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Lichborne: Of Cabbages and Kings
Welcome to Lichborne, where each weekend, Daniel Whitcomb helps you keep pace with the ever-changing Death Knight class. This week, While Death Knight tweaks continue, there's no big piece of news that really stands out. We got a nice bump in damage to our base weapon strikes, Death Coil, and the abilities that mimic them in the talent trees in the latest build. Unfortunately, poor Plague Strike still sits at a sort of dismal 30% weapon damage, meaning it still doesn't feel like it scales as well as it should. But preliminary reports are still that it's a noticeable DPS increase. At the same time, our PvP utility and survivability was nerfed, but not in completely unexpected ways. Chains of Ice is dispellable again, as the devs felt that between it and Death Grip, it was far too hard to get away from a Death Knight. Again, this nerf is somewhat expected, if not needed, although some argue the nerf is unfair in the face of other classes that have similar abilities to ensnare and entrap opponents. I have to admit that I'm hoping we see, at the least, Chains of Ice getting put on Virulence. If nothing else, that Glyph of Blood Boil is looking a lot nicer. Still, none of the news really jumps out and grabs me, and with the beta patches coming fast and furious, it's hard to write with any authority on something that may be changed next week. With that in mind, I've decided this week to post on a potpourri of odds and ends from around the World of Warcraft as they relate to Death Knights, both stuff that refers back to previous columns and new observations. Read on:
Bear armor woes in Wrath to be addressed
You may recall a while back that we covered the problem with bear tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. In short, the new shared gear itemization between Rogues and Feral Druids is leaving bear Druids incredibly starved for armor and stamina. Extra stamina and armor is wasted on rogues, but is mandatory for Bears. Bears, therefore, have suffered. Ghostcrawler has now let us know that the dev team has noticed the problem. The justification, of course, is as usual: They want less useless stuff to drop. Ideally, itemization should be tight enough that there is a high chance of people getting stuff they can use off a boss, even if that means 12 other people in the raid can use it as well.
Itemization and the plight of the bear tank in Wrath of the Lich King
One of the biggest concepts coming with Wrath of the Lich King is gear consolidation. Stat are being folded into each other and classes are being changed even on very basic levels so that fewer gear types can work for more classes and specs. Feral Druids have seen this happen as well, with talents such as Survival of the Fittest and Heart of the Wild tweaked so that they can get more benefits from Rogue gear. Unfortunately, this hasn't worked out that well for bear tanks.
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: Blood spells and talents
The Blood tree was originally designated as the primary DPS tree, and a lot of the talents still reflect that, such as Dark Conviction, the ever-present critical strike talent, and Dancing Rune Weapon, the 51 point talent. However, it's also worth noting that the Blood tree provides quite a few healing skills and talents which may end up making it a useful type of tanking tree via allowing the Death Knight to keep himself healed and keep a bit of grief off his healers: for example, Death Pact will be useful for finishing off a ghoul who's about to die anyway and getting a bit of health back. Below is a selection of some of the spells and talents available to Death Knights in the WWI demo. Blood Spells: Blood Presence:Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood RuneInstant cast, 1 second cooldownDescription: Strengthens the Death Knight with the presence of blood, increasing damage done by 15% and healing the Death Knight by 4% of damage dealt. Only one presence may be active at a time. Blood Strike:Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood RuneInstant cast, 1 second cooldownMelee rangeDescription: Instantly strike the enemy, causing 60% weapon damage plus 55 for each disease effect on the target.Blood Tap:Requires level 64Description: Immediately activates a blood rune and temporarily converts it into a death rune. this rune counts as a blood, unholy, or frost rune. lasts 10 seconds.Death