"31 Point" Talent Trees are Here!

When I heard about how these were coming the other day I first thought to myself, "Noes! That last blog I just wrote was a lie then!". Luckily I wasn't entirely off and now I can give a more accurate description.

OVERVIEW OF TALENTS

The new talents trees are smaller, you have less points to spend, so this makes sense. I am unsure of the rate at which you gain talents points to spend. After spending my 36 points I had at level 80, I had a message at the top of my tree informing me that my next talent point would be "earned at level 81". (Yeah I still haven't leveled yet) The new trees also force a "primary spec". By that I mean it is no longer possible to be classified as "Hybrid" (take a look at some WoW Armory profiles).


"31 POINT" TALENT TREES

I put the 31 in quotes simply because you do not only have 31 points to spend at the max level. However the 31 points are what you MUST spend in a tree before you are even allowed to think about putting points into another tree. (Personally, that is going to force me have to re-think my dual wield tanking). The other trees will remain grayed out until you have spent 31 talent points in the tree you chose from the first talent menu.

Stat Changes on Items and How it Affects Tanking

This blog is mostly for the lovely Demeternoth to better explain/show how the stats on items will affect tanking. (Be sure to check out her blog as well and she should have some more detailed information coming from the Beta soon!)

Basically I noticed after doing a couple quests (and already replacing my heroic and and non-heroic tier gear with greens) that there has been an overall change in item stats. Overall I think the change can be good albeit being extremely annoying on another level.

Before I go on I'd like to mention a small detail

The Effect of Cataclysm on my Death Knight Tank Thus Far

I know that most people are probably hoping for (and expecting) specific details about high-end etc when they look up information on Cataclysm, let me just say right now that this isn't where I'm going with these blogs.

While I may include some specific details about items etc, my blogs will generally be from the perspective of a casual player (keep in mind I'm the mother of a 2 year old and have various other online duties I attend to in my gaming communities) to give and overall opinion on things.
Sadly I haven't had the opportunity so far to play as much as I would like due to time constraints and server stability issues for the EU server but I have already formed some thoughts an opinions.

After a lot of problems even copying my character into the Beta (due to language selection affecting account and DNS cache issues for a reloading transfer page that did nothing), I logged in eager to explore what I could right away.

WoW Cataclysm Beta!

I've actually been away for a week in Amsterdam.. so I'm getting to this late.

The other day I was checkin' my email. "checkin mah email, checkin' mah email, checkin' checkin'.." (ok enough of that for now, reference) when I saw I had something that said: World of Warcraft(r): Cataclysm(TM) Beta Test Invitation, I got a little excited until I considered that it was probably one of those phishing scams that I receive in my e-mail on a daily basis.. except this one was different.. it actually came to the e-mail that I have connected to my WoW account (I forward a lot of email addresses to one address, but my wow email is special) not like the ones I usually receive the scams at.


I read it and figured it was pretty legit

Death Knight Tanking: Frost Dual Wield Spec à la Raevn

(I'm aware that Blood is the main spec for raid tanking nowadays and will be the standard in the next expansion, however I'm doing this with the immediate future in mind)

Background:

A couple weeks ago I decided that my "alt" (Landriana, Elemental Shaman) had quite surpassed my main (Raevn, Frost Death Knight) to the point of humiliation and shame in regards to gear and instances completed. To where technically Raevn should have been considered as my alt.

I'll admit that it was easy to let myself slide. It's not that I didn't like tanking or my Death Knight, it was just that it's WAY easier to come along in instances as a DPS. When something goes wrong it's not the DPS that is blamed (rarely, even when it IS their fault) and I basically get to sit back, shut up and just follow along killing things. It's much more pleasant than running ahead marking mobs (which I'm really slow to do because of the drop down menu and my inability to move my mouse in a straight line, along with the fact that I keep forgetting to keybind the "skull" mark) while having some asshole keep yelling "Go! go!" at you.

So one day I decided to at least do my daily heroic to get some frost & triumph emblems, my gear wasn't (nor is it currently) the best, and didn't even include full tier 9. I felt pretty comfortable with tanking, the day I stopped playing my tank so much I was considered as "up there in gear"... however, the day I decided to resume gearing  I found out just how much I was in everyone's dust.

Real (low level) Tanks of Genius: Mr. I Don't Need Mail To Tank Guy

Unnecessary Blogage Presents: 
Real (low level) Tanks of Genius: Mr. I Don't Need Mail To Tank Warrior Guy

(Real [low level] Tanks of Genius)

Today we salute you, Mr. I Don't Need Mail To Tank warrior guy.

