Feb 23

Corpse Explosion is a talent in the death knight Unholy tree. It didn’t used to look like this, it used to say something to the fact of:

Corpse Explosion
1 Unholy
Cause a corpse to explode for craptastic Shadow damage to all enemies within 20 yards.  Will use a nearby corpse if the target is not a corpse.  Does not affect mechanical or elemental corpses.

I feel certain that if the WoW tooltip system supported italics, that “craptastic” would indeed have been italicized.

The reason Corpse Explosion sucked so badly was two-fold: first, its cost was an unholy rune. I have so, so many better things to do with an unholy rune, like say for instance, casting Scourge Strike? The second reason it was a horrible talent is because it did very little damage. Put those two things on the fact that you needed a corpse to even use it and you’ve got yourself a truly worthless talent.

My guess is almost nobody took it, because a little while back it was changed. Now, it costs 40 runic power and does significantly more damage. How much more damage? Well, I wasn’t sure, so as I respecced last weekend to pick up Anti-Magic Zone, I decided to nab Corpse Explosion too, and take it for a test drive.

Short version: I like it. A lot.

Long version: In my current tank gear, Corpse Explosion does approximately 1000 damage to affected mobs. That’s not as much as a Death Coil, but it’s AoE, and unlike Unholy Blight it does not take time to do its damage. It’s really good for quick bursts of AoE damage or threat (assuming there is a corpse around). Violet Hold comes to mind, as does the hallway between Noth and Heigan (the one with all the bats and stuff). And in AoE situations, if Unhoy Blight is already ticking, or if the mobs won’t live long, I’d rather toss out a Corpse Explosion than a Death Coil.

Furthermore, if you cast it on your ghoul, he will explode! This includes both pet ghouls and Risen Ally ghouls. I’m not sure if it actually explodes them per the spell or if it makes them cast the “Explode” spell, but either way they do indeed explode.

It also helps that the spell is insanely fun to use anyway. I mean, just look at that picture at the top of the article! Furthermore, it can be cast on player corpses. Raid member die to Heigan’s dance? Take THAT! Completely owned that ganker on a PvP server? Forget /spit, just explode their corpse! Nothing quite as humiliating.

In case your wondering, after a corpse is exploded you’re left with either a pile of bones or a hunk of meat with bones sticking out–both of which can be looted, skinned, mined, and so forth as normal. As an added bonus, the pile of whatever is always the same size, from a gnome death knight (kill it!) to Gruul.

All in all, my test drive is pretty much complete–Corpse Explosion is staying on my action bar.

Feb 20

I’m a little late to the game, but I figured I’d join in all the “post the sixth screenshot from the sixth folder” hubub going around. I don’t have my screenshots in folders, so I just picked my sixth screenshot:

Well now that brings back some memories! My WoW life pretty much started like this:

1) Roll a mage on Shadowsong-Alliance. Get him to level 6 and realize you still have no clue what you’re doing.

2) Roll a warlock on Maelstrom-Horde with some friends.

This screenshot is shortly after number two. You can also tell it’s old due to the lack of addons (even the extra action bars are missing!). Simpler times….

Feb 18

I have nothing earthshattering to report today, but I did take a bunch of screenshots in some instance runs the other day. This one had a really nice feel, in my opinion. A /wave to Alliniana, who happens to be in the shot, and kept us alive during the encounter.

Click the small to make large!

Feb 17

Blizzard has released a quick preview of Ulduar, the new raid dungeon coming in 3.1. Though the article is short, it does help shed some insight to the thinking behind this dungeon’s design, and also gives away a neat spoiler or two (Yogg-Saron, here we come). Check it out on WoW Europe’s site (I can’t find a link to a US version!).

Feb 17

Today I am going to lead you on a discussion about the two major tanking runes for Death Knights: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (SG) and Rune of Swordshattering (SS).

Diminishing Returns

One key contept to understand in this debate is that of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns on avoidance stats, new to WoTLK, is a method of making a certain attribute less useful the more you have of it.

For example, let’s pretend that 100 dodge rating increased your dodge chance by 1%. For your first 100 rating, you’d have a 1% dodge chance. But because of diminishing returns, the next 100 rating might only give 0.95% dodge chance. The third 100 rating might give 0.90% dodge chance, and so on. This is an oversimplification of the topic, but it gets the point across–if you’re interested in more, check out this thread at TankSpot.

Why Does it Matter?

It matters because both runes provide their avoidance outside of diminishing returns. That means that the 25 defense skill from SG provides a straight 3% avoidance (1% miss, 1% dodge, 1% parry) and SS 4% (straight-up 4% parry).

