Physical Vulnerability

I was hoping they’d change their minds about Ebon Plague but, as was mentioned recently in WoW Insider’s Lichborne, the buff to the shadow damage of Scourge Strike per disease points to it being done to make up for the loss from 3 down to 2 diseases. Hopfully this plus the increase in the physical portion of scourge strike will make up for the lost disease and the change of the Scourge Strike glyph into Glyph of Foul Menagerie.

But personally I was more concerned with Ebon Plaguebringer now providing Physical Vulnerability which is a debuff that increases physical damage taken by 4% instead of Ebon Plague which increased all magic damage taken by 8%. My normal melee, ghoul, and strikes do physical damage but at the same time my Death Coil, Death and Decay (which it seems will still be included in single target rotation), DoTs from diseases, Gargoyle, and the shadow component of Scourge Strike are all magic damage. This might be similar to how the number of spells we have makes expertise our worst stat despite being a melee class.

Another thing to consider is that the magic damage debuff now comes from warlocks and rogues. I find this a little odd since they have been trying to even things out between classes when it comes to buffs and debuffs. Wouldn’t the rogue have had more use for the physical damage debuff instead? And if I remember correctly, there was a time in Cataclysm that these two were the least seen classes in raids. I’m sure hardcore guilds would have all the buffs and debuffs covered but what of the rest? In our guild that raids two to three 10 mans a week none of the level 85 rogues were raiding before the legendary daggers were announced and only one lock. I just hope that the ability improvements and flashy graphics for warlocks will increase their numbers and that the rogue alts keep getting played once the legendary daggers become outdated.

Death Knight Army of the Dead

I’m glad that they’re planing to make Army of the Dead more of a dps cooldown than it is now by allowing Death Knights to use a glyph to turn off the taunt and increasing the damage of the ghouls. Since it’s a skill that has a 10 minute cooldown I expect it to be something you would really want to use.

I still think that the 3 second channeling is a bit of a problem though. A blue post did mention that the dps the skill will provide will surpass those of the skills you would have used in those 3 seconds but I still think it disrupts the flow of your rotation. It takes up 3 runes without providing runic power which would fuel other skills and potentially recharge runes faster. Unless you channel before the pull or during times that you can’t attack normally you would actually have to stop spending resources once they are available (which is against the nature of DK dps since you want to spend resources at once to have them recharge as soon as possible to spend again). These would result in lost time and open GCDs which are then dps losses.

I also find it odd as a defensive cooldown. Since DKs are the ones who have always had the active tanking model, it feels out of place that one of our damage reduction cooldowns requires us to not do anything else for the 3 short seconds it’s active.

If were really have to live with the 3 second channel then I hope this 10 minute damage cooldown is worth the effort and resources. As a defensive cooldown though I think they should just remove that part of the skill and make it a separate skill instead. It’s not something I really use that often but it’s the only skill I have on cooldown for the third Impale on Heroic Madness (I use it with Dancing Rune Weapon to make it stronger, but DWR won’t really help me take the Impale on it’s own).

I’ve ended up tanking ever since our group reached Heroic Spine, something I would have never expected. I have a tank spec for soloing old raids and to tank as a last resort when no one else can. Now I’ve tanked all heroic bosses and downed Heroic Madness as the tank. With only 3 hrs of progression a week for months now, it did take till the day after the 30% debuff though.

Weather Effects

Since I’ve been doing the ravasaur daily quests in Un’Goro I was lucky enough to catch some rain. It might not be a big deal but weather is one of the features I do enjoy in WoW. Recently though I only get to see rain in Mulgore and Un’Guro; and that one sandstorm while I had some business in Tanaris. I wish more maps had these effects and that they’d happen more often, and maybe more variations.

Toxic Tolerance

Punching venomhide ravasaurs naked still took so long just to finish the quest. I was pondering just finishing the dailies on a very old toon on a different server who had the quests partially done and just wait for MoP to get the mount and feat on my current main.

I wish I had some flashy power-up skill. Being so obvious would be a disadvantage in PvP though.

At last, Rockhide Bracers

After almost 5 months of 1-3 Heroic Morchok kills a week I finally got heroic Rockhide Bracers. Even overall for the guild this is only the second time it’s dropped in a guild run considering we run 3 raids a week (down to 1-2 though since D3 came out though).

I have been know to have terrible luck with getting loot from the first bosses. It took Shannox 7 months to drop an axe for me and I went into DS with the 365 crafted sword (Rag has never dropped that 2h hammer in any of our guild runs, even during patch 4.3).

“All I need in this life of sin, is me and my ghoul friend. Down to ride to the bloody end, just me and my ghoul friend.”

I never really expected to get the Dark Riding and Dark War talbuk mounts short of spending my days AFK in Halaa air space and tabbing, waiting for the occasional leveler or passing 85 to attack.

Good thing some PvP guilds set up an event a while back and I’ve been using the Dark War Talbuk as my land mount since.

After using Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps for a while it does around 10% of my damage. Though it’s been consistent there are fights that it only makes up 3% of the damage while at times it can be as high as 18%. Since it’s a random proc there can be lucky and unlucky streaks.

I did stick to the stat weights with haste>crit>mastery for quite a while since it isn’t dependent on the proc but now having gone haste>mastery>crit for Gurthalak and 4 pc set bonus it does seem to be an increase in DPS.