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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2011's warrior in review
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. In the past, I've done Year in Review columns and liked them well enough. The first one I wrote was in 2007 and discussed rage normalization, which to my eyes was the biggest and worst change the warrior class had undergone in The Burning Crusade. Flash forward four years. Here we are in 2011, and rage normalization has been with us for a year and the sky didn't fall. This has me in a contemplative mood. The future is Mists of Pandaria and a new talent system, but right now, it's time to look back at what were the biggest developments for the warrior class. I don't necessarily mean good or bad, here. These are simply profound changes, things that may have also affected other classes but which definitely affected us. While 2011 was a year we made contact (because we're melee, we have to make contact) it was also a year of a great many changes. Mastery I've talked about it before, but mastery really has been a game-changer for warriors this past year. Fury warriors got so much out of the stat before patch 4.1 that the amount of mastery they have at base was nerfed from 8 points to 2 points. It worked, after a fashion, because until patch 4.3, it became impossible for fury warriors to assemble enough mastery to make them interested in the stat again. It may be possible with Dragon Soul gear for TG fury, but with arms the dominant DPS spec for warriors in Dragon Soul raids right now, it's not likely to be tested exhaustively.
Arcane Brilliance: New Year's resolutions for mages
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we leave 2011 behind and look toward 2012, which I predict will be the magiest year ever! A new year is upon us, my wizardly cohorts. It is a time for reflection, a refractory period when we bask in the afterglow of the year that was and then take a quick shower to rinse off the stink of it. But most importantly, it's a time to look forward, to set new goals, to examine ourselves and determine how best to progress, to improve, and to somehow avoid ending the world in a fiery apocalypse that only John Cusack can save us from. In that spirit, I thought this eve of the new year might be a good time to take an honest look at the mage class, examine our weak points, and conjure up some ways to shore them up in 2012. I figure we still have a at least a few months before Armageddon, and I can think of no better way to spend those last few moments of our existence than by killing as many warlocks as possible. I'll do a full column on gearing up in 4.3 in the coming weeks, but for the time being, suffice it to say there is some phat, epic mage loot out there right now, and all you need to do is take it. Preferably from a warlock's smoking corpse, but we'll take it however it comes. We're at the point now in this expansion where the epics are flowing with almost ridiculous ease. If you've been waiting to level a mage, it has never been easier to get that mage fully kitted out in purples than it is right now. And if, for some reason, you've been neglecting your mage, now is the time to get him up to speed.
The Light and How to Swing It: An updated look at the prot paladin rotation
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. With some of the buffs from 4.3 (specifically the buff to Seal of Truth, when Judged) along with ever-increasing stats and item levels, our rotational priorities have changed as well. In order to keep everyone up to date on the latest theorycrafting being brought down from Mt. Sinai from Theck over at Maintankadin (as well as a refresher for the rustiest among us), this column today will look over single-target and AoE threat rotations and talk about what is the most optimal way to roll face. First things first -- the right setup Talenting is important when it comes to producing threat. If you're sacrificing a key DPS increaser like Reckoning for a monstrosity like Hallowed Ground, you're going to be doing yourself a disservice in the long run. No matter how cool a damage-dealing talent sounds (Eye for an Eye is case in point here), unless it brings the proper numbers to the table in the sims, it's not worth it if optimal play is your goal. This is the pretty standard setup. I included the three heaviest-hitting prime glyphs in there as well. With regard to the talents, you can also go a little deeper by swapping the second point out of Pursuit of Justice and finishing off Grand Crusader. The second point is worth about 241 DPS with 2% hit/10 expertise.
Scattered Shots: Hunter predictions for a new year
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. Another year of hunting is almost at an end, and that means it's time to dig into the vast past of December 2010, when Cataclysm was fresh and shiny and new and SV hunters were dominating every DPS chart, a time before aspect dancing and when pets still had a happiness system (kind of). That's right, it's time to dust off my 2011 hunter predictions and see how I did. It's also time to make new predictions for the state of hunters going forward in 2012 and take some guesses at what's going to happen with the class in the tumultuous year ahead. Looking back at some of the changes, it's interesting to see the patterns and similarities in the class over time. SV is again the top DPS spec as it was a year ago -- only now instead of blowing away all comers with pretty demonstrably overpowered DPS, SV is at best middle of the pack. In practice, the hunter class is one of the poorest DPSers this tier. SV got nuked to death in patch 4.0.6, much as an overpowered BM spec got over-nerfed into oblivion in patch 3.0.8 in early Wrath, except that while overnerfed, SV got it much gentler than BM did back in the day. The nerf bat is hitting a bit softer these days. Let's hope that's a trend that continues.
