My Death Knight, Spec, What the Heck do I

With the expansion nearing and me still bored at work, I’ve thought some about how I will spec my Death Knight. This has proved more difficult than I originally anticipated…there is so much synergy, so much hybridity between the three Death Knight trees that I’m really not sure which I will end up picking. I may have to pick based on thematics, for goodness’ evil’s sake. And then it’s still a tough decision.

So far as I can tell, all three trees sound quite fun based on tooltips alone. Not to rehash information you might find in a million other places on the internet, but what you have is a melee class that relies quite heavily on disease debuffs. It tanks without a shield, like a druid, using the Parry mechanic more than Dodge. It uses two different types of resources for funding its abilities, the first being Runes which operate vaguely like a Rogue’s energy, and the second being Runic Power, which behaves similarly to a Warrior’s/Bear Druid’s rage.

Each tree has a different “Strike” ability associated with it at 41 points. Heart, Frost, and Scourge, for the Blood, Frost, and Unholy trees, respectively. Each tree is also quite heftily loaded with one-point on-use abilities as well as a host of other passives, much like the trees for the other classes. The difference between the Death Knight trees and the trees for said other classes, though, is just how good almost every single talent in every tree sounds. It’s hard to say for sure how good these talents are having not yet played one…but I don’t recall any talents in any of the trees I would call “pointless.” Not that any talent is completely pointless, but Booming Voice for instance, for Warriors, is as close as you can get, in my opinion (have it increase the radius of Piercing Howl, and then maybe we’ll see if I put it in any of my warrior builds).

If you glance over the Death Knight talents, you notice a lot of what Blizzard learned concerning talents for their classes. In almost every passive talent you can see the word “and,” or the phrase “in addition.” This may not sound like much, but what this means is you have a class where your talents are far less situational, affecting more than one of your abilities or having multiple effects.

Unfortunately, the more I think about it, it seems like this all really boils down to a difference based largely on thematics. You have Blood for melee dps, Frost for control/tanking, and Unholy for spell dps, but only vaguely. In every tree there is at least one hybrid talent for one of those other roles. For instance, Unholy has Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone, two abilities which would be great for the Death Knight tank’s supposed niche role in tanking mobs/bosses that deal hefty amounts of magic damage. In Frost, sure you have a lot of survivability talents, but you also can provide a group buff that increases attack speed. The hybridity is excellent. I hope it works out well.

Now they just need to work this in to the other classes. It would be more difficult in the triple- (or quadruple-, you poor druids) role hybrid classes we have, especially the healers. Basically, what I see in the Death Knight trees is what I see in other talent trees, and that is playstyle based on talent build. However, there’s enough hybridity in each that the build is not so limiting.

This is almost a separate rant, but wouldn’t it be nice if Beacon of Light had some dps utility of some kind, without making it overpowered? How about Riptide, Wild Growth and Guardian Spirit? Do you see Penance? Yeah, kinda like that. All I know is that soloing as a Holy Paladin is boring as hell. We gave tanks increased damage, can we do the same for healers, maybe?

Back to Death Knights, and the one I will be making… it’s going to be Luthehza. I kind of want to look at it from a roleplaying perspective and take into account what I think she would be. As someone once a warrior, Blood makes some sense. However, she’s to have changed, I think. Given (warning, fanfic link here) where she last left off, Frost almost makes some sense. Or perhaps the transition to evil would make Unholy viable.

In short, I don’t know. XD

Leveling Specs for WLK, Part I – Warrior

It’s July, and pretty much the end of it.  I think we have 4 months to the day until the projected release date of Wrath.  I myself, having little else to do, have started thinking of how I’m going to level my toons to 80, and what specs they’ll use.

First, Niemandra.  She’ll be getting to 80 first.

I think what I’ll do here is go for a hybrid fury/prot build.  The protection points should help for all those times I know I’m going to have to tank.  I seem to remember some things about Defiance changing, perhaps the threat bonus being rolled into Defensive Stance by default, but I’m not sure.  At any rate, assuming Defiance remains as it is, I’d be going as deep as that, and probably no farther.  Tactical Mastery will be a must for the bonus threat to Bloodthirst, a talent I’ll get from Fury.

