I feel certain a few accounts will be canceled (as I’ve seen a number of people say they’ll do), and voting with your wallet is perfectly acceptable. I want to say that I think the forums will also be a deserted wasteland and everyone will flock somewhere else, like maybe the Wowhead forums, but I don’t think for a second that will actually happen. The forums will still be populated by vast quantities of people who just don’t care about it enough to not post. However, it won’t have some of the valuable stuff that is there, and we’ll probably end up looking elsewhere for it.

As for me, I’ll probably be staying off the forums regardless. I rarely needed to post there before (and mostly in Technical Support when I did), and I don’t see much changing in Cataclysm. Unless, of course, this thing where I crash every time I log out (or get disconnected!) doesn’t have a solution by then.

TL;DR: I can’t say I’m happy with their decision, and while it doesn’t affect me because I choose to not post on the forums, it will probably affect others negatively and I understand why they’d choose to boycott it as they see fit.

Other views: Pewter, Miss Medicina, Chas, Ratshag, Byaghro, Myze. Comments are off in case this non-post somehow gets linked from wow.com and their Troll Squad arrives again.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Weighing in on the forum Real ID issue

I was going to write an actual post about numbers and the top 5 specs for each class from data mined from the top 20 PvE guilds in the world, but instead, I’m going to just put this all down so I don’t have to type it over and over and over again.

But I have to hand out my email!

Once. From the Real ID FAQ, yes, you have to hand out your email to someone you know in order for them to real-ID-friend you. (There really needs to be a convenient way to verb that.) Furthermore, it’s not automatic friending, so if you see a name you don’t recognize trying to friend you? Deny the request. The other person is never notified of that. Got an asshole ex trying to friend you on Real ID? Deny the request. Got someone trying to friend you that you just plain don’t want to know the identity of all your alts? Deny the request. If someone puts in an incorrect email address, or their request is declined, the requester is never notified. If you have a friend who constantly has keyloggers or has been hacked or what-have-you, don’t give that person your email address to begin with. Or make them give you their email address. It’s common sense. Why don’t more people have it?

But then my email address is saved in their client forever and ever!

Incorrect. From the Real ID FAQ, mutual Real ID friends (and their Real ID friends) will see your first and last name, as well as what character you’re on, what zone you’re in, and the special Real ID stuff like status messages and presence. It explicitly states in the FAQ that your Battle.net email address is not displayed in the Real ID friends list.

But you said friends of friends! HAX OMG

Shut the hell up. From the Real ID FAQ (do you see a trend yet?), yes, when you click on a friend, you can see the names of their friends, so if you have mutual acquaintances, you can quickly friend them. However, since your battle.net email is never displayed in the Real ID friends list, you don’t know your friend-of-friend’s email, and they don’t know yours. You don’t have to hand out your email, they don’t get to know your email, and it’s easy to make friends. If you don’t know who this person is who’s trying to friend you? Deny the request.

But what if they harass me?!

I bet you see where this is going. From the Real ID FAQ, not only can you contact a GM – just like if any other player was harassing you – you can block individuals from communicating with you anywhere on battle.net.

But even after you assuaged all my fears, I still don’t want to use it!

Fine.

Don’t.

What, do you think there’s more to it than that? If you don’t want to use Real ID, don’t approve any Real ID friend requests. If you opt in then later decide you want to opt out, remove all Real ID friends from your lists. Friendship is a two-way street on Real ID (unlike WoW in general), and if you remove someone, they don’t see you anymore.

Guess where I got that information?

If all else fails, you can turn on Parental Controls. They’ll be updated to disallow Real ID.

The TL;DR Version

• People you are Real ID friends with do see your first and last name (the ones set up as your primary contact in battle.net).
• People you are Real ID friends with do see your character, realm, and zone.
• People you are Real ID friends with do see what game you are playing – WoW and Starcraft II support Real ID right now. You can safely assume Diablo III will as well.
• People who you would like to be Real ID friends do need your email address once, or you will need theirs once.
• People you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends list, nor do you see theirs.
• Friends of people you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends-of-friends list, nor do you see theirs.
• Read the FAQ before you start freaking out next time, internet.

Worst case scenario: someone finds out your real name, and it turns out it’s your boss, and he notices both of you are signed on during work. Whoops!

