Death-Knight
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The Daily Quest: Mountain o' mounts
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. OutDPS teaches you how to hunt Deathbringer Saurfang, and also has an episode of the Hunting Party Podcast you may have missed over the holiday. NoStockUI features an addon that every mount collector may be interested in. Oh gosh, whatever is a rogue to do with this bountiful mountain of Frost Emblems? Who will tell us their purpose!? Affliction warlocks and death knights, Killing 'em Slowly has a great enchantment guide for your raid gear. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Blood Sport: Beginner's guide to arena, part III
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column. Listening Music: Modeselektor's Tetrispack. Allison Robert offered a challenge to our most beloved columnist last week. Ms. Roberts has chosen a clever and palatable piece with Richard Shindell's On-A-Sea-Of-Fleur-De-Lis. And now we come to my retaliation. My wife recommended our musical selection today -- it just happened to be on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. How fitting. We love this song, albeit mostly for the intro. Upon your first listen, if you correctly predict the timing and type of shift in the first thirty seconds, serious e-props to you. To wit, Robert: pan flute > no pan flute. Your move. Last Week: part two of our beginner's arena guide. We featured the cute ukulele kid who pretty much controls the internet right now. After that, we discussed frequently asked questions from new arena players. We talked about how to spec and what team composition to choose, with two different types of answers (easy and long). Today, we'll be talking some very basic class strategy. If you know your class inside and out, you'll know what I'm going to say when it comes to your class and arena. You can still learn about other classes here. I've written over 2500 words about individual class perspective inside arenas, that's a lot. Full article after the break.
The Daily Quest: Stealing from Icecrown
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. WoW in an Hour really enjoys doing the new raid weekly quest -- nice raid rewards, under an hour of play. Chill of the Grave has some great suggestions for Death Knight gear to be found in the new 5-mans. HTFTMFW takes you through quick strategies for the first four bosses in Icecrown. Starnaglethron has a declaration of love for the Dungeon Finder (which most of you would probably echo). And finally, Pike has some bad news for you Glyph of Bestial Wrath addicts. There's a new glyph in town and he'll up your DPS. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Ask a Faction Leader: Darion Mograine
WoW.com's prestige in the community has afforded us the opportunity to speak to major Azerothian leadership figures on any subject, and we're letting you, the reader, Ask A Faction Leader! We recently spoke to Tirion Fordring, Highlord of the Argent Crusade, and he shed light on several key issues, including bad-luck blades, volume control, dead horses, holy cows, and killing or being killed. In this installment of Ask A Faction Leader, we'll be sitting with Darion Mograine, Highlord of the Knights of the Ebon Blade. Our first reader question: Dearest Highlord, I was looking to inquire as to what the rhyme and reason is behind your surprisingly red (or auburn?) hair is. Most death knights like myself either have a nice frosty shade of white or a deep glacier blue hue to their hair. Look all I'm saying is your eyes glow blue and your hair is red, it doesn't take a prophet to see the clash there. What would you say the % chance of you getting a haircut to match the rest of your fallen brethren is? Sincerely, Altarius, Death Knight Darion replies: The first question asked is one about my hair color? Someone has their priorities in a strange order. But yes, it is an understandable question.
