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Daily Thoughts: Random Comparison – Fury vs Frost

October 26, 2010

Fury v. Frost – Sounds like an epic boxing match about to begin. As it isn’t a boxing match, it is probably unclear why I’d go out of my way to compare to unrelated specs on two different classes. Well, those specs are all I really had time to play yesterday so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

Fury:

I’m two-handed fury. None of these little rogue / insta-dead enh shaman one hander things for me. I’m a fury warrior; a raging beast dual wielding two small trucks, excited to bash just about anything. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. My fury warrior is my freshest 80. He’s decently geared at this point through mainly heroics and one lucky ICC-10. He’s wielding Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling from ICC 10 and the Edge of Ruin from the ToC 5 man heroic. The rest of his gear is pretty representative of those. A mix between ilevel200 and ilevel264 pieces. He’s only partially enchanted and gemmed with mostly rare quality gems. In heroics, I do an easy 7-8k dps on trash pulls and single target bosses with cooldowns. With the right string of crits, i’ve neared 9.5k dps single target in a heroic. The rotation is mostly button mashing, then button mash whatever is flashing. Raging Blow during enrage > Slam when it procs > Bloodthirst > HS when at high rage. I’m not amazing at prioritizing my rotation so mines mostly faceroll. AoE packs are even easier, cleave > whatever > cleave. It’s fun, its easy. I do want to learn a little more about what I should be doing for a tighter rotation and stat preferences for gems so, read along with me:

Wow Insider – Warrior Search , From the Wow Forums

Looks like people aren’t completely sure about stat weights and such. Ej doesn’t have anything definitive currently. Hit/Exp caps are a must though.

Frost:

My death knight is a burly risen dead orc soldier. He brandishes a two-handed weapon and controls deaths icy powers. The new rune system adds a bit more downtime during a DK’s rotation than the global cooldown mashing fest that was in place before 4.0.1, at least for non dual-wielders. To compensate for this, blizzard made everything hit really hard. My main attacks in heroics – frost strike, obliterate, and howling blast – all crit for 13k+ regularly. The DK is using Tyrannical Beheader out of heroic Pit of Saron, he has 4 piece tier 10, and almost completely ilvl 251/264 gear in total. He has all the best enchants and gems. Frosts big hits of howling blast lead me to an easy 8k+ dps on trash pulls but I’m only sitting around 5-6k dps on single target boss fights. I can only assume that my rotation is sloppy, though Frosts rotation and needs are a bit more intensive than a Fury warrior. Frost must lay down both diseases on the target, use Obliterate as often as possible and during the 100% crit procs, Festering Strike to refresh diseases (they really need 100% uptime), frost strike to bleed off all that runic power, and blood strikes to use the blood runes that you’ll otherwise be wasting. Doing festering strike too often is a dps loss as it doesn’t hit as hard as your other strikes. Using FS not often enough causes diseases to fall off, wasting runes and cooldowns to reapply them. It’s a pretty fun spec with some procs to watch for and an interesting rotation, now I just need to get my stuff in order. Lets check out some resources for this and maybe I can find out why my lesser geared warrior does more single target than frost dk.

Elitist Jerks – Frost DK

Wow Insider – DK Search

Both EJ and WoW Insider seem to agree that I could use more haste on my two-handed frost DK. I’ll try reforging that in the next couple days. The EJ link is a GREAT resource for rotation, gemming, glyphs, etc. Hopefully I can tone that DK up a bit and get his damage on par with his gear.

Fury Warriors and Frost Death Knights are both very fun and dynamic specs leaning on procs for best dps. Fury is a bit easier to do well, but if you want a more challenging spec to play and have (or might level) one of these two-handed weapon monsters, Frost might be your best bet.

Daily

Daily Thoughts: Random Thoughts About 4.0.1 So Far

October 22, 2010

With such a host of changes in the 4.0.1 patch, a lot of little things can get missed as we talk about larger or more specific issues. Here’s a few of my thoughts that I think I’ve missed in previous articles so far.

