Blogging and Comments - Blog Azeroth Shared Topic.

Eeeek! Too many ideas in my head so need to get them down fast. Just had a quick glance over at Psynister's Notebook but didn't want to read the full blog until I'd posted my own thoughts on the latest Blog Azeroth Shared Topic - Would having no comments make you a better blogger? - because I want to give my own opinion without any outside influence.

I L O V E getting comments. First of all, it let's me know someone has actually read the damn thing, and more often than not I get the chance to delve a little deeper than I might have had room for in the blog or they present an angle I had not thought of which sheds new light on a topic.

Most of all, I just like talking about something I love, which is why I started a blog, I'm a spurious CPS Queen and hope that through all the rambling and shite I spew out some one somewhere finds it funny and/or helpful. Comments are a great way to let me know that.


Would having no comments make me a better blogger? Personally, for me, I doubt it. I've learnt most from reading other blogs and seeing how they set themselves up, from reading the opening gambits on Blog Azeroth (THANK YOU!) and the rest is just luck and moxi. I know through Google Analytics that my blog is read so even though people don't leave comments, I know there's a few people actually reading who aren't the google bots.

I believe I've grown as a blogger and whilst I try to cover the topics that I think are relevant, I write what I want to write and I write for me. I love comments, but I'm not (thank god) dependant upon them, if someone else happens to like what I've tippitty tapped onto a screen, it's a Brucey Bonus. If more than one person likes it, hell I'm like a pig in poo.

Opening Thoughts on Death Knight Changes in Cataclysm

Jumping on the Class Changes bandwagon I thought I'd kick about my thoughts on the class change for those of us of a Death Knight persuasion. This isn't too in depth, just because I've not thought about it that way yet. Skip to the end for links to a couple more in depth thinkers.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. In this preview, you'll get a glimpse at some of the new abilities, spells, and talents in store for the death knight class, along with an early look at some improvements we plan to make to the rune resource system.

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Unholy DPS rotation relies on diseases and it sounds like come the expac that's only going to be more so, giving us a quicker way to whack them on those mobs looks like a great plan. With the changes to the way runes work I'm pondering how many other attacks will drop the rune cost.


Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Sweet PvP trick. I'd also like to see that 8000 outright damage stomping over mobs too, if this isn't restricted to a PvP build it could be handy in a PvE environment.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Ding Ding Ding! Hello! I really can't wait to play with this.

Rune System Changes

While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

• In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.

• A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.

• Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.

• The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

• As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Hmmm. I suspect this is the thing most likely to be tweaked, changed and nerfed/buffed and generally fiddled with in testing. Such a big mechanic change will take some getting used to, in the big scheme of things I've got faith in the dev team to get it right, but I do have some trepidation. I'm on the fence on this one.

Talent Changes

Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.

• One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.

• Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.

• Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

BOooooooOOOOo!!! In my eyes, the defining class aspect to the death knights is the versatility of all 3 trees to tank/dps in. You can effectively tank or dps in any spec, yes yes I know suchandsuch a spec is best for this and suchandsuch a spec is best for that but unless you're running ICC, you can play the game in any of the specs to tank or dps. I'll have a quite moment later to mourn the loss of bone shield. I almost feel like the dev team have given up on balancing the three trees. Yes, we get a dedicated tank tree, just like the other 3 tank classes. Yes it'll make it easier to know the spec, talents and whatnot, but, we're Death Knights. We're the only hero class in the game. We're supposed to be different. Ok. QQ over.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

MOAR Diseases .... Bring it! (I'm subtly ignoring the blood tanking bits for now).

So overall, I like the look of the changes and yes I like that Unholy is getting a stronger disease based flavour, despite the fact that it's at the cost of tanking in both frost and unholy. The lovely Moody comments about the warrior/rogue similarities and as someone who plays both those classes (albeit as lowbies) I can see the comparisons and sitting somewhere between those two classes in DPS terms works for me.

