What is the name, class, and spec of your primary DPS?
Everwrath, Destruction Warlock

What is your primary DPSing environment? (i.e. raids, PvP, 5 mans)
Raiding. I do a lot of 10 mans, a few 25 mans and I’ve had a couple of cracks at hard modes.

What is your favorite DPS spell/ability for your class and why?
Hmm, hard one. Could be the immolate/incinerate bread and butter for constant high damage. Could be Curse of Doom for the big numbers. Could be the Ritual of Doom, which brings my little friend out to play. I think however, it's most likely the functionality and utility of Demonic Teleport. Before any of you complain that it's not a DPS spell, consider this. If I'm back in position and casting spells while you're still running 35 yards behind me, who's doing the most DPS?

What DPS spell do you use least for your class and why?
Would have to say Curse of Tongues, as it is extremely situational. The only time a RL has asked me to apply it (specifically) is on the trash before Magtheridon - and that was a LONG time ago...

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your DPS class and why?
Before teleporting to instances, I'd say the ability to summon. After this, I would guess the biggest strength is survivability (at range) - being able to keep replenishing mana from life, and draining life from victims. Even more so for Affliction Locks. Having plenty of hit points and demonic armour makes tanking casters fun too.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your DPS class and why?
Threat generation. Nuff said? In a Tank and Spank battle with a good view of the target and very little movement, a warlock's threat generation for the SAME dps as a mage or hunter vastly outweighs the both of them. Couple this with the fact that we have one aggro reduction move on a long cooldown compared to two or three complete drops and misdirects for other classes, threat and the Warlock tend to go hand in hand. A little aside now... shard bags. They are useless. We should have a separate ammo slot.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best DPS assignment for you?
stay out of the fire and hurt things. Single target damage needs a good threat lead on the part of the tank, and AoE is done better by other classes. Realising this is what makes a good Warlock better. Keeping CoE up when there is no Boomkin or DeathKnight (in a 25 man raid??? Doubtful) loses DPS - in fact we have no unique in-battle buffs left. Wrath totems, Faerie fire, commanding or demoralising shouts, divine spirit etc. all replace what utility we had back in the day...

What DPS class do you enjoy DPSing with most and why?
I like ret-paladins, as they can take a few slaps if the tank loses threat. By the time order has been restored, I'm usually still on my feet.

What DPS class do you enjoy DPSing with least and why?
Hunters. Well, to be precise, the hunters who have very little pet control, or decide they can "handle things" and pull groups of trash while the tank is AFK or the healer is drinking...

What is your worst habit as a DPS?
After each pull, or boss, I tend to tap back to full mana, fully expecting to sit and drink when a large heal lands. Then the healer tells me off for tapping when I should be drinking. It's a habit I'm into because I tend to have more food than drink, especially small buff food that I'd never use for anything else.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while DPSing?
Tanks that move packs of mobs out of my AoE. My AoE uses a LOT of mana, and in turn does a LOT of damage. When I'm raining fire, please do your best to stand still and let it run it's course. If you're going to gather 2-3 packs or more, please indicate this, and let me know when to open up the gates of Hell.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other DPS?
Apart from threat, yes.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a DPS?
Recount and World of Logs. I like to know that in boss-fights, I have my buffs and trinkets active as much as possible, I avoid the avoidable damage as best I can, don't clip my dots and don't get bogged down with the detail.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
Lock DPS is overpowered. Really, it isn't. It is simple to achieve moderate DPS, but to push it up to where combat rogues, enhancement shamen and overgeared mages are AND survive... that's another skill altogether.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new DPSers of your class to learn?
What used to be a "standard" rotation is now pretty much a priority list. Refresh the high DPS dots, cast nukes after a proc, and fill with whatever you have available.

What DPS class do you feel you understand least?
Shamen. Totems confuse me. When two shamen are raiding together they tend to have a good long discussion about which totem to use, all of which going over my head...

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in DPS?
Essential for any Warlock is a Dot Timer, Omen and Deadly Boss Mods. Everything else (like Necrosis shard management) is now pretty much eyecandy.

Spellpower over other stats or balanced stat allocation, and why?
There's a great "gemming guide" for locks online - kinda like a flowchart. For a start, until you're hitcapped, extra spellpower isn't worth the effort. Once you have 17% hit (even with 3% talented and a Drainy) then stack spellpower unless you need to activate a meta. And +Hit should come from gear really. Sockets are worth so much more with the nice red shinys in them!

Moving House

I've been offline for over a week now, and it's not as bad as I expected. I have a 3G dongle but made the mistake of logging out in Dalaran, and can't zone in before it disconnects. I'm sure the lag would have made it terrible, but I was planning to jump online, blow a titansteel cooldown and log off. That isn't happening.

Broadband SHOULD be at the new place by the 24th, so fingers crossed it is.

Tanking

Had a couple of interesting experiences tanking recently, and the difference between them pretty intense. Settled has got a fair bit of tanking gear (509 defence at the moment) but needs a better sword than a Nagrand quest reward... There isn't really a decent level 80 crafted 1 handed defence weapon for paladins, so running Utgarde (Keep or Pinnacle?) for the red sword is going to be a priority. However, I decided to go it solo through some Burning Crusade instances to get used to being a tank.

