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[Oni Link 666]

I'm wondering if those spectral cats will be tamable. If they are, they can sort of be the spirit beast for those who aren't BM or just aren't lucky enough to get one. They look awesome.

 

[Kyoufu]

Not anymore.

OMG YESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[border]

Farming it up for two 80s means no epic for my 80 that has all the gathering and gold professions. Meanwhile, I have two other 70s in the stables. One being a Druid, which needs about 3 respecs.

Well if you wanna run 4 or 5 characters I don't see how you can complain about there being so much work to do. I don't see why everything in the game should come free just to accommodate people that want a ridiculous number of alts. If you can't spend 15 minutes/day with each character to farm up some ridiculously easy money, then why have that many characters to start with?

 

[flsh]

You can get 1000g in 4 days if you use every alt to do dailies. It's not hard. 1000g now is not 1000g at seventy, which honestly wasn't that much then either.

Do 6-7 dailies on all alts, sell frozen orbs, farm some crafting mat and enjoy 6k gold in 3 weeks, which is probably still earlier than 3.1.
I can't wait to see new changes and additions. The first taste is always bittersweet

 

[ultron87]

Argh. Just attempted to do Halls of Lightning with a PuG. One of the DKs was doing 600 dps. That was terrible.

 

[Angry Grimace]

So my wife says there's no quitting

Ah well, I guess someone has to tank for teh tree


At least my Warrior wasn't nerfed.

Back on DK's, I'm not even sure what the purpose of Howling Blast being in game is. I really don't get what Blizzard is thinking by taking a 35 pt talent; nerfing the shit out of it and then making it cost 51 points. It's virtually useless now. I actually think a build to 50 pts and then not taking HB is better than taking it Which sucks cause that was my favorite ability.

 

[funkmastergeneral]

Got to level 44 on my priest last night and leveling has become even easier. I had a bit of hard time getting enough xp from quests, so I had to end up running a bunch of instances to make up for the xp I needed. Now with Feralas, Tanaris, and Un'goro still available for questing I should be all set until 50. I really wish they would revamp the zones a bit though (I know this isn't going to happen) Because after leveling up my warrior to 80, I realized just how much better Blizz got at designing zones and quests in TBC and WotLK

So my wife says there's no quitting

Whipped.

 

[Arp3ggi0]

Because after leveling up my warrior to 80, I realized just how much better Blizz got at designing zones and quests in TBC and WotLK.

This is so true. After leveling a warrior to 80, my paladin is 67. Getting to Outlands has made leveling an absolute breeze.

 

[borghe]

yeah, classic wow you can see where Blizzard was pulling away from SOE in zone/leveling design, by BC they totally separated themselves. Graphically BC's minimum requirements are like "we're calling these minimum but let's be honest here folks, it won't be entirely enjoyable". Game design-wise there was definitely a higher focus on grouping quests together better, both where they start and where the required goals are. I went faster so far 60-65, FASTER through levels that need a higher scale of experience (taking into consideration the 40-60 drop) than I went through like 55-60.

I've been thinking of doing a druid or hunter once this guy hits 80 just for fun... but man... the thought of going through classic wow again so soon (I just started my current guy in Dec).

 

[TomServo]

Well if you wanna run 4 or 5 characters I don't see how you can complain about there being so much work to do. I don't see why everything in the game should come free just to accommodate people that want a ridiculous number of alts. If you can't spend 15 minutes/day with each character to farm up some ridiculously easy money, then why have that many characters to start with?

I'm sure I'll offend someone in this thread, but I have to say that the whiny altaholics are becoming the most annoying people in the game by a good margin.

Sure there are exceptions to any rule, but in general the people that whine about repair costs while learning content, flasking when shit is on farm so we can burn through it quicker, not being able to have the guild bank fund their gems / enchants / etc, and just about having no money in general are also the people with multiple high-level alts.

These are the same people who haven't done a daily in months, raid the AH at every chance they get to buy mats to powerlevel their alts' professions, and will spend 5K to get an alt epic flying yet have the nerve to ask for a loan to cover a repair bill in their main.

