Patch 4.1: Protection Warriors

Yes, I know, a lot of talk about the patch 4.1 lately. Everyone is posting about it, which is why I only stick to protection warrior’s point of view for now. There is plenty of material out there about the new instances, dungeon finder, etc. Actually, it is surprising just how large the patch was, despite not featuring a new raid instance. A lot of things have changed, been redesigned, and altered to seriously change the way we play the game.

The official patches are can be found in the following link and obviously, you should always check them out yourself and see what is what. But I will try to cover some of the major changes and give a few thoughts on them. I resisted the urge to write about this yesterday, before I had a chance to get a feel for it.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2219878#blog

There is also a round of hotfixes that have been implemented, in response to many of the problems that came out with the patch, and suggest everyone will also have a look at that.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2220751#blog

Rallying Cry

First, lets go over the new warrior utility, Rallying Cry. Keep in mind; this is actually something all warriors received, regardless of spec, so the dynamics of its usage are rather interesting. It essentially functions like the Paladin’s Divine Guardian ability but instead of 20% less damage taken, RC gives the raid 20% more health for 10 seconds. It shares its CD with Last Stand and what that means is that if a tank uses it, he will not be able to use LS for another 3 minutes. Another warrior using his RC will not affect another warrior’s RC or LS.

The utility of this ability is innumerable and is only limited by the 30 yard range. That means that using it during the Nefarian encounter, phases 1 & 2 you will not grant you a lot of benefits, unless used by a warrior close enough to the main raid. Then again, in phase 3, used by a DPS warrior, it would be awesome for Electrocute. Other examples are in Halfus, Valion & Theralion, Cho’gall, etc. To me, this ability is just great and something the class has needed for quite a long time.

Spell Block

The warrior tank has always been, somewhat, more vulnerable against magic damage. Spell Block is a 5 second buff that gives us 20% reduced damage from magic when we use Shield Block. We need to spec into [Shield Mastery] but this is hardly a concern since it is must-have talent for protection warriors anyway. The important thing is that we finally have a raid-viable ability against magic damage and because it is bound to Shield Block, it makes how you spend that particular ability a bit more a question of time.

For most of the current tier’s encounters you are not going to want to alter your Shield Block routines in anyway, since most of them do not really feature powerful magic attacks. Ofc magic damage is present but it is much more useful to still give your Mirror of Broken Images trinket priority in dealing with them. The reason is simply because Shield Block still also functions as a means to mitigate physical damage and your goal should be to still maximize its effectiveness.

Personally, I would reserve Spell Block primarily against the three end bosses; Ala’kir, Cho’gall, and Nefarian, because those three are the ones that contain the most prominent sources of magic damage that cannot be entirely covered by the trinket. There are few other examples too however, like if you are tanking Ignacious of the Ascendant Council, when he puts up his shield and does a very powerful fire attack on the tank.

A good general rule, for me at least, is that it is not worth delaying Shield Block for more than 10 seconds maximum. The reason for that is because the ability is only on a 30 second CD and if you end up delaying its use by e.g. 20 seconds at a time, you lose a lot of physical mitigation, which is still very important to maintain. Some have made the argument that, well, tanks do not really die from overall damage done over a lengthier period of time, but I would say a bit reason for that is because warrior tanks have so much overall mitigation. So even if we take a few hits without blocking or avoiding them, the next couple will again be mitigated, which lets a healer catch up. If we degrade our ability to produce those heavily mitigated attacks (of which Shield Block is a big part of) we will end up taking more overall damage, making us more vulnerable and harder to maintain.

Spell Resistance

I think the cooldown change on Spell Resistance (changed from 10 seconds to 25 seconds) is two-folded; first relates to pvp, where a skilled warrior could potentially spell reflect crucial attacks by mages, priests, and other spell casters, thus making them unable to keep the warrior at a sufficient distance. Basically though, this is not a big problem in my books. Casters were already gaining a lot of downtime from a warrior by simple kiting and using slows, roots, and stuns that a warrior had to be skilled with SR to even be competitive against them.

