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Warcraft and Squishing

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One of the features in the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion to World of Warcraft was a squishing of numbers. I wasn’t planning to make a post on this, but I thought it was interesting enough to through up — you see on the night before the pre-patch that included the “squishing” I took some screenshots of some of my characters before, so that later I could compare them for after the squish. So earlier I went through and took some after shots to compare. Oh and keep in mind some of the characters were re-kajiggered so some of the after “stat loss” is a bit more extreme then it really was.

Round 1: Discipline Priest

pp-disc-1

Post-Squish

sq-disc-1 sq-disc-2

Thoughts

  • Spirit: Spirit was changed for Warlords, it’s now restricted to Jewelry, Trinkets, and Cloaks. Also it’s potency has been increased nearly tenfold, it’s a nice quality of life change for anyone who dual-specs between healer and something else.
  • Mana: Looking back, I sort of miss the feeling as a healer of seeing my mana pool increase. Better gear does give us more regen, or better heals, but it’s not as visible as having twice the mana pool of a newly leveled max level character.
  • Misc: The changes here aren’t really that extreme. I even ended up with more crit then before, which was nice. Right now Disc healing is basically “spam Holy Nova until you get loot”, so it’s difficult to really measure any actual impact. Atonement, however, was nerfed quite hard.

Round 2: Death Knight (Frost)

pp-dk_frost-1 pp-dk_frost-2

Post-Squish

sq-dk_frost-1 sq-dk_frost-2

Thoughts

  • Attack Power and Main Stats: The main stats were changed with this expansion to be basically the same to one another, except that Strength gives Parry to strength-based classes, and Agility gives Dodge to agility-based classes. Attack Power was also reworked for the squish, it’s now much more potent.
  • Note: I redid the gemming on this alt before taking an “after” screenshot, so the haste loss is much higher than it really was. I’ve been toying with dual-wield hence the extra mastery. The biggest change with DPS in this patch was the loss of hit and expertise, it’s kind of nice to not have to worry about that anymore.
  • Frost Now: Frost plays pretty much the same as it has, I’ve been thinking about trying Unholy again, it seems to be much closer now and was originally the reason I leveled a Death Knight.

Round 3: Death Knight (Blood)

pp-dk-1 pp-dk-2

Post-Squish

sq-dk-1 sq-dk-2

Thoughts

  • Changes: Blood saw quite a few changes, much more than I’ve had a chance to go through. No more blood worms, rune tap was changed, loss of heartstrike (blood boil instead), etc… Their damage is pretty decent right now though. Self-healing is still high, so they’re still great to solo old content with.
  • Stat Build: Before the squish I had been going for an avoidance build, I’ve not tanked much in this pre-patch though, I imagine it’s better to focus on Mastery now.

Round 4: Warlock (Demonology)

pp-lock-1 pp-lock-2

Post-Squish

sq-lock-1 sq-lock-2

Demon Before & After

pp-lock-pet sq-lock-pet

Thoughts

  • Not Destruction?! No, the only time my warlock was Destro was for tanking Keleseth back in ICC — and only then to help get Orb Whisperer. Since I leveled him he’s been Demonoloy/Affliction, with Demo taking over since the changes to the class. And yes, I acquired green fire as Demonology!
  • Demo Changes: With the hard nerfing of all move-while-casting abilities, Demo didn’t escape those changes. Though Demo can DPS and move better then most other ranged casters thanks to Touch of Chaos. Honestly, the spec currently feels like it’s missing something — maybe the level 100 talent Demon Bolt. We also lost a lot of utility via the knockback/interrupt Carrion Swarm removal, losing that is going to sting for quite awhile.
  • Wrathguard: I’ve always been amused by how much AP demons seemed to have, nearly 100k before the squish. The one thing I do miss though is being able to sac a demon as Demonology. Now more than ever, running old content basically means putting your demon on passive because if it kills something before you damage it you don’t get any loot.

Round 5: Feral

pp-cat-1 pp-cat-2

Post-Squish

sq-cat-1 sq-cat-2

Thoughts

  • Changes: Feral actually saw few changes. The biggest lost was probably Tranquility, no longer can we pop Heart of the Wild and Tranq for a brief but potent raid-wide heal. I’m still sort of annoyed over the loss of such an iconic Druid spell — I’m still irritated over the removal of thorns. Luckily with so many QoL improvements it’s difficult to stay too pissed off.
  • Shapeshift Merging: This is stupid of me, but this change really bothers me. We can glyph out of this change, but that feels punishing given the number of minor glyphs we already have. The exclusivity with cat travel form is also lame. I wish they had made this it’s own minor glyph, rather then tacking it on to the glyph of stag.
  • Savage Roar: For years I’ve kept this up throughout numerous boss fights, please make it passive //whine
  • Forced Shifting: For druids, when you change your spec to Feral or Guardian (not sure on Balance) after you finish the talent swap, you are forced into Bear or Cat form. The benefit here is that no longer are you caught waiting for mana to regen to shift, the cons though negate that: Blizzard hotfixed this recently, but Druids have been able to swap specs while in flight form since swapping specs was introduced, however doing so in 6.0 causes you to force shift into cat or bear form — neither of which are of the flying variety… Splat goes the druid! Also a minor irritant: Mark of the Wild doesn’t persist through swaps, so being force-shifted into cat form is useless when I’m going to self-or-group buff with Mark of the Wild anyway.
  • Quality of Life: Blizzard did, however, throw Ferals a massive bone here: Mangle was merged into Shred, and Shred lost it’s positional requirements. Likewise we also had Pounce merged with Rake, and Ravage merged with Shred. So if you’re prowling, you attack the enemy with Rake and it will stun them (as well as give you a 5-point Savage Roar if you’re using the glyph, which you are).

