The patch went live today, and Blizzard wasn't kidding about the Cheat Death Nerf. In case you missed it, here's how it reads:

Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue's health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

Needless to say, Rogues are pretty unhappy, especially since Blizzard hasn't taken much interest in fixing the "vanish bug." Skudo of Altar of Storms takes this as proof that Blizzard hates Rogues. On top of that this must mean that Blizzard favors Druids since they rescinded their decision to make Scare Beast an instant ability.

Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. At least, that's what the others said they were doing. I intend to use it mostly as a soapbox to complain. Absolute power tends to......something something.

Welcome to Tank Talk. I am your bear Druid hostess for this week, with a topic that occurred to me while reading a recent article here on the site. Eliah Hecht wrote that his guild is facing a not-uncommon tank shortage and that he has considered the possibility of leveling a tanking class to 70 before Wrath, or tanking on a Death Knight afterwards. A number of people on my server and in my guild have talked about doing the same thing, or switching mains once Wrath hits. With so many people playing Death Knights, I think it's very possible that more people will discover they enjoy -- or at least, don't mind -- tanking, and may seek to do so in a raid environment without necessarily knowing what they've really signed up for.

From those of us who have tanked raid content in vanilla WoW or BC, here are the 10 questions you'll want to ask yourself if you're considering the possibility of tanking serious raid content:

Curse has noticed a very intriguing change to the Death Knight information page. The descriptions of each of the talent trees has been changed. Here are the old descriptions:

• Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage.
• Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage.
• Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities.

And now, the new descriptions:

• Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, and strikes.
• Frost: Talents in this tree focus on control, counters, and combos.
• Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, and diseases.

This is quite a drastic change, but what could it mean? Let's look at the possibilities after the break.

One of the interesting aspects to playing a class as varied as the shaman (or any hybrid, really, but Hybrid Theory's on weekends, you should read that too) is the disparate roles you can end up playing. For example, on my slowly leveling paladin, I'm constantly forced to look at quest drops and say "Well, it's a healing drop, but it would be an upgrade to my healing set, so I'll hold onto it." On my shamans, even though I rarely see a quest drop nowadays, I've worked to assemble elemental, enhancement and restoration sets for each: my restoration shaman has been getting some love lately, with certain new drops and enchants helping increase his plus heal to around 1800 or so, but at the same time I've been forced to realize something.

I went three months playing nothing but enhancement and man, I was rusty. The first Magisters' Terrace run I did on the orc was a parade of dead tank, dead me, dead DPS. Now, admittedly, this is entirely due to my own foolishness in trying to heal MgT my first run back on the job, so to speak, and subsequent runs in Shattered Halls and Black Morass went much better, helping me to get my legs back under me. It's not like you actually forget the role so much as you have to take the time for it to become familiar again.

Back in November of last year, I wrote a post for the Spiritual Guidance column called "The shadow diaries." In it, I pledged that I would recount my experiences of leveling a brand-new shadow priest. However, as you may have noticed (or not), that never happened. There's always too many things to do in this crazy virtual world of ours (not to mention that other, brighter world outside), so poor Hieronymus ended up getting neglected.

Why am I talking about a series of posts I didn't write? Well, I may not have had the fortitude to level another priest all the way to 70, on a strange server no less, but eventually two realizations came together. I already have a priest at level 70, and I'm doing a lot more soloing than grouping with her these days. I'd recently moved a few points in my long-held 23/38/0 spec over to the Holy damage talents, which sped up my dailies a bit. But then I thought, why not go all the way?

The Care and Feeding of Warriors has a big post in mind, but wants some time to work on it. Well, okay, The Care and Feeding of Warriors has nothing in mind. It has no mind. It has no soul. It is just a weekly column written by Matthew Rossi. If it had a mind it might hate him for having told you that it doesn't, but since it doesn't, it can't even respond. Wow, this is getting kind of odd. Anyway, here's a column.

The other day, while grinding some of the new Sunwell Plateau dailies on my PvP warrior (this is him just before getting his season one shoulders) I happened to get into a discussion of specs with a warrior who had chosen a 51 point fury/ 10 point protection spec. It didn't last long enough for me to ask him why he chose that spec, unfortunately. Being that my 'PvP' night elf has a pretty unusual spec himself, although not as unusual (in my case, that spec is the result of wanting soloing viability for skinning mobs and I freely admit it is not maximized for PvP, I just haven't wanted to spend the money to respec a character I don't play all that often, comparatively) I was interested in the why of that spec.

There are cookie cutter specs, of course, and one of the reasons that there are cookie cutter specs is because they work. I'm going to emphasize that. The reason for cookie cutter specs is because they work. There's nothing wrong with choosing one. Tanking with an 8 arms/ 5 fury/ 48 point protection spec is nothing to be ashamed of. But since you're not always tanking, and you're not always going to be running with your Arena team where you've essentially promised them you'll be at your best, there are times when you can sacrifice some efficiency for experimentation. And with the new dailies, coming up with 50 gold for a respec is not hard. I've respecced my human warrior six times since the IoQD quests dropped.

Or:

"Are you sure you want to do this? Really?"

