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Lichborne: A Death Knight statistics primer
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column by professor Daniel Whitcomb, who totally has a PhD in Death-Knightology from Ebon Hold University. It's the truth, I swear. I've seen a lot of people asking these questions as we've been getting into the expansion: Now that I am trying to gear by Death Knights, what stats should I get? What's good for a Death Knight? Which armor should I take. We've started getting in that somewhat in the last few columns, with advice on reputation gear and starting zone gear, but I figured today we should delve a little bit more into the why of Death Knight stats. Today's column will double as a little bit of primer on how Death Knights get their power, and what stats you should be looking for on armor in general to make your Death Knight the best it can be. It's not completely in depth, but it should get you well on the road to understanding just how Death Knights get all that awesome power and sexiness. We'll have 3 sections today. The Good are stats that are excellent choices for DPS, Tanks, or both. The So-So are stats which still do us some good, but are pretty situational or conditional in their usefulness. The Outcasts are those stats that you should avoid -- Well, I'd say avoid like the plague, but we're Death Knights. We like the plague around here. So I'll just say you should avoid them.
Lichborne: Death Knight Tanking
Welcome to the first post-Wrath installment of Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column. Join Daniel Whitcomb on the bleeding edge of a new and untried class.So Wrath is upon us, and we can finally start leveling our Death Knights on the live servers. That's right, this time it's for keeps. I'm pretty excited about that. One thing, though, that I haven't gotten to do yet on live servers is tank a dungeon. It's not that I don't want to, it's that 98% of the people leveling through Outland right now are Death Knights, so finding a healer is a bit difficult. Still, I did my fair share of tanking on Beta servers, and I played a Druid tank for years, and I'm figuring I'll do my fair share of tanking again at 80. Thus, I decided that this week is the perfect time to start getting ready to tank, even if Utgarde may be the first instance most Death Knights will get a group for. Let's get down to the basics:
Big Feral changes coming post-Wrath
We've been hearing rumblings about Feral stuff from Ghostcrawler, but wow. These are some big shake-ups. I'd better get it out on the table before I start raving about it: Bonus armor on items (rings, necklaces, trinkets, and cloaks) will no longer be multiplied by bear forms. So while leather leg armor with 253 armor will still give us about 1190, a ring with 100 bonus armor will only give us 100 (not about 470, as now). Feral staves will no longer have armor. However, armor modifiers will be adjusted as necessary so our net mitigation does not go down. An as-yet undecided deep Feral talent (such as Primal Tenacity) will gain the added effect of reducing the cost of shifting to Cat and Bear by 50%, stacking with Natural Shapeshifter for a total cost reduction of 80%. This will help PvP druids shift cheaper if they want to. Protector of the Pack's group requirement has been dropped. It now simply increases attack power by 2/4/6% and reduces damage taken by 4/8/12%, whenever you're in bear form. These changes will not be going live with Wrath of the Lich King; instead, they will come in a patch before the 3.1 content patch that introduces Ulduar. Call it 3.0.4 for now.
A look at Cultural Armor in Age of Conan
Age of Conan has been (in our view, fairly) criticized for lacking costume diversity. It's not quite Age of Strikingly Similar If Slightly Recolored Leather, but it's close. The huge revamp to the crafting system that was recently announced will do a lot to fix this, adding new crafting recipes for armor sets including the Cultural Armor sets.We had initially thought that the 'cultures' mentioned would be the three in the game currently - Aquilonian, Cimmerian and Stygian - but a recent feature on the new sets has added Acheronian to the list. It's accompanied by a lengthy piece of background text concerning niello, a substance that does exist in the real world, and will presumably appear in Age of Conan as a crafting material. The whole piece, however, is clearly a FunCom addition to the work of Robert E Howard, and while it's inevitable that the canon would have to be expanded upon in order to flesh out the game, we can't help but raise an eyebrow at a chronicle by 'Lascivicus' that mentions 'Deathcoils' and 'the Dark Lord'. A bit too black metal, perhaps. And Lascivicus? Come on, Funcom. The Bearded Clam was bad enough, but let's steer cleer of the silly NPC names, eh? Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!
One Shots: Hooray for matching armor
When Burning Crusade first came out, people at endgame started out in (generally) a pretty decently matched set of raiding or quested gear. Within a few levels, most looked like they'd been hitting Bob's Discount Armor and Party Supplies for gear. While it's not true of all quest armor that you pick up, Deadend sent in this screenshot to show that apparently Blizzard decided to go more towards a more uniform look in Wrath quest armor. Beats looking like an overblown pinata again, eh?If you're in Wrath, if you're in regular World of Warcraft, or if you're playing another non-Blizzard MMO altogether, we'd love to see your screenshots. Just snag some and send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name/server/group and a quick description of what we're seeing. We'll post it out here for everyone else to enjoy and give you the credit.%Gallery-9798%
Shifting Perspectives: Dude, where's my armor?
