World of Warcraft – DK in 4.2 – Buff, Nerf, Facts, Speculation, Unholy, Frost and Blood, yes i mean Blood!

Ok, With patch 4.2 coming to World of Warcraft in the coming weeks, we saw frost DK getting getting nerf to the ground. Words from mmo-chammpion suggested that Blizzard is done at this point and i aspect no more further chance to the patch notes. Making me a really sad panda.

So far latest patch notes (June 16, 7:16 p.m. PDT.) suggest the followings:

1) Obliterate base damage has been reduced to 150% weapon damage, down from 160%.
2) Hungering Cold now has a 1.5-second cast time.
3) Might of the Frozen Wastes now increases two-handed weapon damage by 3/7/10%, down from 4/8/12%.

4) Unholy Might now increases Strength by 20%, up from 5%.

5) Glyph of Dark Succor has been redesigned. Rather than placing a 15% maximum health floor on Death Strike healing while in Frost or Unholy Presence, it causes the next Death Strike within 15 seconds after killing a foe that yields experience or Honor Points to heal for at least 20% of the death knight’s maximum health (still requires Frost or Unholy Presence).

6) Death Knight Bug Fixes

7) The talent Killing Machine can now properly be triggered from off-hand attacks as well as main-hand attacks.

Now, it’s some pretty straight forward change, frost dk doing too much damage, while unholy dk doing insufficiently as compare with frost, and the rest of the nerf, especially those to frost dk, mostly due to PVP reasons.

Blizzard recently explained the reasons on many of their changes. (I copied their comment and incorporated them into the post, for the sick of completeness)

They added the cast time to Hungering Cold for PvP reasons. Blizzard quoted: “It is one of the most powerful forms of crowd control in the game, especially in Battlegrounds, and yet was impossible to prevent.”

The nerfs to Obliterate and Howling Blast were made because Frost damage was too high in both PvP and PvE. Note that these values were hotfixed — you shouldn’t see damage drop further when 4.2 goes live.

The Glyph of Dark Succor change was to keep Death Strike from providing so much healing in PvP.
The Might of the Frozen Wastes change was a small tweak to help keep one-handed Frost relatively competitive with two-handed style.

The Unholy Might buff was to help catch Unholy up to Frost in PvE.

Now, I see 3 things in PVP perspective, 1) Frost DK doing too much damage and controls hence Blizzard nerf it, 2) DK healing too much with Death Strike with its Glyph, 3) Blizzard want to promote dual wield Frost, fan service i assume.

Since it’s no point QQ”ing the changes, lets look at some potential solutions available for DK next season / patch.

But before that, there is a few things which is essential for you to understand about DK:

1) Without the current Deathstrike Glyph, Dk probably will get train all games, and without the massive deathstrike self heal, it will be very hard for dk to keep up the health pool.

2) Frost DK will do even more damage next patch, due to + stat in new tier of gear, due to frost main damage skills correlate with weapon damage.

3) With Unholy might buff, Unholy DK will probably par in terms of damage with frost in 4.2, however, with the buff to Paladin in 4.2, we could see more Paladin in arena and hence limiting the usefulness of Ghoul (cc’able), as well as many of the bugs associates with pet.

4) Frost will get bigger burst windows than Unholy Dk, due to unholy DK massively rely on its pet and its flying companion. We could argue, more consistent burst available by Frost, however, more consistent damage by unholy due to death advance.

Now, since we’re done with some basic speculation, here’s some potential solution to Dk in 4.2:

1) Reroll another class, pretty straight forward yet a very hard decision to make.

2) Play Unholy – Pretty straight forward too, direct buff to unholy might makes unholy come back in 4.2, this compliment well with the new tier of gears that give more strength stat, making this very good buff.  However, as i mentioned earlier, the rise of Holy Paladin, will makes it a nightmare for unholy pet.

