December News/Discussion

[Mirajj]

Dec. 2 News

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New ways of doing old things. That's what expansions are supposed to shake up. But, is that being done in a good way? Take the Heavy Frostweave Bandage book for instance. It is only supposed to drop if you are lvl 75+ and have 390 or better First Aid skill. But...it's a drop (And a BoP one at that). And that means there is the rare possibility that your toon will never see it. Now the book seems plentiful enough. I recall running Gun'Drak and having 4 books drop. But there are folks who still haven't seen it. And then there's the new way of doing Jewelcrafting and Enchanting, by which you have to buy your new enchants with tokens you get from dailies, and most new recipes take 10 days to get or so...and there are a LOT of new recipies. What do you think? Is this a good way to throttle profession progression, force guilds to have their professionals work together on what they do and don't buy? Or is this a crafting nightmare?

In an interesting article, Mike Schramm speaks about the things that the "Children of Wrath" will never know. He's speaking of what folks who have just joined the game for the first time will never need to/get to experience that those who are older did. It provides a nostalgic look at some of the changes in the game over the last 4 years.

Every guild has one or two. The guildies who, when they quit or leave for whatever reason, most of the guild breaths a sigh of relief and hopes that's the last they've seen of so-and-so. Expansions also change all that. While a lot of familiar old faces pop back out of the woodwork for a while, a few of these bad pennies turn up again, too. There are some great ideas here for dealing with them.

One thing I've noticed in my years in WoW is that trinkets were few and far between. There were some outstanding ones, and some good ones, and a lot of 'meh' ones. But there weren't that many in general. Now it seems that the devs are going nuts with trinkets, and every other quest rewards one. And a lot of them look pretty good. I've got a bank bag full of trinkets now, as I try to sort through the useful and not useful ones. Anything else you've noticed is appearing around Azeroth like crazy?

[Mordekhuul]

I pretty well disllike how JC was handled with regards to gaining recipes.

JC has a rather nice tanking neck and ring, but you have to buy the recipes for them with badges from dailies along with every other BOE epic recipe and every rare gem recipe.

Net result is that unless you know a tank jewelcrafter, good luck finding anyone that can craft the item for you while it is still relevant.

Perhaps a combination of world drop BOE recipes and tokens from dailies, where your tokens from dailies allow you to fill gaps more quickly when recipes aren't appearing on the AH or among your guildies yet, would have been better.

In contrast, as a Blacksmith, once I hit 340 blacksmithing (which was quite easy), I went to my trainer, paid a sum of gold, and learned every single recipe left to learn, including all of our BOE epic recipes. Odd.

[Tuftears]

I think the problem with the jewelcrafting system is mainly that Dragon's Eyes conflict with buying new recipes so if you decide to make the epic items for someone, you're losing learning time. It'd probably be easier/more likely to get these babies made if you had at least 35% chance to get a Dragon's Eye with each jewelcrafting award.

[Mavfin]

I think the problem with the jewelcrafting system is mainly that Dragon's Eyes conflict with buying new recipes so if you decide to make the epic items for someone, you're losing learning time. It'd probably be easier/more likely to get these babies made if you had at least 35% chance to get a Dragon's Eye with each jewelcrafting award.

I much prefer the daily system to the old BoE drop system. At least I know I can get the recipes I want for the most part, rather than faced with the choice of luck or huge amounts of gold.

[RTM]

I'm still kind of confused by the way they did various recipes. As an engineer I can buy all available recipes from my trainer, no problems. Leatherworkers, jewelcrafters, & enchanters (and others, maybe?) need to buy them from vendors with various types of currency. Anyone have any insight on why they set it up that way?

[Mordekhuul]

I much prefer the daily system to the old BoE drop system. At least I know I can get the recipes I want for the most part, rather than faced with the choice of luck or huge amounts of gold.

I'm dropping mining for Jewelcrafting soon, once I have mats collected to power my way up to Northrend JC levels, partially because I found it ridiculous that jewelcrafters in our guild had zero plans to pretty much ever buy the tanking neck/ring recipes, thanks to needing their dragon eyes for a ton of other things.

By the time they were swimming in enough unneeded Dragon's Eyes to buy recipes they saw little use for, I'd be wearing tier 8 gear and no longer in need of great starter JC epic gear.

Just the thing that got me thinking though. The awesome BOP tanking trinket and stamina gains from JC specific jewels that should out-weigh the 500 I get from mining then piled on quickly =)

[Mordekhuul]

Just in, from Blizz:

We changed how the game handles debuffs (ie negative state effects on targets) on creatures with Wrath of the Lich King. The old hard cap of 40 debuffs on a target no longer effectively exists. You can now apply way more debuffs to a target without them dropping off before their duration expires. The default WoW UI will not normally display all these debuffs, but they really are still there!

