official World of Warcraft

[the evn show]

I had to prepare my DK for tanking this weekend so here are my notes from the patch. There hasn't been a lot of theory crafting or testing of mechanics because level 80/4.0 raiding is all basically pointless. If you skim over the typical resources (ej, pwnwear, etc) this is the summary of the situation.

For spec you can basically just copy mine. She's setup to tank 5-mans/trash right now. I only really play her for a couple of hours a week on our Saturday afternoon alt run - still, her gear, stats, spec, and glyphs are pretty much cookie-cutter for any DK tank in 4.0.

For spec there aren't many optional points:

• You can take blood caked blade or will of the necropolis, IMO the extra threat from BCB is better than WotN
  
• You can take points out of blood parasites or scent of blood for abomination's might. Because the buff is so common I didn't bother with it: the extra threat/healing from the other two talents are more useful.
  
• Some combination of the above (ie: don't take blood parasites or blood caked blade and get abomination's might and will of the necropolis). I think that's a bad idea for the same reasons.
  

If you want to tank then you have really limited weapon choices:

• Heroic Pit of Sauron for Tyrannical Beheader (5-man, fairly high drop rate)
  

The only upgrades worth going for after (in order of "ease of acquisition"):

• ICC-10 man for Oxheart or Ramaladni's Blade of Culling (The later is easily available to pugs, the former is less of a sure thing)
  
• Shadows edge (crafted but requires 2 pieces from ICC25, most pugs can kill the bosses that drop them so it's basically a sure thing).
  
• ICC-25 for Bloodfall or Cryptmaker (most pugs can't kill blood prince council so these aren't good goals unless you have friends willing to bring you along)
  

All of your other slots can and should be filled either by the justice point vendor (for item level 245 or higher in any given slot) or the honor vendor. The only thing not on a vendor worth farming is "The Black Heart" an ilevel 200 trinket with 128 stam from normal mode 5-man Trial of the Champion. It's very good, but not really game breaking so the 245 +armor trinket is a good alternative. If you wanted to buy the 245 crafted bracers from the AH they should be fairly cheap. 264 crafted boots and pants would be better than the honor boots + tier 10 pants, but they're also fairly costly (2-3k i'd guess) and probably not worth the gold this close to cataclysm. There is a 264 BOE ring (and maybe a neck) that would also be good but probably not worth the gold this late in the expansion. You'll be looking for boots/bracers/ring/neck from the honor vendor and everything else form the justice points vendor.

For stats: Get hit capped (8% or 246 hit rating total) then expertise soft-capped (26 expertise total), then gem for stamina. Expertise remains valuable all the way to the hard cap of 52 but most tanks stop actively stacking it once they're dodge capped (the only fight where hitting the hard cap is a good idea is heroic Halion)

Avoiding parry isn't advantageous any more - it has the same value as crit for Dk tanks. Prefer gear that has haste to crit as it makes your runes regenerate more quickly which helps build threat. If you're over hit/expertise caps reforge for mastery.

For glyphs:

• Prime: Heart Strike, Death Strike, and Death and Decay are the obvious choices for 5-man dungeons (swap DnD for single-target tanking of bosses in raids)
  
• Major: Bloodboil, Pestilence, and Dancing Rune Weapon are the best 5-man choices. IMO it makes sense to swap bloodboil for single-target tanking.
  
• Minor: Resilient grip is mandatory (bosses are immune to the 'come over here' part, but the 'taunt' will still apply. This glyph basically gives you a no cooldown single-target taunt for boss mobs). Blood tap is worth having because it's used on cooldown. The other doesn't really matter but I'm using Horn of Winter because there's some really annoying behavior with +strength buffs (if another dk has glyphed HOW and you don't then your will fail to cast, the same happens with battle shout) for now just use the glyph to save your sanity. When it's fixed then raise ally will probably be the better choice.
  

Rotation is pretty obvious - the only tip I'd offer is that you don't want to deathstrike whenever you the runes for it.

Deathstrike heals you for 30% of the damage you've taken in the last 5 seconds so you'll want to keep it available for when bosses use "big hits".

Obviously you'll still use it as part of your rotation but if you know a 'deep breath' or similar ability is coming then you'll want to hold back for a couple of seconds.

Spamming icy touch is no longer a viable way to hold threat: they removed the giant +threat component from it.

You'll want to keep rune strike macro'd into your main abilities (heart strike, death strike, icy touch, plague strike) for now. Its supposed to work how frost strike but it's bugged at the moment and still has the old "overpower for DKs" behaviour.

DK tanks are pretty good right now. it's not as easy as it was in 3.3.5 but they've faired pretty well this patch and they'll be very strong at 85.

[Minifig]

! ! ! ! BLIZZCON TODAY ! ! ! !

[gigapixels Veteran]

Yeah, I'm at it :p

[Slane]

Heads to those that want some more heirloom items before Cata drops. Champion's Purse now gives 1 champion seal and 10g everytime now. So that's an additional 4 seals per day. May or may not be faster to farm seals for heirlooms than JP.