3) Play Frost – Now, this is down to personal preference. I play frost in 4.1, and always a fans of frost dk. Why frost you may ask. Well, besides the obvious disadvantage i mentioned in 2) about holy pally,  and about frost DK correlation with weapon damage. This allow new tier of weapon, enhancing frost DK even more. The nerf to Hungering Cold make it difficult for grip+hungering cold, but its really not a too big deal, 1.5 sec cast is fast enough. Even if it get interrupt or silence, great, you just give your healer some breathing space.

Now, how can mastery stacking frost DK compromise? I would like to try a haste stacking frost build in 4.2, this is my views, with more haste, you get more flexibility for more deathstrike, you get faster cast for hungering cold, you get more chain of ice. Now, dont get me wrong, Mastery stacking may still work, just in my opinion, with the buff to healing crit in 4.2,

“All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).”

In 4.2, Burst might no longer work, hence frost Dk might fall into a more supporting role. More  chain of ice, more interrupt, more of everything, more self heal too with deathstrike. And if your one of the desecration frost DK (I am one of them), you help your teammates on massive slow effect too with more necrotic strike, more mortal strike effect and slow.

4) Now, what makes me wrote this uber long piece? Well, i read a post at AJ about Blood Dk feasibility in 4.2, many condemn the idea, but… but… it sounds interesting.

Now, here’s why:

a) Dk gonna get train alot in 4.2

b) No more.

What’s good potentially about a Blood pvp spec. Some one mentioned about Blood Dk a joke if the other team realized it’s a Blood DK and not attacking the DK. No attack to Dk, hence no vengeance stacking, it means little damage boast. So, what is a good pvp blood spec for 4.2?

I envision its gonna be something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jMGzfsdrksz0hZfM

The spec is mainly focus on dealing damage, sacrificing many defensive talents.

2x blade barrier is sufficient to advance to tier 2

1x scarlet fever and no points in Scent of Blood

1x in Sanguine Fortitude, 2x in Blood Parasite, and 2x in Improved Blood Presence

1x in Will of Necropolis, no point in Crimson Scourge.

Frost tree: 3x Nerves of cool steels, Unholy tree: standard desecration with Virulence

Now, imo, Duel Wield Blood DK gonna blossom with this spec. Blood bakes cake (BBC) gonna give 30% chance on melee attack for extra 25% weapon damage and potentially more damage with disease on the target. Now with DW, its gonna be more BBC. Extra damage also comes with Blood parasite, and with DW, more worms gonna spawn and also potentially lessen your healer pressure to heal. Although i’m not sure, Blood worm heal might subject to the crit heal buff, making it even more tastier. 3x Nerf of Nerves of cool steels allow extra damage for offhand and lesser hit rating require. Giving more room for other damage stats. Now, the combination of Toughness and Bladed Armor + new tier gear makes a minor buff to Blood damage. Moreover, Abomination might, also gives additional 2% strengths buff. Coupled with desecration, the slow effect will help closing in your target and help your team in many ways.

Now, this is something not confirm, i read in AJ thread and i recalled too i read it somewhere in MMO-champion, Dancing Rune Weapon deal 100% damage instead of the current 50%, now that’s potentially massive damage buff. Now before you get over excited, this changes is not in the official patch note, so, lets pray.

Now, this post is long enough, what are you waiting for, go use up your stack up conquest points and get your self dual wield one handed weapon.

Ah, lastly, don’t flame me if my speculation gone wrong.

Back to Blog 1 – World of Warcraft Taiwan, Coffeenottea Guild

ok. This is the 1st part of the six back to blog series, that i’m gonna cover.

This post is about World of Warcraft. To simplify, the guild is now pretty establish in 憤怒使者 Wrathbringer – Alliance side. Currently level 25, with member strength of 87 level 85 and 253 toon in our guild (Last update – 07-05-2011)

The guild is probably now, self acclaim the world largest and most establish World of Warcraft – Taiwan, English support guild in the world. Ya i mean world, people from all around the world who play wow taiwan joined us. Our Guild Roster consist of players from Malaysian, Singaporean, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia, Canadian, Danish, French, British as well as American.

Players of the guild consist of Vanilla veteran, Burning Crusade old schooler, WOTLK achiever as well as plenty of newbie to wow.