There's no excuse not to have gold. Clearing Naxx will net you a few hundred gold and doing the easy dailies off of of the airships in Icecrown will get you a couple hundred in half an hour. If you're not exalted with Sons of Hodir you're looking at around 100g for half an hour of dailies that you should be doing anyway.

I've been thinking of doing a druid or hunter once this guy hits 80 just for fun... but man... the thought of going through classic wow again so soon (I just started my current guy in Dec).

There are a couple of things that make old Azeroth more bearable now. Leveling from 30-40 is much, much quicker because you're using a mount in a zone designed for walking. The new Dustwallow Marsh quest hub has the more modern quest designs, so that helps fly through the 40s. 50-58 has so much instanced content and the quest xp from them is silly, so having a friend run you through some instances will burn through that last stretch before Outland.

 

[flsh]

Old Azeroth is very outdated. The quests aren't fun and the zones are designed very badly sometimes. It's funny that outland and northrend are brilliantly designed for riding when 99% of the time people use flying mounts when playing them (well, now 0% in outland).

Blizz should simply make each quest give 20% more XP. It'll put people where they want to be faster. Barely anyone loves leveling, so why make it a chore?

 

[funkmastergeneral]

Old Azeroth is very outdated. The quests aren't fun and the zones are designed very badly sometimes. It's funny that outland and northrend are brilliantly designed for riding when 99% of the time people use flying mounts when playing them (well, now 0% in outland).

Blizz should simply make each quest give 20% more XP. It'll put people where they want to be faster. Barely anyone loves leveling, so why make it a chore?

You'll get to the point where people are leveling so fast that they don't learn the class while doing so, imo that's the important part of leveling.

 

[flsh]

You mean like recruit a friend? or leveling a character today for healing/tanking and only learning at the highest levels when you finally do instances?

If people can't manage a class they can read the perfect rotations at elitist jerks.

 

[borghe]

Like I said, I started my guy in Dec. I'd have to check my exact /played but fairly casually playing I went from lvl 1 in Dec to 65 in Feb. That's a pretty good clip, especially for casually playing. Too much faster than that and you DO run into an issue with learning your class.

You mean like recruit a friend? or leveling a character today for healing/tanking and only learning at the highest levels when you finally do instances?

Recruit a friend is triple experience, but only when you are grouped together, within the same level range, and it overrides rest XP so in fact is only 50% more xp than fully rested xp. granting levels only works for someone who is under your level.

as for the "leveling today for end game tomorrow" mentality, you still HAVE to learn fundamentals to the class just to level effectively. The more you speed that up the less efficient (and effective) you require the players to be. The more you slow it down the more efficient (and effective) you require the players to be. This isn't a criticism or request, just a fact. This same thing was true when blizzard sped up 1-60.

I mean shit, why doesn't blizzard just start everyone at 55 now like the DK? Why even bother with ANYTHING in Old Azeroth anymore? The answer is because all of the above. You HAVE to learn to play your class, and learning to play your class while in an instance, or even worse a heroic and everyone else is dying in the meantime because of you... well, blizzard isn't doing their player base any good by doing that. Sure the same thing can still happen now, but at least by forcing the leveling process for the 70 levels before that there is less likely a chance of it happening now.

If people can't manage a class they can read the perfect rotations at elitist jerks.

If people can't be bothered enough to learn their class while leveling, what makes you think they'd be bothered enough at 80 to go to an external website and look at how to play the class?

 

[flsh]

Recruit a friend is triple experience, but only when you are grouped together, within the same level range, and it overrides rest XP so in fact is only 50% more xp than fully rested xp. granting levels only works for someone who is under your level.

as for the "leveling today for end game tomorrow" mentality, you still HAVE to learn fundamentals to the class just to level effectively. The more you speed that up the less efficient (and effective) you require the players to be. The more you slow it down the more efficient (and effective) you require the players to be. This isn't a criticism or request, just a fact. This same thing was true when blizzard sped up 1-60.

