Okay so it’s pretty obvious that I’ve left this section of 60FPS totally dead but I haven’t been playing WoW for quite a while now. Regardless when the expansion finally does come out I do plan on giving it a go.

For all you number crunchers out there here’s the most up to date Talent Calculator from WoWHead for Cataclysm.

Cheers.

As always I keep my eyes on WoWHead to find out if they updated their PTR site with the next talent calculator for the next patch, and this isn’t just a patch, this is THE PATCH. Patch 3.3.0 folks, this is it, Icecrown Citadel at last. I’m sure the Lich King is relieved to since he’s been literally sitting on his ass for almost a year now just watching us slay blue dragons and kill Kel’Thuzad over and over again.

Not only is there a new talent calculator but Blizzard has also released a sneak peak view to the new Tier 10 armor sets.

Considering the fact that now I’m playing a hunter instead of my Warrior, Death Knight, or Priest I find it exciting to look at the new changes in store for Hunter and Pet talents as well as pets receiving 100% of their master’s resilience!

To check out the new talent calculator click here.

Cheers and sorry about not updating at all lately, haven’t been playing much to be honest.

Some other noteworthy talent changes are those going to be done to shamans like:

• Maelstrom Weapon:  Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex.
• Shamanistic Rage:  Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.

Interesting changes throughout the patch notes in general, shame I probably won’t be playing anymore to see them through XD

My apologies for not updating the blog at all, I’ve been on Vacation in London and Amsterdam and have begun to play WoW less and less. Expect a couple of posts in the future closing this chapter of my gaming life as I have come to the conclusion that it’s finally time for me to stop playing this game after 5 years.

You can check it our at http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent

After almost 5 months since the release of Wrath of the Lich King the first real content patch finally has gone live and with it all our fears and hopes collide as everyone scrambles to try to get onto their respective servers. I’m not going to delve much into the details about errors and issues this patch has but I will say that so far it doesn’t seem to be as bad as Patch 3.08 considering the sheer amount of content that’s in this one. For the most part the few bugs I’ve encontered so far haven’t been too grim although there’s one issue with the new dual talent system and talent windows that I find amusing. Some of my talents after having “learned” them will later appear grey as if I never learned them such as on my Death Knight who has 0/1 Heart Strike. I know I have the ability because it’s on my bar and I can’t use it yet the talent GUI shows that I don’t have it learned. That’s not even the worst part, last night while switching between talent speccs on my priest (yes she finally hit 80 a couple weeks ago but I haven’t pained myself to update >.<) one of my speccs “unlearned” itself and I had to reapply talent points mid-fight in Old Kingdom!

For people like me who have 3 active characters that they play on this patch is hell! The reason why is because I had to give them all new talent points/make new glyphs etc… and I decided to respecc my warrior Arms and so spent some time purchasing PvP gear and enchants/gems to go with her new specc. Good thing there are new dailies with the new Argent Tournament to help fund all this tri-character gold sinks I have at the moment.

At heart if you haven’t noticed by now I’m more of a casual player/PvPer than a hardcore raider (although I use to be at one point) so what are my plans for all my characters? For now I’ll get into what I want to dual specc and how I’ll play with each character.

Yiedra – Warrior

• At the moment I respecced her Arms-PvP even though I have gimpy Arms/PvP gear at the moment. I decided on 60-11-0, I didn’t get improved slam or sudden death since one is situational and the other has been nerfed. Although I my have to reconsider on improved slam at least since I lack a rage dump. I’ll have to play around with the specc for a while since I haven’t been Arms since my Arena days in TBC.
• My second specc will be Protection-PvE to tank in instances/raids when I get the chance and will probably be a variation of what I’ve been using so far, something like 5-8-58 or 12-8-51 for maximum punishment and threat. I personally think the 2nd specc is better once you have enough mitigation gear to make up the talents lost in Prot.
• I’m still not sure but I might swap out my Death Knight for my Warrior to do 2v2 with my Holy Paladin partner Somnium.