Benefits of Swordshattering

Swordshattering, as mentioned, provides a plain 4% parry chance, while Stoneskin Gargoyle provides only 3%. Furthermore, 2% HP is not a lot, though it certainly shouldn’t be discredited–for a tank with 30,000 health, 2% would only be 600. Furthermore, since Rune Strike only becomes usable after a parry or a dodge (not a miss), Swordshattering is a slightly better threat rune (extra 2% chance to activate Rune Strike).

Benefits of Stoneskin Gargoyle

The major benefit of the Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle is the ability to build your tank set without worrying so much about remaining at 540 defense (the soft cap for being uncrittable by level 83 raid bosses). Although technically not superior to SS, SG allows you to gem and enchant for things other than defense rating, and gives you freedom in your gearing choices–especially since it is hard to remain uncrittable as a death knight once you start upgrading to epic pieces with better avoidance.

Conclusion

The conclusion is this: there is no definite conclusion! (I told you this was a “discussion”!) If you can remain uncrittable and use the Rune of Swordshattering, great! However, if you feel you want more gear/gem/enchant options, or need to reach the defense “cap”, by all means use the Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle, there’s nothing wrong with it!

Feb 13

Aes Sedai ventured into The Obsidian Sanctum (10 man) last night for their first full-guild raid. I started off as an off tank, moved to DPS as we reshuffled the raid after people disconnected and/or had to leave, and moved back to off tank for Sartharion himself. We pugged in a great shammy healer, Kasylin, for the final encounter and I want to thank her immensely for her help.

For those of you who don’t know this fight, from time to time walls of lava rise up from the left or right side of the island and move across, doing damage to anyone standing in the way; if any of the adds that spawn get hit by the walls, they gain a lot of damage.

As you can see, there are gaps in the walls, which the raid must stand in to keep from taking damage, and where the off tank must pull the adds to keep them from enraging. The first time we attempted this encounter, we discovered that Deadly Boss Mods keeps track of, and announces to the raid, when and how many times people fail to get out of the way of the lava. And there were a lot of them–and my DBM happily called every one of them out.

It makes it very easy for leadership to quickly see if folks are doing their job.

We make a second attempt, which fails quickly due to respawns being added to the fight (is this normal or did someone aggro them?).

So, we take a moment to repair, come back, clear some trash, type “/rw MOVE THE #@$&*% OUT OF THE WAY OF THE LAVA WALLS!” (actually, there was more discussion that than, but when it all boils down…) and engage him once more. The “lava churns,” moves across the island… and I’m silent in raid chat. Adds spawn, I pick ‘em up, my buddy the main tank does his thing, lava churns again… nothing. Nobody called out. Great!

Throughout the fight, we took maybe two or three lava waves, and though our DPS was low, we managed to bring Sartharion down.

And what should drop? Gloves of the Lost Vanquisher. And who should win the roll?

/happydance

Feb 11

So, as mentioned a few posts back, I dinged 80 recently. My plan was to continue questing for gold and rep, and get into some heroics as DPS when I could, seeing as my tanking set wasn’t quiet up to stuff for heroics. However, some guildies of mine had other plans.

First, my prot warrior friend decided to tank VH to give me a shot at the Bolstered Legplates. They dropped, but the holy pally won the need roll (for an off set)–that’s okay, they’ll drop again (I hope–my prot warrior friend ran that place like thirty times before they dropped!).

A couple of guildies gave me two Frozen Orbs and some mats, which when combined with my mats ended up being a Tempered Titansteel Helm and Tempered Titansteel Treads. I purchased Tempered Saronite Shoulders, Tempered Saronite Belt, Daunting Handguards and Daunting Legplates. I also purchased a belt buckle for the belt, a bunch of gems, and a meta-gem for the helm.

All in all, it was a good night for my tanking set. I’m uncrittable for heroics now, but only because of the weapon enchant, which I’d like to replace if I can get enough gear.

I want to say “Thanks!!” to my guildies, especially Badas and Yoder, for the materials and instance runs yesterday!

Feb 10

I didn’t realize it until just now, but I managed to miss my blog-o-versary! As of three days ago, this blog has been around for one year! I still remember making that initial welcome post, never thinking the blog would amount to anything more than a fun place for me to put my thoughts. I have to say “thank you” to all of you for helping making this blog a sucess, and I look forward to the future!

Feb 10

I’ve taken a few moments to update some areas of the site that have been long neglected. The “About” and “My Characters” pages have been updated, and I’ve gone through and cleaned up the categories (there should be no more “Uncategorized” posts). I’ve also updated the “Featured” section with more recent and relevant posts.

