Class Information Here for Cataclysm.

[chaos5061]

This posts here will direct you to information on class changes and new things to know about if you don't know about them. It's mainly for learning new classes you may want to roll. But it can also be for people who know they're classes but may not know some changes like if you need spirit for classes instead of intelligence. Blizzard may have changed some thing you don't know about. Now I take all the links from the WowInsider site. They have great information for even less knowledgeable people like me If you want some theroycrafting then I suggest elitistsjerks but you better know what you are talking about before asking question or they will ban you and I'm not kidding.

[chaos5061]

So First Mages Pt.1

Arcane Brilliance http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/04/ar...ide-for-mages/
Arcane 101

Arcane is the go-to spec for high, single-target damage. The spec's mastery, Mana Adept, varies your damage output based on how much of your mana pool you've got left. On paper, it's relatively simple: The closer to max mana you are, the more damage your spells do. The way it plays out is actually far more complex. Playing an arcane mage requires skill, patience, and a willingness to do some research on your class. Once you get a good grasp on what you're doing, though, the spec is incredibly rewarding. There's very little I can do to describe the feeling you get when you see an Arcane Blast crit for six figures, not only killing the mob you had targeted, but also doing damage to his posterity down through seven generations, causing his children's children's great-great-grandchildren to speak in hushed tones about the time many generations past when a mage blew up his forefather.

Detailed talent analysis for arcane can be found here.

Base spec Arcane 31/2/3

This gets you the basic DPS talents (and the always-useful movement talent Improved Blink). It also picks up the crit-increasing Piercing Ice from the frost tree and the mana-refunding Master of Elements from the fire tree. As you make your way to level 85, you'll pick up five more discretionary talent points that you can deploy however you wish.

Basic rotation Arcane's rotation is governed by Mana Adept's dependency on your mana pool. Your highest damage rotation is simple Arcane Blast spam, but spamming that spell also burns through your mana pool at an incredibly rapid clip. The idea is to break your rotation up into phases.

* Burn phase Arcane Blast spam until you get to about 40 percent of your mana pool. Slip in Arcane Power and your Mana Gem when you deem appropriate (to buff your damage output during this high-output phase and return your mana to full when it gets low enough).
* Recovery phase Evocation to get your mana pool back to 100 percent.
* Conservation phase The actual rotation here varies based on your gear and level. The concept is to keep your mana at the same optimal level long enough to get close to the cooldown of your Evocation being up and thus primed for another burn phase. For most mages, you want your mana pool top stay around 85 to 90 percent. The best rotation to maintain this mana level (and thus consistent high DPS output) will change as your gear improves, and you will need to do some tinkering and/or research to determine the rotation specific to your mage.

The basic template to follow for the conservation phase is:

Arcane Blast x2 (or more) --> Arcane Missiles (or Arcane Barrage if Arcane Missiles hasn't procced) --> repeat

Adjust that as necessary to make sure your mana pool stays at 85 to 90 percent; then when Evocation comes back, you begin the burn phase. Mastery of this complex rotation is something of an art, and I firmly believe that Blizzard has placed playing this this spec properly so far beyond the scope of the casual WoW player's reach that number-crunching, spreadsheet jiggery, and outside research is pretty much required for arcane mages now.

If that sounds like too much work to you, don't spec arcane.

Fire 101

Fire is an incredibly well-designed tree. The talents interplay with each other throughout the tree in such a way that the entire spec just feels incredibly cohesive. Based around damage over time effects and area of effect spells, the fire tree provides exceptional and consistent multi-target DPS but still packs a punch even when there's only one enemy to be blown up. But what can't overstated about the fire tree is this: It's really, really fun to play. You may not get the gigantic crits of arcane or the PvP dominance of frost, but you will get moving Scorches. And moving Scorches are the shiznit.

Detailed talent analysis for fire can be found here.

Base spec Fire 3/32/3

This build nets you every DPS talent and grabs Piercing Ice's crit increase and Netherwind Presence's haste buff from the frost and arcane trees, respectively. The three points in Burning Soul are for pushback protection, something that's only beneficial if you're actually getting hit regularly. If you don't get a lot of pushback normally, you might want to redistribute those points elsewhere. This build leaves you with three floating talent points to put wherever you wish.

Basic rotation Like most other rotations in Cataclysm, fire's is priority-based but varies depending upon the situation at hand:

1. Living Bomb (if not already up)
2. Combustion (if off cooldown and if Living Bomb, Pyroblast, and a large Ignite DoT are all up on your main target at the same time)
3. Pyroblast! (if Hot Streak has procced)
4. Fireball (or Frostfire Bolt with glyph if your mastery is high enough that it becomes better than Fireball)

If there are multiple tanked targets within range of each other, cast Fire Blast whenever Impact procs to spread your DoT effects to those additional targets. During movement phases, spam Scorch and maintain Living Bomb.

In short, this means you keep Living Bomb up at all times, spam Fireball (or Frostfire Bolt) until Hot Streak procs, then cast Pyroblast. When all of your major DoT effects are up on your main target and Combustion is off cooldown, Combust the living crap out of it. Add water, stir, bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees, and serve hot. Enjoy!

Frost 101

The frost spec is based upon control, high burst damage, and sexy, blue-green water elemental familiars. This is the kind of mage you want to be if you like freezing your opponent in his tracks, then pelting him repeatedly in the face with sharp spikes of deadly ice while you run away from him laughing. Ever been hit in the head by a snowball some kid thought it would be funny to put a rock in? Being a frost mage is like being that kid. Only not an asshole. Well ... maybe a little bit of an asshole. Frost mages excel at keeping their enemies at a safe distance while they kill them. Still the most effective of the three mage specs for PvP combat, frost mages are also (finally) competitive single-target damage-dealers in PvE. Oh, and they have a freaking pet. He's big and blue, enjoys long walks through the Wetlands, and subsists on a strict diet of warlock tears.

Detailed talent analysis for frost can be found here.

Base spec Frost 3/0/31

This gives you access to all of the damage talents in the frost tree and nabs the massive haste increase of Netherwind Presence in arcane. You have a great deal of free talent points to work with here -- seven, to be precise. Frost is by far the most flexible of the three mage specs. You can swoop back into the frost tree to make your mage a PvP powerhouse, or go into the fire tree to grab spell pushback or mana return. The arcane tree could be exploited for Improved Counterspell or even Improved Blink. Go crazy, guys. Seven totally discretionary talent points is a lot to play with.

Basic rotation Again, frost's rotation is less a rotation in the classic sense than a list of priorities. Just like adult life. Only with more magic and less bill paying.

1. Deep Freeze (when cooldown is up and Fingers of Frost is active)
2. Frostfire Bolt (if Brain Freeze has procced and FoF is up)
3. Ice Lance (if FoF is active)
4. Freeze from your water elemental (if off cooldown and if Deep Freeze is also off cooldown and ready to be deployed, but FoF is not active)
5. Frostbolt

So most fights will involve Frostbolt spam until Fingers of Frost procs, followed by whatever the higher-priority spell the conditions are right for, starting at the top of the list and working down. Playing a frost mage right involves being cognizant of your priorities in every situation, then being constantly on the watch for FoF procs and aware of your various cooldowns.

Stat weights

So now you've rolled your new mage. Chances are he's a wolfperson. That's fine; wolfpeople are indeed pretty cool. Whatever kind of mage you've created, you've probably leveled him to 10 by now and picked a spec. But now you've gone and completed a quest that rewards you with a choice of weapons. There's a dagger there with some stats on it. But wait ... there's also a staff with some other different stats on it! Crazy! In desperation, you turn to the internets. After typing randomly for hours, stumbling across all manner of fajita recipes and midget porn, you somehow manage to find Arcane Brilliance. "Weekly internet mage column!" you say, "What should I take? The Dagger of Hasty Agile Strength or the Staff of Intelligent Critical Spirituality?" Then you stare at your computer screen, feeling foolish for talking to the screen out loud at the computer kiosk there in the middle of the public library. The homeless guy sleeping next to you snorts awake and gives you a funny look, murmuring something that sounds suspiciously like "noob." Mashing the mouse buttons, you eventually make the web page scroll down to this paragraph. It is there that you find your answer.

Mage stat priorities (in descending order)

1. hit rating (until cap, which is 446, or 17%) Edit: The cap at level 85 is still 17%, only at 85, it'll require 1742 hit rating to get there. Man, it would sure be nice to have a hit talent or two ... you know ... like every other DPS caster class? Wink wink, nudge nudge? Thanks to g2g591 for pointing this out.
2. intellect (gives you spellpower, mana, and a small amount of crit; you will find it on every piece of cloth gear ever)
3. mastery (only available after level 80, but awesome once you can get a lot of it)
4. haste rating
5. crit rating (the values of this and haste vary depending upon your spec and how much you have of both, but at higher levels, mastery will almost always trump both)

[chaos5061]

Mages Pt.2

That's pretty much it for Arcane Brilliance's basic intro to the mage class in Cataclysm. We'll close with some random extra tips for new mages:

* You are made of wet tissue paper. Avoid sharp things, stiff breezes, children with runny noses, and uneven terrain.
* Aggro is what happens when you're in an instance and you attack something you aren't supposed to. Or you attack something you're supposed to attack, but you attack it too much. You will know you have aggro when something large and pointy lumbers in your direction, ignoring the guy with the big armor who is trying to protect you. When aggro happens, stop casting.
* There's no shame in running away. The shame comes when you do it by jumping off a cliff, then realize in mid-air that you don't have any reagents to cast a Slow Fall spell.
* A steady diet of nothing but magically conjured strudel is not heart-healthy.
* You have a spell called Remove Curse in your spellbook. Use it.

