Ethereal Bacon

PvP Musings

2009-08-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

You know, for the longest time I forgot that Lambda had Ethereal Bacon. I won't make the vain promise of every other blogger in the industry ("OMG! I will totally update for regulars this time!"), but this does give me a place to store some random WoW thoughts. Which is quite therapeutic, even considering that readership for this particular blog are Lambda members and heavy-breathing internet stalkers (Yes, I'm talking about you, starry_eyez2488@hotmail.com. Leather suspenders do not belong on anatomically-correct Tauren plushies!).

Ahem. Onto musing subject #1: PvP.

It took me about three years to get into WoW PvP. There are a few benign reasons for this; being in a casual guild and busy all the time in real life, I found that the standard PvE content kept me pretty well satisfied until the next expansion. I just barely got into instances during the WoW classic years, and just barely got into raiding during the BC years. WotLK was really the first time when I got to see all the raid content, inside and out, and time pressures kept me from an endless cycle of alt creation.

Even then, however, I didn't exactly heed the siren call of PvP. Other games had taught me the golden rule of internet gaming: you will always play against 13-year-olds with infinite time and a desperate need for validation. There are corollaries to this central theory; you would often find yourself getting trash talked with about a thousand euphemisms for dick, but when you occasionally won, your opponents would politely point out that you were either gay, a hacker, or the dreaded hybrid class, the Steampunk Cockmancer.

The turnabout for me wasn't Blizzard's endless cycle of class balancing, but rather their matching systems. Every year or so, I'd forget the lessons of the previous cycle and run into some arenas or a battleground, and get prompted steamrolled by coordinated teams from other servers. Thankfully, the trashtalk element was largely removed by faction differences and relative anonymity, but the whole experience felt like a boxing match that pitted T-Rex versus baby. Most babies don't learn a whole heck of a lot about fighting once they're summarily eaten.

Until one year when I played AV and had a blast. Gone were the organized-teams versus pug matchups... battlegrounds suddenly became a place where contests of roughly equal skill could happen. Baseline resilience gear further narrowed that gap, giving my glass cannon a few more seconds to figure out what was going on before collapsing into a pile of gristle. That small space was all the difference between losing in confusion and losing with a plan for next time (and from there to winning with an even better plan waiting in the wings).

It's not that Blizzard's tinkering with class mechanics and balance hasn't helped, either, but by and large the micro-changes that they do now simply aren't "for" me. I read a bunch of RSS feeds, and it seems not a day goes by where someone complains that one class is utterly overpowered and crushing the PvP rankings. Sometimes its even true; once you filter out the standard whine machine, there are still players with articulate concerns on the role of crowd control, healing, and damage output. These inequalities, however, are really only glaring in the rarefied world of top tier play. In the slog of 1500-rated teams (home to the vast majority of players, the comfortable single standard-deviation), you die in an arena because of a failure in judgment. The wrong escape, the wrong target, the wrong set of tactics. Which is how it should be, really.

This is all preamble to the fact that I'm genuinely enjoying 3v3 arena play, and hope to collect some more thoughts on the subject in the near future. There are a few interesting gear choices to be made out of combat as well, primarily concerning the all-consuming stat vortex that is Resilience... how many points of INT and spellpower must be sacrificed to the volcano before we start hitting a little thing called diminishing returns? Pushing 900 right now and I don't think I've hit it yet.

DPS: not just a number

2008-10-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

One of my personal pet peeves is that DPS (damage-dealing) characters are judged solely on the number they put out. Admittedly, some of this peevishness comes from the fact that one of my 70s is a shadow priest, the ultimate in auxiliary usage -- but people actually do seem to appreciate shadow priests a lot, and I haven't found myself often turned away because someone wants more DPS. But it's not just shadow priests -- in fact, I would argue that in a raid setting, or even more so in an instance setting, intelligence trumps damage (and especially, trumps gear.) If you really want to be a successful DPS instead of just a high-damage one, every class has things they can do to really help out the group:

Hunters: Misdirect is one of the best spells in the game. Use it well. Here are some ways you can use it effectively: at the beginning of a pull to draw enemies to the tank or ramp up the latter's threat quickly (especially good with a warrior/druid), to get enemies off the healer (you'll want a macro for this), and to reestablish aggro after an aggro wipe (a specialty of many hard bosses.) A good misdirecting hunter will make everything a hell of a lot simpler. Also useful: good pet off-tanking, and of course good trapping (especially emergency/caster trapping.)

Mages: Here's a nice move that requires some coordination: if a mob is on the healer, frost nova it, and have the healer step away. Inform your healer than you may do this. Of course, good sheeping is important, but pretty easy to do for the most part.

Warlocks: Keep that soulstone up! The number of warlocks who don't do this is baffling. Other than that, you have a fear and a banish -- use them effectively to control panic situations. Obviously the former is a double-edged sword, but a well-timed and -placed fear can prevent a wipe just as easily as a poorly- one can cause one. Banish is the only crowd control in the game not broken on damage: don't be shy.

(retributive) Paladins: Cleanse. You have the best anti-debuff spell in the game; use it. Wake up people who are asleep. Nullify noxious poisons. The healers have their hands full with damage a lot of the time; don't be afraid to help. Because of your gear, you won't be a great offhealer, but occasionally you will see a chance, and of course there's always Lay on Hands. Divine Intervention is there for wipe protection, but every paladin worth their salt should be familiar with this. Finally, Hammer of Justice and Blessing of Protection are there to defend your healer. Use them. Hammer is also underrated at preventing damage spikes at the beginning of pulls. A 1-minute cooldown means that it need not be a panic button; use it early and often (but, of course, not befre the tank has placed the fight.)

Rogues: Stuns are the main tool that can be used for great good or great evil. Tanks hate nothing more than to see you open with Cheap Shot before they have aggro on the target or before they place the fight (especially true for paladins.) On the other hand, see that caster who isn't coming into the fray? Go over to him and stunlock him or kick him and bring him in. Between kicks, gouges, and stuns, any rogue should be able to solo a normal at-level instance caster. Your abilities are ideal for neutralizing these types -- for instance, a second non-crowd-controlled healer is a huge danger -- and you shouldn't necessarily wait for the tank to instruct you to do so.

Shamans: Earth shock, earth shock, earth shock (free tip: rank 1.) Also, choosing the right totems to help your group out the most (instead of, perhaps, just you) makes a big difference, and keeping them up will ultimately prove to be a win for your side, even if it means sacrificing a bit of DPS. Obviously, some offhealing helps, which elemental shamans are better at by virtue of gear.

Warriors: Disarm! Even many bosses (e.g. Attumen the Huntsman) are vulnerable to this trick, which your tank will thank you for. Also, consider using Commanding Shout instead of your usual Battle Shout, depending on the fight. Finally, some sunder armors on the target may work wonders depending on group composition. If you aren't a particularly threat-generating person, drop some sunders on and watch the boss's health bar dwindle. In caster boss fights (e.g. Shade of Aran), don't be afraid to strap on a shield and interrupt using Shield Bash. Really.