I mean shit, why doesn't blizzard just start everyone at 55 now like the DK? Why even bother with ANYTHING in Old Azeroth anymore? The answer is because all of the above. You HAVE to learn to play your class, and learning to play your class while in an instance, or even worse a heroic and everyone else is dying in the meantime because of you... well, blizzard isn't doing their player base any good by doing that. Sure the same thing can still happen now, but at least by forcing the leveling process for the 70 levels before that there is less likely a chance of it happening now.

20% is NOT that much faster. It takes off all the fluff, and you still have outland and northrend to level as they are now (I only talked about old world, but you know that already ). Also, you don't have that much rested xp when leveling. It takes me 1 hour to blow through it. Most of the XP is from quests which aren't affected at all by rested (oh how I wish). Also, RAF gives you 100% more XP than rested (since one is 300%, one is 150%), it is twice as fast. And it doesn't run out.
And I didn't even talk about granting levels, just people (and I know plenty did it here) dual boxing, putting 1 character on constant follow and only using one character. I have mates who did it and they learned how to play their class in outland.

If people can't be bothered enough to learn their class while leveling, what makes you think they'd be bothered enough at 80 to go to an external website and look at how to play the class?

Because it takes about 2 minutes to do it? You write it down, see it works, enjoy the class.

 

[VaLiancY]

Time to goof around on the PTR.

Fucking great, I spend the morning installing this shit and it doesn't take my password. PTR login bugs out if you change your password on your account in the last three weeks. Yeah because people don't change their passwords often for security reasons. My first PTR experience is abysmal.

 

[TomServo]

You'll get to the point where people are leveling so fast that they don't learn the class while doing so, imo that's the important part of leveling.

Most of the people playing now at 80 have no idea what they're doing.

The only thing I PUG anymore is VoA, and almost every other warlock in those PUGs makes me /facepalm. We've brought in PUG players into 10 man raids (since we only schedule 25 mans) and unless they're from another one of the handful of competent guilds we almost always end up giving them the boot. Last week it was a holy priest who wanted us to stack up so he could use holy nova on Saph.

Everyone thinks they're a progression raider now, and I don't mind that at all. It really doesn't affect me. It's just funny to see players doing such a terrible job yet be closed to suggestions because they're in epics and think that makes them experts on their class.

 

[Sai-kun]

I'm wondering if those spectral cats will be tamable. If they are, they can sort of be the spirit beast for those who aren't BM or just aren't lucky enough to get one. They look awesome.

BUt they don't look AS cool as Loque does! ><

 

[borghe]

20% is NOT that much faster. It takes off all the fluff, and you still have outland and northrend to level as they are now (I only talked about old world, but you know that already ). Also, you don't have that much rested xp when leveling. It takes me 1 hour to blow through it. Most of the XP is from quests which aren't affected at all by rested (oh how I wish). Also, RAF gives you 100% more XP than rested (since one is 300%, one is 150%), it is twice as fast. And it doesn't run out.
And I didn't even talk about granting levels, just people (and I know plenty did it here) dual boxing, putting 1 character on constant follow and only using one character. I have mates who did it and they learned how to play their class in outland.

RAF is 50% more than rested. Rested is 200% XP (double), RAF is 300% (triple). 300% is 50% more than 200%.

As for outland and northrend, the fact is that you learn to play the class at 1-20 (in some cases 1-30). 30-50 are the levels where talents start changing up your gameplay a bit. From 50 onwards gear itemization starts being the focus and you should have the majority of keystrokes in place. Now I didn't say 20% was TOO fast, and I specifically said this in my post. What I did say was that the faster Blizzard makes leveling between 1-30 and 30-50, the less time they are providing someone to learn how to play their class effectively and efficiently. The slower Blizz makes leveling, the more time they are giving that person. Is 20% faster too fast? Is right now too slow? Don't know, don't care. That's for people smarter than myself to debate. But that ratio still holds. I will tell you what does stand though... When we first started hitting the 60 instances and raiding MC, I would say without question that more people back then, who had /played at 9-15 days to hit 60, had a better idea of how to fill their PVE role than MANY people seem to now. I should say a higher percentage of people had a better idea back then than now.. and I would say that the ease in leveling now, INCLUDING RAF, plays a part in that. /played 10 days to 60 is a whole lot different than /played 8 days to 80.. but again, I am NOT saying that a 20% increase would be too much.. I am just saying that ANY increase will lead to even less time with your character during the formative levels where you are learning to play them effectively.

