WoW Cataclysm tanking cooldown feedback wanted

Nethaera hit the forums this morning, asking for feedback from tanks around the globe. Ghostcrawler has been having a lively discussion with tanks (most specifically protection warriors) recently, and now they seem to be formalizing the discussion for the wider audience.

Nethaera

We're currently working on the tanking cooldowns for tanks in Cataclysm. We're interested in feedback from the community on what makes cooldowns fun and useful. For example, what is the sweet spot in cooldown duration between an ability with such a short cooldown that you must mash it constantly versus an ability with such a long cooldown? Which current abilities are fun? Putting aside any rose-colored glasses, were there cooldowns in Burning Crusade or classic WoW that you miss in Lich King? What, in your minds, should the role be for talents and glyphs. For example, if glyphs shouldn't reduce cooldowns, what can they do?

source

Nethaera goes on to remind people that this thread isn't the place for balance discussions necessarily, and certainly not a place to debate who's overpowered. This feedback also won't dictate exactly what the developers will do, it will simply help them make the right decisions. Do you have an opinion? Then head on over to the forums and make it known! Politely, of course.

WoW Raid buffs for great justice

Last week, we talked about the core buffs just about every raid needs to get by. I included the 3% damage buff provided by some folks like retribution paladins. While ample raids get by without that buff, it's so straightforward that I felt it merited inclusion. It affects physical DPS characters, tanks, and magical DPS characters all alike, so is fairly universal.

Of course, I didn't mention a lot of other obvious buffs like Arcane Intellect. While I'll certainly admit I can't recall having been on a raid in while without that buff, I'm pretty sure at least a few 10-man groups have gone without a mage. But that's why, this week, we're picking up the remainder of the raid buffs that provide so much synergy for raids.

As Brian Wood pointed out, raid buffs are some of the most drastic increases available in raid performance. Every class's power soars while under the effects of raid buffs (and while their targets are getting debuffed), and it's this synergy that makes raids successful. That's by design: Blizzard wants us to be exponentially more powerful while grouping with other players. The power of two players in a group is greater than the sum of their parts.

With all that in mind, let's jump behind the cut and start going down the other important raid buffs.

Offensive and Stat Buffs

Agility and Strength

At this point in the expansion, everyone's been under the effects of Horn of Winter. What's less commonly known is that if a shaman has put points into Enhancing Totems, their Strength of Earth totem is actually a little more powerful by about 23 points of Strength and Agility. Caster classes obviously won't get much bang from an Agility/Strength buff, but any physical-based class (including tanks) will love it.

But since you can't swing a stick without banging it off a half-dozen death knights, you can always be assured of having the Agility/Strength buff.

Attack Power (Raw)

In what seems like an elegant design to me, warriors provide Battle Shout and paladins provide Blessing of Might. Both can (and probably should) be improved with talent points, but the only real difference is that a warrior has to proactively keep Battle Shout active. A paladin can cast Blessing of Might, and then forget about it for a half hour. If you have one paladin and one warrior, you might want to have the warrior go for Commanding Shout instead. Blessing of Might does have the advantage of not having to be near the warrior when the buff is cast, but Battle Shout has ample range that it should affect everyone who needs it.

Attack Power Increase (Percentile)

There are three methods to increase your raid's attack power by 10%. Blood death knights have Abomination's Might, marksman hunters have Trueshot Aura, and enhancement shaman have Unleashed Rage. 10% attack power can turn into a lot of damage for folks who are already stacking that stat, but it's important to remember that it's not a percentage increase to your damage. It affects attack power, which then affects damage. It also, obviously, does nothing for casters.

Critical Strike Chance

You have two sources of physical critical strike chance. The first is from feral druids. Leader of the Pack provides a 5% critical strike buff, as well as a bit of healing if specced all the way into Improved Leader of the Pack. Rampage does the same, although it doesn't have the healing benefit.

There are two sources of spell critical strike chance. Balance druids provide Moonkin Aura, which buffs spell critical strike chance by 5%. Shaman are the source of the second spell critical strike chance with their Elemental Oath.

Haste (Universal)

There are two auras which provide 3% haste to characters. One is (like so many buffs) from retribution paladins, earned via the Swift Retribution talent. The other is from the masters of the laser-beams. Moonkin can provide 3% haste from Improved Moonkin Form.

Haste (Specific)

Death knights who are specced a bit into the frost tree can give their raid Improved Icy Talons. The buff is a little tricky to maintain right now, thought there's some welcome changes coming in patch 3.3.3. Shaman can do similar with Windfury Totem, although it'll take additional talent points to make it as effective as Improved Icy Talons. Both of these two effect specifically buffs melee haste.

If you're looking for spell haste, there's only one real source. That's the shaman's Wrath of Air Totem.

Intellect and Spirit

The mage's Arcane Intellect is the standard intellect buff. Warlocks with a Fel Hound also sport Fel Intelligence, which also provides Spirit. Fel Intelligence's spirit does not stack with Divine Spirit, though. If you're short a priest and mage, warlocks can cover both with Fel Intelligence.

Damage Improvement (Spell)

The spell damage buffs are a little odd. The tooltips for them all read a little differently, but they don't stack. Your three buffs for increasing spell damage are Demonic Pact, Flametongue Totem, and Totem of Wrath. Ultimately, most people are using the warlock's Demonic Pact nowadays, since they have enough innate spellpower to make its percentile increase superior to the shaman buffs.

And you can't forget the Ebon Plague, brought to you by unholy death knights, which allows for 13% more spell damage. Earth and Moon does something similar. However, both the items are techinically debuffs less than buffs. (We'll do debuffs in another column.)

Incoming Damage Reduction (Physical)

Ancestral Healing (shaman) and Inspiration (priests) both reduce physical damage taken by the target of a critical heal by 10%. (Inspiration is admittedly a little more specific about which heal spells will create the effect.) These abilities will proc almost non-stop, although they won't stack with each other. A 10% damage reduction will move a boss's attack from being worth 10,000 points of damage to a mere 9,000. Hey, it might not sound like a huge amount, but every little bit counts.

Incoming Damage Reduction (Universal)

There are three buffs that provide a universal damage reduction of 3%. These are the protection warrior's Vigilance, the protection paladin's Blessing of Sanctuary, and the discipline priest's Renewed Hope spell. Of the three, Blessing of Sanctuary is the lowest maintenance, since Vigilance can't be be used on the tank who casts it.

Healing or Health Buffs

Healing Received

The Tree of Life is not only a shapeshift form for druids, but it also provides a 6% buff to everyone's healing received. Improved Devotion Aura will do the same.

Mana Regeneration

Mana regeneration is a little different than Replenishment. While replenishment provides an amount of mana based on your total mana pool, mana regeneration provides a flat amount of mana per second. The two sources of this "tick-based" mana regeneration are the paladin's Blessing of Wisdom and the shaman's Mana Spring totem.

Raw Health

There are only two sources of raw health. Commanding Shout and Blood Pact. Commanding Shout is more effective, but it requires more active maintenance by the warrior, and might cost you the benefit of Battle Shout.

Unique Snowflake

Bloodlust/Heroism

One of the iconic abilities of shaman, the Bloodlust and Heroism buff probably does more to vastly ramp your raid's damage than anything else. It lasts 40 seconds, and increases melee, ranged, and casting speed by 30%. While you can only benefit from Bloodlust once every 10 minutes (barring death removing the Sated debuff). Bloodlust has been the subject of a little bit of controversy, since it can solely be found with shaman and is so darn powerful.

WoW: Gurubashi Beatdown is today

Join in the Gurubashi Beatdown today with It came from the Blog!

