"Anyone else thinks paladins are overpowered?"

The quote above was said in party chat when I was tanking Utgarde Keep yesterday.

I hadn't played for several weeks when the patch hit. I went online and started fixing glyphs for all my characters... I'm fairly certain I made more than 100 glyphs with Ayeba, my druid. Fortunately, I had a lot of materials stacked up. Sadly, I lacked several key glyphs, but every glyph I could make myself saved me a lot of gold. If I'd been greedy and not so lazy, I would've sold glyphs with my mats instead of making them for myself.

After I had fixed up glyphs and talents for all my characters, I still lacked key bindings and macros. I was not sure what to do. What was there for me to do? I don't raid, PVP was a tad broken, I didn't need anything... so I decided I could spend time leveling my paladin which have stayed at 62 for more than a year. I figured it also gave me a good opportunity to test out the new holy power change.

Three words on my personal feelings of the new system. "I" "LOVE" "IT". I never managed to really enjoy the old paladin mechanic, but this... this is just awesome. While the system needs some polishing and possibly rounding off, it is a much, much better framework than the old system.

Retribution

I tested Retribution for some quests and one instance. The system felt much more interesting than it did before. No more just cooldown-smashing, now I actually had to watch out for procs (Divine Purpose) and use different attacks based on what I was doing, primarly deciding between Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm as a holy power finisher, occasionally using Word of Glory for self-healing. I expect it to get even better at 70 when I get Mastery Hand of Light and at 71 when I get Inquisition.

My biggest problem was that I lacked some sort of way to keep track of Holy Power without looking at the top left corner of my screen. I searched and tested a few addons, and decided that the one I liked best was Class Combo Points, positioned right below the center of the screen (just edit frame.lua and set cfg.pointx = -70 instead of the default value of -150.

In other notes, Long Arm of the Law was a great distance closer. Okay, not as great as Charge, but I also (ab)used it to run away and to move fast in instances by judging distant mobs and critters. The Art of War was not in itself dramatically different (except it no longer allowed healing, but I got that from Word of Glory instead), but the visual proc made it a heapload better. Thanks, Blizz!

I felt retribution was much better now than it ever was before. However, I'm not sure that it sails up as my personal favorite dps spec, even so. But as long as it's not gravely annoying, I'm all good. After all, the reason I want to play a paladin is to heal and tank primarily.

Protection

Okay, protection was just so much fun I had trouble controlling myself. The reason I didn't like it before was that it felt awfully... static. It was just a very locked rotation.

In a way, it's still locked, but there's so much more choices and versatility in it now than earlier. The locked part is the 3 sec cooldown of Hammer of the Righteous and Crusader Strike (Ignore the tooltip, both have 3 sec CD as protection). 3 sec CD means you can use it every second GCD, and in most cases, you should. It provides good threat, gives a point of Holy Power, has a chance to reset the cooldown on Avenger's Shield, and deals a decent amount of AoE damage as well (in the case of Hammer of the Rigtheous).

However, there are still circumstances where I decided not to use it every second GCD, such as when I needed to both dump Holy Power into Shield of the Rigtheous or throw an Avenger's Shield. And it felt like I wasn't seriously punishing myself doing that.

Speaking of which, Avenger's Shield is completely awesome. I love having it as a proc, since it hits like a truck, particularly considering it can hit 3 mobs. Part of the reason I love it is the new power auras which display when I've gotten a proc. The silence effect is a welcome boost as well. I still think it's a bit ... ehm... cheesy, for lack of a better word, but I guess I can live with that.

There's also another proc available, Sacred Duty. For some reason it doesn't show up in the Power Auras, most annoying. It's also much more passive... it rarely changes the way I use my powers. The only exception might be if I have 2 holy power, and Hammer of the Righteous, Crusader Strike, Judgement and Holy Wrath are all on cooldown. Then I might consider dropping a 2 HP guaranteed crit Shield of the Righteous on my target... otherwise, I'd just use another ability and wait for the 3rd Holy Power. In fact, I decided to drop the 2 points in the talent in my latest respec.

I have almost never had any trouble with mana while tanking since the patch. There have been a few exceptions, but as long as I remember to Judge and keep Holy Shield up, I'm usually good.

Now, there's one thing I don't understand, but don't complain about. I am doing so much dps, while tanking. I managed to tank an entire instance once forgetting to buff myself with Righteous Fury, just because I dealt so much damage. I mean, I was at 2k dps at lvl 68 in Utgarde Keep, while the dps (lvl 68-71) were below 1k on trash mobs. On bosses I was still above 1k dps, unless I spent all my HP on self-healing. And I'm not even very well-geared for my level, still having several green pieces from low-level Outland quests and no enchants. On every single instance in Outland I've topped the dps charts, usually by a wide margin.

Speaking of self-healing, casting Word of Glory on myself with Guarded by the Light and Divinity yields a massive amount of healing done. It heals for about 2-2.5k/holy power at level 68, and it can crit, healing me above full health. Unlike percentage-based heals (like Death Pact and Enraged Regeneration) it will probably be much less powerful at level 85, but at this level it's just too awesome, particularly since I can throw out one every 9 seconds. After a Shattered Halls run, I found that I missed some quest mobs, so I went back to kill them after the last boss was downed. Only a hunter went with me, and together we took down packs of 5 mobs (the gladiators with a single centurion), with the only source of healing being my own. With careful pulling, I'm sure we could've taken the entire instance that way, possibly not including the bosses.

Conclusion: I've really enjoyed paladin tanking, so much more than before the patch. I really look forward to lvl 82 when I can get Pursuit of Justice in my tanking build, too.

Holy

I respecced from Retribution to Holy and healed an instance with it, having only about 50% of my gear as healer gear. Fortunately, the tank didn't take too much damage, so I was good. It gave me a chance to test out the new holy power system here too.

I won't go into too much details since I've got much less experience healing than tanking so far, but the impression is that it rocks. Much more dynamic, way much more mobile. When Daybreak procs, I can ften throw out two Holy Shocks and a Word of Glory in rapid succession while moving.

Unlike most other Holy Power dumps, Word of Glory scales linearly with holy power, while Shield of the Righteous, Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm scales semi-exponentially. It means that it is not necessarily a bad idea to throw out a 2 HP Word of Glory if that's what you need to top off someone, while throwing a 2 HP Templar's Verdict is a guaranteed dps loss.

I will probably at some point (probably at 85) to test out a Holy DPS build, based on Blazing Light, Enlightened Judgements, Infusion of Light, Crusade, Speed of Light (from the beta, where it provides 3% haste), Judgements of the Pure, Conviction, Rule of Law, Divine Favor and primarily Denounce. Paragon of Virtue will also be handy to use Avenging Wrath more often. All holy power will be dumped into Inquisition. As you can see, there are quite a lot of talents that can improve holy dps. The Glyph of Exorcism and Holy Shock and either Judgement or Divine Favor are natural selections here.

I see three problems with such a spec. The first is mana. While Exorcism is fairly cheap with Denounce (7.5% base mana), with no mana returns except Divine Plea (which should be glyphed) and Lay on Hands (which should be glyphed not once, but twice), you might run dry during a long battle. Of course, you can stack Spirit since you still have Meditation.

The second problem is range. Holy Shock has a mere 20 yards reach, and there are no talents to improve that. However, it's just annoying, it's not critical.

The third and most important is boredom. The rotation is just boring. The instant Exorcism proc from Denounce doesn't change anything in the rotation, so it's just spam Holy Shock on cooldown, spam Exorcism else and use Judgement to keep up the haste buff. If Judgement deals enough damage, it can be part of the roation, but so far it seems it doesn't.

Edit: lack of AoE...

Outland in 2 days

I blazed through Outland (admittedly, from lvl 62) in two days. Most of the time in instances, and I know that's suboptimal for leveling once you've expended your rested XP.

During that time, I also achieved Revered with Sporeggar to get Transmute Primal Earth to Air, skilled from 330 to 350 Alchemy and grinded 4 Primal Air for the Primal Might I need for Master of Transmutation. Fortunately, I had plenty of Primal Earth and Primal Fire on my bank alt from mining with other characters. I ended up buying the Primal Manas from the auction house, since they cost only 7 gold a piece. The primal air, on the other hand, cost 45 gold each, and a primal might cost 180 gold.

During my grinding of Primal Air I killed a lot of level 71 mobs, at level 68. I was not even remotely in danger at any time despite having two or three mobs on me, and they went down fast! Protection is just an awesome spec for soloing as well, possibly more so than before.

Serious surgery incoming

I've decided to pay the money to change race on my paladin from Blood Elf to Tauren, once that becomes available. I just like the tauren paladin theme a lot more, and I really like taurens. Too bad their racials are strictly worse. At least I get the benefit of Cultivation.

I am already renaming the paladin abilities in my head to better suit the new theme. Guarded by the Light can be Bathed in Sunlight.

A candidate for very illogical naming...

One thing I've thought of. The talent Protector of the Innocent. It heals only the paladin himself or herself. Does that imply that the paladin is innocent? Bah, yeah, right. How many mobs have you killed during your level up, mister of-so-innocent pally? How many of those have not been a threat to anyone, and have just minded their own business until they were attacked?

It can also imply that the paladin is the only innocent, since it doesn't heal anyone else. Even worse...

I can see an interpretation where the paladin need to stay alive to help others, in effect, the innocent, but it's not a good way to base the naming on. You could rather name it Dancing in the Light or something like that. For my tauren paladin, this talent will be something like Walking in the Sun.