[Quark]

By the time they were swimming in enough unneeded Dragon's Eyes to buy recipes they saw little use for, I'd be wearing tier 8 gear and no longer in need of great starter JC epic gear.

I have not looked at the tank/heal stuff too closely, but I know for a fact the melee jewelry is so poorly itemized (seriously, armor penetration sucks) that I never took a second look at it. Naxx10 and badges have equal ilvl gear, better itemized. I'm not wasting 10 days worth of dailies for something that's already replaceable.

Again, the jewelry is the only thing I think Blizzard failed on with the new JC setup.

[Ynir]

The Chained Military Gorget (badge tanking neck) is equivalent to the Titanium Earthguard Chain (JC tanking neck) and quicker to obtain at 25 badges.

The Titanium Earthguard Ring (JC tanking ring) is equivalent to the Deflection Band from Anub'Rekhan in Naxx10. Neither is replaced until Naxx25, so the JC tanking ring is a better project than the neck.

Meanwhile, the Monarch Crab trinket socketed with two Solid Dragon's Eyes provides +145 stamina, a good starter project. It sets off nicely the Essence of Gossamer trinket, +111 stamina, from heroic Azjol-Nerub. Neither is replaced right away.

Two good projects out of three is okay. By contrast, try skilling up with the dud enchants available at lvl 420-440.

[Mirajj]

Dec. 9 News

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It's been said that Blizzard was going to address the "tanking shortage" by making Death Knights in the first place. I'm not sure how they are succeeding in that. For every DK tank I know of, I know four that will dps only. Tank? What is this 'tank' you speak of? It was most amusing to me the other day. I was making a group for some Heroic smashing, and had myself (a hunter) and 3 plate wearers in the group...and it fell apart for lack of a tank. The warrior said he could maybe tank it, but didn't really have the gear. The DK wouldn't even consider it. The paladin was healing (and is a damn good healer, at that). But it still amused me. But are a lack of tanks the main problem? Not where I'm seeing, and not where others are seeing. It's healers that are in short supply, and I don't see any good solution to them, other than the long promised dual specs.

If you could change any one thing about your class, however you wanted to, what would you change? It's quite the question. Since I'm currently feeling the pinch when it comes to ammo (1.5g/stack for 28 stacks, 2-3 times a day adds up...) maybe I'd make it so that hunter specials don't use ammo. Or make an item that is an 'endless quiver' or some such. How about you? What would you change about your class?

Raiding blind. I can't fathom it, but have known folks who insisted it was the only way to raid, and if you told them anything about the fight, they had conniption fits that you were 'spoiling' it for them. To me, part of coming prepared for a raid is coming to the raid being at least generally familiar with the boss strategies and abilities. I am very well aware that there is a difference between reading about a boss, watching a video about a boss, and actually DOING the boss encounter. But I've alwyas been of the mind that you should show up knowing what the boss is capable of, at the very least. Even something along the lines of "Oh, this is the boss that loses aggro on phase shifts, has to be kited by whoever it's 'watching' in P2, and pops ground geysers all over" is preferable to showing up and just thinking "Whoa, that guy's huge. Wonder what he does." To me, raiding blind is raiding irresponsibly to the 9-24 other folks in the raid. What do you think?

[Tal]

Dec. 9 News

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It's been said that Blizzard was going to address the "tanking shortage" by making Death Knights in the first place. I'm not sure how they are succeeding in that. For every DK tank I know of, I know four that will dps only. Tank? What is this 'tank' you speak of? It was most amusing to me the other day. I was making a group for some Heroic smashing, and had myself (a hunter) and 3 plate wearers in the group...and it fell apart for lack of a tank. The warrior said he could maybe tank it, but didn't really have the gear. The DK wouldn't even consider it. The paladin was healing (and is a damn good healer, at that). But it still amused me. But are a lack of tanks the main problem? Not where I'm seeing, and not where others are seeing. It's healers that are in short supply, and I don't see any good solution to them, other than the long promised dual specs.

And yet I've had more than one group almost fall apart due to DPS shortages. Usually right after I get a heroic going someone will start making "Need tank for 'X' instance" adverts. >.<

[vor_lord]

To me, raiding blind is raiding irresponsibly to the 9-24 other folks in the raid. What do you think?

I think it's awesome if the whole raid is on board and that's the plan. It would be irresponsible to have just some folk decide not to do their homework if it is a normal raid where you study beforehand.

I've done nearly all of the Wrath 5 mans with groups who haven't seen or read anything about it. It makes it more fun. I'd love to do raiding that way... but the time you would lose isn't worth it to me personally.

