Leveling as a Protection Paladin - The Basics

Though some of this information is still viable, Cataclysm changed much of it.  Please visit the updated article here.

Leveling as a Protection Paladin can provide good survivability while questing, as well as getting you used to the skills you will use as a tank throughout your career.  With the dungeon finder tab you now have the ability to queue as a Tank and get almost constant groups as you level.  Make sure you join the group near a repair merchant so you can sell and repair in between dungeons.  Many days that is all the time you have before you find another group.  I used a 51/20 build to level and tank.

The Build

Protection

10 - 14 Redoubt

15 - 17 Precision

18 - 19 Toughness (2/5)

20 - Blessing of Kings

21 - 23 Shield Specialization

24 - 26 Toughness (5/5)

27 - 29 Improved Righteous Fury

30 - 34 Reckoning

35 - Blessing of Sanctuary

36 - 39 One-handed Weapon Specialization (4/5)

40 - Holy Shield

41 - 42 Sacred Duty

43 - One-handed Weapon Specialization (5/5)

44 - Improved Holy Shield (1/2)

45 - 49 Combat Expertise

50 - Avenger's Shield











Retribution

51 - 55 Deflection

56 - 58 Heart of the Crusader

59 - 60 Improved Judgements

61 - Seal of Command

62 - 63 Pursuit fof Justice

64 - 68 Conviction

69 - 70 Sanctity of Battle

Stats

• Strength (str)
  
  
  
  • 1 strength = 2 attack power (AP) = 0.14 dps weapon (white) damage.
  
  
  • 2 strength = 1 block value before talents, 1.3 block value with the Redoubt talent
  
  
  • The Divine Strength talent increases total strength by 15%.
  
  
  
  


• Agility (agi)
  
  
  
  • 59.89 agility = +1% dodge chance. This is somewhat less efficient than Dodge Rating at increasing your dodge chance (45.25 dodge rating = +1% dodge chance), but with Blessing of Kings the number decreases to 54.45 agility, which makes it roughly 80% as good as dodge rating for dodge purposes.
  
  
  • 52.08 agility = +1% melee crit chance.
  
  
  • 1 agility = 2 armor.
  
  
  • Agility is often overlooked as a tanking stat, but it's actually an efficient way to get avoidance, mitigation, and threat from one stat.
  
  
  
  


• Stamina (sta)
  
  
  
  • 1 stamina = +10 total health (hp).
  
  
  • 10 stamina = +3 spell power (SP) from the Touched by the Light talent.
  
  
  • The Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise talents increase total stamina by 8% and 6% respectively, for a total increase of 14.48% with both talents. If you're buffed with Blessing of Kings or Blessing of Sanctuary as well, then each additional point of stamina increases your total health by approximately 12.6.
  
  
  
  


• Intellect (int)
  
  
  
  • 1 intellect = +15 total mana. This increases the size of your starting mana pool and the maximum amount of mana you can store at any point. It also increases the rate of mana regeneration from effects that restore a fraction of your mana pool, such as Replenishment, Blessing of Sanctuary, and Divine Plea. This is a nice effect, but it doesn't make intellect worthwhile as a stat for tanking gear.
  
  
  • 166.67 Intellect = +1% chance to crit with spells, but all Prot paladin offensive abilities except Exorcism use the melee crit rate.
  
  
  
  


• Spirit (spi)
  
  
  
  • Increases mana regeneration outside of the five-second rule. As a tank, this effect is negligible (and frankly it's negligible for all paladin specs).
  
  
  
  

(The Protection Paladin Field Manual, 2009)

Gear

A good/decent 1 handed weapon. (blue when possible, heirloom if you have a sugardaddy 80 on your account, equivalent to your level)

A good/decent Shield with a shield spike. (iron, mithril, etc)

All other gear can be greens/blues from AH and quest. You can also collect gear by tanking dungeons.  Lots of blue drops and completion rewards.

Buffs

Retribution Aura(RA): Reflects damage every time you are hit.

Blessing of Sanctuary(BoS): This not only reduces damage taken by blocking it increases Strength and Stamina as well as regens mana.

Righteous Fury(RF): With improved talent, this reduces incoming damage by 6% and increases threat for tanking.