Are bears still a bleak copy of Protection Warriors?

We're entering a new era... World of Warcraft version 4.0.

When I started playing WoW in classic, bears were really a bleak copy of protection warriors. Fast forward to Cataclysm. How do they feel today?

Identical abilities

The first comparison isn't even fair. Growl and Taunt are the identically same abilities, but they're also identical to Hand of Reckoning and Dark Command.

Moving on, Demoralizing Roar and Demoralizing Shout are identical. So are Challenging Roar and Challenging Shout. Interestingly enough, druids can glyph their version for 30 sec less cooldown, but I haven't been able to find a similar glyph for warriors. However, they pick up a talent (Drums of War) which reduces the rage cost of both shouts to 0 rage. Most handy.

Maul and Heroic Strike are basically the same. However, glyphed Maul will hit an additional target (albeit for 50%), which is starting to remind very much of Cleave. Then again, glyphed Cleave hits two additional target.

Similar abilities

Survival Instincts reduces damage by 60%, while Shield Wall reduces damage by 40%... however the latter can be glyphed to reduce damage by 60% as well, increasing its cooldown. However, with the talent Shield Mastery, the cooldown, even glyphed, drops below that of Survival Instincts.

Bash and Concussive Blow are pretty similar. The main difference is that Concussive Shot has a shorter cooldown and deals damage as well. Still, pretty similar.

Skull bash and Shield Bash are also similar, though Shield Bash has two seconds longer cooldown (provided the bear picks up Brutal Impact, which every bear with a bit of self-respect should). Shield Bash is affected by a lot of talents, though, among others reducing the rage cost to 0 and granting it a 100% chance to silence and daze the target.

Frenzied Regeneration now increases health by 30%, just like Last Stand. It also converts rage to health, similar to Enraged Regenration. The glyphed version increases healing taken instead.

Abilities which have the same purpose

Now we're arrived at abilities which aren't necessarily very similar, but works for the same purpose.

First, the primary skill for each spec. Mangle and Shield Slam both share a 6 second cooldown and are high-threat single-target moves. Mangle also applies a bleed debuff, while Shield Slam removes a magic buff. Both abilities have talents which gives a proc that reset their cooldown and cause them to cost no rage. For druids, it procs of Lacerate ticks, while warriors proc them off Devestate and Revenge.

Thunder Clap and Swipe are both AoE-threat abilities which share a 6 sec cooldown. In addition, Thunder Clap reduces attack speed of the opponents. Druids have this ability attached to Mangle and Maul with the talent Infected Wounds. In addition, Infected Wounds slow the target.

Druids also get a second AoE-threat ability on a 6 sec cooldown at level 81, Thrash, which applies a bleed effect to all targets. Warriors can talent Thunder Clap to spread the bleed from a Rend to all targets.

Then there's gap closers. Feral Charge and Charge both share a 15 sec cooldown unglyphed, 14 sec glyphed. The druid version immobilizes the opponent, the warrior version stuns. However, protection warriors also have Intercept and soon Heroic Leap.

Druids get Omen of Clarity for free, allowing a rage free ability now and then. Warriors can spec into Battle Trance, which does pretty much the same, but has a higher proc chance from a smaller selection of abilities... namely Shield Slam only.

Stuff which are not so similar

Faerie Fire and Devastate (or Sunder Armor for low-level warriors) both reduce armor by 4% and stack up to 3. However, they are not very identical in the way they are handled in the rotation. Faerie Fire has a long reach, a 6 sec cooldown, and with an almost mandatory bear talent (Feral Aggression) applies 3 stacks each cast. Thus, a druid doesn't spend time stacking up FF.

However, druids stack Lacerate 3 times. They throw down Pulverize to consume the stack and get a self-buff, unlike warriors who just keep Sunder Armor up throughout the battle.

Warriors do have a bleed, Rend, but it isn't vitally important the way Lacerate is.

Barkskin and Shield Block have some resemblance in usage as both reduce incoming damage slightly on a fairly short cooldown. Talented, Shield Block only has 30 sec CD, while Barkskin remains at 1 min. In addition, with Heavy Repercussions Shield Block becomes an offensive utility as well, doubling the damage of Shield Slam while it is up.

The passive mechanic to block incoming attacks for a warrior has somewhat the same purpose as Savage Defense, namely reduce incoming damage somewhat. Both are also focus of the mastery for each class.

Unique abilities to each class

Enrage was originally a copy of the warrior ability Bloodrage. However, it is now gone, leaving druids with an original ability.

In addition to some abilities mentioned above, druids also get Berserk, Stampeding Roar and Omen of Clarity. It might be mentioned that druids also get Rebirth, one of the very few ways to bring someone back to life mid-combat. Useful also for a tank, in a fight with phases where they can shift out between the different phases without risking to get squashed.

Warriors get a heapload of original stuff they can use while tanking. Which isn't too strange, since they can't shift out of their rage-form, like druids can. Listing them quickly: Intervene, Slam (not sure this is of any use while tanking), Vigilance, Shockwave, Disarm, Revenge, Spell Reflection, Heroic Throw, Victory Rush, Inner Rage, Berserker Rage and Intimidating Shout.

The two classes also bring different buffs and debuffs which benefit their party/raid. Well, almost. Both bring the armor reduction debuff. In addition, druids bring Leader of the Pack, the Mangle bleed increase and Mark of the Wild. Warriors bring Battle Shout, Commanding Shout and Vigilance. It feels like I've forgotten something here.

Conclusion?

The two subspecs (bears and protection warriors) still shares a good amount of mechanics. However, they also have enough difference that it doesn't feel like you're playing the same class. Then again, if you do have one of them and want to try a different tanking style, it might be a better idea to try Death Knight or Paladin first, to get a feel of something entirely different.

Test of Faith: Are priests my thing?

Zuna, my priest, was my first 60. I've healed a lot with her, and watched the priest class move through changes. When I think about it, though, priests have been one of the more stable classes in the game, except for the complete re-haul of Discipline.

Because of my uncertainty, I decided to pick her up again and play with her a bit. Test things out.

Demand 1:

PVE healing style that fits me

Priests have two distinct PVE healing styles to choose from. To be completely fair: Every healer class have several healing styles, but none as different as holy vs discipline. With that said, it is different to raid heal with a shaman laser-chain-heal style and tank heal. Same with a druid. Can't speak about paladins, no direct experience in raids there.

Holy

I've only got experience as a raid-healing priest at lvl 70, and that was as holy. Still, I don't think it is a completely different experience now... well, except that Circle of Healing is on cooldown.

Holy has, when specced for it, a very strong hot in Renew. Glyphing it is completely overkill for normal 5-mans, but I can see how that could be useful in raids. Empowered Renew remind me of Riptide. I like it.

Surge of Light is also fun, especially since it can proc multiple times on a single Prayer of Mending. However, if I were to stay a holy priest, I'd get some addon that shows me when I've got a proc up. Too easy to miss.

Mana regeneration is also top-notch as holy (including Meditation, mind you). In fact, I often threw in some damage because I had mana to spare.

I didn't get to test out a lot of Holy's group healing in 5-mans. A random Circle of Healing (which practically guaranteed a Surge of Light following), once in a while a Prayer of Healing. I know from experience it is solid. In fact, I think Holy has the best tools for handling damage to a lot of party members in 5-mans.

I enjoy Guardian Spirit. It is very powerful and fun. I also played around with Body and Soul. Fun, and handy in PVP, but not a MUST-HAVE. Inspiration is as usual powerful.

The thing I didn't like so well with Holy was handling lots of tank damage. But that's comparing to Discipline and druid-healing, which is a bit unfair.

All in all... I liked holy healing fairly well.

What I didn't like so well is the Shadowfiend. Long cooldown (compared to Innervate and Divine Plea), too. That's not limited to Holy, though.

Discipline

Ah... discipline. For a loooong time, I insisted on being a discipline priest, long before the rehaul that made discipline actually good. Back when Divine Spirit was the 31-point talent.

Anyway... I like discipline too. Powerful shields which can be tossed out extremely fast thanks to Borrowed Time and Penance that can heal a tank up from nada to full (almost) in no time are the two main selling points. Renew ticks for a lot less, naturally. Prayer of Mending is still powerful, though.

But, to start somewhere else: Discipline is not scaled well for below-max-level mana management. The mana returns from Rapture is just way more powerful when you got a good lvl 80 mana pool. At 71, I had trouble with my mana as discipline. Had to sit down and drink every third pull, less with a very tough tank. I know from second-hand experience that Discipline's mana is in a pretty good state, though. Had a disc priest heal my DK when I tanked the two groups after Ick and Krick. He ended up with more mana after the two groups than before he started, and he didn't use his Shadowfiend.

I also find the lack of a instant-heal slightly frustrating. Ironically. I'm tossing out shields like there's no tomorrow... which translates to everyone having Weakened Soul on them all the time. At least everyone who is taking damage. But it isn't that bad, I'm just not used to it from being a holy priest for a long time.

Discipline has a lot more cooldowns to play with. Good thing? Bad thing? Definitely something I need to learn. I didn't use them too well.

By the way, Engineering gloves enchant + Berserking troll racial + Power Infusion + Borrowed Time + Enlightenment is a sick amount of haste together. Resurrection in 4 seconds, anyone?