However, coupled with the new Spell Block buff to our Shield Block, the change begins to make a whole lot more sense. Remember, both abilities are completely viable for use in pve and pvp. In fact, I have already created a macro for my arms pvp spec, that lets me pop Defensive Stance and Shield Block and I can see a lot more warrior using that now. For pve, in viable environments like 5-man heroic dungeons, we can benefit from both SR and Spell Block by semi-chaining them. Imagine, you can first pop SR for a specific attack and half-way across the CD, you time your Spell Block for another. That totals a lot of damage that you did not take and if SR still had its old 10 second CD, it would be seriously overpowered. You could pop two SRs inside Spell Block’s CD.

There is, of course, also the Glyph of Spell Reflection which now reduces SR’s CD by 5 seconds, instead of the old 1 second reduction.

Interrupts

As protection warriors, we received two changes total to the way our interrupts work. The first and foremost, shared by all classes, capable of interrupting, is that from here on out, any non-damaging interrupt does not require hit cap to successfully hit. Just like taunts, they now hit automatically, which means that tanks can go with their best survival gear even for fights that require us to perform interrupts.

Until now, we’ve had to maintain hit gear and special buffs to be capable of that job, which especially in 10-man environment has been a bane in our existence. Many do not realize just how much in survival stats we lose in total, when we have to spend them on hit rating, a stat that is otherwise completely useless to us.

Another major change has been the removal of Shield Bash, replaced now by Pummel. There was a lot of discontent about this fact, for a good reason, as Shield Bash is probably one of the most iconic abilities that protection warriors have. Unfortunately, it was removed but to me, in the end, the importance of a more viable interrupt makes more sense. Remember, Pummel is on the standard 10 second CD, unlike Shield Bash which was on 12 second CD. Those 2 seconds shed off our interrupt lets us solo interrupt a lot of abilities, like the prototype adds on Nefarian.

There were of course a lot more updates to this patch and again, I urge everyone to check them out for yourself.

Happy gaming.

Patch 4.2: Firelands Preview

As promised, Blizzard will be pushing out the next content patch soon after 4.1 has been released. We are already seeing preview videos on youtube and it does seem promising. Some have pointed out that it looks like Molten Core v2.0 but since I never played in Vanilla, I have no issues with it. Definitely, at least, looks fantastic, watching the scenery, the terrain, lava flows and mobs inside Firelands. The textures are just amazing.

There are currently two previews that I suggest you have a look at; one for the daily quest hub environment, which will probably be very much like Tol Barad, and the second preview is on the Firelands instance itself. I am looking at the video, again, and cannot help but be excited when watching the encounters. The spider hanging from fiery webs, the night elf fire lord that transforms into a scorpion and giant flaming cat… almost wish it was coming out tomorrow.

3.3.3 for Death Knights

Seems perhaps the dawn is finally rising for us death knight tanks, for Blizzard is blessing us with some more buffs on this patch. Concerning our class, the changes, which seem rather significant, are almost entirely tank related – a much welcome change for we have been under the wind for a long time.

The first and biggest joy for me personally, is the change to Icy Touch: This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Frost Presence.

Why, you ask, am I so glad about this? Because as a DK tank, it is mandatory to spend the first 3 seconds of the fight assigning diseases on your target. This slows your initial aggro considerably because in 3 seconds, your dps can fire out minimum two spells. With this change, the first spell we land, already starts the process. Also makes grabbing stray mobs up a bit easier, if your taunt and death grip are on cooldown.

Some other highlights…

Will of the Necropolis: There is no longer a cooldown on the frequency at which this talent can be activated. In addition, this ability can now also be triggered by damage which deals less than 5% of your health.

Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.

Nerves of Cold Steel: Now increases off-hand damage by 8/16/25%, up from 5/10/15%.

Unbreakable Armor: The amount of strength granted is now 20%, up from 10%.

It is hard to not get excited about these changes. It also really pleases me that Frost spec is getting some attention, because it is still my favorite spec, and dual-wielding is becoming more and more incentive with upped threat and a better cooldown.

Ofc, these changes are not permanent and might change or get updated at anytime. Suggest everyone keeps an eye on the patch notes. The PTR is naturally up so you can go test it out yourself.

New Emblem Gear

I almost did not think it would come out before the official release date, but finally, PTR has been updated and the new Emblem of Frost Quartermaster has some exciting new gear for us to ogle. I am uncertain of the exact prices, as the items are not actually for sale yet. No prices exist but we probably guess at the proper amounts. More interesting are the items themselves.