AoE – Blizzards design goals for the future of WoW is to limit the mass AoE pull fun-fest that Wrath has become. Most of their relevent changes reflect this. Paladin’s Divine Storm needs 3 stacks of HP before it does much damage, even then doing less per target that before, making it only very useful in large pulls. Hunters have lost their EZmode AoE trick – volley. Now multi-shot hits all targets but at much lower DPS (aside from maybe a SV hunter with key talents/glyphs). Warriors cleave and whirlwind now have a stacking buff that increases their damage done the more you use it, to the point that cleave is comparable single target damage to heroic strike even. Wait? How does that fit into the design goal? On my poorly gear warrior alt, cleaves can hit multiple targets for upwards of 13k each. Whirlwind is hitting about as hard as DS when both are buffed to 3 stacks, yet after WW gets its buff, its at full power til the trash is dead. So why is other AoE getting nerfed, while warriors AoE got buffed and most other classes (casters particularly) stayed the same.
Damage Balance – Most people will have noticed by now, even with the damage pass that nerfed caster dps and buffed melee dps, caster dps is ridiculous. I watched a warrior with almost 1k resilience get hit for 36k by some mage. Admittedly, I’m sure the mage was geared, but there’s no good reason for a mage one shotting a warrior in almost all pvp gear. At equal gear levels nearly all casters are doing 25%+ dps of their melee counter parts. There is a decent change that this wont get really addressed until cataclysm.
Tanks – Where are they? People just don’t want to tank anymore. While trying to form a 10m group for the weekly quest last night our group, and at least 5 other groups in trade looking, had no luck finding a tank for over a half hour. We even had 4 people capable of healing in the group, and no tanks. Whats the deal?
Subtlety rogues don’t suck anymore. They hurt. Watch out for those extra sneaky back stabbers.
Although mana isn’t too much of an issue for healers now because we overpower most of the content, I can see how it will be in cata. With the mana regen changes characters of mine that wouldn’t go under 90% mana are now having to use special regen talents to keep going during an average boss fight.
Overall it seems like Blizzard is following through with their stated design goals for the expansion. Expect lots of CC, healers going OOM, huge health pools, and harder instances/raids in Cataclysm.

See you monday!

Daily

Daily Thoughts: Hallow’s End and Bad Queues

October 21, 2010

I spent most of my WoW time last night working on achievements for the Hallow’s End holiday and hopefully the “the Hallowed” title this year.

See WoW Insiders Guide to Hallow’s End 2010

I got my GNERD Rage (50 honor kills with the candy buff active) achievement almost entirely in one wintergrasp. Horde is pretty over populated on my server, so we farm the alliance back to their flight path most times. Poor ally. Most of my time though, was spent getting the Tricks and Treats of Azeroth. That requires you to run around to most of your factions Inns in Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Outlands and loot their pumpkin. It’s a lot of running/flying. Each pumpkin does give 6 or so gold, so my friend and I were up 200 gold after the night.

The quests that require horde players to run into south shore and cause shenanigans were pretty fun because there was a bunch of alliance there trying to kill us. My 1100 resilience paladin and my friends 1k resilience warrior said, “No ally, you can’t kill us”. I didn’t claim our battle taunts were creative. Not much better than some open world PVP while getting achievements. Today I’m going to have to do the achievements that rely on drops, including the Sinister Squashling pet and the pumpkin helm.

…And the bad queue part

During the course of this adventure to gain my holiday achievement, my questing parter and I were constantly queued for random battle grounds. Over the course of 3 hours or so of questing/running around, we got only 3 battle ground queues. Do the math, it’s taking forever. I’d love someone to comment if they happen to know why for certain. I had heard before the patch that battle groups were supposed to expand or function as if they had, though after seeing the limited server selection inside the battle grounds we were in, other possibilities such as smaller battle groups make more sense. Any ideas?

Daily

Daily Thoughts: PVP Weapons and Frost DK’s

October 19, 2010

So lets talk a little about PVP gear. It’s pretty standard to be able to buy the last tier of pvp gear and maybe the current tier of off set pieces with honor points. PVP gear this point in wrath is not typically optimal for a PVE environment (raids, instances, etc). PVP gear on the other hand is great for gearing up an alt with points that are traditionally easier to earn than the badges needed for PVE gear. For example, in the latest tier, wrathful gear is the best PVP gear a player can get, though furious set pieces, some relentless pieces, and wrathful off pieces can all be purchased with honor points. An item level 200 head-piece has less strength and overall stats than a 232 furious gladiators plate helm that can be purchased with honor from any random battle ground or weekly WG quest. Tanks that are in high need of stamina will find some great pieces this way, as PVP gear has higher stamina than PVE gear of the same level. Higher tiers of PVP gear that could best heroic instance PVE gear have typically been off-limits to people without arena ratings – until now.

Currently all PVP gear except item level 270 and above is available without an arena rating and with only honor points. This means you can gear and alt, or even a main character, with a 264 level weapon, something otherwise only reached in ICC 25 raiding or decent skill in arena. I bought my Paladin a 264 Wrathful Gladiators weapon with 100 more spell power than my 10 man ICC weapon I had currently. Over all a solid upgrade for easily acquired points compared to hoping for a 25 man raid drop. He’s just had no luck getting a good 25 man caster weapon. These weapons will have much more spell power or weapon damage than a lower level weapon you can get from a heroic or lower tier of raid. The weapon I bought had 100 more spell power than the lower piece I was using, at the cost of 50 haste though, but 100 spell power greatly outweighs 50 haste. Unfortunately, the best of the best gear still requires arena rating and PVP skill to get. Go check it out for yourself and see if you have an upgrade waiting with honor points you might already have. It’s important to note that 264 wands are only 260 honor points and shields/off-hand gear are only 70 honor points. That’s a new shield for your tank, pally or shaman for basically one wintergrasp win.