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, the Big Bear Butt Blogger, takes a brief look at the changes to Feral Bear armor in the upcoming Patch 3.0. Welcome back, my furry, feathery and barky brothers and sisters! Last week, I did a brief rundown of the many ways the Feral Druid mechanics are going to change in Patch 3.0 and Wrath of the Lich King. This week, I'm going to touch briefly on the changes to tanking changes and bear armor in general, and how they may change the way we view our class. Oh, and by the way... finding a picture of a slightly stoned-looking bear wasn't as easy as I expected. The lengths I'll go to for a joke!
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.
Crushing blows (mostly) removed in Wrath as raiding changes
We've known for a while that the developers have wanted to remove crushing blows, but now it looks like they're starting the process for good: Ghostcrawler has confirmed that crushing blows will now occur only when a mob is 4 levels above you, rather than 3. Since "Boss" mobs are automatically 3 levels above the max level, that means that if you're running level appropriate content, you should no longer have to worry about crushing blows at all. As Ghostcrawler explains it, crushing blows were originally meant to discourage you from attacking high level mobs and to make bosses more challenging. Now, they serve only the former purpose, and Blizzard is working on other ways to make bosses challenging without making them so random.
A look at the Death Knight's 'dungeon set' and other goodies
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/A_guide_to_Death_Knight_starting_gear'; Death Knights have it pretty good. Old school players will remember the pain of collecting our dungeon sets, such as the Shaman's The Elements or the Paladin's Lightforge Armor. These weren't class-specific armor sets, but for a long time they certainly represented the best of how some classes looked. Completing these armor sets were a real pain, with key pieces dropping off the end bosses of what were then the hardest dungeons in the game. Head pieces dropped off Darkmaster Gandling in Scholomance, leg armor dropped from Baron Rivendare in Stratholme, and the chestpiece from General Drakkisath in Upper Blackrock Spire.In Wrath of the Lich King, Death Knights won't be hoping for drops from bosses. They won't need to. If Wrath breaks as planned, Death Knights will be getting upgrades in every slot before they even reach Level 60 -- through quests. This includes a full complement of absolutely badass armor that isn't really an Item Set but a visually matched assortment of blue (literally and item level-wise) gear. I think I'll dub it the Deathplate Armor. Check out the gallery for a look at all the quest swag Death Knights get through questing. %Gallery-28750%
E308: Warhammer Online's customization options explained
One component of Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online that we haven't seen a ton of is character customization. We know that the collector's edition will contain 'rare heads', for example, but what of in-game options. That's exactly what the team set out to correct at last week's E3. Mythic's Adam Gershowitz lays it out for us - make sure to read below the cut for some exciting news about guild banners!I noticed earlier there was a demo for what looked like character customization options? Adam Gershowitz: One of the things we've been having a bit of a hard time with, because we show people live demos, is showing the breadth of customization in the game. So we've put together this presentation which shows off what we have. As you're aware, all of our equipment is career-specific. We've taken a page out of the FPS playbook – we want you to be able to identify a character's career from a distance. Expanding on that, we're showing the armor progression from low to high level in the game. We have over 400 armor sets in the game, they're split pretty evenly amongst the 20 careers. What you're seeing here are just three of the careers - the Warrior Priest, the Witch Elf, and the Chosen – going through some of the armor. I don't think it's all of the armor, maybe just half of it.