[chaos5061]

DPS Warriors Pt.1

The Care And Feeding Of Warriors http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/04/th...guide-for-dps/
In short, if you remember our Arms and Fury 101 posts from earlier this year, we're going to do a roundup for the changes Cataclysm has brought to each spec. Since the changes have actually debuted before Cataclysm has, we've already had a chance to get familiar with what we're going to be seeing in the next few weeks.

So let's go over what a DPS warrior is and isn't. Specifically, a DPS warrior is not a tank. This does not mean that the warrior class does not have a fully functional tanking spec. It does; it's called protection, and we'll be talking about it next week. But while DPS warriors (be they arms or fury) probably think tanking is great and love tanks to death, they would much rather be unleashing bloody murder on things, if that's all right with you.

So let's talk about what the DPS warrior specs are, how they work in Cataclysm, and what you're signing up for when you sign up as a warrior to murder things and take their stuff.

What are the warrior DPS specs?

This one's fairly easy. When you hit level 10 or selected your talent points after the Shattering, did you choose protection as your primary spec? Yes? Then you're not a DPS warrior. You're a tank. Thank you for your interest in DPS warriors; please do not show up for an instance with a sword and board and 31 points in protection and try to DPS in defensive stance. You'll give the tank fits, generate little to no DPS, and confuse everyone.

If you chose arms or fury, however, congratulations. You're a DPS warrior. That's right, two out of the three warrior specs are all about hurting things. Whether you like hitting things with a big two-hander, two smaller one-handers, or two big two-handers, it all comes back to hitting things.

Arms is, in a nutshell, the finesse spec. You're still interested in picking up a colossal sword, axe, mace or polearm and ruining someone's day, but you do so with an eye towards efficiency and precise, debilitating strikes. Arms warriors deal their enemies small wounds to cause them to bleed and crippling wounds that inhibit magical healing. They take advantage of their opponent's tendency to duck out of the way to deal strikes that overpower their defenses entirely. Arms warriors are specialists, tacticians on the battleground. They can even weave their weapon into a storm of strikes at higher levels.

At its heart, fury is about grabbing a couple of weapons and smashing everything hostile with them until everything is dead ... and then probably hitting them a few more times. In the words of Théoden, "Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to ruin, and the world's ending!" Or as that notable fury warrior the Incredible Hulk might put it, "Hulk smash." Leveling fury warriors will use two weapons that are designed to be used in one hand, but the talent Titan's Grip will allow a fury warrior to dual wield two-handers if desired. (If you'd rather not, Single-Minded Fury allows you to continue using one-handers while boosting damage to compensate for losing the higher damage of two-handers.)

What are their benefits?

If you prefer offense to defense, these are the specs for you. Either DPS spec can generally produce much higher damage output than a tanking warrior. If you want to dual wield, fury is required (it's one of the specialization bonuses for fury), while arms gets significant bonuses to two-handed weapon use. Most PvP (player vs. player) warriors are arms warriors, due to the talent spec's combination of debuffs, offensive power and mobility. Fury warriors are generally more popular for PvE (player vs. environment) content such as dungeons and raids, but each spec sees use in each context.

If you want to be one of the ones doing the direct killing, these are the specs for you.

What are their drawbacks?

Warriors are intended to be a hybrid class, one that can fulfill more than one role in the game. The roles are defined as tanking, DPS and healing. Since warriors can specialize their talents to either tank or DPS, they are designed to be inferior DPSers than classes that can only DPS. (Crowd control abilities, such as are possessed by most pure DPS classes, are not considered a role in this case.) Warriors do not have any significant CC (not counting the Glyph of Intimidating Shout) and so cannot fulfill that role in an instance group or raid. In essence, if a warrior is there to deal damage, that's all he's going to be able to do, save for perhaps emergency tanking for a few seconds.

What stats do I want as a DPS warrior?

Each DPS spec uses the same stats but has different targets for each. One of the nice changes Cataclysm has in store for you as a warrior is that the game automatically does the math for rating conversion on your character pane as you level, so you won't need to worry about exactly how much hit rating you'll need; it will tell you.

* Hit Rating Arms has an easier time hitting its target than fury, but for either spec, hit is possibly the best DPS stat until you hit the cap. When looking at your character panel, you'll see exactly what your chance to miss an attack is with your current hit. You can adjust it via gemming, enchanting and gearing. In general, you should at least aim for the minimum amount of hit necessary to not miss special attacks, which is 8 percent. As we level to 85, boss-level mobs will go from level 83 to level 88, but the percentage of hit we'll need to hit them will remain fixed at 8 percent, unmodified by talents or racial abilities. The rating needed to get that much hit will increase with every level. As you can see in the screenshot above, hitting the 8 percent hit you'd need to be completely hit-capped on an arms warrior will be doable by the first tier of Cataclysm raiding. Fury hit capping will be much, much more difficult.
* Strength With the removal of ArP, strength is your go-to red gem of choice when socketing your gear; it is the main source of raw damage output for a warrior. While you definitely want to make sure your attacks hit, you also want to make sure they do some damage.
* Expertise You need exactly 26 expertise to push a raid boss' chance to dodge your attacks off of the table. The parry cap is not worth considering, since it's fairly high and you aren't supposed to be attacking your target from in front, where it does all those nasty cleaves and special horrible attacks that we let the tanks soak up. Frankly, hitting the 26 expertise cap is not going to be much of a problem by the time you're in the first raid tier of gear. You may even have to start reforging it off at that point. I suggest hit, if you're a fury warrior. Arms will most likely move it to crit.
* Haste With the changes to the rage mechanic (as discussed here and in numerous other places), haste, expertise and hit rating are now the only stats that increase a DPS warrior's rage generation. Expertise and hit work by reducing dodges and misses, since an attack that doesn't connect doesn't generate rage. Haste works by increasing the speed of your white swings, thus getting more swings in to generate more rage with. Since haste doesn't work on arms warrior's DoT damage, it's still a fairly lackluster stat for arms, but in tests I've run as fury, it can provide a fairly significant DPS boost. I'd rate it below the "must cap" stats and strength, but it is surprisingly close to critical strike rating in some situations for fury.
* Critical strike rating Even in raid gear, your critical strike chance is going to plummet in Cataclysm. With stats that just have to be capped and agility almost useless for us (while it generates both attack power and crit for agility classes), you're going to most likely end up with much lower crit at 85 than at 80 for a good long while. Gear has to scale somehow. I'd prioritize crit below hit and around the same as haste or expertise, depending on your spec.
* Mastery We've recently discussed mastery in detail. It's the "do whatever you do better" stat added just for Cataclysm. While it's a very good stat, it will probably benefit arms faster than fury, due to arms' having less punishing hit caps to reach.

[chaos5061]

DPS Warriors Pt.2

Talent specializations and abilities

In some ways, we're fortunate that Cataclysm has simplified these for us. There are fewer must-have talents; several passive talents were rolled into the talent specialization bonuses for picking a spec; and there's room for us to choose what we want and don't want. First, we'll look at each spec's talent specializations and then the talents and abilities therein. We covered mastery bonuses for all three specs in this column, so we won't discuss them again here aside from mentioning what they are.

Arms talent specializations are Mortal Strilke for the active attack and for passives, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization and Anger Management. The mastery is Strikes of Opportunity. The fury talent specializations are Bloodthirst (an active attack) and Dual Wield Specialization and Precision for passive bonuses, with Unshackled Fury as the mastery. There's no real choice involved in any of these save for the choice that you make between each tree at level 10, so simply be aware of them and their interaction with your chosen spec.

An arms warrior will be using a priority-based system based around the Mortal Strike ability, applying bleeds with Rend and the Deep Wounds talent and using Overpower and Colossus Smash as they proc. Slam and Heroic Strike are rage dumps, with Execute becoming a powerful attack when your target is below 20 percent health. We'll take a look at arms talents of consequence now.

