Teh Park

It will be missing in Catalcysm. Also, caption option on images? Sweet!

Two Month Roundup

I forgot to do this at the end of June. Then I forgot at the end of July.

So I continued the Death by series (which I'll finish up this week, I promise) and then seriously leveled my rogue for a bit.

There was this streak where all I was doing was leveling him in fact. 40-60 in five days. It was crazy and it was all I talked about.

More recently I've been talking about Cataclysm and Ulduar and Raiding.

What on earth did I spend two months talking about?

You know what, you should go look. Go read all my posts. Jack my hit count way up there.

Looking at the Beta

So, I haven't looked at the beta information (read: talent trees) in a long time.

WoW.com usually reports the news as it happens. But it didn't.

I was curious if there were some minor builds, and there were. And there were some major builds.

Whats interesting is how I feel about them.

I mean, I like them so much that I don't want to seriously level any toons until Cataclysm hits.

I like them so much- they're just amazing.

Now, to really exhibit my point, go ahead and put together a Blood Tanking spec here and now try it here.

Which one felt like a more natural process? Which one was easier? Which one made more sense to you? Which one had fewer extraneous talents?

For me, the answer to all of those questions is the Cata Beta Build.

The current trees are just so bloated with unnecessary talents. I will (as I've promised before) be looking into the trees but hey. I'll get to it.

The Problem with Leveling

See, in Cataclysm leveling is going to be so much better. I mean, for Shamans, Warriors, Hunters and Rogues specialization, and some general reworking will make everything so much better. Enhancement will make sense, rage mechanics will work, Focus instead of mana and a way for rogues to heal themselves.

Now, lets look at the list of classes I want to level- Enh Shammy, Warrior, Hunter and Rogue. Now you can see my problem.

If I start leveling them now, I'll get used to a very different style of play and that will confuse me when we get to Cataclysm. I also want my warrior and hunter to be Worgen and if I start now, I have to wait a long time and pay money to switch em over.

Some people might say that there is the same thing with raiding for the loot- it will all be worthless in Cataclysm, so why bother- but my gear on my paladin at least should hopefully last a significant while.

So, yeah, sorry about another laaaaate post.

Gettin all srs!

Strangely enough, I've been getting somewhat serious about WoW these days. With my 9-5, I usually don't have a chance to log on until around 7 (I have to eat sometime). I may do a daily heroic or something, and then my JC daily. And then I raid. Four days a week. Once the raid is over, I log and wait for the next day.

Its really weird being in this state. Normally I would be leveling alts, or playing on other toons.

But right now, I'm all about gearing them up, maxing them out. Its strange.

Especially since it will all be undone when Cataclysm hits.

Perhaps my subconscious recognizes this and wants to just get me ready for Cataclysm. I won't be able to do my dailies or raid on a regular basis for a month or two after Cata hits, we just won't have enough geared people that quickly. So I'll be left with leveling alts (which I desperately can't wait to do), but I if I don't level until then, leveling will be all the more exciting.

So- what is your subconscious making you do? Also, sorry for the late post.

Paladins in Cataclysm (This is all wrong)

This is going to be wrong, but I'm going to just talk generalities (which will also be wrong).

Ok, so currently, the three specs are staying mostly the same, getting some cool buffs along the way.

What I really wanted to talk about was judgements. Blizzard has decided to consolidate Justice and Light into one, plain, Judgement.

Protection only has 1 talent that effects Judgements: Seals of the Pure- Increases Seal/Judge dmg by 5/10/15%. Thats in the first tier, so any spec can snag it.

In Retribution, we have a little bit more. In Tier one we have Imp Judge and Heart of the Crusader. The first one reduces the cooldown and the second makes it so that targets affected by a judgement are 3% more likely to be critted upon.

In Tier two we get Eye for an Eye, which responds to all damaging attacks with a free Judgement. Righteous Vengeance makes it so that your judgement criticals cause an extra 30% damage as a dot.

Judgements of the wise grant you 25% of your base mana and replenishment.

In tier four, Fanaticism increases the crit chance of your judgements by 18%.