These foreinger work in Mainland China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, and they welcome the opportunity of being able to be in a guild with English as official guild language. It’s a social game after all, nothing beat the fact that sharing your achivement (in game) with your guild mate is one of the best fun factor of the game.

Now, most of the recruiter come from three (3) sources:

1) is the guild forum thread at lowyat.net (http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=ST&f=96&t=1609365&st=0#entry42154824), which serve as the main source of recruitment for Malaysian players.

2) The second source is the wow-in-chinese.forum2jeux.com (http://wow-in-chinese.forum2jeux.com/t1937-wow-taiwan-24996245942035132773-wrathbringer-alliance-coffeenottea), where the guild posted an advertisement there and gather a lot of attention from foreigner, mainly those expatriates in mainland, taiwan, and HK.

3) The last source of recruitment for the guild is simply through referral from current guild mate and the guild application function / interface that Blizzard added to the game in patch 4.1.

Guild recruitment guideline? Well, there is none on paper, but a few criteria or preferences we agreed on, 1) Must be able to understand English sparingly, 2) able to communicate with basic English, above all, the third criteria overwrite everything, where 3) Referral from officer of senior guild members may allow exception to both 1) and 2) above.

The massive influx of foreigners into the guild embrace an unique culture to the guild, something that really special and something where i never experience before, even in the old US server. Now imagine u get Russian, French, Americans, Canadian etc all online and playing together, this is way more diverse than what US server can offer.

Apparent, with all the recent attention and success the guild garnered in terms of growth, i took the chance to interview many of the new joiner, and most of them found the guild through google search, where google search put us among the tops search reply for wowtaiwan, or wowtaiwan english. Many stumble across the guild’s forum post at lowyat.net and wow-Chinese forum and finally decided to move, or join us here.

The early growth fuel by the recruit a friend programme where, i’m able to get many ex wow players to return to wow and join us at wowtaiwan, this includes those non-chinese who play the game using English client, something i try to share with everyone through the forums and get people to understand that playing world of warcraft in Malaysia doesn’t need to be expensive like wow US. No more expensive Cd key and suffering from lags.  In wowtaiwan, its zero entry cost, play with English wow client and constant low latency (below 100ms) gives instant draw to these players to make a come back.

Also, newbie also take the chance to join the game, a game where they admire and envision to play but cant afford to, and now finally a way to play them in an affordable manner.

The guild still lacks progression in terms of PVE, currently 3 bosses (all last boss of respective dungeon) standing and yet to be seen any real progression to down them before the coming new patch 4.2. Not a bad achievement nonetheless, since many of the PVE players in the guild now consist of new players, and lack of options in terms of committed PVE players. Most of the guild mate choose to be casual, probably due to their work. And some, focus mainly on PVP only.

Arena wise, the highest so far, is my brother’s 5v5 teams which merely passed 2k rated then stopped due to members being inactive. Then the nest highest is probably me playing Frost DK, my brother with Affliction Lock and my friend with Holy pally running shadowcleave. We hit 2k and hopefully can climb higher before the next patch. If not, i’m content with that rating and I’m sure we can strive better next season.

The guild run no rated battleground at the moment, all plan is to start fresh next season (4.2) and to get as many members to join / farm pvp gear and progress in battleground competitively.

Oh, about me? Hmm, my main is now a DK, playing frost primarily, most likely remain frost in 4.2 inregardless of the nerf. My alternate include a mage (level 85), a hunter (level 75 – my Glyph toon), a Druid (level 52 – leveling up slowly),  a pally (level 12 – leveling for fun), another pally (level 1 – for storing) and last but not least, my mage, nickname “Airasia” (Level 1 – for Auction house purposes). Next season gonna pretty much playing DK, Mage is not my strong play, can’t seem to play it well. So, Dk is my best options.

K. thats all for World of Warcraft. I’ll keep the update continue once i get some stuff to share.

Bye.

Coffeenottea Operational – I’m back and gonna start with a BANG!