• When: Saturday, March 20th at 5:30pm EDT (2:30pm PDT, 3:30pm realm time) and the mixer will be at 5pm EDT.
• Where: Meet in front of Orgrimmar, Zangarmarsh U.S.
• Who: Any Horde DK that is free from Arthas or any other level 55 and above Horde character.
• What: After chatting it up with the WoW.com staffers, we will travel to the Gurubashi Arena and participate in some PvP games of my own devising.

If you want to know why not EU or Alliance or any other question, it is probably answered in our FAQ.

We hope to see you there!

WoW: New piece of Direbrew loot enabled

A new piece of loot has shown up on the live realms today -- one that has all the servers abuzz. For the intrepid adventurers fighting off Coren Direbew they might be rewarded with a Bind on Equip 1H Mace that every budding Enhancement Shaman will want to get their claws on.

The mace is an iLevel 226 item and has a DPS output of 171.5 -- making it on par with the very best 1H weapons out of 25-man Naxx. Full stats are in the picture above.

It looks like, well, a tankard. Just like the other glasses that are in the game. I don't necessarily get why it's "O' Terror," that would sound like it belongs more with the upcoming Hallow's End than Brewfest, but that's just me. Either way it's quite a nice mace that's going to make a lot of Enhancement Shamans happy.

It can also make your wallet a little fatter if you're lucky enough to get it (it does have a low drop rate). They're selling for between 4k to 5k gold. I would suspect that'll decrease substantially in the next few days however. If you really want it and don't want to spend that kind of gold, Brewfest is running for a while still -- you'll have until October 3rd to get your hands on one.

For more Brewfest information, check out our Guide to the 2009 Brewfest Achievements and the rest of the updated level 80 Direbrew loot.

WoW Race changes Coming Soon

They said WoW Race change wasn't going to happen, but it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard did a 180º on previous announcements. Of course, if we had really bothered to read between the lines, Blizzard wasn't actually saying 'no' to wow race changes -- only that it wouldn't be part of the paid Character Faction Change service. It was in their Faction Change Q&A that Nethaera squashed the idea like an ugly bug. It turns out the folks at Blizzard are shrewder businessmen than we thought, and what Neth's 'no' actually meant was that race change would be a completely different service (which they conveniently didn't mention at the time).

Although wow race changes were confirmed some time back, we received a couple of messages from readers tipping us off to the actual Race Change button being up on the Account Management page, falling under the Paid Services tab. How soon 'Coming Soon!' actually is, we can only guess. It's Blizzard, after all. Besides, WoW Cataclysm promised us new wow races, and it should be interesting to see if Blizzard will allow changing to either a Goblin or a Worgen. It's possible that it won't be allowed at first to encourage players to try out the new starting areas, but Blizzard has been rather surprising as of late. Personally, I can't wait to trade up from Blood Elf pale to Orc green.

Thanks to Ryan and Tuttutt for the heads up!

Patch 3.2.2 PTR: Another Beast Within change

Blizzard's been messing around with Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within over on the patch 3.2.2 PTR -- they've added some CC-breaking utility to it, as well as a mana reduction, while also lowering the duration (and that's what many players latched on to, crying foul). Those angry folks still probably don't have a reason to cheer, but Mania, via MMO Champion, tells us that Blizzard is at least on the way back up with Beast Within: they've upped the mana cost reduction to 50% from the 20% it was before.



Of course, this is the PTR we're talking about, so this change isn't set in stone any more than the first change was (not to mention that in the next expansion, Hunters won't need mana anyway, so who knows what'll happen then). But those of you who freaked out over the first Bestial Wrath changes can at least take comfort in the fact that the talent is still being worked on.

WoW Add-ons panel at Dragon*Con 2009

While at Dragon*Con this weekend, I was able to attend a World of Warcraft add-ons panel hosted by Cameron Knight, commonly known as ckknight, the developer of such add-ons as Cartographer, Pitbull, Chinchilla, and FuBar. As a day job, he is currently the Lead Developer for both Curseforge and WoWAce.com as well as working as an add-on developer liaison with Blizzard to make sure the major add-on developers get access to the Cataclysm beta. The questions during the session ranged from how to write add-ons, add-on recommendations for newcomers, and even funny bug reports and anecdotes. After the break is the summarized version of the panel.

Past, Present, and Future with ckknight

Cameron gave a little background on himself as an add-on developer. He has been programming since he was around nine years old. Around February of 2006, when he was around eighteen, he started playing World of Warcraft. At the time, he was using Titan Panel, but his computer only had 512mb of RAM and was having problems pushing the add-on package as well as the game itself. He decided to learn some Lua so that he could write alternatives to his favorite add-ons that were more lightweight. He wanted a clock add-on, so he wrote a little clock to sit in his UI. After that, he wanted something to track his experience and thus another small add-on was born. After a while, he had all of these little add-ons scattered across the screen, so he decided he needed some place to put them all and FuBar was born.

There are better alternatives to FuBar now, he admits, such as the LibDatabroker compatible add-ons. However, you can use add-ons like FuBar2Broker and Broker2FuBar to convert between the two if you are so inclined.

He's currently finishing up the documentation for Pitbull 4. He admits that versions one through three were a bit awkward at times, but promises that version four will be much easier and quicker to configure. As a follow-up, someone asked what his favorite project was and his response was Pitbull. Cameron said this was because his favorite project is almost always his current project.

Addons for Newbies and Lowbies

Several times during the panel, he was asked what add-on setup he recommended for newer players or for specific classes or specs. Throughout the panel he gave several different ways to approach the problem:
Use whatever your guild members use or tell you to use. This way you have people you know use it and can approach for help. Try an add-on package and try out the various features. Replace or upgrade components as you see fit until you get things where you are happy. Take each UI element individually and replace it. Start with your unit frames, then a bar mod, etc until you get things the way you want it. For those looking for more specific help, he does plug his own add-ons like Cartographer for mapping, Pitbull for unit frames, and such but does point out that if you don't like his products, then don't use them. Find something that works for you.

He also recommends that you pick up something like QuestHelper or TourGuide especially if you are still leveling your character. Bartender is his recommended button-bar manager. For figuring out item upgrades, RatingBuster is one he also likes, but prefers to use it in conjuction with Engravings. When it comes to gear swapping, he uses the built in Equipment Manager with the help of CrossDresser for keeping things organized. Lastly, Auctioneer is a good add-on for anyone to install.

He did point out one that I was unfamiliar with and it was the Addon Control Panel. It allows you to load and unload your various add-ons without logging out. This is helpful as it allows you to be able to turn off Auctioneer during raids or Omen during auction house browsing without needing to remember to log on and off constantly.

For healers, he is a big proponent of click-casting mods like Clique. While mice with an overabundance of extra buttons can't currently use more than five of them with add-ons like Clique, Blizzard is changing that in patch 3.2.2 to support up to thirty-one different mouse buttons. Also, using either a custom unit frames or raid frames add-on such as Pitbull or Grid is a must. While he equates Grid to playing whack-a-mole with healing, things such as HoTs don't display as well using it. As such, the player would be better off to use a unit frame in that situation.

Blizzard, the Add-on Community, and What Not To Do

Knight was able to have dinner with the Blizzard UI team during BlizzCon. He said that the Blizzard UI team viewpoint is the default UI should be as good as possible for the lowest common denominator. What that constitutes changes from patch to patch as they notice trends in the add-ons that people use. For example, automatically looting all items off of a target wasn't originally in the game. Because of that, there used to be an add-on that would do that for you before Blizzard added it to the UI. It is a cycle of life type of thing where features of certain add-ons get absorbed into the game as deemed appropriate.

Sometimes, this causes lots of work by the add-on developers to go down the drain. The developer of Omen used to spend hours figuring out the minutia of the threat mechanics in order for his add-on to work properly. Blizzard decided that basic threat announcements should be part of the game and thus causes all of that work to suddenly be obsolete. There is an upside to all of this. As Blizzard develops these new features for the UI, the scripting team then has to open up ways to access the backend of UI. This trickles down to the add-on developer community which means that Omen is now much more accurate and faster than ever before, because the game is doing most of the work on the backend.