But for a whole group of raiders who want to learn it on their own? Sounds awesome.

[TheDragoon]

And yet I've had more than one group almost fall apart due to DPS shortages. Usually right after I get a heroic going someone will start making "Need tank for 'X' instance" adverts. >.<

Obviously, if you only need 1 tank for a group and you're a tank, you'll rarely see a tank shortage....:)

Personally, I don't have any problems tanking stuff on my Death Knight, if needed. That said, I detest respec'ing for a single group so I usually try to just do it with whatever spec I am. Since I am usually a DPS spec, that can make things tough since whether you spec to tank or to DPS usually results in a difference of 10(blade barrier)+5(anticipation)+3(frigid dreadplate)=18% avoidance, an additional emergency button (be it lichborne or unbreakable armor) and 15% armor (toughness). That's a HUGE difference when you start talking about heroics. It's also exacerbated by the fact that Death Knights are currently the most susceptible to damage spikes of any tank class. Blizzard has admitted that Death Knights are currently too fragile when they don't have any emergency buttons available and they will likely buff frost presence and nerf the cooldown abilities to correct this. But for now, I can understand DPS spec'd Death Knights who strongly prefer not to tank since it can be paving the way for a rough time.

As far as anecdotal evidence, I tried tanking heroic Stratholme last night and it was horrible. We wiped several times because the healer just couldn't keep me upright, even when I was burning Icebound Fortitude, Lichborne and Unbreakable Armor liberally. Granted, that was a combination of a not-very-geared healer with a dps-spec tank, but I was shocked by how often I was ending up face-down in the ground against trash packs. Things got a bit better when we started playing smarter (CC'ing mobs, focusing down the high-threat targets rather than AoEing groups) but it was still pretty rough going.

[Bob the Beholder]

Raiding blind. I can't fathom it, but have known folks who insisted it was the only way to raid, and if you told them anything about the fight, they had conniption fits that you were 'spoiling' it for them. To me, part of coming prepared for a raid is coming to the raid being at least generally familiar with the boss strategies and abilities. I am very well aware that there is a difference between reading about a boss, watching a video about a boss, and actually DOING the boss encounter. But I've alwyas been of the mind that you should show up knowing what the boss is capable of, at the very least. Even something along the lines of "Oh, this is the boss that loses aggro on phase shifts, has to be kited by whoever it's 'watching' in P2, and pops ground geysers all over" is preferable to showing up and just thinking "Whoa, that guy's huge. Wonder what he does." To me, raiding blind is raiding irresponsibly to the 9-24 other folks in the raid. What do you think?

Raiding blind is not something to do all the time, I don't think. It'd just get frustrating! But there are times for it. I remember, back in the day, when my guild was just starting on BWL, when we downed Vael the first time, it was so unexpected and sudden, that we had two hours left on the raid, and not even the raid leaders had looked up the fights after it. We got to Broodlord and had no idea what was going on. It took a couple tries jus to get through the AoE room, and tthen at the end, I still remember my guild leader in this befuddled voice over vent, going, "I... think he... has a de-aggro? Maybe. Do the whelps respawn? Do we have to fight them through it?" He threw down a mortal strike and two-shotted our tank. We were setting up rotations of nature's swiftness heals from druids and shamans to call out and throw right after the MS, on the fly. Took the bastard down that raid, though.

[Delc]

I don't think anything will ever really solve the tank/healer shortage. Putting together 2 decent sets of gear is pretty time consuming, so most people are only going to focus on 1. If they focus on tanking gear, and there is a glut of tanks, they are just as screwed as if they were dps and there are no tanks. Tanking/healing is also much more gear/skill sensitive that dps. It doesn't take more than a couple pulls to figure out how good a tank is, as long as dps doesn't do something horrible you can't tell how bad they are without damage meters. And even that isn't a good measure if you don't know what their spec is capable of.

Blind pulling bosses (if the whole group is on the same page) is a blast. I haven't done it much in raids, but in 5-mans it can make things a lot more interesting. It also really quickly shows who really understands the game. (don't stand in AoE, clear debuffs from the group, etc) I would like the opportunity to do more of it, but at the only real timeframe to do it is right after new content comes out, and before the strats are published on every site in the world. WTB 3.1

[LavCat]

In my experience the last few weeks it has been tanks the ones in short supply. Lots of groups have fallen apart because no tank can be found. On the other hand no one seems to need my healer. So far the only instance she has done is Nexus. What this means is I decided to level my hunter first, since I like pets anyway. Unfortunately other than her pets, tanks are still hard to come by. Last night in heroic HoL we had a guild group except for the gnome warrior who was tanking. The warrior said that he was leveling maces, which I hope was a joke, but may not have been because our healer died on almost every pull. I got to practice my Disengage/Kill Shot timing, as well as of course FD. After the first first boss attempt the warrior said he was sorry and left the group. We never did find a replacement.