In last week's lecture we discussed factions and reputations an Engineer might find beneficial for their career progression. In that lecture, it was mentioned that the only real decision to be made for an Engineer is between the Goblin Engineering school, known as the Goblin Experimental Engineering Korporation, or the Gnomish school, known as the Mechanical Engineering Guild, Associated. Making this choice is an important step in the career paths of many Engineers. It involves a lifelong oath of loyalty, a considerable investment of time and resources, and it steers the direction your tinkering will take for the rest of your career.

Well, almost. One can renounce one's affiliation with M.E.G.A. or G.E.E.K. but at a cost. Perhaps a cost too terrible to bear for many Engineers. The life expectancy of an Engineer is short, and thus his lifelong loyalty can be considered a less than permanent thing. Even so, the memory of an Engineer is long, and it is no simple task to convince those who were once your sworn (and "lifelong") rivals that you are now their sworn (and "lifelong") ally.

You should know before you even consider this the drawbacks involved. Other professions allow a change of specialization with relative ease and minor expense. It is, for many of them, simply a matter of purchasing a new school. They are not like the Engineers, though. The Dragonscale leatherworkers are not foes of Elemental leatherworkers, not to the same degree as are Gnomish and Goblin Engineers. For the Engineer a sacrifice must be made, in order to demonstrate to your prospective new associates that your intentions are good, and your commitment to them firm.

Herein we will discuss the method of changing one's specialization within Engineering.

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If you're a clothie, you've probably already figured out that you are going to need to take up tailoring at some point, if you're really serious about your gear. In fact, many players would argue that tailoring is mandatory for the serious cloth caster. There's no denying that the BoP tailored sets – Frozen Shadoweave, Primal Mooncloth and Spellfire – are some of the best items you can get ... And of course, since they are BoP, you must be a tailor who is specialized in that cloth type in order to use them.

Despite knowing all of this, I persisted in taking up herbalism and alchemy on my new shadowpriest recently, figuring I could always drop one or the other and powerlevel tailoring later ... Only it's later already, and I know I need to start the inevitable process
of slogging through my four-day cooldowns if I want to get my Frozen Shadoweave any time soon. (Actually, I'm trying to decide whether or not to rely on PvP gear for DPS and make the Primal Mooncloth set for my healing moments, or if I should go right for the Frozen Shadoweave – but that's a topic for a different column ... or the comments section!)

So if you, too, foresee a BoP tailored set in your future but aren't yet a skilled tailor, join me after the break for a tour through the top 1-300 guides and more tips for the final stretch from 300 to 375.

With all of the buzz related to patch 2.4 lately, I wanted to take a moment to look at one particular change that our friendly neighborhood healers and tanks will really appreciate.

Respecs have always been a bit of a pain in the butt. Unless you are willing to align and keep your talents so that you are proficient at one aspect of the game, but weakened significantly in all others, you likely find yourself paying through the nose periodically to change your specialization and talents.

In fact, healers, tanks, and hybrids can find themselves making the switch several times a day, sending their expenses soaring. Well, once patch 2.4 hits, your costs will be subsidized. Thyvenne on the European forums let this information slip.

Specifically, although you will need to still pay for the actual switch, you will no longer be asked to shell out gold to relearn talents and spells from your trainer.

I think we should dub 2.4 patch day "Hybrid, Healer and Tank Appreciation Day". Well, we might look for a catchier name; something with pizazz.

Will you be making use of this change? Are you jumping out of your seat with excitement, or are you feeling somewhat clueless right now? Along those lines, are you addicted to respecs, or do you feel pressured or even forced into them?

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more with The Care and Feeding of Warriors, or close the wall up with the dead of the other faction. We hate those guys! Matthew Rossi plays warriors of several races, which often leads to the cognitive dissonance of a night elf trying to take Stormpike Graveyard. It seems when the blast of war blows in his ears he cannot tell a tauren from a draenei.

The problem with playing a warrior, and also one of the most satisifying aspects of the class, is that it can do three things exceedingly well. We can PvP. Some will say we can PvP too well, of course, but then again everyone thinks everyone else is overpowered in PvP... witness how Warlocks think fear has been nerfed to hell while everyone else thinks fear is overpowered. Except priests, who think they're the ones who get nerfed when locks pwn everyone. (I still remember when warriors got nerfed over fear. Ah, everyone was surprised in AQ20 when the warriors couldn't fear everyone anymore.) We can tank. Whatever you think about other tanks and their advantages, it cannot be denied that the single best tank for a boss fight is a warrior and that a protection specced warrior can tank any instance in the game hands down. We have the best itemization for tanking, we have some of the best mitigation on our gear and some of the best talents for getting and keeping aggro and some of the best moves for pushing our defense and heading for uncrushability. And we can DPS, of course. With the right gear and spec, a warrior is capable of rather impressive damage and can be entrusted with roles like solo killing all of the adds in Black Morass. In fact, yesterday I respecced from protection to fury/arms just so that I could help some guildies get their Karazan keys in three back to back to back Black Morass runs. Some nice stuff finally dropped, too.

