I... Want... Control...!

When I started my WoW career, I was all into healing. After a while, I figured out that a good tank can do so much more to change the outcome of an encounter than a healer can. In fact, there is very little a healer can do to change the outcome of a fight, apart from healing like crazy. Sometimes, the healer saves the day. But I figured that more often than not, it wasn't the healer. It was the tank who managed to take control of the fight. The tank could prevent more damage to the group than the healer ever could heal.

Since then, I've played all four specs of tanks. My two non-tank classes, Zuna the priest and Kirba the shaman, has mostly been lying idle except for some short bursts of "I'm going to level up Engineering" or "I'm going to finish What A Long Strange Trip It's Been" (I have, by the way, finished it with 4 characters now).

Most recently, I had fun with my goblin warrior, whom I started after Cataclysm. I've played PVP a lot with her. Mostly as protection. I fell in love with how much control I can bring to a fight. I am really bad dps, barring a lucky reflected spell, but I could change the outcome of a fight with allies at my side, by enabling them to kill the enemy team unhindered.

When I was around 65 with my warrior, my wife decided to play with me again. She has a tauren druid, at that time lvl 63. We played together a lot, but I was always higher level than her. In addition, I had heirlooms and played BGs on my own. Sum it up, and I raced from her in XP. So she asked me to wait so she could catch up with me.

I froze my XP at level 74, when my wife had just entered Northrend. I still tried to play BGs, but since I had frozen XP I would only meet other players with frozen XP, in effect twinks. You know what I really didn't like about that? No, I didn't mind meeting much tougher opponents. I minded the extremely long BG queues. Several hours, sometimes.

So... rather than wait forever to get into BGs, I decided to play with my other characters. I went through all my tanking characters and played BGs, all of them in the 80-84 bracket except my pally who is 85. The thing I found out is that none of the other tanking specs have anywhere near the amount of control that a warrior has.

Blood Death Knights

A death knight tank has very good survivability. But control? I have a 60% snare, which I need to reapply using a rune every 8 sec. It was crippling to try to keep an enemy perma-snared, not least to my dps. Desecration in Unholy might solve some of this, but at the loss of extremely good PVP talents in the first two Frost tiers.

I was, however, able to bother healers by Death-gripping them out of range of their healing targets, strangulating them and mind freezing them, so I wasn't completely useless. But it certainly felt so. I respecced to Unholy and found that my control improved vastly, which actually improved my survivability in most fights. No need to mitigate damage that never happens because I can kite, eh? And my dots still tick (they do as Blood too, but waaaay much lower), my ghoul still damages, and my Death Coils hit like trucks range.

Feral druids

The interesting thing about feral is that you can't avoid picking up a lot of dps talents along with the necessary tanking talents. Not all of them, but enough that I really felt I could deal some damage. I've learned that a good feral druids know when to shift, and shifts fast. It takes practice. After some hours in BGs, I wasn't all that bad at it. Bear when focused or need bash, cat when I'm ignored, caster to cyclone/root and heal a wee bit, or just shift to the same form to remove snares.

Druids actually have a fair bit of control. It's very handy that the snare is attached to other abilities, meaning I'm snaring my target at almost all times. Nature's Grasp is very handy for bothering anything attacking me, and I can use Entangling Roots and Cyclone to give my enemies a headache. Feral Charge is awesome fun, though in most cases worse than the warrior charge/intercept. Bash is an on-demand stun, and Prowl -> Pounce was very handy against anyone attacking my allies when we were defending a flag. In addition, it's very handy to be able to run from most situations. Note that I played before 4.0.6, meaning I used instant Entangling Roots with the glyph, I could still break roots and not only snares by shifting and berserk made me immune to fear. Druids really needed that nerf, though.

However, despite doing fairly well, I never really felt that I was "in control" of the fight like I often did as a warrior. Truth to be told, most of the fights was more like "I hope we can kill them before they kill us", hammering my keys in desperation. And healers? Healers were gods. Outside of gettting the jump on them from prowl with berserk up, I never managed to kill one alone. It's nice that feral druids get a spell interrupt, but they kitty version costs 25 energy! Compare that to kick (rogue interrupt) who costs 15 energy. That is 2.5 secs worth of energy regeneration compared to 1.5 secs. It really takes a bit of planning to interrupt successfully.

I think I like being resto better in PVP. Tons of control attached, yes please. Someone said "If you are casting more heals than cyclones as a druid healer, you're doing it wrong".

Protection paladins

<rant>

I know I've said this before, but I have to say it again: I really don't like Hammer of Justice.

First, it has too long duraction, in fact sharing the first place as longest stun in the game with a 5-CP Kidney Shot. It worked out slightly better when there were lots of stun-reducing talents around.

Second, I feel it is "too common" in the sense that I encounter it very often, since it's shared by 3 different specs.

Third, it is a one-shot pony. With that I mean it's a long cooldown that many paladins practically rely on it to win. A lucky resist/miss or a class that can remove stuns like Mages (Blink) or Death Knights (Icebound Fortitude after 4.0.6) and very much of the paladin's control is gone. It would be better if it was a 4 sec stun on a 30 sec cooldown or something like that.