The protection contribution will be something like this:

2/2 Improved Bloodrage
3/3 Tactical Mastery
5/5 Toughness
3/3 Defiance

13 points total.  I will probably respec into this the day WLK hits the shelves, so to speak (it’s irrelevant to me what it hits, I’ll have it shipped to my house).

That leaves, at 70, 48 points for me to spend in Fury.

My main objective here is Titan’s Grip – allows me to dual-wield 2-handed weapons, compensated for by an attack speed penalty.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure of everything I’d be taking in this tree (I don’t really have any of the new talents memorized yet), but:

5/5 Cruelty
5/5 Unbridled Wrath
1/1 Piercing Howl
3/3 Blood Craze
1/5 Commanding Presence
5/5 Dual-Wield Specialization
5/5 Enrage
1/1 Sweeping Strikes
5/5 Flurry
3/3 Precision
1/1 Bloodthirst
5/5 Improved Berserker Stance
1/1 Rampage
1/5 (the +% stam / -% zerker stance threat talent)
4/5 Titan Grip

Alternatively, I could take one point out of Titan Grip and put that in Last Stand, over in prot, for the extra “aw crap” button.

Ideally, I’d tank dual-wielding, using Sunder Armor and Revenge (and Bloodthirst in lieu of Shield Slam) frequently to hold threat. I’ve reasoned that if I’ll kick out more threat per second at the expense of taking more damage (not using a shield), that’s better than not holding threat and letting mobs one-shot the mage. By my guess, having to use a shield in this build would probably decrease the incoming damage I take by about 5% while simultaneously decreasing my rage and threat generation by about 30% (and decrease my damage output by a similar percentage). I’m pretty sure that’s not worth it.

I’ve tanked all of SV in Berserker Stance, and tanked the end boss of that with Recklessness up. I should be able to take on introductory WLK instances in defensive stance, perhaps in PvP gear. Time will tell, though.

From this point in the spec, I think I would finish up Fury (filling Titan Grip), getting to…Shockwave? I think? That will be level 72. I’m not sure what this talent is for, really (pvp? doesn’t seem to be worth it, damage-wise) but I think it will help me hold aggro on multiple mobs alongside Thunderclap.

From there, I will end up making a decision between Improved Revenge and filling the talent I couldn’t remember the name of above. Level 76…4 points left. There is a talent, if I remember right, on the opposite side of Rampage from the above unnamed talent, that allows you to decrease the cast time of your next Slam by X amount of time when you crit with Bloodthirst. Would 4 points allow me to fill that (as well as Improved Slam)? Would that make it instant-cast? That sounds delectable.

If that’s not possible…I’d fill the +% stam / -% threat talent.

And then, at 70 80, back to Arms. Mortal Strike for PvP or Blood Frenzy for PvE.

Almost Fluid Hybridity

I’ve spec’d Zerei back and forth from holy to ret to holy to prot over the past couple days. To do various things in heroics for badges, since I’m not terribly interested in doing them on my other characters right now. I don’t think her dps was incredible, nor was her tanking the best, but she handled all the jobs well enough to get the job done.

Both of her non-main sets of gear need significant regemming and more enchants to be workable in a raid, but I’m confident she’d be uncrushable in tank gear (but maybe lacking in hit points for content on par with her holy gear) and definitely able to push at least 600-700 dps in ret…but only if she were able to be in those specs at the time.

However, by slapping on her arena healing gear for the extra hit points, she makes a decent simultaneous tank/healer. For the Eagle gauntlet and Jan’alai adds in ZA she’s tanked and healed at the same time. This is fluid hybridity. Now what I would like most now is to dps and heal at the same time. Granted, consecrate is pretty decent damage because it effectively has an infinite number of targets (is it affected by the AoE damage cap, though?) so against more than 5 targets I’m easily doing 1k dps (which is increased if there are more there) to the mobs on me…but the purpose is to hold the mobs on me rather than to actually do damage…and compared to other AoE effects created by other classes it’s not nearly as effective or mana efficient (excepting the benefit of the mobs attacking me instead of the squishy dps).

