Tank like a girl

Sorry for the long silence, but I moved RL, and have only returned to WoW this weekend.

Today is one of those long dull Tuesdays over here, called Patch Days. They usually mean no playtime til Wednesday, because servers come back so late that it’s bedtime over here. It’s time for 3.2, highly anticipated by many, and strangely enough dreaded by just as many, at least based on the vibe I got from the WoW Twitterati. I am kinda torn on my own feelings about the patch, so here’s my personal look at the patch today.

Pros:

• Warrior changes: Increased radius for our shouts; 100% buffed damage of Devastate; more attack power via Armored to the Teeth; Shield Specialization now grants 5 rage per block, dodge or parry. It’s not a huge buff, but it’s a buff, and I will enjoy the DPS increase and the availability of more rage in all tanking situations. Premonition’s DPS parses showed a big jump for Devastate, which is awesome. Speaking of Premo, check out Xav’s Tank Tests as well.
• Shaman changes: totem bar, Call of Fire to put down totems within one GCD. What’s not to love about that? Also, increased range for all shocks; increased jump distance for CH plus less heal decrease per jump; 2 minute cooldown for Nature’s Swiftness
• Death Knight changes: I am no tank, I don’t like Unholy, so I am happy as blood DK and will go back to the same spec I currently have. Big plus for me: fixed RP cost and fixed duration for Dancing Rune Weapon. This means I can now reliably use it every cooldown, instead of waiting for 100 RP.
• Emblem changes: heroics will find a sudden rise in popularity again, and I get to play the gear game again. This will be a huge help for us in Ulduar and will lessen the gap between my guild’s Naxx raiders and the Ulduar team.
• Trial of the Champion, a new 5-man. Not so thrilled about the jousting boss, but variety is good. 
• Raid ID extensions. This could be hugely helpful for us as we’re trying to push deeper into Ulduar and are still running out of time. I think we’ll use this feature to get more attempts in on the Keepers.
• Nexus instances: drakes scaling with gear. About freaking time. This should make Oculus and EoE phase 3 less painful.
• Bye bye to some addons, welcome to the general UI: Doublewide, EquipCompare, SellFish
• Boosts for twinks: earlier mounts, faster mounts, heirloom cold-weather flying, new heirloom chest. Doesn’t really help me specifically as my lowest played character on Bronzebeard is 66, but I can see how many people will find this helpful.

I am sure I forgot something or another, but that’s all the good stuff I got at a glimpse at the patch notes. I am definitely most excited to see what change I’ll see while tanking, but I think other than a DPS increase, I won’t notice much.

Cons:

• Where’s my fix for Heroic Strike? Since 3.0 the devs mention it, and still, there is no fix. Not even an attempt. I. Do. Not. Want. To. Spam. One. Button
• A jousting encounter. Did I mention how quickly the novelty of jousting wore off, and that I know maybe one person (hi Rilgon!) who actually enjoys jousting?
• The tedious Argent Tournament quests got some fixes that make them even more tedious. 3 Boneguard Commanders, really? Specific mobs for the Scourge quests, so that you’ll have camped mobs? I’ll never do that quest anymore, ever. But as I want to see the new quests, I’ll have to continue grinding it out, to hit Exalted and get the Crusader title. Bleh.
• The Block changes are lame. Diminishing returns on Shield Slam is also not very exciting. 
• Despite having similar combat ratings to Dodge now, Parry is still weaker, and diminishes more quickly than dodge. What’s the point?
• I do not like the change to Tidal Waves for shamans. I will miss my super-fast Lesser Healing Waves.
• Why did Blacksmiths get zippo zilch? Every profession got a boost, blacksmiths get absolutely nothing.
• I don’t care about the new raid yet, because as long as Ulduar isn’t cleared, I don’t want to set foot in there. Strangely enough I feel a bit rushed now.

All things considered, the cons list is not that bad. It could be a lot worse. So, a very mixed bag, this patch. How about you guys, what are your thoughts on 3.2, what do you like, what do you hate? Would love to hear opinions.

It makes me feel a little dirty, this guilty pleasure of mine. I…like to raid DPS. Yes, I have said it. I’ve had a lot of playtime on my Deathknight lately, and oh boy, does she kick ass. If I could change one thing about her, I would make her an orc, but other than that, she’s mighty fine. Now, I shouldn’t exaggerate, I have only been on two raids with her, but I kicked butt, I did. My best fights were Loatheb with 3.900 DPS and Patchwerk with 3.700. Not bad at all!

