Alt Planning – Revamp

Waaaaay back here, I had laid out my plans for all my alts and my proposed roles for them.  I admit I was a bit naive, and for one thing still believed that hybrids could be decently effective.  Blizzard continues, however, to pigeonhole the specs into their roles yet further, if the alpha leaks are any indication.

So, I’ve done some more thinking since then, and have decided to try and optimize a bit differently.  Since that aforementioned post, I have decided not to (at least not any time soon) level a druid or a hunter.  I’ve gotten bored with them too quickly in trying, and I don’t see our druid/hunter raid attendance dropping.

And so, here we are.  The plans.

• Niemandra, Warrior.  Blood Frenzy/Imp Slam raid dps utility spec.
• Vaexxi, Shaman.  Enhancement, as she is now.
• Zerei, Paladin.  Unless they make some sort of raid-viable holy dps spec, I don’t see us losing our current raiding Retribution Paladin, so this character will probably remain a tank or a healer.
• Haezyl, Mage.  I can’t recall if the alpha leaks included any new utility for mages beyond Int Buffs, Polymorphs, and Water Vending, but really all I can say with confidence for this character is “ranged dps.”
• Ahzethul, Priest.  Shadow spec, for Misery and Shadow Weaving.
• Luthehza, Death Knight.  I’m unsure of what I want to do with this character yet, I don’t really know enough about the class to make an informed decision.

These last two are also indefinite depending on whether or not I actually level them up.

• Valefique, Warlock.  Affliction utility spec for Shadow’s Embrace and Malediction.
• Thaea, Rogue.  I’m thinking a Hemo build would be nice, but the Subtlety tree most likely still won’t be for raiding.  I’m wondering though, since the tree includes +10% AP and +15% agility that with some different gearing than what rogues are used to (ie, favoring +hit because of SnD) if it couldn’t be viable now.

And that’s that, really.  If I was going to level a hunter it would be Survival for that Expose Weakness debuff our raids never get.  Any druid I rolled I’d want for it to be a Balance/Resto hybrid, one o’ dem fangled “Dreamstate” healers, also with Improved Faerie Fire and Insect Swarm if I could manage it.

See the common theme here is utility.  I see a lot of things we could have in our raids that we end up without, those largely being included above.  Of course, I can’t do them all at once, but here’s the condensed reasoning list:

• Blood Frenzy – Increases all physical damage the target receives by 4% while your warrior’s Deep Wounds or Rend abilities are active.  All of our warriors are Protection or Fury.
• Expose Weakness – Increases the attack power of all attackers by 50% of the hunter’s agility.  All of our hunters are Marksman or Beast Mastery.
• Hemorrhage – Increases physical damage by X with 10 charges or something like that.  All of our rogues are Assassination…do we have any combat rogues?  I don’t think we do.
• Shadow’s Embrace – Decreases all physical damage the target causes by 5%.  I think we have some Affliction warlocks, but I’m pretty sure they don’t take this, or maybe only put one or two points in it to increase their Life Drain lawldamage.
• Unleashed Rage – Increases the attack power of your party members by 10%.  We largely have Elemental and Restoration shaman.

These are the debuffs our raids are most often lacking.  In 10-mans it’s not such a big deal, the group make-up gets splintered by the lack of people you can bring, but in 25-mans these would seem to be most helpful.