Druids: Druids are blessed with amazing in-combat versatility. Something on your healer? Consider going bear form. Healer down? Switch to caster form and start healing (with some changes to the feral combat tree, cats are now better at this than before.) The cat is actually in a fantastically versatile position: because their normal ability doesn't use mana, when they pop over to heal, their mana bar will be nice and full. You can dump this mana tank and then promptly switch back into cat. It's a very nice benefit to the group. Of course, the X factor in many fights is the druid's battle rez: using this well (perhaps not rezzing a DPS in case a healer goes down, or perhaps just being twitchy) will often give your group a much larger margin of error. Finally, Cyclone is certainly underused, both as a healer defense mechanism and as a mitigation tactic.

Shadow priests: Shadow priests have some amazing features. Of course, they can pop out of shadow form to offheal when necessary (try a Prayer of Mending pre-pull, too), but even more amazing, they can cast Power Word: Shield while in shadow form. Do not underestimate this -- I can't tell you how many wipes I've saved by popping this button, giving a 1500-2000 hp buffer while the healers catch up. Aside from maybe misdirect, I think this is the single best non-dps, non-crowd control spell available to damage-dealers. It's an instant cast, of course, which is huge. Aside from this, dispel magic, like with the paladin (although not quite as powerful), is a nice tool to help out. Finally, you have the fear, to be used only in emergencies, but a nice way to save your healer out sometimes.

------

The problem with this, of course, is that you can't very well tell whether Joe Druid who is messaging you will be good at this or not. You can check out his gear on the Armory, but you can't tell if he will be a good offhealer on instinct, or how his bear reflexes are. Maybe with the achievements coming in WotLK you will be able to check out his success in past endeavors, but I wouldn't count on it. So, ultimately, these skills won't help you get into PUGs, and if you are with a particularly blind group who just checks damage meters, won't help you make friends. But those probably aren't the kind of friends you want anyway. So, be a better player: maybe a bit less damage, but many fewer wipes, and a nice experience for all.

Partial derivatives, part 2: Tanking

2008-08-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

This will be a very long and ultimately mathy post about tanking, so I'll start with the qualitative part before moving onto the quantitative. Ignoring the issue of threat gen for the moment, assuming uncrushability (this post will focus on warrior and paladin tanks), there are four attributes that matter to tanks: hit points, armor, block value, and avoidance (which I define as dodge + miss + parry.) You may recall in the first partial derivatives post, I noted that the best strategy for melee dps is a mixture of hit and crit. The conclusion of this discussion is that for tanks, it's actually better to stack either avoidance or armor+block value, depending on the level of gear and the speed of the mob. Lack of diversity is the goal here.

Before we get to the numbers, let's give a recap of what these four things do for a tank. Fight examples will be drawn from heroic instances and Karazhan, as I have not yet progressed beyond that.

Hit points: Obviously, the more hit points you have, the less likely you are to die. However, in long raid boss fights, the issue becomes one of throughput; you only get the value of your max HP once, while increased mitigation happens all fight. Nonetheless, higher HP is still good in these fights (in a fight-dependent way) for some potential non-mitigation-related reasons: 1) in fights against hard-hitting bosses, if you fail to avoid several hits in a row hit points can be a guard against the law of small numbers; 2) if you or your healer(s) are stunned or feared or whatever, you need to be able to survive a period without heals; 3) the more HP you have, the more consecutive seconds a healer can spend ignoring you, meaning that 3a) healers can spend time outside the 5-second rule and regenerate mana, and 3b) healers can afford to have their mental focus off of you for enough time to heal someone else without worrying that you will die during their mental switch time or GCD.

These are not negligible considerations, especially large in some fights (e.g. Maiden of Virtue (Kara), Blackheart the Inciter (SL), Terestian Illhoof (Kara)).

Armor: Armor mitigates every physical attack by a certain percentage, and is applied before block value. This makes it good to have against hard-hitting mobs. Also, armor as opposed to avoidance makes for a dull, less bursty wave of incoming damage. This is particuarly useful when your healer is a priest or especially druid, since if their HoTs are enough to keep you up consistently, they can slap them on you and then worry about other targets. Less burstiness is also better when you have to tank either single really hard-hitting mobs, or multiple hard-hitting mobs, where survival is important and burstiness can kill that. This is also useful in cases where you are potentially incapacitated, since your avoidance and block is not helping you there. Some good fights for high armor are Nightbane (Kara), Aeonus (BM), Warlord Kalithresh (SV), Warp Splinter (Bot).

Block value: Block value mitigates every unavoided physical attack by a certain number, and is applied after armor. This makes it good to have against fast, weak-hitting mobs (e.g. rogue-type bosses), essentially because it procs more (your incoming damage is reduced by a constant every time you block), or against multiple mobs which presumably are not as fast-hitting. Examples of fights where block value is great are Moroes (Kara), Mekgineer Steamrigger (SV), Kargath Bladefist (Shattered Halls).

Avoidance: Having higher miss/dodge/parry chance allows you to escape attacks unscathed. This is obviously the best-case scenario for an attack, and is especially useful against mobs which either apply a debuff on hit or have a debuff applied physically, of which the most noxious is Mortal Strike. Examples of fights where this comes up are from adds to Priestess Delrissa (MgT) or Moroes (Kara). Also, note that (importantly) putting stat points into here instead of any of the other categories frees up other stat points from block rating (the cheapest way to become uncrittable), allowing you to recoup a secondary benefit.

Finally, while specialization is mathematically good (see below), there are two advantages to being well-balanced. One is being able to tank a variety of fights well, because all of these factors are more relevant at times. Another is that items with bonuses to more stats give more total bonus (due to Blizzard's itemization formula) than bonuses to fewer stats. However, there are still cases where one has an outright decision to make (e.g. gemming, or deciding which badge reward to get, or whatever.) That's where my mathematician will take over.