Tier 10 armor set gallery
Blizzard finally released the last of its Tier 10 sneak peeks, the long-awaited shaman set, and it did not disappoint. Now that all of the waiting is over -- at least, the waiting for sneak peeks -- we've assembled a gallery of the Tier 10 sets for all classes. It looks like Blizzard really took their time on these sets. Some I may not like as much as others, design-wise, but they all have top-notch texture work and attention to detail. Check out the wool pattern on the shaman set, or the fiery brands on the warrior set, or the two-toed hunter boots. A lot of the sets are adorned with moving parts, too, like the druid shoulders, which snap and bite periodically. And most of them follow a very cohesive theme -- "stuff we've seen in Wrath up to this point." The warrior set should immediately remind you of King Ymiron, the rogue set is, well, a geist, and the death knight set might as well be called "Arthas Jr." So, check out what you've got coming in Patch 3.3. With the new Dungeon System, a week or so of heroics will get you a full set of Tier 9 gear and get you all set to face Arthas, if you're up for it. %Gallery-77820% Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part I
Ahh, lovely Radiohead. The entirety of Scotch Mist (which is In Rainbows played live) will be our listening music, as I expect today's article to be somewhat...lengthy. Starting out with "Weird Fishes" is a nice touch -- you gotta love Radiohead's set order diversity. By the way, I'm going to continue supporting the Blood Sport column with listening music, due to overwhelming positive response. If you have any suggestions for songs, please let me know in the comments below! Instead of talking about minor changes, I'm going to try to only hit the major ones here, as this is a giant patch. If you think I skipped something important, please let me know via the comments below and I'll reply. Today, we'll be covering pet resilience, the Will of the Forsaken nerf, death knight, and druid changes, and what they hold for arena combatants. Expect the other classes and item/glyph changes soon! You can find all about Patch 3.3 here. Check out what the last major patch of WotLK has for gladiators and challengers alike after the break!
Creating "special purpose characters" with the XP toggle
I love this, as I seem to love most of the things that Mania does. She's just posted that she's put together a whole guild of hunters, all with XP turned off at different levels, for one purpose: testing pets as they move up the leveling ranks. She says she cheated a little bit to do it -- transferred alts from other realms, and it's Alliance-only -- but just having the idea to put something like this together is super creative. We've talked about people who've leveled up one of every class before, but I never considered just how much the XP-off option changes the game in terms of what Mania calls "special purpose characters." Of course, raiding at level 60 is one way to use it, but you can go even lower than that -- want to farm Runecloth without it getting too boring? Roll up a death knight, and leave him in Felwood to grind on Furbolgs. Really love running, really running, Scarlet Monastery with your friends? You can all roll characters to 39 (or lower, if you're looking for a regular challenge), turn XP off, and leave them camped outside the instance. Turning XP off means you can create characters for almost any purpose, and having heirloom items (especially if you buy cloth, which any alt can wear, even if it means they take an armor hit in some cases) means that leveling them up doesn't take more than a few days of free time. Lots of interesting ideas to play around with there for sure.
GC clarifies ArPen's stat removal and others
Ghostcrawler's hoping this answer "gets read," so we'll help. A player asks why Blizzard is worrying about armor penetration with the Scourge Strike ability -- isn't, they ask, ArPen getting removed in Cataclysm like we heard at BlizzCon? The answer is basically no: Armor Penetration rating is getting removed from gear (along with Block value, Defense, Attack Power, and a number of other gear stats), but Armor Penetration as a stat is not getting removed from the game. Talents and other abilties will still depend on removing and penetrating armor, even if your gear selection won't revolve around it. They'll still be balancing it, but as players choosing gear, it won't be a part of our calculations there.Make sense? Just because you don't see, say, Attack Power on gear doesn't mean you won't have an Attack Power number governing how much damage you do. It just means that the AP you have will come from stats like Agility and Strength (depending on your class and a number of other factors) rather than gear adding directly to AP. Of course, as Ghostcrawler says, these changes aren't even coming until patch "4.0" and the Cataclysm expansion, so there's still lots of gear choices and balancing to do before then.
Sneak peek at Tokyopop's Death Knight manga
Not long after Tokyopop announced its 2010 schedule, which actually includes a late 2009 release, BlizzPlanet unveiled scans from the first chapter of Dan Jolley and Rocio Zucchi's World of Warcraft: Death Knight. The story features Thassarian, an NPC first encountered in Ebon Hold and later in the Alliance airship flying above Icecrown. Jolley delves deeper into Thassarian's past, telling his history as a human Alliance soldier with dreams of rising through the ranks but who eventually becomes ensnared under the Lich King's employ.Intended to give insight into the different World of Warcraft classes, the Death Knight manga is the first of a series of class-focused full-length stories. Rocio Zucchi is a 22-year old Argentinian female manga artist, and her work on this book is simply sensational, if the first pages are any indication. Jolley employs a lot of flashbacks in the preview, and Zucci handles the storytelling transitions deftly. The book hits the shelves on December 1, 2009, and if you enjoyed Tokyopop's take on the World of Warcraft universe, Death Knight looks to be an equally entertaining read.