Pact: Requires level 66. Description: Sacrifice an undead minion, healing the Death knight for 1200 healthBlood Talents:Rune TapRequires 10 talent pointsInstant cast, 1 minute cooldown.Description: Converts 1 Blood Rune into 10% of your maximum health.Dark ConvictionRequires 10 talent pointsCosts up to 5 talent pointsDescription: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 1% per talent point.Improved Rune TapRequires 15 talent points, Rune TapCosts up to 3 talent pointsDescription: Improves Rune Tap's health gain by 15% per talent pointVendetta Requires 15 talent pointsCosts up to 2 talent pointsDescription: Heals you for 3% of your total health per talent point whenever you kill a target that yields experience or honorScent of Blood Requires 20 talent pointsCosts up to 3 talent points Description: After being struck by a ranged or melee critical hit, you gain the Scent of Blood effect, causing your next 2 melee hits to steal life from the enemy. lasts for 12s. this effect can not occur more often than once every 12 seconds (Note: the effect of putting more than one talent point in this skill is not yet listed in the description). Blade Barrier Requires 20 talent pointsCosts up to 3 talent points Description: Whenever you have no runes active, your parry chance increases by 5% per talent point for the next 8 seconds.Mark of Blood Requires 20 talent pointsCosts 1 Blood Rune, 1 Unholy Rune Instant cast30 yard rangeDescription: Place a mark of blood on an enemy. whenever the marked target is healed, all party members receive 5% of that healing (up to a maximum of 5% of the Death Knight's health). if a marked target that grants experience or honor is killed, all party members are healed for 10% of their total health. Lasts 3 minutes.Hysteria Requires 30 talent pointsCosts 1 Blood Rune, 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast, 2 minute cooldown30 yard RangeDescription: Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30s, increasing their physical damage by 20% but causing them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their total health every second.Heart StrikeRequires 40 Talent Points Costs 1 Blood Rune Requires melee weaponNext MeleeDescription: A debilitating attack that lowers the target's total health by up to 20% for 30 seconds.Dancing Rune WeaponRequires 50 talent pointsRequires Runic PowerRequires melee weaponInstant, 1 minute cooldownDescription: Unleashes all available runic power to summon a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 1s per 5 runic power, doing the same attacks that you do.
Tanking Rogue 3: Return of the Gaeowyn, or Illidan dies
You've seen him tank Shahraz and a 5-man Gruul run, and now Gaeowyn, of the Shards of Existence guild (US Illidan-A), has struck again. Technically, he gave us some teaser footage about this back at the end of his Shahraz video, but he's now released a full video of a successful Illidan tanking. As on his last 2 videos, Gaeowyn was able to use gear, talents, and buffs to stack enough dodge and parry to fully avoid all physical attacks (with a little help from Scorpid Sting and Insect Swarm, of course). Alas, it looks like this will be his last video. He says that he doesn't want to wear out the concept -- after all, there's only so many videos you can make of a rogue standing in front of a giant monster and dodging a lot. In addition, he's switched characters to a priest to help his guild with a shortage of healers. I'll miss the series, myself, if only because it's great to see people conquer challenges in unconventional ways. It makes the game a little fresher and a little more interesting. [Thanks for the forward, Allen!]
The tanking Rogue strikes again, 5-mans Gruul
You may remember Gaeowyn, the Rogue from Shards of Existence who tanked Mother Shahraz thanks to an insane amount of dodge via agility. She's struck again, this time taking down Gruul with herself tanking, along with a Paladin (with Blessing of Kings), a Shaman (with Grace of Air), a Hunter with Scorpid pet Sting, ad a Druid (using Insect Swarm in addition to Mark of the Wild, of course). After all the buffs and debuffs, she had 76.31% dodge, 12.16% parry, and 14.16% chance to be missed, resulting in 102.63% avoidance. She posted a link to her spec and gear for tank mode, too. The video's short, but it took them a little over 23 minutes to down him. They also got to discover that his Growth caps out at a 30-stack, and that it expires after 5 minutes.