Let’s stop the pointless panic and the rumormongering, folks. Let’s save the panic for actual crisis scenarios, when things are actually wrong, and stop the "ZOMG HORRIBLE IDEA" righteous indignation over Real ID.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Real ID: here’s some info, now stop with the righteous indignation

10man raiding never really felt like raiding an instance for 10 players. Instead, we were traipsing through 25 player content that was lobotomized for us.

It isn’t easy being a strict(ish) 10 man guild in Lich King. Our raid comp is nowhere near ideal (no shaman, for instance), and without the gear 25 man raiders use to carry themselves through 10man content we have to use some extremely weird strategies to defeat bosses sometimes. We’ve had to use Death Knights to juggle kinetic bombs and tank the shadow bolting boss, for instance.

Hi, I’m a DK who tanks Prince Keleseth. Ever try to heal Festergut with two shamans and a druid? It gets a little hairy sometimes.

Anyway, point is, 10man raiding never really was 10man raiding. It was 25man raiding with less players and worse loot.

Amen. Also see Rilgon here.

Right now, in the scope of raiding in Wrath, that means running Icecrown 10 Heroic every week for shots at the couple of BIS items there (primarily Heroic Whispering Fanged Skull, but Heroic Stakethrower is a marked DPS gain, and a great hold-over until Fal’inrush) and increased Emblem of Frost income (less important now, but was VERY important in the start of ICC). When ToC was end-game content, this meant running ToC25 (for DV), ToGC25 (for H-DV and all the other 258s), ToC10 (for Emblems of Triumph), and ToGC10 (for those mother fucking leather gloves). And you know what? I did it, because my peers did it, and I had to do it to perform to the standards placed upon me by my guild, as we were pushing into difficult content and everyone had to bring their best game.

You know what this change means to someone like me? I don’t have to do that shit ever again.

Tangentially related, the flip side has been true for 10-man raiders, as well – the unspoken pressure is there, if you’re more than a casual raiding guild or a "strict 10" guild, to do 25s in your offtime or else you’re hurting the guild. I’m pretty tired of that bullshit, and I won’t be sad to see it go.

(Pic unrelated, but Peter is adorable. Peter is modern 25-day raiders; Cone of Shame Cat is in strict 10s. The wrapper is a trinket.)

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Cata raid stuff

Things have been rather sparse or, at best, fluffy around here lately. Why? Nib said it better than me. I just plain don’t have a thing to talk about because I haven’t done anything new in weeks. Breezing through the first six bosses or smashing against Putricide and, well, supposedly the Princes are on farm, but our luck hates them – we’ve gotten bitten two weeks in a row with the known bug where they summon important parts of the fight in the hallway instead of in their room; last week, it was Dark Nuclei, and I got by because I learned when to look for them, but now Valanar’s started summoning beach balls in the hallway. Add some attendance concerns on top of all that and it’s just become a weekly grind of breeze -> facesmash -> repair -> breeze -> facesmash -> repair. Tried to do Ulduar hardmodes on a raid night and 6 people signed up; did ToGC-10 for a little while, at least, and ran into the wall that is Faction Champs. I pretty much only log onto my DK for the facesmash repetitions; I need frost badges badly – 180+ of them – but I can’t even bring myself to do the dailies anymore.

In short, I’m halfway between frustrated and bored. Maybe I just need a week off or something.

A few days ago, Dechion mentioned the idea of "throwing everything up and keeping what sticks." (I bet now the pic of some sticky hand things makes sense.) Twice now, I’ve basically gone through an entire expansion with a single alt – granted, in TBC, it was an abbreviated amount of time, as I joined just before 2.3.2. After TBC, I immediately switched my main to a DK with no hesitation; my warlock languishes at 73, where – let’s be honest – she probably isn’t going to move up from anytime soon. I’m starting to think I might change again, because my DK is starting to lose his stickiness.

So who’s sticky?