Because it takes about 2 minutes to do it? You write it down, see it works, enjoy the class.

ahh... what an EXCELLENT response. Well, not excellent so much as totally expected from someone, and I really don't mean offense by this, who seems very much like "let me get to 80 as fast as possible and I'll figure out how to play the class then". The problem is that it's not just about hitting 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, proc 5, 2, 4, 2, 3, proc 5, etc. Anyone who thinks that's really all there is to the game well... I hope I never guild with them. That would fall under playing the game ineffectively. let's look at my warrior. am I fighting melee or casters? am I fighting a single mob or many. are there any mobs I have to worry about burning down quickly? do I have to screw around with crowd control? runners? obviously this stuff matters SOMEWHAT less in a raid than solo or an instance.. but this all goes towards knowing how to effectively play your class.. and chances are if all you are looking to do is spam a keystroke sequence in a raid, when shit turns bad (you might have even caused it), you won't know what the hell to do besides just wiping.

Again, not pointing any of this at you.. just a general observation towards that mentality.

Most of the people playing now at 80 have no idea what they're doing.

The only thing I PUG anymore is VoA, and almost every other warlock in those PUGs makes me /facepalm. We've brought in PUG players into 10 man raids (since we only schedule 25 mans) and unless they're from another one of the handful of competent guilds we almost always end up giving them the boot. Last week it was a holy priest who wanted us to stack up so he could use holy nova on Saph.

Everyone thinks they're a progression raider now, and I don't mind that at all. It really doesn't affect me. It's just funny to see players doing such a terrible job yet be closed to suggestions because they're in epics and think that makes them experts on their class.

not much shorter than what I was trying to say, but still to the same point. because 1-60 is so ridiculously easy right now you have a shitton of 80s who don't know how to play their classes. Yet they are still 80 and have blues and purps so they really think they know how to play and get pissed (and defensive) when people make suggestions for improvement. "I got this far just fine. Pretty sure I know what I'm doing." No, because if you did we wouldn't have wiped just now. /kick

 

[TomServo]

RAF is 50% more than rested. Rested is 200% XP (double), RAF is 300% (triple). 300% is 50% more than 200%.

RAF is also 300% on quest xp, which is where it really takes off.

Maybe leveling through Azeroth is too easy. I ran Blood Furnance (normal) while I was leveling my warlock late last year, and was grouped with a mage that didn't know that he could polymorph. It gets better though. Next pull? "The spell isn't working on this imp." Umm... not only was that particualr imp banished, but you can't sheep a demon.

 

[borghe]

RAF is also 300% on quest xp, which is where it really takes off.

correct. I did forget to add that. my wife is a RAF, but she hardly ever wants to group with my alt I made to group with her and mostly just wants to solo except for the occasional instance run. To her credit though, she has little to no interest in raiding at the end game. It's just about having fun right now.

 

[flsh]

If a person can't play a class, it doesn't matter how long it takes to level. The good players realize immediately what to do. Do I really have to press the same 4-5 buttons on a priest so that in 2 months when I finally get it to northrend I respec to disc and never play shadow again?
I have zero fun from leveling a class that does exactly the same role as my mage. I chose my mage for DPS because that's the style of game I like (frost), shadow priest is boring as hell.
And if you can't manage AoE and single target and kiting, you suck at gaming, not just your class.

The amount of stories I have about bad players though... It'll make some of the people here piss their pants off. A very recent one is helping a friend (DK, frost with some unholy) get tanking gear. We run UK heroic, I, a well geared mage, our holydin, also well geared and my DK friend, a few tanking pieces, some dps to fill the gaps before a naxx raid. We get 2 pug dps, one is a DK.
My friend has a very hard time keeping aggro against the other DK. Than my friend realizes what happens and he whispers me, I choked when I read this.