Seal of Light(SoL): Chance to heal yourself every time you swing. (use when leveling)

Seal of Wisdom (SoW): Returns mana back to you with every swing. (use when leveling

Seal of Command/Corruption: Increased damage output while tanking

Cataclysm Class Preview - Paladin

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
New Talents and Talent Changes

We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.

We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.

Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.

Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Holy
Healing
Meditation
Critical Healing Effect

Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Block Amount

Retribution
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Holy Damage

Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.

Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.

Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

Here is the link, join the discussion in the WoW Forums.

Cataclysm Class Preview - Hunter

New Hunter Abilities

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

Resource Mechanic Change

Here we come to the meat of the upcoming hunter changes.

* Hunters will no longer use mana; instead the class will use Focus. Focus generates much like Energy, by building up. It will not be affected by Intellect at all. Haste will improve its generation. Hunters will generate roughly 6 Focus per second, slightly less than rogues' Energy generation rate of around 10 Energy per second. Below, we have listed some examples of how we intend Focus costs to operate:

o Steady Shot/Cobra Shot: No cost. Generates 9 Focus per shot (or 12 per second instead of 6).
o Arcane Shot/Chimera Shot /Explosive Shot: 45 Focus.
o Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot: 60 Focus.
o Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
o Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the resource change and new abilities listed above, we intend to make adjustments to some of the other abilities and mechanics you already know well. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we’re going for with each spec.

* A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags -- though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change -- and we will not be making any additional quivers.

* Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.

* Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:

o Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
o Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy's Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Blood Frenzy).
o Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).

* Stings and other periodic effects will now benefit from haste and critical strike ratings. Hasted damage-over-time abilities do not lose duration, but instead add additional damage ticks.

* Viper Sting will now restore 9 Focus every 3 seconds.

* We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. To this end, the class will now start with ranged abilities at level 1, and we will be removing some melee abilities, such as Mongoose Bite.

New Talents and Talent Changes

* Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.

* Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.

* Rapid Recuperation will cause Rapid Fire to give 20/40/60 Focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.

* Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, and Arcane Shot.

* Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.

* Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter’s Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Beast Mastery
Ranged Damage
Haste
Pet Damage

Marksmanship
Ranged Damage
Armor Penetration
Double Shot

Survival
Ranged Damage
Ranged Critical Damage
Elemental Damage

Pet Damage: Many of the passive benefits to pet damage will no longer be available in the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, these will be provided through the new Mastery mechanic.

Double Shot: The hunter will have a chance to launch a free attack off of the global cooldown for 50% damage.

Elemental Damage: Hunter abilities such as traps, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot will do elemental damage of the following types: Improves the Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature or Shadow damage of abilities like traps, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot.

Here is the link, join the discussion in the WoW Forums.

Cataclysm Class Preview - Druid

New Druid Abilities

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the new abilities listed above, we intend to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics with which you’re already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of our goals for each spec.

* All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form.

* Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

* We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools -- primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.

* Barkskin will be innately undispellable.

* We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss.

* Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse.

New Talents and Talent Changes

* Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

* We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.

* Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target's movement speed. 10-second cooldown.

* Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth.

* We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent -- an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.

* We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Balance
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Eclipse

Feral (Cat)
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Savage Defense

Restoration
Healing
Meditation
HoT Scale Healing

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

Here is the link, join the discussion in the WoW Forums.

How to Get the Crusader Title in World of Warcraft

There are many aspects of World of Warcraft that make it incredibly addictive. It has the effect of making players want to "keep up with the Joneses", so to speak. Tier gear, rare mounts, and achievements are just a few of the addictive traps Blizzard has built into WoW.

One of the newest ingame status symbols is the coveted Crusader title. Obtaining this title proves to everyone who sees you that have put in the work and you know what you're doing. It's a title that carries prestige and most people want it so they can also become a highly toted elite player in World of Warcraft. Not to mention earning the Crusader title also grants you access to purchase items only available to this group of elite players.

Living Among the Elite

There's no question that players look at other players who have earned their Crusader title with respect. It has the same effect of a player who is decked out in many hard-to-get items. They've put in the work and time to aquire those things, and many people wish they could do the same. Besides the status of becoming a respected player in WoW, there are other benefits of earning your Crusader title and living among the elite.