As far as which patches affect the add-on community the most, 2.4 was the largest non-X.0 patch in the game. They were expecting 3.2.0 to be a similarly large patch with the quest helping functionality, but that feature was pulled at the last moment. Supposedly, there is some question if that incarnation of the feature will be added to the game or not as it didn't meet the critical Blizzard quality standard.

Part 2

Argent Tournament gains will not transfer between factions

Just a heads up for you faction transfers, though you've probably already realized this if you have made a transfer: many of your faction reputations will transfer over just fine, but not so for any Argent Tournament progress you've made. Argent Tournament reputation and gains will not transfer over if you change factions. Kisirani says that Blizzard couldn't think of a way to do it technically, and so (as we understand it), anyone who transfers factions will lose all of their current Argent Tournament standing, and have to make their way back up through the ranks to Champion. Many other reputations have changed just fine, and you can find a list of all the changes as you cross over from one faction to another on the faction change FAQ. You will bring items over with you -- any seals earned on one side are still valid on the other. But if you want to grind out more, you'll have to go through the ranks again.

Seems like a bummer for faction changers (especially those who didn't know about the problem before they did the transfer), but on the other hand, I don't believe Blizzard would have let this go if they had any way to fix it. Short of just granting ranks to all players who transfer, assuming they have no way to track where players were at in terms of which cities they'd champion-ed for, I don't know what other solution there would be.


Update: A little more information: you also lose all of your Silver Covenant or Sunreavers rep as well, so you'll have to re-earn that from the beginning, too. As players have said in the thread below, it's not a huge loss, but it's an annoyance for sure.

WoW Warriors Tanking: Some Thoughts

I make no pretense of being a raid tank nowadays: I mostly DPS in raids, and only switch to tank when we're down one for whatever reason (real life issues, connection problems) or a fight demands more than three tanks (Auriaya, sometimes Mimiron if cooldowns are a concern, psuedo-tanking the Faction Champions, adds on Anub'arak). Most of the tanking I do, I do in 5 mans and 10 mans where we just go with whoever is on. (I also do a fair amount of tanking on my DK alt, including 10 mans and 25 man PuG raids, but this is a Warrior column, not a "holy heck my DK is ridiculously OP" column.) However, recent discussions about tanking here at the WoW.com orbital defense platform HQ, combined with a recent very interesting thread on the forums with lots of Ghostcrawler input, have me thinking about where tanking is, and where it's going.

One of the things I see in tanking presently is that the general tendency inherited from Legacy content is at an all time high: tanking is currently two entirely separate games, one at the 5 man level and another at the raid level, and that tendency is exacerbating as raiding itself splits into 10 and 25 man (and their respective hard modes). At present, the 10 man raid experience is in fact undergoing a series of shifts that moves it away from the 5 man but also away from 25 man, simply due to the amount of responsibility that can and must be shared in each kind of raiding. In short (too freaking late, Rossi, too freaking late) 10 man raiding cannot afford the luxury of 25 man raiding's potential of tanking if it actually wants to kill anything.

At present, all four tanking classes can 'do something else' in a raid. Two of them can do anything that needs doing, be it DPS, heal or tank. One of those two can even DPS in either a melee or ranged role. The other two can only DPS or tank. Still, that means in any 25 man raid these classes are often expected to provide tanking if necessary (as I stated before, if a normal tank is unavailable or extra tanking is needed for a specific encounter). In a 10 man raid, however, if you already have your tanks, it can often be difficult to ask a third tank-capable player to do so due to the DPS and healing thresholds necessary to successfully complete an encounter. If you have 2 tanks, 2 healers and six DPS and the only other available potential tank is a resto druid healing your raid, it's simply inadvisable to ask him to switch unless you so completely outgear the encounter that a sing;e healer can heal it, and in that case you probably don't need a third tank anyway.

Basically, what we see happening here is that 10 mans combine the inflexibility of a 5 man run (since it is very rare that a 5 man will ask someone to off tank - all four tanking classes therefore must be capable of tanking whatever will be tanked be it trash packs of large size or a single boss) with the fight mechanics of larger, 25 man raids, especially once 10 man raids begin exploring hard mode raid content. This means that 10 man raids often have to deliberately be designed around the limitations of a 10 man group, and thus encounters have to lose complexity or stress the raid group beyond its depth of selection.

Meanwhile, at the 25 man level, raid tanking is more and more about two unrelated kinds of play itself. Trash between bosses is basically just a boring, autopilot experience for everyone involved as tanks grab as much threat as they can on as many mobs as possible and the DPS burns them down. Occasionally there will be trash pulls that require CC or discipline from the DPS such as the trash packs before XT-002 (let the tanks move the adds out of the big glowy shields please) or General Vezax, but these are infrequent, and even when there are specific mechanics (try to kill the statues at the same time or they go Supermode) they usually don't provide much in the way of real difficulty for the tanks. Either the DPS adapts or you pop some cooldowns.

Boss tanking, however, is more and more about conditionals. Some bosses hit very hard with a specific ability that requires more than one tank to eat the effect, like Meteor Fists or Auriaya's Sonic Screech. (In the case of Auriaya, on 10 man at least we just put the entire raid in front of her and split the damage that way, but on 25's since we often have four or even five tanks we just have them eat the damage and the raid stands behind her). Other bosses, like Gormok or Thorim have a specific attack that requires tank rotation to remove either by resetting or allowing it to tick off. Still other bosses just hit ridiculously hard with an ability (Sartharion with 3 drakes comes to mind) requiring a tank to use his cooldowns (and often, the cooldown abilities of his or her healers as well) to survive.

So we have a tanking game that is divided into two (and congealing into three) parts. We have five man dungeons, even heroic dungeons, wherein 1 tank per party will tank everything that is tanked, be it trash or bosses. In this milleu, even the hardest content currently available, any one of the four current tanking classes is capable and there is no significant perception of tanking inequity. Some players may prefer the Death Knight's ability to generate AoE threat or significant cooldowns (depending on their individual spec) while others might like seeing a warrior tank with their strong cooldowns and variety of unique options like Vigilance, Intervene, Heroic Throw (with a silence if talented), and Warbringer. Still others might prefer Druids or Paladins. In the end, the 5 man game is wide open and any tank can tank here just fine. More importantly, the player base is aware that any tank can tank here: there's no sense that some tanks are just leaps and bounds superior for tanking heroic Trial of the Champion, for instance.

Now, in raiding, we see a different situation. To discuss some of GC's points:

Typically one of three outcomes happens:

1) Players generally accept that tank class choice has little bearing on the fight.
2) Player suspect tank class choice has a small bearing on the fight, but it isn't usually worth the hassle of swapping out.
3) The typical way to do the fight is to swap out for the class that makes the fight much easier.

Ghostcrawler's second option, in my experience, is rare to the point of vanishing. There is no raiding guild that will hesitate to make a swap if they believe it will make a fight even 1% easier, especially if they're learning a fight for the first time. That leaves us with numbers 1 and 3 of his example.

There are a great many fights in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader where we roll with the tanks we have instead of seeking some magical perfect tank that will make the fights easier. Part of that is, we generally have our dedicated tanks at a level of gear that makes them the clear choice for survivability and threat. Furthermore, those dedicated tanks are accustomed to the roles: they know the healers and the healers know them, there's no having to stop and explain what cooldowns which will be using or to go over what to expect in a fight. I would argue that it is easily the case that in the vast majority of cases, you'll not swap out a tank if you don't see a reason to. Inertia rules, and people will most likely want to remain in the roles they're accustomed to (with exceptions based on the occasional feeling of stagnation in a role or what have you.)