* Tier 1 arms talents are War Academy, Field Dressing, and Blitz. Field Dressing is a talent for leveling and tanking; most arms warriors will probably use it for a while but abandon it in a pure DPS spec. It's also strong for PvP. Blitz is also a good PvP talent for an arms warrior as well as a solid tanking talent, very useful for flag defense and the like. War Academy is simply a DPS boost that all arms warriors will take.
* Tier 2 and 3 arms talents include Deep Wounds, Taste for Blood, Sweeping Strikes, and Impale. These are all straightforward DPS increases either through additional damage, allowing procs, or increasing how many targets you hit. Tactical Mastery allows for rage conservation when switching stances (useful for PvP or when trying to use abilities from Defensive or Berserker stance in general); Second Wind provides a little extra survivability when stunned; Drums of War allows you to save rage when interrupting or debuffing; and Improved Hamstring gives you a chance to immobilize someone you've snared. You don't have real CC, but you can provide excellent snaring with this talent.
* For the fourth and fifth tier of the arms tree, we have Improved Slam, Deadly Calm, Blood Frenzy, Lambs to the Slaughter, Juggernaut, and Sudden Death. Unless something changes drastically before we reach level 85, Improved Slam is probably the least desirable of these talents. Deadly Calm is an excellent cooldown for either situations where you're low on rage but need to put out damage now, or for when you reach execute territory and want to keep all of your rage for the next execute. Blood Frenzy is still a solid debuff; it helps with rage generation, which is always a plus for arms. Lambs to the Slaughter is a DPS increase for using arms' main attack; Juggernaut is just plain awesome and increases your damage after you use Charge; and Sudden Death makes Colossus Smash a viable part of your rotation, which is awesome due to Colossus Smash's ability to bypass armor.
* Finally, we have Wrecking Crew, Bladestorm, and Throwdown. Take all three. Frankly, I'm not even going to bother going over why you should; just do it. If you don't want to take these talents as a DPS warrior, you want to be fury.

Speaking of fury, the fury "rotation" is more fluid and dependent on enrages. You'll use Bloodthirst on cooldown, with Heroic Strike taking up a big part of the rotation up now due to its being off the global cooldown (meaning that you can hit HS and BT at the same time without stepping on, say, a Raging Blow proc) and Raging Blow when it procs. You're intended to use Bloodsurge-procced Slams on cooldown, as well. But with Slam damage being lackluster for the foreseeable future and Colossus Smash, Raging Blow, and HS for the single-target rotation (and Cleave/Whirlwind for adds), Slam may end up sliding down the priority queue. I've done parses at level 80 that indicate it might still be worth using, but we'll have to wait and see. (My level 85 beta parses ended up within 100 DPS between my ignoring Slam runs and my using it on every proc runs, which has me scratching my head.)

* Tier 1 fury talents are Blood Craze, Battle Trance, and Cruelty. Blood Craze was heavily nerfed in recent weeks and is now a leveling curiosity at best until/unless you combine it with Field Dressing; even then, it's lackluster. The Battle Trance/Cruelty combo will get you to Tier 2 and are both excellent talents.
* Tier 2 is Executioner, Booming Voice, Rude Interruption, and Piercing Howl. These are all fairly solid talents, with Executioner being good solid DPS in that 20 percent execute phase. Booming Voice is more and better rage generation; Rude Interruption gives you a nice DPS boost for doing what you should do anyway and interrupting spell casts; and Piercing Howl is good for PvP and PvE situations. It's a fairly well-loaded tier.
* Tier 3 is Flurry, Death Wish, and Enrage. Let me just say it now: You'll max all of these. Just take them and move on.
* Tier 4 is Die by the Sword, Raging Blow, Rampage, and Heroic Fury. Die by the Sword is a nice concept but does not do enough for the points, in my opinion. I get that it is intended to save a fury warrior who steals some aggro from horrible death, but even so, I have a hard time imagining putting points there with Raging Blow, Rampage and Heroic Fury in the same level.
* Tier 5 is Furious Attacks, Meat Cleaver, and Intensify Rage. Furious Attacks is pretty useless now for PvP since it can only reduce healing by 10 percent and it can only be applied by an autoattack; it's not reliable. Meat Cleaver and Intensify Rage are excellent talents.
* Tier 6 and 7 are Bloodsurge, Skirmisher, Titan's Grip, and Single-Minded Fury. TG and SMF are what you choose if you want to dual wield two-handed or one-handed weapons, respectively. Bloodsurge will be good at 85 if Slam damage scales reasonably and not if not. Skirmisher is excellent for high-mobility fights and PvP.

In addition to all this, there are several new abilities to consider for DPS warriors. These are Inner Rage, Colossus Smash, and Heroic Leap. Inner Rage will serve you as a DPS cooldown in cases of high rage (and arms warriors, you can't use Inner Rage during Deadly Calm), while Colossus Smash will be used on cooldown by both specs (arms will get Colossus Smash reset procs from Sudden Death, getting more use out of it). Heroic Leap is both more freedom to move around (basically a targetable Charge, it could serve to evacuate an area quickly) and an added attack. One could imagine Intervening to an ally, then using Heroic Leap to get back into the fray and add some extra damage at the same time.

Glyphs and gems

As I wrote in my patch 4.0.1 analysis for arms and fury, glyphs are not terribly complicated right now. Get MS, Overpower and either Slam or Bladestorm for arms primes, with the real flexibility coming in majors, where you can glyph Colossus Smash to also put a Sunder on a target or enhance your Charge with more range or faster cooldown. Similarly, fury warriors are going to glyph Bloodthirst, Raging Blow and Slam because there's nothing else.

Fury warriors will gem hit for their blue sockets and strength for red. Arms probably won't gem hit, possibly gemming mastery in their yellow sockets. Without the large hit cap needed, arms will always have a bit more freedom with its gemming, and it remains to be seen if gemming for more Strikes of Opportunity will be better than going with straight strength or haste. (I'd expect mastery to trump haste for arms.)

Next week, we'll talk about tanking in Cataclysm. Will off spec tanking be viable at all, or must one be protection to even run a 5-man?

[chaos5061]

Shadow Priests Pt.1

Spiritual Guidance http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/01/sp...t-point-by-po/
As you'd expect from a class that (now) stacks intelligence, we shadow priests are a classy sort. To prove this to my oft-skeptical bosses here at WoW Insider, I thought we'd start today's Spiritual Guidance with a little bit of class and culture. As such, I present to you, while sipping on a martini with pinky out-turned, a poem courtesy of our old friend Dark Cleric Duesten:

A Forsaken priest is a curious beast,
her path an unusual course.
Her shadowy rites cannot come from the
Light, so she seeks a more sinister source.

That's about as poetic as I'm willing to allow Spiritual Guidance to get -- we don't want this column turning into Frasier. I did have a reason behind today's poetic opener, though: The quote is just the tiniest sampling of the thousands of new quests that were put into the game last week. Cataclysm is still a week away, but if you're just twiddling your thumbs waiting, you're missing out on some of the best parts of the new expansion. These two weeks between "The Shattering" and the release of Cataclysm are prime alt-leveling time.

Sure, you can't be a goblin priest yet, but you can be a tauren or (ugh) gnome priest now. You can even reroll a race you've already played to enjoy a whole new experience. I spent the last few days leveling a Forsaken shadow priest from scratch, and it's just so much fun (once you get past that bugged first quest). There's much more flavor to be had on this go around -- it's just an incredibly enjoyable experience. I primarily play Alliance, but there's still no denying that there's something bizarrely satisfying about killing an already dead Marshal Redpath and then eating his corpse.

Whether you're taking on the roleplaying challenge of a tauren shadow priest or crawling your way out of Deathknell as an undead seeker of the ... sinister source, you'll need to know where to put all those valuable talent points on your way to level 85.

Tier 1: Levels 10 through 18

Once you get to level 10, you'll get your first talent point. You'll get another point at level 11, and then every second level after that up to level 81. You'll get talent points at each level after that, to 85. It's an odd schedule.

The first few talents you'll wind up taking are relative no-brainers. At levels 10, 11, and 13, you'll be investing talent points in Darkness, a talent that gives you 1 percent spell haste per talent point. It's a raw damage per second upgrade, obviously, especially now that Shadow Word: Pain is affected by haste. At levels 15 and 17, put your talent points in Improved Shadow Word: Pain.

Will you use Shadow Word: Pain in your rotations? If you're building your shadow priest from scratch -- that is, leveling without the benefit of enchanted heirloom items -- you'll find yourself using Shadow Word: Pain a lot. It's less of a player for those with heirlooms, but any time you get saddled with having to fight more than one enemy, you'll wind up breaking it out. In any case, a stronger SW:P is far more useful at this point than the save-it-for-later talent Veiled Shadows.

Tier 2: Levels 19 through 28

Throughout the leveling process, you'll notice a pattern -- if you're not gaining a talent point, you're being told to revisit your trainer to learn a new ability. In the early going, new shadow spells are few and far between; you're still assembling a basic priest toolkit, and an awful lot of those tools are heal-oriented.

Mind Blast is the ultimate shadow priest spell, and since it's one of the few spells you'll actually be able to cast at this point in the game, you want it to be off of cooldown as much as possible. That's why I recommend you invest your talent points at levels 19, 21, and 23 in Improved Mind Blast.

Improved Devouring Plague is a great talent, but you don't learn Devouring Plague until level 28. Hold off on that talent for now, and instead use your level 25 and 27 talent points in Twisted Faith. Obviously, the 2 percent buff to shadow damage it gives you is welcome, but the spirit-to-hit conversion aspect is exceptionally useful while leveling. Consider this: You're routinely sent to face off against mobs that are often two or three levels above you; your chance to hit against those beasties is miserable. And even if you're facing enemies that are your level, you're still only 96 percent likely to hit them. Hit is always going to be your most valuable stat, so these talent points are no-brainers.

