Heya guys!!  Yeah, you read the title right.  Hardcore, and I do mean *hardcore*, guilds will be able to raid one instance two times in a week if they so choose.  Check out these two Blizzard posts:

As a means to provide more flexibility to play with your friends, or move to a realm that may better serve your needs, we are reducing the cooldown of the Paid Character Transfer service from 30 days to 3 days. This should prove particularly beneficial to players who move to a realm they don’t enjoy and wish to quickly move to a brand-new realm. For more information, please see the Paid Character Transfer FAQ.

-Eyonix posted July 20, 2009

No, Zexsudel, the Raid ID would not follow you to a new realm.

-Vrakthris posted December 9, 2008

So here is how the system works:

1. Tuesday (Raid reset day) – You have Tues, Wed, and Thur on your server to raid your instance.
2. Friday you then have everyone transfer their toons to the new server.  You give one full day of leeway to make sure everyone gets transfered, and to give one day off to do whatever they need to.
3. Sat, Sun, Mon you do the exact same raid you did earlier in the week.

Now realistically you don’t need to reserve all of Friday for the raid to transfer.  Realistically on any evening that a raid was completed everyone would log out and then transfer their characters so it would be done over night.  Also some hardcore guilds can clear all hard mode content in just 1-2 days as well, leaving more leeway for transfers to take place.

But that would be cost prohibitive you say?  First off, hardcore gamers (the people who want server firsts and more) will be willing to consider doing this.  Also some of the top guilds in the world actually have corportate sponsors who contribute to those guilds.  There will be rich companies out there who are willing to shell out the cash.  And there are rich (or crazy) players who would also be willing to do the same.

Will it happen?  Don’t know.  Will Blizzard do something to prevent this from being exploited?  Probably.

What about their guild?

But what about losing your guild you ask?  Simple enough again.  The officers and GM of the guild give all of their privledges/titles to Alts.  Duplicate Alts are then created on the secondary server as well, and the same guild is created there.  Those second server alts are given all privledges/titles to the second guild.

These Alts never server transfer and keep the guild intact, no matter where the Core of the guild is.  After any server transfer is completed, the Officers of a guild log in their Officer alts and proceed to invite people.

Absolutely crazy?  I thought so.  It will work, providing Blizzard doesn’t do something about it.

• The sever transfer FAQ by Blizz for reference.
• Eyonix’s Post for reference.
• Vrakthris’s Post for reference.

I’m really curious to see if any of the top guilds in the world pursue this, and whether Blizzard allows this to be possible.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue

Heya guys!!  For a full write up on the new Death Knight Q&A by Ghostcrawler, please click here for the official WoW forums link.  I will only be copying a few particular quotes here, but feel free to refer back to the original post by GC for complete details.

I jest again, but my point is that we introduced a new class to a game that didn’t really have a niche that needed to be filled.

Blizzard lead their players to believe that the major reason that Death Knights were chosen for the new Hero class was specifically because the expansion was spun around Arthas himself, the main character of Warcraft 3.  Had they taken the expansion in a another direction it is entirely likely this Death Knight blog would not even be here, as things would have unfolded differently.

But regardless, the simple truth in the revelation becomes quite clear.  WoW didn’t need a new class, Hero or otherwise, because every possible role in the game was adequately covered.  And because of that, Death Knights will never truly feel needed.  And it seems obvious with Blizzard’s new game design that they intend for that to stay static.

We’ve asked ourselves several times if the death knight is overly complicated — perhaps you could accomplish 90% of the design with a 3 rune system instead of a 6 rune system — but we aren?t changing it to that large a degree soon.

Just be aware that when the big bad blues mention crap like this, that it’s something they are considering doing in the future.  Heads up is all.

In terms of 3.2, we want to chill out the death knight AE damage and defensive cooldowns a little. It’s fine for a melee class to have strong area-effect, but they shouldn’t be so much better than warriors, rogues, and Enhancement shamans.

This is where things break down with Blizzard sometimes.  They forget that a “Hero class” really can break the mold, and it’s ok to tell the players “tough, deal with it” from time to time.  Having a hero class, in and of itself, that can break the mold by doing more AoE damage than a traditional melee role is not bad.  It’s a “hero class”, things are supposed to be shaken up some. 

