An epidemic of sorts…

Yeesh, work has really taken hold of me, I have hardly been able to run the new ICC dungeons to farm my Battered Hilt, even with the upgraded drop rate. Some good news though, my girlfriend finally got her Zulian Tiger! after 4 months of farming… I have on my off time, found time to step into the arena with my new affliction spec. Seriously I am loving this spec again, haven’t ran affliction since before…3.2 maybe? Its been great in pvp, you just dot up someone and forget about em’. Instant howl of terror is always nice, as well as the large amounts of healing I receive. I have been seeing a lot of warlocks starting to edge to affliction since 3.3, and I don’t blame them. This however brings me to my main gripe… why is it that Warlock specs are fads?

It seems like every patch that there is even the most Minor of fixes, warlocks from every direction run in to grab a piece. Then the spec becomes the norm, every warlock you see is rocking the “popular” spec. This is a problem as warlocks are like wolves, we like to be the leader of the pact and stand out. We are also scraggly night dwelling loners… but that’s taking the metaphor slightly too far. It’s impossible though, to stand out, when every other lock seems to have the same spec as you point for point. It takes away from our originality in some way…

Now this could just be my own insecurities coming out when everyone looks like me and plays like me but… I think the main point that this reveals is, pure classes are kinda forced into one spec for PvE and one spec for PvP while one of our specs gets left behind. I mean.. look at mages, when aren’t they frost? Hunters in PvP are almost always Marksman now… what happened to the beast masters? (I don’t miss em though). The hybrid classes don’t seem to be effected, I see Druids, Pallies, and Shamans of all shapes and colors.

But why? Why are we always locked into one spec? Because Blizzard thinks its o.k. if  pure dps classes specs vary in dps… Basically, would would you chose a spec that is more fun when another spec deals more dmg? It’s really a no brainer, you have to go for the dps.  Ehh and it annoys me, I want to be the spec I want to be and not be gimped. Why aren’t they all equal? I mean, is Meta really worth the hundreds of dps loss? It’s bad ass but not THAT bad ass. Anyway this is just me ranting, I love warlocks and I wanna see more variation, I hate being squeezed into a spec. I like to see all the skills used, and be suprised when when I fight a lock. I want to think.. hmm is he demo? destro? instead, I just prepare my felhunter devour macro because I know they are affliction now.

Do you guys notice these fads? its always something right? ugghh I hate it, though I can’t think of a solution other than equalizing the effectiveness of every spec for a pure dps in both PvE and PvP. I know that is their intention, but for them to achieve it them need to get rid of a few of their Ideals, one being that more defense means less dps. Just because they think that a spell like Master Demonologist is the same as Conflagurate they need to think again. A short duration snare = more survivability than 5% damage mitigation. In reality Destro has the better survivability with its stopping power than Demon with meta etc… Now affliction is the top because with some of the new changes, our dps is so much higher AND a lot of our damage is from instants, which effectively reduces the susceptibility to silences, hence more survivability just because we are more efficient offensive wise.

These are all really just speculations and opinion, I don’t have any hard facts to share, but I feel that I’m no that far off, and mind you I know locks still PvP/PvE with the other specs from time to time.. But what do you guys think, notice all the locks rushing to the newest spec too? Hate it? Don’t care? Feel you are being pushed into a spec because of blizzard’s ideals? I dunno, bothers me, but a lot of things do so…

I know this isn’t the most informative of my posts to date, but I felt it was time for you to hear more of my griping. I do have a lot of cool stuffed planned, a new video, a big sweet update to my UI Suite and another guide so stay tuned as always. My audience has been growing, so I might soon be throwing together an incentive program for commenting etc for all you dedicated readers and commenters, all your love and emails have been incredibly encouraging. Anyways that;s it for now peeps, hope posts like this don’t bore ya.
Peace
~Aphroditi