Now, onto Holy. In the first tier of holy, in Sanctified light, we have Fanaticism again, but for 15%. In tier two, judgements of the pure increases your melee and casting speed by 9% when you cast a judgment.

Inspired Judgement in tier 3 heals your beacon target for 100% of the damage your judgement did.

In tier four, Enlightened judgements increases your judgement range by 30 yards and increaes your hit in accordance with spirit.

Finally, in tier six, Purifying power causes a judgement to be cast upon the caster of any effect you cleanse.


Putting this all together, when you get hit or cleanse someone, you get a ridiculous attack. Of course many of the abilities are locked higher up in the ret or holy tree and many of the abilites are likely to be heavily modified or removed.

On fights like Deathwhisper, in phase two when she shoots out her Frostbolt Volley, a holy paladin could spam Cleanse, each on removing a debuff, damaging the boss, increasing cast speed, increasing crit chance on the boss and healing the tank. JUST for casting cleanse. And you can do that over and over again. On Blood Queen Lana'Thel, when she goes into her air phase, during the fear, you could do the same- hurt the boss, make the boss more vulnerable, increase your healing ability and heal the tank.

If these talents remain intact, judgements are going to be flying all over the place. It will be VERY cool.

Warlocks in Cataclysm

I realized that I don't know druids all that well and since paladins are gonna get hit by the "lol-revamp-bat" I should best avoid writing about them in any detail.

So, on with the Warlockness!

Leveling is going to be a whole lot easier. Affliction locks are starting by getting Unstable Affliction, great for PvP and another dot for PvE- nothing too special there.

Demonology locks start off with a Fel Guard. This is hilarious, because Fel-Guards are great. Its also going to be really weird seeing Fel-Guards all over Elwynn forest. They don't belong there!

Destruction gets Conflagrate. While it is ok without the glyph (which is available at 15) it is alot better with it. In anycase, leveling destro locks have yet another nuke in their arsenal.

Right now Affliction locks higher tiers are not that great. Nothing much has changed and there are a lot of PvP talents that are required to get to the next tier. That sucks. So- not much to see here- move along folks.

Destro locks get some cool stuff. In the first two tiers they have Bane, and Emberstorm. The first two reduce the cast time of Soul Fire by 2 second each, bringing it down to a 2 second cast (from 6).  Now, as of now, my warlock (not gemmed/enchanted for haste at all) has about 15% haste. For your knowledge, 15% of 6 seconds (original cast time) is .9 seconds. Thus, the approximate cast time of soulfire for a decently geared warlock will be about 1.1 seconds. Now, if the target is below 35% health, (and you went Demo) the cast time is decreased a further 20% or 1.2 seconds. This is silly. You'll just be slamming out Soul Fires quickly and efficiently.

Elsewhere in destro is Bane of Havoc. This ability makes the target take 15% of all the damage you do. Now, image, on Onyxia, when the whelps spawn and you can pull upwards of 20-30k on the whelps, if Ony was also taking about 3-5k dps. This could be really overpowered if you could put it on multiple targets so that in the case of Twins or Councils, you could spread your damage around.

Now onto demo. Demo is really plain for the first few tiers and there is nothing special until tier 4. In tier four you can cast Hand of Guldan, a targets aoe burst, followed by an aoe dot (as in Flamestrike). You also get ancient Grimoire, which increases the time your Doomguard and Infernal stay around, which indicates that you will be getting those as trained spells, not as quest rewards. Improved Hellfire looks really cool, I mean, right now it has a decent radius, but expand it by that much, and allow you to cast while running- thats just the peak of awesome. As mentioned above in the Destro section, it looks like Decimate is going to be completely broken- insta-cast soulfires during the execute phase? Yes please!

And then you get improved hand of Guldan which has the dot refresh your immolates, so if you spread those around first and cast Hand four seconds before they fade, you get a good deal more out of them.

