LVL 80 or bust

[akun50]

They're changing Blood into the tank-spec for Cataclysm!

Seriously, what the hell, Blizzard?!

Mind you, I can understand the concept of making one of the specs into a tanking spec and the other two into DPS specs. In fact, I thought they'd pretty much done that with Frost being the tank spec and Blood/Unholy being the DPS specs. :hmm:

But Blood?!

I know Blood has some competent tanks running in it's spec, and I applaud those who do it, but Frost just seems like a better choice.

The primary reason I can think of is that Frost is elementally-aligned, hence not all of it's attacks work on every opponent, but that didn't really matter much (since I haven't run into any dungeons where enemies are immune to frost). Even if enemies were immune, all I had to do is switch up my rotation and I was just fine dealing with enemies immune to frost.

The only other thing I can think of is that the increased healing benefits of Blood somehow come across as making it more tank-worthy. (they don't)

Not to mention, what of the players who like being Blood DPS? What about players who like dual-wielding (like myself)?

I know it's Blizzard's game, and this is the first time I've seen a class so heavily savaged, so maybe I'm just unhappy with the shift.

But I wouldn't mind if they decided to keep things as they were.

 

[Darksnider05]

They're changing Blood into the tank-spec for Cataclysm!

Seriously, what the hell, Blizzard?!

Mind you, I can understand the concept of making one of the specs into a tanking spec and the other two into DPS specs. In fact, I thought they'd pretty much done that with Frost being the tank spec and Blood/Unholy being the DPS specs. :hmm:

But Blood?!

I know Blood has some competent tanks running in it's spec, and I applaud those who do it, but Frost just seems like a better choice.

The primary reason I can think of is that Frost is elementally-aligned, hence not all of it's attacks work on every opponent, but that didn't really matter much (since I haven't run into any dungeons where enemies are immune to frost). Even if enemies were immune, all I had to do is switch up my rotation and I was just fine dealing with enemies immune to frost.

The only other thing I can think of is that the increased healing benefits of Blood somehow come across as making it more tank-worthy. (they don't)

Not to mention, what of the players who like being Blood DPS? What about players who like dual-wielding (like myself)?

I know it's Blizzard's game, and this is the first time I've seen a class so heavily savaged, so maybe I'm just unhappy with the shift.

But I wouldn't mind if they decided to keep things as they were.

I'm a blood dpser... :no: :blue: :blue:

 

[mgsaintz]

I think the change is more along the lines that Armor Penetration is going to disappear as a stat in Cataclysm and Blood DPS is going to suffer because of that so they probably decided that it would be best for Blood to be the tank spec.

 

[Kayeich]

I can understand the reasoning behind it due to the mastery system, but I am honestly dissapointed. They could just as easily have the mastery bonus change depending on your presence as hack talent tree up and mangle it so that blood is only tank and the others are dps.

Frost is also actually not the best tank spec, akun. Most ICC tanks that I've seen, like 95% of them, are blood. This is because they have the most health and quite a few oh-shit buttons while still providing buffs (hysteria + abom's might) and is an extremely strong single-target tank (aka boss tank), whereas all frost tanks can give is haste buff (which could easily be done by a shaman and can't really be done by DW-tanks due to point economy), and only gets UA as extra oh-shit.

That said, I -enjoy- cycling through tank specs (although my favorite is and always be unholy, even if it was murdered beyond existance by ICC dodge aura), and have done them all, and it's sad to see that go away.

I also find it incredibly awkward that given 'frost presence' is the tanking presence, talent tree-wise they pick blood. Now there's some dissonance.

Also, kitty/bear druid still exists. They've existed since vanilla. Is feral combat going to also become dedicated tank speak and kitty just lost his ninth life, getting wiped out of existence? And that's -four- types of specs. With three trees, one spec would -have- to be wiped, if the mastery system is really an issue. You can't really mush two trees together, and then say DK can't do that too.

 

[Belgarion213]

Gah, I'm a blood dpser on my DK and I really really liked the rotation and such. GUess ill have ot get used to Unhoy but I LIKED THE blood dps build and I BLOODY WANT TO KEEP MY DANCING RUNE WEAPON.

 

[mgsaintz]

Well they didn't so much want to mangle the tree is that they originally was experimenting on DKs being able to tank with all trees and see how it was going to go. They want to change and make an all tank tree much like pally, warrior, and druid have instead of allowing all 3 trees being viable to tank. Mind you I wish they did that experiment for a short time period instead of the entire time since WotLK was released only to change it drastically in the next expansion.

 

[Belgarion213]

I don't really care what they intended, though iknow they were running an experiment, but getting forced out of my preferred dps tree is very very annoying.

 

[Kayeich]

The most annoying thing is that...Blizzard originally wanted to increase the number of available tanks because it wasn't really fun for a lot of people with just warrior/druid/pally and the variety was part of what -really- made the DK class appealing. A lot of tanks -are- DKs, some like the survival of blood, the aoe/caster buff of unholy, the dual wield of frost or mid-niche of 2H frost.