Blood Sport: Patch 3.2.2, the times they are a-changin, Part II and a half
I don't care for a lot of music that was made in the last decade. The Killers are something of a breather for me. They're one of those bands I'm glad exist. When I'm forced to listen to a terrible radio station, and hear change your mind sandwiched in between auto-tuned, unoriginal dross -- I'm satisfied there is still music being made that can intrigue. (Brandon Flowers has some epic bard tier 10 shoulders there too)This is part two of part two of a three part article. Confusing? Join the fun! Surprising Patch 3.3 timing, i.e. wrenches in cogs, is a blast!In our first installment, we covered pillars changing shape in great detail, and also mentioned a few other tweaks. Our second article dealt with five classes -- paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, and warrior. Warlocks were left out of the 3.2.2 patch notes. This article is going to talk about the other four classes - death knight, druid, hunter, and mage.Being "TheArenaGuy" here at WoW.com lends to forcing myself to a very balanced perspective on classes. It makes me feel guilty if I understand armor penetration less than spell penetration. Well, actually, it doesn't because ArP is confusing. The main thing I'm trying to say here is that I don't want to write anything that is opinionated without being grounded in something. I don't want to make any mistakes when it comes to reporting to our viewers what changes will impact arena games (and how).I'm satisfied to critique changes instead of having the responsibility to make them. The developers have very difficult decisions to make with regard to arena balance and we should applaud them for making decisions in the name of equity, even if some of them might be unpopular.With that, let's get into the juicy, juicy 3.2.2 patch notes.
Ask Mr. Robot
Simulators for WoW are nothing new -- Rawr, for instance, has been around for years, and is steadily snowballing into a one-stop shop for simulating all classes (it's not there yet, but I still love it). In case you're scratching your head at this point, a simulator is like a spreadsheet, but much smarter -- instead of using some general approximations to calculate how your gear is going to change your DPS, it basically goes ahead and plays a model version of the game for you. Edit: apparently Rawr is not a simulator -- it uses formulas that come up with the same answer every time, much like spreadsheets. We still love it anyway. What is new about the simulator I want to talk about today, which seems to be entitled "Mr. Robot," is that it runs on the web, in Microsoft's Silverlight framework (Silverlight seems to have come about because someone at MS saw Flash and decided they wanted one too). This means it's cross-platform and there's nothing to install (well, except Silverlight, but you may have that already). They're only doing sims for Death Knights right now, but the team says more classes are coming (I hear Warlock is next, but don't quote me).
If Cataclysm were to include a new class, what would it be?
This morning I want to play the hypothetical game a bit and talk about what would happen if Cataclysm included a new class. Not only what it would be, but how it would fit into the overall balance of WoW. And just to be clear, there won't be a new class in Cataclysm. Numerous Blizzard employees have stated that doing one new class an expansion would be too much work (paraphrased, don't go complain to your favorite blue that this was a direct quote). The Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King was the first class introduced to WoW, and it's inclusion in the game has had mixed reviews. Most folks agree that the class provided a great new element to play in the game, however its balance in raids and PvP is something that is constantly under the microscope. Ghostcrawler has mentioned numerous times that the Death Knight has taken up more time to balance in Wrath than any other class. This is problematic for numerous reasons, but has been able to be handled nicely by the designers and programmers (I'm sure there'll be some who disagree, however show some restraint in your disagreement).So now for the hypothetical part -- if Blizzard were to introduce a new class in Cataclysm, I would suspect that it would be the healing counterpart to the Death Knight. Mechanics of the class would probably operate similar to the Death Knight's rune system: each small heal or heal over time would be castable based on an available rune, which would in turn generate runic power for larger heals. The class would rely less on spam type heals (such as the Paladin, to some extent), and more on preventative heals (such as the Druid, to some extent).