Look at that -- 10 points in, and your talent tree is well on its way.

Tier 3: Levels 29 through 38

Your level 29 talent point is probably the easiest choice you'll ever make -- Shadowform. Everything is more awesome in Shadowform. Taking rides on gryphons is more awesome in Shadowform. Running around the auction house is more awesome in Shadowform. Heck, Shadowform is so awesome that Dawn Moore confided in me that she writes every Sunday Spiritual Guidance column while AFKing in Shadowform. (If Fox says it, it must be true.)

But I digress. If Shadowform were the easy call here, investing the next four talent points to open up tier 4 is going to be somewhat harder. Harnessed Shadows is a terrific talent, but keep in mind that Shadow Orbs don't really pick up steam until you can actually train Mastery at level 80. Phantasm is a pretty useful talent for PvP with far fewer uses in PvE.

So where do those points go? Well, since we can finally cast Devouring Plague now, levels 31 and 33 seem like a perfect time to jump back up a tier and go 2/2 in Improved Devouring Plague. As for levels 35 and 37, I'm going to recommend you take the not-so-sexy Improved Psychic Scream. While Psychic Scream is mostly used in PvP (and otherwise not generally recommended for use in PvE), the new-for-patch-4.0.1 Glyph of Psychic Scream (at level 50, anyway -- use the Glyph of Spirit Tap at level 25) gives Psychic Scream some much-needed PvE cred.

[chaos5061]

Shadow Priests Pt.2

Tier 4: Levels 39 through 48

Tier 4 starts off with another easy choice: Take Vampiric Embrace at level 39. Even with recent nerfs to the ability, its healing is still a godsend for the leveling shadow priest. At levels 41 and 43, I recommend you take the follow-on ability Masochism, which allows you to resore mana when you take significant hits of damage -- obviously useful while leveling.

Also useful while leveling: Shadow Word: Death. It's an exceptionally powerful instant-cast attack, provided you land it when your target is below 25 percent health. Your talent points at levels 45 and 47 are best spent powering that ability up with Mind Melt.

Tier 5: Levels 49 through 58

The most important talent in the fifth tier is the Vampiric Touch damage over time spell; take it as soon as you hit level 49. At levels 51 and 53, I recommend Paralysis. If your target gets paralyzed, it's as good as dead before it'll ever reach you. That comes in exceptionally handy while soloing. And while you're taking talents in tier 5, you may as well finish it out by going 2/2 in Pain and Suffering at levels 55 and 57 -- it turns SW:P into a spell with an effectively unlimited duration and reduces the penalty for your Shadow Word: Death miscasts.

Tier 6: Levels 59 through 68

I will readily admit a standing love affair with my own Shadowy Apparition. It's a genuinely fun talent that actually improves your DPS -- a rarity in Cataclysm talent trees. I recommend putting your level 59, 61, and 63 points there.

Sadly, at level 65, you're faced with a decision between buffing your Shadowfiend -- which you don't get until level 66 -- and taking Psychic Horror, a primarily PvP talent. If you're playing on a PvP server, the choice is easy. Otherwise, you'll be better off taking the tier 4 ability Silence (for the ability to interrupt spellcasting, natch) or the tier 1 ability Veiled Shadows. The latter talent is pretty useless without having access to a shadowfiend, but at least it's theoretically useful in PvE.

At level 65, I chose to take Silence. For my "level 67 build," I took my first point in Veiled Shadows.

Tier 7 and beyond: Levels 69 through 80

Dispersion is our capstone, level 69, 31-point talent. Our talent tree was designed around it. You have to take it -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Any kind of mana regen talen is going to come in quite handy while leveling a caster, especially in the modern day, fast-paced world of random 5-man groups.

Once you spend that 31st point, you're allowed to start dipping into the disc and holy trees if you'd like. And that's exactly what I'd recommend you do at this point -- the Twin Disciplines talent in the discipline tree, which provides a 6 percent raw damage increase with a three-talent-point investment, is just too good to pass up. Put your talent points there at levels 71, 73, and 75.

The next few levels give us a chance to fine tune our talent tree and pick up some stuff that we've skipped. At level 77, I like taking that second point worth of Veiled Shadows on tier 1. At level 79, I'd grab your first point in Sin and Punishment. It's something of a temporary pick, because once we get to level 80 -- even though it's now just a short pit stop on the way to level 85 -- I'm going to recommend that you visit a class trainer and have your talent tree reset.

Level 80: The great talent tree reset

Today, I am officially retiring my old level 80 raid-ready talent tree. It's served us well these last few months, but simply put, Wrath raiding is old news. Level 80 is now nothing but the starting point of a new adventure. And a new adventure calls for a new talent tree that reflects our new playstyle and goals.

Over the past few segments, if you've followed me point by point and looked at the result, you'll notice that we've created quite the Frankenstein. It's a damn good build for someone at level 79, but once you're at level 80, it gets immediately outdated. We need something much more ... elegant. (Hold on, let me get my martini glass again.)

And so, with the most elegant of fanfare -- I'm thinking a drumroll from a tuxedo-wearing dude, who is also holding a martini glass with pinky outstretched -- I present the level 80 talent tree!

There's a bit of reshuffling going on. Most notably, we've taken points out of Improved Mind Blast and moved them into Harnessed Shadows. We got rid of Silence for now (it'll be back) and put a couple extra points in the first discipline tier to set us up for level 81. It looks quite similar to our old raid-ready level 80 tree, but there's a notable difference -- this one has Paralysis. Not that great a talent in level 80 raids, but a phenomenal talent while leveling as a level 80 in Mount Hyjal and beyond.

[chaos5061]

Shadow Priests Pt.3

The Cataclysm grind: Levels 81 through 84

Well, here we are. It's time to start talking those Cataclysm levels because, well ... this is the last Spiritual Guidance column I'll be able to write before the new expansion comes out. I know, I'm getting all misty-eyed and emotional too, but we must press on.

That second tier of the discipline tree is filled with two tremendous goodies: Evangelism and Archangel. The two talents work as a team to boost your damage and provide you with a little bit of extra mana regen. At level 81, take your first point in Evangelism; at level 82, take your second point. As shadow priests, this will manifest itself in game as the shadow-specific Dark Evangelism, providing a nice semi-permanent buff to your damage over time spells.

If you're fully invested (2/2) in Evangelism, you can take the talent Archangel at level 83. For shadow priests, this manifests as Dark Archangel, complete with a spectacular looking pair of shadowy wings. You're instantly rebated a significant portion of your mana bar (don't underestimate how important this gets as you near level 85) and your non-DoT spells get buffed by as much as 20 percent over 15 seconds.

The talent point you get at level 84 is far less valuable than the first three you'll get -- there's no perfect place to put it. We've already gotten as much mileage as we can out of the discipline tree, so our answer lies once again with the shadows. I put that level 84 talent point back into Improved Mind Blast (tier 2) knowing that when I get to level 85, I'm going to wipe that talent tree yet one more time.

The final level 85 build(s)

Once you get to level 85 (if Cataclysm comes out next Tuesday, you should be at 85 by Wednesday morning, right?), the game once again changes from a leveling experience to one of grinding heroics and, eventually, raiding. Based on my experience in the Cataclysm beta, I've learned a few things about our talent tree. I learned that Paralysis is great for the solo grind, but it's largely useless in groups (it's not a stun). I also learned that in a 5-man heroic, the Silence ability comes in way too handy to leave off a heroic-grinding build.

That combined knowledge led to the development of this, my recommended level 85 build for a shadow priest destined for days of grinding heroics. There's some room to play around with it a bit, but it's a good place to start. When you're ready to move beyond heroics and start running raids, you'll probably want to remove the points associated with Silence and re-invest in the (arguably) more useful Inner Sanctum. Putting two points there may sound silly to some shadow priests, but world firsts are built on "silly" little damage reduction mechanics like that.

[chaos5061]

Enhancement Shaman Pt. 1

http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/06/to...cement-shaman/

As an enhancement shaman, the last time I was afraid of taking on a mob solo was the third grade. With Bloodlusted wolves at my back, Windfury in my hand, and the massive power of instant Greater Healing Waves every 10 or so seconds, soloing was a breeze. Chillmaw? Soloed him daily. Attumen the Huntsman? Weekly. Gamom, level 5 elite neutral tauren? Every chance I got (until Blizzard force fed him "performance" pills).

Going into the Cataclysm beta, if Blizzard wrote a post on its forums warning that solo mobs will actually start threatening my life, I would have written it off as a Public Service Announcement for those pesky mages and rogues who had to worry about things like dying in leveling content. Actually, when Blizzard did write that post on its forums, I wrote it off as a pesky PSA for pures with no self-heals. And then I died. I died quite a bit ... until I stopped trying to AoE grind.