They are effectively stabbing themselves in the foot, by reducing it to just blood tanks, saying to the effect "okay, now we don't need that many tanks" or something. But you could tell this was on their mind, as they've been focusing on pidgeon-holing frost into dual wielding and unholy to not tank with the horrible nerf to bone armor in ICC.

Of course, given that they've had the previous stance that "tanks should be able to dual wield" as part of the focus of DW in frost so they weren't too spread out, you have to wonder then, is that going to be an option for blood tanks when they're ripping out the tanking ability of frost?

Also, dancing rune weapon -totally- gets shifted towards unholy. That's the pet spec, so now you manage army, ghoul, gargoyle -and- weapon. ;p

 

[Kai-]

I think the biggest problem in the 3x tanking trees was that it was hard to keep all 3 trees viable for both tanking AND dps at the same time (they got 5/6, everything is pretty viable except for uh tank).

Another point to consider is that it allows blizz to give more relevant mastery bonuses if they are working on the idea that blood is tank and uh/frost are dps

 

[violinmana]

Well, in the current setup, DW Frost tanking is absolutely not viable in ICC, if only because of parry-haste from certain bosses *coughfestergutcough* that will kill the tank in less than 5 seconds. Yeah, that bad. Blood is decent because of the life-gaining from Death Strike, Frost 2H is great if only for the extra threat/damage, and unholy is good for the damage mitigation from Bone Shield, which has 4 charges if glyphed.

But yeah. DW enemy parry-haste = BAD COOKIE.

 

[Darksnider05]

Maybe they'll move DW to blood just to be dicks.

 

[violinmana]

Maybe they'll move DW to blood just to be dicks.

If so, blood will be immensely OP for tanking because of the extra life gain.

 

[Darksnider05]

Anyway we really won't know what to expect until it actually comes out for now all we can do is wait and guesstimate.

 

[mgsaintz]

Actually Blizzard is going to release info about the class changes starting today with Shamans, Priests, and Warlocks. You can look it up here.

 

[Darksnider05]

Nice I want a new cleave!

 

[Kayeich]

Festergut does -not- parry haste. I'm not entirely sure, don't quite recall, but I believe the only bosses that parry haste in ICC are Deathwhisper and Sindragosa. I know someone did an analysis over a few weeks of tank data on ICC bosses to check for parry haste, and festergut was confirmed to not do so.

Besides which, blizz's general train of thought on bosses parry hasting is that if they hit extremely hard, or have enough special abilities that hit regularly, they won't parry haste. Festergut hits really freaking hard in phase 3 -and- stacks Gastric Bloat, which does damage on application.

Even before that analysis, I would have been hard pressed to believe he parry hasted. I'd be more likely to be convinced that the 'parry haste' seen by tank getting gibbed was just a really fast combination of bloat and hit coming at near same time (it happens).

And even if he did parry haste, it's already been shown that all it takes to be on the same ground as other tanks in terms of parry haste is a bit more expertise for DW tanks. Parry haste is just a bad excuse to exclude dual wield tanks. There's a lot of -better- reasons to exclude them.

The reason I wouldn't DW tank is simply because of the lack of oh shit buttons and extra health compared to Blood, and the lack of raid buffs (only possibility is haste buff, which you just don't have the points for if you DW) for -comparable- TPS. It's just a weaker spec overall, and the main reason to do it is because it looks damn cool, hence better left to heroics and lower tier raids, where you can afford to mess around more.

Unholy tank spec is also not entirely dead, as it's still perfectly viable -outside- of ICC, so if you just hit 80 and are gearing up, it's still very good for tanking heroics and lower-tier raids, as bone armor's uptime will be passably decent and you provide a very useful raid buff for casters/DKs if there's no unholy dps in heroic/raid group, and there's a lot of trash mobs to deal with, which is where unholy shines. It's certainly superior to DW tanking. You're still going to want to respec before ICC, though.

 

[Solarman]

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when itÆs necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

DAMN, just... DAMN. /want this for Moonkins.

 

[violinmana]

Festergut does -not- parry haste. I'm not entirely sure, don't quite recall, but I believe the only bosses that parry haste in ICC are Deathwhisper and Sindragosa. I know someone did an analysis over a few weeks of tank data on ICC bosses to check for parry haste, and festergut was confirmed to not do so.

Besides which, blizz's general train of thought on bosses parry hasting is that if they hit extremely hard, or have enough special abilities that hit regularly, they won't parry haste. Festergut hits really freaking hard in phase 3 -and- stacks Gastric Bloat, which does damage on application.

Even before that analysis, I would have been hard pressed to believe he parry hasted. I'd be more likely to be convinced that the 'parry haste' seen by tank getting gibbed was just a really fast combination of bloat and hit coming at near same time (it happens).

And even if he did parry haste, it's already been shown that all it takes to be on the same ground as other tanks in terms of parry haste is a bit more expertise for DW tanks. Parry haste is just a bad excuse to exclude dual wield tanks. There's a lot of -better- reasons to exclude them.