Assuming an uncrushable tank, the formula for (physical) damage is simple: f(a,r,b,x) = (1-a)(g(r)x - b) per attack on average, where a = avoidance (miss + dodge + parry), b = block value, and r = armor. g(r) is the amount of damage that gets through given r armor; against raid bosses this is equal to 11960/(r+11960). Let's start with the sign pattern of the Hessian (matrix of partial second derivatives) of this function:


    a    r     b
a   0    +     +
r   +    +     0
b   +    0     0

Assuming that all three stats start at zero (and this is true for any other "minimum base values" of stats), the possible options to spend some number of remaining itemization points comprise choosing some avoidance and armor values, and spending the rest on block. This makes the feasible region representable as a right triangle in the first quadrant:


a

|\
| -\
|   -\
|     -\
--------   r

Holding x (how hard the mob hits) constant for a second, our goal is to minimize f(a, r, b, x). Our first result is that holding armor constant, it is always right to go either all-avoidance or all-block. This is implied by the submatrix of the Hessian given by avoidance-block:


   a   b 
a  0   +
b  +   0

For any function with this sign pattern, the minimum is either achieved at the maximum possible value of a or the maximum possible value of b (this is easy to show using rudimentary calculus or common sense.) Intermediate values in fact do strictly worse than one would expect given linear interpolation. This is easy to see with a real world example. Suppose that Arthur the Paladin is tanking a boss who hits for 100 damage per hit post-armor. He has three choices: 20 percent avoidance and 0 block, 10 percent avoidance and 10 block, or 0 percent avoidance and 20 block. Then the first choice will give him an incoming dps of 80 percent times 100, or 80; the last choice will give him an incoming dps of 100 percent times 80, or 80. The hybrid choice actually underperforms either monomaniacal strategy! It has an incoming dps of 90 percent times 90, or 81.

Note also that the dominant strategy depends on how hard the boss hits. If the hits go up to 150 per hit (either by facing a harder hitting mob, or by having worse armor), suddenly the avoidance strategy performs better: 120 dps as opposed to 130 for the block strategy (or 126 for the hybrid strategy, again worse than the average of the other two.) If the hits go down to 50 per hit, the block strategy wins: 30 dps as opposed to 40 for the avoidance strategy (or 36 for the hybrid.) So having more armor swings the pendulum towards block value. We will return to this observation later.

At any rate, given a fixed value of r, we know that the optimum value of either a or b is zero. This reduces the region we need to consider to the union of the hypotenuse and bottom edges of the triangle shown above.

Consider the hypotenuse first, where block value is zero. The formula for percent damage taken is now equal to (1-a)(11960/(r+11960)). Suppose that 1 percent of avoidance is equal in item points to 265 armor (this is approximately correct.) For simplicity, we will let r from now on denote the number of 265-points allocated to armor, making this formula: ((100-a)/100) (45/(r+45)). We can minimize this function along the hypotenuse by setting the a-partial derivative and r-partial derivative equal to each other:

(-1/100) * (45/(r+45)) = ((100-a)/100) * (-45/(r+45)^2), or r+45 = 100-a, or r+a = 55.

This is a surprising magic formula. What this says is that for fixed a+r and no block, the values of a and r are irrelevant when determining your best choice! If r+a > 55, then avoidance wins; if r+a < 55, then armor wins. Essentially, the better gear you have, the better you are putting it into avoidance. Note that in all real-world situations, r+a should be greater than 55.

Of course, this is not quite accurate because of block value in the case where we don't start with zero item points, but rather with some prescribed set of gear (like, I don't know, a shield.) This extra term adds a correction term of +(1/100)(kb) to the left side where k is some factor dependent on how hard the mob hits. However, as r gets lower (aka mob hits harder), note that this term decreases in importance. This means again that the minimum damage taken is always achieved at one endpoint of the hypotenuse. Since the point with zero avoidance will be discussed in the discussion of zero (or min) avoidance, we are left with only having to compare the max-avoidance (min-armor, min-block) point with whatever the maximum from the armor-block-only strategy.

For this strategy, the value of avoidance is obviously irrelevant in the maximization, so we need only consider the damage taken per hit, (45/r+45) * x - 29 * b (in itemization points, 1 point of avoidance rating is approximately equal to 29 block.) However, the value of a mob's hit, x, is relevant. Using partial derivatives again and setting them equal, we obtain:

-45/(r+45)^2 * x = -29

or r = sqrt(45x/29) - 45.

Essentially, the number of itemization points dedicated to armor increases with how hard the mob hits. The interesting thing is that this does not at all scale with the total number of itemization points available, although if x is small enough (less tha 1315) this will be negative (meaning that we should pursue as much of an all-block strategy as possible.)

Here is the optimal value of armor under the armor-block strategy, depending on how hard the mob hits:


x / armor (265r)
2k / 2840
3k / 6160
4k / 8950
5k / 11420
6k / 13640
7k / 15690
8k / 17600
9k / 19390
10k / 21090

Finally, we have to compare the armor-block strategy to the avoidance strategy. This result will depend on how hard the mob hits. Let's consider the following (fairly realistic) parameters:

-- We start with 40 percent avoidance, 12k armor, and 200 block. We have 10 points to itemize. What is the value of x at which the armor-block strategy wins? It turns out to be at or below 3885. So if the mob's unmitigated hits are less than this, prefer the armor-block strategy; if they are more, prefer the avoidance strategy. Note that all raid bosses hit for (much) more than 3885, but the armor-block strategy generally has the benefit of having less burstiness. A typical raid boss might hit for 10k unmitigated; the avoidance strategy will result in 1920 incoming damage per hit while the armor-block strategy will result in 2330 incoming dph. This is a big (20 percent) different, but perhaps not insurmountable.)

-- Let's consider my real-world tank, Abdelnaby. He currently stands at 53.50 percent avoidance, 15925 armor, and 336 block. What should I be focusing on? It turns out that Abdel's break-even point is 3927, meaning that if I plan to fight bosses with more than 3927 per hit, I should stack avoidance, while if I plan to fight things with less than 3927 per hit, I should stack block rating. Again, considerations of real-world issues may shift the spectrum towards armor/block, but it looks like my general strategy of focusing on avoidance is a pretty good one.

Karazhan

2008-08-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

At this point I consider myself a Karazhan veteran. I've seen the place repeatedly from three different perspectives: tank, hunter, and shadow priest. I really like it -- the fun part is that the bosses present a variety of challenges. Each fight places the focus on a different sector of your group, and I like the flow and feel of the bosses fitting together. Here's a quick walkthrough of the bosses for posterity, in the usual order that a very well-geared group will do them:

Attumen: This is a tank gear check, plain and simple. Midnight and Attumen are both tank and spank; if your tanks can take damage, you win, otherwise, you lose. A good warmup.

Moroes: This fight is about crowd control. Basically, if you keep a couple of guys under control, it lets the healers rein in their aggro, and makes the fight much much easier. If shackles or traps break or are fumbled, you're in big trouble, with many adds capable of rampaging. A coordination check on the raid.

Maiden: This fight is about dispelling reflexes. The only real obstacle to this fight is Maiden's holy fire, a nasty DoT which needs to be cleansed quickly. A good trigger finger on the dispel squad and you should be okay. (It helps to have a clueful paladin keep up blessing of sacrifice, of course.)

Opera: Three different possibilities:

The Wizard of Oz: This fight is really about the tanks. Fearing Roar is not hard; kiting the strawman with fire is not hard. But one tank needs to kite the tinman around, and he hits hard; the other tank needs to tank Tito and maintain secondary threat on Roar. Well, not needs, but attentive tanks who pick up the adds when they spawn will make this fight a win for you.