For Sartharion and for Vezax (to name just two encounters) it felt* this way with DKs. Enough* guilds seemed like they were swapping to DKs for those fights because they made the encounter just so much easier. In fact, they made a lot of fights easier, so the conventional wisdom seemed to be just tank everything with a DK. (As another example, the conventional wisdom in BC heroics and Mount Hyjal seemed to be to use a paladin tank because of their huge AE threat advantage.)

I wanted to emphasize this paragraph because it seems to me to be the crux of the matter: namely, that this is not a case where a tanking class has to have a massive advantage over others. I've now tanked Sarth+3 on both a DK and a warrior in 10's, and this is this patch, where DK's have lost a good deal of the insane cooldown flexibility they had previously. My healers stil prefer the DK over the warrior, because the DK can hold threat on both Sarth and a drake (as well as quite a few adds) and can cycle through several cooldowns to stay upright. This is despite my warrior's advantage in health and armor (my warrior is significantly better geared than my DK) and in fact, is despite the fact that the DK's advantage in both AoE threat and cooldowns is minimal at best.

New WoW Model Viewer available

Yes, I went out and made a screenshot of a Worgen with two wolf-headed fist weapons. I did this via the latest iteration of WoW Model Viewer, freshly updated this Saturday, September 5th to work for patch 3.2. While it has a posted warning use it at your own risk which I thought I should mention, I should also mention I've been using it for the past half an hour with no harm and no foul. I've even been able to play with Trial of the Crusader loot. Go behind the jump to see a Worgen dual-wielding a Justicebringer and Reckoning. Not that I'm obsess with Titan's Grip Worgen or anything. Okay, so I totally am. At any rate, so far as I can tell, this version of the Model Viewer is stable and working with all current models.

This update by Chuanhsing even fixed the issue I was having where all my models came out textureless. I have no idea what it was happening in the first place, but I'm glad to see it gone.


So for you aspiring (or even active) machinamists or even just folks like me who like to dress up their future Worgen character with various gear options (sadly, you still can't get them in armor) there's a new toy out there for you to play with. Yay for progress!

Go forth and do great, terrible, or just silly things, for at last you again have a tool to make it easier.

WoW Tags: braking, graphics, machinima, model, mpq, patch-3.2, viewer, wow-model-viewer, wow-mpq

WoW: GuildOx implements 10-man strict rankings

GuildOx sends an email to tell us that they've set up 10-man strict ratings on their guild progression website. They've always offered 10-man ratings, though a lot of guilds run both 10- and 25-man content, and it's not quite legit to stack the "10-man only" guilds up against the guilds who occasionally do 25-man content (and thus have chances at better gear, no matter how much of a difference it makes). Hence, enter the "10-man strict" ratings -- these are guilds who have not run any 25-man content, according to a set of criteria that GuildOx has put together?



What is that criteria? You won't be allowed to earn any Coliseum normal kills or Ulduar 25 hard-mode kills. You are still allowed to PuG those fights, though the limit is 10 players over time, or five in the same fight (in other words, if 10 players of your guild accomplish a kill in 25-man Coliseum, or five of them do it in the same raid, you're off the 10-man strict list). That's designed to make sure that the list stays as clean as possible. You'll have to watch recruits, too -- anyone who enters your guild with a certain achievement has it counted towards that total of 10 players as well. All the other info you need to know about the listings are over in their FAQ.

Players may find other ways around the limit (there is, of course, higher level gear now available from Emblems that 10-player guilds are still able to get), but for now, that's where GuildOx is putting the limit, so if you want to stay on the list, follow their rules. Good luck to all of the strictly 10-man guilds out there.

Hunter WOW Patch 3.2.2 Armor Penetration nerf

Well folks, we recently heard that Ghostcrawler announced the upcoming nerf to Armor Penetration in WoW Patch 3.2.2.

I'll be honest with you. I'm not sure why this is turning into such a big deal is to everyone. I'm not saying I don't understand the mechanics of the change. And I do see the impact to us Hunters, especially endgame raiding Marksman Hunters. But really, let's take a step back and look at the reasoning behind the change.

Ghostcrawler said that they implemented this change after noticing everyone was picking up Armor Pen at the expense of their core stats. Really? And somehow we're surprised that when a secondary stat becomes more important than a class' primary stat and it forced a nerf? It seems more of a correction in my opinion.

If you're a raiding Marks or Survival Hunter you should be focusing on picking up as much Agility (Attack Power if you're a Beast Master) as possible. Hence why in Cataclysm we're seeing things like Armor Penetration removed from the itemization.

Think about it this way. Imagine if someone out there found out that if you stacked Crit over Agility you could find 5% gain in DPS. Would that really make sense as a class mechanic? Sure, we'd all probably switch over for that gain, but could we really blame Blizzard for a change because we found a loophole in the game mechanics?

Now we can all debate if a 15% reduction is too much or not. (Finding that sweet spot is always difficult.) We do know that when Armor values were at 100% everyone laughed at stacking Armor Penetration. Even today it's not considered a stat worth considering until you're raiding the high end raids like the hard modes of Trial of the Crusader or at least Ulduar 25 man. But I think we can all agree that when stacking secondary stats outweigh the benefits of stacking our primary ones, then it's a problem that probably should be addressed.

Armor penetration being nerfed in 3.2.2

Ghostcrawler has announced that armor penetration (ArP) is being nerfed in the upcoming Patch 3.2.2. It's an early notice to players who plan on investing in armor penetration gems. Many raiding melee players (along with Marksman hunters apparently) have begun focusing exclusively on armor penetration without caring about other stats. While the mechanics of ArP can be complicated to understand, the basic understanding is the more ArP you have the more damage you deal. Heck, a Feral Druid in my guild has been known to pass on upgrades here and there primarily because it lacked ArP.

Again, this is mainly a nerf to PvE raiding but it could end up affecting PvP slightly as well. It's not expected to completely rock the arena world or anything. The worst thing that could happen is Priests (or other soft targets) like myself will survive a few seconds longer against melee heavy teams, or people like Rogues have it worse against Plate. I guess from my perspective it could be viewed as a buff!

Note that in Cataclysm, armor penetration will be removed as a stat as it has been deemed confusing in regards to its use.

12 Reasons why you don't want to play a Priest

Every once in a while, I get extremely bitter about being a Priest. For those of you that want to roll a Priest, let me introduce some second thoughts.

Healing is thankless. From 1-80, you're going to be expected to heal something. And those players you work with aren't going to care how you do it as long as you do it. After all, you'll be riding their backs as they're blowing up Snobolds or Gnolls or Murlocs or whatever mob that you've been assigned to kill 50 thousand times. It's a fair trade off since you're keeping them up while they're doing most of the work. That is, until you're stuck with 1 mob left and they disband the group leaving you hanging.

Leveling can be a nightmare. You up for some Smite spamming? Because that's what you're in for as you slowly head up the ranks. It's the only real offensive spell you have at your disposal during the early levels. At least, it's not until you pick up Mind Flay at level 20 that you get some extra diversity among spells. Mind Blast? Yeah, every few seconds. Shadow Word: Pain? Eh. Cool. I guess.

Glorified whack-a-mole. When you start healing, you tend to drown out other things and focus exclusively on your role. That's the point. It's a giant mini-game of triage. Actually, I'd even go one step further and say it's team whack-a-mole in a raid setting.

Buff, buff and buff. Power Word: Fortitude, Prayer of Spirit and Prayer of Shadow Protection. The last two are offered by other classes (Warlock's Fel Intelligence and a Paladin aura respectively), but there's no other buff that will stack with Fortitude. Everyone loves Fortitude and we're going to be depended on to hand out our buffs.

