Posts with tag anticipation

This is something that I can personally attest to. Waiting for the details when it's near expansion time can be absolutely agonizing. And yet, wait we must - there's simply no alternative. No amount of speculation, simming based on tantalizing glimpses, or twitter bombardment will force those details from Blizzard before they're ready.

@MysticalOS Wait for the details. I'm just letting you know that you don't have the full picture to be able to evaluate what many are.

- Celestalon (@Celestalon) February 24, 2014

Those details Celestalon is talking about are item squish related in this case, but it's not even remotely the only thing we're waiting for details on now. People (myself included) are desperate for details on a host of issues (button bloat, new raids, the lore/storyline) that we're simply not being told yet, and I know how maddening it can be. It gets worse after events like last week's press trip, because interviews and articles begin tantalizing us with tidbits of information. We see bits and pieces, but in these pre-beta days we can't see the whole picture.

I remember during the end of the Wrath of the Lich King's cycle, waiting for details on Cataclysm, and seeing everyone in my guild speculating on every last thing. The worgen models, the new raids, where would the final raid even be, you name it and we speculated on it. Speculation is fun, it's natural when there's a dearth of info, but it's not something you can hold Blizzard to. Often I see people surprised and upset when an expansion ends up not being what they expected, even if Blizzard never once promised them the thing they built up in their anticipation.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Now that the patch is live, we know which changes made it and which were cut in development. Vitality's buff was cut in half, but combat rogues are still sitting quite pretty. Assassination had a last-minute 10% boost to its damage via Assassin's Resolve, which should ensure that the spec performs well. Subtlety's Sanguinary Vein buff also stayed put, which should increase the number of subtlety rogues raiding in this tier.

Along with the purely numerical changes, we also have to factor in our new set bonuses, talents, and ability changes that arrived with the patch. Rogues received more changes than usual in this patch cycle, and I am hopeful that we'll continue to excel in PvE while also gaining ground in PvP representation. Patch 5.2 is full of cool new tools for rogues, which has me very excited for this raid tier.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

The original Shuriken Toss never made sense. Why would rogues, a purely melee class, want a single ranged attack? We don't have the supporting toolbox to make the transition into a ranged DPS spec. Melee uptime is our top priority. Because of our reliance on our melee attacks, mobility is our most requested feature. Why would a class want Shuriken Toss when they can have Shadowstep?

Patch 5.2 is turning a one-off ranged ability into everything a rogue needs to attack targets from range. If you use Shuriken Toss on a target that is farther than 10 yards away, your auto-attacks gain a 30-yard range for 10 seconds. The auto-attacks turn into tiny shuriken that you throw at your target. These shuriken have several special properties, but the extended range is obviously the most important aspect of the ability. With Shuriken Toss, ranged auto-attacks, and Deadly Throw, rogues suddenly have a ranged repertoire.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Rogue rotations haven't changed significantly since Cataclysm. Each of our three specs has a new element or two added to the mix, like Blindside and the revamped Revealing Strike. The combo points and energy systems keep on ticking, enabling our familiar rotations in yet another expansion.

Rogue mechanics, on the other hand, have had several significant tweaks. While each change is significant on its own, what's really interesting is how they fit into a larger story. The "quick offhand" paradigm that has lasted for years is breaking down. Rogues are bringing significant buffs and debuffs to every environment. Combo points are more fluid than ever. Rogue rotations may not have evolved since Cataclysm, but the class as a whole certainly has.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

While Mists of Pandaria is still actively being developed and patches are dropping regularly, the rogue of tomorrow is starting to take its final shape. The amorphous blob of shadow that we see on the horizon is congealing into something resembling a functioning class. In fact, rogues have been receiving fewer changes these past few weeks than any other class. I'm not surprised by this fact, as there's really not much to improve upon when we're already a model class.

With talent choices reduced to a half-dozen easy decisions, there's really not much you can mess up while playing your rogue in Mists. I like to think that you can break a class down into three basic categories: customization, enhancement, and execution. You need to pick the talents and glyphs that best suit your situation, gear up with the right gems and enchants, and finally push the right buttons.

So when the Dungeon Finder came out, it was pretty cool even for DPS. A 10 minute wait for a DPS slot for a 5-man dungeon is pretty insanely awesome. If nothing else, it was certainly faster than the old way of sitting in Dalaran for 2 hours picking your nose and watching the LFG channel.

Now that the dungeon finder has been around for a while though, things are getting a bit stickier for DPS. My server averages around 15-20 minutes for a level 80, and I've heard some battlegroups are up to 30-45 minutes, even at prime time. To make matters worse, tanks and healers can continue to boast instant or near-instant queues almost everywhere, leaving the poor DPS green with envy.

Now technically, this is how it's almost always worked. Tanks and Healers get groups pretty quick, DPS has to wait around. And all told, the dungeon finder system is still pretty cool, and you still get a group faster than the old way. That said, now that we've had a taste of true power, I'm sure we're all loathe to lose it. Luckily, death knights have an out: We can go tank.

Whether you're a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column's for you.