Outside of melee-healing, which is too significant a hit in healing for dps that is far too poor to call decent in my opinion, there isn’t really a way to accomplish hybrid healing/dpsing at this point without adding in some form of significant instant-cast heal spell or some similarly significant debuff or aura (which needs to be more significant than Judgement of Light to be considered useful). Seriously, bring back the old Sanctity Aura. Maybe cut its effectiveness in half, or make it only increase healing done to affected party members by 5% at 2 points so it doesn’t…(/thunder clap and lightning)…unbalance the arena.

Image from gameguidesonline.com.

Different Gear Sets

Probably quoting myself and a hundred other paladins here:

Always pick up that stray piece of gear that no one in the group can use. You never know when you might be doing something different.

This is especially true for all the hybrid classes out there that can fit into more than one role:

- Druids
- Paladins
- Priests
- Shaman
- Warriors

Obviously, the piece of gear ought to be of some use to you. Warriors shouldn’t pick up spell damage gear, etc etc. But if you’re a balance druid, I’d say that yes, you should pick up that piece of +healing leather, or that piece of rogue loot that dropped since we have no rogues or feral druids in the group. Just food for thought really, but I noticed something recently!

I normally only ever equip one or the other of my healing sets. Both have high +healing totals, but one is for PvE, with an emphasis on intellect and mp5, the other for PvP, with leans towards stamina, resilience, and spell crit.

Then there’s my tank set. Without being prot spec, it’s got 484 defense, 14k armor, gives me 10k hp unbuffed, but fairly low avoidance. I think something like 25-35% avoidance total.

All of those sets I keep in my bags at all times. But then there’s my Retribution set, which I keep in the bank. It’s got a smattering of items, including a good many of those str/sta/int/spell damage plate items from when I thought spell damage was good for ret paladins.

I went into my bank today and just kinda browsed over all the items I’ve garnered over the months. Decided I’d try something, and told Outfitter (beautiful mod, here is the link I believe) to build a set of gear that maximized melee critical strike chance. What it put together surprised me.

Base stats, in a 41/20 spec:

474 Str
95 Hit Rating
1200-some Attack Power
18% Crit Chance

I was impressed with myself! Especially with the hit rating (95 is the exact number you need to be hit-capped with talents). If I respec’d Ret and picked up some enchants to boost my Str and AP, I’d be at some decent numbers for Ret dps! (+8% crit chance from the Ret tree brings me to the minimum 25%, 3% hit from Prot brings me to the 9% hit needed to never miss, and I think a combination of +10% Str and enchants would bring me to the 1500 AP I’d want).

All that on a set I haven’t even been paying attention to!
Exorcist’s Scaled Helm
Insignia of the Mag’hari Hero
Merciless Gladiator’s Scaled Shoulders
Royal Cloak of Arathi Kings
Doomplate Chestguard
Bracers of Just Rewards
Justicar Gauntlets
Deathforge Girdle
Doomplate Legguards
Ironstriders of Urgency
A’dal’s Command
Ring of the Shadow Deeps
Bladefist’s Breadth
Abacus of Violent Odds
Gorehowl
Libram of Righteous Power

I suppose that if I were to go out and try to get upgrades, my first targets would be the bracers and libram. Probably the bracers from Maulgar (Gauntlets of Martial Perfection) or the Season 3 pvp ones (Vindicator’s Scaled Bracers). The libram I would replace with the Blood Furnace heroic drop (Libram of Avengement) or the badge reward (Libram of Divine Judgement).

And then there’s trinkets, but those aren’t normally easy to come by. I guess the Black Morass goldy (Hourglass of the Unraveller) would be a great place to start. Perhaps one of the Darkmoon deck thingers (like Darkmoon Card: Crusade) for the other slot.

Enchants would be the Glyph of the Outcast (+16 Str, 17 Int) for head, Greater Inscription of the Blade (30 AP, 10 crit) for shoulders, 12 agi for cloak, +6 all stats to chest, +12 Str for bracers, +15 Str for gloves, Cobrahide Leg Armor (40 AP, 10 crit) for legs, and 12 agi for boots. Probably Savagery (70 AP) for the weapon.

Factoring everything in, then, should put me at:

570-ish Str
9% Hit
1550-ish AP
28-ish% crit

Needs more attack power. Also needs less +crit from gems, I had to gem a lot of crit to get it to that high base.