Breakfast Topic: The one-of-every-class club
A friend of mine just dinged 80 again the other day, and it put him into a community that we joked about: the "one-of-every-class" club. Like a few of our readers (including William B, who emailed us a while back), he now has ten 80s, one of every single class in the game. It's not something I'd ever do, or ever want to do, but certainly there are probably quite a few people out there who've gone all the way to the highest level with every single class.As Turpster would say, it definitely gives you a nice overview of how all the classes work and what their strengths and issues are. And of course it'd be handy to run instances with -- you can roll into endgame instances playing whatever role you want or your guild needs to have.
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.
McCormick and Schmick's special BlizzCon menu
Truth be told, I didn't get to try a lot of the local cuisine in Anaheim this time around at BlizzCon -- we did have a nice dinner at the Anabella before the meetup, and we did try the buffet breakfast at the Indian restaurant in the Ramada Plaza, but other than that, most of my food came from the caterer in the press room. But at least one local restaurant got in the BlizzCon spirit -- seafood-and-steak hotspot McCormick and Schmick's apparently put a special Blizzard-related themed menu together for conventiongoers to pick from. And it's pretty funny -- they must have someone on staff who plays Diablo and WoW a lot.I especially like the "Noob Entrees," the "Death Knight Filet Mignon" (it can dual wield two flavors while tanking your taste buds?), and the Grizzly Hills Blueberry Shortcake. Which actually sounds really, really good -- it does kind of seem like Grizzly Hills would grow some great blueberries, doesn't it? Good show, M&S. All of the BlizzCon folks were pretty unmissable in Anaheim this past weekend, so it's cool to see a local busines play to the temporary clientele.
BlizzCon 2009: The Future of Tanking
We tanks are apparently living in interesting times. Whether you're a Druid, Paladin, DK or Warrior tank, how you do your job is in for some serious changes. Itemization is about to take some serious twists and turns in Cataclysm, and stats we've come to depend upon simply won't exist anymore. What does this all mean for those of us who generally go about our game 'lives' keeping the ire of our enemies focused on us and away from the more fragile sorts?With Attack Power on gear gone, and classes more directly gaining AP from stats (which to be fair is pretty much how most tanks do things now) and even more importantly, with Defense gone and all tanks gaining their critical strike removal from talents as Druids do now, we could very well be looking at the end of tanking gear entirely. It's possible, perhaps even likely that in Cataclysm your DK, Warrior or Paladin tank will wear the same gear (perhaps switching in a shield in the case of warriors/paladins) to tank as he or she does to DPS. For an idea of what this might look at, we can consult the current itemization of Druids with the Survival of the Fittest talent.
The lost art of crowd control
The emblems changes are driving traffic back to the Heroics, and I love it -- 5-mans are my favorite thing to do in the game, and there's nothing more fun to me than sitting down with a group and trouncing a Heroic, reeling in all of the gold and loot we can carry. But there's something missing, still, even in these glory days of achievements and Stone Keeper's Shards and Emblems of Conquest. Yes, it's crowd control. Groups are still gung-ho on AoEing everything in their way, and Blizzard hasn't shown any indication, even in the design of the new instances, that crowd control is anything they want to keep around. I can't remember the last time I trapped something in a group on my Hunter, and I'm sure that the last time I did, some Death Knight broke it right open, Death Grip-ped it back into the group, and then AoE'd it down to nothing.Bornakk actually replies in the thread that we're just being nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, and that even when CC was required, people whined that they needed to have certain classes in their groups. But what class doesn't have CC these days? Even Shamans got their CC, just as it wasn't actually needed any more. Crowd control added some semi-serious strategy even to trash fights in instances, and while we originally heard that it would come back at some point, Blizzard certainly seems to be done with it.But we can be patient. The new instances in 3.2 are light to completely empty on trash, so maybe they're waiting for Icecrown to really put our CC skills and coordination to the test. I play a Hunter at endgame currently, so I might be biased, but I do love 5-mans, and I do miss the extra coordination and teamwork that a big CC-required pull provided. Hopefully they can find a way to mix that back in without requiring certain specs or classes to be along for the ride.