Demand 2:

Potential as PVP healer

If you look at any kind of rated arena, Discipline is the only way to go. Blizz has tried to make Holy viable with talents like Body and Soul, Blessed Resilience and so on, but Disc is still king. I don't mind, though.

Disc priests are very powerful in PVP. Priest-Mage-Rogue, anyone? They have powerful crowd-control in their Psychic Scream, shields that ignore any healing debuffs, penance that insta-heals the first tick and nearly the second too, Mana burn goodness for the right compositions (double healer + dps, for example), both offensively and defensively dispels, quick nukes at the right times... powerful, indeed. They're not built for outlasting another team, they are an offensive-type healer.

Sadly, I can't test too well. Walking into PVP with no resilience these days is a sure way of getting blown up, particularly as a healer. So I'll just have to take the word of the community, which says priests doesn't suck. Still... cloth means that my nemesis is warrior and to some extent rogue. I liked being tough and not fearing warriors as a DK.

Shadowfiend is worse in PVP. Can get kited around and killed easily, reducing my possible mana returns.

Demand 3:

Potential as ranged dps

Interestingly enough, this is the first time I've really specced shadow during all those years of being a priest. Dual-spec, I love you.

I like shadow. It's cool with the shadow ... stuff which seems to evaporate from you all the time. I like having three dots to play with, one CD nuke and one no-CD nuke. Creates a game of weaving, where I need to make sure stuff are up all the time. I can get used to that, and thrive with it. No proc-watching involved.

It wasn't so entertaining in PVP, but then again that might steem from my complete lack of resilience. There are some shadow priests among high-ranked arena teams, which should say they are viable. I liked the immunity Dispersion provides. The only good answer against a bladestorming warrior... haha, eat that.

I missed a snare. Mind Flay provides a semi-snare, but I have to stay immobile to maintain it, and that means I can't kite anything around.

Feel

That's a tough question... do I like the priest feel? The question is really, what is the priest feel? From the artwork on some of their armor, they're sort of Oracles, bringers of divine fury, angels... stuff. What do they worship? Easy to answer or a human or night elf, hard for a troll or an undead. And come Cataclysm, and we'll have gnome priests as well.

Angels and stuff are cool and all that, but it's not ... well... shamans are cooler, I'm certain about that.

Conclusions

Possible

I think the priestly playstyle might fit me. I'm not completely sure.

DK vs Druid tanking

(Note: I decided not to spend the time parsing all spell names to wowhead-links. If someone miss that, let me know in a comment, and I'll start doing it again.)

I decided to test out the new instances with my druid, Ayeba. She's geared enough for that place, but far from overgearing it. I tanked Forge of Souls heroic and healed Pit of Saron heroic. I might discuss the healing in another post, but for now I'll focus on the tanking side.

Okay... where to start...

Gathering the mobs

First, Death Knights have a HUGE advantage when attempting to gather mobs. Against "ordinary" melee mobs, I need to get close enough to hit them all with swipe at least once. I'm used to dropping a Death and Decay (which is really rather big) and it will tag almost all mobs so they'll run to me. Slightly irritating, but I can live with that.

Now, what about ranged mobs? Uh-oh... bad stuff. Druids have no way of moving them at all to where you want to tank them, apart from getting aggro and breaking Line of Sight on them. Bash? Stuns them, they just start casting from the exact same position when the stun fades. Feral Charge? Immobilizes them for exactly as long as the interrupt lasts.

In effect, any group with at least two spellcasters who aren't already grouped are a pain. Consider the third group in FoS (excluding the single skull): as a druid I have to run back and forth all the time to keep aggro on all. It is also possible to keep aggro on a single ranged by hitting him with Feral Faerie Fire every time it's off cooldown, but painful. While running, I risk putting my back towards the melee mobs, killing all the avoidance I have.

Death Knights have... Death Grip! Oh, how I love it. But also Mind Freeze, usually causing the spellcaster to follow for as long as the spell school is locked out, and Strangulate to silence at range, guaranteeing that they will come to you. And I don't even need to collect them all to keep aggro on them: If I target a mob in the middle, I can keep aggro in a 30 yards range. Pestilence has 15 yards ranged glyphed in every direction, and once I've got diseases ticking, I can usually hold threat on them.

Health and avoidance

My druid had 45k health during the run... but some 40% avoidance. My DK has only 34k health self-buffed, but almost 60% avoidance. I do notice the difference. Avoidance stacking is not recommended, but I don't recommend stamina stacking either. If damage taken is fairly low, though, Improved Leader of the Pack rocks with a high max-health.

Generally, it's a trade-off, with both having their advantages. However, the tank will require more healing over the course of a raid or instance the lower avoidance is.

Emergency buttons

Druids have 3 emergency buttons.

A bear-tree? Tree-bear?

Barkskin is solid, -20% damage from all sources, lasts 12 sec, only 1 min cooldown, and doesn't cost any resources at all. It (usually) lasts longer than Bone Shield, provides more damage reduction than Unbreakable Armor and works against magic as well. Bonus that it can be used while feared or stunned.

FRENZYYYY!

Frenzied Regeneration is a bit so-and-so in itself. It's very costly on rage, meaning that it's hard to get off any other rage attacks while it's on without hurting it, but glyphed it's pretty good. +20% healing taken compared to Vampiric Blood's +35% healing taken. Lasts fairly short, though, only 10 sec, compared to Vampiric Blood's 15 sec glyphed duration.

Must survive. Must survive.

Survival Instincts is rock solid. Increases current and max health by 45% (glyphed) of your total health for 20 sec. More than Vampiric Blood's 15%, and lasts longer.

Druid roundup

Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration work extremely well together. God-like survivability. That's both an advantage and a disadvantage: Many times I feel I have to save both for the same time, because Frenzied Regeneration isn't too powerful on it's own. So, you get either a fairly good 1-min CD and a superb 3-min CD (combining both), or you get a fairly good 1-min CD, one decent 3-min CD and one good 3-min CD.

The same logic can be applied to any tanking class: of course you get a much better CD if you combine two at the same time. But all CDs should be powerful enough on their own to be worth using alone. I don't feel Frenzied Regeneration is, particularly not unglyphed.

The next sad thing is that you have to glyph two survivability cooldowns, leaving you only one for threat-generation or utility.

OMG Owerpowered magic-ignoring stuff

Now, DKs. They have Anti-magic shell, which has 3 simultaneous effects. First, it absorbs 75% of spell damage taken for it's duration. Second, it prevents the application of any negative stuff and suppresses debuff auras for its duration. Third, it converts spell damage absorbed into runic power. It also works on poisons, diseases and curses. It has low duration, 5 sec unglyphed (and no tanks I've ever seen choose to glyph it), but also a fairly short CD of 45 sec.

There are fights where AMS doesn't help at all. However, I think most boss fights feature something AMS shell works against.

I love AMS. It almost trivializes some fights, like Goarfrost where you can reset the debuff stack, and Falric, where it suppresses his -75% healing and damage done debuff for it's duration, allowing you to be healed fully up.

Chill out, dude

Icebound Fortitude is possibly the most powerful DK cooldown. In non-tanking gear, it reduces damage taken by 20%, equal to Barkskin or Bone Shield. At 540 defense (raid boss crit immunity) it reduces damage taken by 41%. At 600 defense it grants 50% damage reduction, same as Divine Protection. Most DKs have something in-between, meaning it mitigates between 41% and 50%. Quite solid. It also grants stun immunity, but this is very rarely important in PVE. It's a solid cooldown.

Rise and ... never mind, die again

Death Pact provides instantly 40% of total health back. Usually used with Raise Dead, but can also be used with Army of the Dead or Summon Gargoyle. The latter is a very rare talent in a tank build, though. I like it. Especially poweful when combined with Vampiric Blood, restoring 54% of your health. Less powerful in raids, but does have it's place to help the healers overcome a spike.

1 min talent CDs

Each talent tree has a tanking cooldown: Vampiric Blood for ... guess what, Blood. Unbreakable Armor for Frost. Bone Shield for Unholy. Personally, I think Vampiric Blood is the best of these three cooldowns. The other two are fairly good too. Unbreakable Armor does nothing against magic damage, and Bone Shield is a bit unstable; it can fade in as fast as 6 seconds, or last for 5 min... though the latter is very unlikely. The nice thing about Bone Shield, though, is that you can pre-cast it and have it ready again when you enter combat, so you can "chain" it from the start of a fight, or have it up at the start and use it again before 1 min has passed. Bone Shield's duration can be extended by combining Bone Shield with an activated avoidance trinket, like Glyph of Indomitability.

The downside of all these three cooldowns is that they require a rune... which means you either must save one rune until you need it (loss of threat), wait until it comes off cooldown when you need it (risky) or combine it with Blood Tap which also has a 1 min cooldown. I have a macro which I press without modifiers to cast the CD, and press with shift to cast Blood Tap -> CD.

Wait wait, another talent CD

In addition to the 1-min CD, Blood and Unholy has another tanking CD you can spec into.

For 4 talent points in Blood you can have Improved Rune Tap, which restores 20% of your health on a 30 sec at the cost of a blood rune. Frost and Unholy tanks can get the 10% health on a 1 min cooldown without sacrificing much. However, only blood tanks can really use this talent well. To effectively use it, you need to save a blood rune for it (loss of threat, loss of blade barrier), wait until it's off cooldown (risky) or use it with Blood Tap (which means you can't use it with your 1-min CD) or with Empower Runic Weapon (5-min cooldown). I don't like it. Blood has much easier access to blood runes since you can turn both unholy and frost runes into death runes. The unimproved version isn't very powerful at all. The improved version is fairly good, especially combined with the rest of Blood's arsenal like Vampiric Blood, then it restores 27%.