Now, it is important to note that Decimate will probably be fixed, because instant Soul Fires is just too good to be true. Also, the talent mentions Soul Shards, and according to Blizzard's plan (not an official statement, but just what I think they mean) they don't want spells to have to consume Soul Shards when cast normally. Also, Nemesis mentions Fel Domination, which is no longer a talent. It may be a trained skill, but I believe (again, nothing official) that it was intended to be an affect from using one of your Soul Shards.

Lots of words. And tomorrow Blizz will probably announce that Warlocks are going to have another resource- Fel Power.

On the gearing process

I was going to talk about the druid talent trees, but decided to hold off on that. Its not really all that interesting to me, and, if it is interesting to you, you can probably find a better source of information than me. If you can't, I wonder why your internet connection will only allow you access to this one site.

Anyways, I've been gearing up my Death Knight. I want him to be able to tank in ICC, because, well, Alenena is bored of the place and doesn't need anything off the first three bosses (including frost) so it is kind of pointless to bring her if someone else who could use the gear could come along.

Now, Malkhelm is about where Alenena was when she went into ICC. She did, admittedly have all 232 or better whereas he doesn't, but my healers are far more impressive these days than when Alenena started, so it should be ok.

Anyways, I've been doubting myself because my gear isn't as good as Al's. I mean, Al can pull a lot more than Malk can. I would not be surprised if she could handle three waves in H-HoR at once while Malk has trouble with just one.

Anyways, can't wait til Cataclysm and I can have a bajillion HP.

Death Knights in Cataclysm (Fo real)

A week ago or so I painstainkingly filled out talent trees for all three possible DK specs, looking at all the talents.

Then Blizzard went and fixed everything. Go here to look at the NEW DK talent trees.

Now, before you select one you have to remember that you get locked into a tree until you have spent 31 points (level 70).

So let us examine each spec more briefly than before.

All three specs get their spec specific strike as soon as they pick a spec. No big surprise. They also all get their death rune conversion talent, which is something that I would generally not take, but it is useful.

Unholy DKs get Master of Ghouls, which is one of the things that identifies an unholy DK, his perma-ghoul. He also gets a somewhat significant boost to his spell damage. Which, although unholy has some spells, its not as good as it would be in frost.

Frost DKs get Icy Talon which both increases their runic power pool and increases their haste. Who can complain?

Finally,  Blood DKs get Veteran of the Third War for a little bit of stamina and some expertise. They also get Vengeance, which is a very interesting ability. "Each time you take damage, you gain 5% of the damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum of 10% of your health." Now, I thought about this for a few seconds. Right now, my paladin has 60k HP, fully buffed in ICC. Healthpools are only going up in Cataclysm. So, this could be very overpowered. Right now I would get about 6,000 more AP which is just a ridiculous amount. Of course, I would have had to take 120k damage, but that isn't really all that much, just a few swings from Marrowgar.


I'm probably interpreting that wrong, but part of me wishes otherwise.


Off to play SCII. Got the beta a day or two before they close it. Whoo!

Exhaustion

Its an interesting mechanic. When Heroism is cast, everyone who is affected by it also gets exhaustion, keeping them from benefiting from it again. Normally, when it is used, it ends with a wipe or a win (kinda has to doesn't it) so it doesn't matter if you have the debuff. If you died, its gone and if you killed it, you don't need it anymore. It would be interesting if they got rid of exhaustion, but made it less effective, that way even if you have multiple shaman's it doesn't matter as much.

Also, when you work lots and raid lots you get the same debuff. I promise you, tomorrow (and this weekend) I will post more. I might even post two significant posts in a day. I will cover those talent changes.

Sorry for the short shrift.

OMGCATATALENTS

Ok, so you can go to wowtal.com to look at the cataclysm talent trees, all 31 points deep.

They're really weird and I will do a semi-thorough analysis of them as Blizz goes along and says that they're where they want em.

In other news, the job and the raiding schedule (which is now even more ridiculous) is straining me to post at a reasonable time.

So you'll likely be seeing double days, or technically four part days.

Best of luck.

The Real ID situation

So I'm a bit late to the party here folks.

Two days ago, Blizzard announced that they would be attaching Real ID to their forums for Star Craft II (when they were next updated) and the WoW forum a bit after the release of Cataclysm (and of course, the Diablo forums after DIII).

