Posts with tag bloodlust

The first round of patch notes for patch 4.0.6 went up on the PTR today, and among them is a long-anticipated change to arena:

Official patch 4.0.6 patch notes

Bloodlust, Heroism, Time Warp and Ancient Hysteria can no longer be cast while in Arenas.

source

To some players (mainly my fellow shaman), this change has been viewed as a huge nerf. Bloodlust has long been one of the main assets a shaman brings to an arena team. Ever since Season 1, shaman have been able to cite Bloodlust / Heroism as one of the main reasons they were allowed to PvP at a competitive level.

However, Bloodlust has been both a blessing and a curse for shaman. In nearly every season of Wrath of the Lich King, one of the most frequently cited complaints by enhancement shaman in arena was that Bloodlust was the only reason they were on the team. Beast cleave and enh/arms/holy paladin were both comps that relied on the shaman to Bloodlust so that their arena partners could dish out the major damage. Elemental and restoration shaman fared better towards the tail end of the expansion, but there still was an overall feeling that the strongest contribution to the team a shaman could offer was its Heroism cooldown.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights.

Patch 4.0.3 and the Cataclysm expansion are approaching quickly, and frankly, we're in pretty good shape right now. Yes, there are issues you can point at in almost every tree that could be just a little better, but honestly, most of them are pretty minor. We're really solidly set up for leveling (if you don't mind leveling in a tank spec), dungeon running, and even the first tier of raiding, and for now we can feel pretty secure about ourselves (or at least about our class).

That said, there are almost always improvements to be made, and I do want to take a little bit of time to talk about the issue of the unholy tree's complicated love-hate relationship with haste. Now, you're still going to be stacking and gemming strength as much as possible when you gear up. Strength is still king, don't get me wrong, and you'll always want to get your melee hit capped out. But after that, haste pretty much rules for the roost for unholy. It vaults past critical strike rating and leaves mastery somewhere two or three miles down the road, it's so good.

This isn't too much of a problem at first glance. It's arguably a little boring stacking one secondary stat over others, but that's more or less a reality of gearing up a DPS. It's very rare that two secondary stats share equal billing. We did have a problem with reaching the GCD cap early on in the beta, but the addition of a GCD reduction element to Unholy Presence fixed that pretty handily.

That said, there's still two big problems, one of which primarily affects unholy, the other of which affects all three trees.

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

This week I'm dual wielding topics. Neither one was enough to keep you entertained, my lovely and intelligent readers, for a full week's worth of enhancement, but combined together I think we can accomplish something. Consider a Stormstrike post with fire elemental mechanics in one hand and Cataclysm changes in the other.

If you're firmly in the "don't tell me anything about Cataclysm" camp, then just read the first section and skip the rest, though all I'm talking about are the recent changes to the shaman talent trees. If you don't mind a sneak peek at enhancement 4.0 as it stands now, then enjoy!

Rich Maloy lives and loves enhancement. Enhance is his main spec, his off spec, and his off-off spec. The other trees are there purely for his amusement. Whatever your shaman's spec, get your questions ready for the Totem Recall shaman roundtable on Raid Warning coming July 13. Send your questions in now to be answered by the top shaman from around Azeroth.

Last week we covered the Lower Spire of ICC and how enhancement shaman (or any damage-dealing class, for that matter) can maximize their cooldown usage. This week we'll use the 25% buff and power-clear the rest of the instance.

Rotface

Regular and Heroic Another fight where Heroism off the start is the best way to go. The oozes come out faster the lower his health gets, so my theory is to get as much damage on target early on. At the end, things are hectic and too much damage is lost as too many people are running around or dead. You can pre-pot here to have another Potion of Speed available to use later on in combat. An early Hero makes cooldown management easy; use at the beginning and then again at every opportunity.

We're taking a break from bare-bones basics this week to address a topic that pops up for fresh level 80s who are still adjusting to their new curve of power. When is the best time to use long-cooldown abilities, trinkets or anything else that provides a massive, temporary boost in power? (The quick, easy answer: Regularly. Unused abilities that you're saving "just in case" tend to remain ... well, unused.) Things get more complicated, though, when you're juggling cooldowns in a raid group that's savvy to the benefits of a well-timed Heroism (Alliance) or Bloodlust (Horde). When is the right time to go for broke?

Dear Glorious WoW.com Writers,

I have a question on my mind that I suspect a lot of other people have on their minds as well. Should DPS pop their cooldowns/trinkets during Bloodlust or after Bloodlust? I would think you should stack your cooldowns with Bloodlust because you get the effect of them plus 30% haste, increasing their effect by that much. On the other hand, maybe the wiser option is to use cooldowns after bloodlust, so you have the effect of the Bloodlust then the effect of the cooldowns, which spreads it out a little more. What are factors in deciding to use cooldowns with Bloodlust or after Bloodlust? Does mana limits factor in to this at all? I can't find a straight answer on the internet anywhere, and was hoping you could provide me with one.

Thank you,
Bownzy of Blackwing Lair (US)

Join us for a quick roundup of thoughts from WoW.com staffers, after the break.