Unholy tanks can spend 4 talents points as well to get Anti-Magic Zone. 3 of those points boost AMS to 100% and reduces spell damage taken by 6% at all times. Anti-magic Zone requires an Unholy rune, and thus is a bit unpractical. However, it can absorb a ton of magic damage, well worth spending Empower Runic Weapon on if you need. It lasts for 10 sec or until it's absorbed enough damage, then fades. Unfortunately it's extermely stationary. It's a very circuimstancal cooldown, and can really shine on some bosses. Since it also absorbs damage on your party, it has extra utility.

Frost doesn't have a second cooldown, but Icebound Fortitude lasts 16 sec for a frost tank, compared to 10 sec for everyone else.

My flesh was only getting in my way

Army of the Dead can be used in one of two ways. While channeling the army (4 sec), you take reduced damage equal to your parry + dodge chance, which means somewhere between 40% and 60% damage reduction. However, the duration is painfully short, and you can't avoid anything at the same time. Statistically you will take the same damage in the long term against dodge/parryable attacks. However, against attacks which are unparryable/undodgable, it will still reduce damage. It is very circumstantial to use the army this way.

The second way of using the army is that it will taunt anything lower level than a raid-boss. Each skeleton dies pretty fast, though, so it's only a temporary help. The main problem is that you can't taunt the boss of them again until they're gone, or they'll just retaunt. Their taunt seem to have a 1 sec cooldown EACH. That means you can't move the boss where you want him or her, and that can prove death for your group certain places. Against a raid boss, they will provide a bit extra damage and fodder for Death Pact, but nothing else.

Desperate measures

If all other cooldowns are on ... cooldown, it is possible to spam Death Strike like crazy. For a Blood or Unholy tank it restores 15% of your health for each DS that hits, and 10% for a frost tank. Combine it with Empower Runic Weapon and you can theoretically restore 60% of your health (without Vampiric Blood) over 4 GCDs.

DK roundup

DKs have a lot of cooldowns. The main difference between theirs and a druids' is that many of their cooldowns are very circuimstancal. I believe they're better if you can use them in the right circuimstances, but for general-purpose they're about equal.

Threat

Any properly equipped tank can hold aggro on a single target without any trouble at all, barring a string or dodges/parries from their target.

Well, not true. A druid must choose to spend his GCDs swiping (generating AoE threat) or Mangling/Lacerating/Fairie Firing (generating single target threat). Maul will usually be macroed to all those attacks, causing your auto-attacks to generate solid amounts of threat. Glyphed it will even hit two targets. However, I found that I was not always able to hold threat on my primary target while only swiping: I had to throw a mangle or something to stick an enemy to me.

Even spamming swipe, I felt that my AoE threat was only on par with a blood DK. That might be because my DK is better geared than my druid now, but it was very annoying still. Frost and Unholy seem able to put out much more AoE threat.

This is the part of druid tanking I hate the most, and the reason I switched to a DK in the first place; The endless, mindless spamming. Granted, a DK rotation can also be viewed as a bit spammy, but a 20 sec rotation is much more interesting than a 6 sec rotation. And AoE is much smoother as a DK. You drop Death and Decay and get some threat on all enemies, then you hit your primary target with Icy Touch and Plague Strike and then pestilence. The two single-target attacks on your primary target + auto-attacks provide enough threat to hold the primary target to you. Then you weave your abilities as you best see fit.

Conclusions, sort of

I hate swipe-spamming. Otherwise druids are okay. I'll definitely stick to my DK for now.

The other side of the fence is hereby desecrated

I have now tested out a lot of specs, in the following order: Unholy, Frost 2h, Blood, Unholy and Frost DW.

First and foremost, I found that I love the Glyph of Anti-magic shell. If I got it on before I get hit by a CC, I can ignore any attempts to CC me using magic for 7 seconds, often enough to drain half my opponents' health. Interestingly enough: It also allows me to run away from non-combat rogues. Combine Toughness, Da Voodoo Shuffle and Enigmatic Skyflare Diamond, and all movement-impairing effects last only half the original duration (actually: 53.55% of the original duration). Crippling Poison actually fades from me during the AMS duration, allowing me to safely run away, leaving a chained rogue behind.

Frost PVP

Supposedly, frost offers superior control compared to Unholy and Blood. I found the main controlling ability, Hungering Cold, to be a one-shot pony. Of course many would trinket it, but that's to be expected. However, since I'm mainly in BGs, and BGs usually are less than perfectly well coordinated, Hungering often broke almost immediately. Not only because of others attacking the targets directly, but because the targets were dotted and cleave damage.

I could put out a decent amount of burst damage if I could stay in melee, but PVP means you run in and out of melee range all the time. I have mixed feelings about the proc system; It's handy when you get a Killing Machine proc to know that you're going to deal a hefty crit with your next Frost Strike or Howling Blast, but unless I also waited for a Rime proc I would waste some of my dps. Technically. So I spent Killing Machine procs as they popped up. The problem is that killing machine seems to proc only on auto-attacks, and PVP has way less auto-attacks than PVE.

I missed a burst ability. A garantueed crit every 2 min is not much burst compared to Dancing Rune Weapon and Summon Gargoyle. Naturally, I also missed a pet, but that was not unexpected.

The worst part is that I felt very squishy. More so than Unholy. Unbreakable Armor looks like a nice cooldown for both dps and damage reduction, but requires a Frost Rune. Frost Runes are what is often lacking in PVP because I need to use Chains of Ice to stop my target from getting away after a Frost Nova or the like. Death Strike has no synergy with the rest of the tree, and heals for only 10% my total health. In addition, Unholy has three diseases that needs to be cleaned instead of just two, a clear advantage when facing dispelling classes.

I liked the fact that Iceblood Fortitude lasted so long. Owned several rogues with it. I also liked the snare, very handy. Howling Blast is also a good ability in itself, especially with the glyph, but it's not able to carry Frost alone unless you like the rest of the tree.

I never tried it as PVE dps. Proc watching like that is not my cup of poison.

Blood PVP

On paper, Blood offers increased survivability compared to the other two. 15% health back regularly, Rune Tap for 20% at a mere 30 sec CD, Mark of Blood, Vampiric Blood... I didn't test Improved Blood Presence and Bloodworms.

Blood was not too bad, but it had a few serious disadvantages. I liked the fact that Death Strike crit like a truck as long as you've got 25 runic power, regardless of any diseases. Having diseases up merely increases the healing it does to you. I also liked the fact that most abilities require a blood rune, which does not mess up your Frost-Unholy rune moves. In addition, with Death Rune Mastery you've got plenty of Blood Runes and Death Runes available. Vampiric Blood -> Rune Tap -> Mark of Blood anyone? For BGs, one of the best features is that Blood has almost no downtime at all. The snare from Glyph of Heart Strike works for its purpose well, but does require that you start any attack with Heart Strike despite having no diseases up, just to apply the snare. Dancing Rune Weapon was awesome for burst damage, especially since it has only 1.5 min CD. The problem, though, is that if you're CCed, the blade does not deal any damage either, so you need to time it well. Compare that to Unholy: The Gargoyle's damage is fire-and-forget.

The disadvantages... Blood is very dependant on staying in melee range. Frost also requires melee to do much, but you can deal ranged damage with Howling Blast (and Death Coil, if you're desperate) and diseases tick for a decent amount. Unholy's diseases hit hard, the pet will often be in melee range even if you're not, and Death Coil can deal good damage from a range. Blood, however... it's diseases ticks as hard as rain and have short duration (you don't have talent points for both Epidemic and Endless Winter). Death Coil hits for way less than Unholy.

I also found the sustained dps a bit lacking. I've read that Blood is very dependant on Armor Penetration. I've got a decent amount of it on my PVE set (around 30-40%) but in my PVP gear I only have 10%.

In addition, any healing reduction like Mortal Strike and Wound Poison hurt like heck. They destroy the advantage Blood has in survivability. Truth to be told, outside of lower downtime, I never really felt the advantage Blood has in survivability over Unholy. In fact, I felt tougher as Unholy.

Unholy PVP

Now I'm back to my roots again. Unholy works best for me. I feel tougher than any of the other two specs. Why? I've tried to think of a few reasons.

Against magic damage, 6% less damage taken all the time and 100% of spell damage absorbed by Anti-Magic Shell actually makes a difference. Anti-Magic Zone is good, but I often use it as a desperation move on my part, as it requires me to stand completely still. Need to find out how I can use it better. One of the cases I know of is when I get frozen by a mage, entangled by a boomkin or rooted by an elemental shammy; Then I'm not going anywhere anyway.

Each of the three trees have their own 1 min tanking cooldown. However, Vampiric Blood and Unbreakable Armor need to be used when you're under attack. Vampiric Blood is effective even on low health, Unbreakable Armor is not. It's also useless against magic damage. Bone Shield, however, can and should be buffed up in advance. It even lasts 5 min. Since there's a CD on 2 sec for each bone, it lasts a minimum of 4 seconds after the first attack. That means that for any surprise attack by a stealth class, I'm taking 20% less damage the first 4 seconds. That's actually a fair amount of damage avoided, especially since you can't trinket the Cheap Shot, you need to save it for Kidney Shot and sometimes for the following Blind.

