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Lichborne: Racial abilities for death knights
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. With all the upheaval regarding death knight abilities and DPS happening right now, it's sometimes a good idea to go back to the basics and figure out some of the stuff that underlies a good, solid death knight. One of the most basic cornerstones of choosing a death knight is choosing your race. Since every single race can be a death knight, you have your pick, and since there's a race change service, you don't even have to stay the same race forever. Personally, I tend to say that you choose whatever race feels right for you -- but for those who want to pick a race (or change your current race) based on what racials are "best," this guide is for you.
The Light and How to Swing It: Beating the GCD
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine how do deal with our biggest limiting factor: the GCD. Playing a holy paladin is a lot like participating in illegal street racing. We drive as fast as possible, have no respect for law or our fellow man, and we live our lives a quarter mile at a time. Well, at least the last part is true. We play our class one second at a time, with only a moment's time to process our raid's status before making our next move. We play in a GCD-capped environment: limited by the game's own internal pacing instead of our mana. It's because we're already capable of casting as fast as possible that our multi-target healing suffers. Most other healers can increase their number of spells cast per second to boost their healing output, whereas we're limited by the fact that we can really only heal one person per second. There are some tricks we can use to beating this GCD limit, and therefore raise our output over simply mashing Holy Light for five minutes a time. Knowing how to work efficiently in these short, one-second windows will ensure you're healing every last bit possible.
The OverAchiever: Return of the Glory of the Hero
Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. -- Firefly, "Our Mrs. Reynolds." Just as a recap, this is what we've covered so far in the OverAchiever: Glory of the Hero series: Part I: Ahn'kahet Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme Part III: Drak'Tharon Keep Having finished the first of the two "troll dungeons" in Wrath, let's head to the second: Gun'drak! Gun'drak is interesting in that it houses both the easiest heroic achievement and (arguably) the most annoying all at once, What the Eck? and Less-rabi respectivey. If you're planning on doing all of these achievements in one go (which may or may not be a good idea depending on group composition), I would recommend taking a group with a Bloodlust/Heroism (you may have seen me make mention of this point before) and several interrupts. A Shaman with Reverberation can be useful on Moorabi. You will also need an off-tank and off-healer for Share The Love. Snakes, Why'd It Have to Be Snakes? As a note, this achievement seems to be individually- rather than group-based; you can get it even if someone else gets wrapped. However, if you're interested in getting multiple people the achievement all at once, there are ways to ensure it doesn't happen at all.
New racial abilities for Wrath
It looks like Blizzard isn't done tinkering with everything for Wrath of the Lich King. This time, they've turned their attention to racial abilities, which many have pointed out to be imbalanced. Kalgan dropped by the forums to answer a good question regarding the Orc racial Hardiness, which grants a passive 15% resistance to stuns. It's been nerfed a long way from its original 25% resistance, but the poster made a good point about the game's direction towards reduced durations instead of resistances.Kalgan responds by saying that Hardiness was being changed into exactly that -- an effect duration reduction of 15%. He also goes over all the other racials, some of which were changed, others of which were buffed, and yet a few others of which were inevitably nerfed. The changes should make it into the next Beta push. Check after the break to see the complete list. [CLARIFICATION: This isn't the complete list of racial abilities. Abilities not listed here are unchanged or, if they will be changed, will be mentioned in the future.]
Ask A Beta Tester: Death Knights, bears, and buckets
Welcome back to another edition of Ask A Beta Tester! I've stolen the reins from Elizabeth and Alex for a day, so let's get into last week's comments and get some questions answered. Death Knights: Multiple people had lots of questions about Death Knights, so I'm just going to list a bunch of them and then delve into what's going on: How Customizable are Death Knights? Do they get unique skintones, or unique racials? As to Death Knight Customization, the big difference they have right now are glowing blue eyes for every race. You can see that in action in our Death Knight racial gallery. Unfortunately, I think the Blue Eyes look sort of pasted on for most races, so I'm hoping they keep tweaking that to make them look more natural. We've also been promised different sounding emotes -- every Death Knight will have a deeper, sepulchral voice.
Breakfast Topic: Should Death Knights get unique racial abilities?
So with WoTLK fast approaching, there's still plenty of discussion and debate about that whole Death Knights being all races thing. We've already covered the lore aspect, but another thing lot of people have been discussion is how Racial abilities will work with Death Knights. Some people are concerned that abilities like Gift of the Naaru aren't something a Death Knight steeped in shadow should be able to use. Now me, I think that if the Naaru can forgive the Blood Elves for M'uru, they can forgive Draenei Death Knights and give them back Gift of the Naaru. Still, commenter Clayton sent an intriguing thought into WoW Insider's secret headquarters the other day: Who says Death Knights have to use racials? When you consider what a Death Knight is, there's at least some measure of sense to it. Death Knights have undergone a radical change. They're suffused with dark energies, they have forsaken what they knew of love and life and light, they have forsaken whatever skills they knew in the past, all to take up the Runeblade. It is true that not all Death Knights become actual undead, but the total control the Lich King exerts over them leeches away much of their former identity. Because of this, it seems possible that Death Knights could have lost their connection with their racial identities, and through that, their racial abilities. This could also be a quick and easy way to ensure a bit of balance between the various races. There's a whole lot of considerations to made with racials and Death Knight abilities. Will Arcane Torrent combined with anti-magic tanking abilities just make Blood Elf Death Knights too powerful against casters in PvP? Giving Death Knights their own unique set of "racials" based around their class would be an easy way to sidestep this, and probably justifiable since Death Knights are their own seperate "hero" class category. Then again, it might put them under undue pressure to make special racials for all other hero classes as well, so they might want to stay more flexible. Which side of the issue do you fall on? Should they keep it simple and just keep the racials like they always have? Or do the Death Knights need a whole new set of racial abilities, and if so, what?
