Leveling a Warlock in Cataclysm: Installation

        Before I left for work today I logged into Battle.net (something I do so infrequently Firefox doesn't even auto-complete the address for me) and started the installation on my Cataclysm Beta client. I've been in the Beta since Day 1, but haven't really done much with it because there's still so much I want to do on live. I've been having some issues installing it that are going to cost me my sanity, but I am determined to prevail.

So there's that.

       The decision to level a warlock to 85 (pre-launch) and write about it was inspired by an attempt to understand the constant comments on the Elitist Jerks forums about "So x is the new best spec for leveling?" Wait, what? People care about leveling? Apparently so. This kind of thinking is a little flummoxing to me. Doesn't it all kind of get you to the same place? I plan on getting my Succiu from 80 to 85 by mainlining caffeine and buying that dry shampoo you see commercials for. I'm more concerned about what my personal spec, err, I mean, desk, will look like than what Succiu's packing. 

       I had kind of an unorthodox leveling experience though. WoW was my first MMO, so the whole finesse of talent trees was lost on me. I went Destruction because I wanted to use Chaos Bolt. It was shiny and green. While leveling, I also had a lot of patience for things other people might not be as willing to tolerate. I knew I wasn't very good, and so I didn't mind dying and corpse running when I had to. (My tolerance for it now is about on par for walking up a broken escalator.) And of course, leveling doesn't last that long! Or at least, it shouldn't. Putting thought into what spec will serve you best for just a few days didn't seem all that worthwhile to me. Leveling is a mildly annoying detour on the way to the real fun.

       What does seem worthwhile to me is becoming familiar enough with the new content that I can race through it on December 7th without feeling guilty.Yes I am soulless and mercenary, but at least I can admit it. I am a warlock, would you expect anything else?

Leveling Talents: The Philosophy
Damage vs. Survivability

       Leveling casts a starker contrast on what is always a trade off for damage dealers: damage and survivability. You can push really hard to kill something before it kills you, or you can take longer with less risk of death. A raiding warlock, my dogma has always been to aim for lean and mean. That would be great, except for this little setback: a dead DPS does no DPS. You cannot cast Chaos Bolt when you are eating dirt.
       A middle ground between the two will usually serve you best. There's no need to gem stamina, for goodness sake. What will really decide the trade off is how you stack up in comparison to your opponent. There's no point worrying about survivability when you can run around throwing Corruption up, and still leave a trail of dead bodies in your wake. My recollection of my first run through Hyjal was that the mobs had pitifully low health pools. Supposedly, these have been doubled. I am likely to dabble in all three specs, just for fun. But where to start?

Destruction
      Well, probably Destruction. I've always liked Destruction, and there are some nice talents that will make it even better this time around. This is the talent build I'll be starting with.

      Much of it isn't all that different from a raiding build, especially those talents that increase your fire damage. But they have a much different use in the context of level 80 mobs vs a boss. Take Improved Soul Fire, for instance. You can take your time casting a Soul Fire to open combat, something you don't have the option of during raids, and tend to resent the full cast time of anyway. But damage per cast time (DPCT) isn't relevant when you are out of combat. You could even Soulburn and pop an instant Soul Fire if you were in a hurry (although I'd sooner save the instant one until after combat begins!) Either way, you'll be able to cast that much faster throughout, which will be great.
       In this build, I picked up Aftermath, which isn't a part of my current Destruction raiding build. Aftermath puts a daze effect on the target when you cast Conflagrate-- useless on a boss, who is immune, but great for slowing down the mob running towards you. You can stop him again with a well placed Shadowfury, buying you even more time. If he does manage to hit you, Backlash gives you a chance for an instant Incinerate.  Finishing with a Shadowburn will help you save time by getting Soul Shards back without spending time Soulvocating.
       And survivability? Lots of it. Soul Leech returns a portion of the damage you do as health and mana. Fel Synergy will also regen some of your pet's health. Demonic Embrace will put that much more of a cushion between you and the floor, and if you are fighting a caster you can pop Nether Ward for a handy shield.
       Those talents I skipped were Searing Pain, Burning Embers, Empowered Imp, and Bane of Havoc. Searing Pain isn't going to out-damage Incinerate no matter what you do to it, and the threat is useless for soloing. Bane of Havoc could get some usage when you are fighting multiple mobs, but honestly you'd get just as much out of simply DoTting a second target when they are dying so fast. The hardest choice was definitely Burning Embers. The DoT your Imp puts up is certainly powerful, and the chance for an instant Soul Fire is always great. The reason you eschew it is simply that you aren't going to be using your Imp much. He is just too squishy! His Blood Pact could easily replace the increased stamina from Fel Synergy if you do end up using him, but you'll probably be happier using your Voidwalker.
       I also skipped talents for improving Corruption and Bane. While useful in their own right, the mobs we are fighting aren't going to live long enough that empowering spells that take 15 seconds to execute will be all that worth it. Especially when they are such a low percentage of our damage to begin with. 
       An advantage we have from pre-4.0 leveling is of course, Soul Link, which is now available to everyone. I also really enjoy Soulburn for extra burst, and Soulvocate is so much faster than eating (and with such a short cooldown!) that our downtime between fights will be very short.