( Mr. I Don't Need Mail To Tank warrior guy)

Some would say that you shouldn't tank in leather, but for you it's all about the stamina.

(I got more HPs now!)

Those leather DPS classes in the group complaining about your new leathery loot? They're just jealous!

(They were plus crit legs)

While people try to explain to you why mail is better for tanking you cough up some phony mathematical equation to prove why you're right and they are wrong.

(Look at me with my numbers!)

So crack open an ice cold Bud Light, Mr. Leather Tanking warrior. You may not have good armor for tanking, but you sure got a lot of HPs now.

( Mr. I Don't Need Mail To Tank warrior guy)

So recently I've been guilty of leveling up another alt. With the new LFG system I've heard from lots of the other WoW Bloggers I talk to that it's pretty fun to do.

Tanks! You're Welcome.

No it's not a typo.. it's a play on words, you'll get it later :p

I'm pretty sure it is clear from my one of my previous entries: WoW Players of Honor: Join, Aggro Everything and Leave Guy that I play World of Warcraft.

I don't believe however, that I have ever gone into more detail than this silly parody I wrote after a bad experience in a PuG. So before I get to my main point of this blog I'll go ahead and throw some background information out there.

My current main character in World of Warcraft is a Death Knight Tank by the name of Raevn (Terenas EU). I had played every raid role except a tank previous to this character (previous mains included a Combat Rogue and a Holy Priest) and created her with the intention to tank. Things went well and I felt as if I picked up fast on tanking (being that I had tanked before in Ever Quest it wasn't totally new to me). I had a lot of fun raiding in a guild alliance of three guilds. However, that alliance eventually fell apart due to drama in one of the guilds and that left me with not much of anything left to do on my tank so I started leveling up an alt, a caster dps (something I hadn't played before), Landriana (Terenas EU).

I played this character a lot and basically focused on her until she was 80.. I did so many PuGs (as DPS was much easier than tanking) and once I reached full Tier 9 had nothing else to do on her being that I play casually and am not in a REAL guild (my guild is just for friends and my alts). That left me with only one thing to do: go back to farming heroics for Emblems of Triumph to get my DK in full tier 9.

But there was one problem.. I was rusty.

Weekly Rock Band Video: Superbeast (DLC)

As a member of Team Cena I post gameplay videos of Rock Band 2 every week on youtube. My sponsored instrument is vocals, so that is what my videos mostly consist of. The videos I post are split screen (meaning you can see me AND the gameplay at the same time). I decided to do this after asking my subscribers what they would like to see and looking for something to make my videos a bit more entertaining. I also play with the original vocal track turned all the way down just because it is more fun that way.

What I would like to do (and intend to do) is post here every week with a bit more insight into my video for that week. I generally record them on Thursdays and upload them shortly after. It really depends on the amount of time/work I have involved.

So this week I did Rob Zombie- Superbeast (DLC). I found this song to be REALLY fun for my last 2 videos (I had done a bonus guitar one). It may just be that this is a genre of music I enjoy (outside of my usual symphonic metal) whereas usually there aren't too many songs on Rock Band I actually like (that will change with the RBN).




For my guitar video, skill wise it wasn't too hard. Expert guitar isn't my primary instrument, but it is what I started Rock Band on (from previously playing Guitar Hero). My main difficulty was actually a physical issue: my finger nails. As I tried to slide down to catch the yellow/orange "chords" my finger nails would actually catch the raised frets on the guitar and I'd end up missing. I'm pretty sure that if I worked at it (and cut my finger nails) I would probably FC (full clear) it without a problem.
Overall fun song and honestly not hard at all on expert guitar.



Vocally I would say this song wasn't too challenging either. It mostly consisted of talkies that were pretty easy to manage. The hard part for me I would say, was the " a ragged they come and a ragged they kill" phrase.
I really struggle with low marked stuff, so I didn't sing it in original octave. It came out a bit higher (and stranger) sounding than the original. Even in doing this I barely made the phrases. Looking back at the video I honestly don't know how I did. The pitch marker was so often in the red. One of the mysteries of the game I guess.
I also didn't manage to activate overdrive at minute mark 2:47.. I don't know if it's an early window or what.. I honestly hate that though, especially when I'm recording my weekly video, but I'm honestly not the kind of person who looking up optimal paths as I personally hate score whoring songs.

Slightly off topic I did happily wear my Knights of the Ebon Blade shirt for this video. If you play World of Warcraft you know what I'm talkin' about. Being that my main is a Death Knight tank, I really am attached to my shirt :)