Mobs in a Deathwing-infused world hurt. Moreover, they have a lot of hit points. They're no longer just problems for squishy mages and hardy but heal-less warriors. If you pull too many mobs, don't kill fleeing mobs before they warn their friends, or attempt to play chicken with the Whale Shark, you will die. This post will attempt to help you with surviving the first two. For the third, you're on your own.

Speccing your shaman for leveling

The required talents There are a number of mandatory talents, both for pure damage purposes and for the sake of moving further down in the tree. All of these talents will be available by level 80 and should be picked up in nearly any competitive enhancement spec. They are:

* 2/2 Elemental Weapons
* 3/3 Focused Strikes
* 3/3 Flurry
* 3/3 Elemental Devastation
* 1/1 Stormstrike
* 3/3 Static Shock
* 3/3 Searing Flames (required to unlock the following)
* 2/2 Improved Lava Lash
* 2/2 Unleashed Rage
* 3/3 Maelstrom Weapon
* 1/1 Feral Spirit


Some of these talents boost survivability as well as or instead of damage. Maelstrom Weapon is a very effective DPS talent, but its ability to allow for instant, mana-free Greater Healing Waves will keep both your blue and green bars happy. Feral Spirit is also an excellent DPS cooldown, and the powerful 30 seconds of self-healing it provides while doing beastly damage is just icing on the cake. These talents form the core for your talent tree and should not be skipped.

The optional talents As many of you might have noticed (or after reading this, will go back and notice), the above talent tree doesn't quite work. In order for you to actually reach Feral Spirit, you need to invest 30 talent points. Discounting wolves, the listed tree above falls short at 25. Out of the talents discussed below, you will need to choose five points to invest before you get your paranormal puppies. At the end of the day, you have 15 optional talent points in all. Here's a list of the optional enhancement talent points and whether or not they're a good idea.

* Improved Shields Improved Shields is a good talent ... if you're a caster shaman who needs to subspec enhancement in order to get Ancestral Swiftness. For enhancement shaman, three talent points for 15 percent damage on Lightning Shield is a worse investment than Lehman Brothers stock. Go 0/3 and don't look back.
* Ancestral Swiftness In reality, this talent is mandatory for leveling, for PVP, and for PVE damage. Instant 30 percent run speed is incredible, 115 percent base run speed is excellent, and the ability to shift during movement-impairing effects and run at 100 percent speed is just awesome. I can't see a single spec ever not taking this talent, but it didn't provide a pure damage increase, so I left it off "mandatory damage talents." 2/2 or bust.
* Totemic Reach Totems are your friends while leveling, and having a little bit more range might conserve mana provided you pull mobs to you. However, the range increase is really short, and there's no reason you can't pull mobs the extra 10 yards to stay within a totem's base range. If you really hate dropping totems repeatedly, maybe consider this.
* Toughness 9 percent more stamina, and the duration of movement-impairing effects on you is reduced by 30 percent -- both good advantages, so if you find yourself dying more than normal, it might be worth considering. It wouldn't be my first choice of talents, but it's solid for survivability. I'd say skip it if you're leveling with Wrath epics, but shaman making the jump from Northrend quests to Cata quests might see a benefit.
* Improved Fire Nova This talent is both boring and useless. AoE grinding is dead for the most part. Pulls of 2+ mobs will be handled more with Hexes and single target DPSing than Magma Totem + Fire Nova, which makes this point mostly useless. It's worth considering if you're planning on DPSing 5-man instances, though.
* Frozen Power I heavily endorse this talent for leveling. Mobs love to run away from you, and having a slow effect on them will help you get in the killing blow before they leave melee range. And since it's applied through weapon swings, it's a slow that doesn't require you ditching your hard-hitting Earth Shocks for the frosty variant. The 10 percent damage bonus makes up for the spellpower lost through not imbuing Flametongue in your off hand, and the Frost Shock > root is a clutch move for stopping runners. This talent is definitely skippable, but it's also one I'd consider taking the time to think about.
* Earthen Power Removing snares is nice, but most of the time you'll be toe to toe with mobs, not chasing them down. For those few occasions where you do need to chase a mob that's snared you, you have Freedom Wolf. This is a purely PVP talent, and should be avoided for leveling.
* Shamanistic Rage Your main "Oh $%#@" button. 30 percent reduced damage might allow you to survive an attack and get a Healing Surge off. It also allows you to continue dealing damage to finish a mob off if healing has run you out of mana. Lastly, it provides those of us in tier 10 a damage bonus until we get to Deepholm and start replacing our gear. Like Ancestral Swiftness, I'd be inclined to say this is near-mandatory.


This will be my leveling talent spec, before subspeccing.

Subspeccing Back in The Burning Crusade, enhancement shaman subspecced restoration. It gave us 3 percent hit and was part of the reason we were the only DPS class in the game that didn't have to gem hit rating. Those days of yore are far gone, and for the past two years, the game has primarily been "elemental subspec or bust." At 85, this will still be the case for enhancement PVE, as Concussion, Acuity, and Call of Flame all provide flat damage increases. For leveling, however, I'd like to point to some stellar talents in the restoration tree that may contribute to making sure your shaman enjoys a long, healthy life of hunting mountain trolls and killing cultists.

* Spark of Life This talent is excellent because it double dips. (No, not like that one gross friend with the nachos at the party last week.) If you Healing Surge yourself for 10,000, Spark of Life's 6 percent bonus will make that heal 10,600. And then, since you're healing yourself, that heal will be increased by another 15 percent to 12,190. Even if you invest all your other points in Elemental for damage, I'd consider going at least 2/3 in here.
* Focused Insight As an enhancement shaman, you're going to be shocking a lot, generally every 6 to 8 seconds. With 3/3 Focused Insight, that means you'll be able to Greater Healing Wave yourself for 75 percent its normal mana cost and 30 percent more healing every 10ish seconds. Due to the fact that your haste and flurry uptime will be dropping substantially as you level, you're going to be stacking Maelstrom Weapon a lot less frequently. Focused Insight will allow you to spend those instant casts on damage while keeping the cost of healing low and its output high. It won't beat Maelstrom Weapon for "Oh noez I'mma die!" moments of glorious burst healing, but for keeping yourself topped off while methodically dealing out death like you're Boba Fett, it's solid. The only real downside is that you have to invest two points in Tidal Focus to get to it.

This will be my leveling talent spec at 84. (At 85, I'll respec to a more PvE-centric build.)

[chaos5061]

Enhancement Shaman Pt. 2

Glyphing for success

Prime glyphs These are some of the easiest choices you'll make. For a leveling enhancement shaman, Glyph of Feral Spirits is your No. 1 choice. Thirty percent more attack power means your wolves do more damage. Spirit Hunt, the wolves' heal ability, heals them and the shaman for 150 percent of their damage done, meaning glyphing Feral Spirits leads to both a DPS increase and a healing output increase. Our other two Prime Glyphs -- Stormstrike and Lava Lash -- add high amounts of damage to some of our most-used attacks. While Glyph of Windfury Weapon is a contender, it doesn't give a bonus in the same league as these three glyphs do.

Major glyphs Enhancement shaman have a wide array of major glyphs to choose from: Chain Lightning, Ghost Wolf, Healing Stream Totem, Hex, Lightning Shield, Shamanistic Rage, Stoneclaw Totem, and Totemic Recall are the main choices. Here's the breakdown.

* Glyph of Chain Lightning Skip it. While this glyph might have potential as an AoE DPS glyph, the lack of pulling you're doing leveling to 80 will see this glyph giving no benefit. With the number of other, better choices out there, this will just be taking away from using something useful.
* Glyph of Ghost Wolf Skip it. Five percent run speed is OK, but not especially noticeable. Considering that most of your Ghost Wolf movement will be short stints in between mobs, shaving a second off travel time will not really be the biggest bang for your buck.
* Glyph of Healing Stream Totem Consider it. Partial and full resists can save your life if pulling multiple caster mobs, and even resisting a spell when you're at full health will keep you from needing to blow Maelstrom Weapon on heals. Since totems can be a real bother to worry about while leveling this glyph might not see much use, but it's worth thinking about.
* Glyph of Hex Consider it if you're the type of leveler who runs into awkward situations a lot. Personally, I'd skip it -- Hex is not normally an ability I use on cooldown.
* Glyph of Lightning Shield This has been the number one sought-after change to Lightning Shield for years. With this glyph, you only have to click Lightning Shield once every 10 minutes, as damaging procs no longer consume orbs. I'd encourage every leveling Shaman to get this glyph for the sheer quality of life improvement it provides.
* Glyph of Shamanistic Rage I can't recall if there are loads of mobs that put magic abilities on you in Cata leveling. However, being able to wipe DoTs or other harmful magical effects off you once a minute is really helpful. This glyph is in my top three.
* Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem A damage shield tied to a stick of wood that taunts and stuns bad guys. The ultimate mob escape mechanism, this glyph allows you to make expeditious retreats while the two-headed ogre stands stunned from magical stick feedback. This is my No. 2 leveling glyph choice, next to only Lightning Shield.
* Glyph of Totemic Recall If you're afraid of commitment, a nomad, or really just enjoy planting glowing sticks in the ground, this glyph is for you. With this glyph, you get 75 percent of the total mana cost of your totems back whenever you remember to recall them. Great for mana efficiency if you like to move a lot, less good if you like to plant your totems and pull mobs to them.