/edit: Of note on both the tanking and ret sets, they’re almost exclusively using uncommon quality gems instead of all the rares I’m using in my healing sets. Rare gems are expensive, uncommons I have access to hundreds of.

Paladins: Choosing Your Spec

Yesterday, I was approached by a low-level paladin with a simple question: “can a paladin beat a feral druid in pvp?” This seemed almost too coincidental to be real, given the duel I had very recently finished, but it was not (entirely) a joke. (The joke was that this young paladin had asked a question in a general chat channel somewhere and it was rerouted to me by a guild member (serruptitiously).) Anyway, it became a discussion about gear/speccing. I didn’t have a lot of time to delve into it as I was busy trying to get Onyxia keyed (gathering Dragon Eyes in UBRS <_< ), but the thing about paladins is that unlike with rogues, mages, and hunters, there isn't too much of a debate about which spec is "best", which is one of the questions this paladin asked of me. "What is the best spec?"

It just doesn’t work that way. We spec based on what we want to do, not how we want to do things. If you’re leveling, you should probably spec prot (aoe grinding) or ret (better use of the low-level itemization). If you’re into pvp, you’re probably healing (holy) or smashing face (ret). If you tank, you’re prot, if you heal, you’re holy, if you dps, you’re ret. You don’t spec to try and maximize the use of certain abilities you have so much as fill a certain role (with exceptions of course, but I’m referring to more general cases here).

This paladin let me know that he would like to be holy. I can understand this, healing is a very rewarding part of the game, if somewhat thankless at times. I let him know however that at his current level (10), unless he’s getting to group often and consistently, he would probably be better off leveling as prot or ret to get up to a higher level before speccing to heal. I also let him know of the early talents in Holy being very synergistic to the other specs, as more strength or more intellect are very helpful in either Ret or Prot.

My recommendations are:

For soloing/pvp: Retribution. The gear you pick up early in the game (up until about level 50) is far better suited to Ret than Prot. Also, if you plan to actually try killing people in pvp, this is the spec you’ll most likely prefer. 17/0/44 is fairly common, as you supplement your dps with a bit of healing ability. 0/25/36 is another (pvp/soloing exclusive) variation, which loses Crusader Strike but picks up reckoning for bigger burst damage opportunities.

For tanking/soloing: Protection. Where Prot really shines in a soloing environment is in the ability to tackle many mobs at once. I have not tried it myself, but have heard from others that it works just as well as Ret. This is also the spec you’ll want for serious tanking in instances, as deep in this tree you will find all of the damage mitigation and aggro control talents. 0/49/12 is the most popular paladin tanking spec. 30/31/0 will let you tank and do some healing as well. I’ve even heard of 0/40/21 as being somewhat viable with the addition of Sanctity Aura to the tankadin repertoire.

For healing: Holy. If you enjoy healing, Holy is the spec of choice. Going deep into this tree will give you mana efficiency and [/edit: healing]power unparalleled. This spec is not terrible for soloing either, but is simply slower at dealing damage than the other two specs. Anything from 50/11/0 to 41/20/0 are very viable healing builds, just with different foci in the prot tree. 40/0/21 is an interesting take on a dps build that goes for a maximized allocation of spell damage for large holy shock hits as well as big S/JoR numbers, and can still heal well, but like any hybrid class will need to switch gear first.

Remember, it all comes down to what you want to do, not so much how you want to do it.

[/edit: I would also like to add that simply being spec'd for one role does not make you completely unable to fill another. Righteous Fury and all of your basic healing abilities are available to you regardless of your spec...especially pre-60, all of the instances are easy enough to complete with off-specs. If you're 10-12 points into Ret and being asked to heal or tank SFK, you can! Put on some intellect gear/turn RF on, you're good to go! You will take more damage than a prot spec paladin, and you won't have the mana efficiency of a holy paladin, but you can still do it.

Also, pick up those extra pieces of gear. Itemization will make tanking or healing in an off-spec much easier. (At lower levels, this often forces paladins who are willing to heal to pick up pieces of cloth for more intellect. Ideally you're not getting hit such that you'll miss the armor loss in a healing role, but you still have Divine Shield to save you!)]

Paladin Itemization: Protection (updated 6/02/08)

EDIT:  As we play, we learn.  Stuff is changed around a bit.