When we're on the topic of rogue stuns, On a Pale Horse is a good PVP talent. 20% less duration on the stuns, combined with the above, translates to me actually having a fair amount of health left after a rogue or feral druid opener. It's also good against warriors (especially protection, bloody annoying bastards).

The permanent ghoul is also helpful. In particular the stun. I actually put it on auto when defending a node. Hello, rogue, want to stun me? Have a taste of your own medicine. In addition, Death Pact is easily available.

Improved Unholy Presence offers a solid 15% movement increase. That's actually a pretty serious upgrade, and does make a difference. Among other, I can outrun a warrior who is bladestorming me, given that he does not start on top of me. I didn't have any speed enchant on boots when tseting the there specs, which makes the comparison a bit unfair. When I don't have a healer, I'm usually PVPing in Frost Presence. I did try the other two in Unholy Presence, but felt it compromised my survivability too much. Frost Presence offers much longer time to live, and longer time to live means longer time to deal damage to my opponent. In the end, I deal more damage over my total lifespan. Against healers I switch to either of the other two, though.

And then there's Army of the Dead. With the other two specs, that's once in a while. As Unholy, I can use it more often, every 6 min. Nothing rocks calling those up when defending an Arathi Basin flag. I've even seen enemies turn away and head for somewhere else when I start bringing up my army.

A minor difference might also be the combination of stronger Death Coils and Lichborne for self-healing. However, it does not really compare to Blood's Rune Tap.

Finally, Desecration is a much better snare than I first gave it credit for. After all, it's automatically applied to everyone in the area. It allows better kiting of multiple enemies. While it is bad at stopping a single enemy from running away from me, it is probably better for allowing me to run away from an enemy. Besides, I've got Chains of Ice to stop someone anyway.

Aside from the survivability, there are also two other properties of unholy I love. First, the passive damage, namely the dots and pet. I can actually kite and bring a single enemy fairly low using dots alone. Kited a rogue all the way through the Warsong Gulch tunnel, only getting into melee with him for about 4 sec total to hit him with my Plague Strike and refresh Blood Plague on him, using Anti-magic shell to avoid getting snared myself. He did slow me with Deadly Throw, but couldn't catch up because I retaliated with chains myself.

Second, the burst capability. I've macroed Berserking and a trinket to Summon Gargoyle. As long as I can prevent the enemy from running away, the gargoyle deals really serious damage. Even better, it keeps firing even when I get chain-CCed. Has allowed me to win battles despite running around like a feared chicken because it kept firing.

On an unrelated note...

Disarming. It sucks. Royally. Death Knights have one semi-defense against it, though: Rune of Swordshattering. But that would mean sacrificing Rune of the Fallen Crusader, which is a serious dps upgrade. However, without it, rogues eat me for breakfast. Shadow priests and smart warriors too. If I get another identical weapon drop, I can have two different runes depending on the type of enemies I meet.

Conclusions

It's fun playing around, but Unholy really is my game. Not only mine, but 90% of the arena DK population, from what I can gather from reading various forums. With that said, many seem to play it as a support-spec, just applying pressure and allowing their team to set up the kill, often harassing a healer. Mind Freeze + Strangulate + Gnaw + Death Grip to keep healers busy for a long time.

Death Grip, you ask? Yes, it's a trick I learned from watching a PVP movie. You know paladins using Aura Mastery? Immune to silence and interrupts suck, huh? You can still stun them (though DKs are not the master thereof), but more importantly for us you can still Death Grip them. So when they use the mastery, move a bit away, and death grip right before the cast is finished. With good positioning, you can also pull them out of line of sight or range of their healing target. Fun, fun.

Posts I want to write:

• Tanking specs testing results


• When is it the healer, when is it the tank whose at fault?


• When you no longer have access to any gear upgrades

More DK talents, oh joy!

I apologize to those of you with no interest in this. It's just stuff I sort of think about anyway, and writing them down helps the though process, thus I might just as well make it public. Perhaps some other guy somewhere in the future has the same problem.

First, in my previous post I said that Endless Winter was the PVP talent. While this still holds true, I forgot that in taking it, you usually also take Toughness, Icy Reach and Lichborne, all great PVP talents. Losing out Endless Winter hurts. Losing all of them hurts practically too much.

I've boiled down my options a bit. Focusing on which specs can double for two purposes, I've gotten six possibilities.

Just a word of warning: I've had the 3.3 changes in mind while writing this. The Glyph of Icy Touch will in 3.3 buff Frost Fever by 20%. Scourge Strike will hit harder, meaning Reaping and Epidemic will provide more dps increase.

Option 1: Blood tank/PVP

Combining the PVP and tanking talents for blood, I get something like 51/17/3. Compared to a true tank, I lose Will of the Necropolis and only get three points in Anticipation. Further, I have only 3 points to put in Subversion, Death Rune Mastery and Sudden Doom combined. Both Sudden Doom and Subversion get better with Death Rune Mastery, as it provides two extra Heart Strikes during a 20 sec rotation at the expense of a Death Strike. However, since you both in PVP and tanking regulary take damage, perhaps the loss of a bit dps is offset by the gain of a bit more healing?

Generally, I think this build loses out too much mitigation for tanking and too much dps for PVP.

The other spec would 0/51/20 Frost DW or 17/5/54 Unholy dps.

Option 2: Blood PVP/dps

51/17/3 provides the essential Blood dps talents, and adds 17 in Frost for Endless Winter and 3 in Unholy for Virulence. Actually a fairly balanced build. The two points in Improved Blood Presence could be put anywhere else as well, for example Rune Tap and Scent of Blood (for PVP, mind you).

The loss of Epidemic hurts, though. I've played with the thought of only putting 11 points in Frost and the rest in Unholy, losing Endless Winter. However, that's going to hurt in PVP.

The other spec would be Frost or Unholy tank. Linking to the awesome site Pwnwear.com. Gravity has a much better grip on pure tanking specs than me.

Option 3: Frost tank/PVP

9/55/7 succeeds in getting all essential tanking and PVP talents for frost, as far as I can see. Looks like an interesting option. Alternatively, 9/57/5 switches out the Glyph of Frost Strike with Glyph of Howling Blast, for a single-disease rotation. It drops Epidemic. I put the two spare points in Chill of the Grave, but an interesting option is to put those two points and a single point from Scent of Blood into Acclimation, but then you risk getting seriously Runic Power starved regulary.

The other spec would be 51/0/20 Blood or 17/5/54 Unholy dps.

Option 4: Frost PVP/dps

A suggestion here is 0/51/20 Frost PVP/dps, which includes On a Pale Horse. I don't have the weapons nor the talents points to spare to get DW dps.

The secondary spec would be Blood or Unholy tank.

Option 5: Unholy tank/PVP

It might work with an Unholy tank/PVP build. However, the main problem is that you lose Wandering Plague, only get three points in Blade Barrier, and lack Ravenous Dead, meaning your pet is a heck of a lot easier to kill, and only usable for keeping other players in combat. It's not a combination I would recommend.

The secondary spec would be 51/0/20 Blood or 0/51/20 Frost DW dps.

Option 6: Unholy PVP/dps

I like Unholy for PVP. I'd say something like 0/17/54 is the way to go. It'll serve moderately well as a dps spec as well. Includes On a Pale Horse.

The secondary spec would be Blood or Frost tank.

Playing what I like

All of the above are options that might to a lesser or greater extent work. However, that's only one part of the question what to do. The second is what I like to play.

Listing what I like about the various specs in various roles.

Blood is awesome for the self-healing, particularily in PVP. I'm not sure I like it as a dps spec all that much. For tanking, I like the skill cap resulting in being able to use Death Strike at the correct time. For max threat you will need to spam it. However, for survival, it can be handy to wait some seconds with Death Strike until you take damage. I've had success doing this with boss abilities that are announced in advance, such as Meteor Fist on Koralon and the big AoE on Emalon.

What I don't like with Blood is that it isn't so good for AoE, but then again I'm comparing to Unholy which rocks the AoE hard. In PVP it's also much more physical damage compared to the other two, meaning I don't tear through pallies and warriors as easily.

Frost is great for tanking because of the extra mitigation. It's also great to have Icebound Fortitude lasting 16 seconds, particulary in PVP where it means 16 sec of stun immunity. I like Howling Blast because of it's snappy aggro. What I don't like about Frost is that I need to watch for procs all the time and align them correctly for max dps. Fortunately this is less of an issue for a tank, and for PVP you can't afford to wait with procs, you blow when you get the chance. However, I'd like to try DW tanking in 3.3, and only Forst can offer that without a serious threat loss. I don't think Unholy can put out enough threat while dual-wield tanking. If I do that, I need to go with option 2 or option 6, combining PVP and dps with my other spec.

Unholy is great for having a permanent pet, great AoE, powerful dots and great debuff. In addition, I find the rotation fits me fine, much more than Blood and Frost. It feels like they're slightly less tough as tanks against physical damage, but way better against magical damage. I think Desecration is a kind of bad snare. It takes so long to kick in that the target has time to get out of the area, provided they're moving in a straight line. Without Chains of Ice to fall back on, I'd have given up Unholy for PVP a long time ago. For PVP it's also great that Ebon Plague counts as an extra disease for removing diseases.

Conclusions... sort of

Of the six main options below, I find option 5 to be the worst. Option 1 and 3 combines tanking and PVP, but at the expense of dps. I might end up sacrificing so much dps that I have trouble bringing my enemies down, and that's going to hurt.