Xiedra – Death Knight

• I have no idea what my second specc will be to use as dual specc, in fact, I’m not even sure what my first specc will be since the talent trees and abilities have been changed considerably enough to change the playstyle. Everyone has been min-maxing for weeks but to be honest I think it’s still undecided what THE new PvP specc will be. So for the moment I’m sticking to my earlier theory-crafting and specced Blood 52-2-17. Yeah I messed up, I should’ve put 5 points into Necrosis instead of 2 into Epidemic (forgot that they increased the base duration of diseases, doh!)
• After playing around with the new Death Strike and the it’s glyph, I’ve found it does just as much damage if not more than Obliterate and it heals! So going deep into frost as blood isn’t nearly as advantageous as unholy except for 2 points in runic power mastery to give our DRW 3 seconds more uptime. I didn’t test using Obliterate with it’s 20% more damage glyph but I would imagine it would be about the same as Death Strike, however the overall advantage unholy gives for PvP outweighs the benefit.
• Taking a point out of Blood and putting it into Corpse Explosion could also be viable for a little bit more burst in arena but without Gnaw it will probably be difficult to pull off.
• Frost also seems to be totally viable for PvP and my prediction is that Blood and/or Frost will be the new PvP speccs for 1 reason: They each have an undispellable and easily applied snare. Blood requires melee range (and a glyph) so Frost’s Chillblains may be the way to go… ranged hamstring QQ.
• My second specc will probably be a PvE oriented DPS build once I figure out a build I enjoy that does decent DPS.

Ziedra – Priest

• Yeah she dinged 80 a while ago and she’s been a busy bee collecting PvP gear and PvE gear.
• My first specc with my priest is Disc-PvP (60-11-0). Although I’ve theory-crafted over and over again the possibility of using Holy to PvP with I can’t for the life of me convince myself to use Holy just for one spell (Body and Soul) considering the overall utility Discipline gives. I could be wrong and I do plan to at least try it out for a week or so to see if it is viable, considering my arena partner is an Enhancement Shaman it’s a bit redundant considering she has newly revamped Cleansing Totem and Earthen Power. Although having snare immunity and a speed bost is a peeler’s dream come true. Cleansing Totem and Abolish Disease combined will already have Unholy Death Knight’s cryinig a river.
• The second specc is Shadow-PvE (14-0-57) since I can heal instances just fine with my Discipline specc so I opted for Shadow for the utility it brings and it’s fun.

Stay tuned, there’s still a ton more for me to write about the new patch. New Arena Season, class changes, new glyphs, and more XD

Honestly with the new changes they’re putting into Dancing Rune Weapon as well…

• Dancing Rune Weapon: Damage done by this pet is reduced by 50%, but the cooldown is reduced to 90 seconds.

Great change for PvE DPS since it should increase overall DPS since it’ll be available on pretty much every pull and should remain the same for long boss fights. However, blood seems to be less and less of a viable PvP build anymore. Last PTR build had DRW doing 50% damage but lasting twice as long, a shorter cooldown instead makes it horrible for PvP in my opinion. Sure, 50% more damage still is some burst but also considering Plague Strike will no longer remove HoTs (Heal over Time) anymore our burst is nil against HoT heavy healers (Shamans and Druids). Hopefully though the Plague Strike change should encourage a revival of Resto Druids, curious how the once most popular arena classes (Warrior and Resto Druid) are now the the most neglected.

What baffles me is that it almost seems Blizzard is biased towards Unholy, which I have nothing against, it’s a cool talent tree and I am currently using it for PvP due to it’s sheer utility… but this seems to go against their latest agenda to allow all talent trees be PvP viable. A cool idea on paper but a herculean task to accomplish in an MMO which frankly I can see it being possible for hybrid classes but not for core classes like Warrior or Priest (Prot/Holy PvP? Seriously?)

I personally think it’d be cool if they could pull it off, more diversity please, I’m tired of the same Arena match-ups (yeah I play a Holy/Unholy 2v2 comp setup as well). I recently dinged 80 with my little twink project priest and am going to try Disc/Enhancement Shaman just to spice things up and actually try a challenging comp.

Well considering these latest changes it seems Frost may be the 2nd viable PvP tree (Unholy will still be popular nonetheless) since it’s shaping up to have nice control and burst as well as survivability. Time to erase our whiteboards and theory-craft again.