It’s been little more than half a year since i last blogged a post. Time really does flies. I’m started to revamp the blog a little bit this time round, giving it more content, more attention, and more updates.

As always, the blog will continue to blog about World of Warcraft, however, instead of blogging about the US server, which pretty much where i used to play. Now u probably see me quoting “used to play”. Ya i’m now playing WOW Taiwan instead. Switched to WOW Taiwan before the Cataclysm, alot of stuff and progression going on, which i’m happy to share with any reader who stumble upon this blog. Edit: yes, i covered about the switch to WOW Taiwan before i stop blogging like half a year ago. No harm mentioning again tho.

Now, beside World of Warcraft, i probably gonna start covering another up and coming exciting games by EA – Bioware, an intellectual property that we all familiar with – Drum roll…. Star Wars – The Old Republic. Now, The game is still in its early / closed beta. There is no firm release date yet. But day by day, it’s getting closer and closer to the D-day of potentially a game release that may change / revolutionize the whole MMORPG industry.

Also, as always, i will cover two of my favorite / support football team – Arsenal FC and Leeds United FC. An pretty eventful campaign for year 2010-2011, both ironically started well, but failed to impress and sustain, and the rest is disappointed.

Last but not least, i managed to zoom into 2 new hobbies, one being photography and the second being Figures collection. Well, both of this hobbies cost me fortune and i am in a difficult position to juggle priority between the two.

I’m gonna stop here for now, and i’m gonna write on each of the topics above soon. Welcome back, yup, its for me. Welcome back indeed.

Airasia Investment

/guild A unique integrated savings account that works harder than a cow. Account that lets you earn weekly interest and mail to you everyweek. Attractive interest rates starting from 5% weekly for deposits  above 1,000 gold. pst for more details.

This mail will act as the agreement for airasia investment programme, this is to accept 1000 gold of your investment, with promise of 5% interest every monday after a week of loan. the 1st interest payout will be on 22 november 2010. this offfer valid until 14 november 2010. by accepting the cod suggest that you accept the T&C of the programme. for more information. pls consult lina/moko/aisasia.

thank you.

Guild Newsletter 5

Image via Wikipedia

We are having a guild advertisement at the Lowyat.net.

I have been playing wow for the past 3 years started off in US server Gorgonnash Horde side, finally decided to start off new journey with a bunch of friends in the taiwan server – 憤怒使者 – Alliance side, 3 months ago, and we made a guild with players mainly from Malaysia. Singapore players are welcome too.

So far, we have 18 Level 80’s, as well as half dozen of leveler at the level range of 70 – 80.

Players consist of Vanilla veteran, BC old schooler, WOTLK achiever to a great numbers of newly recruit

The guild is pretty much PVP as well PVE oriented.

We are preparing for the upcoming Catacylsm, and would like to invite you to join our exciting journey.

Note: 憤怒使者 is a PVP server.

Also, here’s a few pointers on the benefits of playing over the Taiwan server as compare with the US server.

1) There is no need to pay for the CD key, if u are new to WOW and would like to join the party, there is no entry cost at all, you just need to go over http://www.wowtaiwan.com.tw/ to register yourself for the trial and start off with 10 days free trial. Once that, you can purchase monthly card, or points card for the game time. Or if u interested for some fast leveling with free experience gain throughout the leveling process, you can get us to sent u a recruit a friend ticket so u can profit from it. (For Recruit a friend, see here = https://signup.wowtaiwan.com.tw/action/2009…iend/index.asp)

Note, contrast to US server, in order to play, u need to purchase each of the CD key, WOW Classic, WOW Burning Crusade, WOTLK as well as the coming Cataclysm, which will cost you at least Rm500 to do so.

2) There is also two type of points card for game time in WOW taiwan, one is for monthly, which is RM52 a month, unlimited access, and the other one is RM18 for 18 hours of game time, if u are busy and kind of a casual player, you can then opt for the RM18 game card

3) Latency, as we all know, due to the proximity of our country with the US server, Malaysia players always suffer from delay, spike or lagging when playing with US server. Even with the help of tunneling services, which most them require additional cost, the latency after tunneling will be mostly around 400++.

