dual-wielding

Latest

  • Ghostcrawler: Death Knight dual wielding to get a makeover soon

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    05.23.2009

    Good news to all you Dual Wield Death Knight Diehards: Ghostcrawler recently popped up on the forums with a simple answer to your woes: "Next Major Patch."Apparently, the next major patch (I'm guess it will be patch 3.2) will be seeing more tweaks to Death Knights, at the least to get dual wielding viable again. There's no word on what form this tweaking will take, which is to be expected. Balancing Dual Wielding and Two handed weapons has always been a tricky to near-impossible for other classes, so the skeptical part of me still wonders if it's possible. Of course, it could also be the two-handed weapon partisan in me speaking as well. Any basic solution such as creating a two-weapon strike seems like it could leave two-handed Death Knights out in the cold, at least for DPS. Still, we have that earlier mention of possible dual-wield dedicated tree, so who knows how extensively they'll revamp whichever one they choose to allow dual wield optimization. We do already have some 3.2 feature announcements, though, so who knows, maybe class change information is up next. We'll keep you posted.

  • Lichborne: Dual Wielding and Tanking on the 3.1 PTR

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    03.09.2009

    Welcome to Lichborne, where Daniel Whitcomb is ready to help you roll with the punches (and Death Knight changes) coming from the PTR.We had a new build hit the PTR this week, and with a week gone by, now's a good time to take a deep, focused look at the changes and see how they're shaking down. They're mostly pretty solid nerfs, and a lot of Death Knights aren't too happy about them. Still, beyond people concern about the fact that they are nerfs, the question remains: Were they merited, and where do they leave us? Let's discuss.

  • Lichborne: Top Death Knight DPS builds and patch 3.1

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    02.23.2009

    Welcome to Lichborne, where we've pretty much gone insane waiting for the PTR, and are thus stuck in the Death Knight starting zone pretending to be a pretty pretty princess on our very own pony. The problem with writing a Death Knight column at the moment is that there's so much that's changing in 3.1 - So much that will change, on the test servers at least, sometime in the next few days. With a promise that Unholy, especially, will probably be nerfed significantly, almost any advice I give right now could be outdated in very short order. That said, after some thought, I figured I might as well take a look at nerfs. Namely, I'd like to take a look at a few popular Death Knight builds, how we already know they'll change, and what other changes may be coming to them.

  • Lichborne: Death Knight DPS gear for Naxxramas

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    01.25.2009

    Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly class column for Warcraft's newest class, the Death Knight.Ok, I know I've been focusing on tank quite a lot lately, but I'm here to say that I swear I haven't forgotten about the DPS. To prove it to you, this week's edition of Lichborne is all about gearing up to hit 10-man Naxxramas as a DPS. For the most part, your gearing choices as a DPSer are going to be more or less the same no matter what your spec. For the most part, I'm going to be following the statistical information I outlined in the Death Knight statistics primer, which means the gear I pick out will follow this basic rule for stat choice: Hit rating to the 8% cap > strength/attack power > critical strike rating > expertise > everything else.

  • Lichborne: One more round of Death Knight changes in 3.0.8

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    01.11.2009

    Welcome to Lichborne. Your host is inflicted with the space plague this week, but has done his best to write for you people anyway, so be grateful, you hear?We've covered 3.0.8 pretty extensively, between Mike Sacco's coverage of the initial round of changes and our week before last discussion, but the devs weren't done yet. With 3.0.8 likely to make it to live servers in the next week or two, this is probably a good time to discuss the Death Knight tweaks that have gone in the last few PTR updates.