Round 6: Bear

pp-bear-1 pp-bear-2

Post-Squish

sq-bear-1 sq-bear-2sq-bear-3

Thoughts

  • I ranted above about some general Druid changes, so check those out for my thoughts on the general changes.
  • WHAR MUH CRIT?! Losing what was basically crit-cap is definitely painful, but bear damage is still pretty high so it’s not that big a deal in the long run.
  • Self-Healing and Active Mitigation: I was worried about losing the impressive self-healing Bears have had for Pandaria, but at least at 90 it looks like nothing has changed in that regard. The lose of 3 charges of Savage Defense feels sort of lame, especially because it seems like it was changed solely for a beta talent that increased dodging to 100% when using Savage Defense. I’ll be taking Pulverize anyway:
  • PULVERIZE IS BACK! Ok well not yet, but at 100 we get Pulverize back as a talent! I’m quite looking forward to it, Lacerate has never really felt whole without it.
  • Thrash: Words can not describe how much fun this ability is right now.

So there you have it! Personally I found it interesting how the loss of reforging didn’t really effect my stats as much as I thought it would. It is a shame that we never got to play with reforging without hit and expertise, I feel like it would have been ok then. I’m really looking forward to the new stats, though I think versatility is sort of a boring as a ‘bonus stat’, from what I understand it’s not something we’ll be able to stack very highly. I’m looking forward to being able to stack multistrike (quite a few abilities rely on that now). It’s a shame that cooldown reduction didn’t make it in, I’m going to really miss 20second Tiger’s Fury.

Swipe is OP!

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Been looking through my sites recently and realized it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. I want to do some more WoW posts, but I’ve decided to hold on until Cataclysm goes final, as too many classes, spells, etc… seem to be in flux. For instance my old bear macros post is now outdated. Though truthfully bear tanking hasn’t really changed all that much, even now I basically use 2 buttons for single target tanking, and maybe 3 for AoE pulls (but even that’s iffy given how powerful swipe is currently on live).

I let my time run out recently, aside from the pre-cata events nothing was really that exciting anymore. I do miss playing with guildies and friends, but sometimes you just need a break from the game! Lest you forget it’s just a game, you know?

I’ll be starting work soon on a possible new Blizzard fansite. Still in the planning stages but I’ve got a bunch of ideas. I think Blizzforums deserves one final chance at becoming its own official (or unofficial) Blizzard fansite.

Basic Bear Tanking Macros

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I was asked about what macros I use as a Bear tank, and if I could share them. If there was one thing I wish Blizzard would add to WoW, is make it easy to share macros with your friends or fellow guild members. However if that was the case, then I wouldn’t get the chance to use my site for something other than a random post every couple of months. In World of Warcraft macros can make the difference between an alright player, and a great player. With this post I’ll walk you through briefly how to make macros (it’s easy!) and what the four basic macros I personally use.

Continue reading Basic Bear Tanking Macros→

A Clean Slate

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I’ve not used my website much over the past year. At times I wondered if I even needed a website anymore, even considered closing it down. However this seemed to be part of an overall “designer’s block” I was having in regards to designing anything. Whether it was a signature for a forum, or a full blown layout, I just couldn’t seem to get into it anymore. But like most “blocks” it eventually lifted.

Late last year I worked on an international website project with members all over Europe. I spent a lot of time working on that site and learned quite a bit about WordPress, and even more about CSS then I thought possible. It was then I started to consider my own website again. After the project was finished it was made clear to me I should get a portfolio up, to show my work. I knew this, and in some form or another I’ve had portfolios up. It was a few months before I made any substantial progress in a design for myself, however. Why so long? Well it was difficult to settle on what exactly I wanted to do. It didn’t help that I was depressed because of the weather. You would think that it couldn’t get grayer, right? Well you’d be wrong! A few weeks ago the weather here started to improve, the sun came out from it’s seemingly months-long vacation, the temperatures started to approach “mild” as opposed to “frigid”. Boy is it nice to see the sun… even if I’m sleeping during the day!

Suffice it to say I was finally inspired to redo my website, which I decided out of the blue to do one day. I even went so far as to delete the old content system, along with any files on the main domain (after making a backup of course). It’s taken me a few days to finish coding my new design, and I’ve to say I’m rather happy with it. It seemed like whenever I redesigned my site I also had it in my head I should do so “for others”. Who these “others” were I couldn’t tell you, but I’d never really done a design completely for me, ignoring “others”. This is what I came up with. I know it’s not very Web 2.0-ish, but I like it dammit.

So I start the new year, a few months late, with a ‘Clean Slate’. Which is what I’ve decided to name this particular version of Kupatrix.com’s design. Expect to see me post regularly every few days from now on, including quite a bit centered on Druids from World of Warcraft, Movies or TV Shows (Thanks Netflix!), some inane geeky thing, or a rant. I’ll also be adding a portfolio-like section to the site, though I feel hesistant to include any of my old work, since nowadays it seems rather “noobish”, to coin a phrase from gaming.