Lichborne: Reviewing death knight talents for patch 5.4

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has indicated that Blizzard is pretty happy with the new Mists of Pandaria talent design, and I have to agree with him. While it does suck to wait 15 levels between new talent choices while leveling a new alt, otherwise the new talent system allows real flexibility and interesting, meaningful choices, arguably more than we had under the 51 or 31 point talent systems, where almost every tier had a clear best choice for whatever role you were playing.

That said, there's always room for improvement, and the devs have mentioned they plan to use patch 5.4 as another opportunity to go over talent trees and bolster talents that see less use or otherwise feel underpowered. With that in mind, this week we'll look at the death knight tree and pick out some candidates for a patch 5.4 redesign.
The first tier of our talent system deals primarily with the manipulation of diseases. This is, all in all, a relatively balanced tier. There's two small problems here. The first, and more minor, is that Roiling Blood doesn't fit comfortably into frost anywhere. This is one that probably won't need to be fixed, per se. Talents that are naturally better for specific specs seem like a reasonable thing, and Roiling Blood is very good at what it does.

What probably will need fixing is Plague Leech. Plague Leech is a talent that a lot of death knights have had some justifiable distaste for since it was first introduced. Because it supplies an extra death rune, it ends up being a straight up damage increase, but only if you use it just as your diseases about to expire. Interestingly enough, while it is a damage increase, most death knights seem to agree that it's not the end of the world if you don't take it. Part of this may be because it's only a damage increase if you use it exactly right.

Still, if any talent of ours is liable to be changed, I'd expect it to be Plague Leech. It does technically have an unfair advantage of increasing damage over the other two, but is similarly so complicated to use right that many death knights skip it anyway. Swapping it for a less awkward talent would be welcome.

The second tier is a set of survivability options. This one is actually pretty solid. Purgatory here is probably mostly blood-only since it's so hard for a DPS to get the healing needed to survive, but both Lichborne and Anti-Magic Zone have a lot to recommend to any spec depending on the situation. If there's an argument to be made here, it might be that Anti-Magic Zone should be baseline so that all death knights have a solid raid-wide cool down, but I wouldn't expect this tier to be touched.

If the 3rd tier has a problem, it's that Death's Advance is just too good. Having extra movement speed is very hard to pass up. One of a melee's main duties, whether tank or DPS, is getting out of the fire and getting into position, and a talent that helps you do that is pretty solid. That said, the other two options have good situational use. Chilblains is amazing for kiting duty. So there's possibly an argument for making Death's Advance baseline (or taking it out altogether) and placing another mobility or control option here -- maybe even a long-term crowd control option. That's probably something that would be more a decision to made in a patch 6.0, though, so I wouldn't expect this tier to change.

Tier 4 is our health regeneration tier, and has already seen quite a few tweaks. At this point, both Death Pact and Death Siphon are solid talents and unlikely to change. One offers a big chunk of emergency healing every few minutes, while the other allows on-demand healing as long as you're willing to give up a more hard hitting strike you could have use that death rune for. Essentially, you decide whether you want a strong burst of healing every few minutes, or quicker, smaller bursts at the cost of a chunk of your DPS. Conversion, on the other hand, is the black sheep of this tier, and for good reason. Since it drains a steady stream of your runic power, it essentially blocks the use of our rune regeneration talents and the benefit of Scent of Blood, resulting in a crippling us in ways the healing doesn't make up for. Conversion is right up there with Plague Leech for things that should be redesigned or removed.

The 5th tier, at this point, is what it is. At this point, it's an essential part of our class, and if it's ever removed, it's going to need to be part of a more complete redesign that you'd see in an expansion beginning patch. I would not expect to see any changes in patch 5.4. That said, what might be interesting here is a return of Blood Tap to a base emergency cool down as it was before the revamp, though it's unclear what one could replace it with.