Stoppable Force has more detail and is a little bit more cynical than me, but he's also thought about it more so if you find my sweeping generalisations too, well general, head on over there.

And of course, I can't let this sort of thing go by without mentioning Skeleton Jack. Simply because he's got about 3 posts on the changes including one where he's just answering comments, some people have too much time. Also more skeptical, Skeleton Jack talks about Blizz rewriting the class as a whole. I can see his point, in the end though, so much of this is subject to change, I'm not going to cry about the sky-falling, well not just yet.

You can read the all the changes and further blue comments at the Blizz Cata Forums.

Deme's UI

I wasn't going to blog today because of shitty RL crappy day and thinking I may be in a car driving to the South West tonight. Well I'm not so I'm here and you get treated to a couple of pictures of my UI. You can thanks the folks on Twitter for giving me the idea to list the add-ons with it. Skip right to the end for the full list of all my add ons.

We'll start with a "pretend" raid UI. As you can see, I'm not in a raid, but you get the jist of what it looks like for me.



Starting bottom left - chat box with Prat add on and above that Cellular add on for handling whispers.

Then party and raid frames which have been set up in Xperl. As I don't lead raids any more and I'm not a healer, I don't often have all the groups up for raiding. In 10-man I'll have my group in the party frame and the other in the raid group frame, but for 25-man I regularly just keep my own party up.

Top right is Deme's frame, then left to right is the pet window and pet target. Deme's target would appear to the right of that. But I think that's on later shot.

Then I've got the punks window which is from Carbonite as I'm out in the wilderness I want to know if those damn hordies are sneaking up. Then it's the Carbonite map and then Sexy map.

On the right hand side it's Carbonite quest log window, then Omen and then Recount.

On finally back at the bottom are my toolbars which I use Bartender on and
ButtonFacade.

Here's an "In Action" shot. This was taken on Monday this week, after the 3.3.3.1whatever mini patch and the WTF/Cache bug so all my add ons were screwy, hence the misplaced target box. Target's target is always more central for me, so I know who that mob is hitting!



This shows MikScrollingBattleText in action too though at this point "pet" is doing the damage because I'm too busy trying to take a shot.


This next one is an actual "in raid" shot, but out of combat. Recount doesn't normally sit there and I'd disabled Sexy Map here for some reason.



And finally, the uber clean, fly round and see the world UI. This UI was heavily influenced by this dude, Metzerott, who created the prettiest UI I've ever seen. I downloaded his UI bits and then dropped out what I couldn't handle or didn't like and tweeked the other bits. The picture is an homage to his own shown on wow.com. Basically, even when raiding, I have as much as possible set to fade out, auto-hide or just plain disappear if I don't need it.




Full listing of ALL the Add ons I use:

UI
Xperl Raid Frames
Prat chat add on
Cellular chat add on
Titan bar (set to transparent and auto-hide)
Carbonite
Sexy Map
Bartender
ButtonFacade
Butsu - looting add on
Cursor - shiny pretty cursor thingie


Raiding
DBM
Recount
Omen
BuffEnough
MikScrollingBattleText


Helpful stuff I like
Auctioneer
Gatherer
Ackis Recipe List
Beancounter
Enchantrix
Sell-O-Matic

Deme Does Crotch ... Watching

This weekend saw me take on tanking in a more concerted effort. On Friday night I realised I’d actually got a full tank set of gear. That was a bit of a shock! It means I’ve now got to enchant and gem the lot and get the stats sorted.

In an attempt to prevent other nooby tanks from making the same mistake I repeated on the weekend, here’s a little checklist to use before you start whacking anything.

Have I changed into tank gear?
Check 

Have I changed to Frost talents?
Check

Have I put on FROST presence?
No? Numpty.

I’d also add
- Chug a defence potion if you need it, which currently Deme does.