Somewhat tangentially related to the previous topic is my death knight who is now frost dps and blood tanking spec. He needs to get one of the 264 weapons with honor as he only has the weapon from heroic Pit of Sauron which took 15-20 runs to get. I just wanted to mention, if you respecced to frost dps from unholy or particularly blood after 4.0.1 hit, be careful with your AoE damage. Howling blast can crit for 13k+ in my only somewhat decent gear and threatens to pull aggro often. A couple of heroics in and I’m finding this spec more fun than blood dps used to be, just lacking the self-healing while soloing content. Again, howling blast with caution.

Daily

Daily Thoughts: Holy Paladin 4.0.1 Continued

October 18, 2010

Well, another day of healing as a Holy Paladin and still Flash of Light is stronger than Holy Light and very expensive. Maybe I was half expecting my massive Holy Lights to be back – they weren’t.

Today I ran a couple of heroics and killed Ignis in Ulduar for the weekly quest. Definitely do not feel as powerful as I used to. Not to say that it was very hard to heal that content nor did anyone die. I suppose the shaman who pulled before the tank died but, don’t enhance shamans always die? I’m not sure that counts. No, it definitely doesn’t count. Regardless, it takes a lot more attention to make sure that people don’t die (shamans aside). Prior to 4.0.1, there was really no need to do anything other than hit Holy Light, especially with the Glyph of Holy light which added a splash heal to nearby players. Finally, I’m picking up on the idea that I have to use Holy Shock on cool down. Outside of HS, FL spam is still the way to go for most fights without huge incoming damage. This is making me want to go after more haste than I had before. Yes, haste was always a go to stat for Holy, but now that HL doesn’t hit like a bus, I need it to hit more often to even attempt a comparable throughput. I see reforging in my future.

Without the Illumination talent which gave mana return on crits, crit is even less valuable than it was. Spirit is still a decent stat as a high damage fight could tax our mana regen after the severe nerf to Divine Plea (10% mana down from 25% mana gained). Proper spell use, AKA Holy Light/Holy Shock, will help negate that mana regen nerf to make sure we can keep casting through out a long fight. I’ll probably reforge a fair chunk of crit into haste so that my little HL’s can do the job still.

The other big factor in mana conservation is Word of Glory. Word of Glory is the Holy Power outlet for Holy. Unlike other HP outlets, Word of Glory scales linearly and each point of Holy Power is worth the same amount of healing. For example, 1 holy power might equal 2,000 healing, while 3 holy power will just equal 6,000 healing. This is an instant cast, mana free heal. Without huge cheap mana regen, free heals are a big deal. What about our other two new spells? Light of Dawn is alright for helping out with incoming AoE damage. If you have a Resto Shaman or Druid, you’re better of letting them do the raid healing. I still haven’t found much use for Divine Light – Paladin’s new big heal. Considering that Flash of Light ends up being a little more throughput and Holy Light is cheap, I just can’t find the right Niche for Divine Light.

One thing that is keeping Holy Paladins a contender for big tank healing is our Mastery – Illuminated Healing, which adds a 8% of the healing done as a bubble that lasts 6 seconds. If your tank is taking consistent damage the bubble will constantly being used, adding a lot of effective healing. The other nice part of Illuminated Healing, it is affected by Beacon of Light Heals. So all healing you do to the raid adds 50% of healing to the tank which constantly places that 8% bubble onto the tank. Keep in mind though, this bubble doesn’t stack, each new heal replaces it and resets the 6 second duration.

That’s all for tonight. I’m thinking about taking Holy into PVP tomorrow, though I might end up focusing on gearing my Fury warrior. As always, comments are welcome. Feel free to ask questions or give feedback/suggestions.

Daily

Holy Paladin Healing – ICC 4.0.1

October 15, 2010

Sorry for the short post tonight, but here goes:

I’m going to need a couple more rounds in ICC and some random dungeons before I can give my full opinion of Holy healing post 4.0.1. This new healing model seems a bit wonky to me. I’m really not used to Holy Light spam being so weak. HL is down to about 40% of the effectiveness compared to its previous incarnation. Flash of light, which used to be the small heal, is now a bigger heal than HL. It’s fast and expensive and can’t be spammed recklessly. Right now, Holy Power seems to be on the verge of useless since Holy Shock is still better overall than a 3 point word of glory. There’s also this relatively weak AOE heal ‘Light of Dawn’ that is on a 30 second CD and therefore can’t be used very often.

So what does a Holy Paladin use to heal? Everything! Holy Light is the go to heal for the most part because of its relative efficiency. You’ll also want to throw in Holy Shock almost on cool down because of its chance to provide a 1.5 second reduced cast time on HL as well as 30% reduced cast time of next heal if you talent into it. Use Light of Dawn for when the raid takes some AOE, naturally, and flash of light if someone is taking heavy damage. Honestly, I didn’t much use the new big heal, Divine Light. High incoming damage is better responded to with Flash of Light.

Other than that, use the normal spells as before 4.0.1. Judge to get a haste buff and Beacon the tank. Mana isn’t much of an issue still, stack int/haste and cast away. Healing Dreamwalker is still a blast. I have no idea what’s coming tomorrow, but I’ll see you next time!

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