At least the tanking T12 legplates have mastery on them... unlike the T11 legs. I think that might be the first thing I spend VP on next week to replace the 353s from ZA that I just spent a ton to put an armor kit on and such. Bah.
I'm blowing all my VPs on non-set pieces first, since I've still got 4T11 and would rather replace a couple pieces at a time, perhaps getting 2T12, before I lose the nice 4T11 bonus.
You know what's fucking great? How all the god damn VP gear for plate DPS classes has crit on it, which is the shittiest stat for any of the DK DPS specs. And then the DPS T12 helm and shoulders are some of the best itemized pieces (but obviously the hardest to get) while the chest, which can be picked up with VP, is loaded with crit and sucks. Thanks guys!
Everything in Firelands has crit. And some fury warrior was complaining about the 365 blacksmith sword being poorly itemized for them.
You know what's fucking great? How all the god damn VP gear for plate DPS classes has crit on it, which is the shittiest stat for any of the DK DPS specs. And then the DPS T12 helm and shoulders are some of the best itemized pieces (but obviously the hardest to get) while the chest, which can be picked up with VP, is loaded with crit and sucks. Thanks guys!
Everything in Firelands has crit. And some fury warrior was complaining about the 365 blacksmith sword being poorly itemized for them.
My guild hardly gets any plate drops for whatever reason, but yeah, what I've seen so far is pretty crit loaded. The only really good thing is that there's a very well itemized (for DKs) 2H axe off Shannox, who is basically the easiest boss on both normal and heroic.
Yeah, I've downed Shannox three times now, so hopefully I can get it soon. Wowhead says it has a 20% drop rate, and I'm holding out hope. I don't want to make the Elementium Masterwork thing because aaaauuuugggghhh eight truegold.
Yeah, I've downed Shannox three times now, so hopefully I can get it soon. Wowhead says it has a 20% drop rate, and I'm holding out hope. I don't want to make the Elementium Masterwork thing because aaaauuuugggghhh eight truegold.
Yeah, I've downed Shannox three times now, so hopefully I can get it soon. Wowhead says it has a 20% drop rate, and I'm holding out hope. I don't want to make the Elementium Masterwork thing because aaaauuuugggghhh eight truegold.
I don't even notice the model re-use behind all of the boring and generic stats.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
So, I've rocked Unholy spec since DK release and the pet was my favorite aspect of it, but ever since they changed the pet stances to Assist/Defense/Passive, my pet would just randomly jump into packs of trash on its own. Had quite enough of that after a few wipes, so I switched to Frost (2H for the moment, as I'm waiting to have the 365 1handers crafted and I'm not about to pay 40 fucking k for one Obsidium Cleaver, let alone 80 for two).
Anyway, yeah...wow. Critting for 30-60k on a regular basis makes me actually feel as though I'm doing real damage to things, and the on-demand AoE is significant and quite nice. I guess Cata's the reign of Frost, and I do miss my ghoul and gargoyle, but them's the breaks.
So, I've rocked Unholy spec since DK release and the pet was my favorite aspect of it, but ever since they changed the pet stances to Assist/Defense/Passive, my pet would just randomly jump into packs of trash on its own. Had quite enough of that after a few wipes, so I switched to Frost (2H for the moment, as I'm waiting to have the 365 1handers crafted and I'm not about to pay 40 fucking k for one Obsidium Cleaver, let alone 80 for two).
Anyway, yeah...wow. Critting for 30-60k on a regular basis makes me actually feel as though I'm doing real damage to things, and the on-demand AoE is significant and quite nice. I guess Cata's the reign of Frost, and I do miss my ghoul and gargoyle, but them's the breaks.
Seems like Frost is the srs bsns raider spec of choice for dps DKs for now. Probably for the best since huge crits are fun and everyone has been playing Unholy forever.
I'm blowing all my VPs on non-set pieces first, since I've still got 4T11 and would rather replace a couple pieces at a time, perhaps getting 2T12, before I lose the nice 4T11 bonus.
I just decided to start picking up tier, i do miss my extra 6 seconds of IBF, but can't beat the stats, also we've got normal firelands clear so just a matter of time before i get that tasty t12 4 piece bonus
Yeah, I've downed Shannox three times now, so hopefully I can get it soon. Wowhead says it has a 20% drop rate, and I'm holding out hope. I don't want to make the Elementium Masterwork thing because aaaauuuugggghhh eight truegold.
The risk of talking about one particular spec in a blog is then everyone will wonder when BM hunters or Disc priests are going to get "their" blog. It's not going to work like that, but since I referenced the DK tanking style so much in the previous tanking blog, I feel like it's appropriate to go into a little more detail about what we don't like about DK tanking (and how we’re going to fix it) so that all tanks have a better idea of what the future might hold for their own character.