Affliction
       For Affliction, I would go with something like this.

Affliction has a lot more options, and there could be a lot of variation on what I chose to start with. I put points into Improved Fear and Howl of Terror. Improved Fear will be a great way to incapacitate an enemy, especially when coupled with Glyph of Fear, to make sure he doesn't run around and bring back friends you aren't prepared to entertain. The Howl of Terror talent effectively makes Howl of Terror an instant cast, making it a great "Oh shit!" button.
       I also chose to pick up the Soulburn: Seed of Corruption affect. This will probably get limited use, but when you do use it, it will help burn down enemies you can't afford to target just yet. I thought it was more useful than Jinx, if for no other reason than I'd rather spend GCDs to do damage, and not increase the damage I'll do uh, later. (Jinx is also best used to put up a magic debuff on mobs that other casters will be AoEing, which isn't the case when soloing.) Plus, I wanted to grab Curse of Exhaustion, because Affliction doesn't have the power to stop enemies in their tracks like Destruction does.
       I skipped Nightfall altogether. I love this proc during raids, but a 4% chance for an instant nuke just isn't enough to justify skipping points elsewhere. I left a point out of Eradication for the same reason, and put all three of those points towards Fel Synergy. Improved Life Tap only got one point as well, although we might see this change later. Though it's hard to imagine in 4.0 raiding, at higher levels we might actually start to run out of mana, and so decreasing the demand of Life Taps during combat might be worthwhile. Warlocks aren't anything like mana efficient.
       The best part about Affliction is the totally effortless survivability. Never forget to keep your drain life handy (I keep mine next to Death Coil!) and you can Soulburn Drain Life for a faster return of health when you are pressed. Haunt and Corruption (via Siphon Life) constantly give you back reasonably significant chunks of life, and unlike Destruction which thrives on nukes, loading up multiple targets with every DoT you have is extremely viable with Affliction.

Demonology
       At a glance, Demonology offers a happy medium between the "Impossible to Kill" Affliction and the "Kill it Faster!" Destruction. Here is what my idea of a leveling Demonology spec might look like.