Once you earn your Crusader title, you will have access to purchase items that are only available for sale the those who have earned the Crusader title. One of these items is the Argent Pony Bridle. Once you become a Champion at the Argent Tournament, you will receive a companion who you can summon to follow you around. That companion is essentially useless, until you purchase the Argent Pony Bridle.

The Argent Pony Bridle, when used, allows your companion to serve as a Bank, Vendor, or Mailbox, allowing you to access those things anywhere, without the need to go to a main city first. It's a very nice item to be able to purchase, as it makes your companion incredibly useful, and can only be acquired once you have earned your Crusader title. Another major benefit of earning your Crusader title is it opens up the option to purchase Heirloom items by doing dailies alone, so they are much easier to acquire.

Earning Your Crusader Title

By now, you're probably begging to know how you can earn the Crusader title for yourself. The requirements to earn the Crusader title are that you must earn the achievement Exalted Champion of the Alliance or Exalted Champion of the Horde. Unless you know exactly what you are doing, earning those achievements will prove to be difficult, tedious, and extremely time consuming.

You can try to brave the trenches and figure out for yourself how exactly to earn your Crusader title. However, myself, I would prefer to have guidance with someone walking me step-by-step through the entire process, making it a breeze. That's why I set out in search for a guide that would help me earn my Crusader title quickly and easily. Zygor's Dailies & Events Guide is the guide I finally chose to help me. It proved to be a much needed breath of fresh air, compared to other guides I tried during my search.

With Zygor's guide, not only do they walk you step-by-step through the entire process of earning your Crusader title, but they show you how to get Hairlooms and make gold with dailies quickly and easily, as well. So, if you are in the same boat I was in, knowing what you want, but no idea how to go about obtaining it, I highly recommend Zygor's Dailies & Events Guide to help you. Like me, you will not be disappointed with the results, I promise you.

How to Get Heirloom Items Fast in World of Warcraft

As World of Warcraft continues to expand larger and larger, with the level cap increasing over time, it's becoming more and more difficult for people to have multiple characters at max level. Everyone would like to have characters of all classes at level cap, but it is terribly time consuming to be able to do that.

Luckily, Blizzard has introduced, with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, a new type of item to help players level their alts quicker and easier than ever before. They are called Bind on Account items, or Heirlooms. In order to have access to get Heirlooms, you must already have at least one level 80 character, for the most part.

Power and Extra Experience

There are 2 awesome benefits of getting and using Heirloom items. The first benefit is they scale to your level. So, as you gain levels, the Heirloom item stats (armor, damage, etc) increase as well. This is really cool because it makes it unnecessary to upgrade most of your gear. Heirlooms have good stats, armor, and damage for your current level, so they keep you powerful and able to do quests quickly, which is a huge plus when trying to level up some alt characters.

The second, and probably most important, benefit is that some Heirlooms increase the experience points you gain from killing mobs and turning in quests by 10%. If you have 2 Heirloom pieces that give a 10% experience boost each, that's a total of a 20% experience boost for your character while leveling to level 80. So, if it usually takes you 5 months total, real time, to level your alts, you could level that same character in about 4 months total. Just having Heirlooms could save you 2 months of your time! That's pretty amazing, if you ask me.

Getting Your Own Heirlooms

The most popular way of getting Heirlooms, hands down, is by doing dailies. Getting a full set of heirlooms can be done pretty quickly by doing dailies, if you know what you're doing. The whole point of heirloom items is to save you time. So, not only do you want to save time after you get your Heirlooms, but you should also look into saving time while in the process of getting Heirloom items.

The way to do that is with an optimized route of all the dailies you need to do in order to get the items to trade in for Heirlooms. Obviously, you can figure out your own path for doing this, but if you're like me, you'll want a guide written by professional gamers for the sole purpose of getting dailies done quickly.

There is a certain guide I use for all my dailies needs. It's called Zygor's Dailies & Events Guide. In their guide, they show you step-by-step how to get Heirloom items. As a bonus, they walk you through speed runs for making gold with dailies, as well as getting your Crusader title, which is needed to buy Heirlooms if you want to be able to buy them by doing dailies alone. If you want to get Heirlooms, gold, and your Crusader title fast, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Zygor's guide. Good luck!

Cataclysm Class Preview - Death Knight

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Rune System Changes

While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

• In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.


• A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.


• Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.


• The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.


• As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Talent Changes

Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.

• One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.


• Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.


• Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

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