Wednesday, July 21, 2010
New layout now, new era later
So after taking a break and seeing how Death Goddess changed her layout, it prompted me to redesign my own layout and try something new. It's not as dark as it was but I think it still represents the coldness of a Death Knight. I'm going to be working on getting a new banner image as well as the current one doesn't really fit anymore.
Best estimates are putting Cataclysm on the horizon, hopefully before Christmas like WOTLK was. Lots and lots of changes have been put out there since the Beta started. Some have been met with praise, others...not so much. Overall, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. This represents a new era to Warcraft overall. It will be interesting to see how the story plays out throughout this expansion. But more so right now, the focus is on the mechanics changes.
******SPOILERS AHEAD******
The biggest change is the talent trees. Talent trees are now 31-point trees and you will be locked into your chosen tree until you have spent 31 points in that tree, after which you can spend your remaining 10 in another tree for a total of 41. Needless to say, this severely limits your options for specs.
Taking a look at the newest version of the DK talents (which can be found here), the trees are vastly different already.
I had a post going for the new talent changes but as I just noticed, Wowhead has updated to the newest talent trees which is missing some of the talents I had outlined in this post. So I'll start over. You'll never notice anything different as I hadn't posted the original yet.
One thing I do like about the redesigned talent trees for all classes is how you receive 3 abilities that define that spec as soon as you make that your chosen talen tree. I'll detail each of the DK given abilities at the start of each section.
==Blood==
Blood receives Heart Strike, Vengeance, Veteran of the Third War and Death Rune Mastery right from the start. On a side note, Vengeance will be an ability given to all tanks, be it Druid, Warrior, Paladin or Death Knight.
I'm still having problems coming up with a spec on this one. There are so many great talents in the Blood tree that it limits options from the others. I'm still on the fence about Blood Parasite. I'm just still not convinced this is a useful talent for tanks. I like the change to the talen but just not convinced of it's utility.
I'm very happy that we now have Bone Shield though I wish/hope for Anti-Magic Zone though I can understand why they wouldn't give it to us. It would benefit the tank more than it would a group taking damage. With a DK in melee range, it would be useful for a DK to be able to fall back into a group of ranged and shield them or throw it down for the melee, keeping the tank from needing to move around.
A lot of other talents are mostly unchanged, though where they appear in the tree has changed. Blood Tap is now in Tier 5, for example.
Blood Presence is now the tanking presence, just thought I'd mention quickly for clarity sake.
==Frost==
Frost will receive Frost Strike, Icy Talons, and Blood of the North.
There's a load of great changes to this tree. I'll admit it now, I'm very biased towards Frost pretty heavily. I highly enjoy dual wielding and the Frost based damage. One of the biggest changes I noticed with this round was the removal of the Runic Empowerment talent. I'm somewhat pleased that this was removed as it was a source of confusion for me. It wasn't very clear how useful it was going to be and if other specs were going to want it as well. As I'm not currently in the beta, I'm not sure if it was useful at all or not. In it's place, they have moved Nerves of Cold Steel into the first tier. While this change technically will allow for other specs to allow a degree of dual wielding, it's probably not recommended without Threat of Thassarian.
Improved Icy Talons no longer has additional talent requirements, it now resides in the 4th Tier.
Speaking of the 4th tier, there are two new talents of Pillar of Frost and Brittle Bones. Pillar of Frost seems to have replaced Unbreakable Armor completely but retains the instant +20% Strength while Brittle Bones provides a permanent increase of 4% to Strength as well as increasing damage taken by your victims of Frost Fever by 4%.
Interestingly, there is a talent called Might of the Frozen Wastes now that allows upto a 45% chance to generate 100 RP when wielding a two-handed weapon. How useful this is remains to be seen. In the current spec I have generated for Frost, there's already going to be an abundance of RP being generated. If it continues with the trend from Wrath, generating this much RP is almost wasteful as it can't be dumped fast enough without missing rotation on other abilities.
Lastly, Frost Presence has taken up the main DPS presence for DKs unless haste proves to finally be very useful to Death Knights, in which Unholy Presence may be the winner.
==Unholy==
Unholy receives Scourge Strike, Master of Ghouls, Reaping and Impurity.
I'll admit it, I don't know a lot about Unholy DPS. I leveled in it only briefly and was not impressed. I just can't get a hang of the pet mechanic. To me, if I wanted to play a hunter or a warlock, I would.
Anyway, one of the new talents is Resilient Infection (which is not yet implemented. This seems to be a more PVP based ability as there isn't much in PVE that actually dispels debuffs from a PVE target.
Unholy Frenzy is a new talent to Unholy but looks to be the replacement for Hysteria.
Corrupting Strikes is also new, increasing damage from Plague Strike and Scourge
Strike by 30%, which is a pretty significant amount.
Sudden Doom has also been moved over from Blood.
Overall, Unholy doesn't seem to have changed a lot other than these changes detailed here. As always, if I've left something out, please do tell me about it in the comments.
