The Care and Feeding of Warriors waxes philosophical this week. Matthew Rossi has been switching between a tank and a DPS warrior all week and it's gotten him all misty eyed.

I think it's fair to say now that the shockwaves from the oncoming expansion are being felt. Guilds are disbanding, new ones are being formed, you see people reporting that they've burned out on the existing content while others try and get groups together so they can see it before it is essentially 'gone'. Some guilds are rerolling on the opposite faction, or taking a more casual approach.

All this is to me at least very familiar: I was in Naxxramas the last time the pre-expansion wave hit (I don't really consider it a 'depression' as such because it had some positive effects for me as well as negative ones) and I simply got tired of doing what I had been doing since MC and rerolled Horde. It ended up saving the game for me, I made a lot of really good friends Horde side (Go Consummate Vees) and when I went back to my alliance characters I did so feeling refreshed and ready to tank. Learning how to adapt to the new realities of tanking (prot spec becoming a lot more necessary, for just one example) with 10 more points to spend and 41 point talents to consider helped make it a whole new game for me.

As things stand, I'm fortunate enough to be in two guilds (one horde, one alliance) that are raiding at different progression levels. One's moving into Hyjal and BT, phasing out the SSC/TK raids, and the other is just starting to consider regular 25 man runs. I play a warrior in both: my human is a dedicated main tank, while my tauren is a DPS/offtank. As a result, I'm getting to see a lot of fights I've only ever seen from the perspective of standing in something's crotch calling it names from the fresh new perspective of standing behind it stabbing it.

It turns out that Nalorakk has a massive butt. I mean, seriously, that thing is just huge. I'd never seen it before. Now I'm wondering if Supremus could possibly have so impressive a hinder. It'll probably be a while before I can check, though.

Scattered Shots is for hunters. 'Nuff said on that topic. The Freezing Trap David was stuck in last week also wore off a little bit, thanks to Daniel, permitting him to write once more without his fingers snapping off from the cold.

In the wake of the recent confusion regarding Scare Beast, once again some hunters have gotten to complaining a lot about the state of their class. While on one hand, there are certainly problematic issues hunters are having, it's really not fair to say that the class is broken. It isn't -- being a hunter is more fun than its ever been, and it looks like this class will only get better in the future.

Nonetheless, looking at the problems we do have might give us a clearer sense of where we're going in the future. With more and more information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King, and especially since Blizzard started asking for feedback from hunters, it's worthwhile to have a look at what holes do exist for our class, and how future changes might seek to plug them up.

Today on Build Shop, we're going to take a look at a Shaman build that's a little different from the usual since we've already covered the basic cookie-cutter specs of Elemental, Enhancement, and Mike Schramm's personal variant of Restoration. The Enhancement spec that we'll tinker with will try to focus on the built-in synergy between some Elemental and Enhancement talents, as opposed to the more familiar complement of Restoration talents. This Enhancement build is focused on dealing damage, with less focus on the raid or party utility that Restoration talents provide. You can take a quick look at the build here.

Shock and awe
For optimum DPS, an Enhancement Shaman's spell cycle should be punctuated by shocks, which are instant cast damage-dealing spells that don't interfere with a Shaman's swing timer. The biggest problem with utilizing shocks as part of an offensive spell cycle is the prohibitive mana cost, which can make a dent on an Enhancement Shaman's relatively low mana pool. To alleviate this , we take 5/5 Convection from the first tier of the Elemental tree, which reduces the cost of Lightning and Shock spells by 10%.

There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King lately. With the World Wide Invitational 2008 just around the corner where WotLK will be playable again for us all, and the news that Wrath is in alpha, we can expect to see more and more come out about the game.

With this expectation of the beta and eventual release building, a lot of people are getting excited about different things. So I want to know, what are you most excited about?

For me, I'm most excited about seeing the new end game raid content. I'm with a very dedicated group of raiders right now who do about 20 hours a week of raiding, and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll all still be around in WotLK and get to push into the new content quickly and with a lot of zeal.

Then there is the Death Knight. Who isn't thrilled at the chance to play a new class? We haven't ever seen a new class in WoW, and it's bound to throw a wrench in the way a lot of folks play the game. Seeing the Death Knight get integrated into raiding will be a very interesting thing to watch.

Two aspects of my personality come into conflict quite often during my time playing WoW. You see, I love getting the most out of my gear, and pushing every little point of damage I can get out of my equipment. However, I hate doing math in my leisure time. When you really want to get down to min-maxing, you're stuck with that little math part.

Fortunately, there are tools out there to help that out somewhat. The latest tool being Chardev.org, a website that allows you to either build a character from the ground up or import yours from the Armory. Everything from gems to enchants to talents are able to be altered here, and while this isn't the first website to do something like that, it does do something differently. It allows you to see all of your stats, and the breakdown of your spells. Their damage, damage coefficients, casting time after Haste, all of that.

It definitely isn't perfect or a replacement for good math, but it's quality work regardless. The ability to refine your item searches further would help a lot. As it is right now, it just throws you a giant list of what could technically go in that slot, with no way to narrow it down. Still, seeing spell stats and how gear will affect them laid out for you is very cool. Chardev is worth at least a look!

