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Blood Pact: Destro the only way to go?"Destruction banks on high shadow bolt burst damage and is often coined the ""shadow mage"" spec. Affliction is the king of sustained damage, with a full range of DoTs at an affliction lock's disposal. The interesting thing about these two trees is that their playstyles are probably as different as night and day. The destro lock is essentially a ""one-trick pony"", spending most of their time pushing a single button for shadow bolts. Since most of them will sacrifice their pet for buffs, pet management is also taken out of the equation. Affliction locks, on the other hand, generally have at least four, or even five spells in their rotation. Less spells in the rotation means less micro-management. This gives destro locks more situational awareness in an encounter, which is essential for survival in raids where there is a lot of environmental damage. On the other hand, affliction locks have more to juggle, more decisions to make and are generally ""busier"" in a fight. Many warlocks have leveled as affliction locks due to the excellent sustainability of the build. We are used to making snap decisions about DoTs on the fly and we enjoy the versatility warlocks have with respect to killing stuff: fear-kiting, drain-tanking and so on. Hence it is understandable if some affliction players complain that the destro playstyle is ""boring"" or a ""no-brainer"" - since the active interaction with what's happening on screen is cut down significantly. Blizzard also seems to want most of us to become shadow bolt spammers in the end, as Warlock tier 6 gear favors shadow bolting locks. ""Why is Blizzard not making gear tailored to our favorite build. "" is the question asked by many affliction warlocks. It is however interesting to note that on the WWS Scoreboard, a neat ranking chart based on raid data pulled from WoW Web Stats, just 10 of 15 top Warlock DPSers are 0/21/40. Out of the five who aren't destro locks, two are demonology, one is affliction and two have hybrid demo/destro builds - building for Soul Link probably. These numbers suggest that while 0/21/40 is the favored build, it doesn't seem to the runaway cookie-cutter build yet. wow powerleveling Just as we have various outfits for various situations, there might be reasons to dip into supposedly less DPS-oriented trees to gain certain key talents, particularly for greater survivability during some encounters. In light of this, raid leaders should keep an open mind about warlock builds and not insist on the ""standard"" build for warlocks under their charge. On the other hand, affliction locks who are fretting over the simplicity of the destro build should also look for a build and playstyle that really works for both themselves and their guilds. Yes, 0/21/40 is a popular endgame build, but it is not the only way to play your Warlock" "My experience has been completely opposite. eve isk I leveled as Demo till around 40, then switched to Dest. I liked Dest a lot but then I found myself often farming in the mid-50's to lvl 60 and I *hated* it. Damage was great, but downtime sucked, I often overkilled stuff/wasted mana, and all the drinking was eating into my wallet as well. wow gold So I tried the Afflic spec to make my DoTs more powerful and mana gaining abilities available/more viable. All of a sudden farming was great fun! Completely different play style, for sure. I had planned on switching back sometime, for raiding and such, but just never did. To my surprise I found myself still usually out-damaging everyone in dungeons. wow powerleveling Plus it's really valuable to be able to heal myself so well. So I kept the spec. At the point I'm at now, my DoTs are overkill for even-con mobs so I still waste mana unless fighting elites, but DoTs are cheap, and I can get mana back easily. lotro gold I may do slightly less damage than a Destlock, but it's not significant. What is significant is how flexible I am now. RELATED LINKS: http://community.mytypes.com/wowgold01/weblog
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