However the design team is taking the tunnel vision approach and soothing the bruised egos of other players by making DK’s fit more into the preconceived notions of melee class balance.  While it’s a fundamently design flaw on their part to cave in (imo), it’s something we’ll have to get used to it seems.

What we are going to do with dual-wield in 3.2 is just provide the Frost tree with the talents necessary to prop-up dual wielding, including a new talent that lets Frost Strike, Death Strike, Obliterate etc. hit with both weapons.

Well, Blizzard is finally getting around to supporting the Dual Wield die hards in the DK community.  It’s about time…  Short of some major catastrophy or mythic revelation on Blizzard’s part, DW’ing DK’s will now be pigeonholed into Frost specs.  While it’s probably a good thing from a balance/design stand point, the only upcoming fear is that DW’ing will entirely replace 2H Frost specs.

I want to reiterate though that our vision hasn’t changed — we still want death knights to be able to tank every encounter.

DK tanks have been ridiculously OP for the entirety of LK guys.  Sorry, but it’s true.  In cast off gear, I was 2% away from the armor damage reduction cap (75% cap).  And I still had multiple CD’s available, etc.  DK’s needed some nerfs when it comes to tanking.  The only fear now is whether or not the nerfs will be too heavy handed. 

It’s obvious that Blizzard desperately wants as many viable tank classes as possible, though finding that happy middle ground is far more difficult to accomplish than imagine.  Where we will land when 3.2 launches is still a scary prospect.

It is a problem that, say, Blood wants armor penetration and Unholy does not. But our answer to that problem is going to be to make all specs regard the stats more similarly, not to provide lots of different armor choices.

Well, this is a bad bad bad thing honestly.  More and more, each and every DK spec becomes a carbon copy of the next.  Gargoyle and DRW becoming the same, Unholy losing it’s AoE advanatge, and who knows what else.  Part of the epic flavor of DK’s is that each spec plays totally differently. 

With this new promise you have to ask yourself if the class will lose some of it’s core flavor if homogenized much more.  I think this path is a catastrophic mistake, but as it saves Blizzard both “time and money” I can’t see any way to avoid it sadly.

One particular spell that was brought up a lot is Mind Freeze and the “delays” in it taking effect on the target which often causes the interrupt to appear on a combat log but not actually stop the spell.  We have never been able to duplicate the situation that the players describe, that sometimes it has a delay that other interrupts do not.

This has been an ongoing problem since day 1.  Not sure if you guys have experienced it like I have (in both PvE and PvP), but it’s a massively annoying problem.  Looks like there is no upcoming fix to this issue.

Do we have plans to change any of the death knight’s self-healing abilities?  The healing is one of the core mechanics of the class, and one of the things that helps them feel distinct from warriors.

Yay!!  Honestly, after so much rigamarole basically talking about how they intend to ner…uhm…”balance” the class it’s nice to hear something on the upswing.  No more healing nerfs for Death Strike, woot!!

We have a long-term plan to add the ghoul voices back. We pulled them because they were using the vendor voices, which sounded weird when your ghoul would ask you to buy or trade. We just need to get some audio made without the vendor text. It’s in the plan, but not super high priority.

Who in the hell was complaining about their ghouls talking?  I mean seriously, it made more people laugh than cry.  I mean…  Damnit, give Bonechewer his voice back already!!  *HUFF*  Jerks!!

Recap

So, that’s basically the gist of the Q&A with some SJ translations in there for those who were not able to read between the lines.  The core concept of DK’s seems to be changing honestly.  Blizzard is afraid of getting any more flak from players because a “Hero Class” is potentially more powerful than a base class.  Whether that be by versatility, breaking the mold on potential, or you name it.

While DK’s are an OP class, there are many other OP classes as well.  Anyone else got multiple horror stories about being stun locked to death by a rogue?  Or seen the crazy HoT heals from a druid in a raid?  Or been non stop locked down by a druid in PvP?  Or…well you get the point.

Expect to see DK’s become more of a baseline tank, lose any special AoE tricks, watch damage leak from your primary strikes and bleed into Blood Strike, and become more homogenized.  It’s not the death of DK’s by any stretch.  Just we’re losing some of that “epic” feel is all.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue

Heya guys!!

Frost might still do okay with 2H. We didn’t specifically nerf their 2H abilities. We just gave them a talent to make DW more viable. I don’t honestly know how 2H Frost dps stacks up in 3.2 at the moment.