I want to test out what I like about a single-disease Howling Blast glyph Frost build somtime, option 3. Perhaps I like it, perhaps I don't.

For the moment, I'm using Option 6, Unholy PVP/dps and Blood tank. It works out well, but I'd like to try the other options as well. If I don't find any I like, I'll return to Unholy PVP/dps. It rocks.

I also think that tanking and PVP are the two most important aspects of the game for me. If I deal 500 or even 1000 dps less (as long as I'm above 3k) it does suck a bit. Howevever, if I take 10% more damage as a tank, it's downright devestating. Similarily, if I can't stick to the enemy (in effect, get snared all the time), I'm going to end up so annoyed I might just skip out of PVP alltogether. That means I'm much more inclined to go with option 2 or 4, since they don't sacrifice anything from the tanking spec, and effectively go dps with a pure PVP spec.

I'm going to pay a lot in respeccing and reglyphing in the following weeks.

WTB Triple-spec

Blizzard has stated that they don't intend to implement anything beyond dual-spec anytime soon. I can see some logic behind their reasonings; If you implement 3 different specs, why stop there? Why not 4? And then some would cry for 5... Better to leave the beast alone by only giving two specs.

What bothers me about the dual spec system is that I enjoy three aspects of the game. PVE dps, PVE tanking and PVP. With only two specs, I will have to choose either to optimized for two purposes and lacking for the last, or optimized for one and compromised for the two others.

With my druid, it was even worse. Ideally, I wanted five specs with my druid. Tanking, PVE dps, PVE healing, PVP dps, PVP healing.

For the moment I'm running a
Blood tanking spec and a Unholy PVP spec. It works out fairly well. I use the PVP spec when going dps, and still manage to put out above 3k thanks to my gear. I'm wondering if I can reach 4k with the last gear upgrades and a hardcore dps spec.

However, I'd like to experiment with other specs as well. If they don't work out too well, I can always return to status quo.

For tanking, I need mitigation and avoidance talents. No matter what tree I spec into, I'll need Toughness, Improved Icy Touch, Anticipation and Blade Barrier. I don't need all of them to tank 5-man, but for any pug raid I join they're essential. In addition, there's the tree-spesific tanking talents.

For dps, I need the dps-talents of the tree, which various greatly depending on what tree it is.

For PVP, I need a mix. Survival is important, so is utility, but you need dps as well. However, no matter what tree I spec into, Endless Winter is almost a nescessity, along with a more permanent snare. Blood has Glyph of Heart Strike, Frost has Chilblains and Unholy has Desecration. In addition, Virulence can make all the difference in the world against some classes.

For all three aspects of the game, Epidemic is a talent I love. Cleans up rotations, makes losing the enemy in PVP for a few seconds less painful, helps keep up AoE threat... I love it.

Finally, I'd love to have One a Pale Horse in one of my two specs. It's so handy to have an on-demand 20% extra riding speed, both in BGs and when travelling generally. However, only Unholy specs get it easily. Blood or Frost tank specs can't get it at all. Blood and Frost dps specs can get it without sacrificing too much, by sticking at least 17 points in Unholy.

Note that my PVP is limited to BGs and WG for the moment. Might go arena sometime, have a friend I can go with, but we haven't worked out a good schedule for it yet.

I've thought of a few combinations that might work.

A Blood tanking/PVP spec might work, if I sacrifice Endless Winter, but take the Glyph of Heart Strike. Even a tanking spec can attain almost all dps talents in Blood. Tons of survival.

A Blood dps/PVP spec might also work. Less survival, but more dps thanks to the talent points freed up to go into Unholy. Still need Glyph of Heart Strike.

The problem for me with Blood PVP is that with 51 points spent in blood, I don't have points enough for both Epidemic and Endless Winter. Endless Winter is generally more important for PVP, making 51/17/3 the spec of choice for a pure PVP spec. However, that spec lacks the mitigation talents for tanking, and has to chew to a lot of suboptimal dps frost talents to get Endless Winter. However, it is a possibility in the same way as my current Unholy PVP spec. Unholy does, however, benefit more from +10% shadow and frost damage than Blood does.

Frost have a ton of choices connected to it. Unlike Blood, you can successfully go DW or 2h, either might work. I'd love to try DW tanking sometime. However, that sometime will have to wait 'till 3.3. I don't have the gear to attain 540 defense without the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. 3.3 will add a similar Rune for one-handers, called Rune of the Nerubian Carapace.

Further, since I lack two slow and solid one-handers (above ilvl 200), I'll have to go for 2h until I can get some solid 1h upgrades somewhere.

The next choice for Frost is the Glyph of Howling Blast or not. It allows a single-disease rotation, ignoring Plague Strike and Blood Plague completely. It allows 5 obliterates during a 20 sec rotation rather than the normal 4, but each hit for less. However, that's another 15% chance to proc Rime. It is not a valid choice for a hardcore dps specs. The loss of the damage from Blood Plague hurts, and throwing a Howling Blast from the very start in AoE might steal aggro from tanks that need a bit time to get proper threat on all enemies, particulary other Death Knights.

However, for PVP, for the price of a some dps, you gain a ranged AoE snare with Chilblains. For tanking, you gain even more and snappier AoE threat; Howling Blast -> Blood Boil -> Death and Decay. For either, you can completely avoid casting Icy Touch at all provided Rime procs on one of those Obliterates. No need for Epidemic at all.

So... Frost can offer a HB glyph tank/PVP spec, or a non-HB glyph tank/PVP spec, or a non-HB glyph PVP/dps spec.

Unholy... well, to be honest, Unholy PVP completely sucks without Endless Winter. The snare from Desecration takes a few moments to kick in, and on a moving target often doesn't kick in at all until they're out of the desecrated area. The snare does have it's uses, but it's not completely reliable. That means I don't want to attempt to make a PVP/tank spec. The spec I have now, PVP/dps, works fairly well, but not exactly superb for dps.

So... I'll try to boil down the options I have. It's a safe assumption that if possible, I'd like to delve into two different trees. Before I had tanking gear enough to tank seriously, I ran Unholy dps/Unholy PVP, but it's kinda fun to have different options to fall back on.

• Blood tank/PVP, Frost dps


• Blood tank/PVP, Unholy dps


• Blood tank, Frost PVP/dps


• Blood tank, Unholy PVP/dps. My current setup.


• Frost tank/PVP, Blood dps


• Frost tank/PVP, Unholy dps


• Frost tank, Blood PVP/dps


• Frost tank, Unholy PVP/dps


• Unholy tank, Blood PVP/dps


• Unholy tank, Frost PVP/dps

Choices, choices...

Bad dps

As noted, I've dinged 80 with my third character. I noted something very interesting this time, which I hadn't before.

My first two characters were both geared up as healers. I ran instances as healer, rolling greed on dps gear I needed. As a healer, I could solo stuff, but didn't do much dps. I considered 1.5k dps "good", 2.0k dps "great", and anything above that superb. Why? Most dps I ran heroics with was around 1.5k, some of them lower. When I got a dps that could pull out somewhere above 2.5k, I was amazed.

At some point I got dual spec on my shaman, and could suddenly pull out quite decent dps as elemental. I joined a Naxx25-man, doing somewhere around 2.5-3.0k dps. I was very satisfied. Not that I topped the charts, but I was definitely far from the bottom. I assumed it was because I'd gained so good gear while healing... many ilvl 213-pieces, even.

When I levelled up as bear, I had tanking spec- and glyphs. I could go cat, but I had trouble breaking 3k, even mostly clad in ilvl 219-gear with several pieces higher. I was happy breaking 2k while tanking in bear form.

Now, when I levelled my DK, I did so with a heirloom axe, chest and shoulders, and with a Unholy PVP spec. The most important dps talents, but also stuff like On a Pale Horse, Improved Unholy Presence, and 17 points in Frost to get Endless Winter. 17 points in Blood would've been much better for dps.

At lvl 78, in Culling of Stratholme, I broke 1.5k dps. I'd like to repeat that. Two levels before 80 I did more dps than most dps I had ran with when I was healing at lvl 80. Apart from the heirloom stuff, I had quest blues and greens.

At lvl 80, I quickly broke 2k dps, after respeccing to a pure dps spec. I did 3.5k dps on Onyxia 10-man, but that fight hugely favors Unholy DKs due to the AoE damage on the whelps. Fast forward a few upgrades. Interestingly enough, upgrading from the heirloom axe with Crusader (which hardly does anything at lvl 80) to the ilvl 219 axe from TotC heroic with Rune of the Fallen Crusader was less of an increase on my dps than I'd expected it to be. Unholy is much less dependant on weapon damage than Blood and Frost, I believe.

At the moment, I've got a gear score of around 2000 in wow-heroes.com. That translates to mostly ilvl 200 gear plus 4 ilvl 219 items and three items below ilvl 200. I pull 3-3.5k dps on single target fights in 5-man. Above 4k raid-buffed. Much more on fights featuring adds and cleaving. I pulled well above 7k dps on Onyxia 25-man, but that fight isn't the best to check that kind of stuff.

I've got a fairly good knowledge about death knights, but I'm far from mastering it. I still make noob mistakes like forgetting to save a blood rune for Death and Decay when it's coming off cooldown on AoE fights.

The conclusion I pull from this is that many of the dps I've met lack knowledge of their class. They lack knowledge about what makes the better upgrades, priorities on their attacks, they forget to use cooldowns, and so on. Or to say it with a word: They suck.