All together, most of this will likely be overheal (overkill seemed counterproductive in this context) for keeping yourself alive, at least for those of us leveling in our 264/277 Wrath epics. If you choose the resto subspec, glyph Stoneclaw Totem, Hex, and Shamanistic Rage, dual-wield Rockbiter Weapon (10 percent damage reduction, of course!) and pull one mob at a time, you might get to 85 without ever dying ... but it might also take you an extra week or two.

These are all suggestions for how to improve your longevity. You have a buffet of talents and glyphs to choose from to make staying alive more than just a Bee Gee's song. Overload on them, and you'll be a lethargic leveler. Ignore them completely, and you might find yourself weak and squishy. Finding the right balance is up to you.

[chaos5061]

Death Knights Pt. 1

From WowInsider: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/07/li...death-knights/

What are the death knight specs?

Blood is the death knight tank spec. If you want to tank, this is the talent tree you want to grab. The blood spec helps pump your health to high levels and gives you various ways of draining and recovering health in order to survive taking hits from mobs. This makes it pretty decent for leveling, but if you're in a group, you should only spec blood if you mean to tank. Otherwise, go frost or unholy.

Frost is a DPS tree that focuses on heavy-hitting weapon strikes with a bit of backup frost damage. The tree supports both two-handed weapons and dual wielding via talents that provide certain benefits to one weapon type or the other. You'll mostly be focused on aligning procs and buffs in order to churn out huge hits with your Obliterate, although you also get a very handy AoE frost damage tool in Howling Blast. Go with this spec if you want to DPS but don't want to deal with a pet, if you want put out some huge damage numbers with your weapons, or if you want to dual wield.

Unholy can almost be considered a caster DPS tree in a lot of ways. While you still do a lot of physical damage, your diseases are made even more powerful, you'll be casting a lot of Death Coils, you can apply a magical damage debuff to the mob, and you get a permanent Ghoul pet with a lot of unique abilities that you'll want to learn how to use if you want to play an unholy death knight to its full potential. In addition, Unholy has a somewhat unique damage rotation, because your main damaging weapon strike uses only one unholy rune, as opposed to the other two specs, which use an unholy and a frost rune. One of the biggest disadvantages to this is that it's a lot harder to fit in an emergency Death Strike for healing like it is with the frost tree. The tree is designed to use a two-handed weapon, although unholy DPSers have often tried dual wielding, only to have Blizzard nerf it within a patch or two.

What do stats do for me as a death knight?

Hit rating In order to be good a DPSer, you need to be able to hit stuff. Primarily, your weapon strikes (such as Scourge Strike or Obliterate) need to be able to hit stuff. For the first tier of Cataclysm raiding, this means you need a hit chance of 8 percent. Frost dual wielders will get 3 percent of that from talents, but Frost two-handed weapon users and unholy DPSers will need to get all 8 percent from gear. Now, if you inch a little bit above 8 percent, don't panic. You can reforge or regem to lose some of it, but if you're a bit over 8 percent, that hit rating is not wasted. It's going toward the higher hit cap for your spells, such as Death Coil. Don't worry about hitting the spell hit cap, though. You're better off stacking more strength once you get that initial 8 percent.

Tanks can get some use out of hit rating as well. The more your hits connect, the more threat you get. If you're having problems keeping threat, you may wish to consider trying to hit the 8 percent special attack hit cap, but it's not absolutely as mandatory as it is for DPS.

Strength Strength is the bread and butter of DPS and is the single most important stat for any DPS death knight. It gives you attack power, which makes your physical attacks hit harder. Your spell-like effects also gain power from attack power. Yes, this means you don't want Intellect to make your diseases tick for more; you want strength. If you have intellect or spellpower on your gear, get rid of it as soon as possible. It isn't doing anything for you.

Tanks benefit from strength as well, in that harder-hitting attacks mean more threat. Still, you should get the strength you need off of regular tank gear, so you don't need to worry about it as much as DPS.

Haste Haste makes your weapon swings faster at the most basic level. Unfortunately, it doesn't increase the speed of your DoT ticks like it does for other classes, but that is in part because it helps your runes regenerate faster. It will also affect your pets, including increase the energy regeneration rate of unholy's ghoul. 2H frost and unholy DPS death knights will find haste especially useful, and it's easily the third most useful stat for unholy death knights after hit rating to the cap and strength, in part because it does affect your ghoul pet, in part because it helps you throw out attacks as fast as you regenerate the runes for them. 2H frost gets use out of the haste stat because, again, it helps you unload all your attacks faster, and because faster swings means more chances for Killing Machine to proc. Dual wielding frost death knights won't make as much use of this stat simply because they're already global cooldown-capped. They already put out resources faster than they can spend them.

Tanks shouldn't really bother with haste. If you need more threat, get more hit rating, expertise, or strength.

Expertise With 26 expertise, you'll be able to keep the enemy from dodging your attacks. This is very important to frost death knights, who do a lot of their damage from big hits with Obliterate, so you're going to want to make a real effort to get to 26 expertise after you hit the 8 percent hit cap. Unholy death knights don't really need to worry as much about expertise. It doesn't affect your pets, and it doesn't affect Death Coil or your diseases, which means a huge chunk of your damage just doesn't need it. Get more strength and haste instead.

Tanks can also do well with that 26 expertise target. Again, it's not the end of the world if you don't reach it, but it helps your threat.

Critical strike rating Hitting harder with your spells and strikes is certainly helpful for DPS, but critical strike rating still falls out to be fair to middling for DPSers. Frost DPSers already have Killing Machine to give them a lot of critical strikes, making the stat itself almost redundant, while unholy death knights will always find haste or strength to be a better choice. Critical strike rating isn't something that's bad, per se, but the fact remains that there is almost always a better stat you could be using.

Much like haste and strength before it, tanks are better off getting other stats than critical strike.

Mastery You won't actually have to worry about mastery until level 80, but it's still worth mentioning so that you're ready for it. Between Frost Strike and Howling Blast, frost death knights actually get a decent amount of use out of frost mastery, enough that it comes in a bit under strength for dual wielders, and under haste for 2H weapon users. Unholy, on the other hand, just doesn't get enough of a boost from it, as it just doesn't boost their disease damage enough to make it better than other stats. Blood tanks definitely want as much mastery as they get, though, even going so far as to reforge avoidance to mastery. More mastery means their Death Strikes provide even more blocking protection via Blood Shield, which means they stay alive longer.

Stamina DPS death knights don't have to worry about stamina too much. You'll probably get as much as you need on normal plate gear. Tank death knights, though, should stack as much stamina as they can get their hands on. Stamina means more HP, especially when it's multiplied by talents, which means you survive longer. Stamina also feeds into Vengeance, which means it technically gives you more threat as well. Consider stamina your No. 1 priority and the all-around god stat if you're a tank.

Dodge and parry Dodge and parry or more or less worthless for DPS in the grouping game. You shouldn't ever be hit, so you won't really need them. Tanks, however, will find them useful, as every time you aren't hit is one less time you need use a healing cooldown or have the healer use their precious mana to heal you. That said, as you gear up to tank, you should probably be focused mostly on stamina and mastery. When you do get dodge and parry, try to keep your chances to dodge and parry as close to equal as possible, since each type of rating has equal diminishing returns. Having 25 percent dodge and 25 percent parry is better than having 30 percent parry and 20 percent dodge, if only because it means you're more efficiently dividing the amount of parry and dodge rating you have.

[chaos5061]

Death Knights Pt. 2

How to play: Speccing, gearing, gemming and other details

We've actually already covered quite a few things you'll need to know in previous editions of Lichborne. Let's go back and take a look at some of those articles now.

Leveling your death knight from 80 to 85 While this guide focuses on levels 80 to 85, much of the advice will also apply for levels 55 to 80. If you take away one thing from the article, it should probably be that frost 2H will still probably be your best bet to level quickly, blood your best bet to level safely. Unholy is still doable, of course; it's just a lot harder to use Death Pact and Death Strike, since the unholy tree depends on heavily on your ghoul and doesn't use a frost/unholy strike that Death Strike can replace. You'll find model leveling specs for 2H frost and blood in the article as well.

Death knight talents, specs, and rotations for patch 4.0.1 The damage rotations and talent specs listed in this post are still more or less the ones you'll probably be using at level 85 in Cataclysm, and the damage rotations still work for, say, dungeon leveling through your 70s. The specs also come with glyph recommendations.

A guide to death knight spell alerts As you level, you may notice weird shiny graphics and auras appearing around your death knight. Often, these auras mean you have a talented proc ready for use. This article will let you know what's popping up, why it's popping up, and how best to use it.