Rogue tanks Black Temple boss Mother Shahraz
The guild Shards of Existence on the Illidan server hasn't managed to down Illidan himself yet, but apparently that hasn't stopped them from having a little bit of fun with the other Black Temple bosses. According to their site, they've been having a bit trouble with tanks losing their computers, which has in turn frustrated their attempts to put Illidan on farm status. But just because they're still getting their replacement tanks geared up doesn't mean they have to sit back and wait. Introducing Gaeowyn, The first Rogue to tank Mother Shahraz, the harem mistress of Black Temple. Notes Nihilum's news site, she pulled it off by stacking massive amounts of agility, while keeping enough expertise to cause adequate threat to keep the boss' attention. Raid buffed, she had 76.31% dodge, 12.16% parry, and 14.16% chance to be missed, meaning that she had 102.63% avoidance - just enough to take physical damage out of the equation. If nothing else, that alone makes me wonder if I could pull that off on my Druid tank - It certainly would make tanking Prince Malchezaar's phase 2 easier. Of course, Bears cannot parry, alas, so I'd have to make up some major ground somewhere. The video is a fun watch, especially at the end where it looks like Gaeowyn tries her hand at tanking Illidan. Is this a sign that we can expect Rogues to be fighting with Paladins, Druids, Warriors, and Death Knights for tanking spots come WoTLK?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Show your expertise
This week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors talks about Expertise. There's going to be a lot of math talk. It will probably have an error or two in it. Mr. Rossi needs to get some int gear for writing these columns. Expertise is useful for tanking and melee DPSing, so it seemed time to discuss it. Also, I've recently realized I can't actually hit the 'expertise cap' as a tank with the gear I can get. Sad but true.We live in interesting times since patch 2.3 here in warrior land. Whereas previous to this patch, we had good old fashioned bonuses to our weapon skill (remember the old Edgemaster's Handguards? Admit it, you wore these at 60. Some of you wore them at 70. You don't have to lie to us, we know.) we now live in the magical world of expertise rating and expertise. What is expertise, and what isn't it?Well, for starters, expertise is not chance to hit. Expertise can help you hit more often in an indirect manner... it reduces the chance for a mob to dodge or parry your attacks. so technically yes you'll be hitting them more often. But + hit items directly reduce the chance an attack will miss, which in World of Warcraft is entirely different from a dodge or parry (just ask any warrior trying to hit the Overpower button). Furthermore, expertise is not weapon skill. The expertise system replaced bonuses to weapon skill on items, but it did not actually replace weapon skill: weapon skill up to 350 (at level 70) still exists. Expertise is just (just, he says) a direct reduction of your chance to have your attacks dodged or parried. Unlike the old days with weapon skill bonuses, as far as I know there's no relationship between expertise and glancing blows. (If anyone out there has information that contradicts me here, please share it.) So if expertise isn't going to raise your chance to hit, why am I so excited about it?
Sunwell Radiance, nerf or band-aid?
The Dungeons and Raids forum has been discussion the existence of an interesting buff in the Sunwell Plateau. The Sunwell Radiance, an invisible buff that everything in the 25-man raid dungeon seems to have, is ticking off quite a few people. What this buff does, is it gives the mob/boss an additional 5% To Hit, and reduces your chance to dodge their attacks by 20%.This existence of this buff was hotly debated at first, but analysis of boss attempts and long nights of fighting in the Plateau have mostly proven it to be true. There are a few theories as to why this buff exists, the most likely being that it is a band-aid on a gearing issue as they move away from Crushing Blows. As far as I know, nothing in the raid dungeon can land a Crush. If I understand Druid tank mechanics correctly(and there's a chance I don't), removing Crushing Blows would make them nearly unbreakable. However, removing Crushing Blows and implementing this buff is decent enough way to put a band-aid on something they want to move away from before they're able to make sweeping changes in Wrath of the Lich King. There's a net increase in damage taken, but it isn't as massive as it sounds. Bosses are still being killed.If you're interested in this little(big) buff(nerf?), take a look behind the cut! Patch 2.4 sounds great, but what's in it for you? Find out on our Sunwell Isle page where we list the impact on classes, professions, PvP, Raiders and many other playstyles and interests including walkthroughs on the new Sunwell Daily Quests. Looking for more great info? Check out the WoW Insider Directory for the best of our guides and analysis.
