Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Post 5.0.4 Thoughts

Patch 5.0.4 has been here since for a week now. I've had time to spec a character or two, update every addon at least twice, and even run a raid.

Mornara's rotation hasn't really changed all that much. I made the happy discovery that using Blood Boil on a single target will refresh that target's diseases, which goes a long way to address the (new for Blood DKs) 60 sec cd on Outbreak. I honestly can't see why you'd ever not take Roiling Blood as a talent. I'm looking forward to getting Soul Reaper, and even have a space saved for it on my bars.

Viljo's new rotation seems pretty nice so far as well. I like having a little more control over the pyro procs and feeling less at the mercy of RNG. I'm not sure I'll like the changes that Alter Time and the last talent bring, but we'll see when I get to level 90.

The raid was mildly successful. Despite addons crapping out all over the place we managed to kill the first 6 heroic bosses before we ran out of time. This task was made a lot more difficult by a bunch of disconnects, and the fact that about half the raid forgot that when they updated DBM they also needed to grab the Cata pack for it. There were general adjustment to new rotations, but it went well for the most part. Not being able to release until a fight is over is actually rather annoying. I can see it driving me batshit when there is that one jackass who doesn't listen when a wipe is called for.

I was amused at all the new achieves and combining of old achieves. It did not surprise me that logging in Morn and V was enough to get me the 100 mount achieve and 100 pet achieve. Combining mounts and pets for your account seems a bit odd, but not terribly game breaking. However, I am not going to substantially alter the mount macros I have for my characters currently. Their mounts reflect their personalities, and it just wouldn't make sense for them to be riding anything else than what they already are.

The once thing I am intensely disappointed about with the pets is that the Dragon Kite is not a fightable pet. I had all these awesome plans about how my dragon kite was going to kick ass whenever we actually get to do pet battles. Those plans are all kaput now :'-(

I did get a chance to try out the new aoe looting. This will make farming old instances slightly more profitable and less time consuming. Which is nice, since Morn still needs rep from a bunch of the BC factions. It'll help with her rampages through IQD and older dungeons.

Oh, I was also disheartened to see that the requirements for the DS meta-achieve changed. You no longer need Spine or Madness of Deathwing. It was a bit sad to log in and see that achieve pop up. I'd been looking forward to getting it when we actually downed those two bosses. Now it feels like we were just handed a consolation prize, even though I know we worked so hard and completely earned the achievements we did get.

2 comments:

Durandal said...

Reason not to pick Roiling Blood: other options generate more runes.

Unholy Blight: aoe disease application with no rune cost. Best case on frequent single targets, this saves you a FU rune pair roughly every 2.5m; worse case you see <= 1 target/minute and there's no benefit. Also saves runes and sanity when targets trickle in.

Plague Leech: Best case, with frequent add deaths, this is a death rune every 25s. Worst case, you can Leech right before Outbreak, generating a death rune every 60s. Quality of life loss, since you have to pay close attention to collect that resource.

Roiling Blood: similar to Unholy Blight, saves you runes and sanity, but only in situations where you want to BB for damage (not for disease refresh) anyway. Inferior to Unholy Blight for this purpose until you're AoE'ing more than 10s every 1.5m.

All that said... I took Roiling Blood, primarily because it *didn't* require me to make room on my bars for another ability. :P

Clara said...

I think that other options require more runes to refresh diseases.

The 5.0.4 patch removed the Blood DK skill to have a 30 sec Outbreak CD, it's now back to a baseline of 60 secs for all specs. Every other disease application you can use Outbreak, but you'll need to use an FU rune pair to keep your diseases going in between.

Plague Leech gives you an extra death rune, but you'll still need to use a FU pair to refresh. With adds dying at just the right time you'll still break even, with slightly more than 2 death runes every minute, instead of an extra FU pair every minute.

Unholy Blight has a 1.5 min CD, so you only get to use it to refresh every other interim disease.

And the case where BB with Roiling Blood really shines is when you've got frequent adds. Then you get to BB for aoe threat as well as aoe diesase spreading.