by C. Christian Moore

Drain teams were exceptionally successful in The Burning Crusade, so much so that developers went out of their way to make burst damage, and only burst damage, a successful strategy in Wrath of the Lich King. The problem, of course, was that it went completely overboard, and we were stuck looking at extreme dominance from classes that did best under high-burst-damage conditions.

In season eight, we’re seeing a return to some strategies that try to get an enemy’s mana to 0 percent before they make a serious attempt to kill anything.

I have a special place in my heart for drain comps. My first No. 1 title came from playing a drain team with fellow gladiators; it was our first time hitting No. 1 together and it was an amazing time. I probably sounded like a little girl when I screamed ridiculously loud as I saw that coveted title attached to my character’s name.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Tyler Caraway

I’ve talked quite a bit about various changes that are happening with balance druids in the coming expansion: the Eclipse changes, the talent tree changes, Moonkin Form and a slew of other topics as well. One vital change that I have somewhat neglected, however, is that to spellpower and intellect. Blizzard announced many moons ago that, come Cataclysm, the spellpower stat would be completely removed from the game; instead, raw intellect from gear would passively provide spellpower for all classes. The only exception to this rule would be caster weapons, which would still retain pure spellpower as a stat in order to balance the difference between a melee player’s gaining strength/agility and weapon DPS versus a caster’s simply gaining intellect. Unfortunately, this is a change that’s come and gone untouched.

As a core concept, removing spellpower to allow intellect to provide the same bonus is a strong change. To start with, it significantly reduces the time required to revamp lower-level quest rewards (despite the fact that most previous low-level quests are gone anyway, and thus, rewards would have had to be redone to a certain degree regardless), given that all of them already have intellect on them yet more often than not lack spellpower. This also allows for more commonality between all of the “base” stats: agility, strength, stamina and intellect (spirit is technically a secondary stat, not a primary stat). In removing spellpower and attack power as well, Blizzard allows for better balancing between spellpower and attack power values. Just as with spellpower, intellect is the new top dog in the caster stat options, especially for balance druids due to Heart of the Wild, Furor and leather armor mastery.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Allison Robert

Tanking on a bear feels like it’s turning in the direction of protection warrior tanking, which is a good thing, but I’m not sure how close Blizzard is to being done with the tree. As such, don’t take this as anything other than a few observations specific to the current beta build, and a limited few at that. The dungeon finder’s broken at the moment, so groups aren’t as easy to get.

How good is Pulverize?

Pulverize, on the outside, is a pretty sweet deal. It provides instant threat, an indirect threat buff in the form of additional crit, additional Savage Defense uptime and — for now — more rage generation, although that’s likely to be changed (which means Primal Fury in its current form won’t survive). But it does have a problem, and that’s that it turns Lacerate into something within shouting distance of the current incarnation of Swipe. In other words, it’s a skill that you wind up spamming, not because you want to, but because you kind of have to. And Lacerate is a much clumsier tool than Swipe for that purpose.
Read the rest of this entry »

by C. Christian Moore

I started enjoying 5v5 at the end of season two. For a large part of my time in WoW, 5v5 was by far and wide my favorite arena bracket. It’s also the bracket I’ve gotten most of my rank #1 titles from (clearly no coincidence to being my favorite bracket *wink*).

The 5v5 bracket is a far different beast than 2v2 or 3v3 and is far more misunderstood. I’ve met 2v2 and 3v3 gladiators who just cannot comprehend the differences in the 5v5 bracket. 5v5 is the Rodney Dangerfield of arena. The bracket just doesn’t get enough respect. The biggest misconception centers around 5v5 being a “zerg” bracket.

You like how I throw around StarCraft terms like cowpies? Mhmm.

Read the rest of this entry »

?by Tyler Caraway

I’d like to take you back into the downward spiral that is my life as a beta addict as we take a not so quick gander at how our lovable Moonfire and Insect Swarm are holding up their end of the bargain thus far in the next expansion.

Before that, let me say that I haven’t done any testing of the new instances as of yet, mostly because I’m scared to — very, very scared to — so everything I’ve been doing is limited to questing and work on target dummies. These are nice tools, but they aren’t quite the same as seeing how everything works out within a boss setting. Movement and other caveats to every boss encounter can heavily sway the importance of any single ability at the drop of a hat, so I am saddened that I haven’t been able to actually get in and try my hand at any real encounter.

