by Daniel Whitcomb

The strange thing about talking about the unholy tree since Cataclysm is that nothing ever seems to change. Don’t get me wrong, unholy’s been on a roller coaster of nerfs and balances, it’s true, but the basic gameplay stays the same — and more importantly, the basic problems never really get fixed.

So as we come into Mists of Pandaria, where are we with unholy? It still has a relatively unique playstyle, with a pet and less difficulty keeping diseases up (but more difficulty applying them because of the rune spending issue), but this same playstyle gives it a lot of trouble, as weapon damage scales horribly and strength becomes more important — some would say too important. This is how it continues to go with unholy.

Today, we’ll take a look at the upsides and downsides of unholy as it currently exists in theMists of Pandaria beta and maybe make some suggestions for things Blizzard could focus on fixing once the death knights’ turn for class balancing comes around.
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by Joe Perez
The talent systems for Mists of Pandaria is one that’s received quite a bit of attention since it was first announced, and with good reason. It’s a complete revamp of the current system, a reduction of the total number of talents by a considerable amount and an attempt to make the talents something more fun and less mandatory.

We’ve talked about them since they were announced at BlizzCon 2011, but talking and speculating about them is much different than actually sitting down and getting to test them out for yourself. Today, I’m going to talk about my own personal experience with these talents, and I’m going to offer up my own opinions, just like the last article. The talent system now doles out talents every 15 levels, presenting a clear tier structure to anyone looking at them, and that’s exactly how we’ll tackle them.
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by Megan O’Neill

I got into the beta a week ago. So I went marching around Jade Forest and found myself continuously crashing to affliction spells triggering a fun little error. I’d heard things about moonkin and fire mages also having troubles, primarily when DoTs or debuffs were being cast. But errors are odd things, and I found I could cast Immolate all day long on my destruction spec.

So I did destro for a day of questing and flinging fire at the training dummy. Here are a few of the first thoughts I had.
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by Chase Hasbrouck
So my plan for this week’s column was to talk about how balance currently looks in the beta (short version: pretty good), but judging by a quick scan through the beta forums, that’s not what druids want to talk about. It’s Symbiosis, all the way down … and judging by the discussion, most people don’t like what they’re seeing.

I’ll be blunt: I still love the unique concept of Symbiosis, and I think most of the criticism is shortsighted. I do have quibbles about some of the specific abilities. Overall, though, I think that the concept works and will provide access to some entertaining abilities we haven’t had previously.

To be fair, however, let’s look at some of the more common arguments against Symbiosis and attempt to deconstruct them. One important thing to note: Many of the abilities gained/given from Symbiosis are modified from their original forms, so read tooltips carefully (and realize that many are not updated). The Symbiosis version of Mirror Image, for example, is much weaker than the version used by mages.
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by Josh Myers
Elamism didn’t hit level 87 on the beta this week. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but something more akin to lack of time. Despite grabbing two heroic No’kaleds from our first heroic Madness kill two weeks ago, I still had guild raiding to do this week (I ended up picking up a heroic Rathrak for my elemental spec, so I can’t complain too much), and I had to make preparations for my trip to Michigan next week. Coupled with the fact that I had to dedicate a night to testing my arcane mage as well, I wasn’t able to dedicate enough alone time with my shaman to hit level 87.

Thankfully, other people have had the opportunity to play more than I did (special thanks toAshunera, who graciously allowed me to use this Ascendance video here). It’s thanks to Ashunera that we’ve gotten our first taste of Ascendance, the new class ability coming to shaman in Mists of Pandaria. Spoiler alert: It’s totally and completely awesome.

Ascendance is a potent cooldown for every spec of shaman. It shines brightest for both of the caster specs, with enhancement coming in a fairly close third; that said, I’ll let Joe Perezshare the joys of resto’s Ascendance with his readers.
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by Matthew Rossi

With the Mists of Pandaria beta, I’ve sat down and detailed how fury and protection warriors have played out, how they’ve changed and how they’re the same. And so I wanted to do the same for arms warriors. For one thing, arms is the spec I’m currently playing on live, in heroic Dragon Soul, so I’m fairly intimate with the spec and its demands. For another, arms is right now probably the most played warrior spec in terms of its representation in heroic level raiding. So what of arms in the beta?

Arms in Mists of Pandaria is arms now, but simpler and more variable.

That’s it. The changes to arms are the changes to all warriors. Rend’s being gone and Mortal Strike’s automatically applying Deep Wounds means that all you have to do to light up Overpower in Mists is use your main attack that generates rage, which you would be a crazy mad insane fool not to use.
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by Josh Myers

After writing my first impressions of both frost and fire and totally dropping the ball on my original arcane speculations for MoP (pro tip: Arcane Missiles is still a proc), I thought it was my duty to try out arcane. I told myself that for the sake of science and fairness, I’d give arcane a shot. After a night of streaming dungeon runs, dummy testing, and some Jade Forest leveling, I almost feel like I owe arcane a huge apology — because inMoP, it’s a legitimately fun spec.
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by Allison Robert

Being the dedicated achievement hunter that I was and am (why else would I be writing this column?), I worked tirelessly on all the requirements for What A Long Strange Trip It’s Beenwhen the achievement system debuted in patch 3.0.2. This even extended to planning months in advance for the Brewmaster title before achievements even hit the game. My efforts were coming along quite nicely until Children’s Week, when an unstoppable force (me) hit an immovable object (School of Hard Knocks) — and physics being less predictable than our teachers led us to believe, it turns out that bodies in motion do not always remain so.

For an entire year, the only thing that stood between me and that purple proto-drake was that one damn achievement. And every year, I return to this guide and flinch at having to think of it again. So let’s do this, folks, and then we shall speak no more of it for another year. This is actually a great and fantastically fun holiday, with the exception of that one thing.

The Children’s Week achievements and the meta For The Children are part of the year-longWhat A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, so you will want to get these done if you’re working toward a Violet Proto-Drake. This year the holiday runs from Sunday, April 29 to Saturday, May 5.
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by Brian Wood

As the Mists of Pandaria beta progresses we’re beginning to learn more about how many of the awesome new hunter abilities will work, and of course we’re seeing many of the inevitable changes to abilities, including happy news that the 2-second cast time on Black Arrow and lack of Serpent Spread is likely to be reverted to the current design (which also means the AoE component of the beta Black Arrow is likely going away, too).

We got a look at exactly what abilities the different pet specs will have in MoP. The design is very much in keeping with the plan we discussed last week and does a good job of helping make the different pet specs feel distinctly different (since you no longer have DPS talents for tenacity pets and tanking talents for ferocity), though there are a few abilities lost that hurt.

In fact, pets are a fantastic place to start. Let’s take a look at exactly what abilities Blizzard assigned to each of the pet specs.
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