The Big Bad Wolf: This fight is about the healers being ready to spam heals on Little Red Riding Gnome. Secondarily, it is an individual responsibility fight, as people have to be ready to run.

Romeo and Juliet: This is one for the spell interrupters; the fight is more or less trivial as long as Juliet's heals are interrupted.

Nightbane: Another (optional) tank gear check, with some personal responsibility mixed in. The tank also needs to be good about positioning and churning out threat quickly on his relanding, because he can and will 1-shot dps serially until you do.

Curator: This fight is about dps, who need to switch to the flares quickly and eliminate them before they drain the healers' mana pools. Secondarily, it is about the healers cleaning up after the chain lightning. Incidentally, this is the easiest fight in Kara to tank; because the DPS are mostly after the sparks, you basically have to do nothing more than keep your uncrushability up. Yawn.

Illhoof: This fight is about dps, similar to Curator: nuking the demon chains super fast = win. This is harder than Curator, because the sacrifice is more urgent and less frequent than the sparks, so it's more about reflexes and less about intelligence.

Shade of Aran: In my opinion, this is the hardest fight in Kara from a coordination standpoint, dealing with the elementals, who always cause chaos and interact poorly with each of Aran's special abilities. This means that the main people under duress will be the healers, who have to be prepared for bursty damage on anyone and complete chaos during the elemental phase. Secondarily, spell interrupters need to do their job.

Netherspite: This is an incredibly well-rounded fight. You need teamwork, gear, and individual smarts to prevail. The most fun fight in the instance, bar none.

Chess: This fight is about relaxing and picking up two easy badges.

Prince: Despite the fact that this is the last fight in Kara, it's mostly a luck fight. If the infernals don't drop between Prince and the door, this fight is really, really easy. If they do, you're in for a world of unavoidable pain (especially if you have lots of melee.) This is a really easy fight to heal; either people die after enfeebling, or they don't. It requires some gear, but less than either Netherspite or Nightbane; I would say that it's much more straightforward than any fight in Kara with the exception of Attumen.

Anyway, it's a fun ride, one which I look forward to doing many more times.

Patch Highlights 2.4.0

2008-03-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

Well WoW 2.4.0 is now live. I was bored at work yesterday (like really bored) so I read the patch notes (ok not all of them, but the important stuff). And I'm bored again today, so I figured I'd go through them and pick out a few of the highlights, for the benefit of those who have less time on their hands than I do.

General

The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5 and 25-player instances. (New areas and instances are always good. . . even though I umm. . . still don't have a 70 to make use of them.)

Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers. (Yay! Of course I just did this two days before the patch came out and had to spend money on re-training!)
Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.
The Daily Quest limit has been increased to 25. (I guess that's good, but I've never even gotten close to 10.)

Druids

Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form. (Very exciting! My feral druid's bonus healing more than tripled over night. To bad the bonus to inbound healing doesn't effect bear form too.)
Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Mages

Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100% while active.
Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage’s bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.
New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Paladins

Avenger’s Shield: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. I.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc. (This seems like a pretty big deal and excellent news for tankadins.)
Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.
Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP. (Turn is very situational, but this is a nice little buff nonetheless. And it makes sense, lore-wise.)

Priests

Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds. (Not sure yet whether this is good or bad.)
Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5.
Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds.This will not stack with other haste effects, such as Heroism, Bloodlust, or Icy Veins.
Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.

Rogues

Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.
(There's some other Rogue stuff, but I don't know enough about the class to determine if it's important or not.)

Shaman (apparently this is the singular and plural form)

Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3. (Does that mean it can be instant with talents? I haven't tried but it sounds like it. . . that's sweet!)
The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds. (Moderately helpful.)
Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem. (One less thing to use an add-on for. And the ability to selectively destroy a totem is long over-due.)

Warlocks

Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements. (This is good news for everyone!)

Warriors

Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

PVP

Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
Arenas

Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.

Battlegrounds

If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle. (50 times?! Ouch!)
Warsong Gulch

When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes. (I've been in some looong WSGs. . . this is an interesting approach to take to addressing both teams turtling with the flag.)
Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Quests

Dungeon and Group Quest Experience: The amount of experience awarded for dungeon and 5-person group quests in Outland has been increased in almost all cases.
Increased the slots on Old Blanchy's Feed Pouch to 8. (It's about time!)

Dungeons and Raids (None of these mean much to me yet, but they seem important.)

All 25-player raid bosses have had their cash drops increased!
All 25- player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop an additional token!
Badges of Justice have been added to all raid bosses who did not previously have them!
Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter Hyjal.
Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter the Black Temple.
You may now fight Prince Kael’thas and Lady Vashj without first killing all the other bosses in their respective dungeons.
Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects. (Hmm, this strikes me as an unnecessary and questionable--from a basic logic and lore standpoint--change. But I haven't been into any raids or high level dungeons, so I really don't know.)
Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon’s Lair

Many gameplay elements of the encounters in Magtheridon’s Lair have been changed to decrease their overall complexity and difficulty. (Again, I haven't been in here. . . but it's been made easier. Was it too hard before?)

Karazhan

Players will no longer need the Master’s Key to enter Karazhan. The gates to Karazhan will still require the Master’s Key to be unlocked. (I know getting "Karazhan keyed" was a big deal before, so this sounds pretty significant.)

User Interface

The Interface Options screen has been completely redesigned. AddOns that interact with the Interface Options screen will need to be updated.
Players will now be able to inspect other players via their chat link.
The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.
There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags. (About time. . . another add-on bites the dust!)
You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the quest log. (This is way past due! Thanks, Blizz.)
In Master Loot mode, all players in the group will see sparkles on corpses that have loot above the master loot threshold. This lets everyone see what the master loot items are, though they cannot interact with them. Only the master looter can loot those items still.e quest log.

World Environment

A mailbox has been added to the inn in Darnassus. (Seriously, what took so long?)
The Ratchet bank now has access to the Guild Vault.

Bug Fixes

Ogri'la Peacekeeper's weapons have been scaled to a size more appropriate for keeping the peace. (Don't know what this means, but it made me laugh anyway.)
Zeppelin Master Zapetta will no longer become confused about whether the zeppelin in Orgrimmar is arriving or leaving. (Another funny one.)
Sending mail to a non-existent character will now result in players getting the message, “Cannot find mail recipient”.

There are some conspicuous differences between the PTR patch notes and the ones that went live...

Present in PTR but lacking in live:

Hunters: Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Shaman: Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Druids: Swipe: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Warlocks: Felguard Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. ie. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Curious (and frustrating) that some classes got a very nice CC-related multi-target change and others did not. I hope it's just because Blizzard was having problems with some of the abilities and they'll add it in a future patch (2.4.1 perhaps).