The four new trinkets include Corroded Skeleton Key, Purified Lunar Dust, and Maghia's Misguided Quill. The melee and ranged dps trinket has not yet, at the time of this writing, been added to wowhead, I am afraid. However, rest assured, it looks as appetizing as the three previous. Personally, I cannot wait to get me one of the stamina trinkets.

For death knights, the two new sigils are Sigil of the Hanged Man and Sigil of the Bone Gryphon. Personally, I am more interested of the second choice, as raiding in top guilds guarantees that I need to buff my threat generation as much as possible, especially in preparation to the dropped avoidance, thanks to chill of the throne debuff.

In terms of cloaks, we have such nice pieces like Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky, Drape of the Violet Tower, and Sentinel's Winter Cloak to name a few. The first choice is obviously ideal for mages and caster dps classes. The second cloak, I can already see it on my discipline priest. There are total five cloaks, so if you felt left out by the choices, don't - there is most certainly something for everyone.

Other items, which are definitely too numerous to be listed in this humble article, include chest, hands, and waist pieces. The only let down was the disregard for a non-block wielder tank chest, but I am certain I will be able to compensate with tier10 set piece.

Speaking of which, I still could not locate the tier vendor the new set. They were not included among the Emblem vendor inventory, although it could very well be they just have not been added yet. As a good feature, the same vendor also turns emblems of triumph to emblems of frost and sells a new buzz item, Primordial Saronite. We do not yet know what this is for, however, a good guess suggests it will be a key ingredient in the Icecrown Citadel craft designs.

As a last change I noticed, are a series of new items in the Emblem of Triumph vendor, which has the been supplemented with reputation badges for all major northrend factions, each providing 520 reputation for their respected factions, and each costing a single emblem of triumph. This should make it a whole lot easier to grind the expansion factions for the various enchants, mounts and patterns.

Into the Shadow

Patch 3.3 is approaching fast and the latest changes to the changes are beings scrutinized even more carefully. Personally, I have two character that I am mainly interested and since the death knight, for once, is not getting any major character changes, I can focus some attention on my priest.

Not many changes are involved to the healing specs and for good reason as well. They simply do not require tweaking. Healing priests are, for the moment, in a sweet niche where they are a joy to play and not in a bad habit to outshine their peers. However, shadow priests are getting a lot of buffs on this one. I do not personally play much on shadow, except when leveling but for me, the changes are quite welcome.

First of all, Vampiric Embrace is turned into the spell that it should always have been; a personal buff on the priest instead of a debuff on the monster that it is now. I cannot image what was going through a designer's mind when that spell was first conceived, but for me I always felt like wasting copious amounts of mana, having to apply it on every mob between pulls.

Now, with this change, shadow priests can join warlocks in large mob pulls, with dots and healing mechanics to compensate, speeding up our game considerably. Sure, we could pull lots of mobs before, but you had to first apply Vampiric Embrace on one of them and then actually avoid killing it, in order to gain healing from the damage you make. To make it further annoying, you had to apply it again on the next pull, spending awful amount of for nothing.

Next up, the Improved Devouring Plague spell will gain an increase of damage, to 10/20/30% per rank, instead of the old 5/10/15%. Not having raided as a shadow priest, I am unsure if this is actually necessary but if the Blizzard wants to throw a damage buff my way, heck I am not going to complain.

Also, Mind Flay is having its range increased, up to 30 yards. Wooah!

Changes to Shadowform are close to my heart in particular, as a priest who is still, in fact, leveling. Not only Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch benefiting from haste, mana cost for changing forms is dropping from 32% to 13% of base mana. Along with Vampiric Embrace, casting a quick heal on myself during a big trash pull has to be the single-main reason why I oom quickly.

So to sum up these changes; I do not see any major, big changes to the priest play style or damage output. A small nudge to our damage yes, but mainly I see these as welcome changes that will streamline our game a lot. They will lower down time and the class simply just more efficient, as it should be, if go about and compare to e.g. warlocks, our closest compatriots as dotters.

Chill of the Throne

When the news about this debuff came out, there was a visible shock among the tank community. What it essentially means is that when you enter the final raid instance, Icecrown Citadel, the dungeon will apply a constant debuff on everyone in the raid - lowering all dodge by 20%. While I am a stamina tank, all the way through (meaning I care a lot more about my total health than about my avoidance) it did make me stop on my tracks as well.