• My warlock? When the class changes came out and I realized how much they were going to buff my favorite spec, I went demo on her again, only to find that, well, the urge to stick to her wasn’t there. I throw the pet at the mobs, I throw the magic, and the magic is gone. Leveling her would be hell for leather. Has completely lost her sticky, much like an old toy.
• My death knight? WotLK was a rollercoaster of a time to be a death knight. Overpowered, underpowered, middle of the road, one-and-only flavor-of-the-month specs, other specs utterly nerfed into oblivion for entire patch levels. It’s a little mentally exhausting. Plus I switched roles and I did it fairly thoroughly. Hell, I barely remember how to DPS anymore. Is my DK losing his sticky? Maybe.
• My rogue? You’ve never met a bigger failrogue than me. I really need to just use this guy to farm junkboxes for my DK’s insanity. Not sticky.
• My warrior? I don’t level this toon much, but when I do, it’s always a fun time. As a DK tank I’m a little envious of all the fun buttons warriors have to push (Vampiric Blood just isn’t all that appealing when I could be Thunder-Clapping or Shockwaving or Last-Standing or Shield-Walling or Devastating or, or, or…). The announcement of an alternative to Titan’s Grip is also nice – I admit I’m a fan of single-handed weapons, but they’d need a serious boost to keep up with the stat boosts alone from TG right now. However, with my warrior, it’s just finding the urge to level her. In short, she’s sticky, but not enough yet.
• My hunter? I want to get into my hunter, I really do. I have many hunter blogs in my RSS reader. I just can’t summon up the mojo to level her past 45. Unsticky.
• My shaman? I was leveling my shaman pretty consistently for a while; come hell or high water, I was determined to get him out of Outlands. And out I got him, and now he’s parked at 68 in Valiance Keep, where I keep telling myself I’m going to take that resto spec and go heal some instances. I really do keep telling myself that. Inconsistent stickiness.
• My priest? My priest has been my little side project for a while now. I really only mention her at any length to Tart, who is my pocket advice priest. ("Oh, God, where do I put these talent points?!") And as you can probably surmise from her Discipline spec, I’ve been leveling her almost solely through instances. It’s not entirely instances, of course – whenever she reaches a new level, I gather every newly-available dungeon quest available for the dungeons in my queue list, and usually can gain a level or two from those – but she’s only level 20 (on the verge of dinging 21). She’s got a long way to go to even be considered a main, even moreso than my warrior. But the important part is that she’s fun. It may be just because of the complete change in role – Brynhild is only for healing, at least for now – but I like that healing rush, the feeling of keeping a group alive against odds that they probably shouldn’t have lived through (like three underleveled DPS and me taking on VanCleef because we’d waited 20 minutes for no tank). But right now, Brynhild is very sticky. Those twirly red braids may as well be made of glue.
• An alt I don’t have yet? At this point, if I don’t have an alt of some class, I’m probably waiting on Cataclysm. I fully intend to level a worgen druid or mage, which is the main reason I don’t have either of those. As for paladins, well. I’d love to have a paladin, and if I could get one past level 15 without getting utterly sick and tired of him, I probably would by now. Maybe once 4.0 hits and new baby paladins have a button to push, I’ll look into it, but right now, paladins bore me senseless to try and level.

The dilemma is: if I focus entirely on one alt, I risk burnout on that alt (see also: DK, warlock, shaman), but if I don’t focus on that alt, I’m an incredibly slow leveler. At least in my opinion. I know plenty of people whose progress feels like they’re speed demons, and I figure I’m the slow one. Or is this all pointless wankery – do I just stick with my DK? I mean, he is my only 80, my primary source of cash and heirlooms, and my only actively raiding toon. And no one can deny that we need all the tanks we can get – but I’m looking to maximize my fun here, as well as provide something useful to my guild.

It’s a set of questions that I don’t have any easy answers to. If anyone else is going through the same thing, I’d appreciate any insights you have.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Keeping what sticks

On the realm where I was born
Lived a gnome who sailed to sea
And he told us of his raids
In the land of submarines

So we sailed on to Vashj’ir
’til we found a naga queen
And we raided ‘neath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

And our guild is all aboard
Many other guilds are just next door
And over Vent, we start to chat

(trumpets play over Vent chatter)

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

(Full speed ahead, Mr. Copperpot! Full speed ahead!)
(Full speed over here, sir!
… At least you nearly got my name right that time,
Captain Cloudkicker…)

As we swim in epic seas (epic seas),
Every one of us (every one) has all we need (has all we need!)
Replacing blues (lousy blues), and sharding greens (so many greens!)
In our yellow (yellow raiding!) submarine (submarine, haha!)

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

(fading)

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Raiding in a yellow submarine

And now, the blue post(s), with commentary. Follow along after the jump, ‘cos this is a big ol’ wall of text. As you may have guessed, there’s the occasional bit of foul language in this post.