Dps is a way more forgiving job than tanking and healing. You can get away with much less knowledge about your class and gear than you can as a healer or tank.

Blizz healing spell design philosophy.

New theories incoming, this time about heals.

Basically, I believe all healing spells fit more or less into these three categories:

Baseline aka Bread & Butter: Spells that have a clear defined purpose and are straight forward.

circumstantial: Spells that are better than the bread and butter spells for various special purposes. Most group heals fit in this category.

Cooldowns: Spells that are so powerful and good that Blizz gives them a cooldown to prevent only using them.

Blizzard tries to make every healer use as much as possible of their reportoire. Some spells are much better fit for either PVE or PVP, but they often try to buff the spell for the least used aspect. The baseline spells will be almost garantueed to always have a use. The cooldowns can pretty safely be buffed straight, as the cooldown will limit just how powerful they become.

For the circumstantial spells, though, they follow a different strategy. It can potentially be very dangerous to straight buff a circumstantial spell (as in more healing throughput without adding to mana cost), because you might end up it being completely superior to other tools at disposal for the same purposes. That's what happened to Circle of Healing. They can't balance it by giving it a high mana cost, because the players still will use the spell and then complain about mana. The way they end up buffing these spells are usually by adding secondary effects to them, or give them additional situations in which they might be useful. Adding another situation where the spell shines makes it less circumstantial, as the circuimstances in question show up more often.

Let's take an example, Binding Heal. When it was first introduced in Burning Crusade, pretty much every PVE priest shunned it. While it could outshine Flash Heal in throughput (healing per second), it had no significant advantage in healing per mana (especially compared to Greater Heal) and risked overhealing twice. In serious arena, it was much more common for the enemy team to focus one player rather than split the damage, and it offered no additional benefit to focused damage. Of course, there were occassions where it would shine, but it was very circumstantial. Blizz couldn't straight buff the throughput, as that would've made it put out more single-target healing than Flash Heal. They tried lowering the mana cost, which helped both in PVP and PVE. But since it still was too circumstantial in PVE, they gave it very low threat. That helped. Suddenly priests used it in heroic on threat-sensitive fights, or early in pulls before the tank had proper threat on all mobs.

Fast forward to WotLK. Blizz is talking about changing how healing works. At the same time, they can't mess up too much the existing healing style, as there is no way to garantuee that a new healing style will be better than the old. Read: More entertaining. It's hard to please most of the crowd, impossible to please all.

From the 3.1 preview, it said that holy priests now will have a faster Greater Heal after casting Flash Heal. Fairly unoriginal as it's basically the same idea that they used with both Discipline and shaman Resto end-talents, but it works. It changes Flash Heal so that instead of being a pure bread'n'butter spell (discounting Surge of Light procs), it will also be a circumstantial spell. At the moment, you get the highest throughput of healing as a holy priest by spamming Greater Heal. In 3.1, you will do better alternating Flash Heal and Greater Heal, perhaps Greater Heal several times if a single flash heal will give a stack of buffs (like Tidal Waves gives two faster Lesser Healing Waves/Healing Waves, not only one). In addition, you can also throw in a flash heal early so that you'll already have the buff ready when you need it.

What they do is give spells additional circuimstances in which they'll be better than (other) baseline spells. I offer two observations to Blizz approach in making spell more interesting.

First observation: By adding circuimstances such as the above, Blizz tries to reward planning and foresight. While combat in WoW always will have random elements, most of what happens can be anticipated. At the very least, it's easy to anticipate that the tank will take damage. Then you might also anticipate that he or she's going to take spikes, and that the rest of the group will take AoE damage from the spell the boss mob is just casting. While I think it is a good thing to reward anticipation, it leads to one of two problems. First case, fights might be tuned so hard that the healer is required to be very familiar with the fight in order to keep everyone alive. Second case, fights will be tuned so that it still is possible to improvise and catch up, in which case they might be too trivial for a healer familiar with it. Of the two evils, the second is the lesser and the most likely Blizz will follow.

Second observation: There might be problems at the horizon if you keep adding stuff to existing spells. Specifically, you will "need" to press your cooldown-heals at every possible cooldown to be an optimal healer. That, in turn, makes the healing game feels very spammy, and less dependant on good decisionmaking. Let's take an example, Riptide. For the moment, this spell has all of the following functions:

• A direct instant heal.


• A HoT that lasts 15 seconds.


• A buff to your next Chain Heal with the Riptide target as a primary target which removes the HoT.


• A self-buff to the caster, Tidal Waves, reducing the casttime of the next two combinations of Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave.


• A chance to proc Earthliving Weapon, a second HoT that lasts X seconds.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Healing.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Improved Water Shield.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Awakening.

Pretty hefty list for a single spell. Why is it so long? Blizz has more or less stated that they considered it a problem that every resto shaman in a raid did nothing but spam Chain Heal all day. They wanted to buff Riptide so that it was worth the GCD to cast it for a resto shaman. In the process of buffing it (which also included buffing it's direct throughput), they added a lot of circumstantial reasons to use it. Now it is almost at the point where I feel that I need to cast it as often as I can while healing 5-man heroics, provided anyone in the group have taken damage. Holy Shock is very similar in the regard that it also has a lot of circumstantial effects attached to it.

The bottom line, I think we'll see even more of the circumstantial stuff for healers in the future. Consider the healer abilities in the Aces High daily, same as the last phase of Malygos.

(By the way, sorry for the lack of posts. Like WoW, a blog's priority is well behind both job and private life)

Journal of a shaman equipped with frost resistance totem

These are gathered experiences from my levelling in Northrend. I don't know how many of you have interest in soloing experiences anymore, as "everyone" is 80 now. I'll justify it saying that there will be plenty alts levelling through Northrend.

Speeeeed! Give me what I neeeed

Compared to pretty much everyone else, I've levelled pretty slowly. But if you only look at actual playtime, it's pretty good. All of it has been on rested XP. And this time, unlike the last (Outland), I'm only levelling one character, Kirba. Last time I levelled both my priest and druid, switching them every now and then when I got too annoyed with the other.

It feels slightly awkward that I've only finished Borean Tundra, with about 20-30 quests done in other zones, and I'm already half-way to 80.

Money money money

As a lot of others have pointed out, Blizz is trying to empty our pockets by every mean possible. Some of it can't be avoided, like spending 150 gold training (and I'm exalted with Orgrimmar) my lvl 75 spells. Others can be avoided, though. Some of the ways I've tried to save money:

• Obviously only repair and buy reagents at a fraction with which you're exalted. Orgrimmar in my case.


• Limit the number of flight path usages, by planning a route that involves very little flying. Of course, this might sometimes take extra time, so it's a balance there. For example, with my hearthstone set to Dalaran, I've plenty of times taken a portal to Orgrimmar and the zeppelin to either of the starting areas to save money. It's kind of extreme, though, and not something I do too often. Rather boring to wait for the zep. If I'm in one of the southern Kalu'ak towns, I'll use the boat instead of a flight if it happens to be there at the time I arrive.


• Except for my gathering skills (mining in my case), don't train tradeskills until you're honored with some fraction. I'm almost honored with Warsong Offensive myself.

There's also the flip side of the coin, making money. While I did earn 2k gold selling glyphs when 3.0 came out, I'm not usually much fan of hanging at the auction house too much. That leaves a few other ways:

"Normal" questing. Yields a pretty stable income, but nothing spectacular. Most of it will be going down the drain when I hit 77 and have to buy Cold Wheater Flying.

Dailies. Not too different from questing, really, except that they're slightly faster since you know what you're supposed to do.

Green BoEs... Sent those I can use to my alts, those that I expect to have a use for to a bank alt, and those that I don't think I'll be able to use at all to disenchanting. What to do with the disenchants? For now, they're stored. Later, perhaps they'll help finance my epic flying mount.

Resthancement

I've levelled to 75, about 3/4 of the time as resto, the rest as enhancement. Been respeccing to resto for each instance, there are never healers around. Not that I mind too much, means I always get a place in a group. I'd like to try dpsing as a shaman sometime, though.

I felt like a friggin' glass cannon as enhancement. Next time I go enhancement, I'll drop talent points in Anticipation and Toughness to counter that. I don't think I ever died, but I don't like seeing my health bar leap up and down as I take damage and use my Maelstrom Weapon stacks for instant heal.

Static Shock was not my cup of tea. Spesifically, the lack of Water Shield meant I only had Shamanistic Rage as a mean to get my mana up again. It's a raid/group dps talent, as far as I can see, less useful as a soloing talent.

Now that I've reached 75, Kirba just got a new spell at her disposal. Lava Burst is pretty hefty. As resto (with spellpower gear), it crits for about 2.7k. Nice. I was planning to respec sometime, but I think I'll just wait for 3.0.8 and the free respec.

I must admit, though, that I felt a bit envious hearing that a pally friend of mine crit for 4.5k on Holy Shock used offensively. Wow. That means 3k non-crits, instant, every 6 seconds if you want to. Seriously... overpowered, if it's true. My Earth Shocks hit for about 1-1.2k on non-crits. Looking at the tooltips, I can see that Holy Shock is more powerful. I can only guess that's because it can be used both for damage and healing, while I've got Earth Shock and Riptide on two different 6-second cooldowns.

Fanclub stuff

Thanks to the D.E.H.T.A. quests in Borean Tundra, I've gotten a nice boost to my Cenarion Expedition rep. Only half-way to Exalted to go.

