Nerd Culture Podcast

Day 1

I have just completed my first Full day of Hearthstone, and I love it!

Just to give some background to my TCG playing, I have enjoyed about 10+ years of Magic: The Gathering, about 2-3 years of Pokémon, and 1-2 years of the WoW TCG. I have also played the Battletech card game and tried Yu-Gi-Oh (no I didn’t like it). This brings me up to Hearthstone. In simple terms, I love it. It’s true that it doesn’t have the feel for the instant spells, which Pokémon didn’t have either (making it more simplistic and easier to follow), however Hearthstone adds in the secrets which activate on the enemies turn, giving a little bit more strategy for you and your foe to think around.

Also, automatically gaining 1 mana crystal per turn up to 10 alleviates the problems of having resource ‘clumps’ or ‘droughts’ during your game and is a huge plus. The fact that the game also adds in ‘the coin’ to allow the 2nd player 1 turn of being ahead of the 1st player resource wise is also an interesting concept to balance who goes 1st and 2nd.

The 9 different characters all have their own unique spells, abilities and even creatures makes them all very appealing, provided you know what type of deck you want to make.  This gives a lot of interesting choices for what may even be the same theme behind a deck, but can be executed in up to 9 different ways, based on the innate hero ability, as well as the extra cards they bring to the table.

I look forward to playing against more opponents, live and npc, and getting a much better feel for this game.

Click More to see how the rest of my week went! (more…)

Burn to Ashes is a Fire Mage talent spec designed around encompassing your enemy in fire until they become dust in the wind.

Click here to see the spec on WoWhead!

The main spells used will be Living Bomb, Combustion, and Pyroblast. However, Pyroblast will mainly only be cast when you are either just starting out a fight, or in the cases of PvP whenever you don’t have an enemy up close. These situations call for Dragon’s Fire, so they can be dazed and allow you to move away from your enemy via Blink (utilizing the Glyph of Momentum, which will help you to move backwards while still facing your enemy).

To further help in survivability (as always mentioned first since I like to protect myself while doing damage), Ice Floes can also help buy some time, allowing you to move around while casting your spells. Also, even though Flameglow doesn’t add much to damage mitigation, it is an effect that is on going in helping to protect your character. Ice Ward and Frost Nova help to also keep enemies away from you, freezing your enemies in place allowing you to move away with Blink, or walk away while casting via Ice Floes. There is also healing available to the Mage (sometimes a much needed attribute) via Glyph of Evocation, which can be activated at anytime with the Invocation talent and also gives a good amount of added mana at the same time along with a 15% added damage buff. Also, whenever things get too hairy for the Mage, Greater Invisibility can get enemies off of your back in a flash, as well as give you a better vantage point over your enemy (in the case of PvP). Also, the Armors Glyph will allow your Molten Armor to withstand more damage (especially in conjunction with Flamglow).

Groups are easier to take down due to Inferno Blast and it’s associate Glyph, which allows the player to spread a Pyroblast, Ignite, or Combustion effect to an additional enemy. However before you begin with taking on a group, there will be some precautions that should be taken first. To begin, I recommend casting an Invocation to gain the damage bonus.  Then use Living Bomb on up to 3 of your targets and follow up with a Pyroblast and a couple of Scorches until you get a critical hit, causing an Ignite effect. Then, once you have your critical hit, cast Inferno Blast (which is an automatic critical hit) allowing for a free and instant cast of Pyroblast. After this, you can continue to cast either Scorches or Fireballs while using Frost Nova, Ice Ward and Dragon’s Fire to keep your enemies off of you while burning them to the ground.

All in all, Burn to ashes is based around the thought of keeping a lot of damage on your enemies while continually bathing them in more fire!

This is my latest Monk spec, Bushido. I used this spec on my Windwalker Monk from level 70 and up to take down my opponents. (I will post my hilarious level 1 – 69 long range Sniper spec another day).

Click here to see the spec on WoWHead

This spec is all about keeping yourself at maximum health for as long as possible, by constant healing, preventing damage or just all out redirecting it. For this purpose, Glyph of Expel Harm is a must. Also, I love Chi Torpedo and getting to use it 3 times in a row with Celerity is hilarious (especially since it can be directed in all of 8 directions instantly). Now as for the damage aspect, Fists of Fury was my go to for situations where I had 3-4 enemies on me at a time, mainly for the stun, since Zen Sphere could be placed on 1 enemy as well as myself followed by my pummelling with Fists of Fury (which comes with a wonderful free stun). Afterlife is a life saver since a single enemy is easily dispatched giving you a chance at having the Healing Sphere drop for you, reducing the need to bring food with you (unless you wanted cooked food it for the bonus). Once level 56 is hit, the Windwalker Monk is a true force to be reckoned with, increasing all damage dealt to nearby targets by an astonishing 20% and reducing healing received along with Tigereye Brew to increase damage dealing further.