In patch 3.1.0 (that is unless it gets changed) instead of getting auras Death Knights will have those talents replaced by talents to improve upon the presence. Personally I think it’s a nice step in the right direction since Unholy Aura is unarguably the best aura to have, whether it be PvP or PvE. Blood Aura’s 4% heal is too little to make a difference and Frost Aura only gives 80 resistance to all which is made moot by Paladin Auras, Hunter Aspect, Shaman Totems which all give 130 resistance to one school (which is all that is needed in most fights anyway). Unholy Aura is widely accepted as the best one since the 15% movement speed buff is just huge for raid DPS and especially handy in Arena. Removing the auras will allow for more diversity as DKs won’t feel like they have to specc Unholy to be useful.

Alright enough of my rambling, the new talents are still in tier 7 and replace the old aura talents:

• Improved Blood Presence – While in Frost Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 4% healing from Blood Presence, and healing done to you is increased by 10% in Blood Presence.
• Improved Frost Presence – While in Blood Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 10% health from Frost Presence, and damage done to you is decreased by an additional 2% in Frost Presence.
• Improved Unholy Presence – While in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, you retain 15% increased movement speed from Unholy Presence, and your runes finish their cooldowns 10% faster in Unholy Presence.

Out of the 3 the one that seems weakest to me is Improved Blood Presence because 4% healing from damage done is still weak regardless of what presence you’re in, I can see this being nice for tanks. The extra 10% healing received while in Blood Presence would be great as a tank but as DPS you don’t need that much healing and in PvP where it could have some use Unholy Presence provides much better burst. I’d have to try it out and see but it might be a viable alternative for PvP specced Blood Death Knights to stay in Blood Presence instead of Frost when being focused on in PvP.

Improved Frost Presence sounds intriguing for PvP (not much use for the extra health for PvE DPS and the extra 2% less damage is just icing on the cake for tanks) since often times we find ourselves in Frost Presence in order to survive focus fire attacks. With this talent a Frost specced Death Knight could stay in Unholy Presence the whole time for the added burst benefit without sacrificing total survivability. Perhaps we might actually start to see something besides Unholy in Arena.

As before the Unholy version is still quite attractive but it no longer gives a movement bonus to the rest of the group/raid. Even moreso than the Frost Version this one seems to be purely made for PvP as you can still chase down your prey while in Frost Presence. The added bonus of your runes finishing 10% faster while in Unholy Presence, essentially reducing their cooldown to 9 seconds instead of 10, should help burst even further in PvP. What’s got me thinking though is if this could also be used to DPS with, would reduced cooldowns compensate for the lack of our DoTs doing 15% extra damage while in Blood Presence? I haven’t done the math on this yet but I’m willing to bet that in the long run Blood Presence would still be top dog in DPS although I could see this talent being useful for short fights.

As we all should know, shamans are a hybrid class, and as such are a renaissance class capable of doing a little bit of everything. Powerful healers and damage dealers their only difference from the other 2 hybrid classes (druid and paladin) they can’t tank. The most important thing to keep in mind when alocating your talents is to know exactly what we want to do, whether it be healing (Restoration), melee damage (Enhancement), or mastery over the elements (Elemental); although it is also possible to construct a “hybrid” build which allows us to do a little bit of everything but poorly.

I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves “what talents should I pick? which are best for PvP or PvE… and we’ve all picked talents randomly in an attempt to try them out and experiment or simply because we don’t have a clue.

Right, so for all of those who are undecided and need some help deciding upon which talent tree to go down, I’ve made a small but solid SHAMAN TALENT GUIDE. In the end one could come to the conclusion that there are an infinite amount of combinations as there are players since our choice of talents comes down to personal play style, although if we look over key talents we could easily have a build with a horrible personality. I hope this guide helps any lost WoW players out there or at least gives you an idea of what you like and want to do.

Good luck!

Translated by Yiedra

Patch 3.1.O-Rama at WoWHead

The boys over at WoWHead.com have recently released a calculator with all the Patch 3.1 changes done so far on the PTR realms. Some of the classes have been changed very little others (such as Death Knights) have had trees rearranged almost completely. Frost has been turned upside-down practically and as I feared the 0/32/39 Dual Wield specc for Death Knights will be gone forever. Paladins lost their Blessing of Kings in protection as it is becoming a base ability and are left with a very naked Tier 1 in their Protection Tree.