How to Befriend a Tankadin

2008-02-24T01:36:00.000-08:00

As one of our guild's two resident tankadins, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how to best interact with various dps classes. Basically, two big factors distinguish paladins from warriors/druids:

1) Most of our threat generation is passive, resulting from AoEs or being hit. This means that if you draw aggro, it's much harder for us (if our taunt is on cooldown or the mob is untauntable) to get it back.

2) We use mana instead of rage. Since we regain mana from being healed, the important part of this is that we need to be taking damage in order to produce threat -- even more so than a warrior, I believe, although I do not have a level 70 warrior tank to compare. Initially, it may seem like it's the other way around, since the link between warrior damage and threat generation is one step instead of two, but I believe that it is even more important for a tankadin to be taking damage.

A couple of things you might want to know: we start many pulls by throwing our shield, which produces a lot of threat on three enemies -- less if it misses one, never more. The shield moves in what I believe is a deterministic way, but it's not always obvious which enemies it will hit. Also, our taunt has a longer cooldown than a warrior's: 15 seconds instead of 10. Compensating for this: we taunt all enemies off a given ally instead of just one, and we don't need to be in melee range to do it.

With this in mind, here's a rough guide on how to interact with DPS classes:

1) Rogue: The worst thing that can happen to us is to have a rogue stunlock the main target. Because our threat generation is passive, we need to be getting hit to maintain aggro, and also having the enemy stunned means we are taking less damage. If you are a rogue and you want your tank to like you, don't stunlock the main target or really anything; you will have it stuck to you, and a quick vanish just means that your healer will die instead, because we haven't gotten a whole lot of threat on it. Obviously, stunlock can be useful for temporary mitigation, but be sure your tank approves. Meanwhile, the sap presents an interesting challenge, in that we have to make sure that the shield doesn't hit it. This is usually difficult, because the best way to do this is to sap something in back, which is harder. I usually facepull when sap is in effect, which of course means dps needs to back off a bit and the healer needs to be ready.

2) DPS plate: No particular ramifications. If there is a ret paladin, they should make sure to slap on a seal of the crusader (improved) which they were probably going to do anyway, and sanctity aura (same deal) -- both of these results in us doing more holy damage, which is most of our damage, and which via Righteous Fury means tons of threat. Life should be pretty easy with a ret paladin around as far as threat goes. For fury and arms warriors, no real special treatment.

3) Hunter: The hunter can do many clever things which will help us. Because we're weak on ranged, misdirect pulls will often come in very handy for line of sight; the holy shield has a 30 yard range, instead of 35 for shooting. Note that the hunter can MD you and then you can scamper out of sight for an instant line-of-sight pull. If you have a particularly excellent hunter, they can MD, give you lots of threat on the primary target, and then trap a secondary target. MD also obviously combines well with a sapped enemy for line of sight pulls.

Freezing traps present a problem for the shield. Optimal, obviously, is to not have the shield hit the freezing trap. If there are 3 or fewer enemies, or you don't know where the shield is going necessarily (I believe it jumps to the nearest enemy with ties broken by distance to you, it hitting the nearer one, but this may not be reliable and distances may not be easy to ascertain), this may not be possible. Hunters need to generate more threat on the target than they may be used to from warriors -- a Distracting Shot and a couple more hits should do the trick.

We have an advantage on trap resists, since we can taunt the mob back from afar; of course, if we threw our shield, the hunter can just feign death and we'll get the mob back.

4) Mages -- the shield throw is huge here. If you hit the to-be-sheeped mob with your shield, then the sheep will come to you if it breaks or is resisted, instead of the usual beeline for the hapless mage. I'm not sure how aggro generation for an enemy in sheep form works -- I think there is none, which means that if you have hit it with the shield, no matter how many times it's resheeped, it will likely come for you when it's done. Also, because the target is dazed, it comes for you slowly, which means the mage has plenty of time to sheep it before the mobs come into where you have placed the fight and will be concentrating. This is an excellent dps class for a paladin to work with, not even counting the oh-so-useful biscuits.

5) Warlocks -- warlocks can go more nuts with us than with warriors, because of the threat we generate on all the mobs. In particular, a warlock can usually get away with a DoT or two on each mob. Obviously, don't overdo it, but your tankadin should be able to hold threat with one or two torture devices in place. Banish is also a nice device, because you can consecrate through it. Seduction is quite iffy, on the other hand, because it's hard to maintain it in place since there is an interval in between and the mob is likely to run into our consecrate in the meantime.

6) Shadow priests -- you're in luck. Your Vampiric Embrace will no longer cause all the mobs to hate you. Also, when you mind control a guy and it fails, we're there to save the day instantly with a taunt. No need to thank us -- that mana we're getting back from VE is more than enough.

7) Shamans -- no particular notes, as far as I can tell. Mana spring totems make us happy.

8) Cats -- see rogues, minus comments about sap.

9) Boomkin -- no particular notes. It's worth noting that I haven't run nearly as much with the last three items on this list, so there may be ramifications I'm completely missing.

Curator Down!

2008-01-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

Eight Lambdas and two esteemed colleagues waltzed into Karazhan this morning and downed Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Crone, and Curator in just about 3.5 hours. Nice! Many phat lewts were obtained, including Legacy for our hunter friend and T4 gloves for Crushey.

First, the obligatory "Curator down" screen shot:

Plus, a bonus group photo:

Woohoo!

Nola's Visit to Karazhan

2008-01-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

Nola recently picked up her Karazhan key and decided to check the place out. It's quite the intimidating place for a tiny gnome!

Undaunted, Nola walked up to the gate and unlocked it using her shiny new key. The gate popped open, and in she went, only to find herself staring at the front door.

After seeing this door, she has some suggestions for the tower's staff on accommodating their smaller guests. At any rate, nobody answered, so she figured she'd save them the trouble and let herself in.

In the tower's entry, she introduced herself to a friendly and well-dressed doorman, who told her a bit about the tower.

Seems like such a friendly fellow... Now why couldn't he have opened the door? Anyway, she figured she'd start her tour at the stables.

Quite an offer! Can you believe he refused? Nola decided to spare him (this time), but Mr. Midnight is certainly off her Christmas card list. She headed back to the main ballroom but got a bit lost on the way...

Yikes! They should clean out this place a bit more carefully. Good thing those spiders weren't too bright... Anyway, she eventually made it to the main ballroom.

Quite the party! Nola was excited to see so many other partially-visible guests, but they didn't seem to notice her. It's probably for the best--she's not much for dancing with giants, particularly when they look so hostile!

Unfortunately, some of the tower's staff members weren't quite as welcoming as the doorman.

A quick apology (and a Vanish, for good measure) kept things peaceful, and Nola managed to make it to the banquet hall. Seizing the opportunity, Nola tried to dance on the banquet table, only to have her offer rebuffed in a most uncivilized manner.

Honestly, she has never seen worse treatment of a friendly (and tiny, and mostly invisible) guest. Next time she'll be back, and with reinforcements! Pointy reinforcements...