All in all, I'm pleased with the changes over the past couple weeks to the DK trees. I feel like the Blood tree could be cleaned up a bit more really but would figure out something to do if not. I am very pleased with the way they have went with the Frost tree and looking forward to being able to have a tank spec and a DPS spec again instead of two tank specs. I hope that the changes continue to improve over the coming months and look forward to Day 1 of Cataclysm.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Goodbye....for now
While I did not start the blog with the hopes of becoming the next Wow.com or even to the readership level of fellow DK blogger Death Goddess, I've come to face that no one reads this blog. The fact of it is really that I feel the DK blogging community is rather extensive and perhaps over saturated. I'm not bitter about it. It's a fact of playing the new class for an expansion. I'm not sure but I would be willing to venture that during The Burning Crusade content, the amount of Blood Elf Paladin blogs were high. Same for Draenei Shamans.
In the amount of time since I've starting writing here, I've seen many changes come about for Valoren and his state in the world. The biggest one being the departure from the Razorbacks, joining AWOL, and becoming the main tank for the Friday night ICC10. Now, even that has changed. Not only will I be the MT for this run (which is moving to Thursdays to allow for a continuation on Fridays), I will also be the Raid Leader. This is due to the fact that we have a large military presence in the guild and there is a deployment of some of them to Afghanistan. One of the non military guild leaders has approached me and asked me to lead this run, at least until they return. This will be at least a year. The main reason I decided to start this blog was for a writing outlet for me. It's often said "Write what you know", and I know World of Warcraft, so why not write about it? I've enjoyed writing and doing research for my posts. I digress...
I've come to realize that no one reads my blog. Perhaps it's because I don't market it really. I'm new to this and don't really know how to do that. Maybe my writing is boring. Maybe I'm adding further saturation to an already large pool of DK blogs. Whatever the case is, I'm shutting down this blog until at least Cataclysm. The reason for this is because Death Knights will be getting a large overhaul in our tanking mechanics with the reevaluation of the Rune system as well as the consolidation of tanking to the Blood tree. Cataclysm represents a rebirth of Azeroth and a wave of changes to the game as a whole. When this happens, you can bet that I'll be in the thick of it, tanking and figuring it all out again and posting my results.
Until the world is wrought with destruction and anarchy with the reemergence of Deathwing, I bid you all farewell. Keep up the good fight.
In the amount of time since I've starting writing here, I've seen many changes come about for Valoren and his state in the world. The biggest one being the departure from the Razorbacks, joining AWOL, and becoming the main tank for the Friday night ICC10. Now, even that has changed. Not only will I be the MT for this run (which is moving to Thursdays to allow for a continuation on Fridays), I will also be the Raid Leader. This is due to the fact that we have a large military presence in the guild and there is a deployment of some of them to Afghanistan. One of the non military guild leaders has approached me and asked me to lead this run, at least until they return. This will be at least a year. The main reason I decided to start this blog was for a writing outlet for me. It's often said "Write what you know", and I know World of Warcraft, so why not write about it? I've enjoyed writing and doing research for my posts. I digress...
I've come to realize that no one reads my blog. Perhaps it's because I don't market it really. I'm new to this and don't really know how to do that. Maybe my writing is boring. Maybe I'm adding further saturation to an already large pool of DK blogs. Whatever the case is, I'm shutting down this blog until at least Cataclysm. The reason for this is because Death Knights will be getting a large overhaul in our tanking mechanics with the reevaluation of the Rune system as well as the consolidation of tanking to the Blood tree. Cataclysm represents a rebirth of Azeroth and a wave of changes to the game as a whole. When this happens, you can bet that I'll be in the thick of it, tanking and figuring it all out again and posting my results.
Until the world is wrought with destruction and anarchy with the reemergence of Deathwing, I bid you all farewell. Keep up the good fight.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Verdict on Blood Tanking
As my last post noted, Blood will be the dedicated tanking tree come Cataclysm. At first, this news bothered me a great deal. I worked hard to get to the point with dual wield tanking that it was viable and rather capable. Up until 3.3.3, my main problem was not enough threat generation. That was mostly resolved with changes to the class as well as me switching to two slow 1h weapons rather than 2 fast 1h tanking weapons.
However, after my initial outrage subsided, I figured that I should give Blood tanking another chance. I had tried it out back last summer and didn't care for it. I couldn't do enough AOE and I was hard to heal. Partly because of my gear, partly because Blood doesn't lend to AOE very well. Also, I was doing mostly heroic 5mans so it just wasn't viable. Now that I have considerably better gear, and a nice 2h sword from ICC10 (Citadel Enforcer's Claymore), I figured it would be a good time to try Blood again and get used to it before Cataclysm.
I did research over the span of 2 or 3 days, for the best spec. I finally settled on a 56/8/7 build. I dropped my beloved Frost DPS spec to try this out. I wanted to keep my Frost spec ready in case things went badly in an instance with Blood so I could switch. I tried it out in a heroic 5man and things went well enough but it wasn't enough of a real test to see how it would do.