Fourth, it has no bloody requirement combined with a very generous 15 yard range glyphed. I believe every other stun in the game has requirements, and all but Kidney Shot lasts shorter.

</rant>

Okay, done ranting. Seriously, though: the only snare available to protection paladins is the glyphed Avenger's Shield. It's ... interesting, but it's dispellable and can't be easily reapplied. I've spent lots of time running after my target as a pally. Snares are very common, and as soon as Hand of Freedom is on cooldown, you're as kitable as they come.

The thing about protection pallies, as far as I've discovered, is that they are very reliant on a proc: Grand Crusader which resets the cooldown on Avenger's Shield. It only procs on Hammer of the Righteous and Crusader Strike, both of which requires melee. So if you are being kited, you have nothing more to do than wait for the cooldown to refresh on it's own (15 sec), bubble or try a hammer of justice.

It is, however, possible to get to melee in the duration of Avenger's Shield. Then, if you are lucky with the procs, you can perma-silence an enemy target. In fact, up to three, if they are clumped up. It's very fun when it happens, but very annoying when you don't get any procs at all. Not to mention it must be annoying as freakin' hell to the enemy who can't do anything at all because of all the silences.

Even less than with feral druids, I really didn't feel in control of the fights as a protection pally. In fact, it felt like I was riding the back seat of some wild RNG race.

I can haz idea!

At this point, I had an idea. If I want control, why am I not playing a class with any amount of REAL control? So I picked up my mage, Rime, who had been my bank alt since I abondoned her at lvl 23 since ... classic. Four-five years ago.

I went into a BG and ... got trashed so bad it was not even remotely funny. I logged out in a true nerd-rage. I'm not proud to admit it.

After that, I tried to get into BGs with my warrior again. Still endless queues. Fun while it lasted, not so fun to wait. After a few days, I was ready for another attempt with my mage. However, rather than heading into BGs, I went into Ragefire Chasm and soloed the place. I practiced, learning how to make a shatter combo, got a feeling on how long I had to stay away to be out of melee reach, how long my freezes lasted etc. Not to mention mana management. I ran out of mana all the time.

Then I tried a BG again. Okay, this was way much better. I could kill a warrior or rogue (provided they didn't get the jump on me) without taking any damage at all. I could take on most enemies, except hunters. Hunters outranged and outdps'ed me, and they don't seem to have any kind of deadzone anymore. I just polymorphed them and ran away whenever I encountered on alone, provided I didn't die in the ~2 sec it took to cast polymorph.

Since then, I've been doing a lot of BGs. Yesterday my better half was away, so I dinged 59 after two winning AVs, and got Wrecking Ball in the last. I have found my love... ehem... a class I love ...for now. I know myself, and know that I won't sit at a class for too long. But for now, I am in control. MOHAHAHAHAHA!

Herbalism: Lifeblood changed

The ability that comes with Herbalism, Lifeblood, is changed. Previously, it healed the character for a decent amount of health. Now, it grants haste (240 for 450 herbalism, less if you have less skill) and a minor amount of health.

It now triggers a shared 20-sec cooldown on all on-use trinkets that grant haste, attack power, spell power and you name it.

That means herbalism is now a good pick for profession for all characters.

Haste grants

• Faster spellcasting = more dps and more hps
• Less time between auto-attacks = more dps and more procs (f. ex. Maelstrom Weapon
• More rage gained (warrior, bears)
• Faster energy regeneration (rogues, kitties)
• Faster rune regeneration (death knights)
• Faster focus regeneration (hunters)
• Shorter Crusader Strike cooldown for Retribution pallies (provided they have Sanctity of Battle)

Tanks are probably the role that benefit the least from haste. However, faster auto-attacks and more resources (rage and runes) are always handy, and translates into more threat. Unfortunately, it does nothing to improve Protection paladin resources (mana and holy power), but it still grants faster auto-attacks (and more Seal of Truth and Reckoning procs)

A simple pally macro for herbalism:

#showtooltip
/cast Avenging Wrath
/cast Lifeblood

Talent tree design philosophy

Now, for some of you, this might be obvious. Sorry to you.

I'll share some thoughts about Blizz' design philosophy regarding the different talent trees. At least, what I think they are.

When WoW was made, Blizz tried to separate each class into three parts, corresponding to the three tabs in the spellbook and three different talent trees. I'm not going to debate whether that was a good idea or not. The basic point was that by separating the talents into different trees, no member of any class could have everything the class offered at the same time. Thus, they could choose to focus on one aspect of the game at the expense of the others, or several aspects without being top-notch in any.

Splitting each class' abilities into exactly three made for some very hard decisions and choices, as there weren't always logical reasons for splitting the way they did. But they tried.

The easiest way to split was on role, for those class that could perform several roles. The roles they split on was:

• Tanks


• Healing


• Ranged dps (spellcasting)


• Melee dps

Some of the classes was easily split using those ideas. I'm going to look at what they intended and worked towards, not the status at WoW launch. At that point, some of the talent trees were really messed up, like both Feral and Balance for druids.