New Death Knight Abilities
Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

It was cleared up in a Q&A (which is reprinted below) that Outbreak is one of those new "free" actions that we’re going to be applying now that we’re not pressing a button every single second of the day. Assuming there’s some way to lower the cooldown on this (and, well, let’s face it, a minute isn’t that long, it’s still every few rotations), Glyph of Disease just got obsoleted. I, for one, would welcome the ability to get the GoD’s effect without giving up a more useful glyph for what is essentially a "quality of life" glyph, but this seems sort of… well, underwhelming.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike — the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

A PvP ability? Bestill my beating heart. (Actually I figure this’ll be something more like Mortal Strike for Arms warriors – its primary utility is in PvP, but PvE still hits it because it’s a button that does damage.) Still, this is unimpressive, in my opinion. I’m sure some hardcore PvPers will disagree with me.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent’s next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can’t reflect an ability, you won’t be able to copy it either.

Okay, that’s kinda cool. Assuming it does what it says on the tin, it’s a nice little addition to our arsenal, even if it is just a copy of Spell Reflection wherein we get hit (and wherein we put a debuff on the enemy instead of a buff on ourselves). My one issue with it is that it’s only going to work in melee range, but that’s really a minor gripe.

Rune System Changes
While we’re satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we’re making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here’s the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

* In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they’re unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.

Rogue comparisons are something they seem really keen on making. I’m a little displeased; if I wanted something that played like a rogue but wasn’t a rogue, I’d finally give in and roll a druid.

* A death knight’s runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn’t have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can’t grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it’s impossible to save resources for when they’re most useful.

* Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight’s attacks are weak. The death knight’s rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player’s timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren’t able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.

These two points are simply matter of fact. Anything that requires split-second non-stop button pressing is of course affected by latency; getting a rotation even slightly off can result in a ridiculous loss of DPS. This is the main reason why simulator and dummy DPS is often leagues higher for us. Oddly, though, I’ve never really felt like I wasn’t making much impact with my individual attacks, except when I’m doing something like PvPing in all tank gear.

* The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

Oh good, a use for haste besides speeding up white swings. This seems usable, at least. Off the top of my head this seems like it will slow down most rotations, especially on the second pass. Initial rotations will probably be unchanged but once our diseases are up and ticking, and we dump some RP, it looks like we’re going to be waiting a bit longer between each strike, which is probably where new free abilities like Outbreak will come in. I’m very wary about this – yes, our current DPS rotations are so tight that if we needed to add something new we’d have to use Unholy Presence, but fundamentally changing the way the system works?

* As this is a major change to the death knight’s mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class’s current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Meaningful is probably just developer slang for "hits a little harder." Try and make a Blood Strike meaningful for anyone but deep Unholy.

Going to divert from the notes here to insert Ghostcrawler’s answer to rune system questions. I feel it clears up a few things.

I’ll take a stab at explaining the rune mechanic. Once you see it in action, it’s pretty easy to understand.

Just focus on Blood Runes for the moment. The big change is that rune #2 will never start filling up until rune #1 is full. They always fill 1 then 2. Today 1 and 2 can both fill at the same time.

In Cataclysm, when you’re killing things, you use rune 1. Then any extra "red" in rune 2 will fill rune 1 back up again. If both of them are full, you can use 2 Blood Runes immediately. But after that, rune 1 will fill up first and then rune 2. If it helps, imagine rune 2 is the extra tank.

I’m still not sure he’s phrasing this right – I suspect it’s a flawed analogy – and if he is, then what the hell? This sounds like if I use one rune, the second rune will start "draining" into the first one. That can’t be right, because then rune 2 has to fill up, and I’ve essentially blown two runes by using one.

This sounds like it will slow down DK attacks, and it will to a point. That’s part of what we’re trying to accomplish. We can then fill those extra GCDs with things like free abilities or runic power abilities or we have room to add talents that make runes fill faster. Remember, slow attacks can hit harder though. Instead of DKs hitting fast like a rogue, they’ll hit slower and harder, like a warrior, which fits a lot of player’s image of a DK anyway. Dual wield will hit faster of course.

However, I’d rather not be standing around doing fuck-all while auto-attacking. Frankly, there’d better be a lot of these free or runic power abilities that are interesting enough to punch in combat, because this sounds like an enormous slowdown.

I’ll try another comparison. Imagine that all rogue abilities cost 100 energy. They have to wait until they get 100 energy, and then immediately use an attack so that they aren’t wasting future energy. That’s how DKs play now, except they have 6 runes to watch. Now imagine the same rogue except all his abilities cost 50 energy. If he hits an attack when he has 60 energy, then 50 is consumed but he has 10 energy still left and a head start on the next attack. That’s the way we want DKs to play.