Going into ICC10 on this past Friday (which was the day that I decided to test all of this, forgot to mention that), I let our raid leader know what I was doing that way he didn't give me any hassle if I was sucking and could let me know if things were turning south. We got in and I kept with the Frost spec for trash, mostly because of the AOE threat generation. Trash up to Marrowgar was same as always. Engaged the boss after switching to Blood spec. Things some what went south during this fight and we had some bad moments but we recovered and brought him down. I still was unsure about the spec overall but I had noticed that my threat generation was through the roof compared to Frost, which I had expected and was very pleased with.
Moving on to Deathwhisper, we had some issues with having enough time between waves of adds to burst the mana shield. We managed to get it off and I picked her up first. We had an issue with the off-tank but he was new and still learning the fights. I was pretty pleased with my survivability at this point, starting to notice that my Death Strikes were healing me decently and Rune Tap was doing a great job when I was getting low for a quick save.
Loot boat went off decently. We had an issue with bringing the Horde boat down quickly like we usually do but still got through it. I was being healed from one of our healers but honestly, I think I would've been alright without it. The few times that Saurfang was able to hit me, I was able to heal myself through it.
Deathbringer Saurfang was where we stumbled. We, quite honestly, sucked really bad at this on Friday. We usually are able to get him down. Our raid leader and some other guild officials attributed it to the amount of new people we had, including my off-tank. I attributed it to we weren't paying attention. Our off-tank had never done the fight and was accidentally hitting the Blood Beasts when they spawned, despite repeated attempts telling him to stop doing it. He got better but we still were unable to down him. I, on the other hand, felt great about my own performance during Saurfang. There were a few times where I didn't taunt him as quickly as I usually do but I was somewhat watching the off-tank to make sure he was doing as he should (had an issue with taunts). However, I felt that Blood was doing a great job on this fight. I was receiving a pretty constant stream of healing from our healers but was also noticing that my own self heals were keeping me topped off and I actually had to stop attacking Saurfang when it was time for my off-tank to taunt so he could grab aggro from me.
Despite getting no upgrades in gear (tank gear never drops in the run I do on Fridays) and having several new people, I'm disappointed in the run but very pleased with Blood as a tanking spec. I would like to see them give a threat bonus to Blood Boil in the new tanking Blood tree in Cataclysm to lend us a hand with AOE threat. I'm sure Blizzard has things covered on this though. Blood tanking represents a whole new style of tanking which is a welcome change. Druids can tank without shields but only DKs tank without shields and use self healing as a mechanic to keep themselves alive rather than massive amounts of mitigation/avoidance like a Druid or shields like Warriors/Paladins.
My verdict: I'll be sticking with a dual spec Blood tank/Frost tank for some time now, mostly likely until Cataclysm.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Cataclysm: Cold winds of change
As of late, I've been extremely happy with the changes to Death Knights. Being a big fan of the Frost tree, I love the recent changes. When I was playing my Warrior before my hiatus pre-Wrath, I was dual wield Fury spec. When I learned that Death Knights would be able to dual wield, have having known they would be a tanking class already, my first thought was dual wield tanking.
When Wrath launched, and the months thereafter, it was quickly learned that dual wielding was terrible. It required perfect balance of stats and even then was mediocre. After a while, I (like every other DK at some point or another) gave it a try. I really liked it but it just was not viable for DPS, let alone tanking. Then, 3.2 dropped and it was like a light from the heavens for all Death Knights who wished to dual wield. 3.2 gave us the Threat of Thassarian talent deep into the Frost tree. While dual wielding was still a way off from being great, it was getting better. A while later, 3.3 dropped and added Icecrown raids and dungeons. More importantly, Rune of the Nerubian Carapace was added, giving us a 1h version of the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. Suddenly, dual wield tanking was viable. Not only was it viable, it did pretty well provided you could generate enough threat.
3.3.3 changed dual wield tanks even farther and Death Knight tanks in general with the addition of the high threat mechanic of Icy Touch. Off-hand damage was also increased by changes to Nerves of Cold Steel. Changes to Icy Talons made a constant raid wide haste buff possible, removing the need to constantly hit Icy Touch within a rotation and bringing back Pestilence rotations. 3.3.3 was very good to us Frost tanks, especially the dual wielders. I've even heard that dual wield tanking is now the preferred tanking spec of Frost tanks, though I can't remember where I read it at.
Now, dear reader, you may be wondering what I have to be upset about. As far as Wrath, I have nothing to be upset about. What I am upset about is the recent from Ghostcrawler that in the massive changes coming to classes in Cataclysm, Death Knights will no longer be able to use each talent tree to tank with. You may be thinking that it's not a big deal and you'd be right. The community has asked for a unified tanking tree and Blizzard has granted that. All tanking will be done by one specific tree, the same as how Druids, Warriors and Paladins all have. The difference lies in the name of that tree. Frost, right?
Wrong.