A protection spec paladin is in a completely different boat than a holy spec paladin for gear. While classes like rogues, hunters, and mages can (in general) interchange gear between their three specs, paladins, being a hybrid class, begin to lose potency when doing this. It is not uncommon for hybrid classes (shaman, druids, priests, and warriors included) to carry around multiple complete sets of gear. I myself have two 18-slots full in addition to what I’m already wearing! I carry a set for healing, another for tanking, and another for soloing. (Strangely enough, that soloing set does not get used often.)

Suffice it to say, though, that trying to tank in healing or dps gear will be a daunting task (especially for the people trying to heal you!). In order to tank, you need hit points, avoidance, and threat generation…stats not found in any degree of abundance on other kinds of gear. (A caveat, while paladin tanking gear can make decent soloing gear, especially if spec’d for it, it does not go both ways (ie, wearing other-spec soloing gear as tanking gear).)

So, you try to find a set of gear you can use for tanking. What gear would this be? Well, you can easily base your decisions for that on the stats the items you see available have. [/edit: The following information is based on play at 70...numbers like "490 defense" and "thousands of hit points less than warriors" for instance] Paladin tanks look for the following on their items:

Prot (tanking): Stamina, Defense Rating, Spell Damage, Intellect, Avoidance Ratings

• Stamina: If you compare the hit points you have to the hit points of your warrior/druid tank brethren, odds are you come up significantly short. You probably have thousands less. This makes you a bit less durable than your other-classed counterparts. The only way to make up for this (outside of 16% more stamina from talents) is gear (and to a lesser extent, buffs), so for your tanking gear try to find that which has an appreciation for stamina. A hefty appreciation, if you will. Tanking for Kara and Heroics will require at least 10000 hit points without buffs.
• Avoidance Ratings: Dodge, Parry, and Block Rating all fall under this category. Block Rating is probably the best of the three (due to the way a paladin can return damage to attackers through Holy Shield and Blessing of Sanctuary), but the more avoidance you have, the less likely you are hit, and the less likely you die from an unlucky string of big hits on you. You can get more defense to increase these numbers all at once, but you lose effectiveness in doing so since at 490 you already cannot be crit, decreasing that value more is not possible. I won’t set a number, but any gear with +dodge, +parry, or +block rating is of use to you. See here for more info on avoidance and becoming uncrushable.
• Defense Rating: This is actually more important than stamina until you reach 490 defense. At 490, you have effectively reached the most you should ever need. However, 490 defense is not difficult to attain in the least. You should easily have this with an all-blue set of tank gear. 490, again, is the number you’re after (5 points in the Anticipation talent will help this!), and while more doesn’t hurt, it loses effectiveness the more you put in.
• Spell Damage: Spell damage is what allows you to increase your threat levels on the mobs you are tanking. With Righteous Defense on, your holy damage will have its threat increased by 50-90% (depending on talents). Having the mobs’ attention being the entire point of tanking, if you cannot hold aggro you aren’t tanking very well, and might want to consider getting yourself some more spell damage on your gear. This is what separates paladins the most from warriors and druids; a paladin wearing warrior tanking plate will have a harder time holding aggro because of the lack of spell damage. A safe number to have here is about 200 +spell damage before stepping into Karazhan.
• Intellect: Intellect will increase your mana, which is in effect an inverse rage bar of sorts. Since you start with full mana, you can frontload your aggro, and with Spiritual Attunement you regen mana when healed. Intellect is the least important stat, taking a distant back seat to those above, but a paladin with no mana can’t reliably tank anything.

More information on tanking and the magic 490 defense number here.

Supplementing Your Ability to Heal

Much as a warrior with all 61 talent points cleverly placed everywhere except the protection tree can still tank, a paladin is a hybrid class, capable of performing in a number of roles. These roles may depend on gear and talent point choice, but can still be performed. This is directly contrary to all-dps classes such as the rogue or mage, whose main roles consist entirely of dps and have no way to deviate from this: mages do not have heal spells, and cannot reliably tank anything due to low hit point/armor values (they might be able to take and hold aggro just fine however hehe).