[ via Massively ]

Raiding warlocks have a very specific role - dealing damage. As we progress further in the high end-raiding game, one thing becomes more and more apparent. Our much-envied range of playstyles diminishes and we seem to be shoehorned, like other classes, into pretty much a single cookie-cutter spec.

The spec in question is destruction or 0/21/40 specifically. This spec capitalizes on the wonderful scalability of shadow bolt and consistently outperforms affliction when good spell hit and crit gear becomes available. For a detailed look at the 0/21/40 build, check out my "A Warlock's descent into Destruction" article.

I've recently respecced back to an affliction spec (40/0/21) just to revisit the good ol' days of mobility (instant DoTs) and an "unending" mana pool (Dark Pact). I know we tend to look back on the past with rose-colored glasses, and true enough, my experience with affliction again was ... less than satisfying. Why the difference?

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.

Every week, Arcane Brilliance endeavors to inform and entertain Mages everywhere, and also to brainwash non-Mag es into becoming Mages. This week we take a look at what's to come for the Mage class, even though last week we promised to write about newbie instances. The newbie instances aren't going anywhere, ok? We can write about them next week. Also, this is the last time we refer to ourselves in plural first person. We know we aren't part of a collective. We understand we are not Borg. We promise.

Is this whole "progressive patch" thing blowing anybody else's mind? Am I the only one? When the patch notes were first released, Mages everywhere let out a massive, unequivocated "Meh." There were no significant changes for anybody, really, much less the wizarding community at large. As it turned out, Blizzard was holding out on us. Each build of the patch brings a few new nuggets of change, slightly like when Wendy's switched from chicken nuggets constituted of several differently colored kinds of ultra-processed chicken product to all-white kinds of ultra-processed chicken product. Though we've gotten nothing as drastic as what may or may not be happening to Shamans and Warlocks, some of these changes could prove to be significant.

It's important, I suppose, that I stress yet again that none of these changes are guaranteed to see the light of the live servers, and that future nerfs/buffs could be rolling down the pipe. By the time I finish writing this, chances are it will be out of date. And the way things have been going, if we Mages see something hit the notes that we don't like, all we have to do is unite and QQ the living crap out of the official forums. You never know what it'll get you.

After the jump, rampant speculation!

The Care and Feeding of Warriors takes the time this week to discuss putting the hurt on things. Whether you are fury, arms, or even sometimes prot (stop laughing) there will be times when it's less important that you keep a mob occupied and more important that you bash it's head in, chop it's arms off, or otherwise bring the unpleasantness. Matthew Rossi has been bringing said unpleasantness for a long time now. Oh, right, yes, in game, certainly, what else did you think we meant?

Before we even get started, yes, that is a warrior in Tier 1 with a Terestrian's Stranglestaff equipped. For some odd reason the staff only drops if we have no druids on the run, so there you go. Why is he in Tier 1? Because Tier 1 still looks freaking awesome, that's why. And that's not the lookalike 70 blues, man, that's the old school set. You can tell by the coloring. (You know you've been playing a warrior for a very long time when you can look at a piece of gear and know by its color what it is.)

I've talked a lot about how I mostly tank nowadays, so it's kind of ironic that I'm talking about DPS today, considering that I mainly DPS'd for months and months and seemed always to be talking about tanking. Maybe I should start running around bandaging people. Or I could make a whole lot of food before the raid and pass it out to folks while making weird gestures beforehand.

Anyway, warriors as DPS are, as always, melee. We don't have much in the way of spell damage (no, Thunderclap doesn't count) and even our debuffs generally make for up close action. Basically, all warriors (be they tanks or DPS) hit and yell at things. That's about all we do, really, we hit things and we yell at them, either making them feel bad (Demoralising Shout) or good (Battle and Commanding Shout), and sometimes we break wind so powerfully that they can't attack us as fast (Thunderclap). Okay, so the tooltip doesn't actually say that we're flatulent when we use Thunderclap, but I've yet to see any other explanation as to why I can explode periodically for physical damage when I have no magic. Yes, it counts as a spell, and yes, it's mitigated by armor, so I'm totally in the dark as to what else it could possibly be.

The Care and Feeding of Warriors may just have had its first fart joke. I'm sure we're all very proud. Now that we've all gotten that out of our system, so to speak, let's get on to what a warrior DPSing is and isn't, and what they can and can't do. I'm not going to dwell too much on things like weapon speed or if dual wielding is superior to a 2h weapon because that will really ultimately depend on your build, and I won't know what that is. There are DPS builds in both arms and fury that use 2h weapons and dual wielding (although I have to admit that I don't understand a dual wielding DPS arms build very well) so such a talent choice will be up to you.

There's a new chapter in the ongoing saga of Shaman disappointment with patch 2.4, and it's this: "1, 2, 3, 4... 6?" As you may have noticed in the patch notes, Call of Thunder (an Elemental Shaman talent that increases the crit strike chance of Lightning spells) had five ranks that gave 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, and 6% respectively. But patch 2.4 will bring it in line with standard arithmetic, and have rank five give 5% crit chance.

