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Lichborne: Death knight group utility in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Death knights are not always the first class you think of when you think group utility. They don't have a long-term crowd control method, they can't summon food or Healthstones, and they don't have one of those long term castable stat buffs like Mark of the Wild or Power Word: Fortitude. That said, you shouldn't sell them short. We have a lot of little things we contribute to a group in a ways people may not think of. This week, we're going to look at some of the buffs, debuffs, and group utility moves death knights contribute, with an emphasis on things that or new or significantly changed in Mists of Pandaria. Bringing the Buffs Horn of Winter has long been a valuable buff that you should never neglect, and it's changed in some interesting ways in Mists. Instead of a flat buff to strength and agility, it now adds 10% attack power to you and your group. This ends up being pretty handy since it should scale as gear levels increase.
The Queue: Keeping it classy
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. We haven't kicked off The Queue with reading music in awhile, so let's change that. Once upon a time I posted some Rhett and Link for you, an internet-based musical comedy duo, and people seemed to enjoy it. So here's more! Behold, the T-Shirt War. T-Shirt War was actually my second choice behind the far more hilarious Butt Drugs, but perhaps Butt Drugs aren't as safe for work. Still, funny stuff. Butt Drugs. The Queue is actually a bit short today, since a majority of the questions we've been receiving require rolling bones and gazing into a crystal ball to answer. If you have a non-Cataclysm question for us, please ask in the comments below! busuan asked... "Why is there almost no sound effect for a warrior's shouts? In Diablo II, the similar shouts come with awesome sound effects. But in WoW, warrior shouts merely generate a visual cue. If Blizzard though effect were annoying to other people, they could have restricted the effects as self-only."
Is World of Warcraft really World of Diablo?
So how do you design Diablo 3 anyway? Bargain Bin Reviews has an idea -- just retrofit World of Warcraft. Shift talent points to spells, decrease enemy health and damage and increase the number of enemies by a factor of 10 or so, do away with healing spells and tanking, and you're essentially done. It's a bit silly and a bit tongue in cheek, yes, but it also brings up a good point. In the end, WoW is probably influenced by Diablo 2 as much as it is by Warcraft 3, if not more.
Select group buffs going raid wide in Wrath
Between the Shaman portion of the Class Panel and the Q&A session at WWI08, raiders have some great news (in my opinion). If you're a reader of Hybrid Theory, a few weeks back I discussed the possibility (and necessity) of certain group buffs becoming raid buffs. The devs have confirmed that yes, many of these things are becoming raid buffs.The examples given were Totems and Unleashed Rage from Shaman, and Battle Shout for Warriors. This will greatly lower the need to stack Shaman so every single party of your raid has totems, but there's still the Bloodlust/Heroism issue. Taking 4-6 Shaman for Heroism is the single largest buff to your DPS that you can supply, so we'll see what happens. Either way, this is fantastic news, and something that has been sorely needed. Figuring out class balance for a raid can be fun, but not when your determining factor over who gets cut is "who won't fit in the Windfury group?"
Hybrid Theory: Is it too much?
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.Here on Hybrid Theory, we've done a lot of glorifying the group utility that Hybrids provide. It's one of their strongest points, and the factor that could make or break their raid spot in a setting of pure recruitment. Recently, I discussed the direction this concept of utility is going with a few raidmates of mine, and some interesting points were made.The synergy between classes in The Burning Crusade is powerful, but moving in a direction in which the classes and specs become too reliant on one another, or you have to decide which hybrid is more important to you than another hybrid in the same role. Some class/spec combinations simply can't perform in a raid setting without a specific hybrid class alongside them. Some hybrid classes can't perform without other hybrids in their group. This poses a problem for the pure classes, and even though we don't know the exact details of the Death Knight, adding another class may only make things harder.