Death knight regemming and reforging for patch 4.0.1 This article focuses mostly on reforging and regemming for level 80, but the basic information (and gem colors/stats) will apply to you at level 85. You'll probably want to save your money until level 85 to gem or reforge gear. You'll replace everything else too quickly for it to be worth it. If you pick up one of those random pieces of gear that have gem slots while leveling and you feel like you absolutely have to stick something in there, put in a strength gem if you're DPS or a stamina gem if you're a tank. Those two are still your go-to colors, even at level 85. Just don't waste money on an epic gem to slot pre-raiding gear.

The Bare Necessities: The least you should know

Frost 2H Get the slowest, highest-damage two-handed weapon you can find, and go to town. Focus on strength on your gear, with haste, mastery, and critical strike rating as your secondary stats, in that order. You'll use Unholy Presence because you'll need the GCD (global cooldown) reduction to use all of your resources in a timely manner. While solo leveling, you can probably mostly eschew diseases in favor of lots of Obliterates and Frost Strikes, with the odd Death Strike if you need to recover health, and Howling Blast when you proc Freezing Fog. In dungeon groups, though, go back to the rotation in the article linked above. If you want to start raiding, you'll want to make sure you hit 8 percent hit and 26 expertise, even if you have to shed or reforge other stats to get there.

Frost dual wielding This will work more or less like frost 2H, except you'll want two slow, high-damage, one-handed weapons, preferably ones with strength on them if you can, although agility weapons will work if they're still slow and high-damage. For gear, focus on strength, with mastery, critical strike rating, and haste as your secondary stats, in that order. Frost dual wielding will use Frost Presence, since Unholy Presence just exacerbates frost dual wielding's problems with hitting the GCD cap.

Unholy As mentioned in the article linked above, unholy is probably the most inefficient leveling tree, but it is doable. Get a slow, high-damage, two-handed weapon and focus on strength, haste, and critical strike rating, in that order. You'll still want to spread diseases and otherwise use a general raiding damage rotation (as linked in the articles above) for unholy. Use Unholy Presence, as you'll want the shorter GCD.

Blood Blood will use a slow, high-damage 2H weapon to maximize threat and damage from Death Strike and Heart Strike. If you choose to level blood, you'll probably just want to use Frost Presence while soloing in order to get a little bit of extra damage. Focus on getting stamina and mastery if you're tanking (dodge and parry replace mastery if you're not 80 yet or can't find gear with mastery on it). If you're soloing, you might as well start building a DPS set focused on the stats used by the DPS spec you plan to use for raiding or grouping, if any. You can use the basic attack method outlined in the diseaseless tanking Lichborne column to kill stuff quickly and easily.

[chaos5061]

Restoration Shaman Pt. 1

From WowInsider: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/07/to...ration-shaman/

To quote The Smashing Pumpkins, "Today is the greatest day I've ever known." Tuesday, Dec. 7 marks the release of the third World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm. Over the last several months, we've been talking about all the changes leading up to this expansion. We've covered new spells, changes to old spells, and everything in between.

If you remember, not too long ago, we did our series of everything you needed to know about each class. Restoration 101 was my first post here for Totem Talk. Today, we're going to round up all of the changes to restoration shaman that Cataclysm brings. The changes have already been implemented before Cataclysm was released, we have already had an opportunity to become familiar with them. We're also going to talk about what it is to be a restoration shaman and what you have to look forward to as you explore the world of Azeroth. Note that this is not a guide for the endgame content and is meant for beginners new to the game or just starting as restoration.


What is a restoration shaman?

Upon reaching level 10, you are presented with a choice in talent specialization. Three choices will present themselves to you: elemental, enhancement or restoration. If you choose restoration, congratulations and welcome to the healing elite. As a restoration shaman, we're in the business of healing people and keeping groups alive. Our element of choice tends to be water, and like the element of water, we flow and adapt to the situations at hand. We are responsible for literally saving lives and in many cases, saving the day. We are front-line warriors of the spirits and elements, never shying from combat or getting ourselves dirty in order to save those around us. We are not defenseless healers; we can call down lightning and throw fire when needed. Basically, we're pretty awesome all around.

What are the benefits of restoration?

Restoration shaman offer some of the best versatility among all of the healing classes in the game, without drowning in choices that go unused. Upon choosing restoration, you gain access to the following benefits:

* strong group healing
* access to Earth Shield
* ability to change from group healing to single-target healing without needing to change spec or glyphs
* totems offer buffs for every class you can group with and augment your spell casting
* clear gear upgrade choices

Restoration shaman are one of the few classes that can change duties mid-fight without having to worry too much. Being able to swap between single-target healing and group healing is quite important. Restoration shaman can do this without having to stop and change around talents or needing to swap out glyphs to get the job done.

What are the drawbacks of restoration?

Shaman are a hybrid class and are intended to fill multiple roles. These roles are traditionally defined as tanking, DPS and healing. Shaman can traditionally fill two of the roles, DPS and healing. While you will still be able to DPS as a healer, by choosing the restoration tree, you greatly reduce your ability to deal damage in exchange for bigger, more efficient heals. Due to our unique gear needs, mainly spellcaster shields as an off hand, it can sometimes be hard to find upgrades from bosses and raids.

What stats do I want as a restoration shaman?

Choosing restoration will mean that you are going to be looking for some very specific stats. In Cataclysm here's what you will be looking for on your gear.

* Intellect Spellpower on our gear has been replaced by intellect. Int is now the stat from which we derive our spellpower totals, as well as our mana pools. For healers, this stat is one of our most important ones. Blizzard has included all of the conversions we need to figure out how much benefit our intellect gives us. If you mouse over your int total on your character screen, it will tell you how much mana, spellpower and crit rating you are receiving.
* Spirit MP5 has been removed from all of our healing gear. Instead, spirit is now what we use to determine how much mana we regain while in and out of combat. It goes hand in hand with our new specialization ability, Meditation, which allows us to maintain half of our mana regeneration while in combat. This also helps define what gear is made for restoration shaman and makes it easier to know if it belongs to us or not.
* Crit A lot of our talents and abilities rely on critical healing to activate. Ancestral Healing and Ancestral Awakening, for example, require a critical heal. Critical heals also reduce the amount of healing spells we have to cast, based purely on the virtue of healing for more. Crit is also very important for mana regeneration, as it triggers Improved Water Shield.
* Haste This stat has become quite important for restoration shaman over the last few years, and it will still be something important for us now. Haste reduces the casting time of our spells, and with our most used spells being on longer cast times, this makes them very useful. Recent changes to haste also allow it to have an impact on Riptide by reducing the amount of time between each tick.
* Mastery In Cataclysm, we received a new stat to look forward to. Mastery increases the effectiveness of one of the abilities gained when we choose our specialization. For restoration shaman, this means making Deep Healing more effective. While our healing is not going to be balanced around this stat, it is still quite useful


Is it important to wear only mail gear?

In Cataclysm, it will be very important to make sure that you are stacking mail gear. Mail Specialization gives you an additional 5 percent intellect for doing nothing more than wearing all mail gear. This in turn will increase your mana pool, spellpower and crit rating.

[chaos5061]

Restoration Shaman Pt. 2

Talent specialization

Well before Cataclysm, our talent pools were cleaned up. In the new system, many passive talents were either removed or added as a specialization bonus for choosing restoration. Along with consolidation, we have also received several new talents. Once you choose a specialization, you are locked in and cannot spend any points in any other tree until you have spent 31 points in your primary choice.

Specialization bonuses

* Earth Shield
* Purification
* Meditation
* Mastery: Deep Healing

Earth Shield is has been an iconic spell of our tool kit for quite some time; now, instead of having to spend a talent point on it, we get it for free. Purification increases our healing effectiveness by 10 percent and decreases the cast time of our Healing Wave and Greater Healing wave by 0.5 seconds.

Talents

Tier 1 restoration talents are Ancestral Resolve, Tidal Focus and Spark of Life. Ancestral Resolve reduces the amount of damage you take while casting by 10 percent at maximum rank, while Tidal Focus makes your healing spells cheaper by 6 percent. Spark of Life increases your healing done by 6 percent and healing received by 12 percent. These are foundation for your healing.

Tier 2 are Improved Water Shield, Totemic Focus, Focused Insight and Nature's Guardian. Improved Water Shield is still important for your mana regeneration and continues to be useful throughout leveling and endgame. Totemic Focus makes your totems cheaper to cast but also increases their duration. This affects all of your totems without exception. Focused Insight rewards you for casting any shock spell by reducing your next healing spell cost and increasing its effectiveness. Nature's Guardian remains mainly a PvP talent.

At tier 3 and 4, we have Ancestral Healing, Nature's Swiftness, Nature's Blessing, Soothing Rains, Improved Cleanse Spirit and Cleansing Waters. Ancestral Healing gives an armor bonus to targets of your critical heals, and Nature's Swiftness allows you to make any spell instant-cast once every 2 minutes. Nature's Blessing increases healing done on targets of Earth Shield, and Soothing Rains increases your Healing Stream Totem and our new spell, Healing Rain. Improved Cleanse Spirit allows you to remove magical effects like Polymorph from friendly targets, and Cleansing Waters gives you a free heal whenever you remove a harmful effect from a friendly target.