I admit that I was not a fan of the final tier when it first came out, and I'd still kind of like damage talents as our top tier. That said, the tier as it's shaken out in actual game play has been relatively strong. Both Gorefiend's Grasp and Remorseless Winter have been very solid crowd control and mob wrangling options for trash pulls, and really have no pressing need to be changed. That leaves us with Desecrated Ground. While it has some limited use for PvP and specific PvE fights, it just doesn't have enough to recommend it in the long run. This is one that may need a revamp of sorts. Giving it a damage absorption component like Anti-Magic Zone might beef it up enough to be useful, though that might also beef it up so much as to make it mandatory, which wouldn't be any better. Arguably, it would also see a resurgence in use if one of the bosses in the Siege of Ogrimmar uses fear spells liberally, though that would still bring up a possible needed redesign for future boss tiers. Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear. Tags: anti-magic-zone, asphyxiate, blood-death-knight-lichborne, blood-tap, chilblains, conversion, death-knight-blood-lichborne, death-knight-frost-lichborne, death-knight-guide, death-knight-info, death-knight-talents, death-knight-unholy-lichborne, death-pact, death-siphon, deaths-advance, desecrated-ground, dk-guide, dk-info, dk-talents, featured, frost-death-knight-lichborne, gorefiends-grasp, guide-to-death-knights, lichborne, mists-of-pandaria-talents, patch-5.4, plague-leech, purgatory, remorseless-winter, roiling-blood, runic-corruption, runic-empowerment, talent-revamp, talent-system, talents, unholy-blight, unholy-death-knight-lichborne, wow-death-knight, wow-dk

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The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Terrace of Endless Spring

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Terrace of Endless Spring is a weird conclusion to the joyous majesty of tier 14. We go from one large raid to another large raid, and then the tier caps with chasing a Sha back to his Breakfast Nook of Fear. I suppose, however, you do have to give Blizzard a hand for managing to efficiently cram so many bosses into such a small area. The economy of space in there is very well executed.

Nonetheless, all meta discussion aside, from a tanking perspective, Terrace of the Endless Spring is nothing to write home about compared to the rest of the tier. The fights are okay, but don't really require the same engagement that fights in Mogu'shan Vaults, or even the Heart of Fear, demanded. Regardless, it being the last raid of the tier, the damage is higher and the need to keep yourself on two feet is oh-so-pressing. There are definitely some good tricks in your toolbox that will help keep you vertical and the thus the raid from going pear-shaped. Let's explore them.Like the other two guides I've done like this, it's important to note that my default loadout for tanking is typically this setup of glyphs and talents. Most tips I give will be what deviates from these defaults.

Protectors of the Endless

Like most of the fights in this raid, the magic damage will be intense enough to warrant keeping Divine Protection unglyphed. Likewise, you'll want to keep Glyph of the Battle Healer up as a default.

Movement speed can be a damage saver in this fight, thanks to the Lightning Storm mechanic. It happens frequently enough that talenting for Long Arm of the Law makes sense, allowing you to zip out of any rings of electricity before you get fried.

Since each Protector heals to full when one of their numbers dies, it's not really worth doing anything that will buff your AoE damage. Be sure to use Glyph of Focused Shield for your Avenger's Shield so you're not "wasting" any damage. Likewise, I'd almost recommend going for Execution Sentence, if you don't care about the AoE healing of Light's Hammer.

Tsulong

For the adds that appear in the day phase, you have a few options to make them less dangerous. Glyph of Holy Wrath will allow you to stun them (especially the swarm of little ones that pop up whenever an Embodied Terror dies), and talenting Burden of Guilt can help you slow the Unstable Sha that slowly move in on Tsulong.

For night phase, you'll want to hold onto Long Arm of the Law for getting to the Sunbeam in a jiffy and dropping your Dread Shadows stacks.

Not really related to glyphs or talents, but don't bother using Lay on Hands on Tsulong during the day phase. He'll receive no healing from it (unlike Valithria Dreamwalker) and you'll just waste the cooldown.

