The term comes from the brand name of a toy manufacturer in the 70s who made foam rubber weapons.  Nerf bats and Nerf guns were especially popular.

Hiya,

Good article there, Corvus.     Might quibble a bit with the stuff under Affliction though.     My undead levelled to about 58 with Demonology but has been mostly Affliction since (her current spec is "40/--/21" I think).  

Affliction is actually quite versatile in raids (and instances, etc), solo PVE and PVP, but the strategies vary massively.     For raids, you'll almost always prefer Curse of Elements over Curse of Agony .   .   .    and hardly ever use Curse of Weakness at all.     I use the same for soloing; the main difference being that I'll use fear a lot more.     In PVP, Curse of Agony and Curse of Exhaustion come into their own (and fear of course!).  

Affliction might be all about the DoTs, but you'll still find yourself spamming Shadowbolts like a Destrolock.   I get about 60% of my damage from bolt spamming.

The real weakness for Affliction warlocks is their squishiness; I find I'm really puny compared to when I was full Demo spec.     Back at L51, before one of the patches nerfed the elites outside instances, I was able to solo the ogres outside Dire Maul: send my felguard in, dot the creep repeatedly and then Life Channel to keep the minion alive.     Nowadays, though, I have real difficulty soloing elites 4 or 5 levels below me.     That is, unless they're not immune to fear, in which case I dont really care what level a critter is, it'll fall over eventually; unfortunately, that's quite rare.  

As for pets, I find I'm best with my imp out most of the time, so I can use Dark Pact; the imp stays phased (giving the raid a nice stamina buff) and I get to use him as a mana battery for my bolts.

Anyway, you might find the following talent build discussion thread quite useful: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=288950757&sid=1

Having recently taken my undead group into Naxxramas, I can confirm the above costs.   You can actually get attuned even at Friendly, but it's astronomically more expensive.   By contrast it's significantly cheaper at Revered (2 Arcane Crystals, 1 Nexus Crystal, 30 GP) and, as you correctly say, free at Exalted.

In a similar vein, I'm very happy to lend my services as an enchanter.   I have every BC rep enchant (exalted with everyone); almost all the instance recipes (everything except 2H +35 Agi, 'cos the drop rate sucks rocks); Mongoose and Soulfrost from Karazhan; Surefooted (very rare boots enchant); and the farmed world drop weapon enchants: Spellpower and +20 Int.

Damn handy!  Been looking for something like this for absolutely ages.   Cheers muchly, mate.

For the Horde!

Hi, Camo here.   That's Haradbrand to the Alliance scum over on the Twilight Rising forum (hoc spit).

On the Horde side, I am Lost, L70 undead warlock, and Hoodlum of Unspeakable Villainy.   My main friends in that guild are my RL mates Ferris (troll warrior), Phase (undead priest) and Gronk.   I also have a tauren shaman called Mool, the Guildmaster of <Lazy Peon>.   Zarthag (Piety's orc hunter) is a member of this guild.

Just saying hi, and that I'll keep an eye out in case I spot your Horde folks online.

Hi folks, just chiming in along with Piety and Marbos.   I enjoyed our chat with Starblood and Xaal last night; you guys seem like nice people, so this sounds like it could work very well for everyone.   And it's always good to make new friends.   :)