What makes Demonology unique is that alone among warlocks, Demonology forgoes the Voidwalker and (naturally) chooses the Felguard. The Felguard is akin to the Voidwalker, and can make a much better meat shield if you use him as such. He is slightly squishier, and he doesn't hold threat quite as well, but he does a good deal more damage, particularly his new Felstorm ability (oooer!). You'll have to manage him more than you would the voidwalker-- remember to hit Demonic Empowerment to get him out of a stun, his Felstorm ability is not on auto cast, and he'll need more Health Funnel heals from you on hard hitting mobs. But his multi-target taunting keeps mobs off of you, and makes him your go-to choice. And seriously, did I mention Felstorm?
      The downside of course is that should your pet die, you are a good deal weaker. You devote your talents to your pet, at the cost of your own damage. Luckily, Demonology comes with an instant Demonic Rebirth talent if such were to happen, so you should be able to recover in sticky situations better than Affliction and Destruction. The Aura of Foreboding affect of Hand of Gul'dan will be excellent for mob control, but you don't have many other options when it comes to taking mobs to the face, sadly. Demonology's situation control are more effective when used in proactive anticipation, and not negative source reaction. Don't hesitate to use your metamorphosis cooldown, and get out your Infernals and Doomguards as often as you can. Popping metamorphosis increases your armor, allowing you to take more hits, but it doesn't make you invincible; if you wait too long to use it, you won't stay alive for it to be worthwhile.
       I skipped Master Summoner and Molten Core talents, as well as a single point in Ancient Grimoire. I personally am not all that fussed about Demon summoning time. I usually pop a Soulburn for an instant summon, especially since it's usually a good idea to Soulvocate to regen health anyway. Molten Core is nice in raids, but like Nightfall, waiting for a proc on low level mobs just isn't worth it. I only put one point in Ancient Grimoire, which I needed to get to the top of the tree. Having the pets last longer sounds good in theory, but it will entirely depend on how long fights last. My guess is that most fights won't last anything like a full minute, so the extra time is either wasted on one fight, or you pull a second set of mobs, and risk your demon expiring too soon and leaving you with too much to handle on your own. It's a mixed bag.
       An often overlooked talent while leveling is Decimation. It is obviously a huge cornerstone for Demo-raiding, but people tend to think that by the time you get a quest mob to 35%, the fight is over, so there isn't much point to the talent. Not so. While you do need to proc Decimation off of a low-health mob, you can cast the hasted Soul Fire on anything. It will also continue to refresh on every new mob you hit sub-35%, so you can keep it up indefinitely. The faster casts on such a huge damaging spell will be wonderful to burn through small groups of mobs and chain pull. 
       The strength of Demonolgy will be it's excellent elite-mob soloing capability. I'll most likely keep this as my off-spec full time, so that I can get out the Felguard whenever I run into a mob that just hurts too much to solo. Demonology will also be great to have for 5 mans, as it loses the least in terms of damage when picking up utility talents. (Destruction without Imp talents? Affliction with weak Eradication and no Nightfall?) I'd sooner have a real damage spec for five mans, but in a pinch Demonology will be the best. Demonic Pact certainly doesn't hurt.

Overall I really am deplorably behind when it comes to Cataclysm preparation. I am overcome with self recrimination. BUT, as I write this, Blizzard is helping me to solve this problem by slowly claiming ever-more (more, more, more!) of my hard drive.

Warlock DoTs : How Haste Affects Duration

or

Help! Immolate Falls Off Before Hand of Gul'dan is Off Cooldown!

       Haste scaling is a tricky thing. At the end of the expansion, we are already seeing diminishing returns from haste, particularly with reforging in the picture. We have more control over our stat-balancing than we ever did before. That control comes in the form of choice, and with so many more options than just "It dropped, and it was better than what I had before," we really are considering the damage return more closely. While mastery is fairly easy to understand, the value of haste has left people understandably boggled in regards to their DoTs, all the more so if you play Demonology.

       Understanding the way haste affects our spells in 4.0, specifically the time between DoT ticks, can alleviate a lot of that confusion. Before 4.0, more haste pretty much meant more spam. Unless you played Affliction and used Glyph of Quick Decay, the only thing haste affected was your cast times. Any time you earned through haste typically was spent casting more "filler," which for Destruction means Incinerate, and Demonology mostly means Shadow Bolt. The value of haste in relation to cast time was linear, and it still is. The reason the value of haste jumps around so much more now is because haste now affects the ticks of your damage over time spells. More haste can add additional ticks to a DoT, but it also can affect the duration of the DoT. This little tidbit was not particularly well advertised, probably because the change in duration is so small that it shouldn't matter, but there is at least one situation where a shorter duration, no matter how small, is a large handicap. I'm talking about Hand of Gul'dan and Immolate, but we'll come to that in a minute.

       The formula by which the number of ticks is calculated is very important. Haste does not increase the number of ticks in a linear fashion, as there is no such thing as a partial tick. Rather, there are specific haste thresholds that add ticks. Once crossed, the value of haste to your DoTs is negligible until you reach the next threshold. You should be aware of what plateau your haste currently falls on, and how close you are to the next level, so that you can itemize accordingly.

