Blood Pact: Warlock artifacts, champions, and class halls

When the Legion news hit the scene last month, I observed something interesting from my experiment with some Metamorphosis outrage. Those who played pre-Metamorphosis tended to dislike a Demonology that focused on demon form, and those who started playing it after didn’t mind or even preferred a Metamorphosis-centric Demonology.

Me? My real opinion is that I don’t really mind what they do so long as it both works and doesn’t end up being a copy of another class’s specialization. However, this time I’ll speculate a bit on more positive, less-inciteful Legion information.

Where is the Warlock Class Hall?

Really, of all the classes I thought would be in the basement of the mage city, I didn’t think Rogues — I thought Warlocks. That’s how it is in the Alliance, anyway — the basement of the Slaughtered Lamb Inn that’s near the Mage tower in Stormwind is the Warlock trainer home. In Orgrimmar, the Warlock trainers are in the center of the city near the Mage portals to Outland and Draenor, albeit in a really smoky and shady area.

Warlocks are the rejects of Warcraft society — we’re corrupted Shaman or Mages, depending on what side you play. Rogues enter the hush-hush dark corners of places because they purposefully manipulate what is known or not known about them. It’s more a matter of survival that we Warlocks hide around, because while Rogues are useful for their sneakiness, most people just plain don’t like us wielders of demonic magic.

I know one of the Gamescom interviews mentioned that the Warlock class order will hail from a Legion portal, but I just can’t buy that. Yes, I’d love a chance to see that old “Warlock Island” idea come back to life, and if this is a Legion world, this means Xoroth, land of the dreadsteeds, is maybe on the table. But I just can’t buy how we’d have to defeat the Burning Legion on Azeroth at all when one of the mortal classes rents a penthouse with the Nazrethim. Why wait around to be invaded if we’re that close to invading ourselves?

Though, in all fairness, I think we’ve already seen where Warlock Island is.

We might have a completely mundane sort of place, like a generic dark cave that winds around, lit sparingly with green fire torches, and then you find the master fel campfire, surrounded by well-known figures. Or maybe we’ll step it up and rent a room in Black Temple, now that we’ve conquered it twice — Illidan and Kanrethad. Going out on a limb, would we go as far to enrage some Mages and set up shop in the top of Karazhan? The place is connected to the Nether, right?

There’s a bit of a problem when it comes to Warlock class champions. If we go by Hearthstone, for example, the epitome of Warlocks is currently enemy number one on Draenor. More “notable Warlocks” listed on sites like Wowpedia involve bosses we’ve already taken down at least once, like Archimonde, Kil’jaeden, and Cho’gall (though, after Bastion of Twilight, Cho’gall probably qualifies more as an Old God-influenced Shadow Priest than a Warlock). It’s crazy, I know, but I really doubt Thrall, Varian, and company would still welcome us into their ranks if they found out we were consorting with the heads of the Burning Legion.

I’d be a little worried about letting Wilfred Fizzlebang be resurrected; I don’t want to know what Jaraxxus would do to me if I put too many sugars in his afternoon tea while we attempt to discuss minion-master relations for the bazillionth time. I wouldn’t mind seeing Gorzeeki outside of the Burning Steppes.

When it comes to Warlock class champions, I want to see Council of the Black Harvest there. Since the Council was set up with even faction numbers (three Alliance and three Horde), different races, different genders, and all three specializations represented, I think it would make for a perfect backdrop for an all-Warlocks class hall. We’d have to find a replacement for Kanrethad, but wouldn’t that be the perfect opportunity to let the player Warlock step in and have some Council class quests of their own? Having specialized missions or mini class quests to go to the other two Council places to learn more about Warlocks would be fantastic, but I’m not holding my breath on it.

Warlock artifact weapons

There might be some weapon type differences between specs, like how the Fire Mages are looking to get a sword while Frost Mages definitely have a staff.

If there’s a staff, I hope a Demonology version isn’t just another demon-on-a-stick. Maybe it can be a felguard “it’s actually a staff” polearm. I’ve had Terokk’s Quill in my bank for ages hoping they’d let me transmog to polearms just once. Spooky Scythe — another polearm, but thankfully, Frostscythe of Ahune is a “staff” scythe that Warlocks can wear. I particularly love to carry the Staff of Hale Magefire, since it’s generic caster and yet so spooky at the same time, but my favorite staves to transmog to as a Warlock are Malevolence, Nibelung, and Hellscream’s War Staff/Sulfur Stave.

As cool as Zhar’doom is, I don’t think of a staff when I think of Warlocks. I don’t actually think of a weapon at all — I think of the off-hand, the books, the Grimoires. Although the Skull of Gul’dan in-game item is a trinket, that’s what we do, we lug around some object that contains the soul of something that we sometimes sacrifice to get cool demonic powers.

Besides, if we had an off-hand like a grimoire book, that would let us have a main hand. Daggers are mostly boring without a wicked glow, and they’re Rogue kind of weapons anyway. A wand with skulls on it would appeal to skull-happy armor designers, but at the same time, I don’t really want to return to wand-flinging days of face pulling because I accidentally right-clicked on the boss when I was in range with my raid.

No, I’m saying this would be a fantastic time to give us a sword. I like to drag out Muramasa as a transmog as often as I can get a sword in raid, but there’s also options like the Horseman’s Sinister Saber. I don’t mean to step on Matt Rossi’s parade, but if someone’s going to wield Gorribal, a blade previously wielded by Sargeras, don’t you think they ought to know a thing or two about slinging around demonic powers? Don’t worry, Matt — if we somehow get the greatsword Gorshalach instead, we’ll just add it to our felguards’ collections, maybe sitting in between the two Ashkandi versions.

I don’t think Gorribal would fit Affliction, necessarily. If anyone’s going to have a wand as a class artifact, it’s likely going to be Affliction. Affliction with a sword or even a wand makes me think of the pensieve from the Harry Potter universe — something that would just draw the shards of souls around and into it for the Warlock to manipulate. Although the concept is already in Azeroth — hello, Frostmourne — why else would an Affliction Warlock have anything other than a book or offhand to channel their soul-draining powers?

The artifact weapon for Warlocks is still open for debate, and we have less information to depend on. We know one of our specs is getting a massive revamp, and that’s it — that’s all the info we have to speculate on. It’s a bit difficult to talk about what things for Warlocks are going to look like when we’re not sure of what direction the devs are taking our specs.