So.  Who else really just stopped dead in their tracks when they read the words, “I don’t honestly know how 2H Frost dps stacks up in 3.2 at the moment.”?  I sure as hell did.

Backing up a step…

I played a Shaman for the vast majority of BC.  It was a hell of a lot of fun even though I was playing one of the weakest damage dealing classes in all of PvE and PvP content.  I enjoyed playing this character even though Blizzard never understood how the class really worked, ignored the problems consistently, and in the end ultimately failed at balancing the class as a whole.

So that being said, I can speak with some authority on playing a broken class for an extended period of time.

Moving back to now…

So basically the weakest spec for PvE damage (Frost) is obviously being followed very closely by the Devs… *shakes head*

OK, first up I like Frost.  It’s really cool.  But it’s damage is subpar.  The Blue posts exemplifies why this has happened sadly when of course they are initiating Frost nerfs when they have people who have no concept of Frost’s performance in the game.  I don’t really know what else to say on this matter.  It really speaks for itself.

The future of Death Knights

This is a detailed and long post I don’t have the time for.  But I tell you this now.  DK’s are not dead, they will not suck, nor should you be quitting your DK.  A strong community presence on the forums of WoW is honestly one of the only things that can and will prevent massive nerfs from going through.  If you sit idly by the sidelines without speaking up, then you have no one to blame but yourself.  That said, keep your arguments informed and educated.  Don’t just whine or cry.

It’s been a busy weekend for me guys.  Hell I slept in till like 4pm because I was so exhausted from this last week.  Had a ton of work to do on the D20 rules stuff for our 3.5 campaigns (D&D).  But, that is behind me now (yay!!) and I can get back to focusing on DK’s.

If you’re getting discouraged, don’t be.  Honestly it’s frustrating as all hell when you’re gettin nerfed, but we’ll make it through.  We’re Death Knights.  We not a bunch of sissy Nancy boy rogues or mages who are going to cry because we got a nose bleed.  Man up, weather the storm, and prove what we’re made of.  Remember to keep active in the forums and to not whine or cry.  Speak your message, and back it up with facts.  We are the dark destroyers of WoW, not a sissy caster in robes.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue

Heya guys!!  Nerf city.  Should be used to it by now…sigh.

• Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.
• Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.
• Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.
• Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
• Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
• Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.

Talents

Blood

• Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
• Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.

Frost

• Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 5/10/15%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
• Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
• Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
• Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.

Unholy

• Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
• Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
• Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
• Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
• Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

Uhm…it’s nerfs across the board really excepting making room to make DW viable in the Frost tree.  It looks like a lot of PvP initiated nerfs, combined with them hating the AoE on Unholy.  I’m not sure on all of this yet, so I’ll get back to you on it after I have some time to think on it.

I’ve not been posting because we have a new D&D campaign starting this Friday and I’ve been putting in the new Spyre campaign info on the Shai’dar tab and updating the new house rules I’ve written.  Once this weekend is over, I should be done with updating the D&D part of my site and can focus on DK’s more.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue

Heya guys!!  So today, I’ve got tons of stuff to throw into this post.  The downside is that it won’t be a perfect breakdown on talent trees, rotations, etc…  But it will have TONS of good stuff for you about some of the new tricks out there.  But first, today was awesome!!

I walk into work about 1-2 minutes late.  I’m tired, worn out, and I just don’t want to be there.  I walk to the front to figure out what is going on for the day and my boss says, “Who wants to go home?”  No hesitation, it was like mental instinct and reflexes kicked in as I instantly shouted out, “ME!!!  ME!!!”  One of my co-workers followed up about 5 seconds later with a, “Wait.  I wanna go.”

I stuck with the first come, first served policy and insisted I should get to go because I said something first.  He was asking me to flip for it.  Which, while laughing, I said no way in hell.  He then offers to Rock, Paper, Scissors for it.  Laughing harder I said, “WTF would I wanna do that?  That doesn’t help me get out of here at all!!”  ROFL.  10 seconds later (the boss was on the phone) my boss waves me to go.  I shit you not, I RAN out of that place so fast!!  No way in hell I was gonna walk and give someone a chance to call my ass back.  /SPRINT 

Talk about an early Christmas.  Man.  I cannot think of even one time I was asked whether or not I wanted to go home from work before.  /WIN  I’m not really sure why we didn’t need someone today.  Over staffed maybe…  But I sure as hell was NOT gonna stick around and ask questions in case it made them change their mind.  Know what I’m saying?!?! 