I’m still fiddling around with the calculator trying to figure out what the next best dual wield specc will be and to be honest from the looks of it, it can be any of the trees since all the key DW abilities except for Nerves of Cold Steel have been changed to favor Dual Wielding less and be equally as good for Two-Handers. At first I was thinking of trying out deep frost for PvP and PvE but after the changes done to Blood and Unholy I’m leaning towards using a modified Blood Specc for PvP and Deep Frost for PvE. I still haven’t done the math or any testing though.

For PvP i’ve grown fond of using Blood despite the overwhelming popularity Unholy speccs enjoy and with the new patch Blood will have even more utility. I’m currently torn between two:

1. 51-2-18 possibly putting points into Morbidity and Epidemic instead of Necrosis although I think Necrosis will give better burst results overwall with the use of DRW (Dancing Rune Weapon)
2. 51-17-3 which gives up having a zombie pet in exchange for more survivability and Obliterate not consuming diseases.

Considering diseases get dispelled all the time in PvP regardless of Virulence making the disease removing disadvantage of Obliterate moot I’m leaning more towards 51-2-18. Having a pet would provide me with another interrupt and stun I could use to ensure I’m positioned correctly to use DRW to full advantage. Both of these speccs have 2 points in the new Runic Power Mastery (down from 3 points) which if at full runic power (130) will allow DRW to last 6 seconds longer. I believe almost all speccs will be investing into this talent now due to it’s easy accessibility and usefulness, Unholy Gargoyles will be easier to maintain if used with 130 runic power for example.

As for my warrior I don’t see talents changing since her specc still seems solid and I’m still leveling my priest so I’ll theory craft that later since I haven’t decided whether what specc(s) I want to be at 80 anyway.

So what are you waiting for? Get down to the new talent calculator and start theory crafting away! Tell me what you think would be good speccs for PvE/PvP for your class after the patch.

]]> http://wow.60-fps.com/2009/03/06/310-talent-calculator-available-at-wowhead/feed/ 2 http://wow.60-fps.com/2009/02/24/pre-patch-310-death-knight-twilight-zone/ http://wow.60-fps.com/2009/02/24/pre-patch-310-death-knight-twilight-zone/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:22:24 +0000 Yiedra http://wow.60-fps.com/?p=414

(Insert Doctor Who or Twilight Zone music here)

For all of you who haven’t checked out the 3.1.0 patch notes that Blizzard has revealed, please do so now. There are quite a few upcoming class changes that are very easily going to turn the PvE and especially the PvP scenes upside down. I’m not going to get into all the nitty gritty details in this post because like all test realm patch notes they’re not definitive yet but I feel the need to discuss the changes that have been going on and what will happen to Death Knights, Blizzard’s experimental monstrosity.

As always my main class, Warrior, is the one less affected by the upcoming patch changes which makes me believe that Warriors truely are the center piece of the World of Warcraft classes. What I mean by this is that they tend to be the one class that all other classes are balanced around instead of the latter. Blizzard is content  with the design and mechanics that warriors are currently at so they change everyone else (drastically at times) to achieve WoW nirvana. Despite QQ done by warriors as a warrior myself I have to admit the class is very solid and no where near broken or in nead of ‘something’.

Death Knights on the other hand… this class has gone through some INSANE changes since their first appearence in WotLK 3.0.2. They’ve been molded and morphed in only a few months what the other 9 classes have gone through in the past 4 years. I honestly feel like my Death Knight is a pile of clay, easily moldable and plyable into any form, and no I don’t mean this because of their versatile and dynamic talent trees (although this is true). From the nerfs done to Unholy to the changing of Heart Strike and most importantly the changes done to our zombies I can’t say I feel like I’m playing the same class I was months ago.

After this next patch it will be even worst, it’s no wonder that there aren’t any real solid cookie cutter builds. Sure there are a few but if you look at the builds people have in general you see a bit of everything except perhaps the basic 17/0/54 Unholy Death Knights running around in PvP and PvE which remained popular even after the nerfs to Unholy in 3.0.8. With the switching of Unholy Blight and Gargoyle it’s dubious if this specc will still be the most popular. Other builds that have arisen in PvP inolve points in Frost to get Lichborne to help compensate for the drop in survivability from the Unholy nerf in the last patch.