The other DK used frost presence and death and decay every cooldown (30 seconds I think). So, mediocre to very low dps and huge threat :lol The pug DK than asks in /party "Are you even a tank? why can't you hold aggro?!". At that point I, my DK friend and the holydin exchanged whispers laughing our asses off.

 

[borghe]

I get what you're saying. For the people who just want to level alts for some fun, do away with as much 1-70 as possible. but our point is, for every bit that Blizzard does that by, the game suffers as a whole even more. Yes stupid people are going to be bad at their class no matter what, but by making it even easier to get to 80 you ensure that these people will have even less knowledge about their class and more of them to boot. If you don't PUG then you probably don't care. But for the people that PUG, this prospect SUCKS. and let's just leave it at there I guess.

 

[Kyoufu]

When can we expect to see 3.1 go live? I really really want dual-spec!

 

[TomServo]

When can we expect to see 3.1 go live? I really really want dual-spec!

My guess? April at the earliest. Dragging out into May wouldn't surprise me.

Figure that given the number of bosses in Ulduar and how they've broken the first batch down we'll get at least three rounds of that. Test for at least a week each batch. Extra time for fine-tuning some of the big class changes that are coming.

 

[Epix]

When can we expect to see 3.1 go live? I really really want dual-spec!

I think the PTR shelf life is historically around 4 weeks if I remember correctly.

Has anyone actually managed to get on the PTR yet?

 

[TomServo]

Has anyone actually managed to get on the PTR yet?

I've got some friends who are on testing different warlock specs.

Affliction got nerfed to around the tune of 500dps. A hybrid demo / destro spec is pulling well over 4K on a targetting dummy. With a similar spec on live I do ~5.5K on Patchwerk compared to 3K on the dummy. Immo/Conflag buffs in 3.1 are huge.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I think the PTR shelf life is historically around 4 weeks if I remember correctly.

Has anyone actually managed to get on the PTR yet?

I went ahead and took a look. It's too buggy to really say what's going on in there at the moment. After I flew back into Dalaran and all the NPC's suddenly dissapeared and my character suddenly gained the ability to fly under his own power, I decided to go do something else for while, although it was slightly amusing.

 

[TomServo]

...my character suddenly gained the ability to fly under his own power...

That's happened to me on live before. Fun as hell.

 

[firex]

Destro lock sounds pretty fun now, and I always liked that spec the most. but I'm not busting out my old 8/8 Nemesis warlock on another server so I guess I can buy heirlooms for an alt or something and kind of re-learn it from level 1 as destro.

While I'm sure affliction got nerfed, I kind of like reducing its dot rotation. Now they just need to add something in (like siphon life should vastly increase the damage done by corruption) and maybe find a way to make it so you have another nuke to cast after your dots are up.

god, I'm so torn on my shaman. I guess I'll just keep leveling ele until I get lava burst, and see how much better that makes him before I decide if I'll go ele or go back to enhance. The only bad thing is it feels like I'm losing out on some of the orc racials by being ele. Like I only get half the benefit of blood fury, and no axe expertise (though I bet once again there's no good dps axes for dual wield) and no pet damage (actually pretty awesome with feral spirit + fire ele totem).

and even though I am loathe to pay the 1k gold for my pally for dual spec, I'll do it and then grind that gold back with my alt ret spec. I just don't like the idea of having to pay for it. I only have one level 80, and my shaman is level 73, and I doubt I'll get another class to 80 unless they nerf shamans and paladins both into the ground and I say fuck it and decide to level up a pure dps class or something.

 

[Angry Grimace]

As a big fan of the playstyle of the Death Knight, I hope someone in here can tell me I'm "doing it wrong" when it comes to Unholy. I fucking hated that shit. The fact that Frost is getting nerfed sucks because I think Frost is the most fun to play.