The talent trees that were obvious from the role choices were:

• Shaman: Restoration (Healing), Ranged dps (Elemental), Melee dps (Enhancement).


• Paladin: Holy (Healing), Protection (Tanking), Retribution (Melee dps).


• Priest: Holy (Healing), Shadow (Ranged dps).


• Druid: Restoration (Healing), Tanking (Feral), Melee dps (Feral), Ranged dps (Feral).


• Warrior: Protection (Tanking).

A special note for Feral druids here. Because druids could perform all four roles but still only had three talent threes, it made sense to stack tanking and melee dps together, as they shared many similarities, among them gear choices.

Now, the next wave of splittings was on a spesific aspect of the class. Both classes with pets had a tree devoted to that. Those with choices about weapon types got a single tree focused to that.

• Hunter: Beast Mastery (Focusing on the pet), Markmanship (Focusing on the ranged dps), Survival (Focusing on melee dps and traps).


• Warrior: Arms (Two-handers), Fury (Dual-wielding).


• Mage: Arcane (high dps at the cost of mana efficiency), Fire (good, straightforward dps with fire damage) and Frost (slowing and bursting with frost damage)


• Warlock: Affliction (DoTs and curses), Demonlogy (the pet), Destruction (Direct damage).

Rogues initially got Assassination (finishing moves), Combat (white dps), Subtletey (Openers). This, however, made less sense. Every rogue benefitted from all of those. Over time, Subtletey came to focus more on the "Ninja" aspect of being a rogue, Combat focused on being a light armored, quick fighter, and Assassination came to focus on poisons. Today, they also focus on the three different combo-point builders Mutilate (Assassination), Sinister Strike (Combat) and Hemorrhage. Backstab is the joker, trying to fit in in all of the trees. Blizz tries to make it an alternative to all talent trees, expect if you sink 41 points into Assassination. But I digress. Someone else can probably tell you a lot more about rogue talent trees. I recommend Parry! Dodge! Spin!.

The different playstyles offered by the different trees encouraged different aspects of the game. The warrior Arms tree with it's burst potential was a much better PVP tree than Fury, despite fury packing better PVE dps. Similary, mage Frost tree with it's burst and control was much better suited for PVP than Fire.

There were also some trees they failed with a bit with.

The mage Arcane tree seemed to focus more on meta-spells than standing on it's own. Presence of Mind and Arcane Power were much more useful used with fire spells (and to a lesser extent frost spells) than with arcane spells. Blizz has added new spells and abilities, until today, when it seems to be able to stand on it's own. But it's a bit questionable what it's focus is.

The hunter survival tree was focusing on an aspect of hunter which was generally counter-productive to the hunter playstyle. Melee attacks for a hunter? Granted, some abilities are useful for attaining the range nescessary to use ranged attacks, but a hunter in melee was generally a gimped dps, in addition to the fact that he was much more likely to take damage. Blizz has changed it back and forth. Currently, it's a mix between traps, utility and dps talents. At least from my perspective.

At an alpha or beta stage in Wrath of the Lich King, Blizz decided to change their philosophy. They had done so slightly already, but took a much greater leap now. Rather than letting each talent tree have talents which supported a spesific aspect of the game (such as tanking, PVP dps, PVP healing, PVE dps, PVP healing and so on), they tried to make every tree contain talents which aided in any of the roles the class could perform. The most obvious sign of this was when the description of the three Death Knight changed description. Frost was no longer a tanking tree, but a control tree, similar to frost mages. Every Death Knight tree was given talents that aid in tanking and dps.

At the same time, the warrior Protection tree changed from being bloated with mitigation talents to containing a lot more dps and offensive abilities, while Shield Slam was made baseline for all warriors.

Now, this brings me to my final point. Priests. There are two different observations I'd like to share.

From the start, discipline was a utility tree. Useful abilities for both holy and shadow, but unable to start on it's own. With Burning Crusade, it turned into a PVP-healing tree. Now, they've turned it into a tree that can support others (the lower 20 points), or stand on it's own (further down) as dps or healing, PVP or PVE.

The second observation is about non-shadow dps. Blizz wanted non-shadow priests to be able to dps. But since each class had three trees, this was at first a part of holy through talents on it's own. Then, through different patches and expansions, both discipline and holy have gotten new damage talents. It's interesting to notice, though, that the damage talents are clustered relatively low in both trees. The latest damage talent in Holy is at 27 point (but you need 28 to get all of Spirit of Rdemption, Spiritual Guidance and Surge of Light). Granted, Penance is 51-pointer, but I'm very uncertain that it's better than the talents you're giving up in Holy. Otherwise the latest damage talent is at 31 points (Power Infusion) unless you count Reflective Shields. Many would argue that the latter is not a dps talent, because it only works when you shield yourself. In an instance, that's usually a bad thing. Not to shield itself, but having to shield in the first place.

Now, priests' healing talent trees are built on a slightly different philosophy than the healing trees of Shaman, Druid and Paladin.