Fiance and I moved the Monday before patch day. This means that we didn't have internet again until Wednesday night. Because of this I completely missed out on 24-hours of post-patch mayhem. This was both good and bad, good in that we were able to get enough stuff unpacked to be able to live BEFORE I totally got sucked into WoW. Bad because I missed out on a huge amount of glyph business.
Class Changes
In short, almost all my toons, especially the 80s, underwent huge changes. As of yesterday some still don't even have their specs rebuilt. This is mostly my fault, I've spent far more time making glyphs than actually rebuilding the toons.
Bob, Warlock
Destruction
The destruction rotation is very complicated. Much more complicated that the previous rotation. The old rotation went something like this:
Opener: Life Tap, CoE, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt and Conflag on cooldown, refresh Immolate as needed, lifetap every 30-40sec to keep the buff up and get mana.
Now:
Opener: Bane of Doom, CoE, Soul Fire, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Shadow Flame, Corruption, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt, Conflag, and Shadow Flame on cooldown, refresh Bane of Doom, Immolate, and Corruption as needed. If Empowered Imp procs then cast Soul Fire. On top of all that use Soul Burn->Soul Fire three times somewhere in the fight. Spam Incinerate otherwise.
The opener has 9 spells, you're keeping 3 on cooldown, refreshing 3 dots, watching for a proc and weaving in 3 big cooldowns. I'm slowly developing the feel of it on a target dummy. Its complicated, and I find myself watching the dot timers and my action bars. On a target dummy the rotation is involved, in a real raid where you have to move around, it would be very difficult, at least at first.
The good part about all this, is the DPS. I'm pulling in 6K when I do the rotation well. Thats pretty crazy considering I was only getting 3-4k pre-patch.
Demonology
With dual-spec being lowered to 100g, I went ahead and got bob a second spec. I've always wanted to try Demonology, its the most utility oriented class, plus who doesn't want to turn into a big purple demon?
The rotation is much easier, but the DPS I was getting was only around 3.5k. Its entirely possible that my gear isn't suited for this spec or that I just don't know the "proper" rotation. Either way, I'll have to work on it and see how things progress.
Hooff, Paladin
Paladins ( and Hunters ) have had the biggest change in terms of class mechanics of the patch. Pallies now have "Holy Power" think mini rogue combo points. For Retribution, the rotation isn't that much more complicated, but it changes the tempo of the class quite a bit.
Rotation: Crusader Strike(CS), Filler, CS, Filler, CS, Templar's Verdict. Filler being Exorcism when Art of War procs, judgements, holy wrath ( which now affects all enemies but stuns undead/demons). Its made the class feel slower, more rigid. Whereas before it was priority and you hit whatever was off cooldown, now you have to wait and try to build up holy points (with crusader strike) as fast as possible to hit with a heavy TV. I have to keep myself from trying to hit the abilities as they come off CD.
Unfortunately melee DPS seems to be down accross the board. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, but that was the scuttlebut on wowinsider and mmochampion.
Holy
I haven't got the courage up to try healing on Hooff yet. The heals have been shifted around and new ones added. Flash of Light is now a big, fast, expensive heal. Holy Light is the slower, small heal. Divine Light is the big, slow nuke heal. Except for the names changing, its not a huge change. Then there's the Holy Power mechanic. Holy Shock is still instant, with a CD, and it heals for a decent amount. It also produces 1 holy power. Word of Glory is instant, has no mana cost, but consumes all your Holy Power. The more holy power the more it heals. So this leads to the scenario where you want to use Holy Shock all the time to build up HP to get mana-free healing using WoG. There's also Light of Dawn, which is a Cone type AOE heal.
I haven't actually tried healing with this new toolbox so I don't know how anything feels. My old playstyle heavily favored Holy Shock + Flash of Light combos so that should be easy enough to convert to Holy Shock + Holy Light. Remembering to use WoG will come with time. From what I've heard, the mana pools are so large ( from the SP->Int conversion) that using Flash of Light won't drain your mana much at all.
Hotplate, Death Knight
Blood Tanking
I haven't even respec'd her yet. I forsee that it shouldn't be a huge change for me, since I was already blood tanking pre-patch. There might be new abilities, or name changes but it should be ok. With that said, I haven't built up the bravery or inclination to try tanking with her yet.
Frost Dual-Weild DPS
I just spec'd her into dual wield DPS yesterday. To be honest I really just like seeing a character go to town on a monster with two weapons. With 2pcT9 dps with a bunch of tanking gear, plus a tanking 1hander, I was pulling 2.5k DPS on a target dummy. Pretty low, but to be expected considering my gear and inexperience with the spec.
Waash Druid
To be perfectly honest Waash has spent the majority of the time creating Glyphs. Though I did get around to specing him back into tanking. I even tried tanking a few heroics. The biggest change? Swipe now has a 6sec CD. Thats an eternity for an ability that used to be spam'd with no cooldown. It makes getting AOE threat much much more involved. Now I still use swipe on every cooldown, but I have to be smarter when I use it. For example, during a pull I have to make sure that first swipe gets EVERY mob, so that I can get some initial threat. After that I'll throw a mangle on the first target, then tab-target a lacerate on each mob until swipe is back off CD. Eventually either every mob will have the complete set of debuffs or they'll be dead.
I'll mix in Maul if I'm falling behind in threat and/or I have plenty of rage.
Onaara Shaman
Probably the least affected toon. DPS is exactly the same as before. Healing did take some getting used to, but mostly the same spells, just different named. No more Lesser Healing Wave. Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave (new) have the same cast time, but different heal and mana costs. With the SP->Int conversion I have a huge mana pool now. I rarely have to drink, and even spamming chain heal barely dents the mana bar. This will probably change at 85, but at 73 its awesome.
Glyphs-mas
Even with the 24-hour late start, glyphs have been selling. I had about a guild tab full of icethorn going into the patch. This was by chance from when I used to do glyphs before my last hiatus. Those herbs came in handy. Once I got my auction addon working ( ZeroAuctions instead of QuickAuctions), I looked around. Most glyphs were going for 100+ some weren't even on the AH. I set my fallback to 200G ( just in case ) and made all the expensive glyphs I could. I chewed through those herbs in a few hours. Everything was selling. I made 8k that first night, which was nothing compared to the 20-30k other people were making that prepared.
I'm still creating glyphs, I predict that it'll still be easy profitable for another few days. Once most of the glyphs drop below the threshold I'll have to make a decision on whether I want to continue or just get out and enjoy my profits.
No comments:
Post a Comment