Pimp My Profile: Pre-Heroic Protection Paladin
Welcome to the first edition of our new twice-monthly column, Pimp My Profile. Readers submit their Armory profile to us and every two weeks we pick one to review. We provide a Gear Check, Talent Tune Up, AddOn/Macro recommendations and more to help you reach your goals in the game.For the inaugural column, I asked my long time friend Jon to submit his new Paladin for da pimpage. He had recently shelved his Warrior in favor or leveling a new Paladin to 70 to be the main tank for our casual group. Having played the class for only two months, he had a few questions and concerns. Here is what he had to say:"I'm highly aware of needing to obtain the "uncrittable" defense numbers so far in order to get a defense anywhere near 490 I've found that I have to sacrifice too much spell damage which eats into my ability to hold agro. I abandoned a 63 warrior in favor of my Pally tank and the teary eyed joy that comes with being able generate lots of agro quickly on multiple mobs. Big spell damage is essential to my ability to tank for my trigger happy friends whose 5 man instance approach is more akin to "Who's Line Is It Anyway" rather than the production of Shakespeare most people reading this think their guild regularly produces."Jon's goals as a new level 70 Protection Paladin on the verge of tanking Heroics are: To attain uncrushability by equipping more avoidance gear (+Dodge,+Parry or +Block equipment) Regain his threat generation through +Spell damage Retaining his uncrittable status by keeping his Defense at least at 490 Let's look at Jon's current set up and what he, or any pre-Heroic L70 Protection Paladin, can do to achieve those goals.
A small defense skill change in 2.4 could herald larger things
It seems like a small change, but it could be the herald of something larger. It's a change to the way the defense skill is described in-game in patch 2.4, as reported by World of Raids. I'll let them describe it: * Old value: Higher defense makes you harder to hit and makes monsters less likely to land a crushing blow. * New value: Higher defense improves your chance to dodge, parry, and block attacks, makes you harder to hit, and makes monsters less likely to land a critical strike against you. So what does this mean? They've added things that have always been part of the skill, but have not been explicitly mentioned on the defense tab before, but what's most intriguing is what they've taken away. I'll explain after the jump.
Getting defensive about Zul'Aman tank gear
Player Faldomar of the Cenarius server has very unhappy to see that much of the tanking gear dropping in Zul'Aman is lacking in Defense. How is a tank supposed to do their job if they can't get the uncrittable benefit of 490 Defense as well as the boost to Block, Parry, Dodge and chance to be Missed?Community Manager Bornakk responds that Zul'Aman gear is not meant to be a full replacement of Karazhan tanking gear. In fact, the low occurrence of Defense was intentional. Instead Blizzard wanted to offer pieces that filled other stat gaps to compliment alternate tanking styles. Examples are Hit Rating, Stamina and Block Value.While it would be nice to have a full set of armor catering to our exact needs, the reality is that there are different styles of tanking (as well as healing, dps, etc.) Blizzard has chosen to service all those styles with their current system of modular mixing and matching. And if equipped armor doesn't put your stats where you want them to be, there is also the gem socket system to customize your toon even further.Moral of the story? Don't expect a custom suit off the rack. An outfit that is going to fit you like a second skin is going to come from attention to detail on your part.