[time passes]

Sure enough, a few months later, Nola is back for a second visit to Medivh's famed tower! She was invited to visit the tower by nine of her closest Alliance friends (well, eight friends and a really surly dwarf), and she allowed them to witness as she single-handedly delivered Midnight's comeuppance. She decided that it was rather rude to take all the fun and challenge out of her friends' visit, though, so she kindly allowed them to fight their way through the rest of the tower without her assistance. Despite the fact that they no longer had the benefit of her legendary combat prowess, they seem to have done well for themselves. Nola visited the tower after their departure for a quick victory lap, and she took some photos while she was at it...

First, we have the aptly-named "broken stair". It's a stair, and it sure is broken. It seems everyone is so enthralled with the opera house downstairs that nobody has managed to maintain the rooms upstairs.

Thankfully, the tower isn't all so unsightly. It soon leads to a quaint hallway ordinarily watched by the so-called Curator.

Honestly, Nola questions the taste of any "Curator" who chooses to display those green-eyed gargoyles. Yecch. But you ain't seen nothin' yet...

HOLY MOTHER OF MEKKATORQUE! They put a giant statue of a freakin' dwarf in this place? Not even Blackrock Depths was this bad. Nola posed in front of it, in order to suggest a more suitable subject matter, should the owners choose to commission some new art.

Next up, we have the library, and what a library it is!

Truly dizzying! Nola was hardly able to take her eyes off the architecture, until she happened to spy a familiar-looking name in the corner.

Sadly, he assured Nola that he has no knowledge of this "Gravalun" fellow [ed: guild 'lock] and fears that he may be some sort of imposter. Oh well!

Anyway, you recall that this is a library, right? The kind where you store books? Well, not this one!

FIRE! It's a fire! They're burning books! What kind of twisted library is this? No help came, though, and Nola felt it would be a bit suspicious to stick around.

Fortunately, the rest of the library contains a number of books that are not currently on fire. In fact, there are a number of distinctly non-fiery books lying around, and I do mean lying around. Honestly, it's enough to cause anyone with a library science degree to rupture an artery or three. Nola made the best of a bad situation.

After that brief detour, Nola pressed on, climbing to dizzying heights in this Escher-esque library. Don't look down!

Even up here, though, the place is littered with the results of what is, frankly, some pretty sloppy bookkeeping.

To be honest, Nola was beginning to tire of all of these ridiculous books. Many of them weren't even legible! When she found a friendly Ethereal fellow lighting another fire, she felt quite sympathetic.

Thankfully, that was just about the end of this ridiculous library. Next up was a quick detour to the observatory!

Don't let the perspective fool you--that's quite the telescope there. Nola couldn't even reach the eyepiece!

Onward to the game room...

Quite the chess board, eh? Nola didn't seem to fit in with those orcs, and despite her encouragement, the footmen wouldn't budge an inch. This chess board wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be.

Beyond the chess room was the entrance to the chambers of Medivh himself.

Seems like some sort of whacked-out wizard sauna. Nola tried to relax, but she could swear one of those statues was looking at her. Anyway, if you're wondering who designed this place, check out the next room:

This is probably where Medivh and his wizard buddies go to get high. That explains so much...

Next, a quick pit stop at a rather large bed.

And finally, we've made it to the top of the tower!

Check out the dragon in the distance. Neat, eh?

You might think that this is it, but apparently Medivh figured out how to add on a whole lot of extra real estate to the top of this place. Need more square footage to sell the place? No problemo!

Whoa. Now that's spacious!

Looks like this is the end of the line, though, so there's only one thing left for Nola to do... Strip down to the tabard and leap to her death in the library! Goodbye, cruel world!

So ends another chapter in Nola's exploration of Karazhan. Tragic! Next time, though, next time...

A Warlock's Dilemma

2008-01-05T18:37:00.000-08:00

In instances, minion choice is generally situational. Felguard or voidwalker for off-tanking, imp for +stamina and fire shield, succubus for crowd control, felhound for...something.

But what's the best choice for general questiness? For 30 levels, I've run with a Felguard. I love him. I attempt to keep him alive in instances. He looks really cool. But is he better than the voidwalker for general running around? For 30 levels I thought i knew the answer. Now i'm not so sure.

For those of you who are more baseball statistics-minded (read: not me) here's the stat breakdown for a lvl 70 warlock, 42 Demonology, 19 Affliction.

----	Voidwalker	Felguard
Health	7014	5010
Mana	4658	4127
Str	153	153
Agi	108	108
Stm	457	457
Int	326	280
Spr	122	122
Power	634	630
Damage	139-171	228-282
Spell Bonus	+91	+90
Armor	9384	8503
---	reduces	reduces
---	damage 47%	damage 43%

Felguard does have Cleave and Charge and a better taunt than the voidwalker. Voidwalker has Consume Shadows and sacrifice. When i run with the blueberry, it seems like he dies more, but that might just be an impression.

I don't really play by statistics because I've always suspected they don't give you the whole picture. Looking at the stats for Felguard vs. Voidwalker, it seems that the voidwalker is the better choice. But is it? Am I missing something? I think so. But what?

open letter

2007-12-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Devilsaur,

Please stop killing me and my pet every time I set foot in Un'Goro Crater. Failure to do so will result in severe repercussions from some powerful and hate-filled gnomes.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Tacostalker

375 Drinking

2007-12-08T19:14:00.000-08:00

I decided to start my own booze blog instead of clogging this one with my off-topic posts. sorry to anyone who was annoyed. You can find this one (and more to come!) at 375 Drinking!

look for more posts at Darkmoon Special Reserve

375 Engineering!

2007-12-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

With almost enough gold in my pocket to train 300 riding skill, it was time to think seriously about crafting Merial's epic flying machine. Cheaper, more mudane mounts are available, of course, but what self-respecting engineer could pass up the opportunity to zip around Outlands in their very own epic flying machine?

The challenge, of course, is getting to 375 engineering without going completely broke in the process. Usually Lootables is a nice place to start when leveling your profession, but their engineering guide misses a few money-saving opportunities, and they assume that you're just grinding for grinding's sake. If you have a specific goal in mind, you can get skillups for crafting the materials that you'll need later on.