The reason I wouldn't DW tank is simply because of the lack of oh shit buttons and extra health compared to Blood, and the lack of raid buffs (only possibility is haste buff, which you just don't have the points for if you DW) for -comparable- TPS. It's just a weaker spec overall, and the main reason to do it is because it looks damn cool, hence better left to heroics and lower tier raids, where you can afford to mess around more.

Unholy tank spec is also not entirely dead, as it's still perfectly viable -outside- of ICC, so if you just hit 80 and are gearing up, it's still very good for tanking heroics and lower-tier raids, as bone armor's uptime will be passably decent and you provide a very useful raid buff for casters/DKs if there's no unholy dps in heroic/raid group, and there's a lot of trash mobs to deal with, which is where unholy shines. It's certainly superior to DW tanking. You're still going to want to respec before ICC, though.

My bad then. I tanked him once before and got three-shotted without cooldowns. The guy hits really fucking hard. No parry haste? That's fine. Although if anything, I'm a bit pissed at my hit rating in my tanking spec. I have only about 140 hit rating, or around 4-5%.

 

[Kai-]

Parry haste on/off list for ICC

And yeah, festergut really drills tanks when hes at 3 stacks hitting for huge amounts once every 1.2 seconds or so.

--

Kayeich I think you are being a tad unfair towards frost tanking, the 2% less damage taken and +3% avoidance is pretty comparable to the extra stamina and selfhealing offered by blood and the extra 6 second duration on IBF makes up for any shortcomings in Frost's Unbreakable Armor compared to Blood's Vamp Blood (And really, the difference isn't large although Vamp Blood is undeniably better in a raid setting).

The biggest drawback for frost is its lack of useful raid buffs (imo) which is a much larger concern in 10mans or heroics than it is for 25 man raiding (the blood buffs are given by MM hunters and enh shamans, both common and desirable class/specs, and UH dks will almost always be found in a 25 man).

 

[Kayeich]

I suppose I was. Though to be honest, I was specifically more unfair to DW frost, not necessarily 2H frost tanking, which does have the points to grab raid buff. 2H frost in fact has a fair more talent points it can afford to play around with to give an emphasis to survival/threat/raid buff as needed, while DW is very restricted in where it can put the majority of its points without gimping itself.

DW tanking also seems weaker with TPS just because people can't seem to resist grabbing those fast tanking weapons but not grabbing slow dps weapons. It's admittedly actually pretty darn good if a boss starts off without pounding you into cake, as you can start building a lot of threat with slow weapons, then switch fast tank weapons in for health/avoidance. A bit more work, but certainly doable if you're willing to go to the effort of hunting four one-handers and switching them based on need for for threat or survival. Of course, good luck winning four weapons of same ilv as opposed to a single 2h weapon.

That said, even looking at just 2h frost vs 2h blood, as a healer I do admit to having a preference for healing a high health pool taking somewhat steady damage, as opposed to a smaller health pool that can be really bursty/unpredictable. Sometimes I need to be mana-efficient or I risk running on empty, and doing it at the wrong time, especially in a new encounter, can be incredibly fatal. A high health pool gives me more error room to recover than avoidance -might-. Avoidance is entirely random. A high health pool is always -there-.

 

[Kayeich]

Kinda shocked to see the celestial mount was made a blizz store 'pet'. You gotta feel sorry for people that are working to grab Invincible now.

 

[violinmana]

Kinda shocked to see the celestial mount was made a blizz store 'pet'. You gotta feel sorry for people that are working to grab Invincible now.

I agree. Although you have to admit, that Steed looks awesome.

 

[torgrim]

Kinda shocked to see the celestial mount was made a blizz store 'pet'. You gotta feel sorry for people that are working to grab Invincible now.

I agree. Although you have to admit, that Steed looks awesome.

I think the mount looks awesome - though a little on the small side if you compare it to other horse shaped mounts.

I thought it was funny a couple of people in my guild were saying they didn't like the look of it - mostly because they did not have one themselves. One comment was toons look silly on a transparent mount when they are not transparent themselves. When I asked if that meant he didn't like the spectral tiger he didn't seem to still feel the same.
Honestly its bloody cheep I cant see anything to get jealous over.

 

[Kayeich]

A person has to beat out heroic 25-man Arthas and then beat out 24 other people on the roll for Invincible. It's going to be pretty rare, all things considered. Meanwhile, just walking around Dalaran for a minute shows about 15+ Celestial Steeds already.

To be fair, it's incredibly convinient, since it's BoA and scales to riding skill and zone, as well as going to 310% speed if you have another pet with that speed. That's a pretty good incentive to grab it, since as you said, its so cheap, and it's the only mount you'll ever really need. But...15+ people with it already, and that number's just gonna grow.

Sooner or later the overexposure is just going to make me tired of seeing them, which is a bit sad, since I do think it's one of the coolest mounts in-game right now.

Edit: I love how Nerf Now drew the celestial steed. That expression on the horse just gets to me.

 

[Belgarion213]

Mostly i found the ones compalining where the ones that daddy told them they cant use the credit card to get it