Project Lore

In the upcoming patch, death knights will be the only class to receive a talent point refund because, once again, they are getting an overhaul. Some of these changes are nerfs, some are buffs and others are redesigns of how the spells and abilities function. The death knight community is already analyzing all of the data and surmising why these changes have occurred. Let's explore some of these changes, but keep in mind that all of this is subject to change before this patch goes live.

Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.

This change is creating quite a stir in the death knight community. That's a huge buff to that ability and some folks are speculating that it's a typo and they meant to say "increased by 50% per disease", which would mean it increases from 12.5% to 18.75% per disease and not 50%. If the change does remain as written, then blood strike could replace heart strike in the blood rotation and some of the scourge strikes in the unholy rotation. The blue post found here seems to indicate that it's not a typo, however, it's already been reduced on their latest internal build, which would make it different than the patch notes.

Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.

This is a change for pvp and will probably come as a relief to many hardcore pvpers. However, I don't see DKs making much of a stink over it. Chains of ice is still amazing and has the same basic function.

Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina. Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes. Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes. Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.

Ouch! The death knight tanks take another heavy blow with the nerf bat. In patch 3.1.3 frost presence armor bonus was reduced by 20%. Now we see a 4% nerf to the stamina bonus and the doubling of the cooldown on the death knight's main survival ability. In addition, the armor and stamina talents in the blood and frost trees are also taking a hit. It seems that they are trying to make death knight tanks more like the other tanks. The original design felt like death knights would have more frequent cooldowns to push to offset the fact that they do not have a shield and cannot block. These changes, however, make them feel more like the other tanks and icebound fortitude is now more in line with other tank talents like last stand. If I'm being objective, I think the icebound fortitude change can solve some issues. Recently, my guild took down General Vezax using a paladin main tank. It was a little obnoxious knowing that we could survive the surges of darkness easier if our main tank was a death knight solely because icebound fortitude had a one-minute cooldown. Much of the screaming from the DK tank community seems to revolve around the fact that paladin tanks are getting a decent amount of buffing, including this hard to believe change:

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

If I'm reading that correctly, that's a passive guardian spirit every two minutes? I'm sure glad my guild often runs with two protection paladins!

Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.

Frost strike hits hard and it was probably viewed as too much burst in pvp especially considering it couldn't be mitigated. The slight reduction of damage is probably going to be a wash considering that blood strike is getting buffed. The blue post here, seems to indicate that the frost dps is being spread out a bit more and not consolidated on just one ability.

Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power. Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.

These are the 51 point talents for blood and unholy specs. The jury seems mixed on these changes. While I'm not sure if it's an overall buff or nerf to the damage of these spells, what I do know is these spells will be a lot easier to use now that they have a fixed runic power cost and duration. Currently, the timing of when you use these abilities can drastically affect the amount of extra dps they give you. Pop them at the wrong time and you have just wasted a precious cooldown. So I'm eager to see these changes in action.

Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.

Dual-wielding used to be one of the top approaches to take for a dps death knight. Recently, however, many of the changes have all but killed it. So in patch 3.2, the dual wielding death knights might make a comeback with this new talent in the frost tree.

Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent. Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.

Interesting. So the current desecration is being split into two separate talents. Desecration is now mostly a pvp ability. The good news is, the infamous desecration graphic will now be much less prominent in pve, which will make most raid leaders happy. However, the speculation is desolation may not be worth taking because the 12 second duration may mean that it is not active at all times with the current rotations. We'll have to see if this new talent gets modified at all before it releases.

Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 5/10/15%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates. Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.

There isn't much to comment on here. The talent points saved on blood of the north are probably meant to make room for the new dual-wielding talent in frost. The lichborne change makes it more dynamic since you can use it more often, but need to be more exact on the timing.

Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%. Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

Last but not least, some big changes to the unholy tree. Scourge Strike is the bread and butter for the unholy DK. The nerf in damage seems partly pvp related. Since scourge strike deals shadow damage, it is not reduced by armor and can be a wrecking ball. Blizzard doesn't seem to like large amounts of burst coming from a single ability. The reduction in damage on scourge strike is offset by the buff to blood strike, which should see more use. This may also be a push for unholy DKs to get more benefit out of armor penetration. Items with armor penetration are rife in Ulduar and currently it's not a stat that does too much for unholy DKs who spend most of their time scourge striking shadow damage. The unholy blight redesign is one of the biggest changes for death knights in this patch. Unholy blight is the signature spell of the unholy tree and the main reason that this spec is normally associated with AOE damage. Well that all changes in 3.2. Unholy blight no longer deals AOE damage at all, in fact, it is not even a spell, it is a passive ability that adds a bleed effect to your death coils. This change really alters the flavor of the unholy death knight and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Don't get me wrong, this change may turn out to be powerful, but I thought it was interesting how each of the three dps specs for death knights felt unique. Blood was the heavy hitting single target crusher, frost seems to be evolving once again as the dual-wielding spec and unholy was the master of AOE damage. Well I guess we'll have to wait and see how unholy feels after the changes go live. In summary, death knights are looking at some tanking nerfs and a reduction to burst and AOE damage in 3.2. On the other hand, some abilities will be easier to use, dual-wielding should be viable again and raid members should no longer die by standing in fires that are obscured by spell effects. What do you think of the death knight changes coming in 3.2? Is there anything you're particularly excited or angry about?

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I'll admit that Dual Spec is going to be a game changing mechanic.  There is no denying that.  The ability to trivially change from one layout to another, glyphs, button layout and talents all together, is an exciting idea for most classes.  While appealing to the PvP/PvE crowd - that is, the players that switch back and forth around their raid schedule - Blizzard also believes that the changes will create more tanks and healers per realm.  How many people will go DPS with a Tank/Healer off-spec, rather than a PvP survivability or solo PvE off-spec remains to be seen.   Then there is the issue of one's ability to play their vastly different spec... I'm not saying that the idea isn't a valiant effort on Blizzard's part to fix the various issues it's tackling.  If anyone can pull off such a drastic change, it's Blizzard and their slew of talented designers (oh, right).  My pessimism creeps in because Blizzard and the general WoW populace seems to think that the mechanic will fix all of these issues.  Poof, everything is perfect.  Hasn't Patch v3.0.8 taught us anything? All things considered, I think these problems will be eased, not solved.  The PvP/PvE crowd will be the only sect entirely satisfied.  Although they may start wanting a Tri Spec setup, ya know, for solo PvE.  The quantity of tanks and healers will be split with the PvP crowd, while quality comes with practice.  The first few months could be rough as new or rusty tanks and healers get back into their groove.  I still expect to see plenty of LF2m Tank/Healer either way. Then there is my concern for SolidSamm.  What about the non-hybrid classes?  Warlocks, Hunters, Mages and Rogues are all designed to do one thing, DPS.  Without the ability to offer drastically different specs (don't forget, pet tanking is going bye-bye) we could be left fighting for far fewer spots in raids than before.  If you had the option to take a geared face-melter who could also heal if someone leaves, or an arrow-flinging Hunter, why would you confine yourself to just the Hunter?  Dare I say that the feature will create more homogenization? Scary thought indeed. Initially, I was ecstatic about the Dual Spec feature.  After mulling it over with a certain Horde buddy, I wouldn't mind it not coming with Patch v3.1, or at all in its present condition.  Are you as paranoid about the change as I am, or are you entirely for it?  There are also the issue of Dual Speccing loot drops.  I won't even get into that.  This is one of those things were I hope I am wrong, but I can't see all my points being incorrect.

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Welcome to part three of my tanking stats overview for Tanking 101. So far we have covered maxing out our defense and talked a bit about avoidance. So we know how to make critical hits impossible, and we know how to avoid hits altogether. Today let’s talk about how to reduce the damage that actually gets through. There are two basic ways to do this. We can block the attack, or we can reduce the damage with our armor.