I came home, took a good long nap.  Went to store, came home, cooked, cleaned, and watched some Burn Notice!!  OMFG today was an AWESOME DAY!!! 

LOL, so enough of my wonderful day!!  Let’s get into some of that good old fashioned Death Knight loving from me that you guys have missed so much eh?!

BLOOD Disease-less Spec

You’ve heard me refer to Batmack a few times now.  The main reason is that he is a DK in my guild, and one of the best players in game I’ve ever met.  Now I won’t go to him for theorycrafting or other info always, but when it comes to pure talent at playing this game, he’s one of the best around hands down.  He can tell you how to murder something. 

Here is the WWS link as well, but this should only last about 2 weeks since it is not on a paid account:  WWS Report.

Now the interesting points here are as follows:

• Recount does not track Army of the Dead for anyone but the player himself.  So while my Recount will track my AotD, it will not track and display Mack’s AotD.
• AotD *does* count as part of your DPS.  Moron’s who say it doesn’t are the same idiots originally saying that hunter pets shouldn’t count as part of their damage.  Like I said, morons.
• WWS does not properly track AotD, so the WWS report is not 100% accurate as well.
• Yes, this is a disease-less rotation.  He did not use IT or PS once.
• In game he did 6800 actual DPS with everything added in.  Yeah, 6800 DPS.  It was not a typo.
• He wasn’t even going to spec Blood.  Our Enhancement Shaman was missing so he went Blood and I went Frost for raid buffs.  LOL.

51/0/20

The spec is straight forward.  I’m not going to break down why you make the decisions here that you do, or how to alternate the points up.  But basically this is your big bad boy here.  We’ll go into talent choices and more in another post dedicated to Blood. 

Rotation

Now I’ve seen some variants on this one, but honestly I’ve not seen one rotation out there outperform the simplistic and useful one that Mack used.

OB -> HS -> OB -> HS -> DC -> DC

That’s it.  You can honestly do the attacks in any order, so long as you are using the Rune CD’s immediately.  The rotation is very tight, leaving only 1 second for mistakes.  So you have to be on the ball and you need to Expertise cap.  But outside of Rune management, it’s straight forward.  You don’t have to try to work in Sudden Doom procs, you don’t have to manage diseases, you don’t have to do awkward rotations that change depending on the cycle, etc…  I’m honestly considering trying out Blood for the first time in my life.

FROST Spec

So I’ve always been a fan of Frost oriented themes in in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy world.  It’s pretty f’ing cool in my book.  In fact when I first played in the Beta I rolled out as a Frost Knight to test it out.  But sadly it was pretty suck when I got in.  And it has been for the most part since until recently.  So I finally went back to test it out.

Now, let me start of by saying this upfront.  No matter how good you are, I do not recommend ever picking a brand new spec and rotation one hour before a raid.  >.<  OMFG it was awkward and painful as hell.  I should have run a good couple of 5 mans first to get the hang of it.  Ah well…

So lets just skip past all of the details and get into the pics…  They tell a story.  If you look at BOTH of them, in order, then you should realize what I did before you even get to the next section of text…

And the second pic…

Sigh…

So points of interest:

• If you didn’t notice, I forgot to train.  Yes, I am THAT much of a hardcore Unholy DK that I’ve never trained Frost or Blood Live.  I’ve done all of my testing with those specs on PTR only.
• Frost Strike, untrained, was still the highest % of my total damage done.  That makes me really wonder how much more it would have done had it been trained.
• I did not use HB once, even if I had a Rime (on Patchy).  I was having a rough time.  Deal.  I was new to this. 
• I did this in Blood Presence, not Unholy Presence.  I do not know if that was the right call.
• I changed up my rotation half way through the run.  I was originally in Unholy Presence and using the 6xIT Rotation.  And another one even before that.  I have no idea what was the best.  I’d really need to play them all for a while to figure it out.
• Death Runes are the only way to make Frost rotations work since they do not use PS ever.  It makes things awkward.
• HB on a 5 second cooldown has not helped this spec at all.  It still makes Frost stupidly clunky and not fun imho.

21/50/0

The spec is the backbone of any 2H Frost spec, and can be used for the 6xIT Rotation or for a more standard Rotation as well.  You can tweak it around some, but like I said before about the Blood one.  We’ll cover that all more in depth in a post especially for Frost.