The hot news for last couple of weeks has been all of the April previews for Cataclysm class changes. I do want to take a moment before we dive into more analysis to caveat that these are previews. They're not full and complete changes as much as a sneak peak into the brains of the developers. They're saying things like "intent" and "vision" and "what we have planned." The code's not all written, and it's not all been through beta testing. Heck, any of it could change between now and tomorrow, let alone between now and the time Cataclysm hits the shelves. So the important part is: don't panic.

That being said, these previews do give us a handful of insights into some new raid dynamics. I talked about new abilities like Leap of Faith and Vengeance in last week's Ready Check, but now that we have all of the previews out and published, there's even more to talk about. Let's start with that time-honored tank healers, the holy paladin.

If you're a shaman you're familiar with the "grar grar grar grar" sound of Bloodlust or the "ktang!" of Heroism, its Alliance counterpart. For a long time one of the complaints has been that you absolutely had to have a shaman along in order to gain access to this buff. Even when leatherworking drums and inscription scrolls were created for lesser versions of buffs like Blessing of Kings and Prayer of Fortitude, Bloodlust/Heroism were still a unique buff to the shaman class.

Is that going to change? A discussion on the forums leads to Ghostcrawler revealing that yes, they are considering allowing Bloodlust/Heroism be a buff one can gain through an item. Now, I'm torn. On the one hand, NO! Keep your filthy crafter fingers off of my precious! My precious! I'll kill you! I'll kill all of you! But on the other hand, it really isn't fair at this point that Bloodlust/Heroism is pretty much the only buff we can't get a lesser version of through crafted items. A 25% speed increase for 30 seconds (or even 35) would be weak enough in comparison to real Bloodlust that you wouldn't have to worry terribly about being replaced by a drum kit. I suppose. Man, I don't want you to have my Heroism. Like I said, I'm torn.

So what do you think oh why am I even asking we all know you want my precious. My precious!

Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we haul ourselves to Outland and are shocked to discover that +spellpower sometimes comes on leather.

The above video is the result of an idle question I was asked recently by a friend: "So how much damage would you guys do in caster form meleeing?" I started to answer and then realized I had no idea. The notion of actually hitting something with a weapon is utterly foreign to the class. We have claws and a can of celestial pain for that nonsense if provoked, but still, the question was pretty interesting, particularly because after seeing Prinnygod's comment from last week I started to wonder about all the different ways you could level as a Druid if you deliberately avoided Cat and Moonkin. Sure, you'd be a gibbering wreck at the level cap, but that's beside the point. Blizzard once had a talent called Weapon Balance in the Balance tree that improved our melee damage with weapons by 10% -- they were expecting us to hit things. I wondered how that would have worked out if Druid talent trees had never been overhauled.

So I took my main to the mobs outside the Argent Tournament and smacked stuff while running a stopwatch. What you'll see here is a level 79 Frostbrood Whelp with 12,600 health which took me 34.4 seconds to kill, with two global cooldowns devoted to casting a Rejuvenation and then a Lifebloom. I'm currently on a Feral (Bear) spec and thus wearing gear that does help one's melee damage, mind you, but that still works out to a godawful 366.28 DPS. The moral of our little story can be found at the end of the video. Master of Arms is going to be a real trip.

A pair of 3v3 teams from the US Bloodlust Battlegroup -- aka BG9 and reputed to be the best US Battlegroup -- recently hit the 3000 rating, the hard cap for Arena ratings. A few other teams following closely behind at 2953 and 2949, making it likely that they, too, will hit 3000 before Season 6 is over. This has caused a bit of a stir in the Arena community, although it's not entirely unexpected considering all the changes that had been made to the Arena system since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. In fact, some had predicted that this season would see teams hit 3k legitimately (unscrupulous win-traders have hit the ceiling before).

The two teams, big furious joke and sup fresh our turn baby, an RLS (Rogue, Warlock, Shaman) and a RetPR (Retribution Paladin, Priest, Rogue) respectively, are composed of members who have performed consistently well through different Arena seasons. The Rogue of big furious joke, Nutzz, is rumored to be the legendary Neilyo, who grew to infamy with his popular series of PvP videos. Its Shaman, Douja, formerly played pro for Team Pandemic. The other team's Paladin, Euneek, topped his Battlegroup last season using the Holyplay (Ret Pally, Priest, Shaman) comp. None of these guys are slouches and aren't likely to have win traded the way teams in the past have in order to reach the hard cap.

Their recent achievement has brought the current Arena system under scrutiny, as Blizzard has stated before that they never intended for players to reach the rating ceiling. Considering the system has undergone numerous changes in the past few seasons, it's not unreasonable to think that it's due for another overhaul. Regardless of the system, a 3k rating is an incredible achievement. Congratulations on jobs well done.

[Thanks to cigarillo for the heads up!]

Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. -- Firefly, "Our Mrs. Reynolds."

