So either for better or for worse I was pretty much right on with what was going down today at Blizzcon. They didn’t make any real groundbreaking announcements with regard to WoW, and they announced a new class for Diablo 3. There was some game modes announced for SC2 such as DOTA and a Left to Die (prob just fine and fun but yawn really).

So the new class for D3 is the Demon Hunter. It’s a ranged, trap, trick happy type play style rolled up into one. I am sure it’s going to be fun to play but seems like a bit of a cop out to me. You take the amazon and assassin from d2 mix them with the templar from Torchlight and you can sort of get the Demon Hunter. It’s not the end of the world, but I would forgive them alot easier if they would just release the game soon. It’s in the eternal work stage. I am fairly sure this has less to do with “when it’s done” and more to do with not flooding the market with products and getting their own products to compete with themselves. Which as a stock holder I am just fine with that in a sense but the gamer in me is annoyed.

But back to the announcement Blizz as usual has made a killer cinematic for their big reveal. And thanks to Gamespot here it is.

Ok now back to the GeekJock’s thoughts on the big patch 4.0.1 changes for the classes in WoW.

Next up on my most played toons is the Warlock. As everyone knows they have scrapped the old soulshard mechanic as it was. You no longer have to allot one who bag to 20 soulshards. Instead they are now stored up as part of your toon in 3 slots and charged up the same way you used to obtain the shards. These new stored shards are activated to buff up spells or abilities depending on the spec. For instance you can activate a soul shard and make soul fire an instant cast. (for more detailed info check out wowhead or wow insider for the real detailed info). When I was leveling I used affliction as my primary spec but changed over to destruction once I hit 80 and it’s just a blast to play. Sure it’s a bit bursty but with things dieing so fast as I keep saying, affliction is just too slow to have fun with. The boss fights and some raids it is a bit better to get some numbers with but for heroics destro is just makes you feel a bit more useful. Since the patch I have found destro to be great to play. The already fun spec seems to have been bolstered a bit and the DPS has also gone up.  I have read some reports that say Demonology spec is doing some good DPS but I just cannot wrap my head around using metamorphosis as much as you would need to. It’s a fun enough mechanic but putting yourself on the front line of fighting as a clothie (increases armour or not) just doesn’t seem like the best thing to me. So for now I’ll keep to the destro tree. But hey we got a month and ahalf to screw around and a whole half of the dual spec that I haven’t used hey maybe I will screw around with the Demon tree and see how I like it now. Destro is likely to be nerfed real soon so we will have to enjoy it while it lasts but for now I think that tree is a bit OP but fine with me!

The next class I had to go spec out is my Warrior. Like the DK I had, I had primarily been running my warrior as a Tank with the secondary spec being fury. Now in the recent time fury had been left behind a bit by arms, and Prot was a good tanking spec for sure. Now after the patch I have seen fury putting up some great numbers on the dps meters. My warrior has been doing so so numbers but again like the DK he doesn’t have the gear to put up good numbers on the DPS but he has some respectable gear for tanking. Tanking after the new patch doesn’t look to be much different from the past. Some things have changed, and like some others (DK, and pali as I am going to discuss in a sec) AOE tanking has gotten thrown a bit into the back seat so it becomes more of a thinking mans tanking. I am all for having to actually pay attention to what you are doing while tanking b/c I always have been annoyed at the fact that some tanks (mostly pali’s) could watch a movie and tank a heroic with no issues at all. As for arms after some initial balancing it’s back to being a usable spec now after a bit of a nerf early on in 4.0.1. I think I will continue to try and wrap my head fully around the tanking rotation and getting some better gear to tank easier and easier b/c with all the pew pew of using my Lock and Hunter (and tanking with the DK) I have neglected my tanking skills a bit on the warrior so I will have to find some time to buildhim up some more. Ok onto the holy power talks….

Now onto the new world of Pali’s. The Paladin has undergone somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 overhauls over the years. So this is nothing new that they have given us a whole new mechanic of Holy Power. It’s another charge up mechanic a-la some of the rogue charges but stores on the Pali rather then who he attacks. The charges then can be used to cast a quick hear or more importantly some damage attacks by the pali. If you want to read up more on this mechanic as well check out Wow insider or wowheadagain. So how do I feel about the changes to the tree’s and the Holy power? Well it def takes some getting used to using it for tanking and such, but much different then the old mechanic with the 800 judgements. The harder part is that they increased the cool down a bit on consecrate, made it a bit weaker and overall took out some of the ease of AoE tanking. I know they wanted to make it a little more labor intensive but just like the DK tanking having the DPS to wait a few mins before starting to bombard the dps meters isn’t the easiest thing inthe world. Apparently the Retribution spec has taken some abuse with lower then normal DPS but the playstyle to me, is one that carries some fun with it. One of the big boppers in the tree is sanctified wrath.  Not only does it (at 3 points) reduce the cooldown of avenging wrath by 1 min but it lets you use hammer of wrath at all times when AW is active. Sure HoW still has it’s own CD but you are able to fire off a few of these every time AW is active. And as I have seen HoW can do some killer damage each time. The other night on my Pali (only level 79) I was getting regular hits of 12k damage per HoW. I am sure this will be nerfed but at a small 2 min cooldown this AW will be triggered quite a bit. So maybe the DPS isn’t so far down as it is people haven’t gotten used to using the Ret spec to it’s fullest? Only time will tell again.

So as far as specs go I like what they have done all over the place. I can’t really say a whole lot on the other half of the classes (Priest, Shaman, Rogue,Druid, Mage) only b/c I don’t have those advanced in any way to level 80 so I cannot intelligently speak on what was changed and how it plays. But if they play anywhere like the others I am sure they will be enjoyed by all.

Tonight I will go over the final day of Blizzcon (hopefully they give us something good or else this is quite the fail of a con) and the last part of my review of the new patch as I talk about a change to a couple of things in the UI.

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