The sole tanking tree for Cataclysm will be Blood. Some do not regard this as a big deal. The fact that it will be a unified tanking tree is a welcome change. All tanking abilities will be united under Blood. According to GC, it's because Blood already has strong self-healing and defensive abilities. However, most of the community seems to agree that Frost tanking has better mitigation and actual passive defensive abilities. Call me petty, but this isn't even what I'm upset about. What I am most upset about is the loss of dual wield tanking. Some call it a gimmick and mostly just for fun. I, however, run it as my main spec. I main tank a weekly ICC10 run while dual wielding. It is extremely satisfying for me to be able to have Killing Machine proc as often as it does while dual wielding, allowing for Frost Strike to hit from both hands and guarantee a crit, hitting for usually 3k a piece.
Dual wield tanking is part of the reason I play my DK. I don't DPS with him very often. Granted, when I do, it's (again) dual wielding and I've noticed a big jump in my numbers. In Vanilla, I was a main raid healer. In BC, I was main raid DPS. Wrath, I've been a tank for most of the time. Out of the three, I love tanking. I love being in the thick of it and being the main line of defense between the boss and it eating healers. Part of this passion for it is the fact that I don't wear a shield. I have a weapon in each hand. The animations for tanking while holding 2 weapons is awesome for me.
There will be a lot of change before Cataclysm goes live. Hopefully this is something that Blizzard will reconsider.
When Wrath launched, and the months thereafter, it was quickly learned that dual wielding was terrible. It required perfect balance of stats and even then was mediocre. After a while, I (like every other DK at some point or another) gave it a try. I really liked it but it just was not viable for DPS, let alone tanking. Then, 3.2 dropped and it was like a light from the heavens for all Death Knights who wished to dual wield. 3.2 gave us the Threat of Thassarian talent deep into the Frost tree. While dual wielding was still a way off from being great, it was getting better. A while later, 3.3 dropped and added Icecrown raids and dungeons. More importantly, Rune of the Nerubian Carapace was added, giving us a 1h version of the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. Suddenly, dual wield tanking was viable. Not only was it viable, it did pretty well provided you could generate enough threat.
3.3.3 changed dual wield tanks even farther and Death Knight tanks in general with the addition of the high threat mechanic of Icy Touch. Off-hand damage was also increased by changes to Nerves of Cold Steel. Changes to Icy Talons made a constant raid wide haste buff possible, removing the need to constantly hit Icy Touch within a rotation and bringing back Pestilence rotations. 3.3.3 was very good to us Frost tanks, especially the dual wielders. I've even heard that dual wield tanking is now the preferred tanking spec of Frost tanks, though I can't remember where I read it at.
Now, dear reader, you may be wondering what I have to be upset about. As far as Wrath, I have nothing to be upset about. What I am upset about is the recent from Ghostcrawler that in the massive changes coming to classes in Cataclysm, Death Knights will no longer be able to use each talent tree to tank with. You may be thinking that it's not a big deal and you'd be right. The community has asked for a unified tanking tree and Blizzard has granted that. All tanking will be done by one specific tree, the same as how Druids, Warriors and Paladins all have. The difference lies in the name of that tree. Frost, right?
Wrong.
The sole tanking tree for Cataclysm will be Blood. Some do not regard this as a big deal. The fact that it will be a unified tanking tree is a welcome change. All tanking abilities will be united under Blood. According to GC, it's because Blood already has strong self-healing and defensive abilities. However, most of the community seems to agree that Frost tanking has better mitigation and actual passive defensive abilities. Call me petty, but this isn't even what I'm upset about. What I am most upset about is the loss of dual wield tanking. Some call it a gimmick and mostly just for fun. I, however, run it as my main spec. I main tank a weekly ICC10 run while dual wielding. It is extremely satisfying for me to be able to have Killing Machine proc as often as it does while dual wielding, allowing for Frost Strike to hit from both hands and guarantee a crit, hitting for usually 3k a piece.
Dual wield tanking is part of the reason I play my DK. I don't DPS with him very often. Granted, when I do, it's (again) dual wielding and I've noticed a big jump in my numbers. In Vanilla, I was a main raid healer. In BC, I was main raid DPS. Wrath, I've been a tank for most of the time. Out of the three, I love tanking. I love being in the thick of it and being the main line of defense between the boss and it eating healers. Part of this passion for it is the fact that I don't wear a shield. I have a weapon in each hand. The animations for tanking while holding 2 weapons is awesome for me.
There will be a lot of change before Cataclysm goes live. Hopefully this is something that Blizzard will reconsider.
Friday, March 26, 2010
333 - The Number of the Death Knight
Last night was my first night being able to login since 3.3.3 went live. I had been doing a lot of reading about the changes and how they were working out. I had nearly pulled my hair out trying to come up with a new spec (mostly one that could include IIT plus Annihilation (not in my current spec) AND Rime (is in my current spec...fail).
After giving up on it until the more dedicated people had crunched the numbers for me (Gravity over at pwnwear, you do amazing work) and worked out new Frost tanking specs, I went at it with my current spec. The only change that I made was switching out my Main Hand Rimefang's Claw for my Ghoulslicer and changing the rune configuration to Rune of the Fallen Crusader on the Main Hand and Rune of the Nerubian Carapace on the Off.