The formula that WoW seems to use to determine the number of ticks a spell has is as follows.

       As you can see, the formula also affects the duration of your DoTs. In most cases, the partial second change in duration will not affect how or when you refresh your DoTs. (Remember, you can no longer "clip" a DoT, 100% uptime is good!) One case where it can make a huge difference is when using Hand of Gu'ldan. Hand of Gul'dan, when cast, refreshes Immolate, and does enough damage that is absolutely worth using. Excellent. However, Hand of Gul'dan has a 12 second cooldown, with a two second cast. Immolate has a 15 second duration. In theory, you should have plenty of time to use Hand of Gul'dan and refresh Immolate perfectly every time, with a one second "buffer" (plus whatever haste reduces your cast time by) between hitting Hand of Gul'dan the very instant it is off cooldown. In practice, we all know how difficult that can be. Haste makes it even trickier because of the way it calculates the duration.

       The formula will "round" to the nearest tick, based on the original duration and how much our haste reduces the time between ticks. After the last tick, the DoT will fall off the target, it will not leave any "dead time." The number of ticks can round up or down, so the actual duration will respond accordingly. When you have just crossed a haste threshold, this formula will work in your favor and you will actually have longer DoT durations, giving you more wiggle room to refresh. But when you get more haste and are close to crossing another threshold (essentially when Unrounded Ticks>Rounded Ticks) you will lose duration from your DoT. Just how much is dependent on your particular haste, but the quick and dirty is that if you are having a problem keeping Immolate up with Hand of Gul'dan, you need to re-balance your haste to fit into the margins.

       To figure out how much haste is needed to get an additional tick, and how it affects the duration, all we need is some basic algebra. You can skip this if you aren't addicted to Excel like I am. Let's use Immolate as an example. Immolate has 5 ticks and a base duration of 15 second, which means it normally ticks every 3 seconds.  We want to figure out how much haste we need to have 6 ticks.

We start with what we already know.

        Then we simply plug in the numbers that we have, so as to isolate what we don't know. We are trying learn the minimum haste we need to get 6 ticks of Immolate, which would mean that (unrounded) the minimum haste would give us 5.5 ticks.

        From this we can see that at exactly 10% haste, we will gain a sixth tick from Immolate. At this point, Immolate will last over 16 seconds, and will tick every 2.7 seconds. We can use the same approach to understand the haste thresholds for each additional tick.

       While the number of ticks isn't directly relevant to the duration of the spell, it is good to understand these mechanics anyway. If you are slightly below these thresholds (remember to consider raid buffs!) it is definitely worth reforging/gemming to get that extra tick, no matter what spec you are playing. What we are looking for is the optimum threshold for our haste rating. If we are having trouble keeping Immolate up using Hand of Gul'dan, we can manipulate our haste to make the duration of Immolate longer. Using the same formulas as above and increasing the haste rating, we can solve for the duration and time between ticks. Lets see how widely that can vary. 

       From looking at this we can see that the duration of our Immolate will be highest as soon as we have enough haste for an extra tick. This is because that is the time when the time between ticks will be greatest. As the time between ticks gets shorter, the DoT as a whole will get shorter.  I made a handy little chart to show you what haste ranges will make Immolate longer than 15 seconds, and where it will be shorter. Remember to consider raid buffs!

   
       Note on spell haste buffs. Haste buffs are multiplicative, not additive. What that means is that the buff applies itself to your hasted casting speed, and not your base casting speed. This addition will not show up in your character stat summary screen. To calculate exactly the exact amount of haste you will have after raid buffs, you multiply the buff by your hasted casting speed. If you have 30% haste, you are casting at a rate of 130%.

       So for example, if you had 30% haste, and you were in a raid with a Shadow Priest who provided a 5% haste buff, you would not have 35% haste, your haste would look like this.

