Warlocks in Cataclysm: Soul Burn / Soul Harvest

One very nice change to warlocks in Cataclysm is Soul Burn.

It took a while for me to get used to the new system with soul shards. From being something you had to collect and save and not waste them so you were left without when you really need them to make a summoning portal or a soul stone.

The old system made me skip using shards completely during battle. I didn't want to waste any and be without when I needed to keep soul stones up or summon ppl who got lost or had a long way to run back to the group after they died.

First of all, the ability to summon your minion instantly (even while running) is great. After a wipe you can run in, Life Tap a couple of times, Soul Burn and Summon your Imp, without having to stop at all. Then take a short break with Soul Harvest to regain health and shards. :) No more long wait, eating, drinking and summoning.

During combat instant Soul Fire is extremely useful as...hmm...a kind of crowd control. (If you by crowd control mean blast the mobs to pieces.) You may also start a fight with: Soul Burn (get the buff), Harvest Soul (regain the shard) and then Soul Fire. Mix this with Immolate/Conflagrate, Shadowfury and Death Coil and the mobs won't even have a chance to get close enough to hurt you. :)

Also, to all you healers out there. After combat warlocks usually Life Tap their mana back, leaving them with very little health left. Don't bother too much with restoring it for us as we can (should) do it by our self with Soul Harvest. During battle it is nice to keep us somewhere between 50-80% health though. We don't expect you to keep us at 100% all the time during a fight, there are others who need that more. But since we are aggro-magnets it is nice to not have too little health, we are squichy and need all the health we can get to not be one-shotted. :)

...in return I usually try to steal aggro from mobs that attack the healers. :) <3