Going into a Random (Forge of Souls), I had no issues with threat, except on larger AOE pulls and even that could be cured by making sure diseases were spread and Howling Blast/Blood Boil was used at every opportunity (especially after a Killing Machine proc). At one point, I was well over 300k threat according to Omen and at almost 1 million on the first boss.
Clearly, the changes made to Frost in this patch have benefited Valoren as much as I had hoped and then some. The very minor changes I made to my weapons and their configuration surely helped but the over all damage increases coupled with the threat generated from Icy Touch have made tanking a lot easier for me, as least in 5mans. How this will translate into ICC is still up in the air but will be seen tonight.
My guild was also doing TOC10 last night and wanted to bring me in as DPS, since tanks were already taken. I was spec'd Blood for the rare occasion I would DPS but didn't do this very often as I need a new 2h weapon, which was bringing my DPS down considerably. I took the chance, since I already was in Ebon Hold re-runing (if that's even a word) my weapons, to respec back to Frost for DPS as well. Death Goddess had already spoken of how the changes had helped her raid's Frost DK with his DPS and I had worked out a DPS spec in my head earlier in the day. We ended up not doing TOC10 because Zul'jin crashed and most of our raid D/C'd. I was able to get back in later and ran the aforementioned Forge of Souls then afterwards, sticking with the Warrior (who tanked the next run in Gundrak), was able to pull out a solid 3100 overall for the run. Trash was hard to get a good rotation off and maximize my DPS since everything was being AOE'd down but I was able to top the charts with around 3800-4k on each boss.
I was extremely pleased with these results. One being because I've never been able to break 3200 (fully raid buffed no less) with Blood. Not sure why, honestly. Our main DPS DK in AWOL couldn't figure it out either. Regardless, my DPS went up considerably and this was taking in account that I wasn't using clean rotations and using Unbreakable Armor every 2 minutes. I was being sloppy with my DPS and was still pulling out in front.
Nice job Blizz. You have made for one happy DK.
After giving up on it until the more dedicated people had crunched the numbers for me (Gravity over at pwnwear, you do amazing work) and worked out new Frost tanking specs, I went at it with my current spec. The only change that I made was switching out my Main Hand Rimefang's Claw for my Ghoulslicer and changing the rune configuration to Rune of the Fallen Crusader on the Main Hand and Rune of the Nerubian Carapace on the Off.
Going into a Random (Forge of Souls), I had no issues with threat, except on larger AOE pulls and even that could be cured by making sure diseases were spread and Howling Blast/Blood Boil was used at every opportunity (especially after a Killing Machine proc). At one point, I was well over 300k threat according to Omen and at almost 1 million on the first boss.
Clearly, the changes made to Frost in this patch have benefited Valoren as much as I had hoped and then some. The very minor changes I made to my weapons and their configuration surely helped but the over all damage increases coupled with the threat generated from Icy Touch have made tanking a lot easier for me, as least in 5mans. How this will translate into ICC is still up in the air but will be seen tonight.
My guild was also doing TOC10 last night and wanted to bring me in as DPS, since tanks were already taken. I was spec'd Blood for the rare occasion I would DPS but didn't do this very often as I need a new 2h weapon, which was bringing my DPS down considerably. I took the chance, since I already was in Ebon Hold re-runing (if that's even a word) my weapons, to respec back to Frost for DPS as well. Death Goddess had already spoken of how the changes had helped her raid's Frost DK with his DPS and I had worked out a DPS spec in my head earlier in the day. We ended up not doing TOC10 because Zul'jin crashed and most of our raid D/C'd. I was able to get back in later and ran the aforementioned Forge of Souls then afterwards, sticking with the Warrior (who tanked the next run in Gundrak), was able to pull out a solid 3100 overall for the run. Trash was hard to get a good rotation off and maximize my DPS since everything was being AOE'd down but I was able to top the charts with around 3800-4k on each boss.
I was extremely pleased with these results. One being because I've never been able to break 3200 (fully raid buffed no less) with Blood. Not sure why, honestly. Our main DPS DK in AWOL couldn't figure it out either. Regardless, my DPS went up considerably and this was taking in account that I wasn't using clean rotations and using Unbreakable Armor every 2 minutes. I was being sloppy with my DPS and was still pulling out in front.
Nice job Blizz. You have made for one happy DK.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Can there be too much WoW?
After reading a fellow Death Knight's blog on the same topic, I thought I should share my take on all this as well.
This is a topic that most WoW players have heard at least once in their time on Azeroth. How much is too much? Ultimately, I believe it depends on the person. Some people are totally happy with only being able to play a few hours a week (thought I tend to believe some are throwing their money away if they're not logging in for days at a time but who am I to judge!), others want to devote every waking hour to the game. I've had friends that have done this. Hell, I've done this. I've already given my story on my character's up to current so here's the side on the other side of the PC:
I started WoW during the Public Beta. I had been waiting for a long time to try it out and when the Public Beta sign-up went up, I threw my name in ASAP. I got in and started playing my Dwarf Paladin 2-3 days a week. Not a lot but the servers were incredibly unstable and constantly going down so I played whenever I could. When the game went live, I bought my copy on the night of release. I continued playing 2-3 nights a week on top of whatever else I was playing at the time (no MMOs). My girlfriend at the time didn't seem to mind. I still hung out with friends, went to work, spent time with her, etc. Slowly I started ramping up my play time. We moved to a different apartment together (a 2 bedroom) where I was able to have a room to myself for my computer, TV, game consoles, collectables, etc.