If that still doesn’t make sense, then focus on what the experience will be, which is that you’ll have more breathing room in your rotation and won’t have to hit a button every single GCD. If you don’t use a strike the second it’s available, that’s more okay because the extra tank will store extra rune resources rather than just wasting it. You’ll still be hitting a lot of buttons though. We’re keeping double rune strikes and Death Runes and disease multipliers and all of that. We’ll have to make some changes in some abilities to accommodate the resource change, but it won’t be unrecognizable to you.

This is the part that actually makes sense, because his analogy of an "extra tank" is kind of flawed. Let me try another one: we’re like rogues, except with three energy bars instead of one, and each one’s broken in two halves. If I use a Blood Strike, I now have tank 1 at 0% and tank 2 at 100%. Now tank 1 starts filling up: 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%… but if I hit Blood Strike again, tank 1 is still filling up 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, but tank 2 is now empty, and tank 2 just sits there until tank 1 hits 100%. Then tank 2 fills up. Like I said: for initial rotations, this isn’t going to matter, but we’re going to find ourselves with breathing room in the second half of our rotation.

If there’s enough Fun New Buttons™ to punch, Frost may actually have to start running in Unholy Presence again – as you’ll see below, being primarily in Frost gives you melee haste, and assuming there’s no difference between haste and melee haste, their runes are going to fill up faster than everyone else’s and they’ll probably want to look into UP if they need to punch more keys. That reminds me of the old glory days of Frost, when it just had so many buttons to push that the GCD was an enormous constraint.

We’re not sure DKs even need Rune Strike any longer. If it survives, we’ll turn it into an instant swing. But if we turn it into an instant swing, then it really isn’t that different from existing strikes so it’s possible we can just make a tanking rotation without it.

Then just make it work like Revenge, or get rid of it. /shrug.  It’ll make all my macros shorter, at least. And frankly with Vengeance (see below) making everything hit harder basically all the time, I don’t think Rune Strike – primarily a single target threat buff – is necessary anymore for us.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled preview notes, already in progress.

Talent Changes
Next we’ll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we’re planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we’re intending each death knight spec to perform.

One of the biggest changes we’re making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it’s less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn’t as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We’d rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.

Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood’s niche was self-healing — fitting for a tank — as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.

Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

Well, thanks for not telling us a damned new thing. This is the content of the "Blood bomb" a few days ago, only summarized. The only solid change mentioned was that Bone Shield will jump over from Unholy. I’m okay with that. I still have a huge concern, though, and that is Blood’s AOE threat. Blood AOE threat, unless you talent specifically for it and thus gimp yourself somewhere else like single-target threat or survivability or utility, is in the shitter. There’s only so many Icy Dickpunches I can throw around.

Additionally, I’m not sure how dual-specialization makes having a single tanking tree necessary. In fact, if anything, I’d say it was the only thing that made multiple tank setups worked – back when I was still actively tanking 5-mans, I had to carry two tank specs – one to throw around massive AOE for you half-retarded douchebags in random heroics who attach your AOE attack of choice to every key on the keyboard and slam your face into it, and the other for when I’m tanking raids with actual skilled WoW players. The anti-douchebag spec did, at least, have the wiggle room to let me take Anti-Magic Zone. I love that big pink fucking bubble.

Whoops, off-topic. Moving on.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

Nothing too surprising, really.

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you’ll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

I haz a bubble! Seriously, though, that’s kind of cool, and moves Death Strikes up in our priority, unless they’re planning to make more than one move self-heal in Blood. Well, and Rune Tap. They could change it, but right now, Bloodworm and Mark of Blood heals aren’t considered self-heals (Bloodworm heals come from the worms themselves, while Mark of Blood heals – according to my combat logs, anyway – come from whoever you put the Mark on.)

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Another statement they keep throwing around without justifying it. Does this mean Frost is going to get something to do with all that RP besides spam Frost Strike?

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree’s play style.

Unholy DKs: now even more like warlocks in plate.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won’t see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

Vengeance is probably the one change I actually got excited about, but I read it in the warrior changes, so it really kind of wore off by the time I got to the DK changes. I did some napkin math on this, and assuming "unbuffed health" means "unbuffed health with all our armor on," let’s take Icecrown as an example – most bosses hit for somewhere in the 16k range, so I’d be gaining 800 AP (roughly) per hit, up to a max of around 3100. That’s pretty impressive. Shouldn’t have a problem holding onto a single target pretty much ever, and this will make doing dailies or questing in tank spec a lot more fun.