It's got me used to Judging Wisdom and keeping Divine Plea active to keep my mana topped off (5,000 mana isn't really a lot if there's no replenishment). I've practiced at turning mobs around, and keep my back to a wall to stop them getting behind me. I've practiced pulling groups away from patrols, and keeping things moving from one group to another.

Admittedly, they weren't done on Heroic difficulty, so I'm not blowing a trumpet or anything, but I think I did rather well to complete both Underbog and Slave Pens without any help whatsoever. To be fair, the bosses were easier than the trash once I got my rotation worked out, but I'm pulling with the single target taunt then throwing Avenger's Shield into the mix and using a Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Consecration and Holy Shield. Remembering to ensure Righteous Fury is on and keeping a Seal active is also something I need to concentrate on.

I'm sure when I'm def capped, it'll be a straightforward job tanking heroics, and gear up for raiding.

The other "tanking" experience was very different. Sticking Demon Armor on instead of Fel Armor and spamming high threat spells (Searing Pain) against Mimiron (phase 3) was fun. I got about 130,000 threat lead then started opening up with my "normal" rotation and kept a clear mile above the rest of the dps when the magnets brought it down. We tried a different approach last night, and got Phase 4 to 0% head, 0% body and 2% base. The closest we'd ever been to downing it. The base went to 0% as the head regenerated. Gutted. Thinking about extending the raid next week to have a clear blast at Mimiron and try to get through to the last couple of bosses.

Glory of the Achiever

Ulduar again last night. Great group, got through to Iron Council (via Kologarn) without a single death, even doing hardmode Flame Leviathan (1 tower up) for the Orbital Bombardment. Silly wipe on the Council, maybe a fusion punch wasn't dispelled quick enough, or maybe too many of us were standing on the rune of power when we got hit by chain lightning, but it was inevitable that we weren't going to make it. Ran to the door, gave Divine Intervention to our priest for quick resurrection.

Next attempt, with 2x council members down and the third well on his way to a splitting headache in the morning, I popped my Iron Boot Flask and yelled "But I'm on your side!"

We farmed Auriaya again (she's getting boringly easy with our group composition and DPS) and moved onto Hodir, but time was getting the better of us. People have to work in the morning, and as such, we called it a night.

4x of us (Paladin tank, 2x Warlocks and a healy priest) decided to do the Daily Heroic (Utgarde Keep) and Daily Normal in Heroic mode (Utgarde Pinacle) - and as we had plenty of DPS (I was putting out 7K during AoE phases of the Gauntlet) we decided to play around a bit and go for the achievements. We did ALL the Glory of the Hero achievements for the two instances and, for me, completed King's Bane, Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi, The Incredible Hulk and On The Rocks.

This inspired us to get another member sometime soon and go for the proto-drake.

My Remaining Achievements for Glory of the Hero

Nexus

* Split Personality
* Intense Cold
* Chaos Theory

Azol-Nerub

* Watch Him Die

Ahn'kahet

* The Party's Over
* Volazj's Quick Demise
* Respect Your Elders

Drak'Tharon Keep

* Consumption Junction
* Better Off Dred

Violet Hold

* A Void Dance

Gundrak

* What the Eck?
* Share The Love
* Less-rabi

Halls of Stone

* Good Grief
* Abuse the Ooze

Culling of Stratholme

* Zombiefest!

The Oculus

* Experienced Drake Rider
* Make It Count
* Ruby Void
* Emerald Void
* Amber Void

More Ulduar Ownage

Ulduar again. Getting better at being in the "right place at the right time" to start DPS when everyone else does, and spend less time running around chasing kited adds, avoiding things that kill you and legging it to get in range of bosses when heroism pops. I've even started noticing when things are going on aside from my target. Flaming cyclones approaching from behind - I moved. Feral defender respawns, called, target switched and dps started. People standing in void zones - yelled at. My aggro-dump is hardly needed these days, but when it is, it's never on cooldown... I might even try for a Naxx undying run!

Things looked good from the start, downing Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT and Ignis without breaking a sweat. We even saved a construct and slapped Shattered on our scoresheets. Moving swiftly on to the Antechamber, Kologarn went down without a fight and we farmed Auriaya as usual. She dropped an Elemental Focus Stone, which, since the introduction of BoP trading in groups, I begged to equip for my Epic achievement. Didn't matter really, since I won it.

We decided not to skip the Iron Council this week, and give it a single try - just to see how the group handled it. We've been running for a few weeks with the same people, they all know the tactics and put out good DPS, fair threat from the tanks and great healing. What could go wrong?

Well, everything could. But nothing did. I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir! finally flashing on my screen along with The Antechamber of Ulduar . Happy news.