Some mind control required. I suppose Priests only have to do this once in their raiding careers. I think it's one too many. Mind control? Really? Do we have to? I've witnessed many Priests struggle with this spell in particular. Some players like myself have healed our entire WoW lives from 1-80 and have no concept of what to do when we commandeer another NPC.

Survivability is a question mark. For one thing, we wear cloth. Yeah, I suppose we have healing spells to compensate for the all the pain we're taking in, but really! Once glance by a mob or 3 and you're effectively down for the count! We're given enough time and mana to either heal or shoot stuff. It's not like we've got plate, leather or mail to help absorb this stuff! When we get punched, boy do we feel it.

First target. Hitting some battlegrounds or PvPing in general? If the opposition finds out you're a Priest, expect to attract some attention. It feels as if though there's a giant, neon, flashing "kill me now" sign floating above your head with an arrow pointing downwards. If you're Holy, good luck. At least with Discipline you're alive a few seconds longer.

Where's the damage? I can't attest to this myself, but maybe some Shadow Priests can weigh in here. It seems our Shadowy brothers and sisters are having a hard time with damage since the 3.2 patch debuted. Are you guys doing competitive damage with other classes and players? I look at various logs and it just doesn't look right. Alas, I'm not a Shadow Priest and can comment no further other.

Chain Heal. The days of Circle of Healing dominance is over. We step aside for our Brain Chain Healing friends, the Shaman. For the time being, Chain Heal is expected to see even more improvements. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not bitter at all. As an aside, between laser beams or pulses of light, I'd lean towards laser beams. It's like phasers versus photon torpedoes.

Confusing stats. Cataclysm isn't here yet. Regeneration has not been reduced down to one exclusive stat. We're stuck with Spirit or mp5. Do I want X mp5 or Y Spirit? What's greater than the other? All this math work required just to figure out how much is worth what! Then you've got to take the spec into account. Are you Holy? Are you Discipline? Because Holy actually cares about Spirit while Discipline doesn't. Get ready for some gear juggling and some decision making on gear when it does drop.

Power Infusion. No caster seems to notice it. It's as if every time I cast Power Infusion someone and ask them if they noticed a DPS increase, they respond with disbelief and confusion. "You power infused me? Really?"

Hang up the plow and the pitch fork. Don't expect to be doing much in the way of farming. I distinctly created an Elemental Shaman and a Ret Paladin just to help with that aspect of the game. It's difficult with the lack of survivability and such. What happens if we get challenged for a node? We may as well just fall over and die!

There you have it folks! Do not roll a Priest! They're far too vulnerable! Try having some fun as a Paladin instead! I hear their leveling game is much more enjoyable. I mean, they do wear plate. Alternatively, try playing a Warlock! True they wear cloth. But they can manhandle most mobs out there and then some. But Priests? Oh man, they're so hard to manage and maintain.

Note: With the exception of Shadow Priest damage (I do feel that it does look a bit low but maybe that's just me), all the points were made in jest.

WoW Cataclysm's new race/class combinations

As you know, the new race and class combinations coming up in the Cataclysm will open a whole new set of doors to people who want an alternative character choice that goes against the grain of their typical racial customs, to one degree or another. With the exception of a couple combinations that feel as though they should have been there from the beginning (such as blood elf warriors, which need no discussion here), each new possibility presents roleplayers with an opportunity to play an outcast of sorts, a character who has made a significant break from the traditions his or her race usually represent.

The lore behind each combination is not yet fully clear. We know tauren paladins will probably worship the sun and call themselves "Sunwalkers" for instance, but not much more than that. Some things are clear, though, and there's a lot to get the imagination going for those roleplayers who yearn to play something a little different.

Tauren paladins and priests

Here we have the most obvious departure from the traditions and culture of a race in WoW. Blood elves already had a somewhat convoluted path toward becoming paladins at first, but their story really played out throughout the unfolding of The Burning Crusade expansion, and eventually ended in a redemption that helped make their status as paladins seem much more reasonable. Still, even if you discounted all that, you could argue that the blood elves had once worshiped the light, so it made sense that they could come to do so again.

But the idea of tauren becoming followers of the Light seems absurd at first glance. The good thing is that we're pretty much certain that the tauren paladins will not be Light-worshippers as such, not in the same way that humans and draenei are. Rather, somehow a new perspective on their ancestral connection to nature will open for them a new sort of path that just happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to the paladins of the Light over on the Alliance side, much like priests of different races have different beliefs, yet share similar powers. Whatever it is will probably make sense for tauren paladins and priests alike, but will probably still be a sort of fringe culture for tauren, much like shamanism has been for draenei.

This option seems to be the craziest of the bunch at first glance, but when all is said and done, I suspect that tauren paladins and priests will be more connected and unified with the rest of tauren culture than we would expect by just looking at the WoW lore as it is today, before the Cataclysm strikes. Taking up sun-worship may be more like the dwarves discovering their ancient roots as special creations of the Titans than a true revolution in beliefs or values.

Dwarven shamans (and mages)

Speaking of dwarves, mages are one of those classes that they probably should have had from the beginning -- but shamans, on the other hand, may prove to be something more interesting. Shamans may not have all that much connection to the Titans as such, but they are very connected to the earth element, which the dwarves now know themselves to be born of. Some dwarves of the Wildhammer clan are already shamanistic to a large extent.

Nonetheless, shamanism is something new to the general population of dwarves. Whether or not dwarven culture as a whole embraces it, it will be something most dwarves are not very familiar with, and didn't experience much growing up. I imagine it would be like the relationship between city-dwellers and rural farmers, who may generally belong to the same nation and culture, but maintain very different lifestyles within it.

Troll druids

As Michael and Daniel have already noted, there is a precedent for trolls shapeshifting and taking on animal forms already there in WoW lore. What isn't there is any sort of relationship to the moon goddess Elune and her son Cenarius, which normally forms the foundation of druidic culture. The likely connection between the night elves and the worgen indicates that worgen will have some sort of relationship with Elune, but there's nothing hinting that trolls would have one in the game at this point.

I always thought that druidism came with its own set of beliefs related to Cenarius, as well as protective attitudes about nature that I haven't seen trolls express so far. Could it be that some of the darkspear trolls are turning away even more from their vicious and barbaric past, and following the tauren druids in more constructive efforts to heal the world?

On the other hand, Michael and Daniel were thinking that trolls own belief system related to the Loa spirits could give rise to the same basic set of abilities as Cenarius-based druids. If so, this would create a "two religions, one class" type of system we will probably see emerge with the tauren paladins and priests. If so, then troll druids wouldn't be so much of a departure from their culture at all.

Human and forsaken hunters

Human hunters are likely to enter the game without any extra introduction from the new lore of Cataclysm, except maybe a bit about how the great changes in the earth have forced them to use more hunter skills in order to survive in treacherous places. Still, human hunters have been around for a while now, and it only stands to reason that they should be available to players.

Forsaken hunters have likewise been around for a long time -- Sylvanas herself is a "dark ranger," but in this case there might be an extra focus on a new regimen of dark rangers in Sylvanas' army. Far from being outcasts in their culture, forsaken hunters could be seen as their people's most elite fighting force.

Night elf mages (and orcish ones too)

Night elf mages are probably the most like proper outcasts among all the new combinations, since they openly practice something their race has sworn to abandon. As Metzen mentioned at BlizzCon, they're also a good opportunity to play a really ancient character, if that's what you'd like to do, since young night elves probably wouldn't have had much opportunity to study arcane magic lately. So if you're going to be a night elf mage, keep in mind that your character has probably been very solitary for a very long time, unless he or she would have studied either in secret, or in exile.

Orcish mages are an odd option because there's really no lore for or against them -- how orcs could come to be mages isn't really clear, but nor is there any reason why they wouldn't. Until some sort of story appears around them, it's hard to know how to roleplay one, except possibly as a former warlock, who has turned away from his or her demonological ways.