I'm going to focus on 350 and up (since that's what I've done recently and remember well), but for the sake of completeness, I'll start at 300:

300-325: Elemental Blasting Powder, Fel Iron Casings, Fel Iron Bolts, and Fel Iron Shells. On my server, Fel Iron Casings are marginally profitable, though they don't move very fast at the auction house. The other items are not necessarily profitable, but you'll need at least 20 Blasting Powder for Smoke Flares (below), and you'll need at least 9 Casings and 12 Bolts for Adamantite Rifles (also below). The Shells will get you to 325 if nothing else will.
325-335: Adamantite Frames. These babies are profitable, and you'll need a bunch for Adamantite Rifles later on. Load up!
335-350: Smoke Flares. Recipes for these flares come in various colors. There's a green one available from the Cenarion dudes, and a plain one available in Area 52. They cost virtually nothing to make and will easily get you to 350. If you're patient, I hear they'll carry you to 355.
350-365: Felsteel Stabilizers, Khorium Power Cores, Hardened Adamantite Tubes. You'll need 8 each of the Stabilizers and the Power Cores for your flying machine, and you'll need 5 Tubes for Khorium Scopes later on. If you plan to make your epic goggles as well (and have the requisite Primal Nether), you'll want to make an extra 4 Stabilizers, 2 Tubes, and 1 Power Core, plus the goggles themselves. If you get above 365 while doing all of this, more power to ya.
365-370: Adamantite Rifles. This recipe is available from the engineering vendor in Shattrath, and it'll carry you up to 370. On my server, they cost 40g to produce and sell for 10g, so the loss per Rifle is 30g. (You did save those Bolts and Casings from earlier, didn't you?) I got a skillup from every one until they turned green at 370, and my sole attempt at 370 failed to yield a skillup.
370-375: Khorium Scopes. Five of these should hopefully get you the rest of the way. Make sure to use those Hardened Adamantite Tubes you crafted earlier. You'll invest about 150g worth of mats, and you can sell them for about 100g, so that's a 50g loss per Scope. That's more than you lost with the Rifles, but at this point, you'll probably need to make at least two Rifles per skillup, so the Scopes are the cheapest way to go. Here's the catch: The recipe is a BoP drop from Sunfury Bowmen near Manaforge Duro in the Netherstorm, so you'll have to grind them for an hour or so in order to get it.

By the way, Felsteel Stabilizers and Khorium Power Cores can be purchased from the Area 52 engineering vendor in limited quantities. If you're patient enough, you can buy them from him at a steep discount. However, they appear to be profitable when crafted, so even if you can buy them from the vendor, there's no reason not to use them for skillups anyway. (Disclaimer: I never tried to sell any at the AH, so I don't know how fast you can move them.)

Good luck!

Warlock Basics: Damage and Crowd Control

2007-11-27T15:01:00.000-08:00

I'm going to divy Warlockry up into three posts: The basics (damage and crowd control), the situational (pets and curses), and development (talents and equipment). We are a sophisticated class, after all, and there is so much to manage.

You say you like to torture your enemies to death with the slow dissolution of their bodies and summon demons with the crystalized remains of their pathetic souls? Excellent, then the way of the warlock may be for you.

Role:
Warlocks excel at two major tasks: first eliminating opponents with a little mana and a fair amount of patience and second keeping enemies occupied while you do it.

Most of the warlock finest damage spells do damage over time (DoT). Curse of Agony (more on curses later), Corruption and Immolate are the basics. The channeled drain life and drain soul spells, as well as the channeled Area of Effect (AoE) Rain of fire and Hellfire all mete out pain over time. Even seed of corruption turns [an] opponent[s] into [a] ticking timebomb[s] (beware the angry mobs!) with a DoT wick. Affliction, which specializes in DoTs adds two to the mix: siphon life, a fire-and-forget trickle of health from your victim(s) to you, and unstable affliction, which makes anyone foolish enough to dispel your DoTs very sad.

One consequence of this DoT mania is that warlocks take their time, even with cakewalk mobs. It takes time to load enemies up with our best DoTs, and the other DPS may given our victims a merciful end before a warlock has really even started playing with them. On the other hand, warlocks who keep their DoTs up on a long lasting opponent and live to tell the tale will rank high on the damage meters.

Warlocks have four crowd control options and can use three of them simultaneously: Fear is first. It sends just about any non-boss enemy running all over the place. It's one of the best crowd controls in the game. You can chain it, you can hit them with dots without losing the fear and a couple of points in a first tier affliction talent make it hard to resist. So you can kill them without them ever getting close to you. On the downside, in crowded environments, it easily has the potential to assemble all your opponents to come eat you together. The brief terror attached to death coil and the brief AoE horror of howl of terror are similar. But they have short durations with long cool downs. The short duration reduces the linking risk, but the long cool downs limit the crowd control value.

The second is banish. It holds a single demon or elemental in stasis. It cannot do anything, nothing can be done to it, and it stays still. It also cannot be broken early and has to break before it can be recast. DoTs lose time, but do no damage, and cannot be reapplied until banish expires.

The third and fourth relate to demons. A warlock's succubus can seduce humanoids. This spell takes 1.5 seconds to cast, and requires the succubus's undivided attention to maintain (humanoids are so fickle). When it does break, whether early or not, it takes another 1.5 seconds of target freedom to recast. Unlike polymorph, it doesn't heal the target, and it cannot be recast before it expires. But it can be broken by damage to the target, or any interruption to the succubus. Additionally, since it is the succubus casting, not the warlock, I don't believe it gains the penetration and spell hit of the warlock.

The fourth is to enlave a demon. The enslaved demon won't be as effective or as loyal as one you summon yourself. But it takes an enemy and makes a (feisty) pet. Unfortunately, your normal pet will head off for other parts when you do this, meaning no simultaneous seduction and enslavement. This is crowd control of last resort.

Now, your victims are seduced, banished, enslaved, playing pattycake with your demon, or running screaming with their hair on fire as their bodies unravel. You can knit, pick flowers, plan your next meal, compose poetry, or just relax. We warlocks are a leisurely class. But if you are in a hurry, you can accelerate the process. Shadow bolts are slow casting, but do pack a punch. They are the main non-DoT damage tool of the warlock. Other tools include shadowburn (requires a soul shard, short cooldown), death coil (long cool down), soulfire (long cast time, requires a soul shard), searing pain (distracts victims from your pet or tank), and incinerate (better with immolate up, but still not amazing from what I've seen).

Destruction warlocks also get conflagrate, which consumes an immolate in a burst of damage (best to cast just when the victim thinks it's almost over) and shadowfury, a quickcasting, short cool down AoE damage and stun. Fun to use on casters and I'm told it's great for detonating Seed of Corruption.

Ah, Seed of Corruption, that reminds of our Area of Effect (AoE) spells. Whenever faced with a great many victims there's no way to strike fear into them more quickly than AoEs. Rain of Fire allows you to select an area in which any hapless victims will be subject balls of fire dropping from above while you concentrate. Lovely, but not always sufficient. Hellfire channels something more deadly, but also dangerous to you. You see, you burn along with your targets, and the fire originates from you. Don't worry though, your party members are safe. Then comes my personal favorite, seed of corruption. This puts a DoT on your victim, and when they are damaged up to a certain level, they explode with shadowy goodness, sharing it with everyone around them, and keeping none for themselves. Sadly, one must choose between this and the usual corruption, but it is a small price to pay. The damage can be truly impressive and will often make you quite popular (with the victims).