Perhaps I was doing it wrong, but not knowing what to do, a quick net research suggested glyphing Scourge Strike for the 25% chance to put the diseases on, and then spamming SS -> BS -> SS x infinte, etc. and then using Unholy Blight, DC till UB was ready to fall off, then more DC, repeat.

I personally hate that play style. It's why I find the current playstyle of rogue to be baseline non-fun; sitting around refreshing mandatory debuffs fucking sucks. It's why any rotation that excludes regular PS and IT seems to bother me, and thus why I love frost; because you get buffed up ITs and don't have to keep checking on the duration of your current targets diseases because they will get reapplied regardless.

I guess I'll stay Frost 2H and just accept I'll be lower than other people on the DPS charts; perhaps I can make it up by taking the Frost utility talents that others switching the Unholy will no longer take. Frost 2H is just as fun as the old 33/38 imho; because Frost Strike consumes those Killing Machine procs.

 

[firex]

I liked Blood more than Frost 2h just because Frost 2h's DPS was laughably bad in my experience. Way, way too proc/burst based. But Blood also has you reapplying diseases because of all the heart strike/blood strike/obliterate in the rotation. I never liked Unholy because it just never grabbed me, but I guess Unholy 2h could be similar but with scourge strike instead of oblit.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I liked Blood more than Frost 2h just because Frost 2h's DPS was laughably bad in my experience. Way, way too proc/burst based. But Blood also has you reapplying diseases because of all the heart strike/blood strike/obliterate in the rotation. I never liked Unholy because it just never grabbed me, but I guess Unholy 2h could be similar but with scourge strike instead of oblit.

Well I haven't hit 80 quite yet, but so far it's competitive at the least. I'm at 72, so I have most of the relevant talents; I have yet to try Blood but on a dummy I hit ~1550 as Frost 2H, 1650 as 32/30something DW, and about 1350 if I concentrate real hard on Unholy on keeping Unholy Blight up at all times and spamming Scourge Strike hoping for the glyph to proc. Someone give me a better rotation and I'll try it, but even with the disease extending talents, the diseases fall off too fast if I don't get lucky with SS glyph procs.

It's not that I don't like reapplying the diseases per-se, it's that having to remember to do it when I wouldn't otherwise seems more "job-like" if you get what I'm saying. I like that proc based thing.

I just go PS->IT->BS->BS->OB->FS x 2
Then PS->IT->OB->OB->FS, and then Howling Blast on Rime procs.

I think this is more of what Blizzard intended Frost to play like; I'm thinking they don't want players to rely on HB as something other than utility. Hence why it's put out of reach of Deep Unholy specs and reduced in damage.

I won't deny it's all very proc and crit based, but so far it really rains crits when you take the right talents. I'm thinking taking the Plague strike glyph

 

[TomServo]

Destro lock sounds pretty fun now, and I always liked that spec the most. but I'm not busting out my old 8/8 Nemesis warlock on another server so I guess I can buy heirlooms for an alt or something and kind of re-learn it from level 1 as destro.

From the looks of it, destro isn't changing, just getting an across-the-board dps increase for doing the same things. Immolate is buffed, conflag is buffed, and the loss of molten core for deep destro locks will be mostly offset by the new incinerate glyph.

Moving molten core may have actually made the demo/destro hybrids even more powerful compared to where they stand against deep destro currently. Currently the buffs from dabbling in demonology offset the loss of backdraft and chaos bolt. Moving molten core over to demo may have put hybrids ahead of deep destro, given that no changes to the deep destro talents have gone onto PTR (yet).

I think that's unintended. The tone from the post-3.0 patches has been that Blizzard wants warlocks to invest heavily in one tree. I don't know if they were stuck in a TBC mindset thinking the demonic sacrifice was the key to the current hybrid builds, but saccing your imp was already a dps loss on live, so getting rid of that talent has little to no effect on anyone.

While I'm sure affliction got nerfed, I kind of like reducing its dot rotation. Now they just need to add something in (like siphon life should vastly increase the damage done by corruption) and maybe find a way to make it so you have another nuke to cast after your dots are up.