An obvious nerf, right? Blizzard doesn't seem to be so sure. Players say that there was a reason rank five gave 6% chance to crit, and it was probably to balance the ability with other abilities in endgame. But Neth says that though it is a nerf, the devs did it just to bring the values in line with other similar ranked talents. Even giving Neth the benefit of the doubt on the devs' decision, that seems really unlikely-- no one would "accidentally" count 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. Clearly the extra percentage crit chance was in there for a reason, and the devs shouldn't change it back unless Shamans really are critting too much (and by all accounts, they are not).

It seems like a lot of whining over a small issue (and yes, that could be said about all of this Shaman business), but once again not only is Blizzard not clear on their communication, but they continue to mangle Shaman relations-- in a patch where Elemental Shamans are finally hoping for a buff, the devs decide instead to nerf one of their biggest talents, supposedly to fix a mathematical bug. If the devs suddenly said that Fel Concentration was getting nerfed to 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% (rather than the 14%-70% it's at now) because those numbers were more "in line," Warlocks would throw a fit. And that's exactly why Shamans are so unhappy right now.

This post by Catherine on WoW Ladies (about getting just the right spec for PvP and grinding) got me thinking about specs and their purpose in general. For a lot of classes, it's pretty much accepted at this point that you spec one way for leveling, another way for endgame, and a third way for PvP. While some classes can pull off all three with pretty much any spec (hunters and warlocks, ahem), other classes are much more confined (leveling as a resto shaman or prot warrior is possible, but I wouldn't want to do it any time soon).

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Blizzard has made a big deal (and a lot of money) about making sure that almost any class can jump into any situation at any time and do what they want to do. But the opposing viewpoint of that is that when all classes can do everything, no one class can do one thing better than others.

I think there's a good balance at this point, and though respec costs could be lower, they're definitely low enough that you can change spec a few times in the journey from 1-70 without a problem. But there are two ways to fall off the edge Blizzard is walking here: either specs become too limited, and you need to respec to do different things, or specs become too vanilla overall, and there's no reason at all to change anyway.

There are a few things that have been desired by the players ever since WoW began. Rideable pets for hunters, player housing, guild banks (now in the game! yay!), and additional classes (one coming in Wrath of the Lich King) are a few examples. Here's one more, close to my heart since I have a Holy priest main: Holyform. The dark side of the Priest talent tree has a form; why not the light side? It would supplement our legendarily bad 21/31/41-point talents with something that was truly compelling for the dedicated healer, and of course it would look awesome.

Well, Wowhead and WOWDB now have entries for a spell called, indeed, Holyform, as shown above right. It's hidden in the data files for the 2.4 patch; note that it is not currently trainable by priests on the PTRs. It could be there for any number of reasons: it could be an NPC spell, it could be an ability usable only during the Kil'Jaeden fight, like the Kael'Thas legendaries, or it could just be a cruel joke. The most compelling explanation I've seen is that Blizzard is distributing some of the Wrath patch files early, to lessen the initial download, and this is going to be the new 51-point Holy talent. Please let that be it. Update: comments are reporting that this is an NPC spell in Sunwell. Too bad.

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?

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.

I have been an Affliction lock for much of my 70 career (45 days to be exact). I enjoyed wiping out fauna in Nagrand or Shadowmoon Valley by taking on multiple mobs with hardly any downtime. Between the Frozen Shadoweave set bonus, Essence Infused Mushroom, Siphon Life, Drain Life and the occasional skillcoil, my life hardly drops below the half-way point.

In raids, it was fun watching an amplified Curse of Doom pop for close to 9k damage and trying to keep a full set of DoTs on the boss between Ruin-powered shadow bolt carnage. I liked the instant fire-and-forget DoTs in PvP and Arenas, and Curse of Exhaustion and instant Howls of Terror gave me a chance against rogues and warriors. You could say that I'm a happy Warlock.

Until I got bored.

Screwface on the forums has an interesting idea about a PvP tweak, even though his implementation isn't quite right. He says that since healers are so overpowered in PvP (well that's his first problem), abilities like Rend and Garrote should not only bleed blood, but also bleed mana off of casters. Of course, simply making all bleed abilities also take off mana would make them overpowered on their own, so his plan of making a sweeping change like that doesn't quite compute.

But the idea of more abilities that directly affect mana is an interesting one. Right now, there are only four "mana drain" spells in the game (warlocks can steal mana for themselves, priests can turn mana into damage, and hunters can sting mana off of a target). But as much as mana pools and regen have grown in the last patch, it's true that there hasn't been a balance in the opposite direction. No, warriors don't need another buff, but what if shaman were given a mana drain totem somewhere in the next ten levels? Or Boomkins got a spell that negated mana over time?

It's nothing to play around with lightly. But Blizzard does have to come up with ten more levels of abilities and talents for the next expansion, and messing with mana is something they haven't done much of lately. In Northrend we might not only be worried about health and DPS, but mana draining and mana attacks might become another piece of the class balance puzzle.