Gnomish priests

And last but not least, thinking of gnomes as priests brings to mind some exciting possibilities. I am thoroughly intrigued by the ideas Michael and Daniel had about a possible "Church of Innovation and Discovery" -- that a gnome could cast divine healing magic out of his or her faith in the constant exploration of new ideas seems perfect for their race.

Gnome priests wouldn't exactly be "rebels" as such -- gnomes don't have anything against religion as such, but up till now, the structured beliefs of other religions haven't really made sense to gnomes. Gnomes do have a lot of faith, however, especially faith in possibilities -- if you ask a gnome whether a problem can be solved or not, undoubtedly they would say yes, as long as they have enough time to figure out some sort of answer.

Still, gnomish priests clearly represent something new for their people, and an ambitious roleplayer could play one of those gnomes who thinks he knows what religion is all about but doesn't, constantly praying for the next boss to drop good loot or whatever, winking at his Light-worshipping friends as if they share a secret together.

Keybindings and how to change them

Xella has a great post over at WoW LJ about keybindings, and it got me thinking. I play with what I thought was the "standard" way -- with the left hand sitting on the home fingers of Shift, A, W, D, and the spacebar, and then jumping up to the 1-6 (or further down the number line if necessary, though truth be told, I usually mouse-click those when I have the time to do so) to hit various abilities. But xella does it very differently -- she maps her fingers to the top abilities keys, using only her ring finger for movement. I would probably never have come up with that on my own (my habits come directly from FPS games, where the 1-6 keys are mostly for weapon switching, something you don't do quite as often as casting abilities), but it does make a lot of sense, even if xella says her ring finger, with all of those movement motions, is getting somewhat worn out.

And then she hits on something else I've been dealing with lately, too: changing what you've got. Setting up your keybinds is one thing, but actually changing them can be tougher.

For instance, my Hunter has always had Hunter's Mark attached to the 5 key -- that was the easiest and quickest place for me to put it when I was setting things up, and so I've trained myself, whenever I am about to start shooting a target, to smash the 5 key and move on. But I have Arcane Shot sitting on the 6, and Explosive Shot (when I'm in that spec) sitting on the 4. That can cause problems, as you might have guessed: reach up to mark a target before the fight, accidentally hit the Arcane Shot, and then I get labeled as a noob for pulling early (probably a deserved title for many reasons, but still). So I decided to switch the mark away from there, and put it somewhere else more out of the way.

But instinctively, as I've been hitting 5 for Hunter's Mark for so long, I would reach up and hit 5 again whenever I entered combat -- I had a lot of trouble retraining my reflexes to hit something else. I only really tried to change for about an hour, but at that point I had to run off to a raid, and rather than making mistakes during a raid setting, I just went ahead and moved the keys back.

I presume that if I gave it more time, I would eventually learn the difference (we humans are nothing if not adaptable), but I was definitely surprised to see just how ingrained my reflexes were with the key presses. xella says she wants to change as well, and most people recommend what I would do (and what I'll probably have to do if I really want to change) -- just take the time to practice and re-learn the keys. It's interesting that we can change keybindings in seconds, but especially if we've built up experience over time, it's much harder to change the way we move.

Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 1

A little while after Wrath hit, Arcane Brilliance posted a column on how to gear your Mage up for Naxx. Several things have changed since then:
You don't really gear for Naxx anymore. Naxx is now a place you go in order to gear up for other places.
Trial of the Champion.
Knowing these things, I thought an updated gearing column might be in order. So if you're raising a fledgling Mage, and level 80 is about to hit you like a truckload of Death Knights, and you're looking for the quickest way to turn green and blue into purple, look no farther. Well maybe a little farther. The column's not over yet.

Never before in the history of WoW have level 80 players had so many options for gearing up at 80. Like PvP? You can epic yourself up pretty quickly almost exclusively killing other players. Have a fetish for heroic dungeons? Normal 5-mans? Daily quests? Profession gear? Grinding for faction rewards? All of those things are perfectly viable ways top get shiny epics. Read on, and we'll focus on two of the various and sundry methods you can employ to get raid-worthy without ever stepping foot into a raid. Then come back next week for the rest.

Normal 5-mans

Trial of the Champion is, to put it bluntly, the single fastest way to get epics in the current version of this game. The non-heroic version of this instance is a relatively simple 5-man boss-fest that takes a good group about 20 minutes to complete, and is entirely farmable. Each of the three bosses drops epic loot. Picture a level 80 version of the Ring of Blood/Amphitheater of Anguish questlines, only one in which each boss drops epic loot, and you can do it over and over again. It's infinitely puggable, even a character with relatively crappy gear can contribute, and there are always plenty of other people looking to farm it.

And to completely contradict that last sentence, I'd like to point out that ToC isn't a face-roll, at least not for a character that's going in without good gear. Read up on the encounters before you go in, and know how to play your class. Though it is the fastest way to get epics right away, I don't want to encourage anybody to be the guy that comes in the second after dinging 80, still wearing greens he picked up in Dragonblight, doing 1k DPS, expecting to get free epics on the coattails of four other people. I've been in groups with that guy, and he's a pain. Do your homework, and gear up the best you can through other means before you hop into ToC's loot factory. Either that, or group up with guildies who are fine with you being undergeared.

Having said that, you don't have to be uber to make it in here. Just make sure you're doing more DPS than the tank. Get a couple nice blue pieces, run a couple of lower level instances, make sure you have a good grasp of things like threat management and spell rotations, and you should be able to pull your weight.

These are the normal mode Mage drops:

Belt of the Churning Blaze
The Confessor's Binding
Bindings of the Wicked
Handwraps of Surrendered Hope
Leggings of the Haggard Apprentice
Mantle of Inconsolable Fear
Signet of Purity
Brilliant Hailstone Amulet
Abyssal Rune

Holy crap, right? These are item level 200 epics, on par with the gear from 10-man Naxxramas. Go. Go now.

Heroics

Once upon a time, and not very long ago at all, heroics provided a shot at some nice blue-quality gear, the occasional epic from the final boss, and tokens that could fill a few slots with Naxx-level non-set pieces. You had to run a lot of heroics to get what you wanted, and you had to get a lot of lucky drops.

Things have changed.

Instead of each boss dropping lowly Emblems of Heroism, they now drop Emblems of freaking Conquest. That's the same thing that drops from, oh, Yogg-Saron. You want an idea of what you can buy with those? How about this, which you can then turn into this:

Conqueror's Kirin Tor Tunic

Or maybe some of this, which then becomes this:

Conqueror's Kirin Tor Hood

Yep. That's tier 8.5 stuff, right there. From running 5-man heroics. Do a few heroics of your choice, repeat every night for few weeks, and viola! You're uber! Well, partially uber, anyway.

Here's the highlights from the rest of the Emblem of Conquest gear:

Neck
Legs
Waist
Hands

And then, once you run out of things to buy with your Emblems of Conquest, you can always trade them in for the old emblems and fill the following slots:

Off-hand frill
Trinket
Back
Feet
Wrist
Finger

Also, there are the old tier pieces, but you'd have to trade so many of your Emblems of Conquest in to get them, you'd be far better off skipping them and getting their equivalents the old fashioned way, by actually raiding.

Oh, and by doing the daily heroic, you can get Emblems of Triumph (only 2 per day, but still), which also drop in the current final raid in the game: Trial of the Crusader/Trial of the Grand Crusader, and use them to get the following:

Band of the Invoker
Brimstone Igniter
And a selection of item level 245 cloth armor, including but not limited to this beauty: Khadgar's Robe of Conquest.