Breakfast Topic: Loving the class you hate
I wasn't terribly thrilled with Death Knights when I first saw them. I didn't like the idea of yet another plate class (since I play a lot of warriors), and their whole "recently freed from the thrall of the Lich King" deal didn't do all that much for me. They didn't seem that different from Paladins, to be frank (which is because they're not: thematically, they're the old D&D Anti-Paladin/Blackguard idea) and although I dabbled with them from time to time, I didn't think I'd go the distance.The first crack in that sense of disdain for the class was the starting zone experience. Anyone who's done it knows it's one heck of a well designed start to finish piece of gameplay. It was so well done, in fact, that I actually rerolled several DK's in an attempt to find the one race I really liked, secure in the knowledge that not only would I start at level 55 and be Outland ready by the end, but I'd enjoy the trip. After that, I blew through Outland on a Tauren, Gnome, Draenei and Dwarf before finally settling on my Night Elf here. Heirloom shoulders made the already painless starting zone even more rapid and Outland fell away like a solid fuel booster rocket lifting me to Northrend before I'd even finished Nagrand.Now here I am at level 80, and for once I actually have a third alt at max level (not counting the old days when I had four level 60/level 70 warriors - I'm sad to report I only have three 80 warriors now) of a different class. Gearing the DK's been interesting, and as I've run myself through various content my DPS has been steadily increasing, my understanding of my specs steadily expanding (frankly, I love Blood as a DPS spec, it has so many cooldowns for AoE damage and a nice bag of tricks without being as fiddly as Unholy, and I can't say enough good things about Frost as a tank spec) - I have to admit, I've totally turned around on DKs. They're awfully broken in my eyes (even after the most recent nerfs to their cooldowns and tanking health) but I cannot pretend to be having a bad time playing the class.So now I turn to you. What class turned out to be a surprise hit with you once you tried it out?
WoW Moviewatch: Rise from your Grave
This review will actually be a little difficult to write, but mostly because I don't think the editors would like it if I spent the entire time typing "Oh my god, look at the cute undead gnome!" over and over again. I'll have to rely on "content" and "writing" to get by.Rise from your Grave is a quick story-based music video by Little Sweegy. Turns out, Little Sweegy is Gnomechewer's girlfriend. She dedicates the movie to him, thanking him for helping her learn how to create machinima. It seems like he's done one hell of a job of teaching, because Rise from your Grave is an awful lot of fun.I like the grainy effects used to give the video a semi-horror feeling, or maybe just a nostalgic vibe. The gnomes running around in action is pure win, and a welcome relief for anyone who might be a little Belfed-out right now. Also, I find the idea of a Gnome Death Knight raising companion warriors from the grave to be absolutely compelling, in every way I can imagine. If my own Death Knight weren't already created, I might be rolling an undead Gnome even now.Great job, Sweegy! I can't wait to see more from you. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
Which class gets invited as what?
Veritable Avarice, a new blog on moneymaking in WoW, took a break from financial discussion and looked at class representation in tank, DPS, and healing roles by filtering and comparing data available from WoW Popular. Spec population was then checked against class population data available from Warcraft Realm's census and three live realms. Data differences, according to VA, weren't statistically relevant, and he/she is pretty sure that the numbers are at least a ballpark representation of which class is most likely to be filling a particular role within a group. I play a Druid, so that's really what I feel comfortable commenting on here. While I can't speak to the ultimate accuracy of the numbers, I do a lot of pugging and have to admit that VA's data seems pretty close to what I've seen on my own server. The tank numbers are also consistent with a few things Ghostcrawler's mentioned recently concerning the overwhelming population advantage still held by Warrior tanks, although I wonder whether the Feral statistics are somewhat inflated here by the overlap between Bear and Cat specs. Feral tanks have all but vanished from 5-mans on my server, and it's not uncommon for me to get comments from healers that I'm the first Bear they've healed in months. Less surprising is the representation advantage held by Druid healers. Trees are insanely good in Ulduar, and between this, the rise of the Death Knight, and the de-suckaging of the Protection Warrior spec, that probably accounts for the gradual disappearance of the Bear. Also thought-provoking is just how few Druids hold a share of the DPS pie.I'd love to hear from members of other classes on the data and how closely it dovetails into their own experience. There's a quick note for Warrior players (or anyone interested in the DPS graph) past the cut, as there's a small mistake on the relevant graph.