Rotation

On Patchwerk I used:

IT -> BS – > OB -> OB -> FSx3

That rotation is not necessarily perfect.  If you’re wondering how it works you pop Blood Tap at the beginning of the fight for the starting Death Rune to make it work.

Alternative Rotation 1:

IT -> BS -> IT -> IT -> OB

BS -> IT -> OB -> IT -> IT

This uses Unholy Presence.

You work in FS on any Killing Machine proc (sometimes pushing back a Rune).  If you will go over 100 RP, and you have Runes ready you immediately fire off a FS whether you have a KM proc up or not.  This rotation is a PITA.  You mess it up once, and it borks you up bad.  I highly recommend DRM for it becuase it gives you a lot more wiggle room if you do mess something up.

Alternative Rotation 2:

IT -> BS -> OB -> OB

ITx6

This uses Unholy Presence, and you have to pay attention and try to use as many FS’s on the KM procs as possible.  There’s another iteration that basically is like AR1 but has another IT in it.  The permutations are rather extensive really.  But the point of those is to break up the IT’s to give you more time to react to use FS without wasting a KM proc on an IT.

DW Testing

So I finally got some pimptastic 1H’s!!!

I spent some time training the skills up too.  Not one 1H skill above 270, lol.  So I’ve got Swords and Axes to 395 each now, and I’ll probably skill them up the rest of the way in an instance or something so that I don’t have to put that much effort into it.  Skilling up weapon skills is boring…

But the upside is that I will now be finally testing out some DW builds myself and seeing how they do!!!    More incoming, but don’t expect to see me in a raid as DW for at least 1-2 weeks.

Achievements!!

We FINALLY picked up Heroic: Shocking!

But of course the 3 Drake Sartharion Achievement eludes me still.  Not because I suck.  Not because we can’t do it.  But because I always seem to oversleep, have to go out, or don’t log in when we do it!!!  Damnit I’ve missed like the last 4 times now.  Hell my guild one shotted it one time, and did it in just 3 tries this week.  Grrrr!!!

And don’t even get me started on The Immortal.  OMFG.  We actually did it.  We made it to Saph without one death.  But then one of our guys dc’d after the Ready check.  He got killed by the Blizzard before anyone realized he was dc’d in the back alone.  No one died the entire raid, even after that happened.  Not one death.  Except for a lousy dc that happened right at the end.  How lame is that?!!?  /sigh

BLUE POSTS ZOMG!!!

If you follow MMO Champion or World of Raids at all you may have seen some of the supposed incoming changes to Death Knights in 3.1 release.  Here is a reprint in case you do not.

• Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle?s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
• Pestilence ? this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
• Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
• The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
• Sudden Doom ? this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans? Lightning Overload.
• Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
• Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

As I said in my previous post do NOT expect these changes to be what you think they will.  For example Lightning Overload procs 1/2 damage Lightning Bolts.  So Sudden Doom might do the same.  1/2 damage DC’s.  Expect the restructuring of the Frost tree to impinge on DW builds making HB and KM more difficult to attain.  See where I’m going with this?

The interesting thing to note is whether or not Blizz has taken notice of the disease-less Blood spec, and how useful it is.  Or even the fact that the best Frost specs never even use Plague Strike, aka Blood Plague.  Whether or not they address these issues since disease use/management is supposed to be CORE to a DK will be entertaining to me to say the least.

As will their poor attempts, yet again, at class balance.  Ah well.  I’ll be filling you guys in as more develops.

PTR

Something intersting for you guys though is that I have made arrangements with my guild master now for the 3.1 PTR deployment.  From everything I’ve read the PTR will only release bosses on a limited basis like they did in Sunwell.  So some bosses will never be accessible ever until Live.  Others may be up only for 1-2 nights top for testing, and then go the way of the Dodo until release.

So Rage has given the go ahead for cancelling any and all Live SK Raids after 3.1 is released to PTR so we can explore some of the boss content in testing phase.  I’m not sure how much we will get a chance to see, but hopefully if all goes well I will be giving you guys some very early release info on the Uludar bosses and content!!

Power Leveling

I’m helping out a friend who has decided to take a gamble and try out my server.  I’m going to be helping power level her some as my DK.  So I will also have some information coming out to you guys soon about tricks of the trade for pl’ing up friends through old world instances, etc…  We should be starting this weekend, so more to come soon!!

