Heya guys!!  Plenty to talk about today, so lets just jump right in eh?

5200 DPS

So, am I slacking because I’m 500 DPS lower?  Nah, not really.  First off when I pulled 5700 DPS we had Crypt Fever and Epon Plaguebringer.  Due to specs in the raid, we only had EP this time.  So instead of a x4 disease multiplier I only had a x3.  And then there could have been RNG factors as well. /shrug  But the point here is that this is an idea of what you can expect when 3.0.8 releases.  You will see your self do less dps than you are used to.  Whether you lost some Gargoyle DPS, you lost that 4th disease, etc.  So just be prepared.

As a side note Ruthlessness finally dropped!!  Yay!!  /WIN  It hasn’t dropped for our guild, bad luck and all.  And then BAMM!!!  It drops 3x in the same evening total, lol.  Needless to say my fellow DPS’ers were ecstatic!!

Battle Rez Bug?!

So this SS should amuse you some…

Now for those wondering how this is even possible, I use a not well known mod called Two Box Toolkit.  Now last I checked it hasn’t been updated in forever, but it is a surprisingly useful mod.  It’s designed for a second account where you can make that account auto accept things like group invites and commands to auto follow another character for two boxing.  While I used to Two Box all of the time, I rarely do so now.

But I kept this mod for lazy reasons.  If I have someone on my friends list I will automatically accept group invites and ressurections from those people.  Which is really handy in situations where you’re AFK/windowed out when you get a rez or invite.  So I’m sitting there in the fight and I get a B Rez and then the window pops up…after I’m already alive…  *blink* *blink* *blink*  You have no idea how tempted I was to click one of those buttons…

But I had no idea what would happen.  Probably nothing, I know…but what if?!  Ya know?  Also if I died again somehow, would it work?  Who knows?  I know server lag in PvP has allowed me to see a “Would you like to ressurrect” message at my corpse where I died before the “Rlease” window comes up.  I even managed to click on it once and then kill the two people who killed me before I was magically teleported to the nearest GY.  It was weird as hell.  But as I killed my attackers, and then got magically teleported away to the nearest GY as the five other Horde nearby started looking at me funny…I count that as pure /WIN. 

So I left it up, hoping it’d come in handy.  But alas, it went away before the fight ended.  /sadface

Howling Blast

Yeah, Blizz decided to weenie out on this one…sigh.  No CD was a good move, but because they cannot figure out how to nerf DW, they are nerfing Frost as a whole.  /sigh

“I believe the cooldown is 5 seconds now, so at least it should mesh a little better with 10 second rune cooldown.

We knew there was a risk in taking the Howling Blast cooldown off. Unfortunately, we saw dual-wield DK numbers as high as ever even with the Killing Machine and Gargoyle nerfs. It typically only happened when the DK was fighting multiple targets, which suggests Howling Blast is the right thing to change.

We still agree that a cooldown makes rotations more awkward, and we will continue to look for an implementation that lets Howling Blast be off a cooldown without all death knights feel like they need to DW Frost or go home.

(And no, we can’t buff other DK specs and other classes to 7000 dps or whatever to compensate.) (Source)”

Of course we understand.  Nerfing the Frost tree as a whole because you can’t figure out how to properly balance the DW specs is the right answer.  /grumble  I’ve always been a huge fan of the Frost tree, even if you guys never saw me say it.  On Beta for LK I was a Frost Knight, and it appealed to me greatly.  However when I saw the changes going through and we began to raid Naxx10 in Beta, I quickly swapped to Unholy as it was the far cry winner.

I really would like to see Frost get some loving, and Howling Blast is one the things that needs a fix.  The removal of the CD was the right move, and it’s a shame they didn’t keep that change in.  This will likely go live as they recanted on it now, and they are still failing badly at addressing DW issues.  The biggest saving grace for Frost atm appears to still be the Glyph of Obliterate change, where it is a straight up +20% damage bonus.

Frost will likely scale very well in the end due to the fact that it pulls more damage from weapon scaling than any other spec atm, but we will see.  I’ve actually been seriously considering swapping to Frost and doing some testing when 3.0.8 goes live.  Shocking, I know!!   Whether this will scale enough now before T8 is released in Uludar is the question though.

PvP Builds

I’ve got two little sneak peeks of ideas I’ve been playing around with.  Some readers asked questions about variant specs for PvP, and after dropping some of their ideas and tweaking things a bit I’ve got something here for you to play around with.

But before that, lets talk about the 2 big Blood nerfs for PvP viability.

“Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded. It no longer affects the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell and retains the current damage reduction bonus.

Vampiric Blood (DK) changed from 20% health / 50% healing to 15 % health / 35% healing.”

Now, the VB change was probably needed.  But the WotN change?  Really?  That was one of the biggest draws to a Blood build for Arena in my book.  The ability to use AMS far more often was a big deal.  It meant that you could go immune to Sheeps, Immobs, etc…when you knew you had to.  And more importantly when you needed to.  Far more often.  Move in with the VB nerf which made survivability a joking matter for Blood in Arena matches, and Blood loses a lot of it’s new and shiny draw.

22/14/35

Now this little spec is a bit bonkers.  It’s so odd in fact, let me explain it to you.  Sometimes you may find that survivability is an issue.  Or you may find yourself frequently in the situation where your ally has died, and if you could have just gotten a few heals you would have won the match.  Well that is where this spec shines like no one’s business.

The basic concept in the Blood tree is straight forward.  You want to get to melee buffs while including Rune Tap for healing and filling out your Blood Strike.  Even with losing one point in the Blood Strikes talent should still be pure when when combined with the Glyph of Blood Strike.  Between Chains of Ice and Desecration, keeping your opponents snared for the damage bonus on BS should be a piece of cake.

This is where we deviate from the basic concept.  You dip into Frost now instead of giving Unholy the normal loving you are used to.  Toughness is brought online to ensure that you are not kited anywhere near as often (and that you’re harder to kill) while you directly move to get Lichborne for extra self healing.

Macro to heal yourself with Death Coils:
#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast !Lichborne;
/cast [target=player] Death Coil
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Considering that you have at this point given up on Scourge Strike, you now need to ensure you can use Obliterate without destroying your diseases with Annihilation.  Now while you have done all of this you pick up 5/5 Desecration, your Ghoul from Master of Ghouls and your Gargoyle.

What you basically lose is:

• Magic Suppression
• Anti-Magic Zone
• Unholy Aura
• Bone Shield

Overall, I am beginning to slide towards this being an overall advantage.  Especially with the Oblit buff going in 3.0.8 and the AMZ/Bone Shield nerfs as well.

0/34/37

This is an odd twist on the Unholy Spec, and honestly I’m not 100% satisfied with it.  For example I think this spec has room to possibly attempt to be a “Pure Ranged” spec by specing into Outbreak and using the Glyph of Plague Strike or the Glyph of Blood Boil for bonus damage and/or utility on one of those two attacks.

However with some minor tweaking this spec is very outstanding.  Howling Blast, Icy Touch, Chains of Ice, and Blood Boil will allow you to be able to use all of your Runes against any target at range, meaning you’re only losing some of your damage instead of the majority of it when you are being kited.

Overall this is a very strange builds with amazing potential in the hands of a skilled player.  Ever get frustrated as hell while a Frost Mage kites you?  *YOU* can now be that Frost Mage.  This is a kiting spec like you wouldn’t believe.  It brings to bear self heals, very solid Plague Strikes, solid snaring, and top end burst damage.  Overall it has some potential depending upon your team makeup.

Please note that both of these specs are not finalized “polished” versions in my book, with some room to move points and glyphs.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue, Bugs, Macros, Specs