 
DKs are a very peculiar class. You either see real DPS monsters annihilating the meters or you see mediocrity. Which should make it obvious that yes, you can faceroll your way through life and still do decent DPS, but if you learn and understand how to not faceroll, then you can really shine. Which is just the way it is with all classes, I suppose, but none makes it so apparent as the DK class. I originally rolled Hélle to figure out how not to be a faceroller, not just for myself, but fellow guildies.

I sprang some gold on her to grab dual-specs to test all DPS specs on her. Here’s my personal rundown:

Blood DPS:
I leveled as blood for the survivability. I was disappointed that while leveling I was not able to solo most elite quests, unlike on Kadomi, but I am likely just spoiled. When I hit 80, I tweaked her spec to dump some of the survivability aspects (like Bloodworms) and grabbed some DPS boosts from the unholy tree. Blood DPS plays like old-school prot warrior. A very very set rotation that is all about proper execution. If you are blindly poking buttons, you are losing a lot of DPS here.

My rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Heart Strikex2-Death Strike-Death Coilx2 or Raise Dead/Dancing Rune Weapon
Death Strike-Heart Strikex4-Death Coilx2, rinse and repeat.

I am looking forward to the DRW change in the next patch. Not having to wait for a full Runic Power bar will be a great help, it means you can always use it within the first cycle already. At the moment I have to wait at times if the RP bar is not full. Common issues that I see from fellow blood DKs is that they do not Heart Strike enough or sit on their RP. Make sure to dump RP in every break while you wait for runes to refresh! Don’t forget to get a ghoul for a temporary DPS boost and use DRW with full RP bar every single cooldown. It’s a fun spec and does great DPS.

Frost DPS:
Aaaaah. The spec I would love to use as main spec. So much fun. I really enjoy the heck out of it whenever I switch to it, but unfortunately I found it does not do competitive DPS compared to blood on bosses. I have talked to my friend at work who has cleared Ulduar-25 as frost DK and he said at my gear level it’s just not feasible to expect it to do more DPS than blood. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, but much like prot warriors and arms warriors you have to watch your procs. It is important to watch them, and I set up several Power Auras triggers to help me not miss any procs. First proc to watch out for is Killing Machine, and Rime procs. KM procs a lot! This can make for some bursty moments as Frost Strike hits hard (at least now, before it gets its 10% nerf). Rime doesn’t proc as much, but free Howling Blasts are cool. Frost feels a lot more dynamic than the other two specs.

My Rotation:
I went for the Howling Blast glyph instead of Icy Touch, and thus went with this 1-disease rotation:
Howling Blast-Obliterate-Blood Strikex2-Frost Strike RP dump
Obliteratex3-Frost Strike RP dump

I had a harder time tracking when Frost Fever falls off, when it does, you need to replace Obliterate with Howling Blast to refresh the disease. Like all specs you do not want your diseases to fall off ever. As this is very dependent on watching procs, you need to add extra Frost Strikes for every KM proc, plus Rime usage. I will admit to not having fully figured out the best use of Rime yet. Always HB when it comes off cooldown? Hold on to them and Obliterate instead? I’ll let you know when I have had more experience with it. I’ll definitely try to improve on it.

Unholy DPS:
This is the spec that I liked the least of all. I know that everyone and their brother runs around with a perma-ghoul, but I just couldn’t hack it. I tried to like it, I tested it in many heroics, and yet always switched back to blood in frustration. My major issue is that it requires too much micro-management. As melee class I had a harder time controlling the ghoul. I think it’s easier as warlock or hunter to see what the pet is doing but in melee range it was just frustrating. The only way I could stand to play was with the ghoul on defensive, and that is problematic at times. Then you constantly have to refresh Bone Shield to keep the damage buff up, also no fun. Nevertheless, it did have its DPS moments and is solid, but it’s just not for me. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, no procs to watch for, but a pet to control.

My Rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Blood Strikex2-Scourge Strike-Unholy Blight-Death Coil
Scourge Strikex3-Runic Power Dump

AoE rotation: Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Pestilence-Death&Decay-Unholy Blight

This is bound to change with the next patch as they’re nerfing Unholy AoE capabilities, including changing Unholy Blight completely.

I definitely recommend playing around with all three trees. Every tree feels very different, subtle tweaks for a different experience.

Some great references if you also want to stop button-mashing:

• Skeleton Jack (yo, Bronzebeard represent!)
• Elitist Jerks as ultimate, theorycraft-heavy reference
• DK Wowhead forums