But that's also the rub for the warrior. Are we powerful? Yes, we're powerful, in our limited ways. Are we flexible? After a fashion we're flexible. But the key to our power and flexibility lies outside our gear and in the hands of something else. We have to respec to unlock our flexibility. You cannot, as a warrior, switch from tanking gear to DPS gear if you're specced full protection and expect to really do any significant damage. You simply won't have the tools you need to increase your AP, throw out instants and otherwise become a whirling wall of steel that hews your enemies down. A prot spec warrior is a tank, plain and simple, and one without much of a cannon on board. A fury specced warrior is a mobile gun, all damage and not much survivability against a boss or multiple elites. Arms is a baseline, a light tank with a decent burst weapon. You have to play with the talents if you're going to get the most out of your warrior, and that costs. I won't lie to you, if you want to go between dedicated tanking and PvPing, you may have to respec twice a week, going prot for your guild runs and going arms/fury for Arena and BG's. And if you're like me, and are in a guild where there's another excellent warrior who is more geared for tanking? (Hi Vish!) A guild where there's a feral druid who also wants in on the tanking? (Hi Vash!)

Well, then sometimes you're going to be asked to come along on an instance run as pure DPS. Sometimes people will ask you to burn down the adds in Black Morass, or to help with offtanking and DPS in Shattered Halls, or to come along on a Slabs run because there's five people on and you're one of them. And that means respeccing fury, my friends. Say hello to the talent trainer. Bring 50 gold.

I have a short attention span when it comes to games. I want something new and exciting on a fairly regular basis. Anything that stinks of grinding or monotonous play sends me running the other direction (i.e daily quests, faction grinding, key grinding etc.). This is one of the reasons I rolled a Druid. A quick trip to the trainer for a respec and I have a whole new play style to explore.

The problem is, I can't stop respeccing. A couple of weeks of playing one spec, I start fondly remembering how much fun my last one was and before I know it, I've teleported to the Moonglade Druid trainer and find myself digging into my Epic Flight fund for a chance to experience the game from a different play style perspective.

Now I'm on the PTR on premade L70s not only playing an entirely new class, but respeccing those classes as well!

What about you? Are you a respec addict? Why do you change your spec so often?

When the Public Test Realm is up, any player who has had an active account since November 2006 can copy their character over to help test the new update. During the Patch 2.1 Public Test phase, I copied my L64 feral druid over and respecced to Balance. Fortunately, I had a decent set of Balance gear with me and was able to give the spec a good test drive. I enjoyed it enough that I eventually went Balance when I hit L70 on the live servers.

With Patch 2.2 currently on the Public Test Realm, Blizzard is allowing players to copy up to 4 premade L70 characters to the Test Realm. This time, I decided to see what it was like to play some other classes I long admired, so I copied a shaman, a priest and a rogue.

Each toon starts out with a full set of raid gear and PvP gear for different specs as well as plenty of trinkets, rings, weapons, drink, bandages and gems. They also get epic mounts, both land and air. They have none of their talent points assigned, so you can spec them immediately, but you will have to find a trainer to get the higher levels of any spells/abilities you pick up in your talent tree.

Read on for my impressions on each class after the jump.

I've heard a lot of arguments in favor of making it easier to respec your character. After all, a particular talent build may let you get into raids but not solo effectively -- and that's never fun. Or perhaps it lets you grind effectively but gives you no viability in your favorite PvP battleground. The ability to respec lets you switch from one speciality to another and allows you to do many things viably -- but at an increasing cost of gold each time you do so. Currently, the cost for a respec maxxes out at 50 gold, which seems like a high enough amount that it's not a completely trivial choice. However, on the forums, poster Murlourin suggests respecs need to more expensive and difficult to obtain. The argument? With the daily quests available in Outland, the gold to respec every day can be easily obtained, making talent differences essentially meaningless, since an interested player can flip back and forth quickly. And while Blizzard has said that they want careful thought to be put into your talent selections, currently they're telling us that they believe respec costs are still fine. Well, here's the chance to voice your opinion -- is gold so easily obtained in Outland that the respec cost has become meaningless? And if so, is that a bad thing for the game as a whole, or does it just allow hybrid classes more versatility?

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One of the questions you'll generally always come across on the first page or two of the Blizzard profession forums is The Respec Question: How do I respec from X specialty to Y specialty? With drastically varying procedures from profession to profession and scattershot updates and changes from patch to patch, it's hard to know when you've finally come across an accurate, definite answer – yet if you get it wrong, you could be wasting hundreds of gold and hours of skillups. Bindar of Aggramar has compiled a guide covering specialty respecs for all professions. We'll take a look at the basics right here for you.

The first thing you need to know about changing your profession specialty is how to drop your current spec, a spot where a surprising number of players run into a brick wall. Don't get your netherweave in a twist – it's just a technical difficulty, easily remedied. If you speak with the appropriate NPC to unlearn your specialty and select that option only to find that nothing happens, it's almost certainly an add-on conflict. Open the World of Warcraft folder on your computer and find your interface folder. Rename the whole folder with a temporary name, which disables all your add-ons. Then hop back into game and try the dialogue again; you should be back in business. (Don't forget to go back and rename your interface folder to its original name when you're done.)