Again, though, the majority of what this amps up is single target threat. Still no answers as to how we’re going to handle AOE threat. Maybe we’ll finally get a damage shield, since we’re the only tanks without one unless some druid is kind enough to give us thorns.

Bonus round! DJ Zarhym on the ones and twos:

Here are a few points of clarification:

We want to provide a 2-handed style for Frost since we recognize that pets are an acquired taste. We think we have the design space to do that now that we don’t need to support Frost tanking. We’re definitely committed to making Frost work as a dual-wield tree though — that isn’t going away.

Welcome back, 2H Frost, my old friend. We missed you. Also, it’s not in our Q&A, but it was confirmed somewhere else that there will be Strength-based one-handed DPS weapons available again, for dual-wielding Frost death knights and Fury warriors using the new Single-Minded Fury talent. Huzzah!

Outbreak is free with a 1-minute cooldown. It’s not supposed to completely replace Plague Strike and Icy Touch.

I mentioned this above.

We’re not sure how we’re going to handle presences yet. We recognize the oddness of Blood death knights playing in Frost Presence and Frost death knights not playing in Frost Presences. We might rename the presences or take some other action.

Cosmetic, but it does seem backasswards that Frost DPS uses Blood Presence and Blood tanking uses Frost Presence. I worry about what "take some other action" might mean.

And now back to Mr. Greg "TO THE GROUND" "Ghostcrawler" Street.

Quote:
GC, does this mean that important cooldowns won’t require runes? Instead we’ll see things like Strangulate, Bone Shield, Ghoul Frenzy, UA and stuff cost runic power or just be free? They would be incredibly frustrating to use with such long rune cooldowns.

I don’t think we can make them all cost runes. That would be too hard to manage. If I had to guess, some will be runic power and some will just be free. If we did move Bone Shield to Blood, then that one might be okay as a rune since it’s something you do pre-emptively, but we have some more talent tree work to do first before we can really answer that.

This is the one scenario where I’d fully support the removal of Rune Strike – moving survival tools onto RP.

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Death Knight Cataclysm preview, much like everyone else

I was up way too late last night chatting with our heal lead while knocking out explorer achievements and turning in Darkmoon Decks and he mentioned it as being "growing pains." And I suppose, in a way, he’s right. We’ve gone from overpowered to horribly broken to doing okay to where we are now. It was a neat idea – having a class that can do either of its roles in any of its trees – but in the end, every tree ended up being best at something anyway, and now that I’ve been in all 3 for an extended period of time (even rocking two tank specs at once for a while), I have to finally ‘fess up that I agree with the decision because blood has been the most capable tree for quite some time now. And yes, I really did respec to blood.

However, I still have a wishlist of new toys. Game balance be damned, likeliness be damned, these are the things I would just like to see.

• Equivalents of Demoralizing Shout and HAMMERRRRR OF THE RIGHTEOUS. We already know the Demo Shout equivalent is on its way – that was part of the initial post – but as a tanking talent, Dancing Rune Weapon is really only good if you need a threat boost, which no one does anymore thanks to Icy Dickpunch. On the other hand, Blood’s AOE threat generation – at least for now – absolutely blows, unless you’re willing to sacrifice talent points and a glyph slot to increase damage and reduce cooldown on Death and Decay and/or talent into glyphed Corpse Explosion (which I will freely admit is fun, there’s just a lot of sacrifices I don’t like making in order to get it in blood). Suggestion for Blizzard: Bloodbolt Whirl. (Only, you know, not doing tens of thousands of damage.)
• I assume Rune Strike is going away thanks to the recent move away from on-next-swing abilities, but I could be wrong. I wouldn’t mind seeing it stay; one of the things I liked most about my warrior was punching that Revenge button when it lit up (and I hear you guys got a buff to it or something). Plus, well, Rune Strike is the one chance I have as a tank to see big ol’ crits. (You can take the DK out of the DPS, but you can’t take the DPS out of the DK.) Alternately, some kind of reflective damage on parry or dodge would be handy.
• While it’s great as an oh-shit button or on fights where you need a lot of healing pronto, Vampiric Blood is not the kind of thing you would blow on trash. In Frost, I gleefully use Unbreakable Armor on trash and everything else. Some kind of equivalent like that for tanking would be fun, whether for survivability or threat. I have absolutely no idea what it would be. Heck, maybe it’s just Unbreakable Armor.
• Some kind of party utility. I think we can assume that Abomination’s Might and Hysteria have about an equal chance at this point of staying in blood or going to unholy. I for one wouldn’t mind some kind of unique buff, just deep enough in the Blood tree that DPSers won’t regularly take it, that provides some kind of survival or threat benefit to our fellow raid members or to us. Think Blessing of Sanctuary or Vigilance, though obviously not those same effects. Maybe a blood link – Blood already does a lot of self-healing, so maybe the ability to pop a buff on the highest DPS in our raid and let their damage heal us, too. Nothing more than what Blood Presence provides naturally, but just enough to be something cool we can do.
• An actual, real, true, honest-to-God stun. I mean, we’re the only tanks without any stuns whatsoever at this point, assuming I’m counting my tank stuns correctly (Concussion Blow, Shockwave, Bash, Hammer of Justice, probably a few more – you get the idea). This doesn’t even have to be something new – I’d be perfectly happy making Mind Freeze a baseline or talented stun.