       In this situation, your haste would be 36.5%, and your DoTs would behave accordingly. You can get 5% haste from Shadow Priests, Boomchickens, and Wrath of Air Totem. However, these buffs do not stack. It is also important to note that at this time, the Shadow Priest buff is the only buff that also carries over to your pet. This is likely a bug that will be fixed.
       So there you go. With any luck, Blizzard will reduce the cooldown on Hand of Gul'dun just the smallest bit to make all of this easier. But the tick thresholds will still apply! There is an argument to be made that cooldowns are the new "Don't clip!" measure of a good warlock. Pre 4.0, clipping DoTs was something akin to blasphemy. Now, we'll be able to tell how bad you are by the number of times you cast Immolate because you weren't paying attention to Hand of Gul'dan.

 P.S. Shame I'm not Demonology anymore!

In Which Blizzard Didn't Kill My Dog....

...but they are going to.

…the ritual came to a close and a demon of untold power (but limited stature) was pulled through the void, kicking and biting and gnashing its teeth, forcibly bound to the mortal world. The warlock, a quizzical expression on his face, regarded his familiar, who was in fact now quite unfamiliar, and inquired, “Who in the hell are you?”  [Bornakk]

You may have heard that somewhere in the massive amounts of changes to warlocks in 4.0, something went awry that resulted in new demonic companions for those of us who follow the path of shadow and flame. Cynwise even wrote a charming, misty eyed memorial on the loss of beloved pets and friends. Lo and behold, Blizzard has figured out what went wrong and plans to restore our former companions to us in the next update, presumably this coming Tuesday. At which point, I will join the masses and start to wail, "Blizzard killed my dog!"

You see, I really love demons. A lot. A warlock's relationship with its demon is a very complicated mixture of revulsion and fascination. We are their masters, yes, but the whole reason you go through the process of drawing a rune circle and sacrificing the innocent souls of dead babies and virgins and unicorn tails is to annex those diabolical powers. Your demon characterizes you far more than you affect them. But most importantly, when you summon a demon, you stop being alone. You are incomplete without your demon. Every victory is shared, and sweetened, for the company, and your first action upon resurrection from death is always to summon a new demon. You can't help but feel a bond with your partner, but that bond is kept artificially restrained because its a demon. And demons are evil. 

So there's that. Then, there's the fact that the epic questlines you go through don't "give" you demons. You call the demon forth from the Nether, and subject it to your will by right of conquest. A blood-debt. Their submission to you is a matter of honor, perverse as it might seem. So yes, there is an aspect of individuality to each demon that makes it difficult to justify that the new demons we got last Tuesday are as good as the ones we had on Monday night. 

But...I hesitate to confess this. Sometimes demons just don't fit. I'm looking for that feeling of impossible romance with my demonic companion, and sometimes I got it right and sometimes I didn't. And let me tell you, if I ended up with a demon friend that I couldn't feel that bond with, I would send it back. Let me emphasize again that demons are evil. And yet we come to trust and love them anyway for reasons that cannot have any grounding in logic. That leap of faith is what makes the warlock and demon partnership so special. And it's why I will be more saddened to lose my new demons than I am to have lost my old ones.

The demon I could never bring myself to love was my succubus, Catxxia. She and I just couldn't make it work. I'm a temperamental blood elf with rice paper thin skin concealing my bleeding heart, and Catxxia is one of those succubi that is all about the botox injections. If we'd gone to high school together she would have scratched her name, in calligraphy, on the side of my dad's car, using nothing but her blood red fingernails on the way to have sex with a gang of uh, mechano-hoggers. This isn't one of those relationships that would eventually give way to compassion and understanding. It just got awkward.

So I was thrilled to find that 4.0 brought me to meet with Jhorwyn. Ah, Jhorwyn, how I adore thee. The rounded syllables of your name recall me to the creamy sweetness of cool w-hip. A succubus, you might have been as fiery as any of your kind, but, like me, you had a grounding of level-headedness to restrain your lust. Tomorrow's patch will bring an early end to what could have been an affectionate and respectful partnership. I hope we can reunite in the future. Curse thee, Catxxia, that you must assert your irrational jealous anger!