I got a great group to run me through my first HC as a tank, comprising of two droods, one a bear in off spec and one healing, another DK whose main spec is tank and A N Other. I’m sorry my dear guildie, I’ve forgotten, needless to say all these guys are well-geared and could romp through HCs in 15 minutes max. With this make up, we went for the random. Silent prayers for anything but the ICC 3 or HoS. FoS pops up. *eeek* goes my brain. Group tells me I’ll be fine. I mark up the first two mobs and off we go. Hmm, aggro isn’t great, but I hold them and they die. Then I remember. FROST presence. FFS. What a numpty.

I’ve watched one particular DK tank run HCs and unless the healer needs mana, he doesn’t stop. I wouldn’t say chain pulling per se, but certainly moving fast. I guess because I’ve seen him do this so often, it’s rubbed off on me. I’ve been spoilt too, the group I was running with know who to hit first so marking was a little pointless and I didn’t bother.

Gathering the groups up and holding aggro was fine. Crotch-watching is a suitable description of tanking and for my particular style, I like all the mobs in a group in a semi-circle in front of me. This means I DG those ranged casters in. Is that wrong? Erm, not sure, but it feels a lot more comfortable when I can see them all glaring at me and not have one off to the side.

We pass through a few mobs and get up to James Brown. I mean Bronjam. *phew* Take a deep breath. My first HC boss as a tank. Quick catch up with the group to make sure I understand what I have to do, turns out I do. Confidence rises a little. The encounter starts and all is well. Corrupted Soul goes up and I begin to move him, I honestly can’t say if he got the soul or not because I wasn’t watching his HP, I was too busy popping all my abilities to make sure he keep hitting me whilst I wandered round the outside of the room. The second phase, where we all give him a nice hug in the middle went off without a hitch. Hoorah!

I take a deep breath and pause to savour the moment.

Then we press on and get to the Devourer of Souls. Now, I'm sorry, but did Blizz get a bit camped up when they created the bosses in ICC? I mean this guy sounds like as camp as a row of tents, then there's Marrowgar's cry of "Boooone Stooooorrrrrm". I mean come on.

Anyway, Devourer of Souls. Yeah. Not gunna lie, I died. No idea how because it wasn't down to the healer. Let's not dwell on that though. We got through and I'd tanked it. Hoorah!

I finished off the weekend tanking 4 more HCs. My least favourite being Culling of Stratholme. As a nooby tank running backwards and forwards and running the undead gauntlet I found tough. I hit up ToC too, which isn't up my list of favourites, but hey we got through it. My two favourites to tank have been Azjol Nerub and Utgarde Keep. I love UK on normal to tank so I was chuffed when it popped up on the random. I also enjoy AN. Anooooob gets pwned. Me likely.

I guess now I've actually got the gear and had a bit of practice I'd better give you lot some kind of spec and stats post right? Ok, I'll do my best for the next post.

According to guildies I'll be tanking Naxx this weekend. pfft.

DK Tanking - Initial Thoughts

About a month ago (may be longer) I promised 2 friends on Twitter that I would do a post on DK tanking. It's been a while but I've started to make some progress.

You have to remember that I'm a tank noob. No, really, even though I played a warrior prior to Deme, I'm a tanking noob. Yes I feel your burning hate and I hang my head in shame.

Deme has 2 pieces of T9 tank gear now, to complement the mis-match of heroic, emblem and pieces of off-spec gear from raids where no one else wanted it, but I'm still working on the gems and enchants, as I mentioned somewhere else on the internetz. Her def rating has finally broken the 500 barrier though and is up to a whopping 512. Still some way to go, but when you have a healer to run with you who gives you 'god mode' I've got a bit of leeway. It also helps when they are sitting in the same room as you.