That's right, tier 9. You can pick up tier 9 gear without ever setting foot in a raid. It'll take a long, long time, and you may or may not get done in time for the next expansion to come out...but you can do it. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

While you're in those heroics, you may as well pick up the nice gear the final bosses drop, including the following sweetness:

Utgarde Keep: Annhylde's Ring
Nexus: Gloves of Glistening Runes
Azjol-Nerub: Rod of the Fallen Monarch, Sash of the Servant
Old Kingdom: Wand of Ahn'kahet, Skirt of the Old Kingdom
Drak'Tharon Keep: Overlook Handguards
Violet Hold: Azure Cloth Bindings
Utgarde Pinnacle: Girdle of Bane
Halls of Lightning: Woven Bracae Leggings
Occulus (yes, I hate this place too, but this staff is nice): Staff of Draconic Combat, and also Cuffs of Winged Levitation

And then there's heroic Trial of the Champion, which can be a bit of a gear check. I've seen a lot of groups that can burn their way through most other heroics struggle here. But the rewards are more than worthwhile. Every boss drops epics, and they're item level 219 epics, putting them on par with 10-man Ulduar drops. If that's not worth a few wipes along the way, I don't know what is.

The drops? Glad you asked!

Boots of the Crackling Flame
Embrace of Madness
Gaze of the Unknown
Kurisu's Indecision
Sinner's Confession
Spectral Kris

Yeah. I wrote about ToC loot when the patch first hit, so you've already heard me wax poetic about that dagger. But...yeesh. Beat the Black Knight. Beat him with a stick. When he bursts open and candy falls out, hope one piece of candy is shaped like that frigging dagger. Scrabble for it on the ground with the other casters, then use it to stab the Warlock who's trying to grab it from you. I fully advocate Warlock-stabbing. It's appropriate in every situation. Disclaimer: No real-life stabbing. Put the knife down, crazy guy who also happens to read these columns. Go play Grand Theft Auto or something and blame your inevitable killing spree on that, and not my column, please.

So, let's review.

If your preferred method of gearing up is running 5-mans, here are the slots you can fill with epics without ever getting a larger group together:

All of them.

That's right. Without going crazy, you can now get an epic in every slot before Naxx, before Ulduar, before any 10 or 25-man content, guildless, penniless, socially repellent, and unattractive. Just give your Mage a steady diet of Trial of the Champion and heroics, and you'll eventually be able to pull off a rough impression of a well-geared raider. Fool your friends!

Next week, we'll go over the best of the rest of the ways to get epic gear before going raiding. Yes, there are more. If you hate instances, you can still get epics. You gotta love the new end-game. Epic gear is no longer an exclusive club, accessible only to progressive guilds. Everyone can get it. It's just a matter of choosing how you want to go about it. And to the three or four of you out there who will say this is a bad thing, that this proliferation of purples somehow cheapens the game, that by allowing even casual WoW players into the epic treehouse, Blizzard's ruining everything: you, my friends, are tools. I'm not even kidding. I'm so incredibly tired of that kind of elitism, it's not even funny. In a progression-based game where progression is ultimately measured by gear, more ways to progress--available to more and more types of players--is always a good thing. Soapbox-tangent over.

WOW Race changes confirmed

World of Warcraft: The possibility of changing your character's race was indicated at BlizzCon 2009, during one of the panels. But then the news about it really got hot when Faction changes were officially announced, because eagle-eyed players noticed the following damning question in the new program's FAQs: Can I use this service to change race on my existing faction? The answer was confirmation enough for most folks: No. We will be releasing a Race change service in the near future for this purpose.

But, this wouldn't be the first time a bit of miscommunication or other confusion has occurred. The final confirmation of upcoming race changes came today, confirmed by Neth again in an official forum thread. All she was actually doing there was referencing the original thread about Faction changes, which had already said Race changes were coming. The announcement even showed up on the official Warcraft Twitter account. So this isn't exactly a brand new thing. Still, it's nice to have it confirmed all over again.

WoW Race changes, of course, subtly differ from Faction changes because you'll still stay Alliance if you're Alliance, or Horde if you're Horde. Race changes might be performed for aesthetic reasons -- you might just prefer the look of a sexy little gnome. Still, I bet most Race changes will be to get access to "better" racials. Especially if racials do get revamped in Cataclysm, a lot of players will see the grass a little greener on the other side. Every Man For Himself, anyone?

WoW: Shadow Priest Leveling Guide

This article will discuss the leveling of a priest for maximum speed (therefore optimal fun). The best way to level a priest is shadow. They deal the most damage under the least amount of time and take the least amount of damage. If you're going to level your toon solo for the most of the time like mostly everyone in the game, shadow is the way to go. If it is your plan to level up running instances constantly with friends, discipline (for the damage and healing capabilities) or even holy is for you (if you're the designated healer of the group). I will break down the leveling process into section of 10 levels:

Level 10-20

You get access to talent points at level 10, and you should put your first points into Spirit Tap (And improved Spirit Tap) to begin your path down the shadow tree. This allows for mana regeneration after an experience delivering kill (or Mana Blast/Shadow Word: Death crit). Then place your next points into Improved Shadow Word: Pain and only three points into Darkness.

Level 20-30

Get Mind Flay immediately. This move slows down your opponent and makes grinding much easier. It is then a no brainer to keep investing the points into Improved Mind Blast so that you can blast your opponents away faster and stop relying on non-shadow moves. The main focus here is to get to Shadowform as fast as possible. Once you reach level 16, it is wise to get Shadow Weaving. Shadow Weaving makes your more powerful as your attack mobs. As you grind your way towards 20, I recommend you go back and fill in your points in Darkness as well because of the increased dependency on Shadow affiliated moves.

Level 30-40

Vampiric Embrace and Improved Vampiric Embrace. Heal yourself through DPS and regenerate mana through DPS, almost a grinding dream. Now you have a choice between Focused Mind and Shadow Focus. If you're having trouble hitting mobs, put your next points in the latter, otherwise the saved mana could help out in the long run. The next three points should be placed into Improved Devouring Plague for that extra periodic boost in health production while taking on a lot of mobs. Vampiric Embrace will stack with this attack.

Level 40-50

Shadowform saves lives, literally. Grab this and watch your shadow power explode while minimizing damage. You should only be using shadow spells at this point anyway. Place your next five points to increase your critting abilities. Now you're beginning to feel like a caster. Improve your Shadowform for less disruption while casting as well as two points in Misery to help hit your opponents as well as increasing spell power during battles.

Level 50-60

Snag Vampiric Embrace for that extra mana producing dot that will increase your damage and the duration in which you can do that damage. After this, place the maximum points into Pain and Suffering to save some mana while you're burning a mob, but not in time for your Shadow Word: Pain to expire. This way Shadow Word: Pain continues to refresh and do damage as you Blast and Flay away. After this is maxed out, go back and finish your points in Misery to unlock the next tier of points. The point of a leveling/grinding spec is to maximize damage for as long as possible. At this point in the game, it may be time to put some points in Crowd Control, as the major damage increasing talents have been used up. I would personally recommend points be placed in Psychic Horror. An extra fear where the mob does not run away from you agroing other mobs is a priceless life saving talent. Mind Melt will help you more and more as you level and gear you find is more tailored towards a caster, or Priest specifically. Putting points in that and Improved Psychic Scream will maximize damage the most efficiently while giving you that extra play room with fear if you're in trouble. If you're like me and you want to pick that Elite from behind some regular mobs without aggroing them, it may be overdue to invest in Shadow Reach. This gives you the distance to pinpoint and pick out the mobs you need to complete certain quests. Most of the fighting you are doing as a solo leveling is one on one, with some random beating you over the head with his club or staff. This talent is not critical to leveling although it is a luxury.