However, I haven't spent all that much time with Jhorwyn this week as I was enthralled with Destruction, and so Abatip was actually my most frequent visitor. Abatip's predecessor, Lazpit, convinced me to play a warlock. He got the last hit on a mob that would otherwise have killed me. I was sold. But after picking up my slack for so long, I imagine he was a little burnt out (lord was I sick of him) and so I'm sure he was happy to hand the reins over to his young cousin Abatip. Ohp no! Your vacation is over before your plane hits the ground, my dear. I feel a little sorry for Abatip. He did a good job, and he is going to be unemployed soon, thanks to the weird situation imposed upon the three of us by Blizzard. It's going to be a little awkward to have Lazpit back when he knows how much I liked his replacement. 

Sloonhym, my Felpuppy, was replaced by Phuumon. Enough said.

The demon I know the least well, and could at best characterize as a good "working relationship" was Haaroon, who accompanied me through Icecrown Citadel and hour upon hour of wipes to Halion adds. Haaroon was an ideal employee. He did his job well, never left me to fend for myself, and we had enough fuzzy moments to get us through the rest of the week. Still, there was always a distance between, probably based in the fact that his name sounded like a banshee screech. So I was happy to meet his far more personable brother Erakferil. Erakferil was more eager to please, with an open countenance and a faster blade. 4.0 Demonology was going to be more lighthearted than the self-sacrificing "Moar Spellpower!" Demonology. Ah, well. Maybe Erakferil can give me a massage at a spa in Sweden, which is clearly where he is from.

And last, but never, ever least, my dear Chargrave. Who was Chargrave replaced by? Well, no one. Chargrave is my most useful and best loved demon. We leveled through Noobland together, and he isn't letting me face the Cataclysm. alone. That's the whole point.

<3

Power Auras and Destruction in 4.0

UPDATE: I have written a new and improved guide for Power Auras for Cataclsym. You can find it here. 


I've been having a lot of fun with the new Destruction playstyle. So much fun I'll probably dual spec both PvE Destruction and PvE Affliction. I've heard the new rotation described as "Whack-A-Mole" style button mashing, and that's not entirely untrue, but turns out I have a soft spot for arcade games that involve jumping up and down and banging things on the head. Warlocks got so much in this patch, we really have had to relearn how to play our familiar specs. My first night in ICC, I was putting out huge numbers, which is great, but man did I feel clumsy. I can't count the number of times I fat-fingered an extra Incinerate and let Corruption fall off. No matter what your DPS looks like, raiding is never fun when you know you were messing up. World of Logs will tell the whole story, man, you sucked at keeping up Improved Soulfire. So, I spent the next afternoon getting hot and heavy with my UI, to help re-train my trigger instincts. 

I am a big fan of Power Auras. I love everything about it. It is a great way to keep track of your procs and cooldowns without making your eyes yo-yo back and forth across the screen. I am thrilled that Blizzard finally got on board and implemented it's own version, particularly since its textures are more vivid than the classic Power Auras. I think the two will end up complimenting each other beautifully, and plan to keep using both. Here are the ways I have set up my auras to keep my DPS output at its best.

DoTs! Hey look, Destruction isn't just a mage with an imp anymore! It is actually worthwhile for us to cast DoTs instead of spamming incinerate! While I will actually be using Forte Xorcist to keep track of DoTs (there's only so many auras you can keep track of!) it's important to know what DoTs you have up. For Destruction, your priority order is Bane of Doom, Immolate, Corruption, and Shadowflame. Yes, that is right, Shadowflame. More on this later.

Cooldowns! This is where I get really excited about Power Auras. Before 4.0, I had never bothered to set up auras for Destruction cooldowns. You didn't really have a whole lot going on to distract you, it wasn't all that necessary. Now it is. Your cooldowns in Destruction are a big deal, it's important to get them off again right away. I like to mix a sound (shotgun was my preference) with color coded images that remind me of the spell. You can use different sounds if you think you'll react better, but I found it more distracting to try to remember what sound meant what since most of the sounds aren't all that intuitive. The important thing is that it gets your attention, and colors are much easier to associate. (Green = Chaos Bolt for instance. Doorbell means...uh, huh?) For cooldowns, I am sticking with Power Auras rather than the new Blizzard functions. While cooldowns are important, they need to take a backseat not just to procs, but to the other stuff going on during a fight, and so I liked that they were less flashy. Here is how I set mine up. 