Just as a recap, this is what we've covered so far in the OverAchiever: Glory of the Hero series:

• Part I: Ahn'kahet
  
• Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme
  
• Part III: Drak'Tharon Keep
  

Having finished the first of the two "troll dungeons" in Wrath, let's head to the second: Gun'drak! Gun'drak is interesting in that it houses both the easiest heroic achievement and (arguably) the most annoying all at once, What the Eck? and Less-rabi respectivey. If you're planning on doing all of these achievements in one go (which may or may not be a good idea depending on group composition), I would recommend taking a group with a Bloodlust/Heroism (you may have seen me make mention of this point before) and several interrupts. A Shaman with Reverberation can be useful on Moorabi. You will also need an off-tank and off-healer for Share The Love.

Snakes, Why'd It Have to Be Snakes?

As a note, this achievement seems to be individually- rather than group-based; you can get it even if someone else gets wrapped. However, if you're interested in getting multiple people the achievement all at once, there are ways to ensure it doesn't happen at all.

Quite a week on the podcast last Saturday -- Alex Ziebart, Adam Holisky, Turpster and I spent a considerable amount of time answering your emails (talking about everything from whether VoA has been ruined with the new raid boss to the never-say-die issue about which tank is best to take with you), and when we finally did sit down to the Meat of the Show, there was a lot, there, too: an interview with Tom Chilton, who Val'anyr is for (and that crazy proc), and we even snuck in a little Bloodlust/Heroism talk. Listen in to the show on any of the links below.

And don't forget: this Wednesday at 6pm Eastern, we'll be doing the show at a special time, since I'm out of town next weekend. And our live video show will be going down on the 23rd at 3:30pm Eastern, so mark your calendars for that if you like.

Thanks for tuning in, and enjoy the show.

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Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Flamers and trolls aside, WoW Insider readers are generally a contentious lot. Their viewpoints are as divergent as the player demographics the site attracts – all types of players, from the casual to the hardcore. With this many angles to consider, WoW Insider becomes a melting pot of ideas and opinions, from the sublime to the ridiculous. (And let's face it – some of the so-called ridiculous ideas are the most entertaining to read.)

Yet this week, readers seemed to be more often of one mind than not – whether that agreement was ultimately to agree over the topic at hand or to agree to disagree. [1.Local] highlights several reader conversations that made the radar this week.

Today on the show, it's an all-star cast of WoW Insider folks: we'll welcome Alex Ziebart and Adam Holisky both on the show to talk about the latest news from the World of Warcraft. And as usual, Turpster will join us with his own brand of silliness (don't miss our newest feature, Turpster's Tips, in which he tells you something that may or may not help you play the game better). And what is the latest news, you ask? Why, it's our interview with Tom Chilton (featuring mentions of dance moves, new Druid forms, and player housing), that legendary mace and who it's for, whether the Bloodlust love should have some spreading around, and Alex's general disappointment with the game world lately. The show starts up at May 9, 2009 3:30 PM EDT over on our Ustream page.

And we've got a full schedule in the coming weeks as well: next week, we'll be recording the show live on Wednesday, May 13th at 6pm Eastern, so those of you who aren't usually available on Saturday will have a chance to listen in. And then on the 23rd, we'll be back live at the usual Saturday time, not only with audio but with video, as we present our video show, to thank you all for boosting our Twitter page up to over 9.000 followers. We've got a lot of fun stuff planned -- trust me when I say it'll be a cavalcade of guests and jokes and good times.

And then after that, we'll be welcoming on a special guest host. Brigwyn's charity auction raised a whopping $2,500 for Child's Play this past week, and some awesome, caring fan paid almost $480 to join Turpster and I on the podcast for a week. So stay tuned for that. We'll have them on soon, and they can disagree with me or argue with Turpster or do whatever they want for the whole show. Should be a lot of fun.

The idea behind "Bring the player, not the class" is that raid stacking shouldn't be as big of a deal as it was during, oh, say, Sunwell. For each buff and debuff, we have a few different classes that can provide it, so raid leaders don't have to go too far out of their way to get good coverage.

However, what single buff was the biggest factor causing guilds to stack a particular class in Sunwell? Ten points if you said "Bloodlust/Heroism." And that is, irritatingly enough, one of the few remaining buffs that no other class has; if you want Bloodlust, you need a shaman, period.

Here at WoW Insider we don't always agree with each other. Whether it's debating the merits of various tanks on different encounters, the damage difference between pure and hybrid DPS classes, the ideal function of a particular healing class in raids, or the superiority of cake over pie, our back-channel discussion tends to be pretty interesting.

Eliah Hecht's article "25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear" sparked a lot of great discussion with our readers and, I think, some illuminating poll results as well. The majority of responders believed that giving 10-man and 25-man raids the same loot table would result in a significant drop in popularity for 25-man raiding. Overall, I tend to agree with this, but I also think that Eliah touched on something that speaks to Blizzard's evolving sense of game design, much of which is evident in the transition between late Burning Crusade and Wrath.

I would like to call this the Sunwell effect, or "ingame rationality." To wit: don't incentivize players to behave in a manner contrary to your actual design interests. I believe this played a huge role in the differences between BC and Wrath raiding, and that it underlies why the 25-man loot table has to remain superior to its 10-man counterpart.