Tier 11 – Warriolock + build 13066

In news related to Destruction warlocks, build 13066 was released this weekend and has lowered Warlock numbers.  I don’t say “nerf” because you can’t nerf something that was not yet implemented, and I understand Blizzard is playing with the numbers before they do.  What’s happening, essentially, is a scaling back of some of the high output numbers of destro and demo locks, in this build mostly demo:

Summon Infernal only summons a demon to fight for you for 75% of the time it previously was supposed to.  45 seconds instead of 60.  It’s a substantially lower output of dps from that spell.  Then Decimation only triggers when targets are below 25% health instead of the current 35% health.  Considering this is the burn / execute phase of demo locks, you’re seeing an almost 30% loss in damage output in said phase.  From those two abilities being lowered, you can get the impression that demo numbers are too high, yet Impending Doom, a talent in Demonology, was changed to have a 5% chance on damaging casts (some casts) to lower the cooldown on your demon form by 15 seconds.  In gambler heaven, you can end up being in demon form most of a fight, if the rng gods are in your favor.  So you’re seeing numbers go down, but the biggest gigantic boost to your dps, demon form / metamorphosis, be buffed to allow it to potentially happen more often.

I’m unsure if this trend will end with Demo not being viable or not, but it’s worrisome to see numbers being lowered a whole lot on some spells.  25% on the demon summoning, roughly 30% on decimation…  Is destro going to get wacked as well?

Tier Gear

The biggest news however since 13033 kinda shot my destro overpoweredness in the heart is the Warlock Tier 11 gear set.

It comes in 4 colors, so I’m not sure which ones will be available to us as players and which will be on mobs only, but two thoughts echo at the same time in my mind when I look at the four sets together on one page:

-wow that’s really cool it reminds me a little bit of warlock t6.

-wow that’s really cool it’s like warrior t5.

O look I has pictores.

Warlock Tier 6 – Malefic Raiments

Warrior Tier 5 – Something something or other

I believe the colors of the t6 make me think of the new set, where one of the possibilities is very purply red and blue, whereas the horns and the shoulders on the Warrior t5 are incredibly similar to the Warlock t11.

Here are all four color combinations of the Warlock Tier 11 gear from Cataclysm:

Click for a big version, of course.  Image here courtesy of Wowhead and their 3d modeling tool.

The bottom right one, the earthen brown tones… pure warrior t5.  This is not a complaint at all seeing as I absolutely LOVE the warrior t5 look, it’s one of my favorite in-game.  So great! I may get the chance to look just like one!  If you’re not sure how the Warrior looks in action, there’s one Orc npc that walks around Dalaran that’s wearing it.  Drog Skullbreaker, who is actually wearing the Warrior season 2 pvp set, which looks exactly like season 5.  Have a look around the streets and see the awesomeness of that set.

The bottom left coloring, the light aquatic-like colors are just not very Warlocky.  At all.  In fact, I would expect that toon to be a Shaman in those colors.

But the top two, oh my goodness! They’re absolutely fantastic!  Such crazy colors!  Such… evil… powerful… fel colors!

Although, to be fair, robes are a must.  The pants (both right color copies) make us look a bit like hunters.

Give us robes or give us death!

… or, because we’re Warlocks, give us robes and let us give out death!