• Conflagrate: 8 second cooldown. (Glyphed.) Huge percentage of your damage, big priority. You want this aura to be loud, huge, and obnoxious. Do not miss this cooldown. I like using a flat orange graphic to remind me of the tooltip icon.

• Chaos Bolt: 12 second cooldown. Nuke. Again, you'll want a shotgun sound on this cooldown, but you don't need it to be as big a graphic as Conflagrate. I use a bright green graphic to make it easily identifiable from Conflagrate.

• 

• Shadowflame: 15 second cooldown. DoT. The cooldown is longer than the DoT. Remember that you need to be within 10 yards for this to hit the boss. You will also want to pick up the Major Glyph that applies a slowing effect. For this spell, I wanted a softer effect because there will be lots of times when you can't be in melee range to cast it, and you need the graphic to be small enough that you don't feel the need to disable power auras. I found pink to be perfectly appropriate.

 
• Soulburn: 30 second cooldown. Personal DPS. You will definitely want to know when this is up without having to check your bars, but you don't want it getting in the way when you are fighting. While this is a big deal for your DPS, the use of this is strategic and you may not always want to use it as soon as it is up. I put this at the top of my screen in purple, with a different sound than my spell cooldowns. Note that when you soulburn, spells that can be affected will glow. Be careful what casts you are queuing up before you use this, you don't want to be caught auto-casting searing pain when you meant to use soul fire.

For all of your cooldowns, make sure you check the boxes for "only in combat." You won't be all that worried that Chaos Bolt is off cooldown when you are doing laps of Dalaran.

Procs! Procs are especially important to keep track of as Destruction because so much depends on using them correctly, especially in conjunction with your soulburn usage. Blizzard has built a few of them in by default, and I found that those are the ones I want to keep using.

• Improved Soul Fire: Cast Soul Fire at +80% for 15 seconds of +15% haste, 15 second cooldown. For this, you mostly just want to keep track of how much longer the effect will last...so that you can put it back up, of course! I didn't want any more orange graphics cluttering my screen, so I just went with an easily visible countdown on Power Auras and a small glow effect. You may want to set up a sound or other notification for the boss's health dropping below 80%, at which point you can no longer proc this effect. 

• Empowered Imp: Instant Soul Fire! While not a high proc chance, you will want to know about this lovely nuke right away, every time. Luckily, Blizzard anticipated your need and built in a great aura for you. Not only does it pop huge, shiny, fiery brackets (so easily distinguished from any of our other fire-related auras!) it also...wait for it...makes your soul fire button glow! This is a spell it would be impossible to miss. I love it. 

It's up to you whether or not you make auras for backdraft and your doomguard/infernal. I didn't. Backdraft, while it increases you damage, doesn't change your priority order. And your pets, while amazing in their own right, have such LONG cooldowns that they will either be up or not, and you don't really need reminders.

You can copy the coding for my power auras behind the cut.

     I have only been playing WoW for two years, and I have been raiding seriously only half of that time. I thought I was hot shit when all I was doing was pugging, but pushing hard modes and standing next to members of Elitist Jerks at the toil-err, Bank Teller brings home the fact that there is always someone who does it better than you do. Or at the very least, you can push your limits further. Maybe your DPS is great, maybe your guild wipes the floor with whatever boss you meet, but there is something very satisfying about going over your logs the next day, seeing what you didn't do perfectly, and figuring out how to get better.

Make sure to check out my new and improved guide to Power Auras in Cataclysm.

Succiu's Guide to Reforging for Warlocks in 4.0

*Updated to reflect the hotfix to Searing Pain. 

       Reforging is a pretty daunting project, and it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the choices and throw your hands up in the air. Breathe. It's not that bad!

        When you go to reforge your warlock's gear, your goal is to turn less useful stats into more useful stats. Approach it in the exact same way you do the rest of your gear, think about the order in which stats affect your DPS. You want to start at the bottom, turning your useless stats (spirit, excess hit) into your highest performing stats (mastery and haste) and turning over a good deal of crit as well. The devil, of course, is in the details. You cannot reforge an item to have more of a stat already on the item. The best reforging candidates, then, after the aforementioned empty stats, are items that do not already have your best stats on them, like haste. Start with hit, and then treat each item individually, from the bottom up. Scaling is still a little up in the air, and it can vary by spec. But here is the basic priority order you are looking for, based on the numbers we have.