They said it was to reduce trolling, so that people have something attached to their posting so that they cannot not post nearly anonymously.

In the few hours since then, the thread on the WoW forums reached nearly 50,000 responses. Most of these responses came from the same accounts, as there were only 13,000 responders. However, given the huge and immediate response from the population, it is evident that people are not a fan of the plan.

It would not have affected me, as I have never posted on the forums. However, while Real ID works as is, I am not a huge fan. I would very much like to be able to associate a toon-name to my account and share that. Many of my guildies I would probably be comfortable sharing my name with, but it would be very nice if I could ask a random dungeon finder pugee to add Alenena as a cross-realm friend, so that I can talk to other awesome people I meet in pugs, without having to give them my name.

According to How Many of Me there is only one person in the US that shares my full name, which Real ID gives. So, I'd rather not let people I don't know at all have that information.

Anyways, Blizzard recanted that part of the revamping- so its all cool.

Yeah, words.

Oh, look, a Goblin

What with all the Cataclysm excitement and all, why not have a goblin!

Its all wrong!

The last few posts about DKs... well, its gonna be pretty much 100% wrong.

Blizzard has announced that they are redoing the way talent trees work in Cataclysm. Completely.

1. Talent trees are being reduced to 31 points in depth. I'm really aprehensive about this- they say they're going to keep core talents, but I feel that losing all that will feel like a bad thing.
2. Players will only get 41 talent points at 85. This is very interesting, because if you get the 31 point talent you only have 10 points to spend in other trees- which seems weird. But with higher density of good/cool talents, it may be worth more than the twenty we have today.
3. At level ten, a player will pick a specialization instead of just dropping points. They player will be locked into this spec until they put 31 points into it (or respec/dual-spec). This seems like a helpful thing for lowbies. It almost definitely is the death of hybrid specs, like frostfire.
4. When a player picks a spec, they will instantly get the passive bonuses for that spec. DPS specs will get a % DPS increase, tank specs will get their 'vengeance' effect, etc.... Originally Blizzard had intended for players to get more out of these the more points they put into their tree. Now, with a straight buff and being locked in you get the same effect you would get (at the end) at the beginning of your leveling. Yeah, this is nifty, nothing wrong here.
5. When a player picks a spec they will instantly get an active bonus for that spec. These abilities are usually considered to be signature abilties. They include Mutilate for assassination rogues, Divine Storm of retribution paladins, mortal strike, shield slam, earth shield, thunderstorm, pennance and more. Now this. This. This is full of epic and win. perhaps even some epic win. Seriously- you'll get a KEY ability that you would previously have to wait for 60 for at level ten. This is AWESOME.
6. Players will be able to spec into secondary trees at level 70. This is the time when you will get your 31 point talent.
7. Players will alternate levels between getting a talent point and getting an ability.

So, this looks awesome. It is indeed the total reboot they promised us. The trees will be 100% fresh, as they will have all lost about 10+ talents. But I'm very apprehensive. I don't know how this will turn out. But I trust Blizzard to make this amazing.

Last bit of DKs in Cataclysm

So this is the third post on DKs in Cataclysm. I'm likely to revisit these fellas as we get closer to launch, and probably afterwards.

It felt to me that Unholy was well suited to PvP, and so I put together a PvP build. Now, I'm not a PvPer but anyways- PvP Unholy: Here it is!

In Blood we have Exsanguinate, which gives a little bit of healing when you kill something. Healing is nice- these points could probably be shifted to Unholy if it will increase mastery/be more effective damage wise.

In frost we go in deep enough to grab three really nice PvP abilties. Lichborne- their trinket on a talent, Endless Winter- makes their primary interrupt free and Pillar of Frost, because of the lovely immunity to external movement affects.

If you don't like those options, you can go with this spec. It focuses a bit more on blood, not grabbing Endless Winter or Pillar of Frost, but snagging Bone Shield (don't think it is very effective in PvP).