I guess we’ll have to see what they have in mind for us, but the more I think about the possibilities that a dedicated tanking tree offers, the happier I am. In the meantime, there’s some discussion taking place in the Pwnwear forums on the upcoming changes, and Blizzard will be offering a more fleshed-out preview soon, so it’s pretty much a "wait and see" (or "wait and gleefully anticipate") situation.

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Witty blood pun here

Patch 3.3.3 for DK tanks

And yes, no matter what Gravity tries to tell you, it’s 3.3.3, not 3.33.

Blood tanks: our plan B is now plan-B-ier. It’s also even easier to understand: Damage that would take you below 34-35% health or taken while you are at 34-35% health is reduced by (4-5/9-10/14-15)%. Voila. Will of the Necropolis is now better, but still sort of a worst-case scenario. Frankly, I just want to know when it kicks in – does WotN put something in the combat logs? Does anyone know?

Frost tanks: If you’re specced into Improved Icy Talons, it (1) now double-dips to give you more melee haste and (2) should now be taken whether you have an enhancement shaman along or not for basically that reason… if you’re dual-wielding. DW got more boosts, in the form of more off-hand damage. (That also kind of makes me want to look into frost DPS again, but I’ve not been keeping up with the latest math wankery on whether frost DPS is competitive again. Plus I need new weapons.) Two-handed frost tanks… please stand by.

Unholy tanks: … sorry, I got nothin’.

Shamananananing

My shaman has been receiving a bulk of my attention lately. I like shamans! It took a while for the totem mechanic to grow on me, and I can still see a number of fights that my DK is doing now where totems would be more or less very awkward to use, but it doesn’t make me like it any less. I’ve been leveling elemental, and doing a few Outland dungeons as elemental so I can get used to it in groups. It’s a real culture shock, after being a death knight solely for so long – what do you mean, I have to not use up all my mana? Bloody hell, I’m an aggro machine! And so on.

I also got unexpectedly pressed into resto’ing (as elemental) in Underbog when our healer decided to plop his fat dwarven butt on the ground prior to the naga section and, y’know, not tell anyone, nearly causing a wipe. Once he got punted, I was asked to heal until we could find a healer, and so I swapped over to Earthliving, put my 3 heals on my bars, and along I went. I … liked that too! I sense 1000g is coming up in Kallech’s future to make him dual-spec ele/resto. Y’know, right after the combined 6000g for epic and cold-weather flying.

Money

Finally makin’ it. Thanks Jewelcrafting! And thanks primarily to Hydra and Rip for the advice.   I won’t be hitting the gold cap anytime soon, but my total grows little by little and I’m no longer scraping the bottom of my empty change purse to try and pay for repairs or raid consumables, and that’s an improvement in my book.

WoW is like Pokemon

No, seriously. At a very high level, there’s a lot of unusual similarities, especially in playstyles.

First, you’ve got the people who play for the leveling, or for the story, or both. These people might do things that seem strange to some of us, but they like what they’re doing, and sometimes they’re 9 years old, and who can fault them for that?

Then you’ve got the people who get really, really srs bzns about it. These people crunch math, look at stats, find advantages, and in the end they boil the ‘acceptable’ standards down to certain combinations of stats and maneuvers in tiers. For WoW, these might be hardcore raiders or arena folks; in the world of Pokemon, these are competitive battlers. Hell, both games even have simulators that allow you to engage in full-on math wankery in an idealized version of the game environment.