The Light and How to Swing It: How to evaluate your DPS using World of Logs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! When it comes to tanking or healing, it's pretty obvious when you're doing things correctly. The metrics for these important roles typically involve staving off death as long as possible, whether it be through drawing a monster's ire or invoking the name of some unseen deity to mend the wounds of one's allies. As members of the damage-dealing brigade, we ret paladins can be said to adhere to the same requirements in that we attempt to kill our adversaries before they kill us, but truly gauging a DPSer's value involves more than just looking at meter addons like Recount and Skada. Today, we will discuss the use of a very versatile and amazingly useful tool known as World of Logs in the context of retribution paladin DPS. Buffs gained In my opinion, buffs gained is one of the more handy parts of World of Logs. Here, you can see what buffs you gained throughout the course of an encounter, from Bloodlust to Divine Guardian and beyond. Notice that if you click on the pound sign (#) next to any ability, a graph comparing your damage done with overall raid DPS will pop up at the top of the screen. Underneath that graph will be your selected ability, with green boxes representing the uptime on the buff or debuff. The check box next to the name of the ability will overlay this uptime information on top of the graph itself.
Encrypted Text: Remembering 2011 as the year of the rogue
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 questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here, like how to sneak around wearing a gaudy sweater. With 2010 fading fast, rogues apprehensively looked forward to Cataclysm and how it would shape 2011. We were the crowned kings of Icecrown Citadel, with armor penetration and attack power as our top stats and both assassination and combat battling for first place. Mutilate rogues still tied down by Hunger for Blood, and combat rogues were spamming Blade Flurry on cooldown for the attack speed increase. Looking back, we have grown since Wrath. Each of the rogue specs has evolved and found a niche, and even subtlety can make a reasonable claim for a raid spot now. With the massive talent system revamp, the developers struggled initially to balance each spec against the others. Rogues entered into 2011 and Cataclysm with a whimper, as the loss of armor penetration and the conversion of attack power to agility was not as smooth as Blizzard would have hoped.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priesting through the Hour of Twilight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. He is also scientifically proven more beautiful than boomkin blogger Tyler Caraway. Players of World of Warcraft had been clamoring for quite some time: "We love escort quests! Give us more escort quests! We want a dungeon that's nothing but one big escort quest!" Well, good news, person who doesn't exist and never will -- Blizzard designed an instance just for you! Hour of Twilight is pretty much one big long escort quest involving Thrall. Dude's trying to deliver the Dragon Soul to Wyrmrest Temple, and a whole bunch of bad guys are trying to stop him. A whole bunch of bad guys with loot. I think that's the part I cared about the most. The loot. Saving the future was merely a side effect. Getting the loot requires you to put up with a lot -- one of the most annoying fights in Cataclysm, in my opinion. I'm talking of course about the Asira Dawnbreaker fight. Thankfully, though, her shadow priest frustrating silences are avoidable. Sort of.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing priest strategies for Warmaster Blackhorn and Spine of Deathwing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Assuming you survived last week without turning into a puddle of priestly sludge or quitting your guild (cough, cough), it's now time to move on to the sixth and seventh encounters in Dragon Soul, Warmaster Blackhorn and Spine of Deathwing. Just like last week, I want to remind you that you'll need to be familiar with the basic mechanics of these encounters to follow along with my priest healing guide. For Warmaster Blackhorn, try checking out LearnToRaid.com for a video guide and Icy Veins for a written guide. Warmaster Blackhorn is a pretty straightforward fight as far as healing is concerned. The key is to keep your eyes open to what is going on instead of staring intently at your raid frame the whole time. Much of the healing required will be in response to effects you'll see on the ground first, so if you're good at clicking players instead of health bars, you'll be way ahead of the game.
Lichborne: 2011 in review 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. As 2011 draws to a close, we have come to an end in some places. Patch 4.3 has been confirmed as the last major raid patch for the Cataclysm expansion. Certainly, Blizzard could always change tracks and create another raid or two if it can't get Pandaria up and running fast enough, but we can probably assume that most new class balancing will be put off. With that in mind, it's a good time to look back on the year that was 2011 and see what death knights have been up to, what's happened with our class, and maybe make a few guesses about what we can expect going forward. 2011 was strange for us. We were never, perhaps, horribly underpowered, but we had some weird quirks, some strange deficiencies, and a lot of mechanical stuff to worry about. If I had to give it a title, perhaps I'd call it the year of contradictions.
Totem Talk: Healing Hagara the Stormbinder and Ultraxion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. The siege is, by now, well under way, and now that you're done playing with slimes, it's time to move forward. Your next opponent is Hagara the Stormbinder, a shaman who has fallen under the sway of the aspect of death and now works toward the destruction of the world. Luckily for you, she's an enhancement shaman, so she's pretty easy to deal with. The major theme for this boss is movement. Every major ability that Hagara has boils down to your moving in the correct manner in order to avoid what would be absolutely lethal damage. Moving and healing has never really been a shaman's strong point, but if you use your abilities wisely, you'll have her down in no time. (For full details of the encounters or full raid strategies, please read Ready Check for WoW Insider's boss guides.)