Anyway, back on point of DoTs — let’s get right into it, shall we?

Read the rest of this entry »

by Allison Robert

This week, we’re continuing our series on Pulling 101 with a look at what happens during the dungeon itself. I was surprised to discover exactly how much of this advice concerns rage management, but shouldn’t have been; any discussion concerning how to pull as a rage tank invariably touches on how to get the most out of an eccentric resource system. A good chunk of this advice will become obsolete as of the Cataclysm content patch, but if you’re leveling and gearing a bear through the dungeon finder, there are still an awful lot of 5-mans between yourself and this fall.

Set the tone

You, as the tank, are the de facto group leader and have more power than anyone (barring the healer) to determine how the run goes. If you’re a nice person, you set a standard for the behavior you expect to see during the run. If you’re an asshole, players are often reluctant to drop because that means going back to a lengthy queue.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Tyler Caraway

Before we get started talking about all of the new changes, let me first mention a few things that are currently missing, bugged or simply not yet implemented. First and foremost, Eclipse in of itself does not currently work in beta. The bar works, you can shift the bar in every direction that you like, and the procs certainly work; however, the procs currently don’t actually do anything. There’s no bonus damage there at all, but this a bug from the mastery change when they switched over the talent trees. This actually brings up the next point: We still do not have any specialization effects as of yet, and frankly, I’m a bit at a loss as to what they might end up being. Previously, I assumed that they would merely be the old mastery effects, but looking at elemental shaman, I don’t think that will be the case.

It is safe to assume that one of our mastery effects is going to be Vengeance, to help difference ourselves from other druids. Another will likely be pushback resistances, and I’d venture to guess that the old Wrath of Cenarius benefit will also be baked in there. If there will be anything else, I cannot really say. Last but certainly not least, there are still a few things missing from the talent trees — the effects of Improved Moonkin Form still haven’t been found anywhere else that I’ve seen, anyway — so I still wouldn’t expect this to be the last pass on the druid talent trees. Things are still very likely to change from how they stand now, so don’t get too upset. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Dawn Moore

So here’s the situation: you’re putting together a raid and either your normal pally is absent, for some reason (read: debauchery), or you’re in a pug and there are no paladins to be found in ye ol’ trade chat. What do you do? Can your other healers handle the tanks or are you doomed to a wipe fest?

Holy paladins are probably the most influential healers a raid team has because what they do for the raid is so important. That role is, of course, healing the tanks.

But don’t think that a healadin’s influence is just the result of what he does and not what he is; holy paladins heal the tanks because they’re very good at it. They are designed for single target healing, and have been that way for a very long time. Currently, a paladin’s bread and butter spell, Holy Light, is the strongest single target heal (not on a long cooldown) around. Paired up with Beacon of a Light and you have to wonder why they think they can’t raid heal you’ve got more single-target fire power than a disc priest can produce in twice the time, and that’s counting the absorbs.

So here’s the big question: do you really need a holy paladin to raid?

The answer is no.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Zach Yonzon

A new, exciting build of the Cataclysm beta has been released, implementing the promised overhaul to the talent trees. It’s still raw at this point, but we get a glimpse of the direction the developers want to take. The basic or starter abilities have been defined and although some of these may change, such as Divine Storm for retribution paladins (Ghostcrawler, lead systems designer, mentioned that it would probably go back into the talent tree), the changes feel solid and refreshing. One of the ideas the developers have is that “both the 31-point and the 10(-point) ability need to have more single-target use,” which means we should get very good one-on-one abilities early on as well as at higher levels. The trees are a long way off from being done, but that shouldn’t stop us from taking a look at them and picturing the possibilities.

One of the cooler, less noticeable things to come out of this build are the one-liner descriptions about each of the talent specs, allowing players to quickly grasp the concept of each spec. Blizzard seems committed to keeping this model, complete with talent tree lock-outs to prevent players from straying into other trees early on. As you might have suspected, the real culprit (or at least the most notable one) behind this change is PvP

Read the rest of this entry »