And so we as paladins, instead of pigeonholing ourselves into one talent tree to perform one task and only one task, ought to embrace our hybrid nature and allow ourselves to be viable in more than one role. I myself chose to be a healer, but understand that tanking is also a needed 5-man task and so I devoted myself to that as well somewhat. 41/20/0 is my latest adaptation of this.

I write this post as well, I’m fairly sure most paladins know what they’re doing in the Holy Tree. They’ll pick up talents they like, ones they find useful. Most of the talents in that tree are exclusively for healing, so grabbing them is a no-brainer. However, due to the hybrid nature of the class, there are talents in the tree that do not help the paladin heal.

A 61/0/0 paladin is in many ways identical to a 41/x/y in terms of healing…there will be little differences here and there, but the ability of both to just heal in similar gear will be just about the same. The 61 Holy paladin will have a couple other nifty options available, such as Improved Seal of Righteousness for soloing, reduced mana cost on Consecrate and Cleanse, and Blessed Life to lessen damage taken. But overall, it is limited just to healing.

Branching out into another tree is a good way to avoid this. Even if all you leveled a character for was one task (such as healing), you limit your capabilities when it is a hybrid class. This is often not a problem for healers as they are very valuable and often limited for larger-group scenarios, but in places such as 5-mans, what if your group consists of yourself (the holy paladin), another healer, a dps-spec tank, and two other dps? Wouldn’t it be better to let the fury warrior dps and maybe you yourself step up to tank? Or do you try to fiddle through the instance with a lot of unnecessary healing power, a tank not doing what he’s spec’d for, and only two dps?

Spread those points out! You may find yourself in that situation some day…it really is rewarding to be able to fill multiple roles to a decent degree.

But for a paladin, how best to do this? I surmise it is best to go healer/tank, since these two roles are often the most difficult to fill for a 5-man group as a large percentage of the player base has spec’d their character for dps.

Zerei’s foray into the Prot tree goes as follows:

5/5 Redoubt: Imp. Devotion Aura is not worth the points…890 armor becomes 1.1k. Redoubt will help you tank, as you will be taking less damage, and work a bit towards pushing those critical/crushing attacks off your hit list.

2/2 Guardian’s Favor: Blessing of Protection is a very useful talent, as much of the damage people take is physical, especially in PvE. This is also a very very nice talent specifically for the Moroes fight in Karazhan…the more people you have not bleeding to death at one time, the better. As well, this has pvp utility as it increases the duration of Blessing of Freedom…cast this on a Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, or Mage and watch them proceed to own more face. Also works great on flag carriers in Warsong Gulch.

4/5 Toughness: I would like 5 points, but didn’t have enough. More armor is good while tanking, and mitigates all that physical damage in the game you’ll be taking.

1/1 Blessing of Kings: A very nice supplemental Blessing, possibly the best for tanks and 2nd-best for most anyone else after they’ve received Might, Wisdom, or Salvation.

3/3 Improved Righteous Fury: -6% damage taken and way more threat caused by your holy attacks. The backbone of paladin tanking.

2/2 Stoicisim: I happen to enjoy healing in pvp, in the battlegrounds and arenas. Let’s just say stunning is a major factor for some classes and always annoying to have happen to you. 10% resistance to that effect goes a long way in limiting the ability of others to do it to you. As well, having your spells dispelled is annoying, can we try to limit that…hey, that’s part of the same talent! More bang for your buck, or whatever.

3/3 Improved Hammer of Justice: I tried Imp Concentration Aura, but that was due to a brain fart that had me thinking that a school lockout effect from Counterspell or Earthshock was identical to a silence effect. This is not the case…and I don’t benefit from the extra spell interruption protection due to my talents in the holy tree, and the times where the other members of my group would benefit are so limited (I can’t even think of any at the moment) that it’s just not worth it. So I add myself some pvp utility and stun people more to help my dpsers get those people down or stop them from healing. Or mana burning me ;_;

I’ve considered dropping Imp Hammer of Justice and going over to Blessed Life for that 10% chance to take half damage to supplement my tanking and hamper the ability of others to hurt me in pvp, but I dunno. Stunning is cool. :)

I Dub Thee "Rune Knight"

Stepping off from my last post, finding a new class which does not have significant overlap with any other class would prove to be a difficult task. I took a look at each class in the game and tried to narrow down its abilities into categories and compared them to the capabilities of the other classes.