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid. And we're back once more! In our last edition, we went into some of the tricks that you can use in order to boost your DPS in the first four encounters of Dragon Soul. This time around, we'll be rounding out the rest of the encounters from the instance. Overall, the second half is a bit more challenging than the first half, both in terms of DPS requirements and raid coordination. This is where you're going to have to push yourself the most, so be prepared to pull out all the stops. Ultraxion You'll need two tanks for Ultraxion, which will taunt off each other as they get Fading Light. There have to be three players who stay out for every Hour of Twilight. These players will have to use heavy damage reduction cooldowns or immunities, or they will die. There are three different crystals that spawn for healers, each that have their own unique buffs to help the raid survive. Let them fight over who gets what.
Shifting Perspectives: Feral fighting in End Time
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! So there I was, just minding my own business and trying to get the smoke out of my gear (being a flaming kitty is cool and all, but the dry cleaning costs are incredibly expensive), when one of those bronze dragons showed up. She looked human, but I can smell dragon a mile away (which incidentally has not helped much, being as the things seem to be around every corner these days -- I thought dragons were rare, mystical creatures?). "Champion," she said. "My master, Nozdormu, needs your help urgently. The list of heroes powerful enough to assist him in his time of need are few. Please come at once!" I glanced at the list. Apparently, "few" means half the population of Azeroth. Still, I was bored. "So," I said, wearily. "What needs killing now?" "He does," she replied. "We must kill his future self, who is preventing us from going to the past to get the item needed to save the present." "Right. Wait, what?" I answered, confusedly. "If he has a future self, than that means we've already succeeded, and ... fine. Just tell me where to go, before I have to think about it again." End Time, the first of the new 5-man instances, is arguably the easiest. In order to get to not-Nozdormu, you'll have to go through two of four echoes, which are alternate future versions of today's faction leaders. There's a bit of trash, but nothing that can't be AoEed down. As such, we'll jump right to talking about the echoes, which are more interesting.
The Light and How to Swing It: 5 clever tricks for maximizing your Dragon Soul healing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. If you're a holy paladin with a pulse, there's no reason not to be raiding Dragon Soul. The Raid Finder allows us healers to find groups in minutes, with no strings attached if you have to leave early. The normal versions of the bosses are all accessible for guilds across the spectrum of dedication levels. Healing a raid in Dragon Soul gives you access to the best gear available and provides us with the greatest challenge we can face today. I was looking at my World of Logs parses from the old days, and I was surprised to see how bad my HPS looked then when compared to more recent parses. The first step in preparing yourself to heal in Dragon Soul is to realize that the instance isn't built like Bastion of Twilight or Firelands. While the Ascendant Council repeatedly punished the raid for clumping and Baleroc crushed our tanks, many fights in Dragon Soul involve tight stacking and tons of AoE healing. Optimizing our AoE healing has become a key to succeeding in Dragon Soul.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 61 to 80
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Leveling in Northrend was made easier with patch 4.3's reducing the experience necessary by 33%. In addition, many quests in Outland and Northrend were retuned from group quests to soloable, and the major quest givers for instance quests were moved inside the instances in most cases so that players using Dungeon Finder to level through them could turn them in more easily. These changes make leveling through the oldest content in the game (with the Cataclysm revamps, Outland and Northrend are in fact older content than the 1-to-60 game) easier than it has ever been. That makes now the perfect time to talk about how to level through these 19 levels and get ready for the 80-to-85 content. Since we talked about 1 to 60 two weeks ago, we'll follow much the same format.
Totem Talk: Leveling a shaman in the Cataclysm era
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. This week, Josh Myers, the dean of DPS shaman, and Joe Perez, the Robespierre of restoration, do a Dragonball-Z style fusion dance and combine their class knowledge to bring you a concise shaman leveling guide. So, young padawan, you want to play a shaman. You're following in the footsteps of some of the greatest characters in World of Warcraft lore -- Nobundo Farseer, Thrall, and yours truly. Just know that you have the full support of myself and Mr. Joe Perez, and we'll only judge you a very small amount for not choosing shaman sooner. The shaman class has three distinct specs that each fulfill very different roles. Enhancement, which we'll talk about first, is a melee DPS class, which means standing very close to bosses and whacking them repeatedly with blades or maces imbued with flame and wind. Elemental is a ranged caster DPS class, preferring to stand at a safe distance while hurling balls of lava and electrocuting enemies. Restoration, the last spec we'll talk about, is a healing spec, revitalizing friends by creating super-soothing puddles for them to stand in. Seriously.