Anyways, then we get to our Unholy Talents. I chose to not take Epidemic because you will be reapply diseases as part of your rotation and while they are difficult to dispel (and once dispelled you can reapply them because you got your rune back vie Resilient Infection) this is PvP and they may be dispelled- no need to spend five points on something that will be dispelled.

Unholy Blight, while not as good as it used to be is still helpful, by making it harder for your diseases to be dispelled.

Improved Unholy Presence is really nice, because you will still be a better than average flag-capper and you can get away from someone you don't want to be near, plus, you can pop in Blood Presence, keep the movement speed bonus, but get a huge chunk of survivability.

I didn't put points into Wandering Plague, because PvP isn't the best place for AoE.

Of course, the spec does a lot for Death Coil, creating resource regeneration from Runic Empowerment in the  frost tree, Morbidity for increased damage, Unholy Blight for the disease sticking and extra damage. If you want to, you can put some points into Sudden Doom to give your auto attacks a chance to make them free.

Anyways, I plan on moving to another class- likely Paladins or Warlocks if they seem to be significantly changed.

Sunrise

Sunset, in Westfall. It is likely that this view will be terribly changed in Cataclysm because of spoilers.

More Cataclysmic Death Knights

So, lets get to this quick- here's a DW frost build using the current calculator. These are for PvE purposes, so my talents are chosen accordingly.

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=BTqmjF6rxbVItY.9gq.deathknight
or
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=CT3hwX_dL08Pz.9gq.deathknight

The only new abilities frost has are Brittle Bones, Pillar of Frost and Might of the Frozen Wastes. Improved Frost Presence is different, but not new.

Explanations after the break:

Death Knights in Cataclysm.

Well, in Cataclysm Blood DKs are going to be the tanks, Frost can DW or 2H- up to them, and Unholy is something I don't know much about.

So, without further ado, a Blood Tanking spec:

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=xSaCqIB_0-1M.9gq.deathknight

So- some interesting talents:

The Combination of Hemorrhagic Fever, Crimson Scourge and Blood Swarm all improve it. I like it because it is a cheap snap AoE. Anyways, it can now decrease physical damage dealt, does more damage and you can get it for free when you clip your Blood Plague.

Bood Presence and Imp Blood Presence are the replacement for frost presence- so now presences work with the specs. The improvement gives you your crit immunity.

Blood Parasite is the blood worms redone, so it heals your party- not just you.

Will of the Necropolis currently just does the standard reduced damage under 35%. In Cataclysm, it will give you a Rune-Tap free essentially. Plus 25 damage reduction for 8 seconds- pretty nifty.

Sanguine Fortitude is pretty awesome too- unbuffed it reduces damage taken by 30% and makes the player immune to stuns. If you add in the talent, it now reduces damage taken by 60% and is FREE. So its the Shield Wall/Divine Protection of DKs.

And Dancing Rune Weapon is actually useful for tanks now! In addition to the normal extra damage it provides 20% parry- a huge amount, making it a worthwhile tanking cooldown.

So this is plenty long for a post- I'll do frost some other day. Don't worry boys'n'girls, I'll get to it.

Growing Pains

So patch 3.3.5 was released today.

Along with some painful owiness.

I did not get on until 8:30 (servers up at 8) when they expected the servers to be running by 2 (EST). I mean, cmon Blizzard, can't you expect that maintenance will be extended severely on a patch day?

And, a couple times I was forcefully disconnected, because the game wanted to much memory (perhaps infinite loop?).

Ugh... anyways, I managed to spend my fortune on getting some nice 264 tanking boots.

In anycase, I can't wait to see how painful the Cataclysm launch is gonna be.

May Round Up

I have no idea what I did in the past month.

So I should let you know, because unless you have a really good memory, you won't remember either.

Early on, I had a song about how much I hate tanking the Tribunal of Ages on my paladin. I also hate it on my DK.

I also talked about some ideas that I had for the game, stamina, and then three things for Cata.

And then I even talked about my obsession with looking cool.

Following all that, I had loads of pictures and articles about Dragons and cats.

Some point in there, I started the "Death by..." chain.

And I ended by getting another 80 and writing about it at the beginning of this month.