Outbreak
One of the fundamental tensions in DK tanking is deciding whether to spend a rune on diseases (which offer necessary tanking debuffs) or save the rune for Death Strike. Our hope was that choosing how to spend the resources would be interesting. A rogue for example has to decide on whether to spend resources on Slice and Dice or Eviscerate (or a number of other things). In reality though, we don’t think this decision has been a fun one. You feel cheated if you refresh diseases and then need to Death Strike a moment later, and you feel like a bad tank if you just neglect diseases. For 4.3, we’re going to give Blood DKs a 30 second Outbreak, so they will never have to manually apply diseases to a single target. Yes, that can lead to even more Death Strikes but we think adding a fun alternative to Death Strike is not the kind of thing we can easily change for 4.3.
I feel the need to point out that we’re not just being lazy here. We understand that many players get really worn down by constant class design change, especially mid-expansion, even if they end up improving the experience overall. Deciding when to make serious changes and when to wait is a major challenge of MMO game design. I’ll try and explore this more in a future blog.
Blade Barrier
We originally designed this talent to encourage DKs to not sit on their runes, and it worked fine for that. However, the current model of Death Strike, which we also like, is that the timing of the Death Strike matters a great deal, encouraging you to… you guessed it… sit on your runes. We’re just going to change Blade Barrier to something more passive (and yes, temporarily more boring) for 4.3.
Death Strike
It sucks when Death Strike misses. "Stack hit and expertise" is an answer to that, but not one that's really viable or even fair given that other tanks will care even less about hit and expertise in the short term. Rather than making Death Strike always hit, we’re going to let it always heal you, and proc Blood Shield, even when it misses. This kind of tweak may very well be an interim solution given that everything I said above was that we want tanks to care about hitting to drive their mitigation. But we don’t think it’s fair to penalize the DK for working the “new way” while everyone else is still working the "old way," and it's too much of a change for 4.3 to apply the "new way" to the other three classes. In the long term, as in the Protadin example above, the rotation can't just be Death Strike, Death Strike, Death Strike... Death Strike.
Bone Shield
This change is something we’re exploring but may not pan out, so no claiming we "promised" this *cough*Abyssal Maw*cough*. So… CAVEAT: this may not come to pass. What we’re considering doing with Bone Shield is have it mitigate damage spikes. DKs are prone to spikes more so than the other tanks, particularly the paladin and warrior who can "block cap" (I assume most of you know what that entails, if not, a helpful explanation if someone asks in the comments would be appreciated). Death Strike can theoretically handle the spikes, but if you miss (less of an issue with the above change) or time your DS poorly, you might take much higher damage than other tanks from a single hit. Our idea is that Bone Shield would expend a charge to dampen those spikes specifically. If a single attack did a huge percent of your total health, then some of that attack would be automatically lessened for the cost of a charge. Smaller hits wouldn’t spend a charge.
Blood Shield
This is an even longer-term change. Death Strike feeling reactive is fun, and one of the things we like about how the DK tanks. Death Striking after a big hit can heal you more than Death Striking before a big hit, so you should ideally pay attention to what the boss is doing instead of just mashing buttons as soon as the runes come up. When you heal a novice DK, you may just notice they take a lot of damage. When you get in sync with a talented DK, you come to know when they are going to Death Strike and recover from big hits. However, sometimes inevitably the tank is going to hit DS too soon and not have it available a second later. Our idea is to somehow turn Blood Shield into more of a pool that you actively try to build and maintain. A system where you’re able to add to a pool of absorption would provide more granularity, which in turn would be more forgiving of errors or streaks of bad luck.
There you have it. When we're ready for the 4.3 PTR, you’ll hopefully see some of these DK changes in place. The blog we wrote that dove into our thought process for the 4.2 patch notes ended up being the most positively received blog that the class team has ever done, so we’ll definitely do one of those again for 4.3. As I mentioned, more active mitigation will probably wait for farther in the future. We might talk about how we decide on when a change is more appropriate for a hotfix, patch, or full expansion in the next developer blog. While it might be short on upcoming class changes, hopefully it will still prove interesting to some of you.
It's nice to see that some much needed quality of life improvements for blood DKs are on the horizon (well, the 3+ month horizon).
30-second Outbreak will be great, but of course missing with it will still force you to reapply IT/PS.
Blade Barrier change is good since it's a shitty minigame right now trying to use your second blood rune only as the first is about to come off cooldown in order to maximize death rune Runic Empowerment pops. It's just frustrating trying to keep it up at a ~20% miss rate, and it sucks going into pulls missing a large chunk of your passive DR. Blade Barrier served its purpose in WotLK, but it just doesn't belong in the Cata DK design.
Potential Death Strike change is uhhhh, what? I assume the runes will go on cooldown when DS misses. But do you get the RP from it then as well? It seems like this could actually hurt blood DK damage output, and might also do screwy things to the spec in PvP. The sentiment of "we don't want a DK tank to get fucked when he gets chain parried trying to DS" is good, but this solution seems like a can of worms.
I'm not sure what to think about their ideas for Bone Shield. It probably needs some sort of adjustment, but I think I'd be content for now with them just removing the rune cost.
