On warlocks

For a long time my main on my current server was a Horde warlock. It was my first character. I'd played a warlock in beta and enjoyed it, and so I played it to 60 when that's the highest level you could get.

Then I dropped from the game for a while, played Alliance on another server for a year or so, then got convinced to come back and play my warlock again. By this time they'd added new talents and you could get a felguard pet. So I respecced demonology and took that bad boy out for a run. I loved it. I tore through Outland, destroying everything in my wake. The guild I'd joined that my buddy was in was great. They were already full of 70s and they were doing the top end instances so when I got to 68 I started running with them too. They were all very good players, amazingly good at recovering when anything went wrong. I worked hard to keep up, to polish my skills and soon I was 70 and part of a regular team which was running the top end instances. The great thing was as soon as 5 guildies were online, including someone with a healer and another with a tank we'd hit somewhere for gear or faction.

I had some holiday time and one of the guildies who loved pvp offered to show me around the various battlegrounds. For me pvp had remained something I'd stayed away from, due to a few bad experiences with first person shooter games online in my youth. He loved pvp, he even has a character with over 100,000 honor kills, so when he offered to show me around I figured why not? I don't have anything to lose.

I loved it too. Well all except Warsong Gulch. The whole grab the flag and hide was just frustrating as hell for me. But Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley and especially Eye of the Storm (because Horde used to destroy Alliance 9 times out of 10 in my battlegroup). I also loved the gear that was available. It was far better than anything I could get out of instance bosses or faction rewards, given that season 1 was available for honor and badges. So I began to farm. Honor in Alterac Valley and tokens from all the others. During the week, every day for about 3 hours and most of the day at weekends I would be in pvp land getting myself geared. It took a month or so, but I was covered in purple gear that for a warlock was exceptional for both pvp and pve. High stam, high int, high +spell damage. It was wonderful.

People then began to talk about heroics. We'd never done that kind of thing before, it had seemed too tough for a casual guild. So we started out slow, into Slave Pens. It was tough in there, mobs hit hard, but we persevered. We worked at it and we got so we could do the instances pretty quickly. We had Botanica on farm, every night 5 badges. People were buying up gear and whispers were starting about Karazhan. For a small guild this was the holy grail, a raid instance we could probably do. I was keen. Nowhere else could I get upgrades at the time, even from badge items.

We worked on Kara until we could get as far as Curator. We could only ever get enough people on two nights a week so we never got further than the Chess Event. It was fun! I finally managed to get a couple of upgrade drops, the cloak from Moroes and the Staff of Infinite Mysteries from Curator. Life was good. With the advent of the Sunwell I even spent 100 badges on a very nice chest piece. Things calmed down though, less people were coming online and we stopped raiding Kara. There was a lull, but the excitement was simmering, because sometime later in the year we'd have Wrath to look forward to. New instances, new challenges, new gear.

In the lull, and with the advent of increased experience all the way through Outland I levelled my warrior and my mage to 70, ready for the expansion. When it came, my warlock was the first on the zeppelin from the Undercity, the first to see Howling Fjord. I did all the quests, then switched to Borean Tundra and did them all there. I was a little disappointed though. My gear was better than a lot of the quest rewards, and most of the blue rewards had crit on them. I didn't want crit, I was demonology, I was only interested in gear with +stam, +int and +damage, it was all I needed. I moved on into Dragonblight, and into Grizzly Hills and all the time I was utterly underwhelmed by the gear choices I was getting, and by the experience of playing the warlock. The damage upgrade on spells seemed low when I trained. My new level 75 spell was based on me being face to face with my foe which I never was, it wasn't my playstyle. The level 80 spell was a teleport. How was that going to help me level, or grind, or be useful in instances?

I got as far as level 77 before I decided it was time to really level my warrior. I'd got him to 73, mainly by doing the quests that would get me to the stage where I had the quests in instances. I'd main tanked Uthgarde Keep and Nexxus and got good rewards from there so I decided to push on to 80. So I stormed through the zones, doing the odd instance with my guild on the way. At 77 I bought him epic flying and cold weather flying. Eventually I was 80, I had pretty decent gear thanks to Ciderhelm's great level 80 easy defense guide. I spent a lot of time levelling engineering to get the tanking goggles and the tanking gun (and the wonderful Gnomish Army Knife). I got a guildie blacksmith to make me the tanking shield and I felt ready to hit heroics.

All the time my warlock was languishing. I just felt no desire to level her. She was sitting there with distinctly average gear and distinctly under par feeling spells. My pet was taking a fair beating from mobs, requiring plenty more healing than it had seemed to need before. Nothing felt like it was scaling right. Eventually I levelled her to 80, but I didn't really enjoy it. I did it because it would help level her Inscription by herbing while I was levelling and I did it because I felt I owed it to the guild to have a dps character for those times when our guild leader fancied tanking in bear mode. I also did it because I want to make a hog for my warrior and levelling and doing quests makes cash.

Warlocks need some love. I agree at one time they were overpowered, but never has it seemed so tedious and pointless playing one now. I loved that character. I played it for a year or so, doing instances and having fun. I could dish out good damage, usually either top or second in Karazhan, up against some very well equipped and skilled rogues and mages. I had utility too, soulstones, healthstones, CC on elementals and demons. I've still got those, but I just don't seem to have the rest. Normalisation has meant that lots of gear has +crit now. I suppose I could go destruction, but to be honest I just can't be arsed. Maybe when the Blizzard love machine targets it's eye on warlocks things will change. Maybe when they get a boost I'll get back into pvp with her and have a good time. Until then she'll sit for the most part in Orgrimmar, waiting for me to decide on what spec to give her now she's level 80, or waiting to be taken out to do quests in Northrend purely for the cash. A sad end to a once loved toon.