While going for mitigation, such as armor and health, is and has been more effective a long time now, tanks still need to rely on avoidance for much of their survivability. Now imagine that as a tank, your avoidance suddenly drops from 50% to 30%. That is pretty huge and makes you wonder what Blizzard is thinking.

However, once you reflect a bit, you begin to see the wisdom in it. The rattle among many tanks is still going but personally, I am not worried too much over it. The issue mainly stems from the cascading arms race, between tanks and raid bosses. Our gear, both health and avoidance have been steadily climbing, which forces Blizzard to create encounters that hit for more and more damage.

I am certain that many tanks will agree with my own frustration of tanking bosses where you are basically, constantly on the verge of dying. The rotation of two hits and a heal makes your health look like a yo-yo in desperate need of decaf. One slip, or just bad luck, gibs the tank, usually sending what's left of him rolling down hill - in seven pieces.

Now in Icecrown Citadel, Blizzard is attempting to rectify the problem by lowering our avoidance, so they can design more interesting encounters. I am all for this change and it is reassuring to know that this is also the way they will go with Cataclysm; encounters that have more interesting mechanics that affect way more whether you die or not, rather than just raw damage output.

This is not to say Icecrown Citadel will be easy. I imagine it will be the hardest of them all, for obvious reasons. The bosses still swing at the same rate, but will hit a lot more often, with less damage per hit.

However, I am greatly concerned by the fact that lowering avoidance will have a secondary effect on death knights; we rely on avoidance to give us rune strikes. This is our single-greatest threat generating ability. This is why, once we lose aggro, it is hard to get it back because when the boss is no longer swinging at us, we get no rune strikes, and also why we do not have snap aggro.

Reading the latest patch notes for 3.3 might see a fix for this issue, promising a 17% threat increase to rune strikes, to compensate. But still, I worry. Does 17% more threat compensate for the loss of 20% in avoidance? I hope so but will wait for the patch to go live before I count my eggs.

Return of the PTR

If you are anything like me, you have been following the 3.3 patch news with great anticipation and interest, as they have began to flood through from wow.com and mmo-champion - people hard at work data mining and exploring what is currently available in the test realms.

So far, the most interesting news have come from both Blizzard themselves, in the form a Frozen Halls info page, and mmo-champion data miners, whom have been able to discover some very interesting updates. The first and foremost of course, is the Icecrown Citadel. Anyone who has flown around it a few times realized a long time ago that it will be very expansive. The structure alone is impressive and massive.

So far we know that the citadel with not only host the new raid, with the Lich King as the final boss, but will also contain a new dungeon, with both normal and heroic version, and a total of three different wings; in order the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection. You must complete them in sequence to gain access to the last one and contain a lot of interesting new aspects.

So naturally when I saw people on general channel, looking for likeminded adventurers and explorers I just had to jump at the chance. We entered the Pit of Saron, whether or not because they had already done the first wing or if it was the only one currently enabled, I cannot say. But the first time stepping inside the citadel was very exciting. Essentially, we have two objectives; free as many slaves as possible and also kill the bosses.

The second boss Ick, which after falling to us gave up a startling revelation, Frostmourne currently resides alone, in the Halls of Reflection. Whether it will be just an event or possible a boss encounter, remains to be seen but opens the possibility that the way to defeat the Lich King is by taking away his most dangerous weapon.

Like all dungeons, normal and heroic alike, tanking the instance was heavy on the aoe side. You can switch to blood on bosses if you prefer but all and all, was a very standard issue tankwise. The bosses themselves do a lot of burst damage and had very little actual technicalities to overcome. Tyrannus at the very end had some twists to provide, but seems we encounter either a bug or another disabled feature, because once we quickly downed him, the first was suddenly over.

Why is this odd? Because Tyrannus first presents himself on the back of a frostwyrm and on such an occasion, you would expect to fight both the two-legged and four-legged counterparts. Our encounter however started with Tyrannus coming down and ended when he fell.

We had no luck investigating any possible loot because nothing was dropped, but odds are high this will change quickly, once the loot tables are finished and enabled. Mmo-champions did report an interesting set of new daily quests though, or rather, weekly quests. I managed to confirm them with the usual daily quest giver. Exactly like the old Wintergrasp quests, these can be completed only once a week, but instead provide x10 Emblems of Frost.