Around this time, we began to have problems in our relationship. I withdrew into the game even more and as I had recently hit 60 (game is still Vanilla at this point), I wanted to experience all the end game had to offer. I was running 2-3 5 mans a night with a group of friends and totally ignoring our relationship until it went bust and we split. I moved into a place of my own and continued my long hours of WoW.
Soon afterwards, due to financial reasons, I had to move in with my mother. I was holding 2 jobs, working 12 hour days Saturday-Monday and then 3rd shift Tuesday & Wednesday. Whenever I was at home, I was usually playing Wow. I took some time on Wednesday afternoons to get up and go ride BMX with a couple friends (we all needed the exercise) until I flipped my bike and broke a toe but this was about the only outside interaction I had for most of that summer.
I entered into another relationship and tried to limit my playtime to spend with her, which I think I was mostly successful at. We moved in together about 6 months into our relationship and I got back into a pretty extensive play schedule. About 2 months into living together, and me raiding 3 nights a week, we learned she was pregnant. Then I lost my primary job. I went to working 5 nights a week, 3rd shift. We started having problems in our relationship (not related to Wow this time) and I eventually decided (April before Wrath dropped) to stop playing. I was sitting at my desk one morning and was frustrated that I was bored. I didn't want another alt (thought none of them were 70), didn't want to play the ones I had, didn't want to do any professions and I was starting to tire of raiding. So I quit on a spur of the moment decision. I cancelled and vowed that I was done, I wouldn't be back. I felt that I owed it to myself, my unborn child and my girlfriend to stop playing and devote more time to real life. I still gamed but nothing that required vast amounts of time.
I tried to stay away from Wow and Wow related news but being a gamer, I still read about it from time to time. I had no bad feelings towards the game but felt my time in Azeroth was over. September of that year, pre-Wrath release, I got a new job. Several people I worked with played, including one of my managers. I was still working 2 jobs at this time and was at work the night Wrath dropped. I managed to get a Collector's Edition (oh the perks of being an employee at a 24hr store when a game comes out). I went home in the morning, installed all of Wow plus Wrath and loaded back into Mannoroth, telling myself that I was not going to get sucked back into raiding again.
I ended up leaving Mannoroth for Zul'jin and joining my manager's guild. It was a very casual guild, mostly a friends and family type. I promised my girlfriend that my days of hardcore casual were over and for the most part, they are. I usually play 2-3 nights a week with Fridays guaranteed (I Main Tank the run, kinda need to be there). So far, it strikes a good balance of family and Azeroth life.
Are you someone who want to devote every waking moment or are you someone who enjoys a few casual hours a day/week?
This is a topic that most WoW players have heard at least once in their time on Azeroth. How much is too much? Ultimately, I believe it depends on the person. Some people are totally happy with only being able to play a few hours a week (thought I tend to believe some are throwing their money away if they're not logging in for days at a time but who am I to judge!), others want to devote every waking hour to the game. I've had friends that have done this. Hell, I've done this. I've already given my story on my character's up to current so here's the side on the other side of the PC:
I started WoW during the Public Beta. I had been waiting for a long time to try it out and when the Public Beta sign-up went up, I threw my name in ASAP. I got in and started playing my Dwarf Paladin 2-3 days a week. Not a lot but the servers were incredibly unstable and constantly going down so I played whenever I could. When the game went live, I bought my copy on the night of release. I continued playing 2-3 nights a week on top of whatever else I was playing at the time (no MMOs). My girlfriend at the time didn't seem to mind. I still hung out with friends, went to work, spent time with her, etc. Slowly I started ramping up my play time. We moved to a different apartment together (a 2 bedroom) where I was able to have a room to myself for my computer, TV, game consoles, collectables, etc.
Around this time, we began to have problems in our relationship. I withdrew into the game even more and as I had recently hit 60 (game is still Vanilla at this point), I wanted to experience all the end game had to offer. I was running 2-3 5 mans a night with a group of friends and totally ignoring our relationship until it went bust and we split. I moved into a place of my own and continued my long hours of WoW.
Soon afterwards, due to financial reasons, I had to move in with my mother. I was holding 2 jobs, working 12 hour days Saturday-Monday and then 3rd shift Tuesday & Wednesday. Whenever I was at home, I was usually playing Wow. I took some time on Wednesday afternoons to get up and go ride BMX with a couple friends (we all needed the exercise) until I flipped my bike and broke a toe but this was about the only outside interaction I had for most of that summer.