On the positive side, since WotLK came out I have leveled my protection warrior from 62 to almost 66.

[Mirajj]

Dec. 11 News

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There is a lot of news slipping in now about changes. Nerfs to classes, buffs to others, changes, changes, changes. I thought some about discussing the changes, but as they aren't even on the PTR yet, it's just theorycrafting. And as with any set of nerfs/buffs, folks start the QQ'ing early and hard. All in all, the changes don't look too bad, really. But this is a change folks have been wanting for a while. The ability to change the skin color, hair, face, facial features, and, most interestingly to a lot of folks, the gender of your toon. However, you are not allowed to change the race of your toon. This is probably done so that races don't become FotM, as their racials surge and ebb in popularity/usefulness. Blizzard's got their FAQ if you have questions.

[TheDragoon]

Something that might be worthwhile to note is the general direction Blizzard is working toward for Death Knight tanking. My early experiences tanking in Wrath with my Death Knight showed that they felt pretty fragile if they didn't have any of their on-use abilities available. I never thought I'd see myself run through 28,000 health so quickly… However, Blizzard has noted that they feel this is probably not the way things should be working, so they are planning to buff up general Death Knight tanking by improving Frost Presence while they are also going to nerf the on-use abilities (namely Bone Armor and Icebound Fortitude) to provide a similar level of total mitigation but with fewer spikes when the abilities wear off.

While it sounds like the specifics will take some testing to nail down, I largely agree with the general direction of the changes that have been proposed. This should put Death Knights more in line with the other classes for general tanking situations while still maintaining a lot of the unique aspects of Death Knight tanking.

In other news, Blizzard is also planning to put additional sigils into the game to help alleviate the fact that most Death Knights get their starter sigil at level 55 and don't upgrade it until they can pick up a drop from 25-man Naxxramas at level 80. They have also talked about adding at least one tanking sigil, so that will be good to see, as well, since the current sigils are mainly focused on damage dealing.

[Lissa]

Something that might be worthwhile to note is the general direction Blizzard is working toward for Death Knight tanking. My early experiences tanking in Wrath with my Death Knight showed that they felt pretty fragile if they didn't have any of their on-use abilities available. I never thought I'd see myself run through 28,000 health so quickly… However, Blizzard has noted that they feel this is probably not the way things should be working, so they are planning to buff up general Death Knight tanking by improving Frost Presence while they are also going to nerf the on-use abilities (namely Bone Armor and Icebound Fortitude) to provide a similar level of total mitigation but with fewer spikes when the abilities wear off.

While it sounds like the specifics will take some testing to nail down, I largely agree with the general direction of the changes that have been proposed. This should put Death Knights more in line with the other classes for general tanking situations while still maintaining a lot of the unique aspects of Death Knight tanking.

In other news, Blizzard is also planning to put additional sigils into the game to help alleviate the fact that most Death Knights get their starter sigil at level 55 and don't upgrade it until they can pick up a drop from 25-man Naxxramas at level 80. They have also talked about adding at least one tanking sigil, so that will be good to see, as well, since the current sigils are mainly focused on damage dealing.

One other thing I noticed in respect to DK tanking is there are no two handed weapons that are built for tanking. Not a single two handed weapon that is in the level 80 use range has defense, parry, or dodge, they're all setup for DPS while there are many one handed weapons specifically setup for Warrior and Paladin tanking. They need to alleviate this issue as well for DK tanking instead of having the DK depend completely on their armor for their tanking stats unlike Warriors and Paladins that look to their weapon and shield to give them a number of tanking stats along with their armor.

[Kevin]

One other thing I noticed in respect to DK tanking is there are no two handed weapons that are built for tanking. Not a single two handed weapon that is in the level 80 use range has defense, parry, or dodge, they're all setup for DPS while there are many one handed weapons specifically setup for Warrior and Paladin tanking. They need to alleviate this issue as well for DK tanking instead of having the DK depend completely on their armor for their tanking stats unlike Warriors and Paladins that look to their weapon and shield to give them a number of tanking stats along with their armor.

This would be fun for ret spec off tanking or 5 man tanking. Though admittedly I'm not 80 yet so I haven't seen how ret fairs in a heroic or raid as an off tank, but I've still tanked more than anything else as I've done normal 5 mans and not really had an issue. I have been throwing on my tanking set which has a sword and board in it (I can't stay uncrit without the extra stats right now), but it would be interesting to try some 2H tanking as ret.