Also, instead of heroics, the quests are completed in raid instances. These range from Naxxramas to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader. Basically just like the previous heroic dailies, you have to kill a boss to complete the quest. I could not locate a vendor that currently accepts the new emblems but I am prepared to speculate they have to do with new gear. A new set of tier gear?

Personally, I am voting against a new tier set. It takes our all the fun out of, the otherwise exciting gear, when you have to struggle to change it every damn patch. But time will tell. For now, will continue to follow the blogsphere and explore the PTR. Will keep my readers informed.

Trial of the Crusader

The first reports are coming in from the new instance in the Argent Coliseum and we can finally begin to form a picture of the challenges within. We already had a sneak peek before, in the form of some data mining but we all know just how reliable that is.

The first and most surprising news, for me, is that the rewards within the instance are on par with those from a 10-man Naxxramas run. The authors have graced us with some solid data and even screenshots of the rewarded items. Items are on level 200, which is consistent with naxx10 and seems they are fitting a nice niche, left by Naxxramas itself.

For one, any plate wearer dps, from warrior to paladin and to death knight, will be pleased to learn that getting an epic helm is no longer so difficult. Personally, I tried in vein to hunt for the tier 7 helm, never ever winning the role if it came up for grabs, and I ended up running all the way to Ulduar before a suitable replacement for my Tempered Titansteel Helm dropped. But now, we have a newcomer, Mask of the Violent Fray and it looks great.

The test crew reported the challenges to have been very easy for them, in fully geared tier 8 sets, so the encounters are, in all likelyhood designed for that same level, naxx10, which on itself of course makes sense. Would be very silly otherwise. Both the report and item gallery are available, so if you're curious, suggest you take a look.

I cannot wait to get a crack at it.

Reporting Live from 3.2

I must confess, I did not always play World of Warcraft the way I play it today; looking under the hood, bothering to understand its mechanics, or with progression in mind when entering dungeons. As such, I never actually bothered with the thought of PTR, but now, with 3.2 patch in the horizon and indeed available for testing, I told myself I was crazy as a boot if I did not give it a go.

So here I am now, flying over Icecrown, wearing a full tier 8 suit, looking around and marveling at all the interesting changes. As odd as it might seem, changes do not just jump at you from behind a corner. You have to look for 'em and I knew exactly where to go for my first one; the Argent Tournament.

The place has changed quite a bit since the last we saw it, importantly, the coliseum has been finished and dominates the landscape. The old tents and npcs are still on their familiar places, practice rings of valiants and the challenge arena for champion, but there are some new features as well. One of them is a place, just north up the slope from the grounds where the scourge has setup a fortified position, seemingly ready to assault the tournament. I have no doubt there are quests that lets us investigate it further, but I could not yet find them. I suspect, it is for crusaders only.

The emblem of triumph vendors are in place and their goods, as one might guess, look very appetising. From death knight's perspective, nice ones include the two new sigils; Insolence and Virulence. Another update that blizzard has done, concerning item tooltips, is that it provides the same function as the Ratingbuster addon, which is provide easy to read information how the change between the new and old item, would affect your stats.

Next interesting update comes from Cartier & Co. Fine Jewelry, a location familiar to all my fellow jewelcrafters. Firstly, what we have all been waiting for, epic gems, which include stones like Cardinal Ruby (convertable to e.g. Bold Cardinal Ruby) and Dreadstone (convertable to e.g. Balanced Dreadstone) are available for between 10 to 20 emblems of heroism.

Along with the new gems, the dragon's eye gems have been upgraded as well. Just as we were told, they are now restricted to their respected color sockets, but in turn, the stats have been increased, even if only in a small measure; currently, the Rigid Dragon's Eye provides a +27 hit rate bonus, while the new version provides a +34 hit rate bonus. These numbers are reflected throughout the spectrum.

I always found it extremely annoying, how slow and painful it was to collect Dalaran jewelcrafter's tokens. Now, we finally have a new way to earn them. Mind you, it is not cheap but easily worth it, in my opinion; Timothy Jones now has a new, repeatable quest, in which you turn in Titanium Powder. The powder, can be prospected from titanium ore. Not only will it increase the competition for titanium nodes, but probably revitalize the titanium ore market.