However, with the taiwan server, the latency sustain at around 250++, without tunneling. It will be even lower if u obtain tunneling services.

We all aware of how vital is the upkeep of latency for gaming, latency issues, provide addtional difficulties for wow players to fully maximize their potential in the form of arena’s as well as raiding.

4) Everything in the taiwan server is the same as the US counterpart except for mostly 1 or 2 days delay in patching new contents or fixes

5) Also, it is a common, mis conception that players in taiwan server is least superior compare to the US counterpart, imo, alot of great players plays in Taiwan server, giving examples such as, Unmercy the rogue, Gameking the mage, they both have accounts in the taiwan server.

6) There is actually ways to play on English client on Taiwan server (questing text etc with English). Hence, even if you have trouble to converse in mandarin generally or having difficulties understanding the mandarin words, you can always opt for this option.

Last but not least,i would like to say thank you for reading through my wall of text, i hope it is enjoyable for u and do sent me mails if you interested in more details or simply leave a reply in this thread.

Thank you.

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1609365

Guild Newsletter 4

Tea at green rose, 08 October 2010, 10.30pm, Have fun, Good luck.

Guild Newsletter 3

Executive Summary:

Honor cap of 75,000 = 1800 of NEw honor,

Each arena point = .85 of New honor points

Each Wintergrasp Mark of honor = 19.08 New honor points

Each Stone keeper shard = 1.6 New honor points

Each Frost or Thriumph = 11 Justice points

* Lich King Heroic dungeon boss — 16 Justice Points
* Lich King daily normal dungeon — 12 Justice Points
* Lich King daily Heroic dungeon — 23 Justice Points
* Lich King raid boss — 23 Justice Points

Max new honor and Justice points = 4000

In this Guild Newsletter 3, i would like to explain the relationship between, honor point, arena points, Wintergrasp mark of honor, with the new 4.01 and Cataclysm, New honor point. Zach Yonzon at WoWinsider, The Art of War(craft): The shape of Cataclysm battlegrounds PvP, greatly explained the correlation between them.

For the first time in the history of the game, PvP players will be roughly on par with PvE players in terms of progression because of the parallel currencies. Conquest and honor points match up with valor and justice points, and the coming weeks are going to be prime farming time for players to get as much of the old currencies as they can, so they can get to the soft cap of honor and justice points as soon as 4.0.1 hits. If you’ve been slacking off on your PvP, now is the time to get a move on — and not just by getting to the current honor cap of 75,000, because that only translates to 1,800 of the new honor points. If you play arenas and haven’t been spending your arena points, you can hit the cap much more quickly, as each arena point is worth about .85 of the new honor points.

If you don’t play arenas and have maxed out your honor, don’t worry. You can get bang for your buck by grinding Wintergrasp, which translates to a whopping 19.08 of the new honor for each Wintergrasp Mark of Honor. Presumably, this should prevent low-level characters from obtaining excessive amounts of the new honor points when 4.0.1 hits the live realms. That said, there’s also a decent conversion rate of Venture Coins (1:3), Stone Keeper’s Shards(1:1.6) and even the Spirit Shards from the Bone Wastes, which come at a remarkably even 1:1 conversion. Use whatever means you can to accumulate all these currencies until you’ve got enough to convert to 4,000. Don’t worry about having excess currency, as these can translate to gold.

To sum it up, work on a combination of honor points, stonekeeper shards, arena points, wintergrasp mark of honor, or even venture coins & spirit shards to gain conversion for the 4k soft cap new honor points. Click here for the full article.

The same goes with Justice points, a combination of Triumph badges, Frost badges, or those old pve badges will allow convertion to Justice points, the soft cap for Justice points also stand at 4k.

Conversion calculator – here.

Also, according to here,

• Lich King Heroic dungeon boss — 16 Justice Points
• Lich King daily normal dungeon — 12 Justice Points
• Lich King daily Heroic dungeon — 23 Justice Points
• Lich King raid boss — 23 Justice Points

So, take note, folks.

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