If you see anything that’s out of place or missing, feel free to let me know!

Feb 10

I alluded to the fact that tanks and healers often share a different bond than most people in a prior post, but as I began to think about this some more I decided to post my thoughts.

The Role of the Tank and the Healer

I’m sure you all know what a tank does and what a healer does, but bear with me.

Tank: A tank’s job, at it’s most basic, is to keep aggro on mobs. There are secondary responsibilities, like not dying, which inlcudes gearing up, etc., but at it’s most basic, the tank is there to make things angry so they don’t get angry at the people that would die if the angry things hit them.

Healer: A healer’s job, at it’s most basic, is to make sure people stay alive, primarily the tank. Ideally (and barring AoE damage, which now days is unavoidable), only the tank should be taking damage, because the tank should be keeping the attention of all the mobs.

Connections to Real Life

This reminds me a bit of a traditional family. The man of the house is generally a protector, running interference between all the things that need to be taken care of–providing money for the family, taking care of the yard work, etc.–and the rest of the family. The woman is traditionally more nurturing, caring for the home and the rest of the family. When I realize that I couldn’t successfully tank without the support of a healer, it reminds me of the fact that I could never take care of everything that needed to be done at home without the support of my wife.

The Instant Bond

As a tank, you’ve got your mind on several things at once, especially if you’re tanking several mobs at once. As a death knight tank, I open with Death and Decay, then make sure my diseases get spread around, then make sure I nab the adds or any mobs the DPS may have pulled, and in it all, I might have a moment to take a look at my health pool and go “Holy cow, that’s low.” But then I notice all the green text flying up the right side of my screen–numbers followed by a name. “Oh, it’s okay,” I say to myself, “so-and-so’s got my back.”

I don’t know how it feels from a healer’s perspective, but for me it’s like an instant bond, knowing that someone’s focusing as much on keeping me alive as I am on keeping them from getting eaten by Erekem and his adds. Perhaps the parallel to a real-life relationship is what makes the feeling so strong and so sudden, particularly, as Phaelia points out, when the tank is a male and the healer is a female.

This “bond” (or whatever you’d like to call it) is very interesting to me. Especially when I know the healer (see the next sections), I feel a lot less at edge, to the point that I feel more secure when the healer has me as their target (my mind almost equates this to catching someone’s eye).

“That Healer”

I’d be willing to bet that most tanks have a “that healer.” “That healer” is the healer that healed you in that one instance things went so swimmingly in. “That healer” is the person a tank asks “do you want to run X” before he asks anyone else, because he knows that “that healer” is good at what they do and knows they’ll do their best to keep them up. A relationship between a tank and “that healer” can extend beyond that, in time, as experienced by Jessika.

As someone who spends their time in WoW taking hits for the team, there’s nothing better than not only knowing intellectually that the person keeping you alive is a good healer and will do their darndest to make sure you don’t bite the dust, but also that they’re a friend and that the relationship extends beyond just “I get hit in the face and you make it feel better.” That’s the kind of person that brings out the “Hey, I was gonna run an instance, but only if you’d like to heal!”

Types of Healers

This is a subject that I was thinking about last night when a friend of mine was healing me for The Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul’Drak. Each type of healer–priest, paladin, shaman, and druid–heal quite differently (a druid with HoTs, a shaman with lots of Brain Heal, etc). It struck me that it feels different, psychologically, to be healed by these different classes. The joke I made to my friend (a priest) was “Ah, familiar heals. Not those strange, unfeeling paladin crits.”

This particular friend has a pattern I’ve noticed near the beginning of every pull: a self bubble and a cast of Prayer of Mending for me. Waiting for the mob to run down the stairs, watching the little buff icon above my character frame show up, is when I realized that each class’ heals really do feel different. For example, the priest’s shields, “preventative” heals, and HoTs (and especially the way this priest friend tends to use them) makes me feel secure (”I notice you’re about to pull and tank for us–here, take this, it’ll help :)”), while being healed by a paladin, which is much more reactive and critty, feels more like heals are being thrown at you at a hundred miles an hour (”FEEL BETTER NOW DAMMIT!”).

Conclusion

I’ve rambled on long enough. Now it’s your turn. I’m very interested in what others of you have to say. Tanks, do you notice this relationship at all? Have you formed a stronger relationship with “that healer?” Does the relationship extend beyond tanking and healing? Healers, do you notice it to? What about the relationships with your tanks? You folks that play DPS, do you form bonds like this, or is it all about the meters, like it was for Elad?