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: Frost spells and talents
The Frost tree was originally designated the tanking tree, and the Frost Presence will likely still be the presence of choice for tanking Death Knights. Interestingly enough, very few of the other spells and talents in the Frost tree -- with the exception of Icebound Fortitude -- really scream "tanking." However, some of them do scream "crowd control," which may amount to the same thing in the end -- just freeze, slow, or silence extra mobs until you have a chance to focus on tanking them. The "frozen" bonuses in some of the talents also suggest that Frost Death Knights may have a lot of good synergy with Frost Mages as well, assuming their frozen status afflictions are identical to each other. Below is a listing of some of the Frost spells and talents shown in the WWI Death Knight demo: Frost Spells: Icy Touch:Requires level 55Costs 1 Frost Rune Instant cast, 6 second cooldown20 yard rangeDescription: Deals 217 to 235 Frost damage modified by attack power and reduces the target's ranged, melee attack, and casting speed by 15% for 20 seconds.Chains of IceRequires level 56Costs 2 Frost RunesInstant cast, 16 second cooldown20 yard rangeDescription: Freezes the target in place for 3 seconds. the target regains 10% of their movement speed each second after breaking free of the chainFrost Presence Requires level 57Instant castDescription: The death knight takes on the presence of frost, increasing armor by 45% and threat generated by 25%.Mind FreezeRequires level 57 Requires Runic Power10 second cooldownDescription: Strike the target's mind with cold, dealing 100 frost damage modified by attack power and interrupting spellcasting while also preventing any spell in that school from being cast up to a maximum of 4 seconds. Obliterate Requires Level 61 Costs 1 Blood Rune, 1 Frost RuneDescription: A brutal instant attack that deals 100% of weapon damage plus 330 and 122 additional damage for each of your diseases on the target, but consumes the diseasesEmpower Rune WeaponRequires level 68 3 Minute cooldownInstant castDescription: Empower your rune weapon, immediately activating one of each rune typeIcebound Fortitude Requires level 72Requires Runic Power1 minute coooldownDescription: Consumes all available runic power, causing the Death Knight to become immune to stun effects and increasing armor by 50% for up to 12 seconds. Does not remove existing stun effects.Frost Talents:Frozen Rune WeaponRequires 10 talent pointsCosts 1 Frost RuneRequires melee weaponInstant castDescription: Imbue your rune weapon with frost, causing 29.9 to 92 additional frost damage, based on the speed of your weapon. Also has a chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to frost damage. Lasts 10 minutes.DeathchillRequires 20 talent points2 minute cooldownInstant castDescription: When activated, increases your critical strike chance with frost spells and abilities by 100% for the next 6 seconds. Howling BlastRequires 30 talent pointsCosts 1 Frost Rune30 second cooldownInstant cast20 yard rangeDescription: Blast the target with a frigid wind, dealing 278 to 302 frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Deals triple damage to frozen targetsMerciless CombatRequires 35 talent pointsCosts up to 3 talent pointsDescription: Your frost spells and abilities do an additional 20% damage per talent point when striking targets with less than 20% health.Frost StrikeRequires 40 talent points, Merciless CombatCosts 1 Frost RuneRequires melee weaponNext MeleeDescription: A strong attack that deals weapon damage as frost damage. Has a 10% chance to freeze the target.Hungering ColdRequires 50 talent pointsRequires runic power1 minute cooldownInstant castDescription: Unleashes all available runic power to eradicate all heat from around the Death Knight, freezing enemies within 10 yards and preventing them from performing any action for 2s per 10 runic power. Enemies are considered frozen, but any damage will break the ice.
WWI '08 Panel: Gear Resets
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And if current information holds, you'll be looking like one of his elves when you hit Northrend. Say goodbye to your cool-looking level 70 purple gear and say hello to starting over with greens. It'll be like reliving your junior high photo day -- or worse. Answering a specific question about the topic of ugly, mismatched armor during the WWI Q&A session today, the developer panel gave a cheeky answer: We ended up having a little clown action, ok, a lot of clown action in TBC. We aren't going to eliminate it, but we are going to improve it. You won't be happy 100%, but we could just solve it by making everything gray.I think this answer is perfectly reasonable. After all, it gives you an incentive to keep going for better gear: embarrassment. However, on the positive side, Blizzard will offer more armor customization in Wrath. For example, they will make Raiding sets look different from PvP sets. For me, this means if I spy someone wearing a clear-cut PvP getup, I'm going to get the heck outta Dodge lickety split.
First glimpse of Age of Conan PvP gear!
Naughty, naughty FunCom Devs. To get Age of Conan players salivating, and possibly to distract attention from some recent hiccups, they've posted a sneak preview of some very pretty new items. The character looks like a Ranger, but a Ranger dressed like we've not seen them dressed before. This is not the repetitive brown stuff we've been hearing complaints about. Take a look at it in its full glory, and we think you'll agree this is gear worth showing off.Reticent at first, AoC developer LordOrion has confirmed (in the midst of a coughing fit) that this is PvP gear. Along with the announcement some days ago concerning an imminent PvP consequence system, this whoops-how-clumsy-of-me 'leak' further confirms that the PvP system is seeing some serious tinkering behind the scenes. As we'd hoped, PvP rewards are definitely in the pipeline.So when is this going to go live? There's no clue as yet, but LordOrion has said there will be more treats coming on Friday. As soon as we see anything, we'll stealth up to it, give it a Pin Down bowshot and hammer it with Salvo before it has a chance to escape.UPDATE: LordOrion has just announced that the controversial jail system, originally planned to be part of AoC, will not form part of the PvP consequences: 'there are no plans for a jail system'.