Level 60-70

To continue blowing away mobs without a break, Dispersion would be good for your toon. As well as that "Oh, Shit" button you can slam when there are just too many mobs to handle. Dispersion looks like a pvp talent, but it has its uses in soloing as well. Now its time to start heading down the Discipline tree to help you stay alive while managing your mana a little more efficiently. Put 5 points into Twin Disciplines to give your instant casts a little boost as well as make way for the next two more important talents: Inner Fire and Improved Power Word: Fortitude. These two talents give out a little bit more spell power and health for staying alive while bashing some monsters.

Level 70-80

To finish off your massive grind on the way to 80, it is worth investing in Meditation for increased mana production while casting (stacks with Mana Tap). Inner Focus is a neat talent and acts like a power boost. I would recommend macroing this ability to Mind Blast for a very powerful Blast every once in a while (3 minute cooldown), as this ability does not trigger the global cooldown and can be used in congruence with other spells. That is as far as I would go into the disc tree, and the rest is up to you. Mind Melt and Twisted Faith are more damage boosting abilities to help boost your DPS.

I hope you enjoyed my Shadow Priest Talent Guide. I am sure there are other viewpoints out there, but experience tells me that Shadow is definitely the way to go if speed is your desire.

WoW Cataclysm might mean for Death Knights

We've now had about a week and a half to digest all the new information from BlizzCon about the Cataclysm, and while it's not a complete picture of what we can expect from the expansion, there's enough information now that we can make some pretty good educated guesses about the direction of the game and the new theorycraft of being a Death Knight. Let's take a look at we can learn from the latest information.

New Races

The new races definitely have some pretty awesome racials. The Worgen's plus damage racial will make them a very solid choice for a DPS Death Knight, and the sprint will be excellent for closing distance in PvP, especially when paired with Lichborne or Icebound Fortitude to avoid CC. Even the skinning racial will be nice for a leveling Death Knight who decides to take some time out to level the money making gathering tradeskills.

Goblins are definitely going to be a nice little convenient race, with low buy and sell prices and a free bit of banking. Combat-wise, the Rocket Boots should be nice for closing distances or running away.

As far as whether these races will end up being the "best" races for Death Knights, I don't think I can say. Part of this is because I think the idea of a "best race" is, to at least some degree, rather subjective, but also, the devs strongly hinted they'll take a look at everyone's racial abilities as they move into Cataclysm, so its certainly possible that other races will get some new or upgraded racials that will keep pace with the awesomeness that are the new races' racials.

Stat Changes and New Systems

We'll be seeing quite a few stats either disappear off gear or vastly change in their mechanics come the expansion. While some of the stats changes, like loss of Spell Power, won't really affect us, others promise to bring up new questions and answers for our gearing and combat conundrums. Let's look at those one by one.

Armor Penetration

As you likely know if you've been following the column, my favorite DPS spec is Unholy. Unholy DPS has been having some troubles lately, specifically with Armor Penetration. Armor Penetration is now so ubiquitous on gear that our signature strike, Scourge Strike, can easily be outpaced by Obliterate with a minimum of Armor Penetration gear at level 80. Luckily, it looks like this will be a thing of the past in Cataclysm, as Armor Penetration will be gone from gear.

With this change, it seems likely they'll simply provide Armor Penetration to Blood through the new Mastery system (and possibly to Frost as well, if only for the Obliterate heavy rotations), while hopefully Unholy will get things slightly more useful to us. If they balance it out right, we should definitely be able to pick up Scourge Strike again full time in Cataclysm.

Of course this does bring up the question of Patch 3.3. Will we see Scourge Strike back on the scene before then? The devs have posted that they want Scourge Strike to be the king of Unholy DPS rotations again, but they don't yet have an elegant way to make that happen. It could be they'll hold off until Cataclysm, and we'll be obliterating our way through the raids and 5 man dungeons of Icecrown Citadel, but frankly, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

Regardless, this whole discussion underlines one fact: The devs definitely made the right choice in taking Armor Penetration off gear, where it can no longer trip up those classes and specs who do not need it.

Attack Power

Strength has pretty much always been superior for us for both DPS and Tanks, so the fact that we won't have to settle for attack power is definitely welcome. There's not much of a downside to this one, as long as there's enough good plate DPS gear and strength jewelry to go around.

Haste

In Cataclysm, Haste will, in addition to its current uses, cause resources to regenerate or generate faster. In our case, it will be runes. Faster regenerating runes, in theory, equals quicker damage, although it will have to be quick enough to keep up with the global cooldown, of course. If it is, a faster rotation is only a good thing. If not, we just have runes that regenerate faster then sit there as we wait for cooldowns. This is probably a case where we need to see exact values before we can judge how good it is for the class overall, but it certainly has potential, possibly paired with a switch to Unholy Presence.

Defense and Stamina

Defense is completely gone from gear, meaning that every tank class or tree will be getting a talent similar to the Druid's Survival of the Fittest to gain immunity to critical strikes. This isn't so bad a deal now that you can dual spec DPS and Tanking, and therefore offtanks can still be effective tanks and effective DPSers both as needed, but there's still some questions to clear up. Matthew Rossi covered quite a few of those questions in an article on the future of tanking, but I have a few more things to discuss from a Death Knight point of view.

Traditionally, we are able to tank in all 3 trees given that we choose the right talents. However, if we need to grab talented defense, how does that work? Unless they simply add it to the first level tanking talent of all three trees, we may find ourselves incredibly limited in our tank specs as we are forced to work down that specific tree. Of course, they could add it to Masteries, but that means that Death Knight PvE DPS may pick up a relatively useless mastery for them as they work down the tree.

In fact, that brings up a whole different point altogether: How will Death Knight Masteries work? Traditionally, we're meant to be able to tank or DPS in all 3 trees. If Masteries in one tree are tank focused, everyone will flock there for tanking and flock away from it for DPS. That said, it may be that what will happen is that we'll see more tank focused talents instead, which, when taken, will unlock tank focused masteries.

Still, let's assume they have a decent idea for how they'll implement tanking vs. DPS masteries and crit immunity that will work well enough to give us the same tank spec flexibility we have now. That still leaves us with the question of itemization.

It sounds like the developers mean to finish what they started with Burning Crusade and essentially make Stamina so ubiquitous that pretty much every character has tank-level HP. If so, at least that clears up one itemization issue. We'll, in theory, have the Stamina to tank regardless. However, high stamina alone does not a complete tank make.

Bear Druids can attest to it. Sharing your itemization with DPS classes is not fun. You're scrounging for hit and expertise, trying to find gear that still has a decent amount of stamina on it. And good luck finding dodge rating on pieces. They don't exist. That's my biggest fear: Will we run short on defensive stats as everything is itemized to be modular? It's possible this could be sidestepped if Reforging allows conversions to dodge and parry rating, but it'd be way too easy to make reforging far too restrictive for that be effective. Masteries could possibly pick up some of the slack here, but again: With the way masteries are set up, how do we assure adequate tank masteries without rewiring Death Knights so that only one tree is the tank tree?

I'm not ready to completely condemn the idea, but I get the feeling itemization is going to be a sticky subject as Cataclysm begins. Here's hoping the dev team can figure it out, but part of me thinks there may be a limit to how far you can take the "one size fits all specs" gear philosophy.

Then again, I'm still all for getting rid of some stats and firming up others. It really shouldn't take a spreadsheet and a custom made calculator to figure out if an individual piece of gear is really an upgrade for you or not, to be honest.

And the Rest

Of course, this column is hardly going to be the final word on Death Knights in the Cataclysm. We'll be discussing the Path of the Titans and which paths seem best for Death Knights, and talents are probably going to change so drastically as to completely alter how we look at certain talent builds and rotations.

The misgivings outlined above aside, I can say with confidence that I am incredibly pumped for the expansion, and very interested to see what direction the Death Knight class takes with all the redesigns and rebuilds of so many key systems in the expansion. Stay tuned to Lichborne and Wow.com. We'll let you know how this keeps shaking down.