Last night I ran a couple of normal dungeons just to try out my tanking skills after a hiatus and I've got to say it's kinda fun so I'm hopng to have a bash at an 'easier' Heroic this weekend and see how I get on. Then I suppose it's off to farm for more emblems for more gear. Once I've got a better handle on it all, I'll post up some kind of advice/gear/stats rammel for those who want a guide. It's fair to say thought that so far I'm finding DK tanking fun, full of aggro and a fresh challenge to boot.

Deme the Dodger

It's CPS not DPS that makes a guild.

Deme has a new home! Hoorah and oh the relief. After close to three weeks in the wilderness, I finally took the plunge and placed my little DK in a new guild. I'd looked at 4 in total, including my previous home, but in the end things weren't going to be the same there as they had been so I realised it was time to move on.

One of the things that convinced me to move was the steady stream of whispers I received from those still in my old guild, stating that the guild chat was very quiet now I'd gone and that they missed my CPS. CPS means Chat Per Second.



In your guild there is bound to be someone, maybe a few people, who spam guild chat with random silliness. Those are your CPS people. I hadn't realised until I left the guild how many people actually read it or thought I was being funny, to my mind I was just typing crap and having a giggle or rant when something happened, either in game or in RL. These guildies whispered me and said how quiet it was, that they missed reading my little pieces of spam. These guildies weren't just made up of the others who'd spammed with me, but also of some quieter members who I'd just assumed weren't interested in what I was saying. Turns out it wasn't the case, they were quietly smiling or chortling along in their own space. Not everyone feels compelled to type 'lol'. That CPS I was churning out though, that was giving that green text flavour, humour and heart.

So if you have someone in your guild who spams the chatter box, it's just possible that their bringing more to the table than green text, consider what it might be like without those little punctuation points to your WoW experience. And then tell them you like reading it. Afterall, when their gone, who'll fill the silence?


Deme, Queen of CPS


*A big thank you to Moreaulf for creating the acronym CPS and to all my ex-guildies for the fun and laughs. Just because I'm not 'there' doesn't mean I'm not 'here'. x

There's No Place Like Home

My previous two posts have been on the unravelling drama surrounding my home guild's proposed merger with a guild who could be considered its sister guild. I stated that I'd been watching from the side lines if you like, as it all came tumbling down and caught a few people in the rubble.

It's been a little over 2 weeks since I left my home guild and a little over a week since the biggest chunk of drama. Things appear (at least from what I can see) to be settling down with the two guilds continuing on as they were prior to any proposal and for the most part, no hard feelings. There, of course, will always be those who chuck a spanner in your spokes, but hey, that's what helmets and pads are for right?

Now comes the question I've been dreading. I've had this time away from my home guild, during which I've stated clearly that I'm taking a break and plan to return. However, I now have to ask myself if I want to and the honest answer is, I don't know. Whilst I've been guildless, other friends have invited me to their guilds. I've told them I'm not looking to join a guild at the moment but thanked them for the invite and told them I'll consider it when I am ready to see the green text again.

As some of you know I spam twitter a lot, and you may have seen, I've placed two low-level alts with guilds, one on ally, one on horde. This has been a stress-free, peaceful and enjoyable way to part-take in a guild again. And boy is it great to have that green text, even if it's not pouring achievements at me or spamming butt jokes or virtual food fights, it's nice to know it's there.

BUT, these chars are alts. That little DK at the top of the screen is my main, for a reason. I can not say enough how much playing a death knight rocks my socks. It's just too much fun, like a really good night out when you get a little bit messy, dance a bit too hard and finish the night on smokey whisky, yes it is that good. It's time to find Deme a new home.

I've not ruled out a return to my 'home' guild, but I have other options and I'm investigating them. I'm not in a rush, I don't want to make a hasty decision and chuck all my eggs in the wrong basket. It may be the guild I want doesn't exist, in which case I may have to compromise and decide what I want most from the game and go with the guild that offers that. Of course I could set up on my own, but the name of that guild would have to be D I V O R C E.

Deme clicks her heels together and says "There's no place like home".