With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. This week he's trying to help those of you crazy enough to tank Gnomergon when it's still a level appropriate instance.

We're doing a much longer than expected series of articles on the low level dungeon runners now that the new cross-realm Dungeon Finder is up and running. This is part two of our series on the low level tank. Last week we talked about the basics of threat, avoidance, mitigation, and what stats to be on the lookout for when choosing gear.

We did promise to get into talents and skills this week, but that would have ended up being three pages long. So we're going to leave skills until next week and just concentrate on talents this time around. If you're extremely new, take a look at this nice article explaining talents for new players. If you've got that down, let's start move on to more paladin specific info.

Welcome to the first post-Wrath installment of Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column. Join Daniel Whitcomb on the bleeding edge of a new and untried class.

So Wrath is upon us, and we can finally start leveling our Death Knights on the live servers. That's right, this time it's for keeps. I'm pretty excited about that. One thing, though, that I haven't gotten to do yet on live servers is tank a dungeon. It's not that I don't want to, it's that 98% of the people leveling through Outland right now are Death Knights, so finding a healer is a bit difficult. Still, I did my fair share of tanking on Beta servers, and I played a Druid tank for years, and I'm figuring I'll do my fair share of tanking again at 80. Thus, I decided that this week is the perfect time to start getting ready to tank, even if Utgarde may be the first instance most Death Knights will get a group for.

Let's get down to the basics:

It's a sweet time to be a Tankadin. I know that AoE tanking is no longer the exclusive domain of Paladins, but that's cool. With the changes to the way tanking works now, tanks generally generate threat by dishing out more damage... and boy does a Protection Paladin deal damage. Because Protection is the tanking tree, a PvE-oriented endeavor, I'm going to put away my PvP-fanatic hat aside and focus on a build that is optimal for tanking. Don't worry, even in this spec Paladins are still formidable. That's just the way it works in the new world.

We see a big change right away on the first tier with Blessing of Kings made accessible to all. It's not quite the baseline spell we've been asking for, but it's close. Some players can choose to pick up a scaled down version for less than five points, but since this is standard raid fare, we're throwing in 5 points here including Improved Blessing of Kings. We're also going to pick up Divine Strength on this tier, which was moved from the Holy tree. It's important to note that pretty much everything we use scales off attack power now, too, so more Strength means more pain. And more pain means more threat. Strength also contributes to block value, so we'll be looking to get Strength in our gear, too.

So, where were we? Right. Paladin changes. While everyone and his mother got whacked by the nerf bat this build, Paladins got little more than a love tap from the devs, making me think that the Light, indeed, is watching over us all. As I mentioned in an earlier post, while seal damage got nerfed, the new talents and tree shuffles are shaping up to be good for the class.

Holy was left mostly untouched, leaving many Holy Paladins feeling distraught and apprehensive. As I've learned throughout the whole Wrath Beta experience, it's always just best to... chillax. Don't worry about it. Blizzard changed Beacon of Light last build and it's somewhat overpowered, but even though they've already said they'll tweak it a bit more, they left it as is this build. Everything will balance out in time. For this build, however, Retribution gets a chance to shine -- but so does Protection, and boy, does it shine bright. If you thought Retribution got some love, wait til you see what Protection got.

The latest announced changes for Death Knights are out, and this time, they seem to be mostly concerned with tanking. There's two major philosophies that Blizzard seems to following for Death Knights: First, any tree should be able to excel at tanking at least to the 5-man level, and Death Knight tanking should be at least somewhat interactive.

In that vein, they're introducing two revamped late tree tanking talents to the mix. In Frost, Unbreakable Armor will be a usable ability that costs 1 frost rune, but will only increase armor by 25% and Strength by 5%. In Blood, Vampiric Blood (previously mentioned in last week's Lichborne) will be a 1 blood rune ability that increases healing received from all sources by 50%. Both abilities will not trigger the GCD, will last 20 seconds, and will have a 2 minute cooldown. Blizzard aims to balance these 2 abilities with Bone Armor (which will have an internal cooldown of 3.5 seconds, like Shaman shields) to create 3 viable late tree tanking abilities.

It's Wrath of the Lich King Beta time, and finally time to meet the new Death Knight class. Unfortunately, we can't really guarantee you'll be meeting the same class that you'll see in the live game, per se. It's not that the class isn't shaping up well or isn't quite distinctive, it's more that there's just so much that's changing.

The next build that's scheduled to hit the Beta servers is a perfect example. Not only will talent trees be changing extensively, with some talents becoming baseline and some baseline abilities becoming talents, some talents switching tiers, and others even switching trees, but the very way we inflict and stack diseases will be getting some tweaking as well. In addition, many of the Death Knight's baseline abilities, especially related to disease and damage rotations, are changing as well.

So with all these changes, what can you say about a class that's changing drastically on a weekly basis, and may look completely different from how it does now by the time Wrath goes live? Is it really possible to speak about an overarching unifying theory of Death Knights?

Well, let's try. Welcome to the first annual State of the Death Knight address.