I’m done.

This post was Epic.  I’m taking my kitten Shadow over to Mythra’s house so she can rebond with her momma cat, and we’re gonna chill or something…  I’m not really sure what the hell we’re doing…  I need to grab a movie.  Peace Out!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: /rl, Blue, Fun, Rotations, Specs

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

Heya guys!!  Huh?  WTF do you mean I recently posted with the same title?  Hey.  Who’s site is this anyways!?  IT’S MINE!!!  DEAL WITH IT!!!  /harupmh

Who “harumph’s” anymore anyways?  Sheesh…

Heh, lol.  So guys, it’s that time again where I /vanish on you.  Sunday = busy, busy, busy, busy.  It doesn’t help that I got overzealous on Friday night with some PTR testing and research.  >.<

I stayed up until…oh…I don’t know…10am?!  -.-  Inorite!?!?  Crazy!  But I had a blast, and it was fun getting a bit back more to my roots and doing actual in game legwork figuring things out instead of just pouring through the net reading forums and checking other people’s work.  Down side?  I slept till like midnight on Saturday, lol. 

No idea when I’m going to Arena now, becuase we were supposed to try tonight or something.  /sigh  But there’s still plenty to report about WoW.

Killing Machine

So…I thought Blizz was going to screw over Killing Machine pretty badly by moving it to a PPM mechanic.  I assumed they’d set it at like 2-3 tops.  But oh no…Blizz, in their infinite wisdom, set it to 5.  If you’re unsure what all of that means, it is explained in: More nerfs…yay!! /facepalm KM, Gargoyle, yadda yadda…

Now I mentioned before that I didn’t see how this was a boon to DW because multiple fast white attacks were supposed to be the bane on PPM.  However, that is because I misunderstood how they decided to make the mechanic work.  My thought process was that the talent just worked for “you”, the DK.  Instead Blizz goofed and made the talent work “per weapon”, making this extremely OP for DW builds.  With a 5 PPM, using instant cast attack (which we have plenty of), and DW’ing…you can expect an actual proc rate of 12-14 procs per minute, or 2+ per 10sec rotation.

Now I couldn’t figure all of this in my head as Blizz said they were trying to nerf it.  I honestly was wondering if I just again was seeing something from the wrong perspective…  Till I read this:

“It sounds like something didn’t work right with the Killing Machine change, because the intent was to bring down the proc rate and make it more consistent between 2H and DW. We are investigating. (Source)”

EPIC FAIL BLIZZARD!!!  /WIN

I am still “lol”ing in /rl. 

Sundays

For the non-long term readers, Sunday is an off day for me.  Gotta have one of ‘em right?!!?  No?!?!  No?!?!  OMG SLAVE DRIVERS!!! THAT IS WHAT YOU PEOPLE ARE!!! SLAVE DRIVERS!!!  /sniffle  Can’t a man get a day off?!?!  /whimper

Hehehe, no really I’ve always got a lot on my plate on Sundays.  Off to work, then massive driving around the city picking people up, heading back home to change and get ready, then out to meet the guys and get in some old fashioned Role Playing done, and then lots more driving taking people home.  So you won’t ever see much of me on Sunday.

Deathtards

I recently hinted at a post about Deathtards, the next step in evolution from the dreaded “Huntard”.  Yes, scary I know.  Sadly I won’t be filling your eyes with gleeful tales of the “newly dreaded” Deathtard, but they will be coming soon.  This is a pet project.  And I’m going to do it right.  Not only will you be educated about them, but there will be tips on how to not be one.

New Projects on the way?

Yes, yes, Yes, YES!!!  Since we’re getting a lil bit back to basics with the my old school research on PTR, I’ve decided to go back to my roots from the old days of being a Fury Warrior in vanilla WoW.  Upcoming soon will be write ups on how to DPS, how to Tank, and how to PvP.  And I don’t mean showing you specs, rotations, blah, blah, blah.  I mean the tricks and skills necessary to make you a damn good player.  What to look for, what to watch, how to change your gameplay, etc.

And more?!?  You want more!?!  We gots it!!  Kill Target posts will be coming after the 3.0.8 release and more class changes are finalized.  Not sure what nasty little tricks other classes will be using against you?  Not sure who the best person to kill is?  Don’t even know the right tactics in dealing with other classes!?!?  Patience young grasshopper!!  Enlightenment awaits.