Normally we'd head for Hodir and call it a night, but as we were ahead of schedule we decided we had the right composition to take on Thorim. 4x of us (tank, healer and 2x locks) took corridor duty so I gained I'll Take You All On when we defeated him. First time was a wipe because someone didn't follow instructions. We weren't ALL stacked on the Collossus' heels so someone got Charged... This caused the colossus to spin round to face the tank and, before I could move, his Smash hit through my cloth for around 40,000 damage. Goodnight!

Undeterred. we nailed it second time around with relative ease. Managed to avoid all the lightning blasts and put out fairly good DPS.

250 Dungeon & Raid Emblems was a nice surprise - Didn't realise I'd got so many tokens, although still a little miffed that the statistics for the old TBC heroic badges didn't start until AFTER I'd bought pretty much everything the sunwell vendors sold. I reckon I spent over 600 badges prior to Wrath but my actual statistics don't reflect that.

After Ulduar, we had a quick blast through a couple of heroics. For the last 20-30 Violet Hold Heroic runs, Lavanthor has been hiding. He turned up, and I finally achieved Lockdown!

Other interesting runs included Trial of the Champion (Heroic, of course) that had the last "mini boss" required for the achievement (I think it was the Orc Warrior).

Alt-wise, Settled has reached Level 80 and is starting to gear up (Colosseum normal) for DPS and Tanking. I'm going to drop the healing spec and take a protection stance, as we're always missing tanks for runs. The fact that I have enough mats for a Titansteel Shield Wall and three nice defence plate pieces dropped in the Colosseum have NOTHING to do with it. I've gemmed the DPS gear as best I can with a mixture of strength, +hit, crit (on the meta) and a +10 stats and will be looking more into which instances I need to farm to get some more decent gear.

Toc (normal) has 8x tanking pieces including plate armor, rings, necklaces and trinkets; 9 suitable for DPS; and 4x suitable for healing. Getting hold of them is only a matter of time, and finding a group willing to farm it for a couple of hours - which my guild have kindly fulfilled. I can see (again) the process of winning loot, gemming it, enchanting it, and replacing it on the first couple of naxx runs - so I'm NOT going to be putting expensive stuff on gear I think I'll be replacing soon. Obviously, if iLevel 226 stuff drops that's only going to be bettered by ulduar 25 and toc 10/25 stuff, I'll go to town on it, but I'm not falling into the same traps I did with Everwrath. (Bought and enchanted a Titansteel spellblade at a cost of almost a thousand gold an hour before getting the Grieving Spellblade off Faerlina...)

More tying up of loose ends...

Wednesday was Raid night, and took on Ulduar. We decided to go for the achievement Flame Leviathan and zerged it without catapulting onto the turrets, gaining Shutout for those (like me) who didn't have it already.

Nerfed Gravity Bombs on XT-002 Deconstructor to add to the scrapbots achievement I got last week. Sadly, we had no engineer so the heap we left on the floor was wasted.

Everything went smoothly till Kologarn where we had a couple of issues, mainly with people zerging the wrong arm and rubble escaping, but regrouped, went quickly over the tactics and nailed him.

Finished the run with Hodir down, and, analysing the logs I kept toasty warm, starfired and in a stormcloud for between 30 and 40% of the fight, peaking at 20,000 DPS when all the buffs lined up and my trinkets and cloak procced together.

After Ulduar, finally got around to Heroic: Drak'Tharon Keep and completed Northrend Dungeon Hero.

Yesterday, Needing a couple of instances worth of Wyrmrest Accord rep, I joined some high dps and well geared tank/healer for a blast through some heroics. Gotta Go! was unexpected, but I'm not complaining!

To-do:

• Kill Malygos for the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.
• Throw Eadric's hammer back at him for the Faceroller achievement.

High achiever

With a little time to spare I thought I'd tie up some loose ends and restock the pantry. Fished a few stacks of spellpower food, then finished off The Oracles rep, and got another egg.

Farming heroics for an evening got me enough badges to buy the Evoker's Charm necklace. Quite an upgrade on the old chain of latent energies. It also got me swapping tabards quite regularly as the achievements rolled in.

Knights of the Ebon Blade was unexpected, I must have been pretty close as I got it in the first instance. Not having another tabard handy, I just took it off, and before I got to the bank to swap it I had another two achievements - The Winds of the North (Alliance Vanguard) and 20 Exalted Reputations. The Daily Heroic was Old Stratholme, and as we had plenty of AoE DPS we went for the timed achievement, The Culling of Time - and got it. Lost the roll on the mount though... but will be doing it again soon.

To cull more time, we pugged OS10 then OS25, Defeating Sartharion the Onyx Guardian and the Twilight Drakes with only 20 players in the raid, and two of them were offline at the time! Less Is More (25 player) and Besting the Black Dragonflight (25 player) in the bag.

Killed the Black Knight again in Heroic Trial of the Crusader. Amazing roll on Boots of the Crackling Flame got me the Needy achievement. Still having no luck with Trial of the Champion 10 man... We've got to Icehowl but someone accidentally got charged, and of course we wiped pretty much instantly.

Finished off the night with a few daily quests in Icecrown, and spotted a rare elite. Northern Exposure and a satchel of goodies with 25 Gold in it.