Affliction: Haste > Mastery > Crit > Hit (above 17%) > Spirit. 
Drain Affliction: Mastery > Haste > Crit > Hit (above 17%) > Spirit
Destruction: Mastery = Haste > Crit > Hit (above 17%) > Spirit 
Demonology: Haste > Mastery > Crit > Hit (above 17%) > Spirit 

(Note on scale factors: Subject to change! There was a hotfix to Searing Pain sometime on Wednesday night that seems to have halved it's base damage and reduced it's spellpower coefficient, making Incinerate more efficient. Incinerate scales much better with Haste than Searing Pain did, and so Haste is now more valuable than it had been for Destruction and Demonology. Keep this in mind when you reforge, and re-reforge, as we will likely see a lot more number juggling in the near future.)

       Here are some basic guidelines to get you started.

Before you go to the forge:

• Re-itemize. First, change out your spirit gear. Lots of warlocks have a piece or two, and those of us who were Demonology have more than that. If you have any comparable alternatives, switch them out. Your spirit is now an empty stat. If you don't have any comparable pieces, that's okay. Spirit is a cheap source for reforging.

• Re-gem. You are hitting every socket bonus now. With haste roughly equaling the damage per stat value of intellect, it is still always worth it to gem full Reckless Ametrine's in all your yellow sockets. In a blue socket, you will want to gem Veiled Dreadstone. The reason for this is that you can forge your hit elsewhere if you go over the hit cap, but here you get to pick up the socket bonus in the bargain. You are aiming for 17% hit now. If you are lucky, you will easily be over the hit cap before reforging. Pre-4.0 Affliction locks will have the most trouble with this, and may even end up reforging to pick up a little hit. Any Spellpower/Hit gems you were using before are purple now, so make sure you replace them when you look at your socket bonuses.

Across all three specs, your first priority is to become hit capped. If you find yourself needing to reforge to reach the cap, this is the priority order you should use.
 

Now that you are done with that, here is the priority order for reforging when are above the hit cap. Go through and reforge your pieces in this order.

When you reach the hit cap, stop. You may end up juggling the last piece or two back and forth to get the most out of your hit reforging. Don't be scared to spend the gold to try it a couple times, or get out a spreadsheet and do the math yourself. (26 hit rating= 1% hit). Then follow these guidelines for your remaining items.

       Unless you are insanely over the hit cap, you will probably end up with an item or two that doesn't need to be reforged. It's tempting to think you should reforge everything, just because you "can,"  but you don't. You can't turn those stats into anything more useful. You need that hit right where it is, and why would you turn your most useful stat into something less good? If you are using haste trinkets, like Dislodged Foreign Object or Charred Twilight Scale, leave them alone.

      There might be cases, when you are over the hit cap, where you backtrack to trade stats with another item. Maybe you are sitting half a percent above the hit cap, but your only remaining gear has haste and hit on it. You can't reduce even one piece because it will take you below the hit cap. But maybe you have some spirit gear that, instead of forging mastery, you can forge enough hit that would let you reforge the hit on one of your other pieces into a greater amount of mastery than the spirit was giving you. You'll be able to see these patterns as you finish reforging.  

       The reason that Mastery is a better stat for Drain-Life Affliction is simply that more haste, for affliction, usually just means more Shadow Bolts. When you aren't casting Shadow Bolt, the increased shadow damage from your Mastery will give you greater returns. Drain Life Affliction does not yield as high numbers as Shadow Bolt using Affliction, but it has great potential for higher survivability.  
         Finally, lets look at Destruction. Destruction values mastery and haste about equally, with mastery having just the slightest edge. You will want to pick up as much mastery as you can, without turning over any of your haste. 

       Above all, don't let reforging intimidate you! In a couple months, all of this will be second nature, but for now, just take it step by step to get rid of the things you don't want first, and work your way up the ladder.