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Warlords of Draenor: Periodic effects changes
Warlords of Draenor is about to make some sweeping changes to the way we play World of Warcraft -- in a way that is elegantly reducing those tiny little annoyances that we've dealt with for so long, we've nearly forgotten they were there. One of those items on the streamlining checklist has always been the matter of Damage over Time and Healing over Time spells. Unlike flat casts or attacks, DoTs and HoTs distribute both damage and healing evenly over a brief period of time, through periodic ticks of either damage or healing. These can be layered over direct damage and healing spells to deal more damage and boost those direct cast damage and heal spells to greater effect. Sounds good, right? Yes and no. There are a few weird quirks with periodic damage spells -- casting a DoT while under the effect of a buff like a trinket proc currently means that every tick of that DoT will be boosted by that trinket proc -- even if the actual buff for the trinket has worn off, an effect called "snapshotting." In addition to this, haste modifies DoT and Hot uptime. The more haste you have, the faster your DoTs will tick. In some cases, stacking enough haste meant that your spell would actually get an additional tick of damage or healing -- which led many players to look for that mysterious magic number of haste that would allow this effect to occur. A lot of this is changing in Warlords.
Spiritual Guidance: The mechanics of shadow priest haste
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains sheer purple destruction down on all who oppose him. Proceeds from this week's Spiritual Guidance will be donated to Li'l Sebastian's favorite charity, The Afghan Institute for Learning. Haste. It's a really easy to understand concept, right? It makes spells get cast more quickly. The end. Except that's not quite the end. Haste reduces the casting time of our spells, sure, but there's a limit to how much it can do so. Haste also make our DOTs tick more quickly, meaning there are certain levels of haste where our DOT spells gain an "extra tick." These factors give different weights to each point of haste, creating weird, nebulous concepts such as haste soft caps and haste plateaus. With a little bit of math, we can pinpoint the exact value of haste where these caps and plateaus are said to exist. But how much weight should we give these numbers? And how should these numbers affect how we gear?
Encrypted Text: Dissecting rogue stats
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any article suggestions! Do you remember when armor penetration was all the rage? While combat rogues lusted after all the ArP as they could get their hands on, the other physical DPS classes shared the same desire. I forgave all of the feral druids who asked for the leather gear with armor penetration on it; I know we have to share the agility-based leather gear with our furry friends. I didn't put my foot down until hunters, warriors, and even death knights started rolling on our stuff. While having such a powerful stat allowed us to scale competitively, it also created a massive amount of gear competition. Blizzard's developers decided to end armor penetration's reign as the top stat and actually named a successor to the throne -- agility. Agility is now a rogue's best stat, and since it's always on our gear, we never have to worry about whether we'll see it or not. The plate DPS classes now only want strength, and so our precious leather is safe from their clutches. The stat redesign also shifted the balance of power between the other secondary stats, and we saw several stat functions changed as well.
Spiritual Guidance: Adapting to 4.0.1 priest healing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Sundays, Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests and fails to play the heartstrings of young priests. Some people just aren't cut out to be teen idols like Fox Van Allen. I was hoping to be done talking about 4.0.1 (mostly because I'm sick of typing out all the little periods), but it seems there are still a few things to be said. At this point I've talked specs, talents, new abilities, glyphs, gems and reforging -- and now the last thing I seem to have missed is the part where I tell you how to play. Or at least how to adapt. Or ... something. Either way, I suspect it's one thing for me to tell you guys how to play in a theoretical sense, two or three weeks before the patch, and then another thing to tell you exactly how to play when the patch is actually out. I had one reader ask, "What abilities should I be using?" I had another ask for a flowchart. Pft! Do you think I'm funny enough to make flowcharts? Silly readers, I leave flowcharts to the pros. Anyway, I thought on this relevancy vs. redundancy idea for a while, mostly because I'm extremely paranoid that I bore you guys at every second. (Dawn puts on a silly hat. Are you not entertained!? /Paranoidparanoidparanoidparanoid ...) I eventually decided that the best thing to do was in fact leave it to the pros -- though I'm still not giving you guys flowcharts. Instead I've got our regular priesty friend Kinaesthesia on board to give a full testimony on playing holy right now, as well as a new name you guys may not know, Mr. Raegx of Vigil. Raegx approached me a few months ago, asking if I needed any help, and I stuck him in a file box. He's out now, though, so let's see what the two of them have to say.
Spiritual Guidance: Reforging, gemming and GCD tactics for 4.0.1 priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Sundays, Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests while simultaneously battling her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen. This week, Dawn has been practicing her peacock pose so she can challenge Fox in Wii yoga. Now that Blizzard has announced when Cataclysm is being released, we finally know how long we've got left in Wrath of the Lich King to finish what we want to get done (or twiddle our thumbs and play more StarCraft 2). The past two weeks, I've talked about getting ready for patch 4.0.1, and since we've got a bit more time than I expected to cover Cataclysm healing, leveling and more before the release, I'm going to go ahead and tidy up the last of my 4.0.1 advice by updating my recommendations for priest gems, and tackling reforging. I'll be paying some specific attention to the soft haste cap and GCD (global cooldown) so you'll know how to stay min-maxed for the last two months of the expansion.