Blocking of course is only for the Warrior and Paladin tanks out there, but it is an important and somewhat confusing topic, so here we go!

Block Rating: This stat increases the chance that you will block an incoming attack with your shield. You still take damage, but your shield will stop a good part of that damage. This can almost be classified as an avoidance stat, because you stack it much in the same way that you stack dodge and parry, in fact it all fits into the same equation to figure out your overall avoidance. You will find that this is the easiest to stack in terms of avoidance per point, but it also is the least effective due to the fact you are still taking damage. When it comes to avoidance dodge is still king, but BR is a great stat to stack, particularly if you are a Paladin going for the block cap (102.4 total avoidance)

Block Value: The difference between block rating and block value is a major stumbling block for many up and coming tanks. It is important to note that THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Where block rating determines your chance to block an attack, block value determines how much of the total damage is blocked. Block value basically says how much damage is going to be shaved off the incoming attack when you block it. So in review, Rating = how often, Value = how much.

Armor: Armor can take a giant chunk of the damage we take in. In many cases it can be reduced by 60-70% if you have a lot of armor. Unfortunately there is really very little we can do to affect this. Armor comes with our gear's item level. So as you upgrade your armor will go up, it is not something to pay particular attention to. In my experience special items with extra armor are rarely worth it. Now I must apologize to the bears out there. I know that armor is a whole different game for you guys, I just can’t say I really know the ins and outs.

What is The Real World Raid Application? This one is pretty simple. Ever wonder why mobs can beat on you all day, yet if one gets loose they will once shot a clothie? They hit them a lot harder than they hit you because you have tons of armor to push take a bite out of the damage. After armor takes off its chuck, then you can block and take off even more. It is easy to see how this can really help, especially against multiple mobs. While many people tend to frown on mitigation as compared to avoidance, I remain a big fan. In many situations the difference between life and death can be a few thousand hit points. When that is the case, you are glad you pushed damage off the table to keep you alive.

So there you go! Now we have covered defense, avoidance, and mitigation. We are far from done however, as there are lots of more stats that play into being an effective tank. We will talk about some of those next time!

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Allakhazam continues its interview series with with the Project Lore crew this week by conducting an interview with Lylelovett, Project Lore's protection warrior tank, AKA Joshua Brentano. When he isn't busy tanking for Project Lore, Joshua is also the Executive Producer of the hit G4 show, Attack of the Show. Joshua talked with Allakhazam about such topics as tanking, WotLK, and the future of WoW. Check out the interview with Joshua and let us know what you think! Also, don't forget to check out the other interviews with Dorkins, Juggynaut, and DrDark!

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Bastosa has been writing an eloquent series of articles on Tanking stats this past week, and the latest post on Avoidance perked my interest. Before I ruin his credibility by agreeing with him while having a Rogue as my main, I assure you I have played a Warrior and tanked with her for some time.

Things have changed since the bygone days of Anatik, but even then, I stacked avoidance gear whenever possible. I figured, what's better for your healer and yourself than taking no damage at all? As many tanks will point out, itemization does not allow for tanks to go nuts with avoidance, especially back then. Hence why Bastosa labels avoidance (dodge/parry) the most important secondary stats.

The topic of avoidance did not lead me to think of my days as a terrible tank though, rather the fine art of rogue tanking. As Rogue4Life pointed out, rogues can be "viable" tanks by loading up on avoidance, which they will primarily gain from tons of Agility. The best known examples come from a single bored rogue, Gaeowyn and her Untouchables series of videos.

Gaeowyn managed to tank a few of the endgame bosses before she stopped creating videos:

• Solo BRD Run (the inspiration to the Untouchable series)
• Mother Shahraz of Black Temple
• 5-man Gruul With Rogue Tank
• Tanking Illidan Stormrage From 100% to 0%

There is no chance of Rogues taking over tanking jobs, so don't fret. If you haven't seen these videos then they should be pretty entertaining, especially if you happen to play the best class in the game. Any PvE player is likely to get a kick out of them though. Creative gameplay for the win.