I don't like what's happening to affliction, and I'm destro-for-life. The playstyles are so different, and it was entertaining to know I'm having a total PTKFGS experience hammering away on incinerate while my afflcition guildmate was smoothly watching timers, cooldowns, filling in with shadow bolts / drain soul in between, etc.

Dumbing the rotation down seems like a move to appease the bads. I've seen plenty of terrible warlocks rolling around with the haunt/ruin spec because they see posts on EJ about huge numbers from it, but you can see quickly that they don't have the skill to make it work any better than if they specced demo to get the feltard and just spammed shadow bolt.

 

[firex]

The problem I had was, even as deep frost, Oblit did more damage than Frost Strike unless I had all the cards lined up (cinderglacier proc, killing machine, diseases up). and the sad truth is even as 2h frost HB would do more damage usually than FS if diseases are up.

but the way Blood works, I pull with IT, PS right after, then oblit, heart strike, heart strike, repeat with death coils/rune strikes thrown in when I have the RP to dump them.

 

[Angry Grimace]

The problem I had was, even as deep frost, Oblit did more damage than Frost Strike unless I had all the cards lined up (cinderglacier proc, killing machine, diseases up). and the sad truth is even as 2h frost HB would do more damage usually than FS if diseases are up.

but the way Blood works, I pull with IT, PS right after, then oblit, heart strike, heart strike, repeat with death coils/rune strikes thrown in when I have the RP to dump them.

Perhaps I'm missing something you're saying; Frost Strike uses runic power and is used as a dump AFTER Obliterate (which uses UF runes). You're supposed to take Annihilation and spam both Obliterate AND Frost Strike.

The strength of the spec comes from the fact that Frost Strike creates a significant improvement in the damage of your runic dumps over spamming Death Coil.

 

[firex]

well, it's just that as an RP dump, FS was still pretty weak and with the relatively short frost rotation, I had more opportunities for oblit spam on enemies than I did FS spam. although it's probably different in raids when stuff won't die so fast. And it takes too much setup/one crappy runeforge (compared to fallen crusader, imo) to make FS better than oblit.

then again I went with a deep frost/little bit of unholy (enough to get epidemic at least) build so I could basically spam oblit since that's 2h frost's main damage/RP building skill. With diseases lasting that long it's easy to do PS->IT->BS x2->Oblit->FS->Oblit x2->FS spam, and even easier after 3.1.

but blood had a simpler rotation and I liked death coil as an RP dump. I mean it's basically bound to the same rules as FS, does a little less damage, but it's ranged and doesn't need diseases for extra damage. although the 3.1 glacier rot will probably make FS a lot stronger.

 

[trupclow]

I may be in the minority, but I'm a 2H frost spec'd dk. It started out as an experiment by the guild, wanting to see if the icy talons buff would help out the rest of our dps and make up for the dps I would lose by respeccing. Eventually I found that my dps really wasn't much different from my unholy 2H dps. Last night I was at 5.2k dps on patch and 2nd on the meters and I'm usually among the top dps for our raids.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going back to Unholy after the patch. Frost was a lot more fun to play than unholy.

 

[Xabora]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuJIk9SPeTI
Video is out, tram system... explains what the large black spot was during the video from 2008.

http://www.wowhead.com/?blog=77991
Looks like glyphs got new icons.

 

[Mareg]

Holy cow I just looked at the enhancment shaman changes !!!

For real ?


* Spirit Weapons: Now reduces all threat generated by 30%, not just physical attacks.
* Stormstrike charges have been increased by 2, and cooldown reduced by 2 sec.
* Improved Stormstrike re-designed: When you Stormstrike, you have a 50/100% chance to immediately grant you 20% of your base mana.
* Unleashed Rage - Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Each point now also increases your total Agility by 1/2/3%.