Details of Book 12 lovin' for Champions
Turbine representative Graalx2 visited the The Lord of the Rings Online's official forums and revealed the beneficial changes players of the Champion class can expect in Book 12. The Champion is one of the most popular classes in LotRO, but its players have been crying out for some patch lovin' for a while now. We only recently learned that their cries were not in vain, but now we have specifics!Champions commonly requested a new, intermediary stance -- a compromise between the DPS-crazy but defenseless Fervour stance and uninspiring default one -- and now they're going to get it. The new stance will include the combo point bonuses of Fervour but not the straight-up damage bonus, and will merely penalize Parry and Evade rather than disabling them entirely.Graalx2 lists some other changes in the post as well -- upgrades to existing legendary skills, the conditional ability to use Sudden Defense while in Fervour stance, and more. Read the post for yourself for details. Also, he elaborates on the Legendary skill upgrades deeper into the thread. [Via Curse]
PTR Notes: Pet in position
Mania's Arcania is at it again with the Hunter testing. This time, she heard in the 2.3 patch notes that pets will apparently always try to fight from behind their target (thus supposedly removing Parry and Block from the hit table for those attacks, but apparently that's not always 100% either), and she decided to test it out.When her pet was tanking, she didn't see a change. That seems obvious-- if the pet holds the highest aggro, it would be pointless for them to run around in circles to try and get behind a mob. Unless the target was somehow stunned (Rogues use that tactic all the time, of course), but she didn't say that she was able to test that case at all.But when she or someone else was tanking, sure enough, the pet slowly circled around to the side of the enemy (which, I believe counts as "the back" in terms of theorycrafting), and attacked there. The problem was that the pet did move slowly, and during the whole time spent positioning, wasn't attacking at all.It sounds like Blizzard is trying to get some complicated code down here, and I wonder if the result is really worth the effort. But then again, for Hunters who raid, a buff to their pet's attack like this is probably very welcome. And the real reason for this change probably has nothing to do with attacking from behind anyway-- despite the short loss of DPS, keeping pets out of frontal AoE and cleave attacks is definitely a terrific benefit.
Ho Ha Dodge Turn Parry Block Spin
Daffy and his buck and a quarter quarter staff may be able to parry and block, but should mobs in WoW be able to block without shields or parry without weapons? According to Blizzard, yes. CM Drysc spins it this way:Consistency of base mitigation abilities for mobs allows for a consistency of combat, while still allowing interesting and engaging offensive abilities, differentiating defensive abilities, and various mob characteristic design. It's a bread and butter ground work that keeps mobs consistent in their ability to mitigate damage from all players. It can definitely create some weird situations where a grub really shouldn't be able to parry, but it can.Drysc goes on to suggest imagining that the grub quickly spins a silk sword to parry your attack. Similarly he suggests that moths parry with their "Fel Proboscis". So, it seems we should expect all mobs to be able to parry and block us while we fight them and to daze us while we run away, regardless of their species or appendages. It's a suspension of disbelief thing. We are supposed to rationalize or ignore how these creatures are doing these things and concentrate on the fun aspects of the game. Immersion into Azeroth suffers from balancing the gameplay experience.I would like to see more customization of the enemies we fight -- less consistency of the mobs and more classic RPG battle rules, like skeletons being susceptible to blunt weapons and bleeding attacks not working on creatures without blood. On the other hand, I've had more fun playing WoW for a longer time than any other MMO. Perhaps it is just the classic geek conflict: purist vs. fanboy (or fangirl in my case).Does the fact that grubs can parry bother you? Would you prefer less consistency and more believability? Do you think Daffy is better as Robin Hood or Friar Duck?
WoW Rookie: All you needed to know about stats, part 4
In the conclusion to this series of posts, we're going to be discussing the game's defensive stats -- which are probably only of minor importance unless you're interested in tanking. Though if you're one of those people (like me!) who has to know everything about the game, this is interesting information which will explain a lot of things about how damage is handled in World of Warcraft. If you're tuning in to all you needed to know about stats for the first time, it may be worthwhile to go back and read part 1 (covering the five basic attributes), part 2 (covering physical damage stats), and part 3 (covering spell damage stats) first -- but if you can't wait to know all there is to know about defense, resilience, spell resistance, dodge, parry, and block, keep reading!
WoW Rookie: All you needed to know about stats, part 2
For those of you who have been playing World of Warcraft since launch, this information is going to be ancient history. However, for players newer to the game, I imagine that many of the stats you'll find on armor and weapons remain something of a mystery -- and it's for the new players in the audience that this post was written. That said, if you haven't read our recent post attempting to explain the five basic attributes, you ought to start there, because the basic stats all impact the more advanced stats we'll be discussing here.In part 2, we're going to be talking about stats that improve physical DPS -- if that sounds interesting to you, read on!