As for the survival aspect, Healing Elixirs is amazing in conjunction with Tigereye Brew or Energizing Brew to gain more life. Touch of Karma can be used on enemies up to 20 yards (thanks to the glyph) so no worries about ranged enemies pounding on you while you are taking down melee opponents. Ascension will give you the opportunity to have more uses of your chi required abilities. If the enemies around you start to bog you down after the Touch of Karma has worn off, feel free to perform a Leg Sweep, stunning all of your melee enemies, then roll to that pesky ranged enemy and beat the tar out of them, or use Storm, Earth and Fire to take him out while still attacking the melee enemies. So many choices so little time!

Sparring will also help to keep damage away from you, even further with the Glyph, which adds the negation effect to spells as well. If you have already used up all of your Chi Torpedoes and need to cover more distance, use Flying Serpent Kick to make the rest of the distance to the ranged enemy (especially for PvP of course, since Chi Torpedo already covers a good range) and also deal some damage as well as slow them down (which is also great in the PvP setting for flag carriers, who probably aren’t looking behind them!).

All in all, Bushido will instil the way of the warrior in you, granting enough power and discipline to take on any manner of foe!

The next WoW patch, 5.4, has been given the title Siege of Orgrimmar and will finally give players the chance to curbstomp the insane Garrosh Hellscream.

Check it out!

Another updated spec, this time it’s for Arms Warriors, allowing the blood to flow out of their enemies’ veins while keeping their own. The one thing that the Arms Warrior has to be sure of is to have a good 2 handed weapon with them at all times. This is how they deal most of their damage via Seasoned Soldier, gaining 25% increased damage. Thankfully, 5.2 has made things a bit easier with this spec, removing Rend and tying it into Mortal Strike, and allowing Mortal Strike to grant the warrior 2 uses of their signature ability, Overpower.  Also, due to the new version of Blood and Thunder (which used to be a talent requiring 3 points for this spec), Thunder Clap not only reduces physical damage dealt by enemies, but also applies Deep Wounds. Victory Rush is still your main go to ability for whenever you are low on health, however there are a few changes for the better for this spec.

Click here to see the spec on WoWhead!

One example is that I actually used to stay away from Execute. The reason was because it cost all of your rage when previously my Overpower would do approximately the same amount of damage to my enemies, due to the cutoff of 30 rage. However, Sudden Death brings new life to this skill, since both Mortal Strike is free to cast, and grants 2 Overpowers, and if an Execute is used before the Overpowers, then the Overpowers will both also be free to cast, as well as any others within a 10 sec duration (which from counting Mortal Strikes alone can be a total of 4 Overpowers due to the 6 second cool down). Blood Spiller also has a wonderful new ability granted at level 90, aptly named for the spec, Bloodbath. Every minute this ability can be triggered to give all of your attacks the effect of dealing an additional 30% more damage as a bleed effect over 6 seconds. So, what I have done for fun, against groups of 5+ enemies, is to use Thunderclap, reducing their damage and causing a bleed, followed by Bloodbath, Sweeping Strikes, and lastly Bladestorm. This combo will tear all foes around you to pieces in a matter of moments. Plus, anything that doesn’t die is easily killed afterward, considering that with the Glyph of Sweeping Strikes you gain 1 rage for each enemy that was hit.

As for keeping the Warrior healthy, a few new additions have been made here as well. Disrupting Shout, Warbringer, and Mass Spell Reflection have come to join the fray, allowing the warrior to prevent spell casting (although Warbringer has to be done from afar so this will more than likely be a PvP related caster delay, unless something was done to agro a far way opponent). Second Wind is still old reliable, and has gotten better due to healing 3% at all times while under 35% hit points. This ability now also generates 50% more rage than it used to pre-5.2. Also, while at higher levels, don’t forget about your Banner abilities, they can get you out of bad situations via giving the warrior additional crit chance, reducing enemy damage, or if in a party, then redirecting enemy attention to the Warrior (which I have used to actually prevent a wipe to protect a Druid during a battle Rez from getting killed).

This spec is back in action and it has blood in its eyes (not necessarily its own!).