For real ????
Holy bejesus buff. I think I'll just push my lvl 50 shaman all the way to 80 in time for Ulduar. these changes are just ridiculous. Enh-shamans are going to be spaming that stormstrike key like no tomorrow :lol

 

[Angry Grimace]

well, it's just that as an RP dump, FS was still pretty weak and with the relatively short frost rotation, I had more opportunities for oblit spam on enemies than I did FS spam. although it's probably different in raids when stuff won't die so fast. And it takes too much setup/one crappy runeforge (compared to fallen crusader, imo) to make FS better than oblit.

then again I went with a deep frost/little bit of unholy (enough to get epidemic at least) build so I could basically spam oblit since that's 2h frost's main damage/RP building skill. With diseases lasting that long it's easy to do PS->IT->BS x2->Oblit->FS->Oblit x2->FS spam, and even easier after 3.1.

but blood had a simpler rotation and I liked death coil as an RP dump. I mean it's basically bound to the same rules as FS, does a little less damage, but it's ranged and doesn't need diseases for extra damage. although the 3.1 glacier rot will probably make FS a lot stronger.

Frost Strike doesn't need diseases for extra damage either. I'm not certain how you end up in a situation where you have to take either or. Also, I'm pretty sure Blizzard is trying their hardest to not allow DK's to do disease-less rotations. I don't dislike the diseases, I just dislike a situation where I have to monitor them intently and am fucked if/when they fall off.

 

[Epix]

 

[Angry Grimace]

I may be in the minority, but I'm a 2H frost spec'd dk. It started out as an experiment by the guild, wanting to see if the icy talons buff would help out the rest of our dps and make up for the dps I would lose by respeccing. Eventually I found that my dps really wasn't much different from my unholy 2H dps. Last night I was at 5.2k dps on patch and 2nd on the meters and I'm usually among the top dps for our raids.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going back to Unholy after the patch. Frost was a lot more fun to play than unholy.

I'm not sure I see a huge nerf to Frost's DPS on the way if you aren't in a classic DW build; Howling Blast does get a nerf, but I personally don't use HB as deep frost without a Rime proc anyways, and the buff to Glacier Rot and disease duration essentially leaves Black Ice's damage bonus unchanged in most cases. Plus BotN gives a FS damage bonus now, so I imagine it's pretty similar. I don't get the removal of DK Auras though.

 

[Epix]

Ulduar video preview:

HD Windows
HD Mac

 

[VaLiancY]

What's the mod that pulls the camera further back? I'm installing new addons like a madman.

 

[Angry Grimace]

What's the mod that pulls the camera further back? I'm installing new addons like a madman.

I believe there's a command line that does it without an addon. I used one to pull back to absurd lengths but I have forgotten it already.

 

[vumpler]

Holy cow I just looked at the enhancment shaman changes !!!


For real ????
Holy bejesus buff. I think I'll just push my lvl 50 shaman all the way to 80 in time for Ulduar. these changes are just ridiculous. Enh-shamans are going to be spaming that stormstrike key like no tomorrow :lol

We already do... So nothing is changing in our rotation it's still

(in order of preference up time)Maelstrom Weapon 5's lightning bolt > Stromstrike > Earth Shock > Lava Lash > Fire Nova Totem > Lightning Shield > Refresh other Totems

However I do feel its the most fun dps class to play. We have pretty much everything and our DPS is quite solid. It seems our DPS ceiling is lower than others (which it should be), but getting to 3-4,000 DPS is easier.

The DPS rotation is the most funt o play in my opinion because missing one preference is easily reflected in your dps. And also its fun gambling on MW5 some times. So say you have 4 stacks of MW up, and there's only 1 second left until Stormstrike is back up, do you start wailing on SS or do you wait 3 tenths of a second and pray MW5 will be up? It's always fun and doesn't get old.

 

[vumpler]

The real question for hance shammy's will be if the Frost main hand weapon will be better than Windfury PVE dps wise.. If it's not then I have no idea why they added it.

 

[Yixian]

Ima be the white one soon enough

 

[VaLiancY]

I guess I should get around to leveling my Shaman, it was my first alt til I got bored and didn't want to do the level grind all over again. I don't know how people have a million alts. I tip my hat to them.