  • Lichborne: Howling Blast and other patch 3.0.8 follies

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    12.23.2008

    Welcome to Lichborne, WoW Insider's weekly Death Knight column.Yeah, I definitely have to put out a mea culpa here. Alas, Lichborne is a little bit late again. I have a valid excuse, I swear. It involved a flaming plum pudding, a flailing geist, and a sudden snowstorm at the Shadow Vault over in Icecrown. But after an emergency eye transplant by a Forsaken Death Knight who used to be a member of the RAS, I'm back in the saddle and this week's column is only a few days late. Anyhow, this week I thought I'd take a look at the deeper implications and meanings behind some of the Death Knight changes coming our way in 3.0.8. Our newest Mike has summarized and analysed quite a few of them, but I have just a few more things I want to say, especially about a new change that was added in a recent PTR update.

  • Lichborne: Dual wielding and weapon scaling

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    09.15.2008

    Welcome to Lichborne, your (slighty late this week) weekly window into the zen of being a Death Knight. As the dev team works to firm up Death Knights and get them ready for release, there is a debate that rages on among beta testers and the Death Knight community at large. I don't mean whether the recent huge nerf to Death Knight damage was justified. Rather, the argument I'm talking about is over the clash of 2-handers and dual wielding. 2-handers have been the Death Knight weapon of choice in the modern era of the game up until recently. Frostmourne, the ultimate Death Knight weapon, is a massive two-handed claymore. In the early to middle part of the classic end game, Baron Rivendare was the Death Knight that loomed large in everyone's thoughts, and he too wielded a much coveted two-handed runeblade. Because of this, many Death Knights have no plans to ever pick up 2 weapons. The massive bloody two-handed runeblade is the classic Death Knight emblem. It's part of the lore and the feel of the class and, they say, there's no reason to change it.. At the same time, many other Death Knights say that dual wielding is here to stay. New prominent Death Knights such as Lord Darion Morgraine dual wield. It's now part of the lore, and 2-handed lovers should just suck it up.

  • Epic weaponsmithing weapons no longer unique

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    04.28.2008

    MMO Champion has pointed out something that should make Warrior and Shaman weaponsmiths rather happy: all one-handed epic weaponsmithing weapons will be non-unique as of 2.4.2. Combine this with the fact that the Main Hand designation is being taken off of most weapons as well, and you can see where this is going. Dual-wielded Dragonmaws, anybody? If you can scrape together the mats, 2.4.2 should be a very good time to be a dual-wielding weaponsmith of the non-Rogue variety. The 2.7 speed on the mace and axe weapons means that your Windfury and Whirlwind will be very happy. All you have to do now is hope you have enough badges, gold, or pull with your raid leader to get all the Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes ready to go.

  • Build Shop: Shaman 0/45/16

    by 
    Chris Jahosky
    Chris Jahosky
    03.18.2008

    Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.It's been a long while since there was a Shaman build featured on Build Shop, and I think it's time that changed. I'm looking at an Enhancement build this week that's built for raid damage yet provides a good amount of utility and group buffs. As expected, the majority of the points go into the Enhancement tree, but instead of putting the remaining points into Elemental to buff personal DPS, this build places them in Restoration in order to provide stronger utility for the raid and additional hit chance for you.

  • Bounty Hounds lets you blow up aliens

    by 
    Andrew Yoon
    Andrew Yoon
    08.03.2006

    From the developers of Hello Kitty: Rescue Mission (hey, developers gotta pay the bills somehow, right?) comes the PSP-exclusive shooter Bounty Hounds. It's been a long time since we last heard about this game, but Namco Bandai has blown the covers off this game big time. The main gameplay involves you dual-wielding Halo 2-style, and you'll obviously have to choose the right weapons for the right occassion. In a feat of technical marvel, the developers have managed to squeeze a feature that we thought only the PlayStation 3 could do: real-time weapons swapping. With 500 weapons and items you can equip, and a unique energy field mode, this game is looking up to not be just a good shooter, but an original one as well. Span the mighty Internets to get your hands on multiple videos and perspectives:Gamespot:PreviewInterviewIGN:Progress ReportScreensMoviesGameVideos:Combat GameplayChoices GameplayAttacks GameplayMelee GameplayRanged Gameplay