I've been doing the Kalu'ka dailies when I can, so I'm already Revered. I don't know why I bother so much with them, but they're very likable. And since it's entertaining, that's good enough for me. Thanks to that, Cuttlefish Tooth Ringmail is waiting for me in one level, Totemic Purification Rod in three levels. And if I should reach exalted, I don't mind getting Pengu and the fishing pole.

Misc stuff

Astral Recall rocks while soloing. I can recall to Dalaran, go to Orgrimmar and do whatever I want, then hearth to Dalaran again and catch a flight back to wherever I want to.

Glyphed Water Walking rocks as well. Very nice whenever I'm close to water. Makes some quests ridiculously easy. Ride out to the quest mob, kill it, rebuff and ride back.

Fire Elemental Totem rocks like heck. Drop the totem, Earth Shield the elemental, make sure to damage all mobs at least a bit, and just pull wildly. I've pulled around 10 mobs at the most, and downed them all. Fun.

Speaking of Earth Shield, While I've been resto, I've tossed it on any horde I've met. They seem to appreciate it. I always buff those I meet as priest or druid, so it's nice to have something to offer as shaman too, sort of.

I've missed Glyph of Water Mastery a bit since I dropped it. I think I feel the difference in mana regen.

Is it just me, or did they recently add the feature that gives an arrow on your radar to the quest you've marked in the quest log? Only works for a few quests, but very handy for those it does work for.

Evil plan to take over the world

• Keep up my dailies and whatever other Kalu'ak quests I find until I earn exalted with them.


• Do Warsong Offensive quests in Dragonblight until I'm honored with them, then go train my professions. Won't take long, only got 500 rep left until Revered.


• Howling Fjord. Don't want to miss out the story. Hope I'm not doing something stupid, like killing the fun for my alts when I next level there.


• Respec to Elemental once 3.0.8 hits. Preferably test it as dps in an instance. Perhaps test it as a healer as well in an non-heroic instance.


• Keep levelling, obviously enough.


• Do some instances. No stress, though, I'm probably going to see the inside of them quite a lot as heroics.


• Have fun. Highest priority.

What defines a 'main'?

For the few people with too much spare time that have been following my blog, you've probably noticed that I've focused a lot on shaman stuff recently. Hopefully not exclusively.

Some time ago, I had three healers at lvl 70, priest, druid and shaman. I have several times been tempted to speed-level my paladin to 70 as well, but have resisted so far.

When I first started playing WoW, it was in May about 3.5 years ago. A friend "recruited" me. This was my first serious MMORPG. I'd tried both Ultima Online and Anarchy Online, but neither game really caught my interest. I had no clue what a tank or a healer meant. My friend was a night elf druid on Silvermoon (EU), and I also had a few other RL friends playing on the same server/side. (By the way, I have to give him credit for persisting his balance druid when Hurricane was still the 31-point talent.)

I made a gnome mage. But hey, no pigtails, no pink hair. White hair, which I've always been a sucker for (though I'm not awfully fan of drows, if you're wondering). I got to about level 14 before abondoning her. Then I made a dwarf priest. You know, the reason I chose a priest is that I wanted to Resurrect all those bodies lying around. This was at a time where a body would lie there forever if a player logged out while dead, which I found out when I got to level 10. After ressing about 20-30 times without a single success, I learned that it was pretty much pointless. Now I always use the /who function before trying to res someone.

My priest was abondoned at lvl 12, when I realized how bloody immature most alliance players are. In addition, Silvermoon was a "normal" server, which meant people talked crap all the time. I rerolled a tauren druid on Earthen Ring (EU) (RP-server, RP-PVP servers didn't exist yet), and made it to lvl 30. On the way there, I'd participated in starting a possibly legendary RP guild, learned a lot about instancing, and blown out a lot of temper on fellow players. I regret the last part. That's why I deleted the druid in favor of a troll priest. Which I deleted and started a new troll priest because I didn't like the look on the first one.

This new troll priest made it to lvl 60 eventually, but it took a loooooong time. In fact, I logged out outside inns/cities to not get rested XP, so I could have fun with the trip to 60. I was also a casual player, so I had a lot less playtime than the rest of the guys in my guild. Sadly, most of the guys dropped out, one after another. I know a few guys from my guild who still play, but none of the hardcore RPers. I believe RP was dying 1.5 year after WoW launch. Well, except for the total Drama Queen RPers and ERPers, both of which I tend to stay far away from.

I also earned my first raiding experience, raiding Zul'Gurub. Through some strange coincidence, that was also my first experience with problems regarding raidleaders. In retrospect, I made a lot of mistakes, and insisted on stuff I didn't reallly know too much about. But then again, my raidleader was far from perfect. In particular, I was annoyed that we spent so much time on Mandokir each evening, instead of moving on to the mandatory bosses. But no, we needed to gear up. But why would we gear up on a boss that's considered by many harder than the last boss? Bah.

At some point, I started an alt an another server, a newly fired up RP-PVP server. Ayeba, my current tauren druid. Around lvl 50ish, I paid for a transfer to Earthen Ring. I got to 60 just before Burning Crusade hit the shelves.

Interesting fact: I queued to buy the game as the store opened (not the midnight opening, just a regular store opening at 9.00), but waited almost a month installing the expansion? That's how busy real life can be, sometimes.

The first thing I did in BC was rolling a blood elf paladin. Like many other priests, I was tired of being squishy, and looked forward to the EZ mode healing paladins were in vanilla WoW. I was incredibly interested at first. Heck, I even skilled up cooking and fishing as I levelled. My interest lasted until to somewhere around the 30ies, then I was totally fed up with being a pally. Boring! Soloing as a pally is completely void of any button-pressing. It was slightly fun to level as protection and taking on packs of mobs, but it was still held no entertainment value.

So, back to my druid and priest, whom I took some time to level. At some point I rolled Kirba, orc shaman. It was just a result of a bit of shaman envy, but I didn't spend too much time on her.

My druid hit 70 first, but not too far ahead of my priest. I had severe trouble deciding which to stick to, and ended up doing a lot og PVP gearing on both. In the end, though, I lost interest in both, and levelled my shaman instead.

Another interesting fact: Ayeba (my druid) had alchemy 130, I never bothered to skill up further. But since she had herbalism, I got stack upon stack of herbs. I was too lazy to sell them at the auction house, so I just stored them at an alt. Guess who suddenly got a use for them when 3.0 arrived with Inscription. I skilled up to 360 in about a week, with almost no grinding involved.

Me and my wife also spent some time on our alts just after 3.0 arrived, while everyone else went crazy, including my pally. I haven't spoken too much on the rest of my alts, but I got a warrior at 37 (from the time I wanted to be end-game tank), a mage at 23 (which I haven't levelled since vanilla) and probably a dozen characters between 10 and 20. All of them are priests, shamans, paladins and warriors. This is another tendency: I want to be useful. A tank is useful. A healer is useful. A dps is techically useful, but there are often a dime a dozen on LFG.

Observation: Just before BC arrived, I hit 60 on my second healer. Just after LK arrived, I hit 70 on my third healer. If we follow that, just around the next expansion, my pally will hit 80. At the moment, I doubt it, but I shan't deny that it might happen.

Now, for what was originally the main point: Since I hit 60 as my druid, I've had a lot of times when I've announced in the guild that "This is my new main". Many of those have been after both hit 70. I don't want to do the mistake once more. What is a main, anyway? I'd say it's your main investment. While it's nice to gear up alts and stuff, the main is whose going to end up with the most playtime after switching.

All three characters have now set foot in Northrend. My priest as discipline (51/10/00), my druid as feral (0/51/10), and my shaman as resto (0/11/51) so far.

Experiences? My priest has great dps and good healing, but lives and dies by her mana. Drinking is inevitable. She's not good at handling multiple mobs. And hard mobs? Forget it. Part of the mana trouble could be solved by speccing Spirit Tap, though.

My druid also do great dps as kitty and got great survivability as bear. Squishy as heck as a kitty, though, more than my priest (well, d'oh, my priest shields all the time to get mana returns from Rapture and avoid loosing casting time). And healing as feral? Forget it. 3xLifebloom ticks for 98 each second. If I need to heal out of combat as a druid, I bandage.

My shaman, on the other hand, has nowhere near great dps, but no downtime. And since I hit 71 and got Shamanistic Focus, I can throw out shocks at every cooldown without risking going oom all the time. Easy mobs? Lightning Shield, collect a few and Chain Lightning (with the 2-set bonus from the Tidefury set) between shocks and melee. Hard mob? Earth Shield and we're set. Elementals for even tougher guys. Low on mana? Single mobs and Water Shield.

With that said, I've been intending to respec for some time. But I know that 3.0.8 will bring a free respec for shamans (it always does when they reduce the talent point cost of a talent for a class), which might or might not be worth waiting for. Further, what to respec to? Elemental? Enhancement PVE? Enhancement PVP? ... and so I wait a bit until I set my mind.

Now, for the question of main... it was after I spent time to skill up my cooking to 375 that I realized I may have already made the choice. My priest has both cooking and fishing skilled up, but not my druid. Taking the time investment to skill up my shammy might mean something. My priest still has more achievement points, if that counts for something. But Kirba has overtaken Ayeba in achivements.

I also intend to make a Death Knight sometime, but I'm too much in love with healing in PVP to ever make that my main.

I intend to keep levelling my shaman until otherwise decided. But is Kirba my new main? I don't know. Possibly.