Ok, first off, there are 9 classes. What a weird number, especially when all grouping thus far deals with multiples of 5. It yearns to be made into 10. :D

Second, I believe it should be another hybrid class. Making another non-hybrid dps class would be too difficult and the abilities would have too high a chance of overlapping with others. Also, to avoid overlap with the hybrids in place, I think its three talent trees should emulate a “tank/dps/dps” or even “tank/tank/dps” format. (“Tank/dps/dps” is (c) warriors, hehe.)

Also, it needs a name. I couldn’t think of anything that would be one word, so I decided to break the one-word class naming convention mold and call it a “Rune Knight.” Based loosely on the elven spellbreakers of Warcraft III, it would be a physical damage, melee-to-short range class with extensive buff manipulation, area-effect damage, and threat management abilities. It would tank on the level of a paladin and dps on the level of a warrior, with about as much magic damage capability as an enhancement shaman. Just crazy enough to work, you say?

Its main “gimmick” (eg, paladin seals, shaman totems) would be these “runes” it can cast. I don’t know of how best to implement these without too closely mimicking shaman totems, however. I was thinking just a targetable AoE effect…but yeah, that’s just a totem that you have more freedom in placement for. Perhaps they could be (in effect) auras that you put on a target, rather than a place. They would have two different effects, one it gives to the target and another it gives to the party. Beneficial effects could work like standard buffs, lasting a decent amount of time. It could also have harmful runes it could cast, which would last a short time and have similar effects…one on the target and another on nearby allies.

These would be instant-cast and medium-range, and could have any number of effects, even those that mimick ones already in the game. Powerful runes could give a beneficial effect to one ally but weaken his group members somewhow. It would bring a whole new element to group composition in raids as you try to maximize the benefits and minimize the cost. Say a buff gave bonus attack power to the target but hampered melee hit chance for the whole party. (This is just an example, the runes could just as easily be divided between all-beneficial for friendlies and all-harmful for opponents.)

The Rune Knight would also have various threat management abilities akin to Misdirect or Blessing of Salvation. Different runes and/or abilities could be used to move threat from one target to another.

The class works best in my mind dual-wielding or going sword-and-board. They would be able to tank using a shield and various other runes that increase threat by various means, either by amplifying certain attacks or redirecting threat from other classes somehow. I think they could have a stackable ability that takes a % of threat from group members per stack and gives it to the Knight.

Would need to make the class viable as a dps class and allow it to solo well in one or two of its talent trees. “Tank/dps/dps” would probably be best, as two types of tanking would most likely be redundant.

More later.

Frost Shock!

Of all three of the hybrid classes, I feel that the shaman is the one that can best capture fluid hybridity. At least at this point in time. More on how the others can’t in another post.

What it really comes down to is how you gear yourself. If you’ve got all melee gear, your spellcasting and healing is going to be quite limited. However, if you can find a mix of gear to match your mixed spec, you could potentially pull off a real hybrid build.

For ‘kaiko here however, I did not particularly want to achieve the ranged dps/melee dps/healer thing. Instead, I was thinking of going for a heal-focused shaman which would help the melee via totems, potentially melee herself, and then sort of toss lightning bolts if melee was a bad idea.

Again, though, it would require some interesting gear. Gear akin to what a shockadin (paladin who uses Holy Shock and Seal of Righteousness as its main source of damage) might wear…+strength, +intellect, +spell damage. I don’t see any individual mail pieces of gear that accomplish this…so, I would need to mix-and-match. Pieces of Tidefury here, Desolation there, one caster ring, one melee ring. This would be the build that does not attempt to do better at everything, but about half of it all at the same time.

Would make an interesting counterpart to paladin melee-healing, seeing a shaman doing the same thing, only with Chain Heal. Mana efficiency could be a problem though…I just don’t have the ability to really test the build.

The overall goal is to become that ideal “5th-man” build. In the stereotypical party build (Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Mage…I get this from D&D, not WoW) I would want to be the one that tries to do everything at once only about half as well…to compliment what the rest of the group is doing.

It might be better for raiding than 5-mans however, given the melee-centrism…stick it in a group with a rogue, dps warrior, feral druid, and maybe a hunter for the ultimate quintet of physical dps.