I entered into another relationship and tried to limit my playtime to spend with her, which I think I was mostly successful at. We moved in together about 6 months into our relationship and I got back into a pretty extensive play schedule. About 2 months into living together, and me raiding 3 nights a week, we learned she was pregnant. Then I lost my primary job. I went to working 5 nights a week, 3rd shift. We started having problems in our relationship (not related to Wow this time) and I eventually decided (April before Wrath dropped) to stop playing. I was sitting at my desk one morning and was frustrated that I was bored. I didn't want another alt (thought none of them were 70), didn't want to play the ones I had, didn't want to do any professions and I was starting to tire of raiding. So I quit on a spur of the moment decision. I cancelled and vowed that I was done, I wouldn't be back. I felt that I owed it to myself, my unborn child and my girlfriend to stop playing and devote more time to real life. I still gamed but nothing that required vast amounts of time.
I tried to stay away from Wow and Wow related news but being a gamer, I still read about it from time to time. I had no bad feelings towards the game but felt my time in Azeroth was over. September of that year, pre-Wrath release, I got a new job. Several people I worked with played, including one of my managers. I was still working 2 jobs at this time and was at work the night Wrath dropped. I managed to get a Collector's Edition (oh the perks of being an employee at a 24hr store when a game comes out). I went home in the morning, installed all of Wow plus Wrath and loaded back into Mannoroth, telling myself that I was not going to get sucked back into raiding again.
I ended up leaving Mannoroth for Zul'jin and joining my manager's guild. It was a very casual guild, mostly a friends and family type. I promised my girlfriend that my days of hardcore casual were over and for the most part, they are. I usually play 2-3 nights a week with Fridays guaranteed (I Main Tank the run, kinda need to be there). So far, it strikes a good balance of family and Azeroth life.
Are you someone who want to devote every waking moment or are you someone who enjoys a few casual hours a day/week?
Monday, March 1, 2010
Cataclysm Stat Changes
As I usually spend a while browsing through Wow.com, I just came across a special little post about the upcoming gear stat changes for Cataclysm. As of writing this, I haven't even finished reading the post and have already found the need to write about it. The stat that's changing that has prompted me to stop dead in my reading tracks and come furiously write about is Parry.
Parry has two upcoming changes (as of current, as we all know Blizz likes to change things on the fly sometimes so this also may change). The first change is that you will no longer be able to can 100% avoidance from Parry. This isn't a big deal because I don't know many who can claim that they have 100% avoidance from Parry.
The second, and most exciting for me as a Dual Wielding Frost Tank, is that Parry will no longer speed up an attack. In short, parry hasting is gone in Cataclysm!
As a Dual Wield Frost Tank, parry hasting is bad. Like LeBron James sweatsocks wrapped around Limburger cheese in the middle of July bad. For those who don't know, Parry hasting is what happens when a boss parries your attack, causing their next attack to come faster. This can cause what is known as a Parry gib, or a fast attack you're not ready for that kills you. Typically this only happens if you're low on health. Otherwise you just take another hit quicker and causes a bit more stress on your healer(s).
Instead, a parried attack as well as it's next attack will hit for 50% damage, should they land at all (they can still be dodged, absorbed, etc).
With the removal of this mechanic, this makes the lives of a Dual Wield Frost tank a lot easier.
Other stat changes are as follows:
Stamina - Non-plate wearing classes will see a lot more, bringing health pools a bit closer together for all classes
Spirit - Nnly on healing gear now. Other mana based specs and classes will have other systems put into place to regen mana. Elemental Shaman and Balance Druid are having special systems designed for them. Buffs that provide spirit will boost primary stats along with likely changes to 5 Second Rule and other regen mechanics being redesigned
Intellect - once again (for those Vanilla Wow vets) grants Spell Power but will provide less mana than current levels
MP5 - Gone with classes that utilize it being redesigned for Spirit usage
Spell Power - Now only on weapons and just to distinguish them as caster weapons
Attack power - Removed from most items but will still be a game mechanic through the appropriate gains with Strength and Agility
Parry - see above
Resilience - Changed to affect only player damage and player crit damage.
Block Value - Gone. All shields now give a 30% passive block value but could still be modified from talents and other effects. Effectively becomes Block Rating
Weapon skill - Gone. All classes will start with maxed weapon skills.
Gem colors - Few stats will be changing. Hit rating may become blue instead of yellow.
Defense - Gone. Tanks will become uncrittable through use of Bear Form, Frost Presence, Defensive Stance or Righteous Fury
Haste - Haste will be changed to allow resource recovery to happen faster. The intention is to "do stuff more often".
Mastery - A new stat that allows players to be better at whatever makes their main talent tree powerful or unique. It will apparently be tied directly to talents so whatever you gain from improving this is directly related to your class and spec. More details will come on this as Cataclysm draws near.
Armor - Being rebalanced to reflect the armor changes in Cataclysm. Bonus armor will go down a bit overall. Mitigation difference will change so that plate isn't a huge jump over all others.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Experise and Crit Rating - No real changes to these stats other than ones listen within other stats. They will still appear on gear and function the same though caps (such as for Hit Rating) are likely to change
Armor Penetration - Gone from gear, still present in talents and abilities
Spell Ranks - Gone. All spells will have one rank that scales with level. Some new spells will be introduced to fill in the gaps.