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking Hagara and Ultraxion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. Three down, five to go. Or, four, if that's how you prefer to count it. The difficulty is starting to ramp up at this point, and you'll soon find that it's all uphill from here. Hagara will test the awareness and mobility of your raid team, and Ultraxion will provide the first major gear check for the raid. Both will set you up for the pursuit of Deathwing and the closing out of the raid. Hagara Before I get too far ahead of myself, let's start with the next boss on our hit parade: Hagara. This is a very straightforward fight for you. There's some deadly burst that can be avoided with fancy footwork and an add you'll need to pick up, making the most exciting components of tanking the fight. Thankfully, to break up the monotony, there's some calisthenics to keep the blood flowing and the raid moving. You'll want to start by tanking Hagara off to the side, somewhere between the middle and the edge of that large, central circle of the platform. The reason for this is when an ice phase begins and Ice Waves goes out, you don't want to be standing in the center where she spawns them. If she's off to the side, she has to run to the center and then unleash the ice. So don't get you and all your melee DPS killed! (Only the DPSers' dying is acceptable.)
Scattered Shots: Pet talent possibilities in Mists of Pandaria
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. We all know by now that talents are going to work a lot differently in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, but what we don't know yet is exactly what's going to happen with our pet talent trees. Not only that, but Blizzard itself isn't entirely sure what it's going to do about them, other than not wanting to leave them the way they are now. We do know that we will get to choose what family our pets belong to. If you tame a cat, you can choose to make it a tenacity, cunning, or ferocity pet. But pet talents are a bit up in the air. There are currently two possibilities for pet talents. The first is to remove pet talents entirely, making your pet's special abilities and spec -- tenacity, ferocity, or cunning -- the only unique features of the pet. Thus, every ferocity cat is the same as every other ferocity cat. This option is dull and dreary with nothing interesting or engaging about it. Call it the Shaman Option, in other words, or the Blah Option. The other possibility is to revamp the pet talent system so that it more closely resembles the new character talent system in MoP. In this system, we turn some pet talents into spec abilities, and then give an abbreviated tree of meaningful choices. I call this the Awesome Option -- or in other words, the Hunter Option. You're going to love it. Here's how the Awesome Option could work.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid. Overall, the first four bosses of Dragon Soul are a fun lot that focus more on your ability to raid overall and less on your specific capabilities. There is a solid chunk of movement in them, so you should be prepare to deal with that. Practicing how to drop Mushrooms while on the move is a huge asset in this raiding tier. Styling this week's advice after McCurley's 5-second strats, I'll briefly detail the encounter and any tricks that you should know about heading into the game. Keep it simple, after all. Morchok Morchok should be tanked relatively where he stands. After each Blood phase, the tank can just pick him up where ever he happens to end up. No real positioning is needed unless you start to wander too far to the sides. The raid team should all be grouped up within 25 yards of the boss as often as possible. A dedicated group of ranged DPS should run out to every crystal that spawns. You need seven players for this in 25-man. Run and head behind spikes once they've spawned, positioning yourself either between two spikes or just at the side of one so that you can continue to DPS.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priesting the Well of Eternity
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. He is also scientifically proven more beautiful than boomkin blogger Tyler Caraway. Greetings, fellow time travelers! Last week, we had a lot of fun creating all sorts of terrible paradoxes as we shadow priested through the End Time futurespace. So much fun, in fact, that after a quick stop at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart for supplies, I figured we'd continue our time traveling journey this week. But instead of moving forward in time, we're moving backwards -- all the way back to the Well of Eternity. If you're doing these new patch 4.3 5-man heroics in order, Well of Eternity is the second you'll come across. There are three boss fights, but in my opinion, the first is the most enjoyable. The reason is a pretty selfish one: the Shadow Walk/Shadow Ambusher buffs that can turbocharge a shadow priest's DPS into the stratosphere.
Encrypted Text: Expanding your collection of rogue resources
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 questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. While death knights have only been around for a couple of years and retribution paladins are tasked with rediscovering themselves every few months, rogues have remained consistent throughout WoW's entire lifetime. We've obviously received tweaks and changes along the way, but the rogue of today looks an awful lot like the rogue of the past. Over the years, the rogue class has been dissected from every angle, and our studious brothers and sisters of the shadow have discovered its secrets. There are three main areas of rogue research: mathing out how the class works (and yes, mathing is a verb), picking the right gear, and figuring out the best specific strategies. The best and brightest rogues are constantly monitoring our DPS models to ensure their continual accuracy, compiling lists of the best gear and how to get it, and detailing their guides for dealing with players and raid bosses alike. I can say with a tremendous amount of bias that Encrypted Text is the best source for rogue info, but of course there are other sites that are useful as well.