[iKenndac]

I'd be there, but I'm still having to sign on to WoW on an hourly basis to try and get this stupid Sinister Squashling. :crazy:

Oh, and I'm in Sweden. Hooray Virtual Ticket! :D

[Elliott]

Heads to those that want some more heirloom items before Cata drops. Champion's Purse now gives 1 champion seal and 10g everytime now. So that's an additional 4 seals per day. May or may not be faster to farm seals for heirlooms than JP.

That makes using Champion's Seals a lot quicker (or at least a lot less work). The JP prices on heirlooms are ridiculously high.

Thanks for the heads up!

[iKenndac]

Finally!!!

After nearly a week of trick or treating on a nearly hourly basis every single damn day, I finally got my Hallow's End meta. I got 70 tooth picks, three Hallowed Helms and finally, just now, my Sinister Squashling. Oh, and a crapload of other stuff:

[ylcard]

Feeling any different now ? In case you've lost track of time, it's the 3rd of July, 2039.

lol :)

[Minifig]

Spoilers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IhRuyPFmlY

[Tharp Daddy]

Well i started playing my rogue today and i'm now level 17. I must say i'm quite enjoying the play style of the rogue, it's a nice change of pace after the "in your face" type of other classes. Plus - can't go wrong with 700 damage crits at level 15, one shotting elites has never been so fun.

[Minifig]

Anyone care to give a few thoughts: http://forums.worldo...397543609&sid=1 ?

Please, bump it if you can too.

[Slane]

Anyone care to give a few thoughts: http://forums.worldo...397543609&sid=1 ?

Please, bump it if you can too.

No. The whole idea is no, and by reading the thread nothing is going to change your mind, so it's not worth discussing any further. Simply no.

[Argi]

Keep in mind all the quest and dungeon loot is being redesigned to actually have sensible combinations of stats.

[Lord Nite]

Anyone care to give a few thoughts: http://forums.worldo...397543609&sid=1 ?

Please, bump it if you can too.

A supremely emphatic NO. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[Eric Veteran]

I'd be there, but I'm still having to sign on to WoW on an hourly basis to try and get this stupid Sinister Squashling. :crazy:

Oh, and I'm in Sweden. Hooray Virtual Ticket! :D

I got a Squashling and a Hallowed Helm out of the same bag... It was a treat bag from an innkeeper!

[Slane]

I got a Squashling and a Hallowed Helm out of the same bag... It was a treat bag from an innkeeper!

Got my Squashling last year. Gotten 3 so far this year, but only one flimsy mask. :(

[the evn show]

It's been kind of slow since patch 4.0. I had some time tonight to run with the "common follk" and took a trip to ToC10.

My UI is back to 100% awesome, save for updating my target/focus SBF filters to show only "stuff I can purge" on hostiles,

"Stuff i can cleanse" on friends" and "encounter specific mechanics (like mortal wound)" on both.

The only change I'd like to make is to make my top right buffs filter a little more carefully. Row 1 should be things like

flasks, auras, raid buffs (MoTW, Fortitude,etc) and row 2 should be "short" buffs like rejuvenate, BoSanc, etc.

Now that the foreground FPS sliders are easy to set I capped mine at 35 so that my graphic card/cpu fans never have to

spin up.

[Minifig]

Yay! I fixed my Deathwing video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLUuuIjj-QA

[Shaun N.]

Yay! I fixed my Deathwing video!

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=qLUuuIjj-QA

No.

[lalalawawawa]

4th expansion being worked on. :D

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/news/4th-wow-expansion.html

[Minifig]

No.

Did you even watch the whole video? :crazy:

[Shaun N.]

Did you even watch the whole video? :crazy:

Yup, It sounds like the T Rex from Jurassic park.

[Slane]

4th expansion being worked on. :D

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/news/4th-wow-expansion.html

Love WoW, but at this point I'm more interested in hearing about the MMO. Maybe my mind will change when Cata is released, but I dunno.

@evn: What addon does the text based mail and etc. next to minimap and what's the addon showing Anub health underneath Bloodlust buff?

[Elliott]

@evn: What addon does the text based mail and etc. next to minimap and what's the addon showing Anub health underneath Bloodlust buff?

Not sure about the Anub health thing, but I'm pretty sure the indicators to the left of the minimap are from StatBlockCore displaying various LibDataBroker addons.

[the evn show]

@evn: What addon does the text based mail and etc. next to minimap and what's the addon showing Anub health underneath Bloodlust buff?

Health bar is provided by DXE a replacement for deadly boss mods, bigwigs, etc.

Mail etc is Stat blocks. Think of it like a replacement for Fubar

but you're allowed to position your little modules anywhere on the screen. The are plugins for things like dungeon finder, mail, calendar, DPS, etc. that

you can add.

Both are available from curse.