Now if you don't mind, I am going to take a short break for the rest of the year, returning to your regularly scheduled blogging on January 5^th. Till then I will be in St. Croix, battling my arch nemesis, The Sun.

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I got into a bit of an argument with Death knight tank in a PUG raid the other day that make me realize that tanking stats are often misunderstood. This particular tank was convinced that Stamina was the end all be all of tanking stats and that nothing else mattered. This is of course far from the truth, but it got me thinking.

With the introduction of a new tanking class, and the supposed tank shortage in general there are lots and lots of people playing a tank for the first time.

If that’s the case then there lots of people who need to understand tanking stats so that they can gear themselves to be the best tank they can be. With that said I have decided to do a series of blogs discussing the major tanking stats and saying what they mean. Hopefully this will give tanks and non-tanks alike an understanding of what tanks are looking for, and what to look for in a tank!

Today I would like to talk about the stat that everyone is talking about. Defense!

Defense

What is it? Defense is the one that you probably hear the most about. The reason for this is likely because it is the first major cap that up and coming tanks need to hit at level 80. Defense’s role is twofold. First it determines the level at which a mob can critically strike you. Secondly, it adds additional value to your avoidance stats (I'll get more into that next time).

How Much Do You Need? The reason that 540 is the defense cap is because when you reach 540 defense you can no longer be critically hit by a level 83 mob, and by level 83 mob I mean a raid boss. For every level you take off the mob, you can take 5 points off the max required defense rating to remain uncritable. If you are only running heroics then you really only need 535 defense because the highest level mob you will see there is level 82. If you want to be uncritable against a level 80 mob the you really only need 525 defense.

That being said if you want to raid, you need to push crits off the table. So your number one gearing priority needs to be reaching 540 defense.

You probably noticed during the leveling process that the higher your level, the less defense rating you are actually getting from your items. This is because defense scales with level, and you will need a tremendous amount to make sure you are at the cap at 80 if you are still leveling. Think ahead! Crafted gear is a great place to find defense for reaching that cap.

What is The Real World Raid Application? So we’ve pushed crits off the table, but why is that important? When you take a crit you are taking 200% damage. This is very high spikey damage that is unpredictable and hard to heal through. If a crit gets through and you are not topped of (or even sometimes if you are) you will likely die. Raid bosses can often hit for upwards of 10k on plate, it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out doubling that damage is very bad. If you die the raid wipes and you are an unpopular person... please resist the urge to blame the healers.

So there is a taste of my first Tanking 101 column. This first one is pretty basic, but please let me know what you think. Next time around I will be covering Avoidance, so stay tuned!

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Yesterday I mentioned that most of my Thanksgiving was spent trying to convince people to join me in Azeroth, rather than playing myself. It isn't that I didn't want to play, I did my best to find the time, but living far away from my family forces me to obligate the little time I have with them to them. I blame society and quality parenting (don't ever tell my parents I said that).

While I was busy chastising my brother for his disinterest in Wrath and cursing my cousin's friends for ruining a raiding buddy, Ghostcrawler was busy on the official forums discussing the intricacies of World of Warcraft. Seeing as we have extended maintenance this fine Tuesday, I thought we could dive into his numerous posts and do some light theory discussing today.

The first meaty post I noticed from Mr. Crabbie was a discussion on the upcoming dual spec feature. Healers and tanks have been looking forward to this feature more than anyone, as it will allow them to tank or heal when needed, and revert to a better talent build for solo leveling. Sadly, if the feature doesn't make it into the game soon then most of us will be level 80, and it will lose he majority of its impact. Blizzard realizes this, and even though they won't put an ETA on it, they are trying to get the feature in for patch 3.1.

