct involvement, and most importantly without requiring additional shards. You will be able to bring the rest of a 25-person raid quickly (since you can summon folks simultaneously), for the cost of a single shard, and with less clicking on the part of the lock.
The “meeting stone” will last 5 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown. It will not be usable in areas where summoning is currently restricted, such as battlegrounds or in combat. Creating the stone still requires 2 people in addition to the warlock. Summoning actual party members only requires 2 people.
Summoning players in raids is only one piece of the pie since we have plenty of ways to burn the shards even without it. As mentioned before, it’s not the system itself that is broken — quite the contrary, we just don’t want to bring along two bags full of stolen mage souls (at least I hope you’re using mages, they make the best shards!).
Fortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg and we’re going to see more changes according to Ghostcrawler, who confirmed they are indeed working on an overhaul and there are more changes coming.
DoT tagging (src)
We just talked about this and agree that it’s dumb you have to go to such theatrics just to tag a mob. We’ll try to get this fixed.
Unfortunately it appears this change will not make it in time: it would be perfect if they thought of it sooner which would surely make a lot of warlocks happy since we’re all leveling up right now. If you’re not familiar with the issue, we are often annoyed by players who are tagging our mobs since it takes a few seconds for them to do damage. Neither of our instant-cast spells are appropriate for tagging mobs which makes it easy for other classes to “steal” our kills.
Although this isn’t exactly post-worthy, I’ll slip it in anyway. There are two new WoW commercials, one with Steve Van Sandt which we don’t really care about, and the other with Ozzy Osbourne which is embedded for your viewing pleasure below. What do you think, is he evil enough to play a warlock?
Even though I know I shouldn’t, I really do like the Ozzy one. The other one is utter shit, though.
Also, good summoning change. No, it isn’t enough, but you can’t poo-poo an obvious buff.
I don’t know if he’s evil enough, but Ozzy’s ad is hella funny.
Yes hes’ evil enough! That Man Rocks!
Finally we locks get some good stuff
not the best improvement, but no doubt that it is an apprieciated upgrade
The Ozzy commercial actually made me crack a smile, which is more than the other commercials have done since Mr. T’s.
I liked how his warlock was wearing goggles similar to his glasses.
They are again doing something that has effect. Face it. Warlock is to suck for now and they wont fix it. Things they could do to really help:
1) Stack shards: 20 per slot
2) Store them outside bags - just like rogue poisons
3) improve the glyph to really produce 2 shards per soul drain
4) Pet returns soulshard when it dies or is dismissed
5) Each boss to give a shard automatically? hrm
With Rank 6 Drain Soul becoming such a heavy hitter, we’re going to be destroying shards left and right. They’ve GOT to do something about it now… right?
Why are you using Rank 6? None of the ranks have any considerable damage and all of them produce a shard. Switch to Rank 1
ehm? you missed that rank 1 cost the same or maby even more mana than highest rank since 3.0?
switch all spells to max rank.
You got me on that. I am thinking pre doom patch (3.0.2). Currently, Rank 6 is cheaper than anything else
Read the tooltip for RANK SIX…
Drain Soul, Rank 6: If the target is at or below 25% health, Drain Soul causes four times the normal damage.
Yeah, and that proc on Rank 6 when they are at low health is full of win.
Recently I went over the experience of being the sole warlock on a MC achievement run (I was there to get my item from Raggie for the AQ40 scepter quest line), I had to summon about 30 ppl inside. A similar thing happened with a BWL run…. so I /thank Blizzard with all my heart, that they finally did something about the shard system. It was just too annyoing to get whispers over and over with “can I get a summon ?”
PS: I didnt get my item, the RL refused to set FFA and the stupid default looter never looted Raggie… /fuck that EU-Frostmane bastard.
The concept was a lot better than the execution.
My Rank 6 Soul Drain ticks for 4k damage when the mob is under 25%.
What is your definition of “heavy hitter”?
Plus Rank 1 costs more mana than Rank 6.
I wish they’d make it so healthstones, soulstones, firestones, and spellstones could be placed in Soul Bags. It’s bad enough that I have to equip two soul bags to have enough shards for a long raid. It would be nice if I didn’t have to use 3-4 of my other bag slots for soul-related items.
Another idea that would be cool…. Demonstones. Basically a pre-summoned demon. The mana cost and most of the cast time could be sunk into the stone (which would be unique), and it would allow you to whip out a demon whenever at short notice. This would still be cool even if you had to “dismiss” your demon into the stone, and couldn’t have a stone and a demon at the same time. Demon standing in the AoE? Easy fix. Want to jump off that ledge without your demon running around and aggroing everything? Easy fix… Etc…
Demonstones sounds like the most amazing idea I’ve heard in awhile! Dunno how you came up with that but it would be brilliant and lots of fun, and I’d give a bag slot for that any day