BISI is not scrapped either.  I would have had one up today…but well I slept through “today”.  Hence me writing on Sunday morning before work, heh.  BISI incoming on Monday, I promise!!

And!!  A special surprise.  Coming for 3.1 release.  Some of you guys may hate it.  Some of you guys may love it.  Me and Bonechewer here don’t know…  It’s a new style of guides.  Just for Uludar.  I’m getting some…*cough*…release forms signed by some people in WoW.  Need their…uh…consent.  Yeah, that’s it!!  Don’t need people yelling at me for writing about them saying they did or do things they don’t do…

I mean, cause I would never portay people in a fictional manner that has nothing to do with what they’re like, while making fun of them or other people…  *innocent look*  I SWEAR!!!  Damn haters…  o.o

Curious yet?  Me to!!!  Heh.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue, Coming Soon, Epic Fail

That is the question.  Heya guys!!  So before we get all too much “Doom and Gloom” around here, I figured it was time to go do some testing on PTR.  Since they put through most of the Unholy nerfs I’ve been waiting for, this was an optimal time to check Live Unholy DPS versus PTR 3.0.8 DPS.

Now I encountered the Test Dummy bug…yay!!  /sigh  They were pretty lit up on the PTR so Wandering Plague and Necrosis were doing 1 damage per hit.  I managed to later find a boss dummy that had some health, but was only able to get a very small test sample in for average damage on those two strikes.  Now of note, it has been referenced MANY times in the past that Necrosis is not a true % damage bonus.  I don’t remember what the math is behind it, but if it says 10% or 20% or whatever…you never actually get that number.  *shrug*

Leaving that one as a mystery of WoW.  I’ve got better things to research atm.  So basically I had to do manual math to fix the PTR numbers.

For those people who are anal and want to see proof here are the links to the pics that are relevant for me doing the math:

• PTR Necrosis
• PTR Wandering Plague
• PTR Unholy DPS
• PTR Unholy DPS Part 2
• PTR Unholy Unmerged
• Live Unholy DPS
• Live Unholy DPS Unmerged

OK then, so lets jump into the math eh?

PTR

I did 1,913,411 damage over 676 seconds.  Necrosis hit 205 times for 1 damage.  The average for Necrosis from a short sample was 325 damage.  WP hit 101 times for 1 damage.  The average for WP from a short sample was 497 damage.  Changing the averages from 1 to the correct numbers this adds in 116,822 damage for a total of 2,030,233 damage in 676 seconds, or 3,002 dps over 11.2 minutes.

Live

I did 2,161,358 damage over 713.3 seconds.  The Test Dummy had enough hit points to generate correct numbers with no issues.  Or in other words this did 3,030 dps over 11.8 minutes.

Comparisons

• I used the exact same Glyphs, Spec, Rotation, Buff Management, 3 Gargoyles, and 1 Empower Rune Weapon on each test.
• Standard 17/0/54 Unholy Spec.
• Major Glyphs were: IT, SS, and Ghoul.
• Each test was relatively the same period of time.
• Live Necrosis did 221 damage on average, while on PTR it did 325 damage on average.
• Live WP did 511 damage on average, while on PTR it did 497 damage on average.
• The damage spread was longer than a typical boss fight, which means the true “power” of the Gargoyle was diminished.  No Heroism, or short period of time, to do a larger % of the base damage.
• Gargoyle did 852 DPS on PTR, and 1034 DPS on Live.
• Ghoul did 287 DPS on PTR, and 255 DPS on Live. (+20% extra Str on the Glyph doesn’t seem so OP anymore does it?)

Caveats

You need to remember that the Gargoyle damage will be much spikier in a real Live Raid environment.  It will do a significantly larger dps portion and scale better with Heroism and your AP.  So it would be more likely to see a range of 300-500 DPS at least in a Raid once 3.0.8 goes Live.  That being said however, outside of Patchwerk there are a ton of fights where he dies early and contributes very little.  In the long run, this probably will not impact Unholy as much as was expected.

The test sample was also relatively small.  11 minutes each on PTR and Live.  Many would argue that a true test would require at least 1 hour on each side.  I’ve got a life people.  The “simple” version works for me.  I’ll let some other crazy SOB do that if they want to. 

I lost the EP debuff for almost a full minute on the PTR test due to another DK.  I had it up for at least 10min however, or I would have started over later.

End Result?