Combat ratings (hit rating, for example) will obviously raise. Apparently, all ratings will be harder to cap.
Reforging is an interesting concept. In theory, Blizz is making it to where if you have an abundance of a certain stat (again, using hit rating as the example), you can "reforge" your items to convert 50% of that stat into another stat. Some conversions will be forbidden (Stamina -> Strength, as noted by Wow.com).
Melee DPS classes will be seeing more stamina, more strength (plate wearers)/agility (leather/mail, attack power becoming agility and stamina, armor penetration becomes Haste and Crit.
I won't go into the changes for healers and caster DPS as they're a bit beyond the scope of this blog, even though I'd already detailed some of their changes with other stats.
I'm looking forward to a lot of the changes, as well as the changes to the talents themselves. I can only hope that they continue to improve Dual Wielding for Frost and make it bigger and better!
Parry has two upcoming changes (as of current, as we all know Blizz likes to change things on the fly sometimes so this also may change). The first change is that you will no longer be able to can 100% avoidance from Parry. This isn't a big deal because I don't know many who can claim that they have 100% avoidance from Parry.
The second, and most exciting for me as a Dual Wielding Frost Tank, is that Parry will no longer speed up an attack. In short, parry hasting is gone in Cataclysm!
As a Dual Wield Frost Tank, parry hasting is bad. Like LeBron James sweatsocks wrapped around Limburger cheese in the middle of July bad. For those who don't know, Parry hasting is what happens when a boss parries your attack, causing their next attack to come faster. This can cause what is known as a Parry gib, or a fast attack you're not ready for that kills you. Typically this only happens if you're low on health. Otherwise you just take another hit quicker and causes a bit more stress on your healer(s).
Instead, a parried attack as well as it's next attack will hit for 50% damage, should they land at all (they can still be dodged, absorbed, etc).
With the removal of this mechanic, this makes the lives of a Dual Wield Frost tank a lot easier.
Other stat changes are as follows:
Stamina - Non-plate wearing classes will see a lot more, bringing health pools a bit closer together for all classes
Spirit - Nnly on healing gear now. Other mana based specs and classes will have other systems put into place to regen mana. Elemental Shaman and Balance Druid are having special systems designed for them. Buffs that provide spirit will boost primary stats along with likely changes to 5 Second Rule and other regen mechanics being redesigned
Intellect - once again (for those Vanilla Wow vets) grants Spell Power but will provide less mana than current levels
MP5 - Gone with classes that utilize it being redesigned for Spirit usage
Spell Power - Now only on weapons and just to distinguish them as caster weapons
Attack power - Removed from most items but will still be a game mechanic through the appropriate gains with Strength and Agility
Parry - see above
Resilience - Changed to affect only player damage and player crit damage.
Block Value - Gone. All shields now give a 30% passive block value but could still be modified from talents and other effects. Effectively becomes Block Rating
Weapon skill - Gone. All classes will start with maxed weapon skills.
Gem colors - Few stats will be changing. Hit rating may become blue instead of yellow.
Defense - Gone. Tanks will become uncrittable through use of Bear Form, Frost Presence, Defensive Stance or Righteous Fury
Haste - Haste will be changed to allow resource recovery to happen faster. The intention is to "do stuff more often".
Mastery - A new stat that allows players to be better at whatever makes their main talent tree powerful or unique. It will apparently be tied directly to talents so whatever you gain from improving this is directly related to your class and spec. More details will come on this as Cataclysm draws near.
Armor - Being rebalanced to reflect the armor changes in Cataclysm. Bonus armor will go down a bit overall. Mitigation difference will change so that plate isn't a huge jump over all others.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Experise and Crit Rating - No real changes to these stats other than ones listen within other stats. They will still appear on gear and function the same though caps (such as for Hit Rating) are likely to change
Armor Penetration - Gone from gear, still present in talents and abilities
Spell Ranks - Gone. All spells will have one rank that scales with level. Some new spells will be introduced to fill in the gaps.
Combat ratings (hit rating, for example) will obviously raise. Apparently, all ratings will be harder to cap.
Reforging is an interesting concept. In theory, Blizz is making it to where if you have an abundance of a certain stat (again, using hit rating as the example), you can "reforge" your items to convert 50% of that stat into another stat. Some conversions will be forbidden (Stamina -> Strength, as noted by Wow.com).
Melee DPS classes will be seeing more stamina, more strength (plate wearers)/agility (leather/mail, attack power becoming agility and stamina, armor penetration becomes Haste and Crit.
I won't go into the changes for healers and caster DPS as they're a bit beyond the scope of this blog, even though I'd already detailed some of their changes with other stats.
I'm looking forward to a lot of the changes, as well as the changes to the talents themselves. I can only hope that they continue to improve Dual Wielding for Frost and make it bigger and better!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)