So that summarizes the basic tools in a Warlock's toolbox. Next up, the situational tools: pets and curses. Tune in later for more silly exposition on warlocks.

Perpetual Lowbie

2007-11-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hi. My name is Josh, and I'm an altoholic. (You all echo "Hi, Josh!". . . gosh, thanks for the support.)

I have been playing World of Warcraft since July 6, 2006. That's about a year and a third, for those who don't want to count. Guess how many level 70 characters I have. I'll give you a hint. It's a number that's shaped like an egg and rhymes with hero. Yes, 0. None, zip, zilch. I don't even have a single character over the level of the 60. In fact, my highest level character is a mere 41! Zoiks!

Why is that, you ask? I'm glad you asked! Otherwise this post would have gone nowhere. The answer is multi-faceted, but I'll try to simplify it. First, I like to try new things. I have a number of characters, specifically 8:

Troll mage - very lowbie
Draenei priest - 12
Night Elf druid - 14
Human paladin - 20
Blood Elf hunter - 23
Undead warlock - 29
Tauren shaman - 35
Night Elf druid - 41

Except for the mage, which is just a bank alt, and the 14 druid, who has been abandoned, those are all "actively played" to some extent. Now I realize that you can't take two level 35s and say they're equal to a level 70, but I'm pretty confident that if I had played the same amount of time, but all on one character, that I'd have a level 70 by now.

But there are people with more alts and more combined levels than me that still manage to have a top level character. So another factor is that I'm a casual gamer in the strictest sense of the word. I play now and then, probably averaging only single digits of play time in a week. I work full time and go to grad school. In fact, at one point I went about 2 months hardly signing on to WoW at all. I really enjoy WoW, but I don't make a second career out of it.

The biggest factor really is the alt-itis though. Saying that I have so many alts because I like to try new things is overly simplistic; there are many reasons for having such a plethora of toons. But my alt-itis is still going strong. Just last week I created a new character, the level 12 priest (Sanctimonia). Somebody stop me!

Anyway, I wonder if there are other perpetual lowbies like me out there, and what their excuses are. And I very much hope to have at least one 70 (probably the druid) by the time the next expansion comes out and the level cap is raised again. I might need a bit of an ass-kickin'.

Warrior Tanking

2007-11-25T21:20:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm Merial, level 70 protection warrior. Want to learn to tank 5-mans as a warrior? Read on!

As a warrior tank, your primary threat generation tools are, in order of preference:

1. Shield Slam (if you have 31 pts in protection)
2. Revenge
3. Sunder Armor (or Devastate if you have 41 pts in protection)

Pop them whenever they're up, in that order. It takes a little practice to get a sense for how much threat each one generates relative to your healer, but to a first approximation, a single application of one of these abilities will keep a mob off your healer for 5-10 seconds and off an AoE DPS'er for about 2 seconds. Keeping threat on the primary DPS target requires you to be practically spamming these abilities.

Ways to generate AoE threat include Thunder Clap (breaks CC), Demo Shout (doesn't break CC), Bloodrage, and Cleave (only 2 targets). However, none of these abilities will generate a substantial amount of threat, so at some point you really need to start using your single-target abilities--or just leave the job to your favorite pally. Heroic Strike is useful as a high-threat rage dump, but it's not strictly necessary and can be ignored for now.

On each pull, I'd recommend starting with a Demo Shout and/or a Thunder Clap to get some initial aggro on all mobs. Then tab between all enemies and individually apply one of the three abilities above. You may lose the primary target to your DPS if there are a lot of enemies, but that's okay--just taunt it back, and you'll regain aggro *plus* all of the threat they've generated on that target.

On bosses, warrior tanks excel at mitigating damage. You still want to use your high-threat abilities to hold aggro on the boss, but you also want to pop Shield Block whenever it's available in order to reduce incoming damage. Also, make sure to keep Demo Shout and Thunder Clap on the boss at all times, for the same reason. Keep an eye on your health, and if it gets suspiciously low, pop one of your oh-shit buttons: Shield Wall, Last Stand (if you have it), or a healing potion.

When I originally posted this guide to our guild mailing list, fellow protection warrior Causality added the following thoughts:

Shield Slam is actually third on my list of things to do, far behind Revenge and Sunder Armor. Why? It technically causes the most threat, but it's also twice as expensive on a protection-based tank. You can slap on two Sunders with the same amount of threat, and do it incrementally (so you're not losing aggro in the time it takes you to build up the rage to shield slam... I'm assuming that either you have no rage starting out, like for an add, or you've spent your initial rage on Thunder Clap or Demo Shout).

Sometimes, if I'm worried about threat across multiple enemies, I'll intentionally leave one add without any sort of single-target rage, wait for casters to steal the aggro, then taunt. That's kind of like playing with fire, though. The advantage is that you haven't "wasted" any rage, as your threat is set to what the caster earned for his/herself. Thus you end up with more threat on all your targets than if you had been sundering every one. Buuuuut.... if you don't pull it off right, the caster takes it in the face. [I heartily endorse this technique. -M]

I'm also of the opinion that Improved Revenge is vastly underrated. It's a great damage-mitigation measure for trash mobs... I'm spamming Revenge as often as the cooldown allows (with Focused Rage, it costs a measly two points!), and having my primary target stunned roughly a third of the time means less work for the healbot.

Partial Derivatives

2007-11-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

I discovered something today which maybe everyone knows, but which I thought was very interesting. I had always implicitly assumed that for a given class, everything was linear; specifically, for melee dps, 1 point of attack power is worth x, and 1 percent of crit chance/hit chance is worth y. If this were true, it would be easy to evaluate gear changes once you knew the relevant coefficients to translate attributes into those base terms.

This is not true, however. The actual formula for dps from melee attacks is (dps)*(hit chance + crit chance), which to put it another way is (base dps + a*attack power)*(hit chance + crit chance). If you take partial derivatives:

1 point of attack power is worth crit chance + hit chance
1 percent of hit or crit chance is worth b+a*(attack power), where a and b are some constants

In particular, it pays to be well-balanced! When deciding between x amount of attack power and y hit/crit, the answer varies depending on your other gear. This is especially relevant for my paladin when considering strength (only affects the first factor) versus agil/hit/crit (only affects the second, not counting the minuscule change in armor from agil) -- the answer is not constant. And, finally, since your hit chance varies from opponent to opponent (immobile level 70 mob versus slippery level 72 boss), the coefficients are not even constant from battle to battle, raising the rather alarming possibility that the optimal solution for melee dps is to carry two sets of gear optimized for different opponents...

The equivalent for casters, of course, is spell damage versus spell hit/crit, which follows a similar equation for overall dps and thus exhibits the same phenomenon.

Hello, World!

2007-11-21T21:00:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the official WoW blog of Kilrogg's Lambda guild. Post away!