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

Opening Screen to the Isle of Conquest

Alright so i’ve obviously have been out of the loop for a while. Just today I stumbled upon the latest patch notes on the test server and my first impression is that it looks good overall. What stands out the most to me obviously are the PvP changes and the NEW BATTLEGROUND! The isle of conquest!

Besides the new battleground other important big changes are:

• Shaman totem queuing system with a spell to stomp 4 totems at once
• Death Knight talents/abilities getting gutted (AGAIN, surprise surprise!!!)
• Profession buffs
• More mount changes (Level 20 normal mount, level 40 epic)
• Experience from PvP
• Arena Season 7
• New 5, 10, and 25 man Instance
• and the Argent Tournament of course (something I don’t really care for)

I’ll get into what I think about all the new changes during this week in an attempt to revive the blog a bit and shake the dust off.

Here’s the official thread by Blizzard on the Isle of Conquest:

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. But as insignificant as it may seem, this is no ordinary place. A sound of thunder as waves crash endlessly against rocky cliffs; a sound of fury as swords clash on the blood-stained fields of this island on the edge of forever.

Welcome to the Isle of Conquest.

The ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance has turned many once peaceful (and some not-so peaceful) places into theaters of constant war. The Isle of Conquest is the latest such place, set to be the location of a battle of epic proportions over the island’s precious resources.

An Alliance and a Horde general are fighting for dominance, overseeing the action from the safety of their keeps. Whichever side manages to eliminate the enemy general first will triumph on the island; failure to protect your leader will bring shame, dishonor, and defeat. There is no peace accord here, and it’s an all-out war between the factions.

Once More into the breach…

Isle of Conquest, a new battleground scheduled to make its debut in the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, will pitch teams of up to 40 players against each other in a massive battle over this small island off Northrend’s northern coast. To win, your team will need to make use of the island’s unique strategic locations including an oil derrick, a siege workshop, and a fully equipped airship hangar. You will deploy devastating siege weaponry on the field; Light have mercy on anyone caught between you and your ultimate target, the general holed up in the enemy keep.

There are five points of interest on the Isle of Conquest for the factions to battle over. Each one offers its own benefits and strategic value. Which one will you claim for your side, and will it be enough to ensure victory?

Capture Locations

Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations (as seen on the map), each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team.

The Oil Derrick: Located on the northwestern end of the island, this smudge in the Frozen Sea produces enough black gold to run a thousand siege engines. Taking this resource garners precious reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Cobalt Mine: This snow-covered assembly, located on the southeastern end of the island, hides untapped supplies that must be harvested. Taking this resource grants reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Docks: The western shore’s docks will further expand your selection of siege weapons with the devastating new Glaive Thrower and the Catapult. Unleash the destruction of the Glaive Thrower upon the walls of the keep, or launch your invading party over the walls to assault the keep from within.

The Airship Hangar: This sturdy steel structure stands on the peak of Mt. Conquest overlooking the eastern side of the island, allowing players to board the airship docked there. This devastating weapon of war is capable of raining death upon the heads of your enemies and destroying enemy defenses. Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above.

The Siege Workshop: Situated right between the Alliance base and the Horde base, this siege workshop occupies a strategic hot spot. Seizing it grants the controlling party the ability to utilize an arsenal of siege vehicles perfectly suited to reducing the enemy keep’s walls to dust and ashes.

Graveyards: There are five graveyards in the Isle of Conquest that are attached to different points of interest on the map: the Horde base, the Alliance base, an oil spill island in the center of the map (attached to the siege workshop), the northeast corner (attached to the airship hangar), and the southwest corner (attached to the docks).

Main Objectives

The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within.

The General: Holed up behind the keeps’ massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor.

Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over.

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. A test of strength. A chance to prove your might, to crush your enemies, to make a difference, a chance for endless glory and conquest.

Will you seize it?

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

As always Blizzard treats its customers to another April Fool’s joke on their website. This year they thought it would be funny to give us false hopes of being able to “pimp out” our mounts. Damn! I always wanted my mechanostrider to have neon lights and a built in piranha fish tank!

Oh well, this isn’t really the MMO for that sort of customization.

Honestly though this is probably one of the least believeable pranks so far, alright the Bard was a bit far fetched but one can dream right? 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.

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.

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