The fifth, sixth and seventh tier of talents contain Ancestral Awakening, Mana Tide Totem, Telluric Currents, Tidal Waves, Blessing of the Eternals and finally Riptide. Ancestral Awakening gives you a free heal on a low health party member every time you critically heal, and our new talent Telluric Currents lets you regain mana based on what damage you do when casting Lightning Bolt. Tidal Waves gives you a haste boost when you cast Riptide and Chain Heal, and Blessing of the Eternals increases your change to proc Earthliving Weapon on low-health targets. Two of our most important spells come from these talents. Mana Tide Totem is a major source of mana regeneration for shaman, especially when in the thick of battle. Recently, it has changed to increase our spirit totals by 350 percent every 3 minutes. Riptide gives you an instant-cast heal and one of our only heal over time effects.

Glyphs and gems

The choices in glyphs have become more about role and personal choice in Cataclysm. Now, we've covered the glyphs available already, so now it's all about choosing the right ones for the right roles. Glyphs really allow you to augment your abilities and plug gaps in your healing. There are no real best choices, just best choices are for you at the time. Take time and choose glyphs that fit into your style of healing.

When it comes to gems, gemming for intellect is a good way to go at first, as it has a direct effect on your spellpower and mana pools. When you get to a point at which your mana seems to be stable and you aren't struggling to heal in a fight, you can move on to gemming crit and haste. Spirit is a good to help any mana concerns as well, and you can always gem for mastery, but we will get enough of that from our gear. My suggestion is to gem for intellect and spirit until your mana and healing are stable, and then move onto crit and haste.

New spells

From 80 to 85, we gain three new spells, Unleash Elements, Healing Rain and Spiritwalker's Grace. Unleash Elements allows you to release the energy of our various shaman weapon imbues. For restoration, this gives us access to Unleash Life. This gives us an instant-cast heal and boosts the effectiveness of our next direct healing spell by 20 percent. Healing Rain gives us an area of effect heal that we can choose where to place. It has a 2-second cast time and a 10-second duration. It also has a target cap; any players over six in the affected area will reduce the amount of healing done to everyone inside the effect. Spiritwalker's Grace is our new cooldown that allows us to cast any spells while on the move without interruptions. Learning to use this spell is quite important and something you should spend time getting used to at level 85. Check out our previous articles to learn more about them.

Next week we will be diving right in to healing through the new Cataclysm instances. Are you ready to heal the new 5-mans?

[chaos5061]

Rogues Pt. 1

From WowInsider: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/08/en...de-for-rogues/

There was once a time where rogues were one of the worst soloing classes in the game. We have never had any tanking or healing abilities like the hybrid, and our fellow pure DPS classes have the advantage of ranged attacks. Rogues were simply wrecked by their enemies. While we had decent levels of dodge, our survivability depended entirely stunlocks to control our opponents. Against anything immune to stuns, we were pretty much worthless.

Times have changed. Rogues have reached levels of survivability that were previously fantasy. We remain the single best DPS class for toe-to-toe damage, and now we can actually last long enough to get the job done. Each of the three rogue specs has a purpose and a direction, and the title for top DPS spec is still up for grabs at level 85. Blizzard has already tweaked the mastery system for rogues several times to ensure that no spec is left behind. I'm looking forward to our bright future in Cataclysm.

The basics

If you've played a rogue in the past year or so, not much has changed with Cataclysm's release. Our poison preferences are the same for every spec, with Instant Poison gracing our main-hand weapons, while Deadly Poison is set on our off-hand weapons. I personally like using Wound Poison on my throwing weapon, especially since Fan of Knives now uses our throwing weapon's poison and damage. We still continue to use our energy and combo point mechanics to deal damage to our targets. We really don't have any proc-based or reactionary abilities in our arsenal, which is a major difference between us and every other class. Rogue rotations are as routine as clockwork, while other classes play more like whack-a-mole.

Major and minor glyphs

Feel free to choose your own minor glyphs, as they're really not going to affect you in any major way. I personally like Blurred Speed and Safe Fall for their utility effects, and Glyph of Poisons is pretty sweet as well. Major glyphs are similarly generic, although there are a few exceptions. The Tricks of the Trade major glyph saves us energy and is therefore a clear standout. The Glyph of Feint is also incredibly valuable if you're going to be using Feint at all in a fight, saving you significant amounts of energy. The Fan of Knives glyph can be potent if you need to AoE down a large group of enemies, although its radius is already pretty large. If you're going to be keeping up Expose Armor for your group, the EA glyph is an easy call. Combat rogues will want to invest in the Blade Flurry major glyph, as it significantly improves the usability and performance of Blade Flurry.

Stat changes

With the shakeup of stats in Cataclysm, our priorities have shifted significantly. Agility is now the king of all available stats, as it is now our primary source of attack power, providing 2 AP per point of agility. Attack power and armor penetration have been removed, leaving expertise, critical strike, haste, mastery, and hit ratings as our secondary options. Hit and expertise are typically incredibly high on our valuation charts until their respective caps, while the other stats vary in potency based on spec and amounts. Haste is particularly powerful due to its new function: We regenerate extra energy as we acquire more haste.

Assassination 101: A master of poisons

Assassination's focus is dealing massive poison damage, and it stays true to that paradigm in Cataclysm. It's currently projected to be the front-runner at level 85, although much can change between now and then. Assassination has a new, sharper rotation and provides a great mix of burst and sustained damage, giving it the potency needed for both solo and group play. The build requires a pair of daggers, with at least one of them having a very quick speed. It's the least weapon-dependent of the three rogue specs, and so it lends itself well to players without awesome weapons. One weakness of the build is its reliance on hit rating -- since poisons use the spell hit chance and not the melee hit chance, you need a solid chance to hit in order to maximize the effectiveness of this spec. Reforging can help you here.

Build The revamped assassination tree has a few flexible points in the build, although there are a couple of utility talents that are essentially mandatory. Quickening provides two important effects: a powerful movement speed boost that can't be replicated, and an increase in survivability. Similarly, Deadly Brew gives assassination rogues a bit of extra utility, and so these two talents will be picked up by just about every Mutilate rogue. Deadly Momentum is actually incredibly potent for leveling, and I would recommend dropping points out of Cut to the Chase if you're making a leveling build.

Glyphs Mutilate, Backstab, Rupture

Combo point generators Mutilate if target is above 35%, Backstab if below 35%.

Finisher priority Slice and Dice, Rupture, and Envenom

Cooldowns Vendetta, Overkill (via Vanish), and Cold Blood

Rotation Use the preferred combat point generator until you have 4 or more combo points, then use your finisher. Open with Slice and Dice to activate the buff, use Rupture to maintain the debuff, and use Envenom to refresh Slice and Dice. Once you reach a steady state of the rotation, you will be alternating between Rupture to keep the debuff active and using Envenom when Rupture has plenty of time left.

Leveling rotation If you're leveling with assassination, I would suggest two major changes. First, forget about Rupture altogether, as mobs typically don't last long enough for Rupture to deal significant damage. Secondly, switch your poisons to Wound/Wound and replace Envenom with Eviscerate. Unless you're in a dungeon or fighting elites, mobs will rarely survive to see a 5-stack of Deadly Poison applied, and so Eviscerate is going to let you kill faster.

Combat 101: A skillful swashbuckler

Combat's focus is dealing massive weapon damage, and it's the only rogue spec that requires non-dagger weapons. Swords, axes, maces, and fist weapons make up the core weapons of this build, although a quick dagger can be used for an off-hand weapon. It is the most weapon-dependent build in the rogue talent tree spectrum, and so it's recommended for rogues who already have awesome weapons at their current level. It has the most powerful cooldowns and the strongest survivability talents of any rogue tree. The key weakness of the build is that it deals mostly physical damage, which makes it weak against armored targets.

Blade Flurry also has the unique ability to kill two targets at once, via Blade Flurry's ability to replicate our attacks onto a second target. Blade Flurry should always (and only) be used if there are two or more targets nearby. BF used to give us extra haste and would be used as a DPS cooldown against even a single target, but that's no longer the case -- it actually hurts our energy regeneration while active. Save it for multi-mob situations.

Build The combat tree also has several free points available, and the utility talents can be customized based on your preferences. I like Blade Twisting, personally, as slowing your target is nearly always a good thing. Improved Recuperate is crazy-powerful and gives the combat rogue a major survivability boost. The wording on the talent is a bit unclear; it actually doubles the potency of Recuperate.

Glyphs Sinister Strike, Slice and Dice, Adrenaline Rush

Combo point generators Sinister Strike, Revealing Strike

Finisher priority Slice and Dice, Rupture, Eviscerate

Cooldowns Adrenaline Rush, Killing Spree, Blade Flurry (if two or more targets are active)

Rotation While keeping Slice and Dice active, generate 4 combo points via Sinister Strike. Once you have 4 points, use Revealing Strike to generate the 5th point, which also buffs your next finisher. Use Rupture if it's not active, or use Eviscerate if Rupture is already active. Don't bother using Revealing Strike before you refresh your Slice and Dice, as RS only affects damaging finishers.