There are plenty of more very nice updates, but too many to list here now, and so our peak into the 3.2 patch ends with a shot of the much desired druid bear skin. A fellow alliance druid, deep in his thoughts near the landing platform, was happy to volunteer as unsuspecting photo candidate.

Next Generation Emblems

The next 3.2 patch continues to raise a lot of emotion and debate about its new features and most notably, changes. I have already given my personal and quite hot opinion on the changes to my favorite class, the death knights. If you wish to read on it, check the article Latest on Death Knights. This time, I am going to briefly touch on the changes to the emblem system, as it has generated a lot of discussion in my own guild.

The main conclusion was that the patch is very much an update for the benefit of casual players and I have to agree. This is true especially when you read the blue post on the emblem system. In simplest terms, the various emblems become mostly worthless. The only emblem that continues to have significance, is the emblem of conquest. To accompany this, Blizzard is releasing a new emblem, called Emblem of Triumph.

Any instance that now drops emblems of heroism or valor, will in the future drop emblems of conquest instead. Emblems of triumph will be available from the daily dungeon quests, both heroic and normal, and from the new instances in the upcoming Crusaders' Coliseum. Exactly what you can buy with the new EoT, nobody knows but all and all, this is a welcome update.

To me, the idea of having 3-4 different emblems is not practical by any stretch of the imagination. It creates a long road of progression, where people have to climb through all three to get to the latest gear and content. While many point out that we all had to do it, it is not quite that simple.

Yes, for anyone in a quality raiding guild, getting through the ladder is not a big issue but it is most difficult for players inhabiting the casual guilds. We have to remember, not all of us play this game like a second job and some just cannot keep up with the demands of a hard core raiding guild. Instead, they will be stuck doing the same instances over and over again, trying to get the emblems and gear to advance into the next tier and usually will be sabotaged by rest of their guild. After all, progression is a team effort and many casual guild will never advance beyond Naxx10 and perhaps Eye of Eternity.

True, it is not very fair to those who actually made that journey but life is not always fair and I would point out, the game has changed quite a bit since WotLK first came out. Those who started progression then, had it, in my eyes, easier than those who are only now getting into the raid scene and playing catch up.

In the end, I feel advanced players are only complaining about this because they feel casual gamers are getting off easy, preferring if they would be put through the same hoops as themselves when they made their progression. But me, I still continue to support my matra that the more people that experience all the content, the better. It does not burst any of my bubbles that someone will less game time gets through the same content as I did.

And also, I would remind everyone, the gear that you can get with emblems barely touches the surface of what you need to successfully navigate encounters like the last bosses of ulduar. It will still require as much dedication, practice and skill to finish them off.

Latest on Death Knights

By now, I think we should stop being surprised that death knights are being nerfed again, but every time they just come at us with new bewildering changes. I apologize if I seem cranky this time around but despite my efforts to try keep up a positive state of mind, I am slowly losing faith in our game designers. Since their inception death knights have been getting the boot in every patch so far and you have to wonder, are they ever going to stop nerfing the class.

The most bewildering aspect is that they are soon running out justifications for all the nerfs, as the changes take more and more ridiculous forms. Emboldened by the positive changes that we are being promised in the Crusader's Coliseum (see Tournament Review) I went out and looked up the new PTR notes to see just what is in store.

The first that nearly popped my eyes out of their sockets was the nerfing of frost presence. In the next patch, instead of a 10% health boost, we are only getting a 6% stamina increase, and I reserve the right to use the word "only" because frankly a 6% stamina increase is pants on head retarded. To outline what this actually means, lets have a show and tell.

In Durithim's proper tank gear and spec, he has an average 26 300 health without frost presence. Once I put it on, it rises to a healthy ~29 000. This is a good starting point for raids like 25-man Naxxramas. However, with a meager 6% stamina bonus that health drops to ~27 400. That is a 1.6k difference. This gets further bewildering when taking a look at other plate tanks, for whom I see no such nerf and remembering that the last big patch actually brought us a raid instance that is all about taking huge amounts of damage.