I’d still have to see what happens in a Raid.  Like I’ve always said, Test Dummies can only tell you so much.  Real test results in a Raid with buffs, debuffs, etc…  That is what really will tell you what will go down.  All in all however being able to maintain 3k dps on a dummy left me very happy however.  Shows serious promise for Unholy still as things stand in 3.0.8 PTR.  In my current gear, even with a dps loss, I should still be able to hit at least 5k DPS on Patchwerk if 3.0.8 went live today.

WHAT ABOUT BLOOD AND FROST!?!?!?!  ZOMG!!!

You serious?  Buff, buff, buff, buff, buff!  You guys are getting tons of loving.  There’s no need to test how your dps is being affected.  It’s going up ya newbs!!!  Heh! j/k    No testing needed seriously, Blood and Frost are getting a lot of Lovin’.

I would have done some testing on DW specs, but I do not have any decent 1H weapons.  But I will keep updated on the current research.  Don’t worry.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue, Specs

Heya guys!!  So there is a lot to talk about with the upcoming PTR changes, however for the moment we’re only touching on a few points.

• Killing Machine now gives Your melee attacks a chance to make your next Icy Touch, Howling Blast or Frost Strike a critical strike.
• Necrosis now give your auto attacks an additional 4/8/12/16/20% shadow damage.
• Summon Gargoyle now persists up to 30 seconds.  Damage from Gargoyles has been reduced from 64-86 to 51-69.
• Anti-Magic Zone now lasts up to 10 seconds.
• Gnaw cooldown has been increased from 20 to 30 seconds.

Outside of Necrosis, this is pure fail.  Keep in mind that Necrosis tends to never exceed 3% of your total damage, so this 5 point talent will cap out at 4-7% of your damage tops.  With 4-5% being more realisitic with these changes.  No one is sure yet what the PPM is on KM, so lets talk about it for just a moment for the uninitiated.

PPM

PPM stands for Proc Per Minute.  This is usually set to a number.  Let’s use the number 10 for example.  Now if an item or ability has a PPM of 10, that means that normally without anything changing your attacks you’d get 10 procs (or activations) per minute on average.  So if you would normally attack 30 times in 60 seconds (with haste) then you’d get 1 proc per 3 attacks.

Instant casts change things, as they don’t count as your normal attacks.  So if you fire off 30 instant cast attacks in 60 seconds you got 60 attacks in 60 seconds.  With the same PPM of 10, once you add in the instant casts, you will actually proc 20 effects in 1 minute since you are normally at 1 proc per 3 attacks with your current stats, etc…  Now, this is a bit simplified, but that is basically how PPM works.  You can also check out a read on PPM at WoW Wiki.

OK, so at the moment no one knows what the PPM on KM is, but I guess some testers will hopefully find out for us soon.

Summon Gargoyle

Summon Gargoyle is now less than 50% of what it was.  Remember that for about the first 10 seconds of the Gargoyle’s duration, he’s not doing bupkiss.  He’s summoning in.  So in actuallity you will only have a potential of about 20-25 seconds of dps instead of 50-55 seconds of dps.  Add in that the base damage is being reduced, and this has become a MASSIVE nerf to DK’s.

While it’s good to nerf this talent in regard to the fact that any and every spec can get it, this screws over Unholy spec dramatically.  Unholy is not really being buffed in any way outside of Necrosis, and that isn’t much to begin with.  So you’re looking at a pretty severe dps drop off.  It’s time to get crackin’ on ideas and thoughts on how to make up for some of this dps in the Unholy tree without affecting other trees.  Get on over to the PTR forums and drop some feedback and/or suggestions.

PvP Nerfs

AMZ to 10 seconds.  I’d personally think this deserves at least 20 seconds.  It requires a 6 point investment to gain, and has limited use which solid CC can actually negate entirely.  Not too keen on 10 seconds.

And wtf with screwing over our Stun?!?  It’s the biggest reason to stay spec’d into Ghouls for PvP to begin with.  /sigh

More to come

Well I’m off for the moment.  I’m still waiting to hear more feedback on the DK nerfs and changes.  And it’s things like these changes to KM and Gargoyle that is making me wait on revamps and touch ups on specs and rotations.  There’s still no telling where we will land.

This is like voting though guys.  If you don’t go speak up and leave some kind of feedback, then you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if you get something you don’t like.  PTR forums.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: Blue