The changes are too many to list here so I’ll detail the most important ones that’ll change the way we play our Death Knights or fight with/against them (Next to each I’ll write PvE and/or PvP to indicate what it will affect the most, my comments are in italics/underlined):

• Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented. Frost Fever: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented. PvE The change to BP and FF will render current rune cycles moot and we’ll have to come up with new ones
• Death Pact: This heal cannot be a critical. PvP/PvE
• Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove hots. Plague Strike’s damage increased quite a bit to compensate. PvP/PvE Druids will no crumble as quickly before our mighty visage and Resto Shamans will be even more impossible to kill (
• Raise Ally now has a cooldown greater than 15 min and can no longer be used in Arenas. PvP
• Rune of Razorfrost now affects Frost damage done by the DK only, but stacks up to 10%. PvE

Talents

• Blood
  • Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise. PvP/PvE This should increase Blood DPS considerably since it relies heavily on melee damage
  • Bloody Strikes now increases Blood Boil damage instead of Pestilence. PvE This along with the changes to Blood Boil should help Blood DKs compete with Frost/Unholy AoE.
  • Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3. PvP/PvE More burst in PvP and no more worrying about throwing off rune cycles by using another global cooldown
• Frost
  • The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter. PvP/PvE This is going to be HUGE since up until now Frost has been the least mutilated tree. Hopefully this will increase it’s viability as a main specc and secondary tree
  • Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20% PvE Considering the buff to Rune of Razorfrost it almost equals out but still equates to a 5% nerf, the curren 0/32/39 Dual Wield speccs will have to change post patch
  • Blood of the North: Now also increases damage dealt by Frost Strike by 15%. PvP/PvE The earlier tier nerfs may be justified by this change, testing will have to be done to see if this talent is DW worthy
  • Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). PvP Pure 100% awesome, enough said
  • Frost Aura: Replaced with Improved Frost Presence. Allows the deathknight to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence in any presence, and decreases magic damage taken while in Frost Presence. PvP This will easily make Frost a force to be reckoned with in PvP since they can maintain Frost Presence survivability while in Unholy Presence. Is needed considering Frost has the least survivability in PvP out of the 3 trees
  • Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree, and damage bonus to targets afflicted by Frost Fever reduced from 100% to 50%. PvE/PvP Goodbye 0/32/39 forever! Hello new PvP toy
• Unholy
  • Blood-caked Blade: Now has a 3 second cooldown on the effect. PvP/PvE This seems to make the talent favor 2H builds over Dual Wielding
  • Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance. PvE/PvP The player can now choose how much bonus damage/snare they want without having to worry about procc values. This should free up some possible talent points to put elsewhere.
  • Magic Suppression: Now has 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction. PvE/PvP Slight nerf for tanks and Unholy PvP but also frees up 2 talent points for those who invested in Magic Suppression to get Anti-Magic Zone
  • Necrosis: Can now only be triggered by main hand attacks. PvE Obvious nerf to Dual Wield speccs, it seems Blizzard wants to rip 0/32/39′s heart out and gloat over it’s death
  • Scourge Strike: Damage increased.
  • Unholy Aura: Replaced with Improved Unholy Presence. Allows the Deathknight to keep the movement speed bonus of Unholy Presence in any presence, and increases rune regeneration rate while in Unholy Presence. PvE/PvP Interesting… honestly I’m not sure what to think of this yet
  • Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new Unholy 51 talent. PvE Will give Blood/Frost builds access to a nice AoE ability, PvP isn’t affected as Unholy DKs who PvP already go this far down the tree. This is however the final nail on the coffin for 0/32/39.

So there you have it, my analysis of the current PTR patch notes for us followers of the dark faith clad in plate. Overall to sum this up for all you TLDR folks out there:

• 0/32/39 will be DEAD, gone forever into the abyss (Think HARP 2.3.2)
• Frost will be PvP/PvE viable
• Unholy will still be popular, it isn’t the specc it’s the concept people love
• Frost will be the new ‘flavor tree’ for Blood and Unholy PvP DKs to dip into (even moreso than before)
• Blood will be a force to be reckoned with in PvP and PvE equal  to Unholy and the newly revamped Frost
• Blood Worms will stuck suck a big can of jagons