Lei Shi

If any fight in this tier is *the* magic damage fight, it's this one. Indeed, Blizzard recently nerfed the magic resistance trinkets from Wrath and Cataclysm because they were -- even after the massive nerf resistances took in 5.0! -- still useful. That's how crazy the magic damage is on this fight. If you are crazy enough to equip Glyph of Divine Protection, I hope your healers take you out into an alley after raid and work your kidneys a bit as punishment.

Like the previous two fights, keep Long Arm of the Law talented for portions of the fight like Get Away! and for expediting the tank swaps. Because that Spray damage really, really hurts. (It's deadly even in watered-down LFR.)

I haven't mentioned it previously, but you'll really want to use Sacred Shield on this fight for proactive damage mitigation. You really need to shave every possible decimal point of damage off of this fight, because it can get hairy very quickly. As always, the ol' chestnut applies: damage prevented is better than damage healed. Especially when there's a lot of damage.

Sha of Fear

This fight upsets me, as a tank. After all the amazing encounters in tier 14, you would think that the very last boss would be the cherry on the delicious sundae. But, instead of getting something as intense or engaging as the fights at the very beginning of the tier, tanking the ultimate threat of tier 14 involves standing in one very specific spot painted on the floor and not moving, lest the raid explode.

But I digress. You'll want to keep Long Arm of the Law talented, if only to get behind of the Wall of Light before another Breath of Fear goes out. Other than that, as you can imagine, you won't be moving much at all.

Unlike the previous three fights, you'll want to glyph Divine Protection. As a tank, your biggest worry is going to be dealing with Thrash, where the Sha will strike you three times in quick succession. Divine Protection can help mitigate that. In addition, consider timing the use Shield of the Righteous to cover all three.

Likewise, since there will be a pile of melee behind you, Glyph of Battle Healer continues to be a fantastic idea.

Even if the fight is lackluster, the payday from his drops are excellent. Best of luck getting the sword to drop for you! The Light and How to Swing It shows paladin tanks how to combat the Sha in the strange new land of Pandaria. Try out the new control gearing strategy, learn how to make the most of the new active mitigation system on your tankadin, and check out how to deck out your fresh 90 tank to get ready for any raids! Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, lei-shi, Paladin-Glyphs, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-protection-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, protection-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, sha-of-fear, terrace-of-endless-spring, tsulong, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It

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Night elf priest iron-mans to level 90 with no greens, no talents, and no deaths

It's a world first for night elf priest Lyssan of Vek'linash (US), who has bypassed death, gearing, talents -- all the conveniences of modern-day Azeroth -- to hit level 90 in the player-created WoW Ironman Challenge. A report like this would normally include the winner's class specialization and gearing, but not for this player, yet the Ironman's brutal ruleset prohibits not only those basics but also death itself.

That's right: If you die during the WoW Ironman Challenge, you re-roll. Period.

Here's a look at the grim core rules of the challenge:
No items equipped other than white or gray items.No heirlooms.No talent points -- no specialization. You may train class abilities.No professions, primary or secondary, other than First Aid.No food or water above vendor-quality white items.No groups -- no BGs, no instances, no raids, no quest groups. No guilds.No enchants, scrolls, potions, elixirs, or glyphs.No outside financial or equipment assistance (including gold or bags from other characters).The Big One: If you die, ever, you delete that character and start over at level 1.The next closest participant in the Mists leg of this event is currently level 87. Kripparrian, the player-run hard-mode competition's former title-holder in Cataclysm at level 85, does not appear to have leveled in Mists of Pandaria.

We'll have a full interview with the triumphant Lyssan next week, after she takes a well-earned holiday rest! (And if it were me, I think I'd go out and die a few times, just for sheer relief ...)
Tags: hard-mode, hard-mode-wow, hardcore, hardcore-wow, ironman, ironman-challenge, leveling, Lyssan, no-death, no-deaths, player-generated-content, player-run-events, world-of-warcraft-ironman-challenge, wow-ironman-challenge

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