Second but surely not lesser of two evils, is the nerf of Frost Strike; which can now not only be parried, blocked, and dodged, it also deals 5% less damage than before. Icebound Fortitude's cool down has doubled and Toughness provides a one-third less armor than before. So no, life as a death knight tank is sure not going to get boring in the future. If anything our performance will only continue to drop if Blizzard goes on, incapable of restraining itself.

Tournament Review

Blizzard has once again graced us with a small sneak peak at some of the new content from the coming patches. The latest is a more detailed description of what the completed Crusader's Coliseum, promised to come out in the upcoming 3.2 Patch, something many of us tournament grinders have been waiting a long time for. These include the following:

"New epic 10- and 25-player raid dungeon with five encounters, with each encounter being unlocked one week at a time."

"New 5-player dungeon with three encounters that will include Champion’s Seals as each one is defeated."

"A more intuitive structure for harder encounters. This raid dungeon will have four different versions: 10-player, 25-player, 10-player Heroic, and 25-player Heroic, with each one using a separate lockout."

"New tier of armor and weapons that are modeled with Alliance- or Horde-specific themes."

There is nothing like cheering your players with a new coming up raid dungeon, however where in the difficulty scale will it be? My hope is that not above Ulduar the least, since though lots of people have been doing Ulduar, it is still a fresh raid dungeon for a lot of raiders. Another dungeon that holds challenges on the difficulty to Ulduar is much more desirable in my mind, rather than upping the encounters once again.

Anyone remembering playing some of the many Star Wars games? The common theme in the jedi games was always to give the player an option to be either good or bad, thus having two possible endings for the game. My first reaction to the "more intuitive structure for harder encounters" was a pleasing smile, but having now mulled the thought I am not so sure anymore. Like in the old Star Wars games, all this really does is forces you to complete the same content more than once - in fact, four times this time.

Aye, it is a nice thought that we have two versions, 10- and 25-man so the more casual guilds can go with the easier content but it is soon going too far. Anyone who has played 25-man Naxxramas knows that the encounters have only few aspects in difference to the 10-man versions and if the same paradigm continues here, all Blizzard is doing is making us complete the same instance four times.

Just so this review does not seem too harsh, let me finish by saying I am still pleased by the update and excited for its release. The idea that we will be getting new gear with special, new looks is especially welcome. It is hard to describe the disappointment in starting your death knight from level 55 with good looking pieces, only to end up in level 80 with identical pieces, and this pattern repeats throughout the WotLK content.

So for this piece of news, Blizzard takes the points home I think.

Things to Come

New things are on the horizon again from the Blizzard, as they prepare to launch their next patch, 3.2. Some of them are good things and some of them rather depressing. I have always been an enthusiast for the Argent Tournament and for me, the news is exciting; they are finally completing the coliseum at the tournament grounds:

"In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the Coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside."

What are the "challenges" that they are talking about, it is hard to say. It could be a new instance or a ring of blood type of battle. Personally I hope it is a new raid instance because we still lack a good middle ground for raids. Ulduar was a great addition but lets face it, startup raiders will not be able to do it for some time and you cannot really call VoA and OS as raids - at least with a straight face. In the end we only have Naxxramas that is actually a real dungeon and many people, me included, would hope for more variety.

One might also make the case that we should soon also see a benefit to our reputation with the Silver Covenant faction. As for the moment, it is neigh useless but yet we still receive a health amount of reputation with them from various quests, including specifically the Argent Tournament dailies.

Another most welcome upgrade will be for the druids who are, finally, getting new skins to both their cat and bear forms. The skin will vary between races, so night elves and taurens for example, will look distinctively different. I am willing to wager half the druid population are extatic about this changes, as it is a rare player who isn't tired of watching the same, giant bear ass day after damn day.

One update that the world of player is in an uproar is the nerf that is being targetted at the jewelcrafters; as of 3.2, the dragon's eye gems will no longer be considered prismatic. This is a pretty major set back because that is one of the main benefits of using those gems. The main reason for the uproar is that so many gear sets in the game seem poorly designed when considering colored sockets.

As a personal example, my current dps gear set has literally 5-6 blue sockets, with one yellow and two red sockets. Anyone is free to explain to me in what world it makes any sense to have blue sockets in dps gear, because it bewilders me. The good news is, the patch has not even hit PTR yet so a lot of things are subject to change. So, if the gems are being nerfed, hopefully they can find a way around the socket issue.