Oh, and altoholics? Come on, that one’s easy: gotta catch level ‘em all.

Pokemon even has its own version of Elitist Jerks: it’s called Smogon.

No wonder I’m such a fan of both games.

Caffeine is still recruiting

Especially healers. Seriously. Join us. Joinnnnnn ussssss. Now 7/12 in ICC-10, after a decisive Orb-Whisperer-included victory over Team Edward The Blood Princes.

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Bits and pieces

Then Pea and I decided to do the new Icecrown instances; it’s not random, but we still wanted to see it. Picked up Nighthawque and, well, there’s our DPS.   Tank and a healer joined in (the healer, amusingly, was the only one not from our server – and he was from Alexstrasza, where I once had a toon, once upon a time). We completed the Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron, and while I’m sure I’ll be sick of them eventually, I absolutely loved them. They were different, they were actually challenging since none of us knew any of the mechanics, and Bronjahm is a treat to fight. Sadly we didn’t make it past the Halls of Reflection; we wiped on Falric when he had virtually no health, and never managed to do that well again (it was about 2:30AM server time, so I’m going to blame it on that).

UI redesign: I spent a couple hours last night redoing parts of my UI from the ground up. Several of my addons were unnecessary or could be rolled into smaller, more efficient versions. Just for comparison, here’s what my UI looked like prior to yesterday (click to embiggen):

Several new addons later, I got something I like. I’m still fiddling with the precise layout, but at least I know I like all of the addons themselves – except maybe Magic Runes. I may switch back to SimpleRune or its successor. And I’m not a big fan of TidyPlates – I find that in groups of enemies they tend to completely overlap, making targeting an enormous pain in the ass. Here’s what it looked like, from the beginning of the evening until near the end (again, click to embiggen):

Since I know someone’s going to ask – the thin white circle you see around me in several of the combat pics is from Power Auras (specifically, that one’s letting me know that Unbreakable Armor is ready for use).

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Random dungeons and UI redesign

There’s just been a lot of stuff to deal with lately (though not stemming from the patch – frost death knights saw virtually no changes of note in this patch, which is just fine and dandy with yours truly), and it hasn’t been the best of times, but I’m hoping tonight fixes that. We’ll see. If I can’t get into ICC, maybe I can at least PUG a little bit with the new LFG mechanism (which Anea sums up nicely here with her in-game experiences, so I don’t have to). If anyone on Rampage runs into Rajaat, give me a wave.

Also: boy, that Core Hound Pup is cute! Lil’ K.T. has himself some competition for the spot of my favorite pet.

Tonight will also probably be when I redo my UI from the ground up. I mentioned on Twitter that a few things were non-negotiable. Those things are, in no particular order:

• A rune timer of some kind. I’m currently using SimpleRune because it lives up to its name.
• Unit frames. Currently I use Grid, but full-fledged raid frames are largely overkill for what I do. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Shadowed Unit Frames, and may give it a try. (Users of SUF are welcome to convince me. )
• A configurable bar mod. Currently rocking Dominos. My primary reason for this is a bar layout that matches my n52te. I’m not totally committed to this, but I like to at least have 14 keys, with the ability to page to 14 different keys by holding alt, and as just about any bar mod will do that… (Also, you can tell how old the screenshot in that post is because it still shows Unholy Blight as a clickable, actually-useful spell. Ah, those were the days.)
• I put the bar mod down as non-negotiable, but honestly, I dunno. If I could find a 14-button bar mod with paging on keypress and a few additional slots to the side for things I am lazy about, like mounts and Path of Frost, that might be sufficient. I might not need all the extra jazz that Dominos comes with.
• Quartz. More for my caster alts than my main.
• Jamba, but only until February, when my recruit-a-friend runs out again. I loooove Jamba.
• RatingBuster, because I hate crunching math on the fly.

That’s basically it. I do have some utility stuff (Auctioneer for bank alt, for instance), but a lot of my addons have been replaced by built-in features – for instance, from what I tried last night, I don’t think I’ll need to be toting around Cartographer or QuestHelper anymore; I could truthfully do away with Outfitter at this point; and LightHeaded’s built in features have been replaced by having a second monitor. I also have Buffalo3 but I don’t find it very useful. I also have some features I’ve lost that I’d like to get back – for example, a movable minimap like SexyMap or Carbonite’s map.

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This is not about my impressions of 3.3