Yeah, I've downed Shannox three times now, so hopefully I can get it soon. Wowhead says it has a 20% drop rate, and I'm holding out hope. I don't want to make the Elementium Masterwork thing because aaaauuuugggghhh eight truegold.
Plus its ugly as sin.
God it looks like a nerf sword.
PS3: MistaCreepy::Steam: MistaCreepy::360: Dead and I don't feel like paying to fix it.
Mmm, the DK buffs feel so nice. After being the red-headed steptank for an entire year, it's good not to feel so flimsy again.
I went from ~32k armor unbuffed to ~39k. 6 charge bone shield lasts quite a while sometimes (obviously not if you're tanking multiple things, but at least in that situation it no longer runs out in 10 seconds). And obviously 30-second Outbreak cooldown is a big QoL improvement for single target tanking. It's unfortunate that it can still miss, but I'll take what I can get for now.
I looked at the T13 tank set bonuses last night, and the 2 piece confuses me. Like, what good is that? I mean in theory the extra death rune could get you closer to a death strike sooner, but it just feels like such a weaksauce bonus.
Mmm, the DK buffs feel so nice. After being the red-headed steptank for an entire year, it's good not to feel so flimsy again.
I went from ~32k armor unbuffed to ~39k. 6 charge bone shield lasts quite a while sometimes (obviously not if you're tanking multiple things, but at least in that situation it no longer runs out in 10 seconds). And obviously 30-second Outbreak cooldown is a big QoL improvement for single target tanking. It's unfortunate that it can still miss, but I'll take what I can get for now.
I looked at the T13 tank set bonuses last night, and the 2 piece confuses me. Like, what good is that? I mean in theory the extra death rune could get you closer to a death strike sooner, but it just feels like such a weaksauce bonus.
Yes, yes, and more yes. Specifically regarding the T13 2 piece, I agree. It doesn't really seem like it has any benefits. I have three pieces of T13 so far, but I'm holding off on swapping to them until I have 4. I'm using the T12 4piece right now, which is great, so I don't want to break it until I can get T13 4piece.
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Everything in Firelands has crit. And some fury warrior was complaining about the 365 blacksmith sword being poorly itemized for them.
Plus its ugly as sin.
Anyway, yeah...wow. Critting for 30-60k on a regular basis makes me actually feel as though I'm doing real damage to things, and the on-demand AoE is significant and quite nice. I guess Cata's the reign of Frost, and I do miss my ghoul and gargoyle, but them's the breaks.
Seems like Frost is the srs bsns raider spec of choice for dps DKs for now. Probably for the best since huge crits are fun and everyone has been playing Unholy forever.
I just decided to start picking up tier, i do miss my extra 6 seconds of IBF, but can't beat the stats, also we've got normal firelands clear so just a matter of time before i get that tasty t12 4 piece bonus
Zero percent. 9 kills, no axe. Grr...
30-second Outbreak will be great, but of course missing with it will still force you to reapply IT/PS.
Blade Barrier change is good since it's a shitty minigame right now trying to use your second blood rune only as the first is about to come off cooldown in order to maximize death rune Runic Empowerment pops. It's just frustrating trying to keep it up at a ~20% miss rate, and it sucks going into pulls missing a large chunk of your passive DR. Blade Barrier served its purpose in WotLK, but it just doesn't belong in the Cata DK design.
Potential Death Strike change is uhhhh, what? I assume the runes will go on cooldown when DS misses. But do you get the RP from it then as well? It seems like this could actually hurt blood DK damage output, and might also do screwy things to the spec in PvP. The sentiment of "we don't want a DK tank to get fucked when he gets chain parried trying to DS" is good, but this solution seems like a can of worms.
I'm not sure what to think about their ideas for Bone Shield. It probably needs some sort of adjustment, but I think I'd be content for now with them just removing the rune cost.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/lightbringer/Muirleen/simple
God it looks like a nerf sword.
Apply diseases.
Obli > FS.
50k DPS.
Just kidding, I think I was blood for tanking and dps before.
I went from ~32k armor unbuffed to ~39k. 6 charge bone shield lasts quite a while sometimes (obviously not if you're tanking multiple things, but at least in that situation it no longer runs out in 10 seconds). And obviously 30-second Outbreak cooldown is a big QoL improvement for single target tanking. It's unfortunate that it can still miss, but I'll take what I can get for now.
I looked at the T13 tank set bonuses last night, and the 2 piece confuses me. Like, what good is that? I mean in theory the extra death rune could get you closer to a death strike sooner, but it just feels like such a weaksauce bonus.
Yes, yes, and more yes. Specifically regarding the T13 2 piece, I agree. It doesn't really seem like it has any benefits. I have three pieces of T13 so far, but I'm holding off on swapping to them until I have 4. I'm using the T12 4piece right now, which is great, so I don't want to break it until I can get T13 4piece.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582