Forum Post of the Day: Fordragon, Saurfang, and original armor
I don't know that we've ever credited a Forum Post of the Day award to an actual CM comment (though the GM scam comeback was pretty classic), but this post by Drysc deserves it if anything does: when asked by a player if Bolvar Fordragon will get any more original in the expansion, Drysc says that High Overlord Saurfang punched the originality right out of him. Burn much?And just in case you were worried that a CM would get away with making fun of what might have been a serious player question, Drysc gets burned right back when Aure asks if the same thing happened to Shaman armor sets. "Ouch," as many players say, is about right.Of course, none of the burning actually answers the questions, so I guess that's what we're here for. No, Bolvar probably won't be redone in the expansion: if the King of Stormwind storyline comes to a head, he may be on his way out anyway (although then who would fight off Onyxia's minions?). And be careful what you ask for with Shaman armor -- next thing you know, we'll have totems coming out of our shoulders (actually, that might be pretty cool). And yes, High Overlord Saurfang can punch the whatever he wants out of whoever he wants.
Singing the praises of shoulderpads
freelancer_bob (love that name) over on LJ has a good point: Shoulderpads seem to be the height of fashion in Azeroth. Not only do shoulder pieces call for the highest Arena rating in the game, but they're often the flashiest way to add a little flair to your character. While you can get the plainest of the plain before level 20, after level 70, they quickly and often turn into the wackiest thing your character can wear. Whether it's pure energy, lightning wolves, or even eyes (freakin' eyes!), Blizzard's artists seem to go overboard as much as possible, especially on the high end shoulder pieces.Sometimes it just gets out of hand -- how exactly are Hunters wearing Tier 1 supposed to use their peripheral vision? But just as Bob says, oversized and garish shoulders are a big part of what makes WoW Warcraft. If we walked around with realistic shoulder armor, the game would look that much more boring.So here's to the praises of huge, awesome-looking shoulders. We're looking forward to a lot of stuff in Wrath of the Lich King -- the new class, the dungeons, and the new continent to wander around on. But I'm also looking forward to seeing just how the armor designers will top having blindfolded statues of women on shoulder pieces. It'll be amazing for sure.
Essential Extras: Monaco aluminum case
If you're in the habit of carrying your DS in a pocket or in a bag, you've probably considered some sort of slim case or armor, if you don't have one already. Sure, the DS is pretty sturdy overall, but do you want to risk those hinges or shoulder buttons? Better safe than sorry, right? If, like us, you're interested in protecting your handheld, you might want to check out the above armor, the Monaco aluminum case. We spent a couple of days banging the slim-fitting case around and testing its functionality, and have mostly good news to report. %Gallery-22596%
Wrath will bring new forum icons
Tactial mentions on the forums that all of the Rogues (in fact, this is true about almost everyone) are still in Tier 4. When Burning Crusade first came out and we all reached 70, Tier 4 was where it was at -- some people were excited about being in Tier 4, even if they hadn't earned it yet. But nowadays, Tier 4 ain't that great, and yet all of our forum icons shows us in the (now old) armor.Drysc does say that the Armory is a click away from the forum icons, but surely Blizzard could take an afternoon and code a little customization into the icons. It seems like everyone else can render icons out of game -- why can't they? There is some good news for those looking for a forum icon update, though: Drysc says that when we're all level 80, we'll probably have new icons yet again, with shiny T7 on our characters.Which will be great -- until a few big content patches after Wrath, when T9 will be out and we'll all be whining that we're still dressed in T7. Thus goes the circle, the circle of life.
Leather on a Shaman and cloth on a Druid
Obstruce brings up a topic that seems obvious to some people but can drive others crazy: healers wearing less sturdy gear than they can just for the stats. I won't lie -- I've got a few pieces of leather on my restoration Shaman for the stats, but in general, I don't think it's a bad thing that healers and casters sometimes wear cloth for the stats, given of course 1) that they're not taking it from someone else who needs it, and 2) that there's not a better piece of normal gear for them to be wearing (it's an upgrade).Obstruce's aunt disagrees, especially with Shamans and Druids -- if for some reason they pull aggro, wearing leather or cloth will only make things harder on the group. Which is true -- if I'm wearing leather (or even cloth) on my Shaman, I'm not going to have near as much armor as I would wearing the mail I'm supposed to wear. But in a group where all members are doing what they should be, I should never get hit anyway. If a healer's getting hit, it's a good 80% of the time not their fault -- it's the tank's or DPS' fault for not keeping aggro where it belongs.So no, I don't see any problem with a Druid or Shammy (or even a Paladin, though there's a lot of nice healing plate out there anyway) wearing less than they're meant to. Warriors are definitely not in the same situation -- while yes, some of that Hunter mail may have lots of Agility on it, and that will help out your crit percentage, you get so much more bonus from Strength and Armor that it's just not worth it. Casters can steal Mage and Priest gear (as long as they're not actually stealing it from actual Mages and Priests) if it's an upgrade, but Warriors almost never have a reason to slum it up in mail.