After reading that over, I noticed another post of interest to PvEers. I have been following the discussion of Wrath's difficulty ever since Ensidia (then TwentyFifthNovember) crushed the end game content. GC mentions that Blizzard is happy with the way PvE is going. Specifically, the developers want players to run the lower level dungeons at the appropriate levels, and make sure they do not “hit the introductory raid content like a brick wall.”

One of the most interesting posts to players of all flavors will be the discussion on itemization. Greg Street gives some background into how Blizzard wants you to feel when you have to decide between items. Back in the day, and after The Burning Crusade's launch, it was pretty obvious that one piece was vastly superior to another. Blizzard is now creating gear that doesn't lend itself to clearcut answers.

Shall I take a bit of haste or a large amount of attack power? These are the kind of questions Blizzard wants you to ask when looking at your gear options. I guess that explains why I have five trinkets that are almost equal. I went with the one with the lowest cooldown and best static stat.

Last but not least, Ghostcrawler spread tanking posts all over the holiday period. The pre-Thanksgiving post is the most interesting (and possess the least QQing by the OP) as it discusses core mechanics behind tanking. The OP asks what the point of the defense mechanism is, to which Street replies to, some 20 posts later. The interesting part is that the tanking mechanics that have been a staple in World of Warcraft since the days of Onyxia, may have just been added to the crustacean's whiteboard. The pincher possessor is not happy with the fact that the mechanic pulls “double duty.” In the future we may see the stat split up into multiple pieces, as the current incarnation “might eventually be a problem.” Topics such as easy tanking and tanking scalability – needing two or three tanks for 10- and 25-man raids – were also brought up.

The decapods dedication to World of Warcraft, the world he has helped to create, is astounding. Being in California one would assume that he celebrated Thanksgiving, yet he managed to post a horde of responses on that day alone. Seems that he took off Wednesday and Friday for travel days thought. The sheer volume of informative posts from Saturday makes me feel inadequate.

Here's to hoping that dual spec is implemented before I turn my focus back on my priest.

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Blizzard has made it no secret that there are some big tanking changes on the horizon in Wrath. On the surface this has all seemed really exciting. There are tons of new spells, abilities, and mechanics all around. They have stated they want all of the tanking classes to be viable raid tanks, meaning that the ability for Paladins and Bears to tank single targets will be greatly improved. On the flip side Warriors and bears are getting some great AOE tanking abilities that were the Paladin’s bread and butter. As I first heard about these developments, I got really excited. As a Tankadin, I was getting the equivalent to last stand, shield wall, and shield slam. Mana problems will be a thing of the past, and during raids I won’t have to justify having a warrior main tank a boss instead of me (apologies to TRG’s warrior MT,  Jato). All these new abilities were incredibly exciting. Here’s a quick summary of the exclusive abilities I have noticed that have now crossed over between classes: Consecration – Both Thunder Clap and Swipe now hit unlimited targets, making them better for AOE Righteous Defense – Taunt and growl now work at range as well Holy Shield – Warriors will now also deal damage on blocks with Damage Shield Last Stand – Lay on Hands cool down has been greatly reduced, making it much more useful. Shield Wall – Divine Protection has been reworked to fill this role. Shield Slam – Hammer of the Righteous is a new skill with a similar effect. There are many more, I'm sure. After the initial excitement died down, it occurred to me: are we all going to be the same? Are we losing class distinctions and individuality? It started to not sit right. I love being able to do things that warriors can’t do. I love being the "go to guy" when you want to beat the Shattered Halls timer by 20 minutes. It’s a great feeling to round up a 12 pull without breaking a sweat. And, I’ll admit, I loved being the underdog when it came to being able to tank the big raid bosses (and loved even more proving my guild wrong when I did). It seems like all this will be gone… I will no longer be a Tankadin, I will just be a tank. Perhaps these changes aren’t so good after all? Now take this all with a grain of salt. I have not played the beta, so this may be all in my head, but I fear I may be dead on. Does anyone have any experience to prove me wrong? Are you as concerned as I am? Or is my concern unwarranted? I can’t say I’m completely sure myself.

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